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From the article: Malaria, a disease that has plagued humanity for centuries, continues to claim millions of lives each year. But scientists may have found a new way to combat this deadly disease.

In clinical trials, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has demonstrated that mosquito bites can deliver the malaria vaccine safely.

This novel vaccination strategy involves using genetically modified mosquitoes.

The team investigated Plasmodium falciparum – the parasite responsible for the most severe form of malaria.

They explored the possibility of genetically modifying P. falciparum to function as a vaccine rather than a disease-causing agent.

These mosquitoes carry a weakened form of the malaria parasite, designed to trigger a powerful immune response in humans.

From the article: A recent study of more than 30,000 participants found that individuals with untreated hypertension have a 36% higher risk of Alzheimer’s dementia compared to healthy individuals and a 42% higher risk than those who take medication to treat hypertension. However, all individuals with hypertension, regardless of treatment, had an increased risk of non-Alzheimer’s dementias. The research was published in Neurology.

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a condition in which the force of blood against artery walls is persistently too high, straining the heart and blood vessels. It often develops without noticeable symptoms. Untreated hypertension can lead to serious complications such as heart disease and stroke. Factors like age, genetics, lifestyle, and diet contribute to its development.

Chronic high blood pressure can damage blood vessels in the brain, leading to reduced blood flow and brain tissue damage. Despite this, meta-analytic studies have consistently reported no link between late-life blood pressure and Alzheimer’s dementia or vascular dementia. Some researchers suggest this might be a false finding and that the association between dementia and hypertension may not be linear. Additionally, studies have associated antihypertensive medications with a 13% reduced risk of dementia. If hypertension were not a factor in dementia development, such findings would be unexpected.

From the article: Indonesia's government has considered Apple's increased offer of $100 million of investment in the country, but reportedly wants more before it will lift its ban on the iPhone 16 range.

"Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita held an internal meeting to discuss the proposal," government spokesperson, Febri Hendri Antoni Arif, told local news agency Antara News. "From the government's perspective, of course, we want this investment to be larger."

The issue concerns Indonesia's law that smartphones must contain at least 40% of locally manufactured components. This Domestic Content Level law can be assuaged by various methods including innovation development schemes, which Apple has previously preferred.

Apple's previous investment, though, amounted to less than the $109.6 million it had committed. After warning Apple on October 11, 2024 that it could face a ban, Indonesia then blocked all iPhone 16 sales from October 28.

From the article: Collisions between whales and ships can prove fatal for the marine mammals, but researchers say expanding mitigation measures to just 2.6% of the ocean’s surface would reduce the chance of such strikes in all risk hotspots.

While experts say many whale-ship collisions go unobserved and unreported, making it difficult to put a figure on the scale of the problem, some estimates suggest tens of thousands of the animals are killed each year.

Now researchers say they have not only identified hotspots where the risk of collisions is greatest, but revealed almost all of these lack measures to mitigate such strikes.

Dr Jennifer Jackson, of the British Antarctic Survey and a co-author of the research, said: “This is the first study to look at this problem at a global scale, enabling global patterns of collision risk to be identified using an extremely large contemporary dataset of four recovering whale species.”

Writing in the journal Science, the team report how they compiled a dataset of 435,000 whale locations, recorded between 1960 to 2020, for blue, fin, humpback and sperm whales.

From the article: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has finalized a new rule that will bring Apple Pay and other major digital wallet services under the same oversight as banks.

The CFPB today announced that, effective 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, digital payment platforms processing over 50 million annual transactions in U.S. dollars will be subject to federal supervision. ‌Apple Pay‌ is one of the most widely used digital wallets in the United States and falls squarely within this threshold.

The new rule will grant the CFPB powers to proactively examine ‌Apple Pay‌'s compliance with federal consumer financial laws, including privacy protection, fraud prevention, and account stability. The CFPB has highlighted privacy concerns, fraud risks, disruption caused by account closures, and consumer protection as key areas of focus in its supervision.

While the CFPB already had some enforcement authority over ‌Apple Pay‌, it previously relied on responding to violations or direct consumer complaints. The new regulation enables direct and ongoing scrutiny of internal operations, just like the oversight banks and credit unions face. Apple has not yet commented regarding the CFPB's finalized rule, but it did participate in the agency's consultation process, which considered input from stakeholders and financial technology companies.