Reporters are invited to an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the AI and robotics tech featured at the AI for Good Global Summit 2025 (ITU/United Nations).

New research indicates that genetics may predict the effectiveness of anxiety and depression medications, potentially revolutionizing treatment approaches. Currently, nearly half of all patients don't respond to their initial prescription, leading to prolonged recovery. Researchers have developed a method using polygenic risk scores (PRS) from a simple genetic test to foresee which drugs will work best. While this technology has only been tested on genetic databases, clinical trials are anticipated. The goal is to develop an affordable and efficient test, allowing doctors to quickly select the most effective medication, thereby alleviating suffering much faster.

Grant-free communication schemes are a promising way to connect massive numbers of IoT devices, but they can suffer from interference and uneven performance. Researchers from Japan have made progress in addressing this challenge by developing a detailed mathematical model of how these schemes perform under various conditions. Their findings reveal a key trade-off between network fairness and optimal performance, offering insights for designing future 5G and 6G systems that support smart cities and connected healthcare.

In a bold stride toward carbon neutrality, seven researchers from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), South Korea, unveil a novel catalytic reaction which selectively produces value-added alcohols from CO₂ using electrochemical conversion. The cutting-edge technology enables mass production of high value-added feedstock chemicals with world-class efficiency (four times higher efficiency than those achieved till date)—laying the groundwork for a zero-carbon future.

A new study of over 3,000 Japanese firms reveals that companies often set overly ambitious earnings targets after previously missing their goals—an effort to restore investor confidence. This strategic move, known as “organizational impression management,” helps firms manage market perceptions despite the risk of repeated failure. The research also finds that institutional investors, analysts, and board diversity can temper this behavior, offering fresh insight into corporate communication and investor relations.

In a paper published in National Science Review, the team of Pro. Liu present an innovative computational framework, the sample-perturbed Gaussian graphical model (sPGGM), designed to analyse disease progression and identify pre-disease stages at the specific sample/cell level based on optimal transport theory and Gaussian graphical models. The proposed sPGGM provides a new single-sample way to identify the pre-disease state and discover signaling molecules leading to potential disease, which showcases exceptional effectiveness and robustness for both bulk and single-cell data analyses, offering a novel perspective for personalized disease prediction.

Brain aneurysm is the leading cause of brain hemorrhages. To combat the growing cases of brain aneurysms in China, researchers are conducting a large-scale, national clinical study to evaluate the best surgical and endovascular treatments for unruptured brain aneurysms. The China Treatment Trial for Unruptured Intracranial Aneurysm (ChTUIA) has enrolled up to 25,000 patients across 83 hospitals and is all set to refine the treatment guidelines for brain aneurysms in Chinese patients.