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Testing for 'Bad Cholesterol' Doesn't Tell the Whole Story

WIRED

Testing for'Bad Cholesterol' Doesn't Tell the Whole Story So why don't more doctors use it? For decades, assessing cholesterol risk has been built around a simple idea: Lower "bad" cholesterol, lower your chance of a heart attack . The test at the center of that approach measures how much low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, is circulating in part of the blood. It has shaped everything from clinical guidelines to the widespread use of statins, medications that reduce LDL. Lowering LDL cholesterol reduces heart attacks, strokes, and early death.


A New Hantavirus Vaccine Is in the Works

WIRED

Since 2023, Moderna and Korea University have been developing a new mRNA vaccine for hantavirus. The work has been promising so far, but a finished product isn't likely coming any time soon. US-based pharmaceutical company Moderna confirmed that it has been working on the development of hantavirus vaccines in collaboration with the Vaccine Innovation Center of Korea University College of Medicine (VIC-K). This comes after an outbreak of hantavirus occurred on a Dutch cruise ship that sailed from Argentina and disembarked its passengers and crew in the Canary Islands on May 10. At least three people aboard the MV died, and several cases were reported as serious.


World's largest solar-powered aircraft crashes after losing power

Popular Science

'Solar Impulse 2' made history by circumnavigating the globe in 2016. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. 'Solar Impulse 2' completed its circumnavigation of the planet, which included a flight over Giza's pyramids, in 2016. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The groundbreaking experimental aircraft known as has met an untimely end.


AI-powered hacking has exploded into industrial-scale threat, Google says

The Guardian

'There's a misconception that the AI vulnerability race is imminent. The reality is it's already begun,' said John Hultquist at Google's threat intelligence group. 'There's a misconception that the AI vulnerability race is imminent. The reality is it's already begun,' said John Hultquist at Google's threat intelligence group. In just three months, AI-powered hacking has gone from a nascent problem to an industrial-scale threat, according to a report from Google .


How to teach the same skill to different robots

Robohub

In today's manufacturing environments, upgrading a robot fleet often means starting from scratch - not only replacing hardware, but also reprogramming tasks. Even when two robots are built to perform similar jobs, different joint arrangements or movement limits mean that a task programmed for one robot often can't be used on another. Enabling skills to transfer directly between robots could make these systems more sustainable and cost-efficient. To meet this challenge, researchers in the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory ( LASA) in EPFL's School of Engineering have developed a new robotic control framework called . The method takes a human-demonstrated task, mathematically converts it into a general movement strategy, and then adapts it so that different robots can perform it based on their physical design.


Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create 'new work' by beloved French playwright

The Guardian

Léa Sorrentino and Melvin Fauchoux perform in L'Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), created using AI. Léa Sorrentino and Melvin Fauchoux perform in L'Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), created using AI. Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create'new work' by beloved French playwright Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English: the last word in historical literature, drama, wit and satire. Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century dramatist has been revived after scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to help write an experimental play in his style. L'Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), a three-act comedy, made its debut at the Royal Opera at the Château de Versailles last week.


Palantir's access to identifiable NHS England patient data is 'dangerous', MPs say

The Guardian

NHS England said it had'strict policies in place for managing access to patient data'. NHS England said it had'strict policies in place for managing access to patient data'. Palantir's access to identifiable NHS England patient data is'dangerous', MPs say Health service has given US tech firm'unlimited access' to certain data to build integrated platform, according to reports Mon 11 May 2026 08.01 EDTLast modified on Mon 11 May 2026 10.06 EDT MPs have warned that an NHS decision to grant Palantir access to identifiable patient information in its plan to use AI to improve the health service is "dangerous" and will fuel public fears that data privacy is not being prioritised. NHS England has allowed staff from the US tech firm and other contractors to access patient data before it has been pseudonymised, despite internal fears of a "risk of loss of public confidence", the Financial Times reported. The health service made the move to allow Palantir to access the data in recent weeks according to the reports, which revealed an internal NHS briefing that said it would allow "unlimited access to non-NHSE staff" to part of the NHS's federated data platform (FDP), which holds identifiable patient information.


Who is Gerhard Schroeder, Putin's pick for Ukraine peace talks mediation?

Al Jazeera

What are Russia's gains from the Iran war? 'We are not losers; we are winners' Who is Gerhard Schroeder, Putin's pick for Ukraine peace talks mediation? Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could coordinate talks with the European Union to secure a peace deal in Ukraine - a proposal met with scepticism by EU officials. European Council President Antonio Costa said recently he believed there was "potential" for the EU to negotiate with Russia and to discuss the future of Europe's security architecture. A day later, the Russian leader said the four-year-old war may be "coming to an end", adding that he was ready to hold direct talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Moscow or a neutral country. Speaking after Saturday's celebrations for Victory Day, which marks Russia's victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 at the end of World War II, Putin added he would be willing to meet Zelenskyy only once the terms of a peace agreement had already been settled.


Forget the AI job apocalypse. AI's real threat is worker control and surveillance

The Guardian

For some, AI can help remove the drudgery from daily work. For many others, though, AI is not an assistant. For some, AI can help remove the drudgery from daily work. For many others, though, AI is not an assistant. Forget the AI job apocalypse.


Sequential Minimal Optimization for $\varepsilon$-SVR with MAPE Loss and Sample-Dependent Box Constraints

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We derive a Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO) algorithm for the quadratic dual problem arising from $\varepsilon$-SVR~\cite{Vapnik1995, Drucker1997, Smola2004} modified to minimize the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE)~\cite{Makridakis1993, Hyndman2006} directly in the loss function~\cite{benavides2025support}. This formulation is part of a broader family of SVR models with percentage-error losses that also includes least-squares variants~\cite{Suykens2002} and symmetric-kernel extensions~\cite{Espinoza2005}, whose unified structure is studied in~\cite{benavides2026unified}. The key structural difference from standard $\varepsilon$-SVR is that the box constraints become \emph{sample-dependent}: $α_k, α_k^* \in [0,\, 100C/y_k]$. We show that this modification affects only (i) the feasibility sets $\Iup$ and $\Idown$ in the working-set selection and (ii) the clipping bounds in the analytic two-variable update, while leaving the curvature formula and gradient update structurally identical to the standard SMO~\cite{Platt1998, Platt1999, Fan2005}. A shrinking heuristic adapted to the sample-dependent bounds is derived and shown to introduce an asymmetry between $α$- and $α^*$-variables controlled by the gap $2y_k\varepsilon/100$. The same solver applies to the symmetric-kernel variant (m2) by replacing $Ω$ with $Ω_s = \tfrac{1}{2}(Ω+ aΩ^*)$~\cite{Espinoza2005}. Numerical validation against an interior-point QP reference solver confirms solution agreement to within solver termination tolerance across ten synthetic configurations spanning both kernel variants and symmetry types. An implementation is available in the open-source \texttt{psvr} R package~\cite{BenavidesHerrera2026Rpsvr}.