PA MediaA recruitment drive for Scotland’s first ever Patient Safety Commissioner has failed for a second time.

Two NHS hospital trusts in London are using AI technology to see if they can spot type 2 diabetes in patients up to a decade in advance of the condition occuring.

As Mel Robbins tells it, the concept for her new self-help book, “The Let Them Theory,” came to her on the night of her son Oakley’s junior prom. Overcome by the realization that her youngest child would soon be leaving her, Robbins coped by micromanaging the scene. She pressured Oakley to give his date a corsage. Fretted about the weather. Worried that the teenagers hadn’t made a dinner reservation.Fed up, her daughter Kendall finally snapped: “Mom, if Oakley and his friends want to go to a taco bar for pre-prom, LET THEM,” Robbins writes in the book. If they get hungry? Let them! Soaked? Let them! Let them, let them, let them.This mantra of radical acceptance was instantly soothing to Robbins, who — by dint of her iron will and innate confidence — has emerged as one of social media’s go-to motivational influencers (a term she loathes, incidentally). Robbins began repeating it whenever she felt stressed about other people’s thoughts or actions. In May 2023, her minute-long video about the term took off on social media; some of her followers even got “let them” tattoos.“Let them” is not the first time Robbins, 56, has spun a catch phrase into content gold. She shot to fame more than a decade ago with her “five-second rule,” the idea that whenever you feel an impulse to act on a goal — whether something small, like getting out of bed when the alarm goes off, or big, like finally giving notice at work — you simply count down: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, then go! Do it. (The TEDx talk in which Robbins debuted that particular hack has been watched more than 33 million times, and she turned it into her first best seller.)“There is an obsession with being smart, I think, in the thought leadership space,” Robbins said when we met in November at the loftlike headquarters of her media production company in Boston’s seaport district. “And I would rather be useful.”If Robbins looks familiar, with her bright blond hair and signature dark-rimmed glasses, the algorithm may have sent you one of her pithy takes on life’s problems — like how to stop trying to “fix” your parents, or her frequently memed exhortation against spending money on stupid … stuff. Maybe you saw a recent video of her — clad in a sports bra and hot pink hair rollers — weeping about her recent sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, who declared “The Let Them Theory” one of the best self-help books she has ever read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

NHS website information on drinking while breastfeeding saw the highest increase in visits at Christmas last year, new figures show.

There is no one factor that causes autism — or explains its growing prevalence. Researchers are seeking explanations for the surge. Here are some possibilities.When President-elect Donald J. Trump mused in a recent television interview about whether vaccines cause autism — a theory that has been discredited by dozens of scientific studies — autism researchers across the country collectively sighed in frustration.But during the interview, on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Mr. Trump made one passing comment with which they could agree: “I mean, something is going on,” he said, referring to skyrocketing rates of autism. “I think somebody has to find out.”What is going on? Autism diagnoses are undeniably on the rise in the United States — about 1 in 36 children have one, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected from 11 states, compared with 1 in 150 children in 2000 — and researchers have not yet arrived at a clear explanation. They attribute most of the surge to increased awareness of the disorder and changes in how it is classified by medical professionals. But scientists say there are other factors, genetic and environmental, that could be playing a role too.Autism spectrum disorder, as it is officially called, is inherently wide-ranging, marked by a blend of social and communication issues, repetitive behaviors and thinking patterns that vary in severity. A mildly autistic child could simply struggle with social cues, while a child with a severe case could be nonverbal. There is no blood test or brain scan to determine who has autism, just a clinician’s observations.Because there is no singular cause of autism, scientists say there is therefore no singular driver behind the rise in cases.But at the heart of the question is an important distinction: Are more people exhibiting the traits of autism, or are more people with such traits now being identified? It seems to be both, but researchers really aren’t sure of the math.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Artificial intelligence often gets criticized because it makes up information that appears to be factual, known as hallucinations. The plausible fakes have roiled not only chatbot sessions but lawsuits and medical records. For a time last year, a patently false claim from a new Google chatbot helped drive down the company’s market value by an estimated $100 billion.In the universe of science, however, innovators are finding that A.I. hallucinations can be remarkably useful. The smart machines, it turns out, are dreaming up riots of unrealities that help scientists track cancer, design drugs, invent medical devices, uncover weather phenomena and even win the Nobel Prize.“The public thinks it’s all bad,” said Amy McGovern, a computer scientist who directs a federal A.I. institute. “But it’s actually giving scientists new ideas. It’s giving them the chance to explore ideas they might not have thought about otherwise.”The public image of science is coolly analytic. Less visibly, the early stages of discovery can teem with hunches and wild guesswork. “Anything goes” is how Paul Feyerabend, a philosopher of science, once characterized the free-for-all.Now, A.I. hallucinations are reinvigorating the creative side of science. They speed the process by which scientists and inventors dream up new ideas and test them to see if reality concurs. It’s the scientific method — only supercharged. What once took years can now be done in days, hours and minutes. In some cases, the accelerated cycles of inquiry help scientists open new frontiers.“We’re exploring,” said James J. Collins, an M.I.T. professor who recently praised hallucinations for speeding his research into novel antibiotics. “We’re asking the models to come up with completely new molecules.”

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We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Mireille Efonge got sick a few months ago, with a fever and painful blisters on her groin. She became too weak to move, so neighbors carried her to a health center with walls of plastic sheeting in Pakadjuma, a crowded, poor community in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.There, a nurse called an ambulance to take her to a hospital. Soon lesions broke out on her head and the rest of her body, each one a hard nub of throbbing pain.Finally she was given a diagnosis: mpox. “I’d never heard of it,” Ms. Efonge said.This was back in August, when the mpox virus — closely related to smallpox — was still almost unknown in Kinshasa, a city of 17 million people.Some researchers now recall that time almost wistfully, because it might still have been possible back then to fence in the mpox virus, to fend off disaster.That window has probably closed, they say.The detection of a new, fast-spreading strain of the virus in a remote mining town in eastern Congo led the World Health Organization to declare mpox a global public health emergency in August. Since then, its spread has only accelerated.The virus is taking hold in crowded camps home to millions of displaced Congolese, who live crammed into rough shelters with limited access to water. And it has reached Congo’s cities, including its enormous, congested capital.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Attempts to restrict pharmaceutical advertisements have failed many times over the years, often on First Amendment grounds.Since the late 1990s, drug companies have spent tens of billions of dollars on television ads, drumming up demand for their products with cheerful jingles and scenes of dancing patients.Now, some people up for top jobs in the incoming Trump administration are attacking such ads, setting up a clash with a powerful industry that has long had the courts on its side.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, is a longtime critic of pharmaceutical advertising on TV, arguing that it leads broadcasters to more favorable coverage of the industry and does not improve Americans’ health. He has repeatedly and enthusiastically called for a ban on such ads.Elon Musk, who is spearheading a government cost-cutting effort, last month wrote on X, his social-media site, “No advertising for pharma.”And Brendan Carr, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, said that his agency could enforce any ban that is enacted. “I think we’re way, way too overmedicated as a country,” he said.The push against TV drug ads threatens to dent the revenues of pharmaceutical companies, which can make back in sales five times as much as they spend on commercials, according to some analysts. It could also create uncertainty for major television networks, which bring in substantial revenue from pharmaceutical advertisers trying to reach older viewers, who tend to take more medications.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Susannah MorganWhen Susannah Morgan learned that an operation to remove a benign tumour in her neck could leave her with a crooked smile she was “frantic”.

Royal Papworth HospitalA new machine which keeps lungs alive outside of the body could “transform” the number of people receiving transplants, surgeons hope.