Researchers have discovered a defect in how cells produce exosomes, a problem linked to a mutation found in patients with dementia. They may be incredibly small, but their impact on human health could be enormous. Scientists at Aarhus University have discovered a flaw in how cells produce tiny particles known as exosomes, linked to a […]
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Researchers discovered that a nutrient-matched, plant-based diet could prevent and reverse a hidden form of heart disease in hypertensive rats. A new study from researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University reports that a diet centered on fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes may help both prevent and improve heart disease in […]
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Experts say Google’s expansion reinforces Texas’ position as a business-friendly state with abundant energy and a skilled workforce.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced a $40 billion expansion in Texas, marking the company’s largest-ever investment in a single U.S. state.
Governor Greg Abbott joined the announcement on Thursday in Midlothian, highlighting the initiative’s economic and technological impact.
The plan includes three new data centre campuses to support Google’s growing cloud and artificial intelligence operations. These energy-intensive facilities will be paired with programmes to strengthen Texas’ grid, improve energy affordability, and provide workforce training for students, apprentices, and skilled workers.
“This is a Texas-sized investment in the future of our great state … Texas is the epicentre of AI development, where companies can pair innovation with expanding energy. … We must ensure that America remains at the forefront of the AI revolution, and Texas is the place where that can happen,” Mr. Abbott said.
Mr. Pichai added, “They say that everything is bigger in Texas – and that certainly applies to the golden opportunity with AI. … This investment will create thousands of jobs, provide skills training to college students and electrical apprentices, and accelerate energy affordability initiatives throughout Texas.”
Texas has become a hub for major tech and energy companies. Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, along with Amazon and Meta data centres, have made the state a magnet for high-tech manufacturing and cloud infrastructure.
Experts say Google’s expansion reinforces Texas’ position as a business-friendly state with abundant energy and a skilled workforce.
As part of the project, Google will invest in renewable energy and grid capacity, including a $30 million Energy Impact Fund supporting community and school-based energy initiatives.
Workforce programmes will train more than 1,700 electrical apprentices, bolstering the state’s talent pipeline for AI and data-intensive industries.
Published – November 16, 2025 10:38 am IST
Scientists tested the substance on rats with positive results and are now seeking partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials. A research team at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) in Brazil has created a new chemical compound that may help in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Their investigation used computer modeling (in silico), […]
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Although cancer becomes more common as people get older, individuals of very advanced age appear to face a lower threat. New research from Stanford University demonstrates this pattern in mice and investigates how later-life biological changes may offer unexpected protection. Older laboratory mice were found to develop far fewer lung tumors, and those tumors were […]
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New research suggests that when vitamin D levels drop low enough, depression becomes more common, but not in a simple, one-directional way. A large new review finds that adults with lower vitamin D levels are more likely to have depression, especially when 25-hydroxy-vitamin D [25(OH)D] falls at or below 30 nmol/L. The work, published in […]
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The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules (DPDP), 2025 were notified this week, kicking off the formation of the Data Protection Board of India (DPBI), and the legal framework for safeguarding the data of Indian people online. The DPDP Act itself was passed in Parliament in August 2023, and a draft of the Rules that were notified on Friday (November 14, 2025) were released for consultation in January.
The DPDP Act, 2023 is India’s version of data protection laws such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar regimes in many other countries, such as Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act, 2012. Like these regimes, the Act sets out some baselines for how companies (“data fiduciaries”) handle data of their users in India (“data principals”). For instance, there must be access control and encryption, along with security audits for large firms (“significant data fiduciaries”).
Data principals are also required to take “informed” consent from their users, and anyone whose data they collect, by giving a summary of what data they are collecting, and how they will use it. The Act also gives users the right to erase or modify data they provide to firms, or to delete it. After a specified period of inactivity, firms are under an obligation to delete the data they have on users. A Data Protection Officer has to be appointed by large firms, who will oversee compliance.
The Act also restricts targeted advertising and certain data collection for children. The Rules carve out an exemption here for parents tracking their children’s location.
To allow users to exercise rights across a variety of fiduciaries (accounts over several platforms), the Act and Rules set out the framework for a “Consent Manager,” a service that will allow users to manage their data across several fiduciaries, similar to permissions manager settings on a smartphone.
Data breaches must be reported as soon as possible, the Act says. Fines for non-compliance for different parts of the law range from ₹10,000 to ₹250 crore.
No. While over two years have gone by since the Act was notified, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has chosen to give firms up to 18 more months to comply. Some requirements, like having a DPO be appointed for large firms, goes into effect one year from now.
Some parts of the Act have been kicked into action — such as the DPBI’s formation. The DPBI will oversee the Act’s implementation and will be a subordinate office of MeitY. The body will have four members.
Another part of the Act that goes live is the amendment to the Right to Information Act, 2005, which has been furiously resisted by digital rights and transparency groups alike.
The 2023 Act amended Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act, 2005, which allows citizens to request public information from government bodies. That section allowed government bodies to refuse requests for “personal information,” but said that this exemption would not apply if there was a larger public interest in disclosing the information.
The DPDP Act removed that carve-out, allowing government organisations more discretion in what is and isn’t personal information, and decline it even if doing so would be in the public interest. The 2023 law was not going to be in force — including this amendment — until the Union government notified it. Transparency activists, such as those belonging to the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), spent years (since the DPDP Act’s 2022 draft was published) resisting this change.
But on Friday, the government disregarded that pushback, and specifically invoked its power to push the amendment through in the form of a notification. Another amendment, to the Information Technology Act, 2000, is not yet in force.
Organisations like MKSS have worked with grassroots movements to get access to ration “muster rolls” and work order logbooks, allowing them to scrutinise public records for signs of graft and misspending. With a broad definition of “personal information,” they have argued, citizens may have no room to conduct such social audits. The amendment could also be used to shield powerful officials’ misconduct, they have said.
Nikhil Dey, an MKSS founding member, vowed that “‘[w]e the people’ will fight back” after the amendment went into force.
Published – November 15, 2025 02:32 pm IST
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia carries thousands of citations to “questionable” and “problematic” sources, U.S. researchers said Friday, raising doubts about the reliability of the AI-powered encyclopedia as an information tool.
Musk’s company xAI launched Grokipedia last month to compete with Wikipedia, a crowdsourced information repository authored by humans that the billionaire and others on the American right have repeatedly accused of ideological bias.
“It is clear that sourcing guardrails have largely been lifted on Grokipedia,” Cornell Tech researchers Harold Triedman and Alexios Mantzarlis wrote in a report seen by AFP.
“This results in the inclusion of questionable sources, and an overall higher prevalence of potentially problematic sources.”
The study, which scraped hundreds of thousands of Grokipedia articles, said the trend was particularly notable in topics pertaining to elected officials and controversial political topics.
Grokipedia’s entry for “Clinton body count,” a widely debunked conspiracy theory that links the deaths of multiple people to former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, cites InfoWars, a far-right website notorious for peddling misinformation.
Other Grokipedia articles cite American and Indian right-wing media outlets, Chinese and Iranian state media, anti-immigration, antisemitic or anti-Muslim sites, and portals accused of promoting pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, the report said.
“Grokipedia cites these sources without qualifying their reliability,” it said.
The study found that Grokipedia articles often “contain exactly identical copies of text” from Wikipedia, a site it has intended to outshine.
It said Grokipedia articles not attributed to Wikipedia are 3.2 times more likely than those on the rival platform to cite sources deemed “generally unreliable” by the English Wikipedia community.
They are also 13 times more likely to include a “blacklisted” source which is blocked by Wikipedia, it added.
AFP’s request to xAI for comment generated this auto response: “Legacy Media Lies.”
Musk, the world’s richest person and owner of social media platform X who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign, has said that Grokipedia’s goal is “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
On Thursday, Musk said he plans to rebrand Grokipedia as “Encyclopedia Galactica” when it is “good enough (long way to go).”
“Join @xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote on X.
Musk and the U.S. Republican Party have frequently accused Wikipedia of being biased against right-wing ideas. Last year, Musk urged his more than 200 million followers on X to stop donating to Wikipedia, dubbing the site “Wokepedia.”
In a recent interview with the BBC Science Focus podcast, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales rejected claims it has a left-wing bias as “factually incorrect,” while acknowledging there were areas for improvement among its volunteer community.
“Unlike Grokipedia, which relies on rapid AI-generated content with limited transparency and oversight, Wikipedia’s processes are open to public review and rigorously document the sources behind every article,” Selena Deckelmann, chief product and technology officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, told AFP.
“It is precisely this deliberate openness and community model that upholds the neutrality and trustworthiness essential for a global encyclopedia: no single individual, company, or agenda can exert influence over the work.”
Published – November 15, 2025 09:38 am IST
Oracle bonds have taken a hit in recent days following a report that the cloud and artificial intelligence service provider plans to add another $38 billion to its heavy debt load to fund its AI infrastructure, according to analysts and investors. Oracle has invested billions of dollars to build its cloud and AI infrastructure this year.
With roughly $104 billion in debt outstanding, including $18 billion in bonds, the company is spending more than it earns from operations as it bets on future profits through contracts with startups such as OpenAI.
“What’s interesting is most of the (major tech) companies are trying to sustain their (stock) buyback programs at the same time that they’re spending on capex currently and to do that, they’re actually borrowing and so they’re using debt,” said Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
Renewed questions about the safety of this bet appeared to have surfaced in trading of Oracle’s bonds this week, following reporting by CNBC on Thursday that Oracle plans to assume an additional $38 billion in debt.
The price of Oracle’s bonds maturing in 2033 with a 4.9% coupon has dipped, pushing yields up more than three basis points over the last two weeks, while the yield on its newer bonds maturing in 2032 with a 4.8% coupon has risen almost two basis points in one week, according to market participants.
Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“There’s definitely some selling pressure,” said Stu Novick, tech sector credit analyst at corporate bond research firm Gimme Credit.
“The numbers are enormous (and) a lot of people are asking, ‘how are they actually making money on this stuff?”
Tim Horan, chief investment officer for fixed income at Chilton Trust, said the Oracle bond selloff was unlikely to signal significant troubles for the company, which he said had mechanisms in place to address before cutting dividends.
“I’m viewing this more as a bump in the road … I don’t think what Oracle is experiencing is symptomatic of a popping of some kind of bond market expensive bubble,” Horan said.
Other arguments have been made by well-known investors recently against investments in tech giants tapping into AI, such as Oracle, Microsoft and Alphabet-owned Google.
Michael Burry, the investor whose successful bets against the U.S. housing market in 2008 were recounted in the movie “The Big Short,” and who is closing his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management, has argued that these companies are quietly stretching out depreciation schedules to make earnings look smoother as they commit money to AI development.
Between 2026 and 2028, those accounting choices could understate depreciation by about $176 billion, inflating reported profits across the sector, Burry estimated.
Michael Field, chief equity strategist for Morningstar in the Netherlands, noted that it is difficult to attach a depreciation number to the economic life of data centers.
“(But) it’s decreasing all the time and it could be single, low single-digit years very shortly,” Field said.
“It could be three to four years and then something’s obsolete, (and) you have to make a hell of a lot of money in that particular time to pay off the infrastructure that went into that site in the first place.”
Published – November 15, 2025 11:55 am IST
An Apple spokesperson said that the company disagrees with the verdict and will appeal [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS
A federal jury in California said on Friday that Apple owes medical-monitoring technology company Masimo $634 million for infringing a patent covering blood-oxygen reading technology.
The jury agreed with Masimo that the Apple Watch’s workout mode and heart rate notification features violated Masimo’s patent rights, a Masimo spokesperson confirmed.
An Apple spokesperson said that the company disagrees with the verdict and will appeal. Masimo, in a statement, called the verdict “a significant win in our ongoing efforts to protect our innovations and intellectual property.”
The California lawsuit is one branch of a contentious, multi-front patent fight between Apple and Irvine, California-based Masimo, which has accused Apple of hiring away its employees and stealing its pulse oximetry technology to use in Apple Watches.
The dispute led a U.S. trade tribunal to block imports of Apple’s Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches in 2023 after finding that Apple’s technology infringed Masimo’s patents. Apple removed blood-oxygen reading technology from its watches to avoid the ban and reintroduced an updated version of the technology in August with approval from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The ITC separately on Friday decided to hold a new proceeding to determine whether Apple’s updated watches should be subject to the ban.
Masimo has filed an ongoing lawsuit against Customs over the decision. Apple has separately challenged the import ban at a federal appeals court.
A California judge declared a mistrial in Masimo’s trade-secret case against Apple in 2023 after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict. Apple won a minimal $250 verdict against Masimo in Delaware last year over allegations that Masimo’s smartwatches infringe two Apple design patents.
Published – November 15, 2025 12:03 pm IST