For more than a decade, researchers have wondered whether artificial intelligence could help predict what incapacitated patients might want when doctors must make life-or-death decisions on their behalf.

It remains one of the most high-stakes questions in health care AI today. But as AI improves, some experts increasingly see it as inevitable that digital “clones” of patients could one day aid family members, doctors, and ethics boards in making end-of-life decisions that are aligned with a patient’s values and goals.

Ars spoke with experts conducting or closely monitoring this research who confirmed that no hospital has yet deployed so-called “AI surrogates.” But AI researcher Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad is aiming to change that, taking the first steps toward piloting AI surrogates at a US medical facility.

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The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed Sunday that it is investigating an airliner that was struck by an object in its windscreen, mid-flight, over Utah.

“NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data,” the federal agency said on the social media site X . “Windscreen being sent to NTSB laboratories for examination.”

The strike occurred Thursday, during a United Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles. Images shared on social media showed that one of the two large windows at the front of a 737 MAX aircraft was significantly cracked. Related images also reveal a pilot’s arm that has been cut multiple times by what appear to be small shards of glass.

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Even in my youth, I always loved the idea of point-and-click adventure games more than I did the reality. I appreciated how they transported me to other worlds, each with its own rules, histories, and interesting characters. However, like many people, I often ran up against the harsh reality of solving bizarre and obtuse puzzles in a time before Internet walkthroughs.

I almost never actually finished point-and-click adventure games for that reason—but there is one major exception: I completed Robert Williams’ The Colonel’s Bequest several times.

One of the last Sierra adventure games to still use a text parser, The Colonel’s Bequest follows a young woman named Laura Bow as she visits a mansion in the Southern US belonging to her college friend’s grandfather, Colonel Henri Dijon. While she’s there, a dispute breaks out over the colonel’s will, and it becomes clear a murderer is on the loose.

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Earlier this month, the Trump administration made nine elite universities an offer they couldn’t refuse : bring in more conservatives while shutting down “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” give up control of admissions and hiring decisions, agree to “biological” definitions of sex and gender, don’t raise tuition for five years, clamp down on student protests, and stay institutionally “neutral” on current events. Do this and you won’t be cut off from “federal benefits,” which could include research funding, student loans, federal contracts, and even student and faculty immigration visas. Instead, you may gain “substantial and meaningful federal grants.”

But the universities are refusing. With the initial deadline of October 20 approaching, four of the nine universities—the University of Pennsylvania , Brown , University of Southern California , and MIT —that received the federal “compact” have announced that they will not sign it.

In addition, the American Council on Education, which represents more than 1,600 colleges and universities, today issued a statement calling for the compact to be completely withdrawn.

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For some cases of bacterial vaginosis, treatment should include a package deal, doctors now say.

The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) updated its clinical guidance Friday to fit with recent data indicating that treatment for recurring bacterial vaginosis (BV) in women is significantly more effective if their male partners are also treated at the same time—with both an oral antibiotic and an antibiotic cream directly onto the potentially offending member.

“Partner therapy offers us another avenue for hopefully preventing recurrence and helping people feel better faster,” Christopher Zahn, chief of clinical practice and health equity and quality at ACOG, said in a statement.

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Law enforcement agencies will soon have easier access to footage captured by Amazon’s Ring smart cameras. In a partnership announced this week, Amazon will allow approximately 5,000 local law enforcement agencies to request access to Ring camera footage via surveillance platforms from Flock Safety . Ring cooperating with law enforcement and the reported use of Flock technologies by federal agencies, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has resurfaced privacy concerns that have followed the devices for years.

According to Flock’s announcement, its Ring partnership allows local law enforcement members to use Flock software “to send a direct post in the Ring Neighbors app with details about the investigation and request voluntary assistance.” Requests must include “specific location and timeframe of the incident, a unique investigation code, and details about what is being investigated,” and users can look at the requests anonymously, Flock said.

“Any footage a Ring customer chooses to submit will be securely packaged by Flock and shared directly with the requesting local public safety agency through the FlockOS or Flock Nova platform,” the announcement reads.

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In 1890, a German scientist named Robert Koch thought he’d invented a cure for tuberculosis, a substance derived from the infecting bacterium itself that he dubbed Tuberculin. His substance didn’t actually cure anyone, but it was eventually widely used as a diagnostic skin test . Koch’s successful failure is just one of the many colorful cases featured in Dead Ends! Flukes, Flops, and Failures that Sparked Medical Marvels , a new nonfiction illustrated children’s book by science historian Lindsey Fitzharris and her husband, cartoonist Adrian Teal.

A noted science communicator with a fondness for the medically macabre, Fitzharris published a biography of surgical pioneer Joseph Lister, The Butchering Art , in 2017—a great, if occasionally grisly, read. She followed up with 2022’s The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I , about a WWI surgeon named Harold Gillies who rebuilt the faces of injured soldiers.

And in 2020, she hosted a documentary for the Smithsonian Channel, The Curious Life and Death Of …, exploring famous deaths, ranging from drug lord Pablo Escobar to magician Harry Houdini. Fitzharris performed virtual autopsies, experimented with blood samples, interviewed witnesses, and conducted real-time demonstrations in hopes of gleaning fresh insights. For his part, Teal is a well-known caricaturist and illustrator, best known for his work on the British TV series Spitting Image . His work has also appeared in The Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph, among other outlets.

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Texas is being sued by a Big Tech lobby group over the state’s new law that will require app stores to verify users’ ages and impose restrictions on users under 18.

“The Texas App Store Accountability Act imposes a broad censorship regime on the entire universe of mobile apps,” the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) said yesterday in a lawsuit . “In a misguided attempt to protect minors, Texas has decided to require proof of age before anyone with a smartphone or tablet can download an app. Anyone under 18 must obtain parental consent for every app and in-app purchase they try to download—from ebooks to email to entertainment.”

The CCIA said in a press release that the law violates the First Amendment by imposing “a sweeping age-verification, parental consent, and compelled speech regime on both app stores and app developers.” When app stores determine that a user is under 18, “the law prohibits them from downloading virtually all apps and software programs and from making any in-app purchases unless their parent consents and is given control over the minor’s account,” the CCIA said. “Minors who are unable to link their accounts with a parent’s or guardian’s, or who do not receive permission, would be prohibited from accessing app store content.”

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One of the earliest teen victims bullied by fake nudes has sued to destroy the app she said left her living in “constant fear.”

In her complaint , the teen—who was granted anonymity as a 17-year-old minor—accused ClothOff of intentionally making it easy to generate and distribute child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), as well as nonconsensual intimate images (NCII) of adults. She also alleged that the social media network Telegram helps promote ClothOff through automated bots that have attracted hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

ClothOff’s operation, the teen alleged, goes beyond promoting a single app, which can be used for free to turn an ordinary Instagram photo into CSAM or NCII in “three clicks.”

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