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Today:
When Susan Wojcicki Discovered She Had Lung Cancer, She Decided to Find Out Why
NEWS | 21 November 2025
After her shocking lung cancer diagnosis, the late Susan Wojcicki dedicated herself to fighting the disease and looking for answersIn 2022 Susan Wojcicki was on top of the world—CEO of YouTube, parent to five kids and running a few miles a day—when she received a shocking diagnosis: metastatic lung cancer. Elah Feder: Susan would go on to learn a lot about lung cancer, and one of the things that she learned that really disturbed her is that doctors were not great at detecting her kind of cancer: lung cancer in non-smokers. But historically, part of the reason that lung cancer got proportionately less funding might have to do with attitudes toward lung cancer. Further Reading“From Susan” — Susan Wojcicki’s final post, written a few weeks before she died and published on YouTube’s blog on Nov. 25, 2024. Esther Wojcicki, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019The Lung Cancer Genetics Study“Does Lung Cancer Attract Greater Stigma Than Other Cancer Types?” by Laura A. V. Marlow et al., in Lung Cancer, Vol.

Top Stories:
Illegal Wildlife Trade Tied to Drugs, Arms, and Human Trafficking
NEWS | 21 November 2025
In 2021 investigators in South Africa received a tip that a Vietnamese organized crime ring was operating out of a local farm. Illegal wildlife trade is a multibillion-dollar industry carried out by organized criminal gangs with operations spanning continents. “We’re seeing criminal networks around the world being more adaptable and interconnected and almost commodity agnostic,” says study lead author Michelle Anagnostou, a University of Oxford researcher of illegal wildlife trade. In some cases, cartels that specialized in drugs, gold, diamonds or human trafficking opportunistically added wildlife goods such as rhino horn, rare succulents or bear gallbladders to their dealings; in other cases, wildlife specialists expanded to drugs, stolen goods or sex trafficking. These interconnections show that “the previous long-standing approach of countering each type of organized crime separately is no longer sufficient,” Anagnostou says.

World:
Alien Comets Swarm around Other Stars
NEWS | 21 November 2025
Given that we now know that planets are the norm around other stars, too, it’s not a big leap to think those stars might host comets as well. And just as astonishing, the first such alien comets were detected nearly 40 years ago. Amazingly, the exocomets, which formed around an alien star trillions of kilometers away from us, looked downright familiar. As I write this, in fact, an exocomet is passing through our solar system. Statistically speaking, there’s probably more than one such alien comet in our solar system at any given time; they’re mostly just too small and faint to detect.

Current Events:
Michael Benson’s Nanocosmos Explores Natural Design through Scanning Electron Microscopy
NEWS | 21 November 2025
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.] I’m, I’m really looking forward to talking about my project. Pierre-Louis: Yeah. That’s, that’s a marine, marine diatom. Pierre-Louis: Yeah.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 21 November 2025
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

News Flash:
Personalized mRNA Vaccines Will Revolutionize Cancer Treatment—If Federal Funding Cuts Don’t Doom Them
NEWS | 21 November 2025
Personalized melanoma vaccines could be available as early as 2028, with mRNA vaccines for other cancers to follow. Another threat to personalized mRNA vaccines for cancer was coming into focus: mounting federal hostility to vaccines. After obtaining positive results for the mRNA vaccine for melanoma, Sahin agreed to partner with Balachandran to develop an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer. Lennard Lee, an adviser to the U.K.’s National Health Service overseeing the rollout of clinical trials for cancer vaccines, says the pandemic gave regulators there a running start on trials for mRNA cancer vaccines. By May another threat to personalized mRNA vaccines for cancer was coming into focus: mounting federal hostility to vaccines.

Latest:
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission in Jeopardy as U.S. Considers Abandoning Retrieval
NEWS | 21 November 2025
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on Mars in July 2024. The Perseverance rover is the first phase of a multistep mission to bring bits of Mars to Earth known as Mars Sample Return (MSR), and the next step is dangling by a thread. Now that Perseverance has scooped up prized samples, scientists are faced with the prospect of leaving them on Mars to languish. “I’m on record for having criticized Mars Sample Return,” says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis. The plan called for widespread cuts, scrapping existing space missions, shelving many climate programs and ending Mars Sample Return—which the administration described as “financially unstable”—in favor of one day sending humans to Mars.

Breaking:
New Pill Can Save Moms from Postpartum Depression within Days
NEWS | 21 November 2025
Emerging research on the biology of postpartum depression shows that it is not like other severe mood disorders neurologically or biochemically. Leos finally got relief from her postpartum depression with a new medication, zuranolone; she felt better within days of her first dose. Arin YoonGrowing knowledge of the neurobiology of postpartum depression is also pointing toward methods for earlier and more reliable detection. “That’s a game changer.”For centuries medicine has struggled to fully grasp the causes and consequences of postpartum depression. Because postpartum depression has been lumped in with major depression, the two have often been treated the same way.

Trending:
Can AI ‘Griefbots’ Help Us Heal?
NEWS | 21 November 2025
And that’s exactly the therapeutic effect Robert Neimeyer, a therapist and professor at the University of Memphis, had told me might be possible with AI ghosts. One of the few completed studies of digital ghost users, however, found that the AIs were largely beneficial for mourners. Ten grieving people who underwent in-depth interviews for the study said digital ghosts helped them in ways people could not. Creating and interacting with an AI ghost, Kurzweil argues, “is not like [getting] a painting. Like Wales, I had found that the work of creating a digital ghost wasn’t just pouring data into an app.

This Just In:
The Brain Science of Elusive ‘Aha! Moments’
NEWS | 21 November 2025
Experiences in Insight Problem Solving,” by Jennifer Wiley and Amory H. Danek, in Nature Reviews Psychology, Vol. moments and compare the brain activity during them with the brain activity for analytical solutions. That part of the brain, the right anterior superior temporal gyrus, connects with many other brain regions. Our findings linking this specific area of the brain to the aha! Fortunately, insightful thinking is largely unconscious and does not tax attention or working memory the way analytical thinking does.

Today:
The Quest to Build a Truly Intelligent Machine Helps Us Learn about Our Own Intelligence
NEWS | 21 November 2025
Researchers seek not simply artificial intelligence but artificial general intelligence, or AGI—a system with humanlike adaptability and creativity. Further, and invisibly to users, the core language system may itself be modular in some sense. “How does information go from the language system to logical reasoning systems or to social reasoning systems?” wonders neuroscientist Anna Ivanova of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Whether or not Franklin’s machine was truly conscious—Baars and Franklin themselves were dubious—it at least reproduced various quirks of human psychology. In this scheme, brain modules operate mostly independently, but every tenth of a second or so they have one of their staff meetings.

Top Stories:
Lifting the Veil on Near-Death Experiences
NEWS | 21 November 2025
For decades François d’Adesky, a retired diplomat and civil servant who now lives in Brussels, spoke to no one about his near-death experience (NDE). An astounding 5 to 10 percent of the general population is estimated to have memories of an NDE, including somewhere between 10 and 23 percent of cardiac arrest survivors. “Now, clearly, we don’t question anymore the reality of near-death experiences,” says Charlotte Martial, a neuroscientist at the University of Liège in Belgium. But their findings are already challenging long-held beliefs about the dying brain, including that consciousness ceases almost immediately after the heart stops beating. Participants reported stronger sensory effects during their NDE, including the sensation of being disembodied, but stronger visual imagery during their drug trip.

World:
How the Brain 'Constructs' the Outside World
NEWS | 21 November 2025
They nudged me to develop a perspective that provides an alternative description of how the brain interacts with the outside world. Fluctuations in neuronal activity are meaningful only for the scientist who is in the privileged position of observing both events in the brain and events in the outside world and then comparing the two perspectives. A brain that remakes itself constantly would be unable to adapt quickly to fast-changing events in the outside world. When you close your eyes, you still know where you are because a great deal of what defines “seeing” is rooted in brain activity. In this sense, our thoughts and plans are deferred actions, and disengaged brain activity is an active, essential brain operation.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 21 November 2025
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Current Events:
Could Inducing Lucid Dreams Treat Insomnia and Nightmares?
NEWS | 21 November 2025
Imaging studies revealed more wakelike activity in the brain during lucid dreams than nonlucid dreams. To have stable lucid dreams, you need to remain calm and attentive, or you will probably wake up from excitement. Lucid dreamers who can conjure up characters rate these dreams as more positive and mystical than other dreams. Headbands and watches could help them call for help to escape nightmares—or just help to induce lucid dreams or direct the content for more satisfying dreams. Such measures could lead to algorithms that detect opportune moments to deliver sensory cues and induce lucid dreams.