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The Download: cancer-detecting blood tests, and crypto’s big Merge

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The Download: cancer-detecting blood tests, and crypto’s big Merge


This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

The US is launching a trial for blood tests that promise to catch cancers earlier

The news: The US is launching a national trial to assess how effective tests designed to spot signs of multiple kinds of cancer in blood drawn from a patient’s arm really are. The goal is to help determine how blood test results for cancer should be interpreted, and it should provide a standard approach to launching cancer screening studies as companies flood the field with new tests.

Why it matters: Most cancers can’t be reliably screened for before symptoms begin—tools like mammograms and pap smears are exceptions, not the rule. Most of these multi-cancer early detection tests work by looking for remnants of tumor cells that explode after the immune system attacks them. Debris from dead tumors turns up in the bloodstream, where it can potentially be detected to warn of cancer before someone feels sick. If imaging confirms the finding, a biopsy follows.

What’s next: The trial, run by the National Cancer Institute, will begin enrolling participants in 2024 and test how effective various blood tests are at spotting cancer in 24,000 healthy patients over four years. If the findings seem promising, a clinical trial almost 10 times as large will commence. Read the full story.

—Hana Kiros

Why Ethereum is switching to proof of stake and how it will work

Later this week, one of the world’s biggest blockchains should move to a new way to approve transactions, and away from the energy-intensive “proof of work” system.

If successful, the process, known as The Merge, should reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by around 99.95%, and potentially help it reach 100,000 transactions per second. If The Merge continues at its current rate, the process should complete on Thursday. Read our explainer on how it will work.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Russia’s government has been hit with its first climate change lawsuit 
A group of activists hopes to force the country’s authorities to adhere to the Paris climate accord. (The Guardian)
+ Russia forest biome is at severe risk from climate change. (FT $)
+ Europe’s increased demand for coal is undermining its climate credentials. (Reuters)

2 A new cancer drug appears to be more effective than chemotherapy
However, there’s no evidence it reduced the total number of deaths. (WSJ $)

3 Twitter’s whistleblower is appearing before the US Senate
Peiter Zatko’s testimony next week could change the course of Elon Musk’s legal battle with the platform. (CNN)
+ Here’s just some of the questions Zatko could face. (The Guardian)
+ Why China’s authorities buy adverts on Twitter, despite banning it. (Reuters)

4 A Blue Origin rocket suffered a booster failure during a launch 
No humans were on board, though. (WP $)
+ Maybe we need to widen our search for ‘intelligent life’. (The Atlantic $)

5 Why it’s so important to understand why some people don’t get covid
And why plenty of people think they’re immune when they’re not. (Wired $)
+ Long covid’s brain fog is disproportionately affecting women. (The Atlantic $)
+ A battle is raging over long covid in children. (MIT Technology Review)

6 CRISPR needs its smartphone moment 
A push into mainstream adoption could change how we treat genetic mutations. (The Atlantic $)
+ Protein factories could help us shine a light on life’s origins. (New Scientist $)
+ Edits to a cholesterol gene could stop the biggest killer on earth. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Why the Internet Archive’s legal suit could change digital history
It could lose a huge chunk of it in the process, too. (Slate $) 

8 Antarctica is in peril 
We’re still learning how vulnerable the East Antarctic ice sheet really is. (CNET)

9 How beauty AI repackaged physiognomy for selfie-lovers
Its claims to read personality traits from facial features aren’t supported by science. (The Information $)
+ The fight for “Instagram face” (MIT Technology Review)

10 WhatsApp groups are tricking us into a false sense of intimacy
But leaving them is easier said than done. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“Our main demand is not to get killed.”

—Camila, a student in Mexico City, tells Rest of World how her classmates track each other’s whereabouts using WhatsApp amid a dramatic rise in violence against women in Mexico.

The big story

The 50-year-old problem that eludes theoretical computer science

October 2021

In July 2021, a proof appeared online at the esteemed journal ACM Transactions on Computational Theory. The result purported to solve the problem of all problems—the Holy Grail of theoretical computer science, worth a $1 million prize and fame rivaling Aristotle’s.

This treasured problem—known as “P versus NP”—is considered at once the most important in theoretical computer science and mathematics and completely out of reach. It addresses questions central to the promise, limits, and ambitions of computation, asking: Why are some problems harder than others? Which problems can computers realistically solve? How much time will it take?

The million-dollar question posed by P vs. NP is this: Are these two classes of problems one and the same? Which is to say, could the problems that seem so difficult in fact be solved with an algorithm in a reasonable amount of time, if only the right, devilishly fast algorithm could be found? Because if all the tricky problems could be transformed with such algorithmic sleight of hand, the consequences for society—for humanity and our planet—would be enormous. Read the full story.

—Siobhan Roberts

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Netflix’s new thriller Glass Onion, a Knives Out sequel, looks a lot of fun.
+ This Twitter account of a cat vibing over music is the best (thanks Melissa!)  
+ Whether you’re comfortable in water or not, we can all agree that waves are pretty majestic-looking.
+ Teen TV shows are surprisingly good at dealing with death. Here’s why.
+ TikTok is throwing its weight behind California’s striking farmworkers.



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The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush

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The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush


The first step to finding out is to catalogue what microbes we might have lost. To get as close to ancient microbiomes as possible, microbiologists have begun studying multiple Indigenous groups. Two have received the most attention: the Yanomami of the Amazon rainforest and the Hadza, in northern Tanzania. 

Researchers have made some startling discoveries already. A study by Sonnenburg and his colleagues, published in July, found that the gut microbiomes of the Hadza appear to include bugs that aren’t seen elsewhere—around 20% of the microbe genomes identified had not been recorded in a global catalogue of over 200,000 such genomes. The researchers found 8.4 million protein families in the guts of the 167 Hadza people they studied. Over half of them had not previously been identified in the human gut.

Plenty of other studies published in the last decade or so have helped build a picture of how the diets and lifestyles of hunter-gatherer societies influence the microbiome, and scientists have speculated on what this means for those living in more industrialized societies. But these revelations have come at a price.

A changing way of life

The Hadza people hunt wild animals and forage for fruit and honey. “We still live the ancient way of life, with arrows and old knives,” says Mangola, who works with the Olanakwe Community Fund to support education and economic projects for the Hadza. Hunters seek out food in the bush, which might include baboons, vervet monkeys, guinea fowl, kudu, porcupines, or dik-dik. Gatherers collect fruits, vegetables, and honey.

Mangola, who has met with multiple scientists over the years and participated in many research projects, has witnessed firsthand the impact of such research on his community. Much of it has been positive. But not all researchers act thoughtfully and ethically, he says, and some have exploited or harmed the community.

One enduring problem, says Mangola, is that scientists have tended to come and study the Hadza without properly explaining their research or their results. They arrive from Europe or the US, accompanied by guides, and collect feces, blood, hair, and other biological samples. Often, the people giving up these samples don’t know what they will be used for, says Mangola. Scientists get their results and publish them without returning to share them. “You tell the world [what you’ve discovered]—why can’t you come back to Tanzania to tell the Hadza?” asks Mangola. “It would bring meaning and excitement to the community,” he says.

Some scientists have talked about the Hadza as if they were living fossils, says Alyssa Crittenden, a nutritional anthropologist and biologist at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, who has been studying and working with the Hadza for the last two decades.

The Hadza have been described as being “locked in time,” she adds, but characterizations like that don’t reflect reality. She has made many trips to Tanzania and seen for herself how life has changed. Tourists flock to the region. Roads have been built. Charities have helped the Hadza secure land rights. Mangola went abroad for his education: he has a law degree and a master’s from the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program at the University of Arizona.

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The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan

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The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan


Over the last couple of decades, scientists have come to realize just how important the microbes that crawl all over us are to our health. But some believe our microbiomes are in crisis—casualties of an increasingly sanitized way of life. Disturbances in the collections of microbes we host have been associated with a whole host of diseases, ranging from arthritis to Alzheimer’s.

Some might not be completely gone, though. Scientists believe many might still be hiding inside the intestines of people who don’t live in the polluted, processed environment that most of the rest of us share. They’ve been studying the feces of people like the Yanomami, an Indigenous group in the Amazon, who appear to still have some of the microbes that other people have lost. 

But there is a major catch: we don’t know whether those in hunter-gatherer societies really do have “healthier” microbiomes—and if they do, whether the benefits could be shared with others. At the same time, members of the communities being studied are concerned about the risk of what’s called biopiracy—taking natural resources from poorer countries for the benefit of wealthier ones. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

Eric Schmidt has a 6-point plan for fighting election misinformation

—by Eric Schmidt, formerly the CEO of Google, and current cofounder of philanthropic initiative Schmidt Futures

The coming year will be one of seismic political shifts. Over 4 billion people will head to the polls in countries including the United States, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia, making 2024 the biggest election year in history.

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Navigating a shifting customer-engagement landscape with generative AI

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Navigating a shifting customer-engagement landscape with generative AI


A strategic imperative

Generative AI’s ability to harness customer data in a highly sophisticated manner means enterprises are accelerating plans to invest in and leverage the technology’s capabilities. In a study titled “The Future of Enterprise Data & AI,” Corinium Intelligence and WNS Triange surveyed 100 global C-suite leaders and decision-makers specializing in AI, analytics, and data. Seventy-six percent of the respondents said that their organizations are already using or planning to use generative AI.

According to McKinsey, while generative AI will affect most business functions, “four of them will likely account for 75% of the total annual value it can deliver.” Among these are marketing and sales and customer operations. Yet, despite the technology’s benefits, many leaders are unsure about the right approach to take and mindful of the risks associated with large investments.

Mapping out a generative AI pathway

One of the first challenges organizations need to overcome is senior leadership alignment. “You need the necessary strategy; you need the ability to have the necessary buy-in of people,” says Ayer. “You need to make sure that you’ve got the right use case and business case for each one of them.” In other words, a clearly defined roadmap and precise business objectives are as crucial as understanding whether a process is amenable to the use of generative AI.

The implementation of a generative AI strategy can take time. According to Ayer, business leaders should maintain a realistic perspective on the duration required for formulating a strategy, conduct necessary training across various teams and functions, and identify the areas of value addition. And for any generative AI deployment to work seamlessly, the right data ecosystems must be in place.

Ayer cites WNS Triange’s collaboration with an insurer to create a claims process by leveraging generative AI. Thanks to the new technology, the insurer can immediately assess the severity of a vehicle’s damage from an accident and make a claims recommendation based on the unstructured data provided by the client. “Because this can be immediately assessed by a surveyor and they can reach a recommendation quickly, this instantly improves the insurer’s ability to satisfy their policyholders and reduce the claims processing time,” Ayer explains.

All that, however, would not be possible without data on past claims history, repair costs, transaction data, and other necessary data sets to extract clear value from generative AI analysis. “Be very clear about data sufficiency. Don’t jump into a program where eventually you realize you don’t have the necessary data,” Ayer says.

The benefits of third-party experience

Enterprises are increasingly aware that they must embrace generative AI, but knowing where to begin is another thing. “You start off wanting to make sure you don’t repeat mistakes other people have made,” says Ayer. An external provider can help organizations avoid those mistakes and leverage best practices and frameworks for testing and defining explainability and benchmarks for return on investment (ROI).

Using pre-built solutions by external partners can expedite time to market and increase a generative AI program’s value. These solutions can harness pre-built industry-specific generative AI platforms to accelerate deployment. “Generative AI programs can be extremely complicated,” Ayer points out. “There are a lot of infrastructure requirements, touch points with customers, and internal regulations. Organizations will also have to consider using pre-built solutions to accelerate speed to value. Third-party service providers bring the expertise of having an integrated approach to all these elements.”

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