{"id":78082,"date":"2026-03-30T10:36:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T02:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=78082"},"modified":"2026-03-30T10:36:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T02:36:18","slug":"science-news-march-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=78082","title":{"rendered":"Science News (March 2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not a bad mix of articles this month though a key one is here more as a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Said big news is of course the claim that a <strong>fly has been uploaded<\/strong>, fueling frenzied speculation that the singularity is nigh as demonstrated in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=e21OUXPlnhk\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/flywire.ai\/\">video <\/a>released by the team behind the project. Detractors disagree with that assessment. The team behind the video used the <a href=\"https:\/\/flywire.ai\/\">FlyWire <\/a>connectome, which mapped every one of the fruit fly&#8217;s neurons and synaptic connections with the assistance of AI. They then linked this to a relatively simple physics-based simulation of a fly body to create a video depicting realistic fly behaviors that include grooming, feeding, flying and so on. However these are canned behaviors of the body model and the connectome is only used to select the behavior without actually simulating all of the coordinated movements. The connectome itself is a remarkable achievement but this should not yet be considered a full upload.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Another fascinating <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/a-man-used-ai-to-help-make-a-cancer-vaccine-for-his-dog-an-oncologist-urges-caution-278735\">news <\/a>item that went viral is that a tech entrepreneur seemingly created a <strong>customized cancer vaccine<\/strong> for his dog with the help of ChatGPT. The dog was diagnosed with aggressive mast cell cancer that kept returning even after chemotherapy and surgery. The owner paid to have a lab sequence the DNA from the dog&#8217;s tumor and used ChatGPT to sift through the results to find a sequence that would make for a good neoantigen, a protein sequence that identifies the cancer and helps make it visible to the immune system. He then enlisted researchers who designed an mRNA construct that instruct the body to manufacture these spike proteins, in effect making it a vaccine. The dog&#8217;s tumors did shrink after being treated but it is difficult to attribute the success to the vaccine, given that this is a sample of one. The amazing thing about this story is that one person was to mobilize the scientific and medical apparatus to achieve this for his dog and for not very much money at all.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Also in medical news is a result that is perhaps obvious and still important to take note of for anyone who cares about maximizing their lifespan. It&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/biomedgerontology\/advance-article-abstract\/doi\/10.1093\/gerona\/glag043\/8497853?redirectedFrom=fulltext\">study <\/a>meant to find associations between <strong>infection history and frailty<\/strong>. To no one&#8217;s surprise, it found that a history of any infection at all is linked to frailty, increasing the risk of death. This means that any infections even after they have been treated and the patient has recovered, could be said to cause lasting damage to the body that affects your overall longevity.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The next <a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/article-abstract\/2844764?utm_campaign=articlePDF&amp;utm_medium=articlePDFlink&amp;utm_source=articlePDF&amp;utm_content=jama.2025.27259\">paper <\/a>similarly has implications about longevity. It claims to find an association between <strong>caffeine intake and lowered risk of dementia<\/strong>. It even differentiates between caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee and tea to determine that it is the caffeine content that matters. What&#8217;s especially impressive is the size and period of time covered by the study, over 131,000 individuals followed up over the course of 43 years, which will certainly ensure that this particular paper will establish an important baseline for years to come.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not a bad mix of articles this month though a key one is here more as a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78082"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78193,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78082\/revisions\/78193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}