Health & science · page 2

How a 1940s US experiment tried, and failed, to create a ‘super dog’

• Scientists in Maine studied more than 500 puppies of five breeds over 13 years, backed by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Alan Gregg, who believed intelligence was overwhelmingly hereditary.
• No breed proved ‘more intelligent’ overall: each did better on some tests, and temperament shifted with context.
• Pups had a ‘critical period’ from 4 to 12 weeks; isolated pups that missed it grew up untameable, an experiment researchers say would not be allowed today.

Other side: Dogs are bred over generations; AI is engineered and copied in months, so the limits that stopped the super-dog may not apply.

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IIT-JEE topper Nitin Gupta now studies mosquito brains at IIT Kanpur

• All India Rank 1 in IIT-JEE 2000; BTech in computer science at IIT Kanpur (2004), a PhD at UC San Diego (2009) and NIH research (2010–14).
• Back at IIT Kanpur since July 2014, his lab studies how insect brains decide to approach or avoid a smell, such as a human body versus a repellent.
• His group built TreadWill, a free automated CBT programme for depression; in a 598-person randomised trial in India, users who finished at least half the modules showed significant drops in depression and anxiety symptoms.

Other side: This is one career, and the trial benefit is reported for users who completed at least half the modules; others may not see the same. Twelve of twenty toppers abroad is a small group, not a trend.

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Three IITs are building medical schools. The real target is not more doctors

• IIT Kharagpur, Madras and Kanpur are building medical schools, but their directors say they want ‘physician-engineers’, not more doctors.
• Kanpur will start with MD, DM and MCh degrees; its 500-bed hospital is due to be inaugurated by the end of this year, with the first patient by March 2027. Madras plans MBBS, MD and PhD; Kharagpur has a hospital and approval for postgraduate courses. None has graduated a doctor yet.
• Imports are about 60% of India’s medical-device consumption: roughly ₹1.37 lakh crore (~$8.8bn) in 2024-25, against exports of ₹42,360 crore.

Other side: Kharagpur’s director says success is a product made in India, validated, deployed at scale and improving outcomes, not papers, patents or start-ups. A teaching hospital and NMC approval are mandatory and take years, so the model will take a while to judge.

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Google's Project Suncatcher readies its first test of AI chips in orbit

• Google says Project Suncatcher is scheduled for its first orbital test, with the first TPUs going into orbit next week.
• A prototype satellite built with partner Planet will fly on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare.
• The test will evaluate how Google's Tensor Processing Units perform in space.

Watch next: How the new TPU cooling system performs in orbit, and the 2027 test of high-bandwidth, short-range laser links between two satellites.

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