A weekly collection of links to interesting things curated by Colin Wright.
Cells Are Swapping Their Mitochondria. What Does This Mean for Our Health?
It’s not yet clear why mitochondria are so mobile. Some studies have hinted that cells donate their mitochondria to their neighbours during times of need. In cellular emergencies, newly arrived mitochondria might kick-start tissue repair, fire up the immune system or rescue distressed cells from death. Other research suggests that mitochondrial transfer can be a lethal weapon that cancer cells deploy to gain an advantage.
Why Does Athens Look So Quirky?
In short, everybody was making money, everybody was getting homes and everybody was, theoretically, able to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside, and start a new life in the city. The luxury of preserving Neoclassical architecture simply never entered into the equation.
A further 680,000 internal migrants arrived in Athens during the 1960s, with the city’s population reaching 2 million by the mid-1970s. By this point, Neoclassical Athens had almost entirely vanished. In its place, a sea of ugly, low-rise concrete apartment blocks stretching as far as the eye could see.
Google Is Burying the Web Alive
I’ve been testing AI Mode for a few months now, and in some ways it’s less radical than it sounds and (at first) feels. It resembles the initial demos of AI search tools, including those by Google, meaning it responds to many questions with clean, ad-free answers. Sometimes it answers in extended plain language, but it also makes a lot of lists and pulls in familiar little gridded modules — especially when you ask about things you can buy — resulting in a product that, despite its chatty interface, feels an awful lot like … search.
Mocktails Cost $15 and Nobody Knows Why
Clara Choi gets a funny feeling from the drinks she sips when she goes out with friends.
The fruity, brightly colored concoctions typically incorporate juices and syrups. They contain no alcohol, but they still make Choi wince and leave her with a different kind of hangover.
“It looks pretty, but it’s literally a layer of grape juice and orange juice,” said Choi, a 30-year-old Southern California foodie working in higher education. “They are definitely gouging.”
ExxonMobil and Chevron to Do Battle Over $1 Trillion Oilfields in Guyana
Stabroek is one of the most lucrative oil discoveries in recent decades with an estimated 11bn barrels of oil reserves and further exploration likely to increase this figure. The project has transformed Exxon’s fortunes, enabling it to reclaim its position as the most valuable US oil company after briefly being eclipsed by Chevron in October 2020.
AI Is Changing the College Experience As We Know It
Last week an equally vexing issue came to the forefront when a student at Northeastern named Ella Stapleton asked the school to reimburse her for the cost of a class she had taken after she discovered that her professor had used an AI to prepare lesson plans. Stapleton, it turns out, is just one of many students across the country who have made similar discoveries. Education experts began new hand wringing: Will teachers bother to teach anything if they can have AI do it? Will students pay full price for college if their professors use AI? Is there any way to make it stop?