Tech
Vaccine Panel Stacked by RFK Jr. Recommends Delaying MMRV Immunization

A federal vaccine advisory committee made up of members hand-picked by Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recommended in an 8-3 vote on Thursday that the combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine should not be given before age 4, citing long-known evidence that shows a slightly increased risk for febrile seizures in that age group.
Experts say that while frightening, febrile seizures—which are uncommon after vaccination—are usually short-lived and harmless, and removing the option for parents could cause a decline in immunization rates against measles, mumps, and rubella, some of the most dangerous childhood diseases.
Known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, the group provides recommendations to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine usage. These recommendations are typically adopted by CDC and have an impact on state vaccine requirements for school, insurance coverage of vaccines, and pharmacy access—something at least one member of the panel seemed to be unaware of.
Thursday’s vote is part of a new shift in vaccine policy being spearheaded by Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist. In his short time as HHS secretary, Kennedy has implemented restrictions on who can receive Covid-19 vaccines and dismissed all 17 sitting members of ACIP, replacing them with 12 new members—some of whom were installed just this week. Several of the new advisers have a history of criticizing vaccines or denouncing public health measures taken during the Covid-19 pandemic. Kennedy said a “clean sweep” of ACIP was necessary to build back public confidence in vaccine science.
On Thursday, committee members were asked to evaluate whether to recommend against the combined MMRV vaccine before age 4, as well as whether to delay the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine until the child is at least one month old.
Currently, parents have two options for vaccinating their children against measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella, also known as chickenpox. They can choose the combined shot, known as MMRV, or two separate shots—one for MMR and another for chickenpox. About 85 percent of children get separate shots.
In the US, the hepatitis B vaccine is given in the hospital shortly after birth, because the virus can be transmitted to children during delivery. A serious liver infection, hepatitis B can lead to cirrhosis and cancer. Each year in the US, an estimated 25,000 infants are born to women diagnosed with the hepatitis B virus. Without vaccination, up to 90 percent of them would develop chronic infections. The World Health Organization advises a universal birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.
The topics of discussion at Tuesday’s meeting were not based on new data or evidence, and in fact, two ACIP members, Joseph Hibbeln and Cody Meissner, as well as several representatives from professional medical organizations who were in attendance, questioned why these changes were up for consideration.
Robert Malone, one of the more controversial new ACIP members, offered an explanation: “It’s clear that a significant population of the United States has significant concerns about vaccine policy and about vaccine mandates.” Malone is a former mRNA researcher who rose to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic by spreading falsehoods about the disease and the vaccines; he abstained from Thursday’s vote because he previously served as an expert witness in a lawsuit over the mumps vaccine.
Tech
If You’ve Got the Right Rig, Check Out This Sale on Samsung’s 4K Gaming Monitor

Looking for an impressive gaming monitor to match your powerful desktop? The 32-inch version of the Samsung Odyssey G8 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is currently marked down from $1,300 to just $1,100. Only the beefiest gaming rigs can dream of powering its 3,840 x 2,160-pixel resolution at the full 240-Hz refresh rate, but those who can will be hard-pressed to find anything stronger.
I got to spend some time with the 27-inch version of this panel and was extremely impressed with its incredible image quality, whether watching movies or playing games. A big part of that is the QD-OLED panel, which is capable of producing perfectly dark black levels, as well as bright, vivid colors.
While streaming services might have limits when it comes to utilizing that kind of screen, most video games can take advantage of a panel like this without any extra work. The result is immersive, lifelike scenes, particularly in more cinematic and detailed games. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a screen like this is a rare delight, available only to those with thousands to spare on their battle station.
Even my supercharged gaming desktop, which features Nvidia’s top-end RTX 5090 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) couldn’t get anywhere close to 240 Hz in any game with the settings turned up. You’ll likely need to turn the quality down, or rely heavily on multi-frame generation, in order to reach 200+ FPS at 4K in modern titles.
In fact, I wouldn’t even consider using this monitor unless you’re on an RTX 3000 Series GPU or newer, the first generation to support the HDMI and DisplayPort connectivity needed for 4K at 240 Hz. Thankfully, the G81SF does support both FreeSync Premium Pro and Nvidia G-Sync, so AMD users on Radeon RX 6000 Series or newer cards might give this a look as well. Anything older than that and you’re better off checking one of our other favorite gaming monitors.
If you’ve got the scratch, and the rig to match, this Samsung is absolutely one of the most premium gaming monitors available, and a noticeable discount to help cover the cost of a GPU upgrade is particularly welcome.
Tech
Brendan Carr Isn’t Going to Stop Until Someone Makes Him

To Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on free speech, Carr’s threats against ABC appear to be “a pretty clear cut case of jawboning.” Jawboning refers to a type of informal coercion where government officials try to pressure private entities into suppressing or changing speech without using any actual formal legal action. Since jawboning is typically done in letters and private meetings, it rarely leaves a paper trail, making it notoriously difficult to challenge in court.
This Kimmel suspension is a little different, Lakier says. During the podcast appearance, Carr explicitly named his target, threatened regulatory action, and within a matter of hours the companies complied.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that that’s unconstitutional in all circumstances,” says Lakier. “You’re just not allowed to do that. There’s no balancing. There’s no justification. Absolutely no, no way may the government do that.”
Even if Carr’s threats amount to unconstitutional jawboning, though, stopping him could still prove difficult. If ABC sued, it would need to prove coercion—and however a suit went, filing one could risk additional regulatory retaliation down the line. If Kimmel were to sue, there’s no promise that he would get anything out of the suit even if he won, says Lakier, making it less likely for him to pursue legal action in the first place.
“There’s not much there for him except to establish that his rights were violated. But there is a lot of benefit for everyone else,” says Lakier. “This has received so much attention that it would be good if there could be, from now on, some mechanism for more oversight from the courts over what Carr is doing.”
Organizations like the FPF have sought novel means of limiting Carr’s power. In July, the FPF submitted a formal disciplinary complaint to the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel arguing that Carr violated its ethical rules, misrepresenting the law by suggesting the FCC has the ability to regulate editorial viewpoints. Without formal rulings, companies affected by Carr’s threats would be some of the only organizations with grounding to sue. At the same time, they have proven to be some of the least likely groups to pursue legal action over the last eight months.
In a statement on Thursday, House Democratic leadership wrote that Carr had “disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC” and called on him to resign. They said they plan to “make sure the American people learn the truth, even if that requires the relentless unleashing of congressional subpoena power,” but did not outline any tangible ways to rein in Carr’s power.
“People need to get creative,” says Stern. “The old playbook is not built for this moment and the law only exists on paper when you’ve got someone like Brendan Carr in charge of enforcing it.”
This vacuum has left Carr free to push as far as he likes and it has spooked experts over how far this precedent will travel. Established in the 1930s, the FCC was designed to operate as a neutral referee, but years of media consolidation have dramatically limited the number of companies controlling programming over broadcast, cable, and now, streaming networks. Spectrum is a limited resource the FCC controls, giving the agency more direct control over the broadcast companies that rely on it than it has over cable or streaming services. This concentration makes them infinitely easier to pressure, benefitting the Trump administration, Carr, but also whoever might come next.
“If political tides turn, I don’t have confidence that the Democrats won’t also use them in an unconstitutional and improper matter,” says Stern. “[The Trump administration is] really setting up this world where every election cycle, assuming we still have elections in this country, the content of broadcast news might drastically shift depending on which political party controls the censorship office.”
Tech
Magnetic tunnel junctions mimic synapse behavior for energy-efficient neuromorphic computing

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) poses challenges to today’s computer technology. Conventional silicon processors are reaching their limits: they consume large amounts of energy, the storage and processing units are not interconnected and data transmission slows down complex applications.
As the size of AI models is constantly increasing and they are having to process huge amounts of data, the need for new computing architectures is rising. In addition to quantum computers, focus is shifting, in particular, to neuromorphic concepts. These systems are based on the way the human brain works.
This is where the research of a team led by Dr. Tahereh Sadat Parvini and Prof. Dr. Markus Münzenberg from the University of Greifswald and colleagues from Portugal, Denmark and Germany began. They have found an innovative way to make computers of tomorrow significantly more energy-efficient. Their research centers around so-called magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs), tiny components on the nanometer scale.
“These components not only store information, they can even process it, just like nerve cells. This makes them ideal for novel computing concepts that are based on the way the brain works, what we call ‘neuromorphic computing,'” explains Dr. Tahereh Sadat Parvini, postdoc at the University of Greifswald and co-author of the paper that was recently published in Communications Physics.
The research team developed a hybrid opto-electrical excitation scheme that combines electrical currents with short laser pulses. This made it possible to generate particularly high thermoelectric voltages in the MTJs—an important prerequisite for the targeted simulation of synapse behavior.
The physicists were able to identify three particularly remarkable properties: First, the generated voltage can be adjusted flexibly depending on the electrical current, similar to the weight of a synapse in the brain. Second, spontaneous “spike” signals occurred, which are similar to the way information is exchanged between nerve cells. Third, in computer simulations, a simple neuromorphic network based on this technology already achieved a recognition accuracy of 93.7% for digits that had been written by hand.
“Our results show that MTJs with optical-electrical control represent a compact and energy-saving platform for the next generation of computing,” summarizes Prof. Dr. Markus Münzenberg. “As the technology is compatible with today’s semiconductor technology, we believe that in the future, it could be used in everyday devices as well as high-performance computers.”
More information:
Felix Oberbauer et al, Magnetic tunnel junctions driven by hybrid optical-electrical signals as a flexible neuromorphic computing platform, Communications Physics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s42005-025-02257-0
Citation:
Magnetic tunnel junctions mimic synapse behavior for energy-efficient neuromorphic computing (2025, September 18)
retrieved 18 September 2025
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