Bnaya Gross, Joseph Ehlert, Vadim N. Gladyshev, Joseph Loscalzo & Albert-László Barabási 
Nature Aging volume 6, pages1516–1531 (2026)

Despite the thousands of genes implicated in age-related phenotypes, effective interventions for aging remain elusive, due to the multifactorial nature of longevity and the interconnectedness of molecular components involved. Here we introduce a network medicine framework to map 2,358 longevity-associated genes onto the human interactome to identify drug-repurposing candidates capable of modulating specific hallmarks of aging. We find that genes associated with each hallmark form a connected subgraph, or hallmark module, allowing us to measure the network proximity of 6,442 compounds to each hallmark. We then introduce a transcription-based metric, pAGE, which evaluates whether drug-induced expression shifts reinforce or counteract known age-related expression changes within each hallmark module. By integrating network proximity and pAGE, we identify drug-repurposing candidates targeting specific hallmarks and provide a falsifiable framework to leverage genomic discoveries for accelerating drug repurposing in longevity. Our findings are interpretable, revealing molecular mechanisms through which drugs modulate hallmarks.

Read the full article at: www.nature.com

Tomás Cicchini, Ollin D. Langle-Chimal, Marta C. González, Ines Caridi & Leonardo Ermann

Discover Cities

Volume 3, article number 139 (2026)

Public transportation systems are vital for urban mobility, yet their robustness against disruptions remains underexplored, particularly in Latin American cities. This study quantifies the structural and functional robustness of public transport networks in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires, revealing that Rio de Janeiro exhibits the highest resilience due to its structural redundancy, while also establishing a strong correlation between structural connectivity and trip feasibility across the cities.

Read the full article at: link.springer.com

Peter A. Corning

BioSystems
Volume 266, August 2026, 105845

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was seriously deficient. Although his concept of natural selection was an important contribution – highlighting the fundamental fact that life on Earth is a contingent, always at-risk enterprise – he failed to acknowledge the fact that all living systems – from the smallest single-celled bacteria to humankind – are also shaped by their evolved purposiveness (teleonomy). Their initiatives and activities – their “agency” – has exercised an important influence over the trajectory of life on Earth, as one of Darwin’s predecessors, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, appreciated. Lamarck proposed that changes in an animal’s “habits”, stimulated by environmental changes, have been a primary source of evolutionary change over time. Darwin also portrayed evolution as a fundamentally competitive process (the “struggle for existence” in Darwin’s term), as did many of his contemporaries. Today we know that life has also been a multi-faceted cooperative (synergistic) enterprise and that this has been of overriding importance in the evolution of complexity over time. Teleonomy and cooperative functional effects (synergy) have shaped natural selection in many different ways. Indeed, we now know that there have been many influences in evolution. My proposed Inclusive Synthesis is also open-ended, because it is expected that still more has yet to be learned about biological evolution; it is an ongoing work-in-progress rather than a completed theoretical edifice. “Teleonomic Selection” (after Corning) and “Synergistic Selection” (after John Maynard Smith) have played important parts in evolution. It’s time for a more inclusive theory.

Read the full article at: www.sciencedirect.com

Klaus Jaffe

Infodynamics explores how the interactions between information and energy generates useful work, offering a framework for understanding cognition. It views consciousness as an adaptive mechanism that enables an entity, biological or artificial, to construct an internal map of itself and integrate it into its environmental models (Weltanschauung). When these models incorporate the perceived internal states of others, empathy emerges. Empathy in turn allows to secure synergistic social cooperation to build robust new social structures. By focusing on the utility of information, infodynamics uncovers how consciousness and empathy serve as evolutionary tools to enhance survival odds and stabilize social structures. This approach provides an actionable methodology for detecting consciousness in living or artificial entities, that allows optimizing the design of advanced artificial intelligence, and of future educational systems. Both will drive cultural and eventually biological evolution.

Read the full article at: papers.ssrn.com

Karina Kofman, et al.

Organisms. Journal of Biological Sciences

Life is one of the most fascinating features of the physical world. Despite centuries of scientific study, experts still disagree about the definition, and even the possibility or utility of a definition, of this field. In a recent paper, we used AI to analyze the conceptual space formed by definitions of life given by a select set of modern workers in the life sciences and related fields. However, some of the most interesting material emerged as real-time conversations among those polled. In order to ensure that these ideas are not lost to the peer-reviewed scientific record, we here provide a minimally-edited (largely verbatim) transcript of the email chain among leading thinkers, containing numerous clarifications, disagreements, and challenges that enrich the topic of Life. It is our hope that this case study serves as an example for future papers, since the exchange of ideas among scientists is at least as interesting and valuable as formal scientific manuscripts written from a single perspective.

Read the full article at: rosa.uniroma1.it