James' World 2

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I never had issues with sleep until the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple of months into lockdown in 2020, I found myself unable to fall or stay asleep. My worries played on an unstoppable loop, and the longer I lay in bed, the more anxious I became about not sleeping. This vicious cycle left me exhausted. After a few months, I became depressed. It was time to get professional help.

This was the start of a years-long odyssey to find an effective sleep aid without negative side effects. The first medication I tried was 50 milligrams of an antihistamine called hydroxyzine, prescribed to me after a five-minute telehealth appointment. It effectively knocked me out, but it left me feeling so groggy the next morning that I struggled to get out of bed. I stopped taking it.

I lacked the energy to meet with a physician again, so I went back to relying on a grab bag of pills. These included over-the-counter melatonin, a hormone used to treat sleep problems; diphenhydramine, an antihistamine and sedative commonly sold as Benadryl; my husband’s gabapentin, which is prescribed to treat epilepsy and nerve pain but is commonly given as an anti-anxiety sleep aid; and tablets of questionable provenance that were labelled as alprazolam, used to treat anxiety conditions, which I acquired on a pre-pandemic trip to Sri Lanka. I rotated through these remedies in an attempt to not become overly reliant on any one of them.

Last year, my struggle to sleep markedly worsened. Stress still seemed to be in limitless supply. My identity is wrapped up in my job as a science journalist, but as the media industry continues to collapse in on itself, it is becoming more and more difficult to make ends meet. At night, my chest would tighten as I tried to imagine a viable future in my chosen career. Layered on top of that were the stressors of the 2024 US presidential election and interpersonal drama with my increasingly conservative father.

I found a sympathetic primary-care provider in the form of a physician’s assistant (PA) — a licensed medical professional who, in some states, can prescribe medications but isn’t actually a physician. She listened to my problems and asked me questions about my life. At the end of the appointment, she agreed that I should try the antidepressant bupropion. I was still having trouble sleeping, however, and my night-time anxiety spiked following the election. “Sadly, we are getting a lot of these messages,” my PA said when I told her about this. We added buspirone, an anti-anxiety medication, to my daily regimen. I immediately started sleeping better. But buspirone left me feeling deflated, numb, and unmotivated during the day. My PA suggested that, as long as I didn’t develop serious depressive thoughts, I should stick it out for a month to give my body time to adjust.

I agreed to give it more time. Then, about three weeks in, I woke up one night from a nightmare and felt something crawling through my hair. Then, I saw a flash of light, as though someone was standing over me, taking a photograph. I quickly realized that these had been hallucinations that occurred in the transition from sleep to wakefulness. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, and the vividness of the experience was extremely disconcerting. The next day, I learnt that disturbed sleep is a side effect of buspirone. My PA agreed that I should stop the drug.

But, I still needed help to fall asleep. The obvious choice would have been benzodiazepines or ‘Z-drugs’ — classes of medications that have a sedative effect. But these drugs can also lead to dependency. Worryingly, too, a study in mice, published this year, found that one of these drugs, zolpidem (Ambien), might interfere with the brain’s ability to clear waste, including toxic molecules associated with Alzheimer’s disease. These results still need to be replicated in humans, but they do mirror findings from at least one observational study. I told my PA I wanted to steer clear of these medications.

Through reporting for another story on sleep medication for this Nature Outlook, I was cautiously excited to learn about a new class of insomnia medications known as dual orexin receptor antagonist (DORA) drugs. These work by blocking a molecule that promotes wakefulness, and they have fewer side effects and a lower risk of dependence compared with other sleep aids. My PA was familiar with one of them, Belsomra, and said I could try it.

It took almost three weeks for me to receive the prescription, and my insurance would not cover it. There are no generic DORA drugs. Thirty daily tablets of Belsomra was going to cost me an astronomical US$500. But, I was desperate to get some sleep, and my pharmacist was able to find a coupon that knocked $150 off the bill. I sucked it up and paid.

As I write this, I’ve been taking Belsomra on and off for a month. When it works well, I fall asleep quickly and soundly, and wake up feeling clear-headed and rested. About one-quarter of the time, however, my anxiety manages to cut through the medication, and I struggle to fall asleep. My PA said that I can try doubling my dose to the maximum 20 milligrams, by taking two tablets each night. But I haven’t tried this yet, because I’m aware that each pill I pop before bed is about the same price as ordering a fancy cocktail.

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Malte Mueller

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They offer clear and candid advice on what actually worked, from pitching unlikely partners to skipping VC funding entirely. One founder even landed John Deere as a lead investor. If you’re fundraising or remotely thinking about it, here are seven tips on how to do it differently.

1. Don’t wait for perfection

“Don’t be afraid to invite people in at the ground floor. I think sometimes you can feel like you have to wait until the thing is built and it’s perfect, and it’s out in the world, and it’s successful. But I think the way you build something quick, and the way you make something successful is by inviting the right people in at the ground level.” —Elaine Welteroth, founder of birthFUND, a maternal health investment initiative, raised $1.85 million.

2. Pitch your partners

“The biggest problem with agriculture is that it’s highly consolidated. There’s just a handful of companies that sell to farmers, and they really don’t want to sell anything new. But farmers are actually great at adopting technology, they’re incredibly open-minded. We just needed to figure out how to get our technology into farmers’ hands as fast as possible. We pitched our tech to John Deere and they ended up leading our Series A. It’s an incredible partnership because we’re doing something that fits 100 percent into their strategic initiatives, and they help us increase our brand awareness.” —Shely Aronov, co-founder and CEO of InnerPlant, an agriculture tech company developing biosensing plants, raised $51.65 million.

3. Lead with belief

“Don’t be intimidated by fundraising. If you go in with energy and enthusiasm for something that you’re really passionate about and you truly believe that what you’re doing is needed, the people who are considering giving you money will want to learn more.” —Georgia Gaveras, co-founder and chief medical officer of Talkiatry, a digital mental health provider, raised $242 million.

4. Put clients before capital

“Your best investor is your client. If your clients are happy with your product, you will always have—like in the case of Creatio—a ton of investors who will be knocking [on] your doors and will be excited to invest in you. When you’re laser-focused on clients from day one—finding new clients, serving them, making them your raving fans, making them absolutely excited about the product, developing relationships with your clients—when all your focus and attention goes not into your personal PR, not into speaking engagements, startup competitions, and the fanciest products, but literally into your clients, it all starts working as a flywheel. Because clients, they actually bring life to your company, because it’s the best evidence that what you deliver actually brings value, and that’s the most important thing.” —Katherine Kostereva, founder and CEO of Creatio, a no-code platform for workflow automation and CRM, raised $268 million

5. Prove it with product

“In a venture business, there’s a lot of unconscious and conscious bias for women out there. When I first tried to raise money, I had a VC telling me, ‘I’m a Caucasian guy with gray hair. How can you raise funding for a company without even a single gray hair, and without being a Caucasian man?’ And I was like, ‘Well, you can raise money without a product, but I would rather raise money with a product.’ Eventually, we became one of the most successful companies in our portfolio.” —Siyu Huang, co-founder and CEO of Factorial Energy, a developer of solid-state battery tech, raised $250 million

6. Know what you want

“It’s also really important to understand what’s in fundraising for you. What kind of business do you want, ultimately, what kind of money do you want to make? It’s important that what you personally want is also aligned with what the investors want, and then it’s much easier to succeed. If actually what you want isn’t quite what the investors are looking for, they’ll see that, and it will be very difficult to fundraise.” —Madison Maxey, founder and CEO of Loomia, a materials science company focused on e-textiles, raised $2 million

7. Be the pioneer

“You get very few opportunities to be the first person to do something. It’s a thrill, but sometimes the pathway is so uncharted and the white space is so vast that I think there’s too much opportunity. The most difficult part of building a business on the cutting edge is there’s no playbook to follow. It’s harder to tell if you’re deploying your first-mover advantage in the right way or focusing on the right opportunity within this huge opportunity set.” —Jiani Zeng, co-founder and CPO of Butlr, an anonymous occupancy detection platform for traffic monitoring, raised $68 million

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These women know how to pitch

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A single atom has performed the first full quantum simulations of how certain molecules react to light. The researchers who carried out the feat say that their minimalistic approach could dramatically speed the path towards a ‘quantum advantage’ — when quantum computers will be able to predict the behaviour of chemicals or materials in ways that are beyond the reach of ordinary computers.

“The key advantage of this approach is that it is incredibly hardware-efficient,” says Ting Rei Tan, an experimental quantum physicist at the University of Sydney. The single atom can encode the information that is normally spread across a dozen or so ‘qubits’, the computational units used in most quantum computers. The findings were published on 14 May in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

No quantum computer had simulated this level of complexity in the energy levels of molecules before, says Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a computational chemist at the University of Toronto in Canada. “This is a tour-de-force that will remain in the history books.”

Excited electrons

Tan and his colleagues simulated the behaviour of three different organic molecules, allene, butatriene and pyrazine, when they are hit with an energetic particle called a photon. When this happens, it triggers a cascade of events in the molecule that affects both how its atoms move with respect to each other — vibrating like balls connected by springs — and how its electrons jump to higher-energy, or excited, states. Understanding the precise sequence of these events can help chemists to design molecules that channel energy in the most useful or efficient way, for example in solar panels or in sunscreen lotion.

The researchers found a way to encode these different parameters into a single ytterbium ion trapped in a vacuum using pulsating electric fields: the excitations of the molecule’s electrons corresponded to similar excitations in one of the ion’s electrons, and two different vibrational modes were represented by the ion wiggling inside its trap in two different directions. The team also nudged the ion with laser pulses to tailor how all of the states interacted with one another. This forced the ion to evolve over time, meaning it could mimic how the corresponding molecules act after being hit by a photon.

The team then read off the state of the virtual molecules at a sequence of different stages by measuring the changing probability that the ion’s electron was in an excited state over time.

The results matched what was known about these three molecules, which validates the approach, Tan says. Allene, butatriene and pyrazine are still simple enough to be studied with ordinary computer simulations, but these run out of steam when they have to embody 20 or so vibrational modes, which is not uncommon for more complex molecules.

Kenneth Brown, a quantum engineer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, calls the study “great work”, and says that it’s the first time that researchers have shown how to tune such a technique to mimic the properties of specific molecules.

Simulating the chemistry of molecules and materials is often described as one of the most promising uses for quantum computers — but one that will produce useful results only once the machines have scaled up to many millions of qubits. Tan and his collaborators predict that with their approach, a quantum computer could be able to do useful simulations using only a few dozen ions.

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Four partners at Paul Weiss announced Friday that they are leaving the white-shoe firm, which two months ago struck a deal with the Trump administration.

Karen Dunn, a star litigator who has helped Democratic candidates prepare for presidential debates, her longtime partners Bill Isaacson and Jessica Phillips, and the former prosecutor Jeannie Rhee said in an email addressed to “partners and friends” that they are starting their own firm.

The high-profile departures underscore the ongoing turmoil at Big Law firms surrounding the firms’ handling of punitive executive actions from President Donald Trump’s administration. The departing lawyers did not give a reason for leaving in their statement.

Several major firms — including Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block — chose to challenge the legality of the orders in court, and have so far been successful after two judges declared two different orders unconstitutional. Other firms, including Paul Weiss, chose to make deals with the administration, prompting concern among associates and partners over their willingness to cooperate rather than fight.

The new firm’s name isn’t clear. Since April, several domain names containing Dunn’s name and those of other lawyers have been registered anonymously. None of the websites contains any details, and it’s not clear who registered them.

The lawyers have represented prominent clients like Google, Amazon, and Apple over the years. Isaacson is one of the country’s top antitrust litigators. Antitrust issues have been a focus for both former President Joe Biden and Trump, who have criticized the power of large tech companies. Rhee managed the firm’s Washington, DC, office, and Dunn co-chaired its litigation department.

“It has been an honor to work alongside such talented lawyers and to call so many of you our friends,” their departing email said. “We hope to continue to collaborate with all of you in the years to come and are incredibly grateful for your warm and generous partnership.”

Paul Weiss’s chair, Brad Karp, said in a statement, “We are grateful to Bill, Jeannie, Jessica, and Karen for their many contributions to the firm. We wish them well in their future endeavors.”

The departures come several months after the Trump administration began targeting Big Law firms with punitive executive actions. Among them was Paul Weiss, which faced an executive order that revoked the security clearances of the firm’s attorneys and ordered a review of its government contracts.

On March 20, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would drop the executive order against Paul Weiss after negotiating a deal that would require the firm to end any diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in its hiring practices and contribute $40 million of pro bono legal services to causes aligned with the administration’s priorities, such as veterans affairs issues and the administration’s antisemitism task force.

Business Insider previously reported that the copy of the deal shared internally among Paul Weiss partners omitted language regarding DEI that was present in the president’s announcement.

Other firms that chose to negotiate with Trump also saw high-profile departures from partners and associates concerned with their firms’ decisions not to challenge the administration.

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Attorneys Karen Dunn (left) and Jeannie Rhee (right), along with their fellow partners, Bill Isaacson and Jessica Phillips, have resigned from Paul Weiss to start their own firm. Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS

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The Indigenous peoples of the Bolivian highlands are survivors. For thousands of years, they have lived at altitudes of more than two miles, where oxygen is about 35 percent lower than at sea level. This type of setting is among the harshest environments humans have ever inhabited. Scientists have recognized for some time that these residents of the Andes Mountains have evolved genetic adaptations to the thin air of their lofty home. Now, researchers are learning that they have also evolved another remarkable genetic adaptation since their ancestors first settled the highlands of South America around 10,000 years ago.

In the volcanic bedrock of the Andes, arsenic is naturally abundant and leaches into the drinking water. The dangers it poses are well known: inorganic arsenic is associated with cancers, skin lesions, heart disease, diabetes, and infant mortality in other populations. But the biochemistry of Andeans has evolved to efficiently metabolize this notoriously toxic substance. Populations in Bolivia—along with groups in Argentina and Chile—have evolved variants around the gene AS3MT, which makes enzymes that break down arsenic in the liver. It is a prime example of natural selection, the evolutionary process by which organisms adapt to their environments to survive longer and produce more offspring. Apparently, natural selection among the Uru, Aymara, and Quechua peoples of the Bolivian Altiplano took DNA sequences that are present but rare in other populations around the world and increased their frequency to the point where the normally uncommon sequences are predominant in these groups. The case is one of many discoveries of relatively recent biological adaptation that could upend a long-standing idea about the evolution of our species.

For most of the 21st century, many evolutionary biologists have assumed that humans evolved at a leisurely pace in recent millennia, in contrast to the dramatic transformations that occurred earlier in our prehistory. The oldest known members of the human family evolved in Africa around six million to seven million years ago and looked apelike in many ways. Our own species, Homo sapiens, arose in Africa a few hundred thousand years ago and began venturing into other parts of the world in significant numbers around 60,000 years ago. By that point, our physical appearance seems to have settled into an evolutionary plateau, with only minor differences among human populations around the globe. After natural selection had worked its wonders for millions of years, transforming small-brained quadrupeds into large-brained bipeds, it appeared that biological evolution had slowed to a crawl in our lineage as H. sapiens developed agriculture, founded civilizations, and transformed the planet.

Early studies of the DNA of modern people turned up few fixed differences—genetic variants possessed exclusively by one population, which seemed to confirm this apparent stasis. Consequently, many scholars believed that the latest chapter of the human saga revolved around cultural changes rather than biological ones—figuring out more reliable means of obtaining food instead of changing our digestive or metabolic systems, for instance.

But advances in the sequencing of ancient and modern DNA have allowed scientists to look more closely at how our genetic code has evolved over time, and the results are startling. Genetic studies suggest that H. sapiens experienced many major episodes of natural selection in the past few thousand years as our ancestors fanned across the globe and entered new environments containing foods, diseases, and toxic substances they had never before encountered. “It shows the plasticity of the human genome,” says Karin Broberg of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who studies the genetics of susceptibility to environmental toxic substances. “We’ve spread throughout the world, and we live in very extreme environments, and we’re able to make them our homes. We are like rats or cockroaches—extremely adaptable.” This research offers fresh insights into how our species conquered every corner of the planet. We didn’t manage this feat through cultural adaptation alone, as some scientists previously supposed. Rather, humans continued to evolve biologically to keep pace with the radical changes they were making in their ways of life as they pushed into terra incognita.

To appreciate how these evolutionary changes came about, it helps to know the basics of how DNA is structured and how it can vary among individuals and populations. The human genome contains about three billion nucleotide base pairs, the matched sets of two complementary nucleic acids that form the basic unit of our genetic code. The DNA sequences of people today are extremely similar; we differ on only about one tenth of a percent of the genome, or about one out of 1,000 positions. A difference between two people at any position on the genome is called a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP (pronounced “snip”). A variant of genetic code, which may be a single position or thousands, that differs between individuals is called an allele. In general, human populations share most of the same genetic variation and evolutionary history.

New research raises the possibility that recent human history involved far more dynamic evolution than previously thought.

In Darwinian biology, the classic conception of natural selection is a “hard sweep,” in which a beneficial mutation allows some individuals to survive longer or produce more offspring, such that eventually that variant becomes fixed in the population. In the early 2000s, when researchers were starting to look for signs of hard sweeps in the genomes of contemporary peoples, the clearest examples came from populations that had adapted to unique circumstances. For instance, around 42,000 years ago, a selective sweep changed a protein on the surface of red blood cells in Africans to boost their resistance to malaria. People in the Tibetan Highlands underwent selective sweeps for genes that helped them tolerate low oxygen (intriguingly, populations of the Himalayas, Andes, and Ethiopian highlands adapted to high altitude with different assortments of genes, taking different evolutionary paths to solve similar problems).

Some of the best-known selective sweeps happened in western Eurasia and involved alleles associated with diet, skin pigmentation, and immunity. Many of these sweeps are linked to the profound shifts wrought by the transition to agriculture. Around 8,500 years ago, early farmers spread an allele that helped them synthesize long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids from plant-based foods. These fatty acids are essential for cell membranes, particularly in the brain, and hunter-gatherers obtained them easily from meat and seafood. The new genetic variant allowed agricultural populations to synthesize them from short-chain fatty acids found in plants. This variant was rare at first, but now it is present in about 60 percent of Europeans.

Likewise, as dairy farming rose, so, too, did a gene variant that helped people consume milk products into adulthood. When Stonehenge was built around 5,000 years ago, virtually no Europeans possessed the genes people need to digest milk as adults. In most mammals—and most human populations—the body ceases producing the milk-digesting enzyme lactase after weaning. Yet around 4,500 years ago, a gene that kept the lactase turned on in adulthood began to spread through Europe and South Asia. Another series of sweeps beginning around 8,000 years ago gave Eurasians their distinctive pale complexion. These changes reduced their production of the dark skin pigment known as melanin, which is believed to have allowed more sunlight to penetrate their skin and help them synthesize vitamin D, a nutrient in short supply among early agriculturalists.

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Chris Gash

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If you’re like most parents, you might have your fair share of concerns about the bath toys your little one shoves into their mouth during bathtime. Maybe you have even seen the telltale signs of dirt and grime—and possibly even mold—when they squirt the toys at the wall of the tub. 

Fortunately, there are safe and effective ways to not only clean your child’s toys, but extend their life and prevent mold. Below, cleaning experts and pediatricians explain the best ways to clean bath toys as well as offer tips for keeping them fresh for as long as possible. 

Make a Bleach Solution

If you suspect your child’s bath toys have mold inside them, and you want to try to salvage them, the most effective cleaning option is using a diluted bleach solution. Just keep in mind that bleach is harsh and can damage toys.

“Bleach solution is effective because it kills bacteria and mold,” says Jonathan Jassey, DO, FAAP, a board-certified pediatrician and founder of Concierge Pediatrics.

A Word of Caution

Bleach is extremely toxic, so you will have to take great care in making sure the solution is strong enough to kill mold, but not so strong that it could pose a risk to your child.1 You also should ensure the toys are rinsed extremely thoroughly before giving them to your child.

For basic cleaning of toys, Kristin DiNicolantonio, MA, senior director of stakeholder communications at American Cleaning Institute, suggests making a solution of ¾ cup of chlorine bleach to one gallon of water. 

“Scrub the toys using this solution and be sure to wear protective gloves and old clothes to prevent bleach damage on your garments,” says DiNicolantonio. “Make sure your space is well-ventilated.2 For hollow toys or toys designed to fill with water, be sure to squeeze out all liquid. Once the toys have been cleaned, leave them wet for five minutes, then rinse the toys in a clean sink and let them air dry.”

Use a Hydrogen Peroxide Spray 

If you are looking for an alternative to bleach or if you want a cleaning method that you can use more frequently, try making a spray with hydrogen peroxide. While it is not as strong as bleach, researchers have found that it will fight against a number of microorganisms. For instance, it is effective in getting rid of viruses, fungi, spores, and bacteria. To use it, simply select a container of 3% hydrogen peroxide and put it in a spray bottle. 

“Hydrogen peroxide is a solid bleach alternative,” says Taylor Riley, a father, cleaning expert, and partner at GermSmart Commercial Cleaning in Brooklyn, New York. “All you need to do is put it in a spray bottle and apply directly to the toys. Let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes then rinse thoroughly.”

Use the Dishwasher 

Another option for cleaning and disinfecting toys is to use your dishwasher, says Lana Tkachenko, a cleaning expert at Force of Nature. “For hard toys, place them on the top rack of your dishwasher and run a hot water cycle with heat dry. Just make sure the toys are labeled dishwasher-safe first.” 

For soft bath toys, she suggests using a lingerie bag and running them through a gentle cycle with hot water. Let them air dry completely before storing. She says you also can opt for an over-the-counter disinfectant spray. “It’s a simple way to add an extra layer of protection—without introducing harsh chemicals.”

Opt for the Washing Machine

You also can use your washing machine to clean bath toys, says DiNicolantonio.  Just make sure the item is machine washable, then put the toys in a mesh laundry bag or pillowcase that is tightly secured at the top. 

“Launder on a delicate cycle using cold water and regular detergent or laundry sanitizer,” she says. “Once the washing cycle is complete, let the items dry on a counter or in the sun until they are fully dried before storing them away.”

Handwash With Soap and Water

For daily cleaning, you can still sterilize your bath toys with soap and water, says Dr. Jassey. Simply fill a disinfected sink, basin, or container with hot water and a few squirts of dish soap.

Karissa Whitman, a mom of two and motherhood blogger at MomAfterBaby.com, says she often uses this method and recommends scrubbing each toy, rinsing it, and letting it air dry. If you submerge the toys in water, you should squeeze out any excess water as well. Also, if you are using extremely hot water, consider wearing gloves to protect your hands from the heat.

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