Contributor

B. David Zarley

Senior Staff Writer

Contact

[email protected]

B. David Zarley is a senior staff writer for Freethink, where he covers health and medicine, including infectious disease, psychedelic research, mental health, and the brain. A graduate of SUNY Fredonia, his work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Verge, Jezebel, Frieze, Sports Illustrated, VICE, Paste Magazine, and numerous other publications. He lives in Chicago and can be reached via Signal by request. Send him story ideas!

a smartphone with a glowing golden screen

Mental Health

“Sunshine Calls” help depression and loneliness, study finds

A trial of “Sunshine Calls” found that the empathy-based phone calls helped reduce depression symptoms in older patients.

B. David Zarley

How ChatGPT “jailbreakers” are turning off the AI’s safety switch

Through clever prompts, OpenAI's red team and public "jailbreakers" are revealing the holes in GPT-4's guardrails.

B. David Zarley

Engineering

New smart glasses use sonar to read your lips

New glasses use sonar sensing technology and AI to allow users to control devices via silent, mouthed commands.

B. David Zarley

massive airship flying above a forested valley

Aerospace

Massive hybrid-electric airships secure powerful megawatt generators

B. David Zarley

Aerospace

Xwing puts autonomous flight on the runway to approval

Autonomous flight startup Xwing has filed for approval to do crewless cargo flights, a first step towards pilotless commercial aviation.

B. David Zarley

a microscope image of tuberculosis bacteria

Public Health

Tuberculosis kills over a million people a year. New breakthroughs may help humanity fight back.

The world needs a tuberculosis vaccine, but the challenge trials that could help are impossible to run. Two new approaches look to change that.

B. David Zarley

Brain

Epilepsy surgery has a success rate of only 50%. This digital brain may change that.

Using patient data and AI, French researchers have created a digital model of the brain to figure out which brain region needs removed.

B. David Zarley

$futuristic Excel collage$

Excel may make chatbots much more useful

Math and logic are a weakness for chatbot AIs like GPT-4. Access to Excel may help change that.

B. David Zarley

Virology

Viruses cause 200+ diseases. This one drug may be able to treat them all.

New Zealand-based startup Kimer Med wants to create an antiviral that would be effective against many known viruses — and unknown.

B. David Zarley

Oceans

Drone discovers weird underwater volcano off California

An un-crewed sailing drone has discovered an unusually shaped underwater volcano, called a seamount, off California.

B. David Zarley