Trump 2.0 is an assault on science everywhere

World and Human Action Model: A Generative Artificial Intelligence Engine to Generate a Game World for Online Multiplayer Bleeding Edge

The United States’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) will be a challenge for the agency, but hope is not lost, senior global health figures told Nature. Without the United States, the WHO’s ability to monitor emerging diseases such as H5N1 bird flu might be hindered in the short term. Peter Singer says the withdrawals could lead to more balanced funding from member countries, which is actually in the interest of a sustainable WHO.

A new generative artificial intelligence engine can create a video game world that responds to player inputs. Researchers trained the engine — the World and Human Action Model (WHAM) — on one-second slices of gameplay from the online multiplayer game Bleeding Edge, taken from controller inputs from 500,000 anonymized play sessions. They showed that WHAM’s creations adhere to the original game rules, and can generate a variety of game scenarios that retain items added by the player.

A two-and-a-half-year-old girl shows no signs of a rare genetic disorder, after becoming the first person to be treated for the motor-neuron condition while in the womb. The child’s mother took the gene-targeting drug during late pregnancy, and the child continues to take it. The drug, Risdiplam, modifies the expression of a gene called SMN2 to produce more of a protein required for maintaining motor neurons in the spinal cord and brainstem.

Microsoft’s Topological Qubit: Why scientists are angry about their research? The US scientific community must know how it is going to be affected

Microsoft says it has created the first Topological qubits, a way to store quantum information, that it hopes will underpin a new generation of quantum computers. Some researchers have doubts about the company’s claims after the press release contained few technical details. Microsoft says it has disclosed some of its data to selected specialists. I bet my life that they are seeing what they are seeing. Steven Simon, a theoretical physicist, was briefed and he said it looked good.

The damage done to the US research enterprise is such that it is hard to put into words the enormity of it. Organizations representing the global scientific communities are beginning to react. They have to speak out for their US colleagues. The US scientific and educational communities must know that they are not alone. Science and scientists are being attacked around the world.

There could be more disruption in the future according to experts. Project25 was a blueprint put forth by the Heritage Foundation and many of the policies rolled out so far track with it. The document also called for slashes to climate research and new rules that could make it easier to fire government employees, including scientists, who were hired to positions on the basis of expertise rather than being politically appointed.

Containerization for urban rat populations: How much is needed? How much of our rubbish gets rid of in the era of innovation, and what will we do about it?

For more than a decade, Chinese policymakers have aimed to shed the image that their nation lags behind the United States in innovation. China is now being spotlighted for its wider Artificial Intelligence (ai) ecosystem after the launch of a large language model. Chinese firms invest more in industrial and manufacturing problems than in consumer-facing products. The person who is winning the race might be less relevant in the future.

Cities are having a hard time fighting the rats because of a warming climate. Efforts to control urban rat populations rely heavily on poisons and traps, cruel and largely ineffective measures that can have knock-on effects on other wildlife. Thankfully, research has shown that there’s another way (and bonus, it’s not too difficult to implement): we keep our rubbish better contained. New York City shows that containerization can work, even if it takes careful planning. There is no need for a gruesome end to rat life.

Source: Daily briefing: First in-womb treatment for motor-neuron condition is a success

The Science of Diversity and Inclusion: Why the Trump Administration shouldn’t stop funding scientific research that promotes sexism and gender equality

In normal cells, cellular machinery takes introns from immature mRNA and joins them with exons in a process called splicing. The results of the sequence creation are used to guide the creation of an amino-acid chain. Slipping can go wrong in a tumours. There are instances where the cells produce wrong or odd proteins. The cells are labeled as foreign by the neoantigens that the proteins produce. (Nature News & Views | 7 min read, Nature paywall)

Nature Computational Science commits in an editorial to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion. Nature Computational Science can be read for 4 minutes.

Young scientists, scientific academies, and researchers are at risk around the world because of the support of global scientific organizations. We urge them all to speak up for their US-based colleagues — and the crucial work they do — just as they support researchers at risk elsewhere.

There are differences of opinion between researchers in all scientific fields. Discussion and further study are the best ways to reach a shared understanding. It’s a not a solution to shut down scholarship.

These are unacceptable attacks on people’s rights and on academic freedom. They will halt, if not reverse, decades of progress in scientific research. Worldwide, the research consensus is that more granular, more disaggregated data are essential to achieving the SDGs. Sex and gender are included in the study design to improve science and medicine.

The Trump administration has wrongly described the cancellation of diversity, equity and inclusion policies as illegal, radical and wasteful. Cancelling public initiatives that create inclusive and welcoming spaces, and stopping federal funding for the study of these issues, could cause harm. There’s no excuse for the White House to stop funding initiatives that recognize the complexity of sex and gender.

More than 10,000 employees of the agency have been placed on leave. It is currently impossible to visit most of its buildings and website. Although life-saving programmes are technically exempt from any immediate changes, in practice there are few, if any, USAID staff or functioning financial systems available to keep the payments that fund them going. The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has disbursed over 100 billion dollars for the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS since 2003 but funding is still uncertain.

At least one million women in countries around the world have lost access to contraceptive care as a result of a 90-day ‘pause’ on funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the world’s largest single-country source for aid, including scientific assistance. In 2023, the United States disbursed $72 billion in international assistance, some 60% of which was provided through USAID.

Trump has also cancelled US federal funding for international climate-change projects, which totalled some US$11 billion in 2024, amounting to around 10% of annual global public climate finance. Alongside his decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, this is a severe blow to tackling climate change, and will delay efforts to boost finance for the countries most affected by global warming.

Some of the actions of the Trump administration are being challenged in the courts, and the White House might have to modify or reverse some of its decisions. But the direction of travel is clear: there is a desire to downgrade, if not eliminate, independent, science-based evidence and expert advice; there is also a rank disregard for international agreements.