What’s driving these changes? You can outsource early stage science to China for 1/5 of the cost at 2x the speed.

The largest and sharpest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31. It is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars, thousands of star clusters in a section of the galaxy’s disc stretching across over 40 000 light-years.

This is a hilariously disappointing result: 15% of placebo GLP-1 patients seemingly realized they weren't getting the real stuff and so they went out and got it on their own. They're undermining the trials because they want to lose weight!

'The surge in new US business formation is being fueled by AI and large language models, which are dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of launching a company' @apolloglobal

Something that is underappreciated is China has 4x the population and Tier 1 cities are 30 million people, so easier to recruit and finish studies. However, their Phase 1 process is more like Australia and have more silent approval; if you don’t hear from us, proceed. Australia is fast for Phase 1 and they have more silent approval, but they are just doing safety and know the pivotal trials will primarily be done in US & other countries. FDA tends to view Phase 1 as precedent for the entire drug program all the way through Phase 3, so they want everything to be in order from the start like CMC. I would say Australia doesn’t really care about CMC b/c that will be covered by US during trials and scale up. For Phase 1 just need smaller batch manufacturing, do not necessarily need to be set up with standards for Phase 2 or 3 larger trials, but it makes thing smoother.

bleak that the primary people who are worried about chinese biotech are people who actually work in the field, and everyone telling them to chill out are either VC’s or journalists

We’re deeply committed to reforming our IND/Phase 1 process. We must retain our position as the world leader in biotech.

A real downside of the rise of LLMs is that we now have to sit through Cloudflare verification pages all the time.

1/ For nearly 350 years, science has communicated itself through one object: the paper. A linear narrative, frozen as a PDF, written for a human reader. We've come to treat that format as the medium of science itself. It doesn't have to be. It's a historical artifact. 🧵

There's a common misconception that Brutalist buildings were unpainted, but thanks to microscopic analysis of the exteriors we can now recreate what they looked like in their prime.

Wealth permits a morality to exist that would be incomprehensible to our ancestors. E.g. Germany yesterday finally captured the stranded whale whose story had gripped the nation, and is now escorting him via barge back to the deeper Atlantic. An enormous, multiday operation.

The dream of China surpassing the U.S. as the world’s largest economy is fading. In 2021, China’s GDP was about 78% of the U.S.; by 2024, that share had fallen to roughly 64%, back to around 2017 levels, with the gap between the two economies doubling in just a few years.

There is more high tech in Israel than in Italy w x 6 the population because rich Israelis invest in the risky projects of young Israelis while rich Italians more prudently demand safer investments. The result of all that prudence is a terrible stagnation that pols ignore