Jennifer Aniston Cells.

A roadmap for retribution.

“Most mornings I learn more from New Items than I do from all of the traditional papers I read combined.” — Michael Blair, Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School and former presiding partner, Debevoise & Plimpton.

---

---

1. Jennifer Aniston (cells):

Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives.

Concept neurons fire for their concept no matter how it is presented: in real life or a photo, in text or speech, on television or in a podcast. “It’s more abstract, really different from what you’re seeing,” said Elizabeth Buffalo, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington.

For decades, neuroscientists mocked the idea that the brain could have such intense selectivity, down to the level of an individual neuron: How could there be one or more neurons for each of the seemingly countless concepts we engage with over a lifetime?

But when researchers identified concept cells in the early 2000s, the laughter started to fade. Over the past 20 years, they have established that concept cells not only exist but are critical to the way the brain abstracts and stores information. New studies, including one recently published in Nature Communications, have suggested that they may be central to how we form and retrieve memory. (Sources: quantamagazine.org, buffalomemorylab.com, ukbonn.de, doi.org)

---

2. Rewriting the Story of How Life Works:

Biologists had long believed that bringing order and organization to the chaos of molecules inside a cell depended on membrane-bound compartments called organelles, such as the mitochondria. But condensates, it turns out, offer “order for free” without the need for membranes. They provide an easy, general-purpose organization that cells can turn on or off….

These little blobs inside living cells now appear to feature across all domains of the living world and are “connected to just about every aspect of cellular function,” says biophysical engineer Cliff Bran­gwynne, who was part of the 2009 Dresden team and now runs his own lab at Princeton University. They protect cells from dangerously high or low temperatures; they repair DNA damage; they control the way DNA gets turned into crucial proteins. And when they go bad, they may trigger diseases.

Bio-molecular condensates now seem to be a key part of how life gets its countless molecular components to coordinate and cooperate, to form committees that make the group decisions on which our very existence depends. “The ultimate problem in cell biology is not how a few puzzle pieces fit together,” Brang­wynne says, “but how collections of billions of them give rise to emergent, dynamic structures on larger scales.” (Sources: scientificamerican.com, cbe.princeton.edu, italics mine)

---

3. Humanity is "on the verge" of having AI agents that can complete tasks in the real world, OpenAI Product chief Kevin Weil told Axios' Ina Fried in Davos Tuesday. Weil's prediction comes days after Axios reported that a major AI company was close to announcing a breakthrough regarding the creation of Ph.D.-level AI super-agents capable of completing complex tasks: "I think 2025 is the year that we go from ChatGPT being this super smart thing that can answer any question you ask to ChatGPT doing things in the real world for you," Weil told Axios. The advanced reasoning skills of new AI models, and improved ability to be multimodal and engage with humans, will be key to this ability, Weil said. He predicted that likely as soon as this year, AI agents will be able to do tasks like filling out forms or making restaurant reservations. (Source: axios.com)

---