Towards a sustainable World Health Organization: Generative Artificial Intelligence-based games for motor-neuron disease prevention in the womb

Hope is not lost, according to senior global health figures, despite the United States withdrawing from the World Health Organization. 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, a health researcher, says the withdrawal of funds from member countries could be in the interest of a sustainable WHO.

The new generative artificial intelligence can help create a video-game world that responds to player inputs. The researchers used 500,000 controller inputs to train the engine on one-second slices of play in the Bleeding Edge game. They showed that WHAM was able to create different scenarios for games 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 is taking the drug despite his mother taking it during the last few months of her pregnancy. 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.

Deep Seek in China: How far is the U.S. government from launching a new quantum computer? Experts question the claims of Microsoft

Microsoft plans to underpin a new generation of quantum computers by creating the first topological qubits, a way of storing quantum information. The announcement was made in a press release containing few technical details, which caused some researchers to doubt its claims. Microsoft says it has given some of its data to specialists. Would I bet my life that they see what they think they see? Steven Simon, a theoretical physicist who was briefed, said that it looks pretty good.

US President Donald Trump is going to change a lot of things. The global research community must take a stand against these attacks.

Experts warn there might be more disruption to come. Many of the policies rolled out so far track with proposals put forth in Project 2025, a blueprint organized by right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation. 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.

For more than a decade, Chinese policymakers have aimed to shed the image that their nation lags behind the United States in innovation. The launch of Deep Seek-R1 puts the spotlight on China’s wider Artificial Intelligence (ai) system. Chinese firms are more focused on solving manufacturing and industrial problems than designing products for the consumer. Who wins the race might become less relevant as the countries differ in priorities.

Towards a global understanding of the science of diversity and inclusion in biomedical research: How can we support the fight against urban rat populations?

In a warming climate, cities around the world are finding themselves fighting a losing battle against rats. 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. Research shows that we can keep our trash better contained by using another way to dispose of it. Changing city-wide sanitation systems might take some careful planning, but examples such as New York City’s ‘containerization’ approach show that it works. There was no need for the end to rat life.

In normal cells, cellular machinery takes introns and exons from immature mRNA and joins them together in a process called splicing. The resulting mRNA sequence is used to guide the formation of an amino-acid chain that makes up a protein. In a tumour (b), splicing can go wrong. In those instances, the cells produce incorrect or unusual proteins. The proteins produce structures called neoantigens, which flag the cells to the immune system as ‘foreign’. (Nature News & Views | 7 min read, Nature paywall)

In an editorial, Nature Computational Science commits to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion among their authors, readers and communities. (Nature Computational Science | 4 min read)

How should we respond to this, when we are part of the global enterprise of education, health, science and engineering? To support researchers and to defend their ability to work and study without fear for their jobs, is one thing that must be prioritized. Those working at federal agencies feel that they can’t speak up, but they are free to do so at other organizations if they show support for their affected colleagues.

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

These are unacceptable attacks on people’s rights and on academic freedom. If not reversed, decades of progress in scientific research will be halted. Worldwide, the research consensus is that more granular, more disaggregated data are essential to achieving the SDGs. We also know that incorporating sex and gender into study design improves science and medicine, including diagnosis and treatment.

Another executive order mandated the cancellation of policies and initiatives in diversity, equity and inclusion, which the Trump administration has incorrectly described as illegal, radical and wasteful. It could cause harm if there were to be stopped federal funding for the study of these issues. There is no reason to scrap policies and funding that acknowledge the complexity of sex and gender, something that the White House wrongly calls gender ideology extremism.

Federal agencies and universities are in turmoil. Thousands of researchers wait for a thaw on a funding freeze. Around the world, tens of millions of US assistance programme recipients have been abandoned.

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.

Around 10% of global public climate finance has been lost because of Trump’s cancellation of US federal funding for international climate change projects. 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 Trump administration’s actions in the courts are being challenged by people and organizations and it is possible that the White House is forced to change 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.