05 Sci-Tech

AI tool poisoning exposes a major flaw in enterprise agent security– venturebeat.com

pgnewser May 11, 2026 0

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AI agents choose tools from shared registries by matching natural-language descriptions. But no human is verifying whether those descriptions are true.

I discovered this gap when I filed Issue #141 in the CoSAI secure-ai-tooling repository. I assumed it would be treated as a single risk entry. The repository maintainer saw it differently and split my submission into two separate issues: One covering selection-time threats (tool impersonation, metadata manipulation); the other covering execution-time threats (behavioral drift, runtime contract violation).

That confirmed tool registry poisoning is not one vulnerability. It represents multiple vulnerabilities at every stage of the tool’s life cycle.

There’s an immediate tendency to apply the defenses we already have. Over the past 10 years, we’ve built software supply chain controls, including code signing, software bill of materials (SBOMs), supply-chain levels for software Artifacts (SLSA) provenance, and Sigstore. Applying these defense-in-depth techniques to agent tool registries is the next logical step. That instinct is right in spirit, but insufficient in practice.

Scientists say a critical Atlantic ocean current is weakening and the world could feel the impact– www.sciencedaily.com

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A massive system of ocean currents in the Atlantic that plays a key role in regulating Earth’s climate has been weakening for almost 20 years, according to a new study. Scientists say the slowdown stretches across a large section of the Atlantic Ocean and could eventually alter weather patterns around the world.

The research was led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science. Their findings provide some of the strongest direct observational evidence so far that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is losing strength. The results could help researchers improve climate models and better understand how ongoing climate change may affect the future.

“A weaker AMOC can shift weather patterns, potentially leading to more extreme storms, changes in rainfall, or colder winters in some regions,” said Shane Elipot, a senior author of the study and physical oceanographer at the Rosenstiel School. “It can also influence sea-level rise along coastlines, affecting communities and infrastructure.”

SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites. Here’s how that could impact the atmosphere and the night sky– www.cbc.ca

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Most of humanity has a great propensity to think in the short-term, but generally, long-term considerations — air pollution, deforestation and emissions, for example — just aren’t our thing.

That’s partly why scientists are deeply concerned about a recent SpaceX proposal to launch one million satellites — data centres — into orbit around Earth.

Their concerns range from losing the natural night sky, to losing access to space, to the environmental impact on our atmosphere.

At the moment, there are roughly 16,000 satellites orbiting Earth, 14,000 of which are active. SpaceX is responsible for more than 8,000 of them.

Scientists reversed liver aging with young gut bacteria in stunning study– www.sciencedaily.com

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Scientists may have discovered a powerful new link between the gut microbiome, aging, and liver cancer. New research presented at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2026 suggests that restoring gut bacteria to a more youthful state could help protect the liver, reduce age related damage, and potentially lower cancer risk.

The findings come from a mouse study focused on the microbiome, the vast community of bacteria and other microbes living in the digestive system. Researchers found that giving older mice back their own younger gut microbes produced striking effects throughout the body, especially in the liver.

Does Dante’s Inferno from the 14th century depict an asteroid impact?– www.space.com

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Dante’s famous 14th century epic poem, “Inferno,” which is the first part of the Italian writer’s “Divine Comedy,” represents the first time a giant impact of a massive object falling from the heavens was envisaged, according to an expert in the specialized field of geomythology.

In the poem, the massive object in question is the Devil himself, Lucifer, who fell onto the Earth after being expelled from heaven. Yet, according to Timothy Burberry of Marshall University in West Virginia , this fall and subsequent impact is described by Dante in very similar terms to an asteroid impact.

Burberry is a professor of English and an expert in geomythology, a field which involves searching old folk tales, myths and stories for evidence of real geological events. Written between 1308 and 1321, Dante’s “Inferno” depicts the main character — Dante himself — being guided through Hell by the spirit of the ancient Roman poet Virgil.

In what is considered one of the greatest works in the history of European literature, Dante and Virgil travel to the Underworld, where they are taken across the River Styx to Hell by the ferryman Charon — in fact, two of Pluto‘s moons, Charon and Styx, are named after these details.

Brain scans reveal a shocking difference between psychopaths and other people– www.sciencedaily.com

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Neuroscientists have identified a measurable brain difference between people with psychopathic traits and those with few or none. In a study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), the University of Pennsylvania, and California State University found that a brain region involved in reward and motivation was larger in individuals with psychopathic traits.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the team found that the striatum was about 10 percent larger on average in psychopathic individuals compared with a control group. The striatum sits deep in the forebrain and plays a role in movement planning, decision-making, motivation, reinforcement, and how the brain responds to rewards.

Make America AI Ready: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Recommendations– blog.citp.princeton.edu

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The Trump administration has made artificial intelligence a centerpiece of its economic agenda, promising to retrain a workforce it says must be ready to compete in an AI-driven future. One early piece of that effort: a free text-message course from the Department of Labor (DOL) and private partner Arist called, “Make America AI-Ready”, is a useful start on the journey to AI literacy for all Americans. This seven-day long, 10-minute-per day course which frames itself as “your AI 101” is accessible, technically informative, and engaging (see below for the full contents). Here we analyze its strengths, lay out a few weaknesses we think should be addressed in the current version, and elaborate some stretch goals for an “AI 201” course that would build upon the original.

Ice age humans in China crafted surprisingly advanced stone tools 146,000 years ago– www.sciencedaily.com

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Archaeologists working at an ancient site in central China have uncovered evidence that early humans may have become more inventive while living through a brutal ice age. The discovery comes from the Lingjing archaeological site, where researchers have spent more than 10 years excavating animal bones and sophisticated stone tools linked to an extinct human relative called Homo juluensis.

A new study found that the site dates back about 146,000 years, placing it squarely within a cold glacial period rather than a warmer era as scientists once believed. The findings challenge the long-standing idea that creativity and technological advances mainly developed during times of environmental stability and abundance.

“People often imagine creativity as something that flourishes in good times,” says Yuchao Zhao, the assistant curator of East Asian archaeology at the Field Museum in Chicago and the lead author of a paper describing the findings in the Journal of Human Evolution. “Finding out that these stone tools were made during a harsh ice age tells a different story. Hard times can force us to adapt.”

Scientists discover the brain’s hidden “stop scratching” switch– www.sciencedaily.com

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When an itch strikes, scratching usually brings relief after a few moments. Scientists have now uncovered part of the biological system that tells the brain when enough scratching has occurred. The discovery reveals how the nervous system naturally limits scratching and may help explain why this process breaks down in people with chronic itch disorders. The findings were presented at the 70th Biophysical Society Annual Meeting.

Researchers from the laboratory of Roberta Gualdani at the University of Louvain in Brussels identified an unexpected role for a molecule known as TRPV4 in itch triggered by mechanical stimulation, such as scratching.

“We were initially studying TRPV4 in the context of pain,” Gualdani explained. “But instead of a pain phenotype, what emerged very clearly was a disruption of itch, specifically, how scratching behavior is regulated.”

Supercarrier October – americanistpress.com

pgnewser May 7, 2026 0

There is a growing realization by many that the U.S. Supercarrier is no longer the decisive military advantage it once was. Now, more analysts are coming down on the side that claims the supercarrier’s days are gone or soon will be.

The rise of drones and supersonic missiles alone have significantly raised the price of carrier defense. The question is this, if the supercarrier era is in the fall of its reign, how far away is its winter? And what does that mean for U.S. power going forward?

Go Deeper

AI Models Near the Point Where They Can Build a Better Version of Themselves – PJ Media– pjmedia.com

pgnewser May 7, 2026 0

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“My prediction is by the end of 2028, it’s more likely than not that we have an AI system where you would be able to say to it: ‘Make a better version of yourself.’ And it just goes off and does that completely autonomously,” Jack Clark, who heads The Anthropic Institute, told Axios.

Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, says his institute is seeing signs of “AI contributing to speeding up the research and development of AI itself,” a process known as recursive self-improvement. 

Clark adds, “It’s always been the case that humans outside the technology need to come up with the ideas that they then put back into it. What happens if we have a technology that can generate ideas within itself for how to improve itself? That’s a new concept.”

Too fast, too soon. The speed with which AI systems are evolving is far outstripping our ability to gauge the impact on humans and society. Lots of good things can happen in medicine, biology, and other sciences where AI is already making a big impact. The speed and autonomy of artificial intelligence models promise an abundant future.

MIT scientists discover millions of “silent synapses” in the adult brain– www.sciencedaily.com

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MIT neuroscientists have uncovered a surprising feature of the adult brain. It contains millions of “silent synapses,” which are immature connections between neurons that remain inactive until they are needed to help form new memories.

For many years, scientists believed these silent synapses existed only during early development, when the brain is rapidly learning about the world. But the MIT team found that in adult mice, roughly 30 percent of synapses in the brain’s cortex are still silent. This suggests the adult brain holds a large reserve of unused connections that can be activated when new information arrives.

Researchers say this hidden pool of synapses may explain how the brain continues to learn throughout life without disrupting existing memories.

“These silent synapses are looking for new connections, and when important new information is presented, connections between the relevant neurons are strengthened. This lets the brain create new memories without overwriting the important memories stored in mature synapses, which are harder to change,” says Dimitra Vardalaki, an MIT graduate student and the lead author of the study.

Anthropic AI says deal struck to use SpaceX data centres– www.cbc.ca

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The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.

Anthropic on Wednesday said it had reached a deal to tap the computing resources of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, marking a détente with its one-time critic and ‌a boost for both companies in the high-stakes artificial intelligence race.

Under the agreement, Anthropic will use the full computing power of SpaceX’s Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, Tenn., which houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and will give the Claude chatbot maker 300 megawatts of new capacity within a month.

The deal gives the IPO-bound SpaceX a marquee customer as it looks to sell investors on its AI ambitions, while helping Anthropic ​ease capacity constraints following a surge in demand for products such as its AI coding ​tool, Claude Code.

The announcement came as Anthropic held a developer day in San Francisco on Wednesday, where it unveiled a new Claude AI feature called “dreaming,” meant to help its AI systems learn by reviewing work between sessions, spotting patterns and updating ​files that store user preferences and other context.

Affirmative Action In NIH Grants Revealed– www.science20.com

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The Supreme Court recently issued another ruling that seeks to end racial discrimination. most recently in specially-created political districts. What has not been an issue, because it was not obvious like universities and Louisiana politics, is how grants get chosen.A new study says that there was a component of racial favoritism in science funding as well, and it’s only been revealed in the wake of NIH grant cuts.

To the public, science is like sports – a meritocracy. The best win. The reality is more like politics. It helps to have friends, and it’s important that you say you will do what they want you to do. After the COVID-19 vaccine saved millions of lives and got a Nobel Prize, for example, both the NIH and the University of Pennsylvania attached themselves to it. Both were blatantly lying. The NIH had refused to fund the mRNA work of Katalin Karikó, Ph.D. Penn not only refused her tenure, they demoted her because she believed in mRNA but the federal government did not. She quit academia specifically because she knew the private sector funded nearly all actual basic research(1) while government often wanted to engage in cultural agendas or fund ‘safe’ studies guaranteed to show a positive result before the grant was up.

Scientists reverse diabetes in mice with lab-grown insulin cells– www.sciencedaily.com

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Scientists in Sweden have developed a more reliable way to create insulin-producing cells from human stem cells, bringing new momentum to efforts to treat type 1 diabetes. The research, published in Stem Cell Reports, shows that these lab-grown cells can effectively control blood sugar in tests and even reverse diabetes in mice.

Type 1 diabetes develops when the immune system attacks and destroys the pancreas’s insulin-producing cells. Without insulin, the body cannot properly absorb glucose from the bloodstream, leading to dangerous blood sugar levels. Replacing these lost cells has long been seen as a promising solution, but earlier attempts to grow them from stem cells have produced inconsistent results.

“We have developed a method that reliably produces high-quality insulin-producing cells from multiple human stem cell lines. This opens up opportunities for future patient-specific cell therapies, which could reduce immune rejection,” says Per-Olof Berggren, professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, and corresponding author alongside Siqin Wu, researcher at Spiber Technologies AB

AI is splitting the housing market in two: Bay Area luxury homes up 13%, affordable ones collapsing– fortune.com

pgnewser May 7, 2026 0

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As AI mints new millionaires, billionaires, and even trillionaires, it’s also threatening to replace entry-level workers and sparking fearful chatter of the “permanent underclass.” There’s no place that’s more evident than in the Bay Area, at the heart of Silicon Valley, where technology is wedging a deeper divide in the K-shaped economy, especially in the housing market.

A new Redfin report found that since the launch of ChatGPT’s first model in Nov. 2022, luxury home prices in the region—classified as those selling between $3.1 and $7.6 million—have jumped 13.4%. At the same time, home values for lower-end properties in the Bay Area—those $535,000 to $615,000—have fallen by 3.8%.

“Some owners of lower-end properties have missed out on the AI boom, with home prices in the most affordable Bay Area zip codes declining over the past two years,” Yingqi Xu, Redfin senior economist, said in a statement. “It’s another sign of the K-shaped economy taking shape in the Bay Area, with AI lifting the fortunes of some households and neighborhoods much more than others.”

Many Americans today are grappling with the sobering reality of high mortgage rates, inflated home prices, and a housing stock shortage. Many are delaying homebuying by a near decade from just a few years ago, as the median age of the first-time homebuyer hit 40 in 2025, up from just 33 in 2021.

Even brief AI use could hurt your ability to think, a new study finds– www.digitaltrends.com

pgnewser May 7, 2026 0

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A new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford, and UCLA suggests that using an AI chatbot for just 10 minutes could negatively impact your ability to think and problem-solve. And honestly, the findings are a little alarming.

As reported by Wired, the researchers asked participants to solve problems, including simple fractions and reading comprehension tasks. Some participants were given access to an AI assistant that could solve the problem for them.

When the AI was suddenly removed, those participants were far more likely to give up or get the answer wrong. In other words, the moment the AI crutch was gone, people struggled.