People worldwide seek medical care for back and neck pain, which can interfere with sleep, mobility and daily life. For individuals who need surgery for spinal conditions, advances in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and motion-preserving implants are expanding treatment options and allowing for more personalized treatment, according to Ahmad Nassr, M.D., orthopedic surgeon at Mayo Clinic.

The Keck School of Medicine of USC and Keck Medicine of USC have launched collaborations with Tempus AI, Inc., a technology company at the forefront of applying AI to precision medicine, to integrate clinical care, clinical trials and research through a unified framework. The new framework intends to create an ongoing cycle of learning between patient care and research, with a primary goal of improving outcomes for the more than 1.5 million annual patient visits to Keck Medicine of USC hospitals and clinics. It is designed to promote more personalized and precise care to patients across the Keck Medicine of USC health system with tailored recommendations informed by large-scale clinical data. At the same time, it seeks to use clinical data to inform and accelerate research to develop innovative therapies and algorithms that may translate for public benefit. At the heart of the USC -Tempus collaboration is the pioneering research and patient care delivered by the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. The strategic undertaking is anchored by four key pillars. These include clinical testing, which can enable detailed molecular and genetic profiling at the patient level; clinical trials matching, which automatically matches eligible patients with novel targeted therapies; clinical care gap pathways, which uses AI-driven insights to promote evidence-based patient care; and research collaboration and co-development, aimed at moving academic discoveries into real-world diagnostics and treatments. Together, these elements have the potential to create an integrated ecosystem that connects patient care and research. This collaboration will start with a focus on precision oncology, with the intension of creating a proven model for integrating care and research, that can then be extended over time to other specialties, including cardiology, neurology and radiology.

A new study identifies oroclinal bending as the trigger for lithospheric foundering and surface uplift. It opens fresh questions about how such “intracontinental” mountains may have shaped Earth’s habitability over deep time, and it could help scientists better interpret similar mountain ranges elsewhere on our planet.

Robotic muscles that contract in response to a light pulse; cube-shaped screens on which three-dimensional images can be viewed from all angles: Professor Dr. Henry Dube of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) is hoping to develop materials for entirely new applications over the next four years. They are based on tiny molecular machines, each consisting of only a few dozen atoms. Chemist Dube hopes to link different types of these machines into three-dimensional structures that can perform different functions depending on the type and arrangement of the building blocks. The Volkswagen Foundation is providing approximately 900,000 euros in funding for the project.

A new review in Science China Life Sciences examines how machine learning and host-microbiome multi-omics can be combined to better understand health and disease. The article outlines the road from fragmented datasets to interpretable models, precision interventions, and ultimately a “virtual gut” that could simulate how diet, drugs, or microbial therapies affect individual patients.