It's no secret that the last few years have seen a massive explosion in the use of artificial intelligence for general information-gathering. An even more recent trend, though, is how large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are increasingly being used for verifying and consuming news; reports from the Pew Research Center over the last year found that one-in-five U.S. teens regularly use LLMs to get their news, while one-in-four young adults have reported using them for that purpose at least once. A new open-access study from the MIT Media Lab should give some of those users pause: Researchers found that, over the course of a month, participants who relied on AI systems to verify facts actually got worse at detecting misinformation on their own when their chatbots were taken away. This phenomenon, which is often referred to as the 'AI dependency paradox,' has been observed in a wide range of knowledge domains, like the 2025 study that found that doctors who used AI got worse at detecting cancer on their own. The dynamic mirrors broader tech trends around so-called 'deskilling' (or 'cognitive offloading') that have been well-documented for decades, from calculators weakening our math skills to Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies impacting our natural sense of direction....

The Bacillus Calmette'Guerin vaccine, often given to infants in countries with high rates of tuberculosis, is also being tested as a treatment for diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and other conditions.Credit: Nikolay Doycinov/AFP via Getty A century-old vaccine against tuberculosis helps to regulate blood sugar in people with certain types of diabetes, such that they can reduce their insulin use, according to the results of a phase II clinical trial. The finding adds support for the once-controversial hypothesis that vaccines made with living but weakened pathogens can protect against both their target disease and off-target ones. The trial vaccine ' called the Bacillus Calmette'Guerin (BCG) vaccine, after the two researchers who developed it ' is derived from a weakened form of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis in cows. In the 1920s, studies found that the shot reduced mortality in children by protecting them from not just tuberculosis, but other deadly infections, too. Fast-forward to today, and it has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat bladder cancer and is even being investigated against conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. Its broader benefits are 'no longer a fluke', says Denise Faustman, a medical researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who ran the diabetes trial....

For some time, the Biden family standings were clear. Hunter, the ne'er-do-well son, resided in the basement. Joe, occasionally buffoonish but a successful and durable politician, sat in the middle. Jill, the community-college professor with a bright smile, was widely liked'even if some conservatives scoffed at her wanting to be addressed as 'doctor.' (Everyone agreed that Beau, the saintly oldest son who died of cancer at 46, had been the best of the bunch.) The Biden family is at its highest peak of attention since Joe left office in January 2025. Jill is on tour for her memoir View From the East Wing; Joe spoke Friday night at a Best Western in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Hunter is on X, Substack, and a podcast. Something strange has happened in the midst of this: As each of them has tried to publicly reconcile themselves with troubled recent history, Hunter has been oddly charming, while Jill has turned heel. The former president, for his part, is simply no longer relevant. In his address to the South Dakota Democratic Party's annual McGovern Day dinner, Joe Biden ripped into his predecessor cum successor. 'My God,' he said, 'tearing down the East Room of the White House to make room for a ballroom more fitting of Versailles'' The issue is not that he's wrong about Donald Trump, nor that he was in 2024. It's that few people are interested in hearing him, assuming they can. (The New York Times reported that Biden was 'at times halting and hard to understand, at other times yelling clearly at the top of his voice.')...

The question was prominent at two of the world's largest cancer meetings this year, and hypotheses abounded. Ultra-processed foods, obesity, microbial toxins and agricultural chemicals were all considered. But a clear answer remained elusive. 'Multiple cancers are increasing in incidence globally among individuals under the age of 50,' oncologist Kimmie Ng told the audience at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago, Illinois, last week. 'The vast majority are considered sporadic, with unknown cause.' Worldwide, more than 9,000 cases of cancer are diagnosed in adults under the age of 50 each day, epidemiologist Hyuna Sung told the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in San Diego, California, in April. But lumping these diagnoses together could obscure clues as to their cause, she cautioned. 'Rising incidence of cancers among young adults does not reflect a single story,' said Sung, who works at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, Georgia....