The Rundown: No one is embracing robotics quite like China. More than 82% of the 300+ global robotics investment deals in the first half of 2025 occurred in China, with total financing topping at least 20B yuan (~$2.7 B).
The details:
State-backed funds have earmarked some 70B yuan (about $9.7B) for humanoids and robot initiatives, while pushing robotics into public spaces.Companies like Unitree (eyeing a $7B IPO), Agibot, and EngineAI closed massive rounds, with Unitree slashing prices to $5,900 for its R1 humanoid. Even Elon Musk has warned that in humanoids “positions two through ten could all be Chinese companies.”China now produces 70–80% of global planetary roller screws — the critical actuator component that Tesla, Figure, and 1X all depend on.
Why it matters:China isn’t just building robots — it’s fusing hardware, software, and AI into a full-stack advantage, backed by massive government subsidies. If that strategy works, the West could soon be buying the very machines that make its goods, shifting both economic power and technological leverage.
China has introduced AI-powered health kiosks that operate entirely without human doctors. These advanced booths scan vital signs, conduct basic tests, and use AI to diagnose common illnesses within minutes.
Each unit includes sensors, cameras, and automated dispensers for over-the-counter medicines.
Patients step inside, input symptoms, and receive instant prescriptions or referrals to hospitals if needed.
Deployed in metro stations, shopping centers, and rural areas, these kiosks offer 24/7 access to healthcare, bridging the medical gap in underserved regions. Experts believe they represent a major leap in automated public health technology.
Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Nathan Howard / Getty Images
While some anti-AI advocates have called for some extreme property damage to halt the AI boom, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has a proposition that’s a little more down to Earth: simply shut it all down until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
In a video shared on social media, Sanders announced he’ll be pushing for a “moratorium on the construction of data centers that are powering the unregulated sprint to develop and deploy AI.”
His main contention is that society needs to slow down on the rapid deployment of new tech, and ask an important question: who benefits?
“Let us be clear: AI and robotics are the most transformative technologies in the history of humanity,” Sanders declares. “Just a few points we need to think about: one, who is aggressively pushing these technologies? Well, surprise, surprise, it happens to be the very wealthiest people on Earth.”
Sanders’ call comes at a time when AI-related capital expenditures account for around half of the US GDP growth throughout the year, as low-income Americans’ purchasing power plummets and vehicle repossessions hit levels equivalent to the Great Recession.
“Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up nights worrying about what AI and robotics will do for the working families of our country, and the world?” Sanders continues. “I don’t think so. I think that these very, very, rich men want even more wealth, and even more power. “
“Question: if AI and robotics eliminate millions of jobs and create massive unemployment, how will people survive if they have no income?” the Vermont Senator challenges. “Very few members of Congress are seriously thinking about this.”
Sanders goes on to cite the growing degree of emotionaldependence users are developing on AI chatbots, as well as the selfish ambitions of billionaires like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Dario Amodei.
“One thing’s for sure: this process is moving very, very, quickly, and we need to slow it down,” Sanders said. “This moratorium will give democracy a chance to catch up with these transformative changes that we are witnessing, and make sure that the benefits of these technologies work for all of us, not just the wealthiest people one Earth.”
I’m a tech and transit correspondent for Futurism, where my beat includes transportation, infrastructure, and the role of emerging technologies in governance, surveillance, and labor.
Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images
You know those memes about how there’s no such thing as a free VPN? Here’s the ultimate cautionary tale.
A recent investigation by Tel Aviv-based security firm Koi uncovered a massive data harvesting operation tied to a voluntary extension on Google’s Chrome browser.Called Urban VPN Proxy, the free extension has some six million users at the time of writing, and even a “featured” badge on the Chrome Web Store — in other words, an endorsement from Google itself.
As Koi researcher Idan Dardikman writes, the extension goes beyond the actions of a typical VPN. Packed under the hood are “executor” scripts designed to intercept and capture conversations from the leading AI platforms, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, DeepSeek, and xAI’s Grok.
The data collected encompasses anything a user might ask their chosen AI chatbot, per Dardikman, including “medical questions, financial details, proprietary code, personal dilemmas, all of it, sold for ‘marketing analytics purposes.’”
Regardless of whether the VPN is on or off, Urban VPN Proxy is constantly scraping conversation data.The script is enabled by default, meaning that from the moment someone downloads the extension, their chatbot gabbing is fair game.
Worse yet, Forbes notes, “there is no user-facing toggle to disable this. The only way to stop the data collection is to uninstall the extension entirely.”
The company behind Urban VPN Proxy, Urban Cyber Security Inc, isn’t shy about any of this. As Dardikman observes, the company’s privacy policy explicitly states that “we share the Web Browsing Data with our affiliated company,” a data broker called BiScience, “that uses this raw data and creates insights which are commercially used and shared with business partners.”
Despite this, Urban VPN Proxy’s page on the Chrome Web Store declares that “your data is not being sold to third parties, outside of the approved use cases,” and “not being used or transferred for purposes that are unrelated to the item’s core functionality.”
Though the revelation might be startling for the six million users of Urban VPN Proxy, it’s surely not the only app running this scheme. Indeed, Forbes notes there are over two million customers across seven additional apps by the same publisher, each with “identical AI harvesting functionality.” All but one of them carry a “featured” badge courtesy of Google’s Chrome Web Store.
As Koi’s Dardikman writes, “if you have any of these extensions installed, uninstall them now. Assume any AI conversations you’ve had since July 2025 have been captured and shared with third parties.”
I’m a tech and transit correspondent for Futurism, where my beat includes transportation, infrastructure, and the role of emerging technologies in governance, surveillance, and labor.
As students use ChatGPT to write their college papers to the chagrin of their professors, OpenAI wants to make its relationship with universities more official.
The company is forging relationships with colleges around the country, having sold more than 700,000 ChatGPT licenses to 35 public universities, according to Bloomberg. Students and faculty across 20 campuses used the chatbot more than 14 million times in September, the outlet reported, averaging around 176 uses per month across tasks.
These deals aren’t the only sign that OpenAI has its eyes on the classroom.
In November, the company launched a free version of ChatGPT built for K-12 teachers through June 2027, including admin controls for school and district leaders. And teachers are making use of the tech, with around 60% of teachers using some sort of AI tool for their work,according to Gallup. On the student side, ChatGPT introduced “study mode” in July, a tool that guides students through challenging homework problems collaboratively rather than just giving them the answers directly.
But whether these schools and universities sanction it or not, students will lean on AI. A Copyleaks report found that 90% of the roughly 1,100 college students surveyed are using AI academically. And even if the tech is prohibited, AI detection tech is shoddy at best, with false positives and false negatives often gumming up the works.
In partnering with OpenAI and other AI firms, these educators are taking control of something that was otherwise happening right under their noses. Strict, outright bans on the technology will just force students to come up with new and creative ways to cheat. Instead, that control could allow educators to guide students in responsible AI use, leveraging it as a tool rather than a system that does most of the thinking for them. This could also prevent AI overuse, skirting concerns that AI is eroding critical thinking in young and impressionable minds.
Summary: Depression and anxiety may heighten cardiovascular disease risk through chronic stress pathways in the brain and body. In a large analysis of more than 85,000 adults, those with depression or anxiety — especially both — were significantly more likely to experience heart attack, stroke or heart failure.
A subset of participants also showed signs of heightened amygdala activity, an overactive stress response system, and elevated inflammation, all of which are known to damage blood vessels over time. These findings suggest emotional health is deeply intertwined with cardiovascular risk, and that stress-reduction therapies may have physical as well as psychological benefits.
Key Facts
Emotional Distress Pathway: Overactive stress circuits, lower heart rate variability, and chronic inflammation linked depression/anxiety to cardiovascular disease.
Higher Combined Risk: People with both depression and anxiety had ~32% greater cardiovascular risk than those with only one condition.
Therapeutic Potential: Stress-reduction and inflammation-targeted approaches may help lower future heart disease risk.
Source: Mass General
Patients with depression are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease, and a new study suggests that stress may help explain why.
Research from Mass General Brigham suggests that this increased risk is driven by stress-related brain activity, nervous system dysregulation, and chronic inflammation.
They also found that patients with both depression and anxiety were at even higher risk of cardiovascular disease than those diagnosed with just one condition.
The findings, published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, suggest that stress reduction and related therapeutic targets hold potential for cardiovascular disease prevention.
“These findings give us a clearer biological picture of how emotional distress ‘gets under the skin’ and affects cardiovascular health,” said study first author Shady Abohashem, MD, MPH, an investigator and head of Cardiac PET/CT Imaging Trials at MGH Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Mass General Brigham Heart and Vascular Institute.
“For clinicians, it’s a reminder to view mental health as an integral part of cardiovascular risk assessment. For patients, it’s encouragement that addressing chronic stress, anxiety, or depression is not just a mental health priority, it’s also a heart health priority.”
The researchers analyzed data from 85,551 participants in the Mass General Brigham Biobank. Of these, 14,934 presented with both depression and anxiety, 15,819 had either depression or anxiety, and 54,798 had neither condition. Participants were followed for a median of 3.4 years, during which 3,078 experienced major adverse cardiovascular events such as heart attack, heart failure or stroke.
“In line with previous reports, we found that both depression and anxiety were linked to a higher risk of heart attack or stroke,” said senior author Ahmed Tawakol, MD, Director of Nuclear Cardiology at the Mass General Brigham Heart and Vascular Institute.
“Notably people who were diagnosed with both depression and anxiety faced roughly a 32% higher risk compared with those diagnosed with only one condition. Importantly, these associations remained strong even after accounting for differences in lifestyle behaviors, socioeconomic factors, and traditional risk factors such as smoking, diabetes, and hypertension.”
To investigate whether depression and anxiety might be linked to heart health via systemic stress responses, the researchers also analyzed advanced brain imaging data and biomarkers of nervous system activity and inflammation for a subset of the participants.
They found that people diagnosed with depression or anxiety showed increased activity in the amygdala (a brain region associated with stress), reduced heart rate variability (a sign of an overactive nervous system), and higher blood levels of CRP (a protein linked to inflammation).
“Together, these changes seem to form a biological chain linking emotional stress to cardiovascular risk,” said Abohashem.
“When the brain’s stress circuits are overactive, they can chronically trigger the body’s ‘fight or flight’ system, leading to increased heart rate, blood pressure, and chronic inflammation. Over time, these changes can damage blood vessels and accelerate heart disease. This reinforces that protecting heart health isn’t just about diet or exercise, it’s also about emotional health.”
Because the study was based on observational data, more research is needed to determine whether depression and anxiety are causing cardiovascular disease or whether they are simply associated.
The researchers are now studying whether interventions such as stress-reduction therapies, anti-inflammatory medications, or lifestyle changes can help normalize these brain and immune markers and, in turn, lower heart risk.
Authorship: In addition to Abohashem and Tawakol, Mass General Brigham authors include Iqra Qamar, Simran S. Grewal, Giovanni Civieri, Sabeeh Islam, Wesam Aldosoky, Sandeep Bollepalli, Rachel P. Rosovsky, Antonia V. Seligowski, Lisa M. Shine, Antonis A. Armoundas, and Michael T Osborne.
Disclosures: Osborne receives consulting fees from WCG Clinical, for unrelated work. Shine receives textbook royalties from Pearson for unrelated work. Remaining authors have no significant disclosures.
Funding: Abohashem is supported in part by the American Heart Association Second Century Faculty Early Independence Award. Tawakol is supported by NIH P01HL131478. Seligowski is supported by NIH K23MH125920. MTO is supported by NIH K23HL151909 and AHA 23SCISA1143491. Armoundas is funded by the Institute of Precision Medicine (17UNPG33840017) of the American Heart Association, the RICBAC Foundation, NIH grants R01 HL135335-01, R01 HL161008-01, R21 HL137870-01, R21EB026164-01 and 3R21EB026164-02S1.
Key Questions Answered:
Q: Why are people with depression at higher risk for heart disease?
A: The study links depression to overactive stress-related brain circuits, nervous system dysregulation, and chronic inflammation — all factors known to accelerate cardiovascular disease.
Q: Do depression and anxiety together raise the risk even more?
A: Yes. Individuals diagnosed with both conditions had about a 32% higher risk of major cardiovascular events compared to those with just one condition.
Q: What biological markers connected emotional distress to heart health?
A: Increased amygdala activity, reduced heart rate variability, and higher inflammation markers (like CRP) formed a stress-related pathway tied to cardiovascular risk.
Editorial Notes:
This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
Journal paper reviewed in full.
Additional context added by our staff.
About this depression and cardiovascular disease research news
Author: Brandon Chase Source:Mass General Contact: Brandon Chase – Mass General Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Depression and Anxiety Associate with Adverse Cardiovascular Events via Neural, Autonomic and Inflammatory Pathways
BACKGROUND:
Depression is linked to major adverse cardiac events (MACE), yet the role of stress-related neural activity–previously implicated in stress and anxiety—in mediating this association remains unclear. Because anxiety and depression frequently co-occur and share neurobiological pathways, we hypothesized that the relationship between depression, anxiety, and their co-occurrence with MACE is partially mediated by increased stress-related neural activity and related autonomic-immune mechanisms.
1) Your money on yourself (you’re careful about both cost and quality) 2) Your money on others (you care about cost, less about quality) 3) Someone else’s money on yourself (you care about quality, not cost) 4) Someone else’s money on… pic.twitter.com/uAdotCW3SE
Did Michael Comyn have any dealings with William Wylie or Sir John Grenfell Maxwell?
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No direct evidence exists of personal or professional dealings between Michael Comyn KC and either William Evelyn Wylie or Sir John Grenfell Maxwell.
With William Wylie
Comyn and Wylie were both prominent Irish barristers in Dublin during the early 20th century, operating in overlapping legal circles (e.g., the Munster circuit for Comyn and general Dublin practice for Wylie). However, no records indicate specific interactions, collaborations, or courtroom encounters.
Wylie served as prosecutor in the immediate 1916 Easter Rising court-martials (May 1916), while Comyn was abroad in Kansas City and only began defending republican prisoners in military courts and appeals from late 1916 onward—after the initial executions and when martial law proceedings continued under different prosecutors.
With Sir John Grenfell Maxwell
Maxwell, as military governor, oversaw the 1916 suppressions and court-martials but departed Ireland in late 1916 (replaced in November). Comyn’s defenses of internees and later republicans occurred under ongoing martial law but post-Maxwell’s tenure, with no documented petitions, correspondence, or direct involvement linking Comyn to him.
Biographical sources (e.g., Dictionary of Irish Biography entries on Comyn and Maxwell) and historical accounts of the period emphasize their separate roles—Comyn as a nationalist defender, Wylie as a unionist prosecutor, and Maxwell as the enforcing general—without noting any intersections.
China’s robotic surge
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
