Researchers

• The White House has proposed a new rule that would grant political appointees greater control over the approval and funding of scientific research grants. • Critics argue the proposal threatens the U.S. scientific enterprise by undermining the longstanding peer review process used to award grants. • This shift could restrict research into critical areas such as cancer, HIV, rare diseases, climate science, and artificial intelligence by prioritizing political agendas over scientific merit.

• UC San Diego researchers are employing unconventional methods to study space, expanding beyond the university's established history of producing astronauts like Jessica Meir and Kate Rubins. • Professor Karin Sandstrom of the School of Physical Sciences is specifically analyzing the interstellar medium to understand how gas and dust become dense and cold. • This research is critical for uncovering the fundamental mechanisms that trigger the formation of new stars within the universe.

• OpenAI released GPT-5.5-Cyber, a specialized AI model with relaxed restrictions accessible only to vetted security researchers protecting critical infrastructure. • The model supports cybersecurity tasks like malware analysis and authorized penetration testing, overcoming blocks in standard chatbots, and features a three-tiered access system from public to least restrictive Cyber variant. • This positions OpenAI in competition with Anthropic's Mythos Preview, aiming to empower AI defenders amid industry concerns over offensive AI capabilities.

Survey of 27,000 Australian supermarket items found some products boasting environmental benefits had significantly higher emissions than unlabelled counterpartsFoods in supermarkets boasting environmental terms such as “natural” or “sustainable” are mostly just using marketing speak, rather than verified claims, Australian researchers have found.More than 27,000 packaged foods sold at Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, IGA and Harris Farm supermarkets in Sydney were assessed by researchers from the George Institute for Global Health. Continue reading...

Data from University of Toronto suggests Canadians are avoiding US cities during the second Trump administrationA new research tool that tracks cell phone activity has found a 42% drop in visitors from Canada to big metropolitan areas in the US that is much higher than official border-crossing data, suggesting Canadians during the second Trump administration are avoiding US cities in particular.Researchers from the University of Toronto said the tool showed a “year-over-year median decline of approximately 42% in Canadian visits to US metropolitan areas – significantly higher than official border-crossing data, which showed a roughly 25% decline”. Continue reading...

• A*STAR researchers in Singapore created CLUST-McMs, a specialized AI model that beats GPT-4 in summarizing multilingual news from Southeast Asia. • Using a curated dataset of regional news, the smaller model achieved superior accuracy across three evaluation metrics, delivering concise English summaries from overlapping articles in multiple languages. • The study emphasizes localization and targeted data over larger general-purpose models, showing higher fidelity to original sources.

• Deep Tech Week highlights The AI Collective, described as the world’s largest AI community, which connects more than 100,000 AI builders, researchers, and professionals through events, forums, and networking. • The gathering brings together startups, corporate labs, and academic groups to showcase advances in core machine learning, robotics, and applied AI, with a focus on interoperability and responsible deployment. • U.S. participation is strong, with many leading AI research labs and venture‑backed startups using the venue to announce new collaborations, model releases, and open‑source tooling.