Thursday, October 9, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

The 5:2 diet can help with type 2 diabetes

Published 5 August 2024
– By Editorial Staff
2 minute read

Fasting two days a week may be effective for type 2 diabetes, according to new research.

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, involved 405 Chinese adults who had recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The study participants had not used any medication for the disease or weight loss drugs in the past three months. They were then divided into three different groups that received the diabetes drugs metformin and empagliflozin or a 5:2 meal replacement diet for a total of 16 weeks.

In a nutshell, 5:2 means fasting two days a week and eating as usual the other five days.

The meal replacement participants ate one serving of a low-energy product instead of three meals on two consecutive days. For the remaining five days, they ate breakfast and lunch of their choice, but a portion of the meal replacement product for dinner.

At the end of the study, glycated hemoglobin, weight, and anthropometric and biochemical parameters were analyzed.

The fasting participants had the greatest reduction in glycated hemoglobin compared to the other two groups. All participants in the group except those over 60 years of age had lower levels. The researchers saw no difference between those taking metformin or empagliflozin.

About 76% of the 5:2 group had a glycated hemoglobin level of less than 6.5% eight weeks after treatment. For people without diabetes, the level should be around 5.7%. Body weight also decreased more in the 5:2 group than in the other two groups, as did blood pressure.

The researchers conclude that 5:2 fasting can effectively improve glycemic control and reduce body weight in patients with type 2 diabetes, and that it is more effective than the medications tested.

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Professor: We’re trading source criticism for speedy AI responses

The future of AI

Published today 10:13
– By Editorial Staff
AI has become a natural companion in our daily lives - but what happens if we stop thinking for ourselves and take the chatbot's answers as truth?
2 minute read

Professor Olof Sundin warns that generative AI undermines our fundamental ability to evaluate information.

When sources disappear and answers are based on probability calculations, we risk losing our source criticism.

— What we see is a paradigm shift in how we traditionally search, evaluate and understand information, states Sundin, professor of library and information science at Lund University in southern Sweden.

When we Google, we get links to sources that we can, if we want, examine and assess the credibility of. In language models like Chat GPT, users get a ready-made answer, but the sources often become invisible and frequently completely absent.

— The answer is based on probability calculations of the words you’re interested in, not on verifiable facts. These language models guess which words are likely to come next, explains Olof Sundin.

Without sources, transparency disappears and the responsibility for evaluating the information presented falls entirely on the user.

— It’s very difficult to evaluate knowledge without sources if you don’t know the subject, since it’s a source-critical task, he explains.

“More dependent on the systems”

Some AI systems have tried to meet the criticism through RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), where the language model summarizes information from actual sources, but research shows a concerning pattern.

— Studies from, for example, the Pew Research Institute show that users are less inclined to follow links than before. Fewer clicks on original sources, like blogs, newspapers and Wikipedia, threaten the digital knowledge ecosystem, argues Sundin.

— It has probably always been the case that we often search for answers and not sources. But when we get only answers and no sources, we become worse at source criticism and more dependent on the systems.

Research also shows that people themselves underestimate how much trust they actually have in AI answers.

— People often say they only trust AI when it comes to simple questions. But research shows that in everyday life they actually trust AI more than they think, the professor notes.

Vulnerable to influence

How language models are trained and moderated can make them vulnerable to influence, and Sundin urges all users to consider who decides how language models are actually trained, on which texts and for what purpose.

Generative AI also has a tendency to often give incorrect answers that look “serious” and correct, which can damage trust in knowledge in society.

— When trust is eroded, there’s a risk that people start distrusting everything, and then they can reason that they might as well believe whatever they want, continues Olof Sundin.

The professor sees a great danger to two necessary prerequisites for being able to exercise democratic rights – critical thinking about sources and the ability to evaluate different voices.

— When the flow of knowledge and information becomes less transparent – that we don’t understand why we encounter what we encounter online – we risk losing that ability. This is an issue we must take seriously – before we let our ‘digital friends’ take over completely, he concludes.

Language models

AI services like ChatGPT are built on language models (such as GPT-4) that are trained on enormous amounts of text. The model predicts which word is likely to come next in a sentence, based on patterns in language usage.

It doesn't "know" what is actually true – it "guesses" what is correct based on probability calculations.

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

RAG combines AI-generated responses with information retrieved from real sources, such as the top three links in a Google search.

The method provides better transparency than AI services that respond entirely without source references, but studies show that users nevertheless click less and less on the links to original sources.

Study: Diet crucial against obesity – not activity level

Published 6 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
The problem is not a sedentary lifestyle – but too much and the wrong kind of food, according to the researchers.
2 minute read

Sedentary and physically active people can burn almost the same amount of energy per day, shows a new American study. The researchers therefore argue that the fight against obesity must focus more on diet – and less on exercise.

In the study, published in the scientific journal PNAS, researchers compared data from 4,200 people from different continents with different lifestyles – including herding cultures in Siberia, hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, as well as people from both low-income and high-income countries. In total, they compared 34 different population groups.

The results show that total daily energy expenditure did not differ significantly between the different population groups. This means that, for example, a hunter-gatherer used the same amount of energy as an office worker in Sweden during a day.

Even when people live different lifestyles, once we account for the effects of body size, we do not see meaningful differences in the total number of calories people burn, says Amanda McGrosky at Elon University in the US, who is the lead author of the study, in a press release.

McGrosky points out that obesity is therefore primarily about increased calorie consumption, not decreased activity expenditure.

If you are worried about excess body fat, focus on calories in, not calories out, the researcher suggests.

Westerners eat too much

Obesity and overweight are growing health problems in the Western world, something often linked to the increasingly sedentary culture. However, this study suggests that sedentary behavior is not the biggest problem causing obesity, and McGrosky believes the study offers hope in the fight against obesity. Instead, one should look at diet and especially reduce the intake of ultra-processed foods and increase the proportion of healthy ones.

The researchers therefore suggest that it is not sedentary behavior that is the culprit in Western countries’ obesity epidemic, but rather that people simply eat too much and too unhealthily.

Exercise is still important

However, the researchers point out that this does not mean one should exclude exercise and movement, as it has a range of health-promoting benefits such as reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, premature death, and also improves mental health.

A key takeaway from the study is that increases in body fat that accompany changes in lifestyle are primarily linked to changes in energy intake, or diet. Physical activity is still very important for all-around health and should be considered complementary to diet, says McGrosky.

Study: Divorce harms young children’s development

Published 2 October 2025
– By Editorial Staff
According to a Chinese study, children of divorced parents risk falling behind in a range of different developmental areas.
2 minute read

Children whose parents divorce risk falling behind in their development – particularly in social skills, reading ability and physical health. The results come from a major study that followed 62,000 preschool children and compared children from divorced and intact families.

The research, published in the journal BMJ Paediatrics Open, is one of the largest studies conducted on younger children and shows that divorce can slow young children’s development in several areas.

Divorces don’t just affect adults but also have a significant impact on children. However, previous research has often been based on small groups of voluntary participants and produced conflicting results. Additionally, studies have primarily focused on older children, which has left knowledge about how the youngest children are affected inadequate.

The new study fills this knowledge gap by examining children between 3 and 5 years old – a critical age period where development progresses particularly rapidly and where important foundations are laid for the child’s future social, emotional and cognitive abilities.

The researchers used the so-called Human Capability Index, which measures children’s development across nine areas: reading, speech, writing, learning, persistence, language comprehension, cultural knowledge, social and emotional abilities, and physical health.

Worse at almost everything

Of the more than 62,000 children in the study, 2,409 (just under 4 percent) had parents who had divorced. When researchers compared these children with children from intact families, the differences became clear: children whose parents had divorced scored lower on almost all developmental areas.

The largest differences were in social and emotional skills, physical health and reading ability, while medium-sized differences were seen for verbal communication, persistence, language comprehension and cultural knowledge. The least impact was noticed in the areas of writing and general learning ability.

Overall, the study showed that children from divorced families had a greater risk of falling behind in their development compared to peers whose parents still lived together.

The researchers emphasize that the results highlight the need for more research on how society can support this vulnerable group. Parents, relatives and friends, healthcare services and society as a whole need to find better ways to help children through divorce processes so that their development is not negatively affected.

AI-created viruses can kill bacteria

The future of AI

Published 28 September 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Bacteriophages attach to bacteria, inject their DNA and multiply until the bacteria burst. AI can now design new variants from scratch.
2 minute read

Researchers in California have used artificial intelligence to design viruses that can reproduce and kill bacteria.

The breakthrough opens up new medical treatments – but also risks becoming a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.

Researchers at Stanford University and the Arc Institute have for the first time succeeded in creating complete genomes using artificial intelligence. Their AI-designed viruses can actually reproduce and kill bacteria.

— That was pretty striking, just actually seeing, like, this AI-generated sphere, says Brian Hie, who leads the laboratory at the Arc Institute where the work was carried out.

The team used an AI called Evo, trained on genomes from around 2 million bacteriophages (viruses that attack bacteria). They chose to work with phiX174, a simple virus with just 11 genes and 5,000 DNA letters.

16 of 302 worked

The researchers let the AI design 302 different genome variants, which were then chemically manufactured as DNA strands. When they mixed these with E. coli bacteria, they achieved a breakthrough: 16 of the designs worked and created viruses that could reproduce.

— They saw viruses with new genes, with truncated genes, and even different gene orders and arrangements, says Jef Boeke, biologist at NYU Langone Health who was given advance access to the study.

Since viruses are not considered living organisms, this is not yet truly AI-designed life – but it is an important first step toward that technology.

Major medical potential

The technology has great potential in medicine. “Most gene therapy uses viruses to shuttle genes into patients’ bodies, and AI might develop more effective ones”, explains Samuel King, the student who led the project.

Doctors have previously tried so-called phage therapy to combat serious bacterial infections, something that AI-designed viruses could improve.

“Grave concerns”

But the technology’s development also raises strong concerns. The researchers have deliberately avoided training their AI on viruses that infect humans, but others could misuse the method.

— One area where I urge extreme caution is any viral enhancement research, especially when it’s random so you don’t know what you are getting. If someone did this with smallpox or anthrax, I would have grave concerns, warns J. Craig Venter, a pioneer in synthetic biology.

Venter believes that the technology is fundamentally based on the same trial-and-error principle that he himself used two decades ago, just much faster.

Future challenges

Creating larger organisms is significantly more difficult. E. coli has a thousand times more DNA than phiX174. “The complexity would rocket from staggering to way way more than the number of subatomic particles in the universe”. explains Boeke.

Jason Kelly, CEO of biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks, believes that automated laboratories where AI continuously improves its genome designs will be needed for future breakthroughs.

— This would be a nation-scale scientific milestone, as cells are the building blocks of all life. The US should make sure we get to it first, says Kelly.

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