Google Plans To Release Millions Of Mosquitoes

California could soon become a testing ground for one of Google’s most ambitious public health projects yet.

The tech giant is seeking federal approval to release up to 32 million specially treated mosquitoes in California and Florida over the next two years as part of an effort to reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, including West Nile virus, St. Louis encephalitis, dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.

The proposal is currently under review by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which is accepting public comments through 5 June before deciding whether to issue an experimental use permit.

Regulators have not announced where any mosquito releases would occur if the plan is approved.

Researchers say the latest proposal targets Culex mosquitoes, a species known for transmitting West Nile virus and St. Louis encephalitis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Nile virus remains the leading mosquito-borne disease in the U.S.

Those viruses are already established in California, where they circulate naturally among local bird and mosquito populations.

On Friday, a positive sample of West Nile virus was confirmed in Riverside County.

The project is part of Google’s little-known Debug initiative, launched more than a decade ago to develop new technologies aimed at reducing populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Rather than releasing biting insects, the company plans to release male mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacteria. When the infected males mate with wild female mosquitoes, the offspring do not survive, helping suppress mosquito populations over time.

Because only female mosquitoes bite humans, experts say the releases would not increase the number of biting mosquitoes.

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UK's Rudest Chalk Figure Gets A Makeover

For centuries, the Cerne Abbas Giant has been hard to miss because of its rude features.

The 55-metre chalk figure, cut into a hillside near the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, shows a naked, club-wielding man whose outline has made him one of the UK's most instantly recognizable historic landmarks.

But the National Trust, which owns and manages the site, says changing weather patterns are making it harder to keep the Giant prominent on the hillside.

National Trust staff and volunteers will this week pack tonnes of new chalk onto the figure to restore the crisp whiteness of his outline.

Luke Dawson, a National Trust ranger who helps look after the site, says heavier winter rains are washing chalk from the slope more quickly, while mild, damp conditions give algae more chance to grow.

He says this wetter weather has been having "a dulling effect" on the Giant's outline, leaving it greener and less distinct between maintenance work.

The Trust is cautious about attributing the changes directly to climate change at a single site.

"It's one of these things we cannot really prove," says Dawson. "It is more just observation of what we are seeing up there."

The charity has cared for the Giant since 1920. Its rangers and volunteers keep the outline defined by rechalking the figure every decade or so to protect it from weeds and erosion. And between chalking it uses sheep to keep the grass short.

But the Trust says that coupled with heavier winter rains, the frequent dry spells in summer, mean the grass grows back more slowly and can leave the chalk edges more exposed and vulnerable to erosion.

The rechalking could take up to 15 days to complete. Around 300 National Trust staff and volunteers will be involved, carrying about 17 tonnes of fresh chalk up the steep hillside, which in places has a gradient of roughly one in three.

The work is physically demanding, especially in the exceptional heat the UK has experienced in recent days. The old chalk is carefully dug out before fresh material is packed into the Giant's outline by hand - a process the Trust says has changed little for generations.

The Giant's naked, club-wielding form has fuelled centuries of speculation - "a real ding-dong" according to local historian Ian Denness. Some argued he was an ancient fertility figure, others a Roman Hercules, or even a later satire of Oliver Cromwell.

But scientific analysis of sediments published by the National Trust in 2021 suggested the figure was probably first cut in the late Saxon period, between around 700 and 1100AD - much later than the prehistoric or Roman origins once imagined.

However, this finding has not settled the question of his significance.

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Google's AI Still Can't Spell, Including The Word "Google"

And though the Gemini-powered technology has improved its accuracy dramatically over the last two years (unfortunately for publishers), AI Overviews still gets basic questions wrong. And that includes spelling tests.

Google's AI tools remain abysmal at answering questions about spelling, having gone viral two years ago for responding to the question "how many r's are in the word strawberry?" incorrectly. But it's still bad. Last 26 May, X user Naomi Rohatyn tested the large language model's (LLM) current ability to answer to a spelling question.

"There are exactly 2 'e's in the word "astronomical" (a-s-t-r-e-n-o-m-i-c-a-e-l)," replied AI Overview.

How many Ps are in Google? According to Google, there are two.

There’s also is also "exactly 1 'r' in the word 'poop'," Google’s AI Overview says, as well as two ‘d’s in the word journalism, yet spelled it: j-o-u-r-n-a-d-i-s-m. Google did at least identify that there is one P in the last name of the U.S. president, but spelled it as t-r-p-u-m.

Considering users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results, surely the information provided in AI Overviews should be accurate. But it's complicated.

AI chatbots need exact context and specifics to answer as well as they can, so surely spelling words within their training data seems easy. However, things get knotty when you ask an LLM to consider words letter-by-letter, as the model will process text in chunks rather than individual characters (it's called tokenisation).

"Counting within words has been a known challenge for LLMs, and we’re working to fix this particular issue," Google told TechCrunch in an emailed statement.

These basic spelling errors may seem familiar. LLMs, the kind of artificial intelligence that powers chatbots and other text-generators, are not built to understand spelling. It’s been a running joke for years that whenever a company unveils a new AI model, you should ask it how many 'r's are in the word strawberry. These AI models — which can code an app in seconds, or solve problems that have stumped mathematicians for decades — are about as good as a kindergartener at spelling.

Google’s AI overview woes reach beyond silly spelling mistakes though. Google already patched an issue from last week in which searching the word "disregard" would yield what looked like a dictionary definition of the word, only the definition was shown as, "Understood. Let me know whenever you have a new prompt or question!" But these spelling errors have remained amusing because they’re so difficult to quash.

"LLMs are based on this transformer architecture, which notably is not actually reading text. What happens when you input a prompt is that it's translated into an encoding," Matthew Guzdial, an AI researcher and assistant professor at the University of Alberta, told TechCrunch. "When it sees the word ‘the,’ it has this one encoding of what ‘the’ means, but it does not know about 'T,' 'H,' 'E.'"

The token-based architecture that powers LLMs like Google’s AI overview is inherently limiting, and researchers haven’t been optimistic that they can solve the spelling problem.

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Windows 11 Is Upgrading To A More "Useful Start Option"

On Windows 11, as part of Microsoft's broader "Windows K2" initiative to improve the operating system and rebuild user trust, the company has revealed the first tranche of Start menu changes that will soon begin rolling out through the Windows Insider Program.

The upcoming improvements focus heavily on customization and usability. Some of the most notable changes include the ability to resize the Start menu, show or hide individual sections, and separate file recommendations from recent activities.

When the software giant introduced Windows 11, the company replaced the classic Windows 10 Start menu with a completely redesigned experience. The new design removed Live Tiles and the secondary pane layout in favor of a simplified, centered menu that only included traditional app icons.

While the redesign modernized the interface, it also reduced functionality and customization options compared to Windows 10. Since launch, users have consistently criticized the Start menu for feeling restrictive and less flexible.

Now, Microsoft appears ready to address many of those complaints and one of the biggest additions is support for manually resizing the Start menu.

Until now, the Start menu automatically adjusted its dimensions based on screen size and resolution, offering virtually no control over its appearance. In future updates, users will be able to choose between smaller and larger layouts.

Unlike Windows 10, Windows 11 still won't allow freeform resizing by dragging the edges of the menu or enable a full-screen Start experience. However, the new option is still a major improvement over the current fixed layout.

Microsoft is expected to add the feature through a new "Start menu size" setting available from Settings > Personalization > Start.

Microsoft is also introducing privacy-focused improvements for users who frequently share their screens during meetings, presentations, or live streams.

The company plans to add a new option called "Hide your name and profile picture on Start." When enabled, the Start menu will no longer display the account name and profile image.

The setting will appear under Settings > Personalization > Start > Other.

Originally, the Windows 11 Start menu separated content into multiple areas, including "Pinned," "Recommended," and the separate "All apps" list.

One of the most common complaints after launch was the inability to remove the "Recommended" section entirely. Microsoft eventually added a workaround, but it required turning off several unrelated settings before the section disappeared.

More recently, the company redesigned the Start menu by merging the "All apps" list into the main interface. However, customization still remained limited.

As part of the Windows K2 effort, Microsoft has now confirmed that users will soon get dedicated toggles to individually show or hide the "Pinned," "Recommended," and "All" sections.

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A "Living Bandage" Can Speed Up Healing

There is now an engineered "living bandages" that could offer a new way to treat chronic wounds by delivering healing signals directly where the body needs them most. Researchers at Rice University developed a cytokine factory patch that continuously releases therapeutic proteins inside wounds.

Chronic wounds remain difficult to treat because the body often struggles to maintain the immune signals needed for tissue repair. Existing therapies also face limitations because healing proteins degrade quickly and fail to remain at the wound site for long periods.

The Rice team designed the patch as a cell-based delivery platform that uses engineered cells as miniature factories. These cells continuously produce cytokines over extended periods instead of releasing them in short bursts.

Cytokines are signaling proteins that regulate inflammation, immune activity, and tissue regeneration. By delivering them directly at the wound site, the patch aims to maintain a stable healing environment during recovery.

The device came from the laboratory of Omid Veiseh. Researchers encapsulated ARPE-19 cells engineered to secrete cytokines including IL-10, IL-12 and TGF-β inside a protective biocompatible matrix.

The matrix allows nutrients and therapeutic proteins to move through the material while shielding the engineered cells from the host immune system. Researchers said this setup helps sustain localized cytokine delivery for longer periods.

In preclinical studies, the patch accelerated healing in excisional wound models in mice and pigs. The findings highlighted the potential of sustained, localized immune modulation during tissue repair.

"The findings show how continuous, localized cytokine delivery can support key biological pathways involved in tissue repair," Veiseh said. He added that maintaining a steady supply of signaling molecules at the wound site helped engage the body’s natural healing response more effectively.

Researchers also examined how the patch influenced biological activity at the cellular level. RNA sequencing revealed activation of several pathways associated with wound healing after treatment.

Transcriptomic analysis showed increased activity in genes linked to tissue regeneration and immune modulation. The results provided a molecular explanation for the faster healing observed in the animal models.

The platform also offers flexibility beyond a single treatment strategy. Researchers designed the system so scientists can modify the engineered cells to produce different combinations of cytokines, growth factors, or therapeutic proteins.

That modular structure could help tailor future treatments for different wound types and diseases. The team also integrated an optimized hydrogel matrix that may eventually work alongside bioelectronic technologies.

Researchers believe the cytokine factory concept could extend beyond wound healing. They said the platform may support localized delivery of therapeutic proteins in diseases that require sustained, site-specific immune signaling. Christian Schreib, assistant research professor in Rice’s bioengineering department and co-author of the study, said the team now plans to improve control over cytokine delivery.

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