August 14, 2026

05 Sci-Tech

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Excerpt from news.bloomberglaw.com

Twenty-seven states and three tech trade groups urged the Federal Circuit not to scrap Idaho’s “anti-patent troll” law in response to an unprecedented challenge to its constitutionality.

Idaho’s law barring the bad-faith assertion of patents in court—and particularly a bond requirement it imposes on non-practicing entities—is before the court in appeals filed by Longhorn IP LLC and an affiliate, Katana Silicon Technologies LLC.

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Excerpt from www.irishtimes.com

OpenAI has created a board committee to evaluate the safety and security of its artificial intelligence models, a governance change made weeks after its top executive on the subject resigned and the company effectively disbanded his internal team.

The new committee will spend 90 days evaluating the safeguards in OpenAI’s technology before giving a report. “Following the full board’s review, OpenAI will publicly share an update on adopted recommendations in a manner that is consistent with safety and security,” the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.

OpenAI also said that it has recently started to train its latest AI model.

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Excerpt from www.nytimes.com

OpenAI said on Tuesday that it has begun training a new flagship artificial intelligence model that would succeed the GPT-4 technology that drives its popular online chatbot, ChatGPT.

The San Francisco start-up, which is one of the world’s leading A.I. companies, said in a blog post that it expects the new model to bring “the next level of capabilities” as it strives to build “artificial general intelligence,” or A.G.I., a machine that can do anything the human brain can do. The new model would be an engine for A.I. products including chatbots, digital assistants akin to Apple’s Siri, search engines and image generators.

OpenAI also said it was creating a new Safety and Security Committee to explore how it should handle the risks posed by the new model and future technologies.

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Excerpt from www.scientificamerican.com

Around 8% of human DNA is made up of genetic sequences acquired from ancient viruses. These sequences, known as human endogenous retroviruses (or Hervs), date back hundreds of thousands to millions of years – with some even predating the emergence of Homo sapiens.

Our latest research suggests that some ancient viral DNA sequences in the human genome play a role in susceptibility to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.

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Excerpt from www.sciencealert.com

One of the most peculiar things about Uranus and Neptune is their magnetic fields. Each of these planets has a hot mess of a magnetosphere, off-kilter and tilted wildly from the rotational axis in a way that’s not seen in any other planet.

It’s not entirely clear why, but thanks to a team of researchers from China and Russia we might have a new piece of the puzzle: a really weird, ionized form of water dubbed aquodiium that could exist deep in the extreme high-pressure interiors of these weird, icy worlds.

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Excerpt from www.discovermagazine.com

 

While robots with a human touch are still not a common sight, they are slowly appearing in public. For years, recreating the softness sensation of a person’s touch remained the ultimate technological challenge for humanoid robot scientists. Recent innovations effectively address these constraints, showing a glimpse of a future where robots can interact with humans in more advanced ways.

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Excerpt from cosmosmagazine.com

Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of ancient practices which might change our understanding of ancient Egyptian life.

Two skulls, both thousands of years old, bear cut marks which could be indications of attempted operations to treat cancer,  or perhaps even to conduct postmortems to learn more about excessive tissue growth.

It is known that as an early civilisation, the ancient Egyptians were skilled in medical practices. Historical records note that they could identify, describe and treat diseases and traumatic injuries. They even build prostheses and inserted dental fillings.

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Excerpt from news.ucsc.edu

A new paper summarizing decades of research demonstrates how social media has supported an explosion of diversity in gender and sexuality in America during the 21st Century, and also how these technologies have equally enabled a cultural backlash. 

The paper’s authors, UC Santa Cruz Psychology Professors Phil Hammack and Adriana Manago, identified five main narratives about gender and sexuality that they believe emerged through social media as people have strived to be “authentic” on these platforms. The findings, along with resulting recommendations for psychology researchers and practitioners, were published in American Psychologist, the flagship research journal of the American Psychological Association.

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Excerpt from lawandcrime.com

Special counsel Jack Smith (left) speaks on Aug. 1, 2023 AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin), former President Donald Trump (right) pictured on May 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Irritated by a late Friday request to bar Donald Trump from falsely saying the feds who raided Mar-a-Lago were authorized to assassinate him, the former president’s lawyers want the Special Counsel’s Office sanctioned for running afoul of local rules and ignoring the judge’s “prior warnings.”

Attorneys Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise, pointing out that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon already told special counsel Jack Smith months ago that “meaningful conferral” with the defense is needed and that “non-compliant notices or unauthorized filings will be stricken,” asked the jurist to “make civil contempt findings” and issue sanctions for “unsupported histrionics.”

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Excerpt from www.newsweek.com

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces scrambled F-15 fighter aircraft on Monday to intercept a Chinese Air Force drone making its first appearance near the country’s southwestern islands, its Defense Ministry said.

The Joint Staff Office in Tokyo said Japanese Air Force jets were launched to head off a possible airspace violation by a Wing Loong-10 unmanned aerial vehicle, which had entered Japan‘s air defense identification zone but not its territorial airspace.

A Newsweek map, created using the Joint Staff’s geospatial data, shows the flight path of the military drone, which Japan identified as a reconnaissance and attack aircraft, during a sortie in the East China Sea.

Tokyo said the WL-10 approached from China’s east coast and circled the waters at least twice before returning to the Asian continent.

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Excerpt from nationalinterest.org

Summary: The Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) has advanced China’s naval aviation with the J-35, a fifth-generation fighter that enhances the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) capabilities.

-The J-35, resembling America’s F-35 but lacking VTOL capabilities, requires a catapult for takeoff.

-While tested on older carriers like the Liaoning, the J-35 is set to fully integrate with the new Type 003 Fujian, which features advanced electromagnetic catapults.

-Initially using Russian RD-93 engines, China is now developing the indigenous WS-13E engine.

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Excerpt from www.nysun.com

Hunter Biden’s legal team may try to argue in his upcoming firearms trial that he was not addicted to drugs at the time he bought the gun in 2018 because he’d just gone to rehab, according to recent court filings.

“Someone like Mr. Biden who had just completed an 11-day rehabilitation program and lived with a sober companion after that could surely believe he was not a present tense user or addict,” Mr. Biden’s defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell wrote.

Mr. Biden, whose trial begins next week, is facing multiple federal felony charges for lying about his drug use to buy a gun in 2018. Dueling filings from the defense and prosecution suggest that some of the trial will revolve around disagreements on what defines an addict, and on how Mr. Biden’s substance abuse disorder could be characterized in October of 2018, when he bought the gun.

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In what appears to be more of a gesture than a substantive act, the GOP-majority House passed a bill that would effectively end the government’s plans to create a centralized banking digital currency (CBDC). The bill passed 216-192, with only 3 Democrats voting for it while 18 Democrats and 4 Republicans did not register votes.

Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) introduced the legislation, saying of its passage in a press release, “For more than two years, we have worked to educate, grow support, and pass this important legislation, which prevents unelected bureaucrats from issuing a financial surveillance tool to fundamentally undermine our American values. My legislation ensures that the United States’ digital currency policy remains in the hands of the American people so that any development of digital money reflects our values of privacy, individual sovereignty, and free market competitiveness.”

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Excerpt from www.tronweekly.com

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Anti-Surveillance State Act, introduced by Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) on May 23, 2024. The le­gislation was approved by 216-192 votes to prevent the Federal Reserve from directly offering CBDC to individuals and using it to implement monetary policy.

The bill, which had the backing of all Republican repre­sentatives and three­ Democrats—Mary Peltola of Alaska, Marie Pe­rez of Washington, and Jared Golden of Maine­—marks a pivotal moment in the ongoing debate­ over digital currency and financial privacy in the Unite­d States.

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Professors Lawrence M. Cathles and Adam C. Simon have released a report claiming the expected and mandated expanding Electric Vehicle (EV) market will soon outstrip the available supply of copper. The solution the report offers is to lower the EV benchmarks and replace that EV production with hybrid car production.

The report claims “Hybrid electric vehicles could have almost as large an impact on reducing CO2 emissions and city pollution, and the likelihood of the copper required for their manufacture being available is much greater. This is not a perfect solution, but it is a much more resource-realistic one.”

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Excerpt from www.roadandtrack.com

Penning a report called Copper Mining and Vehicle Electrification, Professors Lawrence M. Cathles and Adam C. Simon claim that a key mineral in EV production, copper, isn’t being mined at a strong enough rate to support long-term EV sales goals.

Cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and nickel are all essential to electrification in their own ways, but copper fulfills a particularly important responsibility in the production of EVs. Found in everything from the electric motors, batteries, inverters, and the wiring of an electric car as well as in the charging stations themselves, copper is attractive for electrification due to its ability to conduct heat, resist corrosion, and relatively low cost of production.

The Copper Development Association says that each electric vehicle can have up to a mile of copper inside of it. Similarly, the report notes that the manufacturing process of an EV uses around 132 pounds of copper, as compared to 52 pounds of copper used to produce an equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle.

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Excerpt from www.livescience.com

‘Master of deception’: Current AI models already have the capacity to expertly manipulate and deceive humans

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems’ ability to manipulate and deceive humans could lead them to defraud people, tamper with election results and eventually go rogue, researchers have warned.

Peter S. Park, a postdoctoral fellow in AI existential safety at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and researchers have found that many popular AI systems — even those designed to be honest and useful digital companions — are already capable of deceiving humans, which could have huge consequences for society.

In an article published May 10 in the journal Patterns, Park and his colleagues analyzed dozens of empirical studies on how AI systems fuel and disseminate misinformation using “learned deception.” This occurs when manipulation and deception skills are systematically acquired by AI technologies.

 

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Excerpt from www.politico.com

The cryptocurrency industry capped a notable month on Capitol Hill, as 71 House Democrats joined most Republicans to pass sweeping legislation aimed at establishing rules of the road for the fast-moving industry.

Backers of the legislation, which passed 279-136, included prominent senior Democrats like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (D-Calf.) and DCCC Chair Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.).

The White House opposed the measure, which critics say could put consumers and even the larger financial system at risk, but did not threaten to veto it

In a statement explaining her vote, Pelosi said that while the bill “must be improved by working with the Senate and the Administration,” the industry “needs clearer rules of the road and the federal government needs stronger enforcement authority.”

It’s a powerful show of force for the crypto industry among Capitol Hill backers from both parties in a time of fierce divisions.

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Excerpt from coingape.com

Anti-CBDC Bill: The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act, marking a significant legislative milestone.

This decision comes at a time when the public and consumers are becoming wary of their privacy and the government’s intrusion into the financial sector, especially the proposed CBDC by the federal government.

Anti-CBDC Bill Passed

The passage of the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act is a win for the supporters of financial freedom, capturing the essence of a shared fight to keep the policy of digital currencies as a public interest rather than the executive branch’s discretion.

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Excerpt from www.notebookcheck.net

In practical terms, the new battery should enable a range of 600 kilometers with the same size, compared to the previous 400 kilometers – as is currently the case with the Tesla Model Y is currently the case. To achieve this, a mixture of lithium and metal is to be used instead of a lithium-graphite anode.

Production would be cheaper, the potential output would be significantly higher, but commercial use is not yet in sight. The reason for this is the highly reactive combination of an acidic electrolyte and the anode material.

Basically, various compounds are deposited on the anode, which gradually reduce the performance and service life. At Columbia University, New York City, these processes have been and will continue to be studied in detail.

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Excerpt from www.irishtimes.com

Financial rewards for communities, small businesses, farmers and individuals who adopt solar and wind power are being scaled-up, making feeding surplus power into the grid more attractive following an overhaul of tariffs announced on Wednesday by Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan.

The new range of fixed feed-in tariffs to small-scale and community projects who produce between 50kW – 6MW of renewable electricity – from solar and wind – come under an expansion of the small-scale renewable electricity support scheme (SRESS).

It “aims to provide an easier route to market to community projects, farmers and SMES, and maximise their participation in the energy transition”, Mr Ryan told the Energy Ireland conference in Croke Park on Wednesday.

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Excerpt from www.breitbart.com

Chinese state media on Tuesday touted the emergence of a Chinese-made rival to Elon Musk’s Neuralink technology, a chip implanted in the brain that allows humans to directly interface with electronics.

Although China’s Global Times breathlessly hyped the Chinese Institute for Brain Research’s “Neucyber” chip as “China’s version of Neuralink,” the product on display at a laboratory in Beijing is far behind Neuralink, having not yet been implanted in a human host.

Global Times reporters were treated to a “magical scene” in which a monkey with a Neucyber chip made brainwave signals wobble on a computer monitor.

The project directors said the chip has been implanted in the monkey’s skull for almost a year and is “still able to collect high-quality signals.” The next step is designing an algorithm to decode the brainwaves, which would allow the monkey to control a robot arm. If that goes well, researchers hope to begin human trials within a year.

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Excerpt from www.nytimes.com

TikTok said on Thursday that it was introducing new measures to limit the spread of videos from state-affiliated media accounts, including Russian and Chinese outlets, as the company deflects criticism that it could be used as a propaganda tool in a major election year.

The company in 2022 started labeling state-affiliated media accounts — like those from RT, the global Russian television network, and People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. It said it would no longer allow videos from such accounts into users’ main feeds if they “attempt to reach communities outside their home country on current global events and affairs.”

TikTok also said the accounts would not be permitted to advertise on TikTok outside their home countries, to further reduce their reach.

Social media platforms, including Meta, YouTube and X, are grappling with misinformation in a year when as much as half the global population will vote in major elections. Political news on TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, is under particular scrutiny after the passage of a law that would force ByteDance to sell the company or face a ban in the United States. Lawmakers and intelligence officials have said TikTok is a threat to national security, partly because of how the Chinese government could use it to spread propaganda.

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Excerpt from www.bigcountrynewsconnection.com

BOISE – Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador has joined a coalition of 27 states in defending American firearms manufacturers against attempts to hold the companies liable for gun violence in Mexico. Labrador says if a lower court’s ruling is allowed to stand, Americans’ Second Amendment rights could be threatened.

In their petition, the attorneys general ask the U.S. Supreme Court to correct a lower court’s ruling against Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. to keep other nations, like Mexico, from “using American courts to limit the rights of American citizens.”

“This case is a part of the continued attack on the American firearms industry,” said Labrador. “I will never sit back and let a foreign nation dictate the freedoms of American citizens, especially when Mexico’s own hypocritical inaction about immigration, drug cartels, and the border has created such damage here on U.S. soil.”

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Excerpt from indianexpress.com

A platform collapsed during a political rally in Mexico, leaving at least nine dead and many injured. Jorge Maynez, a presidential candidate for the upcoming election in Mexico, was on the stage too, but escaped without getting hurt. People have been talking a lot about how aware Maynez was to escape without harm.

In a post on X, Maynez wrote in Spanish what roughly translates to, “After the accident in San Pedro Garza, where a gust of wind collapsed the stage where we were, I moved to the San José hospital. I am fine and in touch with state authorities to see what happened. Right now, the most important thing is to take care of the accident victims.”

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Excerpt from www.usatoday.com

As Donald Trump heads toward a November rematch election against President Joe Biden, his online posts are reinvigorating a key element of his support from years past: the conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

While QAnon largely faded from the spotlight after Trump left office, he has newly amplified the ideas on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Since the site launched two years ago, Trump has reposted or promoted QAnon-affiliated accounts more than 800 times, ensuring their messages will be widely seen, according to a new study from liberal watchdog group Media Matters shared exclusively with USA TODAY.

Experts say the support amounts to a tacit endorsement of a dangerous movement that has been linked to criminal acts ranging from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to isolated cases of violence and even murder.

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Excerpt from www.worldipreview.com

US Court of Appeals revives Core Optical’s patent infringement cases against tech giants Nokia, ADVA, and Cisco | Decision overturns previous ruling by California District court concerning optical technology | Ambiguities surrounding inventorship agreements add complexity to the legal dispute.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has reopened the door to Core Optical Technologies’ patent infringement lawsuits against Nokia, ADVA, and Cisco.

The appeals court vacated the US District Court for the Central District of California’s decision, which had granted summary judgment in favour of the defendants, remanding the case for further proceedings, yesterday, May 21.

The Californian district court had ruled that the inventor for one of Core Optical’s patent relating to optical signalling was not developed “entirely on his own time”, due to their fellowship at US corporation, TRW.