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"A welcome change:" Xbox’s new update is making achievements feel meaningful again — thanks to Gamerscore badges
Xbox’s latest Insider update introduces evolving Gamerscore badges, a new boot animation, and fresh library filters for players.
What Tele-ICUs Mean For Health Care In Critical Moments
In August 2024, 26-year-old Conor Hylton checked into Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut. Overnight, he was transferred to critical care, where he died.It was only after his passing that his family found out that Conor was treated at what’s known as a “tele-ICU.” His story shines a light on a practice that’s been around for decades despite a lack of substantial research about its outcomes.A tele-ICU is a hospital unit where patient care is handled off-site by remote doctors, nurses, or specialists. Up to a third of ICU beds in the U.S. are in tele-ICUs. That’s according to a study from the American Hospital Association.In Wisconsin, as of May 1, critical care physicians are no longer physically present in the ICUs of a few Ascension satellite hospitals. They remain available via video call to help bedside nurses and on-site hospital medicine doctors, known as hospitalists, who do not specialize in critical care.These facilities do present an opportunity to expand and improve the health care people receive. But what are the risks of replacing in-person care in the most critical, life or death moments?Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.
Next Major ARC Raiders Update Pushed to October as Embark Slows Down Content
In a post on social media, Embark Studios confirmed that it's slowing down updates and making them more meaningful when they do drop.
Agriculture in Africa: science and research can’t make an impact without investment and good policies
Science can only change the world when societies decide to give it the means to do so.
Introducing Northwood Insights, a New Blog for the Next Generation of Business Leaders
New content platform strengthens the university’s digital presence, broadens its reach among prospective students, and establishes Northwood as a thought leader in business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurial education. Northwood University has launched Northwood Insights, a new blog designed to position the university as a leading voice in business education, free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and career development. The platform delivers expert, research-informed content to prospective students, current students, and the broader professional community, meeting audiences where they already are online and searching for answers. “Northwood has always been about preparing people to move forward with clarity and confidence,” said Marketing and Communications Officer Rachel Valdiserri. “With Northwood Insights, we’re meeting students where they are with content that’s relevant, direct, and built for how they discover and learn today. It’s not about adding more noise; it’s about delivering ideas, perspectives, and insights that help them make more informed decisions earlier in their journey.” The blog features a growing library of articles spanning Northwood’s core academic strengths, including business administration, automotive and mobility studies, sports management, and entrepreneurship. Each piece is written to inform and guide, answering the real questions students are asking while organically connecting readers to the academic programs, faculty expertise, and career outcomes that define a Northwood education. Each article is crafted to reflect Northwood’s institutional voice while being optimized for the search behaviors of today’s prospective students, a generation that begins researching universities long before they apply. By appearing in those early search results, Northwood establishes credibility, builds familiarity, and creates a meaningful connection with students the moment they are most open to influence. “This platform is a natural extension of our enrollment strategy,” said Dr. Matthew Bennett, vice president of enrollment and strategic alliances. “When a prospective student searches for career paths, we want Northwood to be the source they trust. Northwood Insights makes that possible at a global scale.” Beyond enrollment, Northwood Insights serves the university’s broader advancement mission. As a platform built to demonstrate expertise and institutional relevance, it reinforces Northwood’s standing as a thought leader in free enterprise education and entrepreneurial leadership, directly supporting alumni engagement, donor confidence, and community partnerships. The content signals that Northwood is not only preparing students for the careers of today but actively shaping the conversations defining the industries of tomorrow. “Attention isn’t given anymore; it’s earned,” said Milada Dzevitski, Northwood’s digital content and technical writer who manages the Northwood Insights blog. “This platform is built to meet that standard, with content that’s relevant, direct, and worth engaging with.” Northwood Insights is live now and will continue to grow with new content published regularly. Share this page
Randi Zuckerberg Means Business
Every week, the "Randi Zuckerberg Means Business" show covers the latest business trends and topics and how they affect our modern lives.
Vault: W&M diving into sports tax
The House Ways and Means Committee is preparing for a hearing to investigate a slate of sports-related tax issues, according to multiple sources familiar with the plans.
NBC News Aims to Steer Business Coverage Beyond Stocks, Bonds
NBC News really means business this time. The NBCUniversal-backed journalism outlet is launching a new concept that will feature deep conversations with executives whose companies exert a strong influ...
Commencement 2026: Pharmacy graduate combines passion for care with business acumen to provide total patient support
KINGSTON, R.I. — May 12, 2026 — For Alayna Ballavia, who will graduate from the University of Rhode Island with two advanced degrees—including a Pharm.D. from the College of Pharmacy—some of the most meaningful lessons she learned about pharmacy, healthcare, and life in general happened far beyond the classroom. During two international medical missions in […]
How the Iran war could weaken Trump in his strongman showdown with Xi
Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week is a capstone event meant to demonstrate the president’s indelible mark on world history.
Official Xperia 1 VIII images show global colours and key features before launch day
The Xperia 1 VIII is launching on May 13. In the meantime, a reliable leaker has published a series of photos detailing Sony's new flagship. Features like a camera shutter button, a capacitive fingerprint scanner and Zeiss T* lens will return for the smartphones' eighth-generation release.
What The Abortion Pill Case Could Mean For The Workforce And Healthcare
A federal appeals court said providers could no longer mail mifepristone anywhere in the country. SCOTUS temporarily restored access for mailing the drug until May 14th.
Science says morning sickness could mean you’re having a girl
The old wives' tale turns out to have some real data behind it.
City Council panel backs tax incentives for United Center entertainment district
A plan to provide nearly $55 million in tax rebates for the $7 billion project that’s meant to be “transformative” for the West Side sailed through the council’s economic development committee.
City Council panel backs tax incentives for United Center entertainment district
A plan to provide nearly $55 million in tax rebates for the $7 billion project that’s meant to be “transformative” for the West Side sailed through the council’s economic development committee.
Big, Beautiful Success Story: Missouri Small Business Owner Expands, Creates New Jobs Thanks to Working Families Tax Cuts
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The pro-worker, pro-growth tax policies in the Republicans’ Working Families Tax Cuts are already helping small businesses...
HOK’s John Rhodes Talks Sports Venue Brand Engagement with the Financial Times
The Financial Times featured HOK’s John Rhodes on brand engagement in stadiums and arenas—and what it means for venue design and the fan experience.
Buckeyes and Bama still on for 2027 and 2028
We know that your life is busy, but that doesn’t mean you want to miss any news about your favorite team. So, we are rounding up all of the most important news, analysis, and commentary from LGHL and the rest of the Buckeye beat. Hype Week From now until preseason camp starts in August, Land-Grant […]
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight goes live early for some Xbox players as the PC version gets Denuvo DRM
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight has gone live early on Xbox for some pre-orders. Meanwhile, Denuvo DRM has been added to the PC version.
Watch: 8 Health Insurance Terms You Should Know
Deductible. Copay. Out-of-pocket limit. What do these health insurance terms actually mean? We explain common phrases from insurance policies so navigating your plan is less of a headache.
Germany's businesses frustrated by economic decline
No one had higher hopes for Friedrich Merz's chancellorship than the German business community. Meanwhile, however, early euphoria has given way to bitter disappointment.
Germany's business community is frustrated and disillusioned
No one had higher hopes for Friedrich Merz's chancellorship than the German business community. Meanwhile, however, early euphoria has given way to bitter disappointment.
On ‘60 Minutes,’ Gov. Jeff Landry defends Louisiana redistricting: ‘no one gets extra rights’
“The failed narrative is that actually people in Louisiana are racist. That we — that basically we won't elect Black people.” Landry said. “I mean, I disagree with that.”
Bengals' waiver wire signing won't prevent more moves
The Bengals tackled a weakness on the waiver wire. But that doesn't mean they're done.
Liquid Glass Tweaks Are Reportedly Coming In The Next macOS
The changes are meant to improve legibility issues with lists and text-heavy areas.
Thousands drop Medi-Cal in Ventura County. Here's what it means
Enrollment in the Medi-Cal insurance program is falling in Ventura County and the decline is expected to continue.
Chicago Teachers Union wants $8.5 million dues hike to fund politics
“Has your brand become toxic?” This was a pointed question from WGN Political Editor Tahman Bradley, posed to Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates in a recent interview. Her immediate response: “I don’t understand the question.” When pressed, Gates added, “The Chicago Teachers Union is not a political party, it is a labor union.” But internal union documents show CTU leadership is trying to skim $8.5 million more from teacher paychecks explicitly for politics, while trying to silence union members critical of Gates’ leadership. Under the proposed dues hike, Chicago teachers would see up to $800 more per year flow from their paychecks to union coffers. The union already takes in more than $40 million a year, mostly from dues. And it spends less than 18 cents of every dollar on teacher representation. The No. 1 reason for the proposed dues hike? Politics. “We must win a majority of the first 21 person fully elected school board in November,” reads the first point in CTU’s member FAQ document.1 This directly contradicts CTU’s promise to members about how leadership uses dues money. The official CTU handbook tells members that the union does not use dues money for politics, so if they are interested in funding political activity, they should consider voluntary donations to CTU’s political action committee. “Our dues are not used for political purposes,” according to the handbook. “So our PAC relies on extra contributions from our members to support progressive candidates and to impact elected officials at the city, county and state levels.” This kind of double-speak is one reason members are concerned about another constitutional change slipped into the dues hike vote, which will take place on May 20-21: an attempt to stop members from holding the union accountable. A proposed amendment to the union constitution tries to place limits on when members may bring a lawsuit against the union for violating members’ rights.2 This provision is clearly a response to members’ lawsuit against union leadership regarding Gates’ years-long refusal to publish audited financial statements. The judge in that case has repeatedly denied the union’s attempts to dismiss it. Teachers opposed to these changes have been circulating this flier, urging members to vote no. What will CTU members get in return for millions of dollars in additional dues? If the 2024 school board elections are any indication—not much. CTU leadership’s record on school board races may not inspire confidence among members. A Chicago Policy Center analysis of a dozen affiliated PACs found CTU spent nearly $2.9 million on school board races in 2024. Of that spending, more than $2.1 million (75%) went to losing candidates. And while CTU-backed candidates lost six of the nine competitive seats overall, they fared worse in their biggest-spending races, losing five of six contests in which the union and its affiliates put up more than $250,000 for their candidate. The Chicago school board elections take place Nov. 3.3 Is another $8.5 million enough to clean up a toxic reputation? Not likely. Update on federal tax credit scholarship: Last week, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she plans to opt into the federal tax credit scholarship program. If Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker follows suit, Illinois could unlock $1 billion in donor money statewide for both public- and private-school students. If Illinois does not opt in, that money will flow to other states. The Last Ward reported in February on how Illinois Democrats could unlock at least $100 million in new resources for Chicago public-school students by opting in. Update on the investigation into how Chicagoans learned about a meeting to hike their property taxes: The Last Ward reported in January on an absurd, taxpayer-funded investigation into how local media learned of a planned Chicago school board meeting to hike the district’s property tax levy. That investigation is now complete. Lawyers interviewed two dozen witnesses, and found nothing. Update on Illinois’ muni debt crisis: My colleague Joe Tabor last week published a must-read piece in Crain’s Chicago Business about how Illinois recently rejected south suburban Harvey’s request to be designated a “distressed city.” The saga shows why the state must implement a better structure to assist insolvent local governments, including allowing for the option to pursue debt relief via Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The Last Ward reported in October on how Harvey is tipping the first domino in Illinois’ municipal debt crisis. Mincing Rascals: I joined the Mincing Rascals podcast to discuss the SAFE-T Act, the millionaires tax, and more. My “green light” recommendation: Force Majeure (2014). 1 Notably, the No. 2 reason cited is “resources to fund a state-wide millionaires tax campaign in order to fully fund the state’s school funding formula.” The constitutional amendment necessary to implement a progressive income tax in Illinois recently died in the Illinois House, meaning this question would not appear on the ballot until 2028 at the earliest. 2 There is seemingly no single-subject rule for CTU constitutional amendments. So members only get one vote on the full package. One cannot vote “yes” on the dues hike and “no” on the restriction of members’ rights, for example. 3 Illinois law grants far too much power over local government to unelected officials like Gates. State lawmakers should fix that.
Editorial: Economy, health headline session
The story of the 2026 Legislature is one of making difficult spending and taxing decisions, which meant that proposals to add new spending to the balance sheet were a heavier lift.
Opinion: US constitutional freedom now twisted to mean abusing others
The United States' great story is inventing constitutional democracy out of monarchy. Now it's the story of freedom to exploit and abuse others.
Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt’s Leaner, Meaner Strategy for Success
He is unsentimental about books as he wrings out expenses ahead of a potential IPO.
Video: The G.O.P. Rush To Break Up Majority-Black Districts
Republican-controlled legislatures in the South are breaking up majority-Black congressional districts in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. Our national politics reporter Nick Corasaniti describes what it means for the midterms.
Antarctica is melting from below and scientists say it’s worse than expected
Scientists have uncovered a hidden Antarctic threat that could accelerate global sea level rise far faster than expected. Deep beneath floating ice shelves, long channels carved into the ice appear to trap warmer ocean water, dramatically speeding up melting from below. Even regions of East Antarctica once considered relatively stable may be far more vulnerable than scientists realized. Researchers warn that current climate models may be missing this dangerous process entirely, meaning future sea level rise could be underestimated.
Joao Fonseca Means Business: Rising Star Builds Portfolio On Court
Joao Fonseca, Brazilian tennis star focuses on his game while his family, including father Christiano Fonseca, focuses on business
Bigger Isn’t Better
The expanded basketball tournament means a bigger football playoff is probably just a matter of time.
What is perimenopause? The overlooked stage prior to menopause
Understanding what perimenopause is can make a meaningful difference in helping individuals and families navigate it.
'Feuding tech bros' go head to head in legal showdown. But what does it mean for the future of AI?
Elon Musk and Sam Altman battle it out in court, and the outcome could carry significant ramifications for how AI development is shaped.
What the Trump administration's latest tariff blow means for businesses
Politics Friday: Amy Klobuchar lays out plans in her DFL governor's campaign
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is putting some definition around her campaign for Minnesota governor a few months after entering the race to replace DFL Gov. Tim Walz. Meanwhile, some longtime lawmakers prepare to exit the state Capitol.
PlayStation sees AI as a ‘powerful tool’ to help make games
However, AI is meant to “augment” its teams’ capabilities, not replace them.
In The Lab: Checking In On Jose Altuve
Jose Altuve is an anomaly. What does this mean for his future?
Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democrats’ redistricting plan, dimming party’s midterm hopes
Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court's ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.
WOAH Statement on Hantavirus - WOAH - World Organisation for Animal Health
Hantavirus is a zoonotic disease, meaning it originates in animals — primarily rodents — before crossing into human populations.
‘Wheeee!': A giant slide is now an exhibit at Chicago's Griffin Museum of Science and Industry
“It’s huge, huge, huge — what is there to say? I mean, it’s incredible,” said Patricia Ward, the museum’s head scientist.
Sony forecasts lower gaming business sales amid memory price surge
STORY: Sony forecast lower sales in its gaming business due to a memory chip price surge.The tech giant said Friday annual sales in the segment would fall 6% to $28 billion.It also blamed lower hardware sales as its PlayStation 5 ages.Although the Japanese company said it expects gaming profit to rise 30%.That's due to higher first-party software sales and no repeat of the impairment loss it recorded a year earlier.Sony has been praised by analysts in recent years for its transformation into an entertainment powerhouse.But markets have grown concerned about the impact of AI on its business, while Sony also faces a perceived lack of growth catalysts.Both factors have weighed on shares in recent months.Investors are also concerned about the impact of a memory-chip price surge.As well as disruption to supply chains from the Iran war on margins at electronics manufacturers.The firm said it sold 1.5 million PS5 consoles in the fourth quarter, which was a 46% drop on the same period a year earlier.Looking ahead, the PS5 is expected to receive a major boost from the launch of the delayed "Grand Theft Auto VI."The game is due to release in November.Sony said in February it had secured the minimum quantity of memory needed to manage the year-end shopping season. Sony also said it sees higher profits at its pictures and chips units but a lower profit at its music business.The group reported operating profit for the year ended March rose 13.4% to $9.2 billion - below analyst forecasts. Meanwhile, rival Nintendo said it expects to sell 16.5 million units of its Switch 2 console in the financial year ending March 2027.It also projects profit to rise 2.7% to $2.36 billion.But, like with Sony, investors are concerned about the possible impact of a memory price surge on margins.
Minnesota Wild Support Mental Health Awareness Month at Playoff Home Games
Minnesota Wild Support Mental Health Awareness Month at Playoff Home Games The Minnesota Wild will host a monetary drive during Home Playoff Games 3 and 4 of the Second Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs at Grand Casino Arena in support of Sophie’s Squad. As the nation recognizes Mental Health Awareness Month, the Wild are proud to spotlight this meaningful partnership and help advance [...]
In Aaron Rodgers-Steelers protracted negotiations, who has meaningful leverage?
What the latest ruling on Trump’s tariffs could mean for businesses
A split ruling from the Court of International Trade on Thursday delivered President Trump another setback in his tariff agenda and could provide some businesses with a tariff holiday of sorts between now and the summer if the ruling stands up.
Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt on his political inexperience: "I mean, look at Obama"
How Disneyland Remade American Politics
America is turning 250, and The Free Press is marking the occasion with a yearlong series of events, conversations, and stories celebrating our country’s history. Today, we’re taking a journey with historian Beverly Gage to Southern California. Beverly traded the archives for the open road for her new book, This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History. We’re proud to publish an excerpt, on the theme park that shaped American politics—and the presidents who loved it. —The Editors On July 17, 1955, Ronald Reagan stood near a mocked-up wood-plank town in Anaheim, California, where a 13-star flag flew incongruously over an “Old West” landscape, and introduced the world to Disneyland. He had been invited by Walt Disney himself to co-host the park’s live ABC broadcast, alongside Art Linkletter and Bob Cummings—three Hollywood actors who seemed to embody a wholesome, all-American ethos. From the imagined past of Frontierland, the show leaped ahead to Tomorrowland, set in the far-off year of 1986, emphasizing the technical marvels yet to come: nuclear energy harnessed for civilian purposes, human beings riding rocket ships into space. Disney foretold great things for a 1980s in which the United States would serve as “a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.” But even he could not predict the most important political fact of the age: that his genial co-host would become president. Southern California was a strange place to build a park about the past, because the region at the time was all about newness and abundance and growth. For a lot of its history, Orange County had been Southern California’s version of flyover country: a vast agricultural expanse between two desirable places, Los Angeles and San Diego. But Disneyland was changing that. Before long, 50 miles south of deep-blue Hollywood, Orange County would become a region famed for its right-wing politics—but also for its mythmaking skills. Those two things, it turned out, went naturally together. ADVERTISEMENT The two presidents Southern California gave America both understood this instinctively. Richard Nixon and Reagan each built a national career on invoking a version of the American past in which the specificities of historical context mattered less than the big picture. For Nixon, progress meant proclaiming a “New American Revolution” on the eve of America’s bicentennial while dismantling the federal programs that had built the postwar middle class. For Reagan, it meant recapturing a lost optimism and an old-fashioned faith in America as an exceptional nation. Both men were less interested in history as it actually happened than in history as it felt—and Orange County, a place that had built itself almost entirely from scratch, turned out to be exactly where the myth of America’s future was getting made. I’m a historian—and historians tend to be myth-busters. With the country’s 250th birthday on the horizon, I figured it was a good time to step out of the ivory tower and check in with the past as it exists here and now, at the museums and monuments and roadside attractions where Americans go to learn about their history. After all my travels—to Davy Crockett’s Tennessee and Texas, to the real Erie Canal, to the birthplace of the American automobile and the actual Old West—I couldn’t miss out on Disneyland, the single most influential historic attraction in U.S. history.
Connecting climate science and storytelling at Mission Hill Middle School
Working with seventh grade science teachers Sallie Corbin and Christy Fairbairn, Lookout developed a science communication workshop to support students’ climate change research projects and help students think about how complex scientific ideas can be communicated clearly and meaningfully. The visit introduced students to the basics of journalism, storytelling and audience engagement, with support from UC Santa Cruz science communication graduate student and Lookout intern Cassidy Beach. Students later presented their climate change projects at Mission Hill’s Climate Change Symposium through creative formats including videos, games, comics, sculptures and interactive activities. The partnership marks one of Lookout’s first middle school classroom visits as part of its growing educational initiative focused on media literacy, civic engagement and local journalism.
ICYMI: Rep. Smucker in York Daily Record: From Main Street to family farms, small businesses power region
WASHINGTON – In case you missed it, Rep. Smucker (PA-11), Vice Chairman of the House Budget Committee and senior member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, published an op-ed in recognition of Small Business Week in the York Daily Record, highlighting the ways small businesses bolster our economy.
Business school grad connects finance, sustainability and agriculture
It was while applying to colleges that Thomas Hancock-Bacon realized the importance of approaching problems through an interdisciplinary lens. "I initially wanted to pursue organic agriculture, but I came to understand that if I wanted to create change at scale, I needed to engage with the systems that enable it. That meant learning how capital flows and how policy shapes outcomes," he says.
The farthest probe from Earth faces its most dangerous mission yet - Futura-Sciences
From Sci-Fi to Reality: The Launch of Voyager 1 Back in 1977, the world was grooving to new hits, and in cinemas, moviegoers were captivated by laser swords and beeping robots in a galaxy far, far away. Meanwhile, far from the silver screen, NASA was embarking on its own space...
Crime declined, but so did tourism, downtown DC business leaders say
Did the deployment of the National Guard have an impact on D.C. tourism? It did, according to the annual State of Downtown report, released Thursday morning by the Downtown DC Business Improvement District (BID). The group is using terms we can all understand to describe the state of downtown over the last year: partly cloudy and partly sunny, meaning the…
Science diplomacy lessons from a North Korean volcano
Mount Paektu, a mythic, active volcano on the border between North Korea and China, is almost the epitome of a scientific challenge that crosses political lines. In 946 CE, it erupted in one of the five biggest volcanic events of the past 10,000 years, kicking up huge quantities of ash and sending destructive mud flows down river channels for hundreds of kilometres. Should this happen again, the entire region, including easternmost Russia, South Korea and even Japan could be hit. “It’s definitely got the potential to be big,” said James Hammond, a professor of geophysics at Birkbeck, University of London. An eruption on the scale of 946 would have “huge regional impact.” For the past 15 years, Hammond has helped lead a groundbreaking collaboration with North Korean scientists to study the volcano, navigating scientific sanctions, tough export controls on scientific equipment and a long, pandemic-enforced exodus from the country. Although he seems more at home on far-flung research expeditions – before speaking to Science|Business, Hammond was camping out on a Greenland ice sheet – he has also advised the European Commission on its changing science diplomacy strategy. His long experience with North Korea has made Hammond sceptical of blanket bans on science collaboration, no matter the country.This is a live question in Europe, where in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, institutional ties with Russian universities were almost entirely severed, although some scientists fear this could undermine our understanding of climate change’s impact on the Arctic. Here, Hammond tells the story of the Mount Paektu mission and the policy lessons he takes from it. Ominous rumblingsThe genesis of Hammond’s collaboration came in 2002, when Mount Paektu began to rumble ominously. Earthquake activity picked up and the volcano began to emit unusual gases. North Korean scientists took notice. “People felt we need to know more about this volcano,” said Hammond. In 2011, North Korean vulcanologists put out a request for international expertise to help them learn more. At the time, Hammond and his collaborator, Clive Oppenheimer, were working on a vulcanology project in another sanctioned country, Eritrea, and so decided to answer the call. Within a month, they had flown into Pyongyang. “It was pretty incredible,” recalls Hammond (left). “We were made to feel like honoured guests, and invited to official celebrations.” The scientific opportunity was huge. Paektu is unusually positioned, a thousand kilometres from where tectonic plates rub against each other in the Pacific. “It was an incredibly interesting volcano, but not much research had been done, at least not in the international community,” he said. “There was so much we felt we could do. And we had these partners that were super keen to engage.”The mission received an unusual visitor in the form of volcano-obsessed filmmaker Werner Herzog, who accompanied Hammond and Oppenheimer while directing his 2016 film Into the Inferno about volcanos across the world. Four days into the trip, the German director delivered a long speech about reunification to his North Korean hosts, recalls Hammond. “He got to the heart of the Koreans and how they felt, and how they thought, in a way that I'm not sure I ever will,” he said. UN sanctionsHowever, Hammond realised he’d been “naïve” about how difficult it would be to collaborate with North Korea, which was sanctioned far more heavily than Eritrea. “We didn’t fully appreciate the all-encompassing nature of restrictions,” he said. In 2016, as tensions escalated over Pyongyang’s nuclear tests, a United Nations resolution banned all joint scientific work with North Korea. However, the UN sanctions did allow countries to request carve outs, and the UK successfully requested an exemption for Hammond’s work. Related articlesEU pushes for joint science diplomacy, but care needed to avoid gridlock, experts sayRussia severs its last ties with German scienceAnchor Greenlanders in Arctic climate research, experts tell EU ahead of policy updateExport controls have also delayed Hammond’s work. In one case, it took 18 months to get approval from the UK government to take seismometers, which measure earthquakes, to North Korea. “It was frustrating,” he said. “But they didn’t just say no.” However, one instrument, called an induction coil, used to measure how the earth conducts electricity, was blocked entirely because it can in theory be used to detect submarines. Karaoke bondingSince the collaboration started in 2011, Hammond has visited the country around 15 times, although the pandemic closed off North Korea for more than five years. A trip last November was Hammond’s first since the outbreak. Despite this lengthy interlude, Hammond has deep bonds in the country. The North Korean scientists Hammond works with are somewhat isolated, as they struggle to access the latest research papers and travel to international conferences. That said, they are “excellent geophysicists” and are “very well trained in the field,” he said. Over karaoke and chats about their families, “we’ve made friendships, for sure,” he said. The authorities have to sign-off things like the placement of seismometers, for example, but Hammond said these requests have been approved. “Everything that we've asked for within a scientific context has been delivered.”Scientific backchannels? These kind of personal links between scientists across political lines are one purported benefit of science diplomacy. During the Cold War, some historians argue, scientific contact between the US and Soviet Union laid a groundwork of trust for other cooperation, such as on arms control. Hammond agrees that backchannel contacts to North Korean geophysicists are hardly likely to defuse a military crisis on the Korean peninsula, but the simple fact of the scientific collaboration makes contacts between diplomats that little bit easier. “It creates opportunities to understand each other a little bit better,” he said. “When maybe you have those more difficult discussions as diplomats, it's coming from a slightly better place.” Cutting tiesDrawing lessons from the Mount Paektu mission for today’s links with Russian science isn’t simple. The analogy is far from exact, Hammond said, “because one is essentially a Cold War, versus a pretty hot war in the case of Russia.” But Hammond’s broader argument is that the challenges we face, such as climate change, pandemics, biodiversity loss, pollution and so on, have globalised in an unprecedented way, making blanket shutdowns in collaboration with any country unwise.He’s somewhat critical of the UN scientific sanctions imposed on North Korea in 2016, even though they did allow for exceptions. “I think a blanket halt to some of these things, when we face big global challenges [. . .] that’s quite a risky thing to do,” he said.Institutional endorsement?European academics are still by and large free to work individually with Russian counterparts. However, official, institutional partnerships have largely ended. Shortly following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian university rectors wrote a public letter endorsing the war, meaning European universities fear official collaboration could also be seen as a kind of endorsement. Hammond acknowledges there is a risk of legitimising regimes, and state-controlled universities, through scientific cooperation. “That’s the trade off you have to make,” he said. Strategic projectsWith Russia, instead of giving a green light to restart all Arctic science, a middle ground might be firing up a few carefully selected “strategic” projects, said Hammond. After all, European countries are still collaborating with Russia on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, an experimental nuclear fusion plant in the south of France. However, even if Europe did try to revive Arctic science with Russia, there’s no guarantee Russian scientists would play ball. A series of high-profile arrests of physicists in Russia accused of sharing their findings with the outside world has made collaboration fraught. Even before the invasion of 2022, “the Russian regime made it increasingly difficult, and this sort of discouraged people,” Dag Rune Olsen, rector of the Arctic University of Norway, told Science|Business last year.
The merits and pitfalls of metaphor use in science communication
Effective science communication is a powerful but underrated tool. Metaphors, a common literary device, draw connections between unlike things and are often conceptually, innately understood. In science and science communication, these figures of speech act as a means of structuring concepts to provide the basis for further exploration. The use of metaphors in science can be a catalyst for change, invention, and, unfortunately, misunderstanding. Metaphors should be used responsibly when attempting to make complex scientific concepts easily understandable, and should weigh the accuracy and accessibility of information in a favorable balance.
What’s that Farragut construction near Topgolf? Depends which you mean
Something big and \
Magic mushrooms make mean fish lazier and more chill
Psilocybin may selectively lower aggressive behavior in the the notoriously nasty mangrove rivulus.
Clavicular is charged in connection with alligator shooting
Clavicular faces a misdemeanor charge after a viral video appears to show the manosphere celebrity shooting the body of an alligator from an airboat in the Everglades.
Amazon just expanded its shipping business. What does that mean for UPS?
The shipper's wind-down with Amazon has caused the company to give up some of its market share to competitors like FedEx.
Savan Kotecha on Co-Writing Justin Bieber’s ‘Beauty and a Beat’ & What Its Post-Coachella Comeback Means: ‘My Kids Think It’s a New Song’
"I remember sending it to Max Martin, going, 'look at this!'" the hit songwriter-producer recalls of the 2012 pop hit currently topping Billboard's global charts.
CEA Retail + Hospitality Winner: Biggers blends produce, entertainment
Biggers Market’s roots run deep, tracing back to the 1940s when founder and partner Sven Wallin’s grandfather, alongside his brothers, opened Biggers Brothers, a family-run produce business in Charlotte. Decades later, the family’s reputation for farm-fresh fruits and vegetables lives on. In 2010, Wallin opened Biggers Market, building on a reputation that endured for the past 16 years. “I learned a lot about my grandfather, who passed away when my mother was young, through my uncle. The one thing that is ingrained in me is my grandfather’s willingness to go the extra mile for a better product, not settling for what’s easy, but finding what is better,” said Wallin. “He taught me the importance of name and reputation. If your name was on it, it had better be right. Word-of-mouth was always very important to gain a good reputation.” So was hard work. Entrepreneurialism has always been central to Biggers Market’s identity, Wallin said. In high school, Wallin worked at a produce stand in Charlotte, an experience that shaped how he thought about food. “I realized all produce was not created equal, and we could focus on freshness, seasonality and flavor. Grocery stores were convenient, but the produce often didn’t have the same taste or quality,” he said. As a college graduate without a paying job, Wallin took a leap and opened a 20-by-30-foot roadside stand with just three employees. “It was so small we had to put tables with umbrellas out in the yard to accommodate everything. We didn’t have pallet jacks or forklifts to unload the trucks. We would form a line and toss watermelons to get them to where they needed to go,” he recalled. In year two, Wallin opened a market on Carolina Beach Road, still in operation today but larger, and later on Market Street, setting up tents for extra space. In 2019, the sale of the land forced a hunt for a new property, and Wallin landed on his current location at 6250 Market St. “We had ambitions beyond produce,” he said. “We wanted this market to be a place that felt different from a typical grocery store.” In 2024, Wallin added his kitchen to the Biggers brand. “I’ve blurred the lines of a market and a grocery store,” Wallin said. “It’s a place where you can shop, eat, have a drink and listen to live music with friends and family. It’s a mix of retail and social experiences cultivated over time.” What hasn’t changed, however, is Wallin’s Southern hospitality, a strong sense of pride, purpose and responsibility and a commitment to seasonality. Spring brings the garden center to life with herbs, veggie plants and jumbo ferns. Summer leans heavily into produce. Fall brings the pumpkin patch, and winter hosts a Christmas market. “It means a lot to have what we’ve built recognized, especially in Wilmington. There’s a lot that goes into the business from our team. And that’s something we’re genuinely grateful for,” Wallin said. With plans underway for a new larger Carolina Beach Road location, Wallin continues to look ahead. “It’s an opportunity to build another market from the ground up and continue growing what we’ve been doing,” he said. “We’ve been through development before, so we understand what it takes.”
Cancer treatments can take a toll on body image
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He wrote about their daughter’s sudden death. Then his wife did the same.
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Science Will Win season finale explores AI in cancer care with Pfizer Chief Oncology Officer Jeff Legos
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Michigan may force hospitals to disclose savings from drug cost program
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DOJ targets tech-driven health fraud on West Coast
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Aurora Mental Health cuts 111 jobs, blames state funding model
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Charting how Trump became a historically unpopular president
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Global Health & WASH: May 2026 Funding Opportunities (14 new opportunities!)
The May update for Global Health & WASH brings new calls that cluster around three distinct shifts: LMIC research leadership moving from funder encouragement into a hard eligibility constraint, pharmaceutical and corporate-linked funders running structurally independent education and use-inspired research portfolios at substantial scale, and AI adoption shifting decisively from speculative tool to operational capability across health and WASH systems alike. In LMIC Research Leadership as Eligibility, Not Encouragement, Wellcome anchors the dominant signal of the month with three separate major calls that all require or strongly center LMIC leadership in their basic eligibility architecture. Wellcome’s ESIC Hubs (£1.5-£1.9M per hub over 3-5 years) explicitly requires an LMIC-based lead applicant, treating Global South leadership as a design constraint rather than a participation goal. Wellcome’s Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Development Award funds transdisciplinary teams whose lead must be a mid-career or established researcher based at an organization in Africa, South Asia, or Southeast Asia. Wellcome’s larger Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Award (£1M-£8M for optimizing licensed interventions) requires the administering organization to be in eligible LMIC regions and at least 50% of applicants based there. Around Wellcome, the same pattern shows up at smaller scale and across funders: CHINNOVA channels $1M into West and Central African research institutions for climate-health work; IBRO’s Neuroscience Training Grants explicitly tier ceilings by region of residence with Africa receiving the highest amount ($5,000); IHME’s GBD Emerging Researcher Award reserves at least one of its two annual awards for an LMIC researcher; Sidaction’s HIV Cure call funds research teams across France, the Netherlands, and eligible African countries with a minimum two-country collaboration requirement. Taken together, these calls signal a meaningful shift in how research equity is being operationalized — not as encouragement language at the bottom of a call, but as a structural feature of who can lead, where the work must be administered, and what proportion of the team must be regionally rooted. In Pharma-Funded Independent Medical Education and Use-Inspired Research, the lineup this month is unusually deep. Pfizer alone runs four parallel calls under independent education and quality improvement frameworks: a Migraine and Women’s Health RFP (200K x 2-year, $500K pool), Migraine IME ($200K, $1M pool), JAK Inhibitor evidence-based education ($100K), and Maternal Vaccination HCP Education in Saudi Arabia ($75K), plus a separate Pediatric Pneumococcal Surveillance research call in Saudi Arabia ($400K per project). Novo Nordisk Foundation runs four parallel calls of its own at substantial scale: Infectious Diseases Catalyst Grants (DKK 60M pool, up to DKK 7M collaborative), Non-Diabetic Endocrinology Collaborative Grants (DKK 53M pool, DKK 5-10M per project), Pioneer Innovator Grant Health (DKK 1.1M), and Distinguished Innovator Grant Health (DKK 6.8M). LEO Foundation deploys DKK 2-4M per project for dermatology research excellence. Pfizer’s framing across calls deliberately separates the funding from product promotion, emphasizing measurable practice-relevant change and structural distance between scientific outputs and commercial activity. Novo Nordisk’s “use-inspired” hard filter pushes researchers toward a credible translation pathway from mechanism to deployable tool. The pattern: industry-aligned funders are running structurally independent portfolios at meaningful $ that fund implementation evidence, not promotion. In AI as Operational Capability, Not Speculation, several calls this month explicitly treat AI adoption as a near-term operational question with real evidence and governance requirements, rather than a speculative trend to be watched. Wellcome’s ESIC Hubs frames AI as “the accelerator” for evidence synthesis, asking hubs to translate technical innovation into adoption-ready workflows that can match real-world policy timelines. UNICEF Venture Fund’s new Climate Tech for Children’s Health call funds for-profit startups deploying AI, machine learning, and blockchain in low-resource environments, with a strict requirement that solutions must already have a working prototype with promising pilot results. The Water Research Foundation has launched two simultaneous AI calls treating reproducibility, cybersecurity guardrails, and human-in-the-loop deployments as core design constraints rather than nice-to-haves: one on GenAI and Agentic AI in water utilities ($200K), one on alternatives to water shutoffs that explicitly screens for implementation economics evidence. Nordic Innovation’s quantum technology call (NOK 4.5M) extends the same logic into life science and healthcare, demanding consortium-stage projects mature enough to test with real users. TEF-Health offers €300K in subsidized testing infrastructure for European healthcare AI and robotics SMEs. The pattern: funders are converting AI pilots into playbooks, requiring transfer evidence and risk controls before AI can move from experimentation to sector-wide operational practice. For LMIC-based researchers in infectious disease or evidence synthesis, the three Wellcome calls together represent the deepest concentration of LMIC-led research capital in recent memory — pair the Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Development Award (£200K, deadline May 19) as a strategic pipeline feeder into the larger Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Award (£1-£8M, deadline June 2), since the development award functions explicitly as a track into the larger trial scheme. For Nordic researchers, the four Novo Nordisk Foundation calls plus LEO Foundation and Nordic Innovation Quantum represent ~$30M in regional research capital this cycle, all with deadlines clustered in May-August. For WASH practitioners, the three Water Research Foundation calls together (each up to $200K) are a cluster worth reading across — one on AI deployment, one on shutoff alternatives, one rewarding applied innovation — and the strongest applicants will articulate how their work bridges utility operations to policy-relevant evidence. For US-based clinical researchers and educators, the four Pfizer calls plus the APF Portfolio’s 80+ programs form an unusually accessible recurring pipeline; APF’s prohibition on indirect costs is a meaningful structural feature for early-career applicants whose institutions might otherwise absorb significant overhead. Snapshot of New Opportunities Total Estimated Funding Pool: $100 Million+ USD The grants are organized into three categories: Open Calls: Current grant and opportunities with a deadline. Grants are listed by closing date. 39 open opportunities- 14 new! Rolling Applications: current grant and opportunities with rolling applications (but it’s still best to submit as early as possible). 14 rolling opportunities- 1 new opportunity! Long term planning: Grants that have closed their current rounds, but are expected to open new windows. 4 long term opportunities! A quick tip for returning readers: if you want to jump straight to the newest additions, use CTRL F to search for “New!” and navigate quickly to the latest funding opportunities This post is for paid subscribers. This helps support the time and effort it takes to curate and organize these opportunities. Subscribe To keep this accessible to everyone who needs it, we’re happy to offer pay what you can rates. You can find more details here. Open Calls: Migraine Competitive Grant Program: Migraine and Women’s Health (Quality Improvement and/or Research RFP), Pfizer.*Closing soon!* Pfizer, in collaboration with the American Headache Society, is seeking independent quality improvement and research projects that close persistent gaps in migraine care for women across the United States. The funding logic centers on measurable, practice-relevant change: proposals should generate actionable evidence, tools, or system improvements that can be shared and used widely, not just within a single site. Priority areas span menstrual migraine and screening in women’s health settings, the role of hormonal fluctuations across the lifespan, sex-specific risk factors, comorbidities and quality-of-life burden, and disparities in outcomes by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The call is structured as a two-step competitive process with an initial Letter of Intent, with the strongest concepts expected to translate scientific insight into implementable improvements in diagnosis, management, and equity. Geographies: United States. Who can apply: U.S.-based organizations (not individuals), including professional schools, healthcare institutions, professional organizations, and other entities focused on healthcare improvement. Funding amount: Up to USD $200,000 total over 2 years; total pool USD $500,000. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: migraine, women’s health, quality improvement, clinical research, menstrual migraine, health disparities. Deadline: LOI: May 5, 2026; Full proposal (by invitation): August 28, 2026. Learn more and apply here. This RFP rewards “shareable impact”: the most competitive submissions will pair rigorous methods with a clear plan for system uptake and dissemination beyond the originating institution. ReSSARC: Strengthening the Health Sector and Food Security in the Central African Republic (AID 013381/01/0) Call for Proposals, Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS). *Closing soon!* AICS is seeking a limited set of high-capacity humanitarian partners to deliver an integrated package that stabilizes essential health services while reducing acute malnutrition and strengthening food security resilience in priority areas of the Central African Republic. The funder’s logic is explicitly nexus-based: proposals should meet urgent, life-saving needs while reinforcing local systems, coordination mechanisms, and community-level capacity so results persist beyond the emergency window. AICS emphasizes inclusion and protection outcomes, expecting gender-sensitive design and explicit measures for groups facing compounded vulnerability, including women, children under five, internally displaced people, and people with disabilities. The call also signals a localization pathway, encouraging stronger collaboration with national NGOs and balanced partnerships, alongside clear coordination with existing cluster and humanitarian actors to minimize duplication and improve coverage. Geographies: Central African Republic (Bangui, Ombella-Mpoko, Ouham, Ouham-Pende, Lim-Pende, Lobaye). Who can apply: Non-profit organizations registered with AICS, plus eligible non-profits without an office in Italy that have a pre-existing collaboration agreement with an AICS-listed organization. Funding amount: Total pool EUR €1,800,000; max EUR €800,000 (single applicant) or EUR €1,000,000 (ATS). Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: malnutrition prevention and treatment, maternal and child health, community health services, food security and resilience, localization partnerships Deadline: May 5, 2026. Learn more and apply here. This call is structured to reward partners who can link frontline service delivery to system durability and localization, not just short-term coverage gains. Contracts for Innovation in drug and alcohol addiction healthcare, Innovate UK. *Closing soon!* Innovate UK, on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences Addiction Healthcare Goals program, is procuring R&D to accelerate innovations that can improve treatment outcomes, strengthen recovery, and reduce harm and deaths linked to drug and alcohol addiction. The competition is positioned as a market-facing readiness push: selected projects are expected to advance solutions toward later-stage validation, generate evidence of user acceptability and UK market fit, and map credible routes through regulatory and certification requirements. Innovate UK signals a preference for innovations that can be field-tested in relevant UK settings and progressed to TRL 6 or 7, with practical plans for commercialization after contract completion. This structure favors applicants that can execute most work in-house, co-develop with service providers and people with lived experience, and translate technical progress into deployable tools for addiction healthcare delivery. Geographies: United Kingdom. Who can apply: Single organizations of any size (including EU, EEA, or international) leading delivery, with most work and key deliverables carried out in the UK; subcontractors for specialist skills only. Funding amount: GBP £200,000–1.5 million per project (inclusive of VAT); Total pool: GBP £20 million (across two strands). Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: Mental Health, Health Systems Strengthening, Research & Development, Technology Access. Deadline: May 6, 2026 (11:00am). Learn more and apply here. This call uses procurement to pull near-market addiction innovations toward operational proof and adoption pathways in UK services.
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‘The reality, for better or worse’: Columbia comp sci students and faculty grapple with AI’s disruption of the field
‘The reality, for better or worse’: Columbia comp sci students and faculty grapple with AI’s disruption of the field ‘The reality, for better or worse’: Columbia comp sci students and faculty grapple with AI’s disruption of the field A field that once seemed like a direct path to stable, lucrative work is becoming less certain under AI, students and faculty told Spectator. By Ria Vasishtha and Arjun Menon May 3, 2026 Shanying Liu / Deputy Illustrations Editor Asia Genawi, SEAS ’29, first encountered artificial intelligence during her sophomore year at her high school in Indiana. Back in 2023, policies on AI varied widely—even within the same district—and some schools had no guidance at all. As Genawi began to see the effects of AI trickle into her classroom, she turned to guidance from her home state’s Department of Education, which she said she found “outdated and inaccessible.” Genawi spent the rest of her high school career dedicated to the issue, including writing a 15-page memo exploring varying AI policies across Indiana schools, which she sent to every Indiana state senator and representative whose contact information she was able to find. She later helped draft a bill that would have required public high schools to establish and share their own AI policies with students in an accessible format. But with so many other bills already awaiting referral, hers never made it to committee. When Genawi arrived at Columbia to study computer science, she found that the gaps she had spent years trying to address in Indiana had followed her there. Many students and professors were also grappling with what AI meant for the field. Across Columbia’s undergraduate schools, computer science has become the most popular major—accounting for around 11 percent of degrees awarded in Columbia College, 32 percent in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and 12 percent in the School of General Studies in 2024. While the number of computer science majors in SEAS grew from 166 to 173 during the 2024-25 academic year, the total number across the three schools fell around 4.5 percent from 393 to 375, driven by declines at Columbia College and General Studies. At Barnard, it has grown to become the second most popular major as of 2025, up from third the year prior. The number of degrees awarded have grown fivefold since 2016. Faculty members and students in the department told Spectator that the surge in the major’s popularity has been driven in large part by its apparent promise of a secure, well-paid career path. However, they noted that the recent rise of generative AI has compromised the sense of stability that once defined the field, even as interest in technical skills among students persists. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 2024, out of 74 majors tracked, computer science had the fifth highest unemployment rate among majors at 7 percent, while computer engineering had the second highest at 7.8 percent. “Anecdotally, people are moving away from CS as a major,” Daniel Bauer, a senior lecturer in the computer science department, said. “They’re still taking some of our classes, right, because they think they need that, but they’re instead majoring in other things.” Bauer described a field that had shifted from what he called a “nerdy outlier discipline” to one that “everyone needs,” a sign that technical skills have become a baseline expectation across industries with the emergence of AI. “A lot of people thought, ‘Oh, it’s a guaranteed path to a stable income. You get a six-figure job right out of your undergrad,’” Bauer said. Now, companies may see AI as a way to reduce demand for entry-level programmers, especially in what he calls “code monkey jobs,” roles where a large number of employees are “just writing out code nine-to-five.” Chris Murphy, a senior lecturer in the computer science department, described the current moment as the convergence of two forces: the downturn of the job market and generative AI coming onto the scene. “Things kind of started to really pick up in 2014, 16,” he said, recalling the years after the weaker 2010 market. Murphy added that this was also a period where “students were getting more experience outside of class than they were inside of class” through internships, jobs, and side projects. Murphy suggested that the earlier momentum helped make computer science feel like both an academic program and a reliable pathway into work. That feeling is harder to sustain now as the industry reconfigures, which is a shift that students are seeing firsthand. Rebecca Yu, SEAS ’27, said that during a recent internship in Big Tech, she saw that “every single tech company was racing to integrate” large language models. She added that her manager said her intern class was the first to complete their assigned projects, which she attributed to the increased efficiency that comes with AI. Frank Liu, SEAS ’29, said that with AI lowering the barrier to coding, companies now expect everyone to write code. “A lot of companies outright say if you’re not using coding in your job, you might get fired for not being productive enough,” Liu said. Yu similarly expressed that students increasingly have to accept AI being a part of industry workflow, adding that many also “make use of it to maximize their productivity.” Richard Li, CC ’28, described a “franticness” among his peers as the pace of change accelerates. He explained how “some new tool” is released regularly, noting that tools rise and fall in prominence within weeks. He has come to believe that he doesn’t need to “match that speed all the time” and keep up with every development. Li has learned that AI tools allow him to “take a breath” and “get back into the loop much easier than before” when he needs to. While some companies specifically target Columbia when hiring, sending representatives to campus career fairs and recruiting large numbers from Columbia, a computer science degree cannot be treated as a static credential, Yu described. “You can’t just get your degree and stop learning after that. You have to always be learning,” Yu said. “That is something you basically have to expect for your job.” AI has not only affected students’ decisions to major in computer science, but also reshaped how the subject is taught. Across departments, faculty members no longer treat work done outside the classroom as a reliable measure of understanding, shifting instead toward in-person exams, quizzes, and attendance checks. While homework once made up as much as 60 to 70 percent of a student’s grade in computer science classes, Murphy said that breakdown has since flipped, with exams and quizzes now accounting for the majority. “The assumption—especially among pessimists—is that they’re using it to do their homework,” Murphy said. “They take the homework assignment. They put it into generative AI. Out comes the solution. Submit solution. The end.” Murphy said that faculty members ranged in their responses from fully prohibiting AI use to actively teaching students how to effectively work with AI. He said he shifted his approach this year after his teaching assistants called his belief that students weren’t using the technology “naïve,” and now permits students to use AI on assignments. His surveys of students in his introductory classes have told a more complicated story than the one so-called pessimists offer: Around 60 to 70 percent of students who reported using AI said they used it to have concepts explained to them, to clarify assignment instructions, to generate test cases, or to create practice questions. “Those are all ways that you might have had a tutor in the past to do that, and now you have this AI essentially as your tutor,” he said. Bauer has taken a different approach, teaching students how to use AI productively without sacrificing the core principles of the discipline. “People who are trained to actually use AI tools productively, while being in charge of designing the overall project, will be very much in demand in the next couple of years,” he said. Over the past year, a working group of computer science faculty has been redesigning the introductory and intermediate programming sequence to integrate generative AI as both a subject and a tool, representatives from SEAS wrote in a statement to Spectator. The effort is “coordinated” across the department, “not course-by-course,” with a systematic assessment of how AI integration is affecting student outcomes underway to shape the next round of changes. The goal, the department explained, is for students to be able to “read, verify, and reason about code, whether they or a model wrote it.” Tony Dear, senior lecturer in the computer science department, is piloting individualized AI feedback in a discrete mathematics course, while a machine learning course is also testing a Socratic AI dialogue system designed to “guide inquiry rather than supply answers,” the statement reads. Beyond individual courses, SEAS funded seven cross-departmental faculty projects in generative AI this past academic year, spanning biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, industrial engineering, and computer science, according to the statement. This phenomenon extends beyond the computer science department. SEAS’ new AI minor, which it announced in November 2025, reflects the University’s attempt to adapt. The minor is specifically designed for noncomputer science majors and aims to provide “essential AI knowledge” while emphasizing practical and responsible use across disciplines, according to the SEAS website. At the center of the minor is AI in Context, a course taught by a team of faculty from the departments of computer science, applied mathematics, philosophy, music, literature, and the Writing Center, the representatives told Spectator. Bauer described it as targeted at students who want to bring AI into fields like economics or biology, rather than as a path into software engineering itself. At the graduate level, SEAS announced a new Master of Science in artificial intelligence in February, with the inaugural cohort starting in the fall. While recognizing how AI has helped them navigate coursework, students also described its rise as isolating, even among members of the Application Development Initiative, one of Columbia’s largest computer science clubs. “As people start to ask AI for questions that they would normally ask students and members, it starts to isolate people” Li said. Alexa Kafka, BC ’27, echoed Li’s sentiment, pointing out that computer science has always been a collaborative discipline with code reviews and pull requests, even as AI makes independent work easier. Despite this, Kafka noted that she hasn’t been to office hours “in at least a year.” Bauer added that faculty are exploring long-term solutions to the assessment problem. “One of the things that we’re trying to do at the department or school level is to maybe move towards computerized testing facilities,” Bauer said, referring to ideas in the department to revitalize computer labs as an alternative to pen-and-paper exams. “We have to accept that this is the reality, for better or worse.” But more exams, students say, does not mean better learning, nor does it reflect how computer science is actually done. “Code is so variable and can be approached in so many directions, there’s never just going to be one correct answer. There can be multiple optimal solutions,” Kafka said. Students also expressed concern that the shift toward exam-heavy grading pulls focus away from the applied, project-based work that better reflects both discipline and industry expectations. ADI has tried to respond more quickly than the curriculum can. Through a vibe coding workshop this past semester, club members said they wanted to help students understand not just that AI exists, but how to use it deliberately. “Vibe coding” refers to the practice of prompting AI to write code for a task or project, and has become widespread enough that ADI felt the gap in formal instruction was worth addressing, according to Sophia Huang, BC ’29. The workshop introduced students to the concept of context engineering, which Shaina Sahu, SEAS ’27, described as not just writing a prompt, but optimizing “the rest of the relevant information that you would feed into the model.” Without that, students said that AI-generated code can fail at scale or introduce difficult-to-detect bugs. Genawi said the shift toward AI has changed what it means to be good at computer science. “I think the shift has kind of gone towards what can you create and what can you do, instead of, what do you know,” she said. Indeed, during ADI DevFest, its annual hackathon, Li said more teams are trying to complete their projects than in years past. While sign-ups have historically outpaced submissions, Li said this is beginning to change because teams “have a tool that completes the vision for them.” While many students see AI as an equalizer that lowers the barrier to entry for coding and technical work, Murphy said it also creates new equity concerns inside the classroom around who can afford stronger tools and who already knows how to use them. “The equity issues I worry about are students who have access to paid versions of things versus free versions of things,” he said. Although popular AI models like ChatGPT and Claude have free versions available, both have paid models that can reach over $100 per month, which output different qualities of code. Murphy also pointed to differences in prior exposure to AI literacy itself. “Students who go to high schools or K-12 education, where they’re taught AI literacy, prompt engineering, context engineering, they understand how to do this, as opposed to students who go to schools who don’t teach that,” he said. “Then they come in, and then they’re somehow expected to know how to use these tools.” For Genawi, those disparities begin long before students arrive on campus. “It’s very interesting to consider how lucky you were geographically,” she said. “To be born where you were is influencing your ability to get access to these spaces.” Students like Yu, though broadly apprehensive about the future of computer science, are not without hope. “I’m optimistic, because I think if you’re truly passionate about CS, there will definitely be a place in the field to do something you want to do,” she said. Senior Staff Writer Ria Vasishtha can be contacted at ria.vasishtha@columbiaspectator.com. Follow Spectator on X @ColumbiaSpec. Staff Writer Arjun Menon can be contacted at arjun.menon@columbiaspectator.com. Follow Spectator on X @ColumbiaSpec. Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter and like Spectator on Facebook. Produced with Spectate by Emily Ta