James Altucher:

Scientists Create “Living Plastic” That Self-Destructs in Just Six Days

In a study published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials, a team of scientists used two cooperating bacterial strains to fully degrade plastic in only six days without producing microplastics.

Zhuojun Dai, a corresponding author on the paper, explains that “the realization that traditional plastics persist for centuries, while many applications, like packaging, are short-lived, led us to ask: Could we build degradation directly into the material’s life cycle?”

Some microbes make enzymes that can cut long polymer chains into smaller fragments. Since plastics are polymers, researchers can potentially place those enzymes, or the microbes that produce them, directly into living plastic materials.

“By embedding these microbes, plastics could effectively ‘come alive’ and self-destruct on command, turning durability from a problem into a programmable feature,” explains Dai.

Next, the researchers want to create a way to activate the microbes in water, where much plastic pollution eventually accumulates. Although the work centered on one polymer, the same general strategy could potentially be adapted for other plastics, including materials often used in single-use products.

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Ray Blanco:

Daily Pill Can Double Survival Time for World’s Deadliest Cancer, Trial Shows

A daily pill can double survival time in patients with the world’s deadliest cancer, according to the results of a clinical trial that experts are saying is a “gamechanger”.

Currently, there are few treatments for pancreatic cancer, and most do little or nothing to help. For decades, scientists have worked relentlessly trying to find clever solutions for a form of cancer that is often found late. More than half of patients are only diagnosed after it has spread.

Now experts are hailing the arrival of a smart drug called daraxonrasib, which works by targeting a protein, Kras, that fuels nearly all pancreatic cancers. The drug glues molecules together to grab and shut down Kras.

In the trial of 500 patients, all of whom had pancreatic cancer that had spread, the pill doubled survival time, with fewer side-effects compared with chemotherapy. The findings were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago.

Patients who took the drug lived substantially longer, for an average of 13.2 months, compared with 6.6 to 6.7 months for patients who had chemotherapy.

Experts in Chicago said there is hope of breakthroughs elsewhere. Similar drugs are being tested for lung and colon cancers.

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Davis Wilson:

Trump Signs an Executive Order That Invites Vetting of Top AI Models for National Security Risks

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on oversight of artificial intelligence Tuesday, less than two weeks after postponing a White House ceremony over his concerns that a similar policy could dull America’s technological edge.

The order establishes a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release. Participation by AI developers would be voluntary, the order says.

“Advanced AI capabilities make our Nation stronger, but also introduce new national security considerations that require coordinated action across executive departments and agencies,” the order says.

It was not immediately clear to what extent the order differed from the one Trump declined to sign on May 21.

The order says the government would have only 30 days to review an AI system, a shorter time frame than some in the industry were expecting. A longer time period might have been seen as too burdensome for a fast-moving and highly competitive industry.

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