Fungicides utilized in agriculture have been linked to a rise in resistance to antifungal medication in each people and animals.
Fungal infections are on the rise, and two UC Davis infectious illness consultants, Dr. George Thompson and Dr. Angel Desai, are sounding the alarm. In a current commentary revealed within the New England Journal of Drugs, they warn that new agricultural pesticides designed to kill dangerous fungi could be making it more durable to deal with harmful fungal infections in individuals and animals.
Fungi already trigger severe well being and financial issues around the globe. Whereas antifungal brokers are important instruments in each drugs and agriculture, overuse or poorly coordinated improvement of those compounds may result in fungi evolving resistance. Which means life-saving therapies for people may cease working.
Thompson and Desai are urging the worldwide neighborhood to undertake a “One Well being” strategy to creating, testing and utilizing brokers to struggle pathogens like fungi and micro organism.
“Antimicrobial resistant pathogens are a relentless reminder for us to make use of brokers judiciously,” Thompson stated. “We now have discovered that the widespread use of antibiotics for livestock resulted within the fast improvement of resistance to antibacterials. We now have related issues relating to using antifungals within the setting.”
Thompson is the article’s lead writer. He’s a professor on the UC Davis Faculty of Drugs within the Division of Inside Drugs, Division of Infectious Ailments, and the Division of Medical Microbiology and Immunology.
A One Well being strategy proposes a extra holistic view to well being. It emphasizes how modifications in a single space — like human exercise, animal well being, or the setting — can have ripple results throughout all three.
About antifungal resistance
Adjustments within the local weather and the wind patterns may also help unfold pathogens like fungi. Additionally, human vacationers, migrating animals, and the motion of contaminated gadgets can carry pathogens to new areas.
In the previous few many years, there was a fast enhance in fungus varieties that trigger extreme infections in people. One instance of a difficult-to-treat fungus is Candida auris (C. auris).
“Fungi have related mobile equipment to that of people. Because of this drugs that kill fungi like C. auris typically have unintended effects for individuals. With few antifungals to select from throughout scientific care, stopping resistance is of paramount significance,” Thompson defined.
Coordinated pesticide improvement and use
Resistance to therapies is very linked to the quantity of every agent used, the authors wrote. They known as for coordinated international regulation to sluggish the event of resistance to new antimicrobial brokers.
“There’s a want for a shared antimicrobial approval course of that features a thorough evaluation of potential impacts on the setting and human and animal well being. That is very true earlier than any new large-scale environmental and agricultural pesticide use,” Desai stated. She is an affiliate professor within the Division of Inside Drugs.
They famous that shared decision-making amongst nationwide and international regulatory companies can be cost-effective. It’d assist keep away from the dearer and riskier prospects of the fast unfold of resistant pathogens.
Reference: “Addressing Antifungal Drug Resistance — A “One Well being–One World” Problem” by George R. ThompsonIII and Angel N. Desai, 11 June 2025, New England Journal of Drugs. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2416548
Like most loudmouths on this area, I’ve been paying loads of consideration to the position that generative AI techniques could play in software program improvement. I feel the looks of LLMs will change software program improvement to an identical diploma because the change from assembler to the primary high-level programming languages. The additional improvement of languages and frameworks elevated our abstraction stage and productiveness, however didn’t have that sort of influence on the nature of programming. LLMs are making that diploma of influence, however with the excellence that it isn’t simply elevating the extent of abstraction, but additionally forcing us to think about what it means to program with non-deterministic instruments.
I’ve witnessed many “game-changing” instruments that didn’t actually have very a lot of an influence. At one time there was a loud crew proclaiming that graphical fashions could be the way forward for programming. I used to be fascinated with their potential however discovered they didn’t have a major long run consequence. I’ve additionally seen some very actual modifications: relational databases, object-orientation, the world-wide-web, a bevy of recent languages (Smalltalk, Java, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, Rust). All of those have led to vital, however incremental change. None of those modifications has felt to me to have that very same change because the introduction of COBOL and Fortran did (though that assembler-to-HLL change was earlier than my time).
HLLs launched a radically new stage of abstraction. With assembler I’m serious about the instruction set of a selected machine. I’ve to determine do even easy actions by shifting information into the proper registers to invoke these particular actions. HLLs meant I might now suppose when it comes to sequences of statements, conditionals to decide on between alternate options, and iteration to repeatedly apply statements to collections of information values. I can introduce names into many points of my code, making it clear what values are purported to characterize. Early languages actually had their limitations. My first skilled programming was in Fortran IV, the place “IF” statements didn’t have an “ELSE” clause, and I needed to bear in mind to call my integer variables so that they began with the letters “I” by “N”.
Enjoyable such restrictions and gaining block construction (“I can have a couple of assertion after my IF”) made my programming simpler (and extra enjoyable) however are the identical sort of factor. Now I rarely write loops, I instinctively go features as information – however I’m nonetheless speaking to the machine in an identical manner than I did all these days in the past on the Dorset moors with Fortran. Ruby is a much more refined language than Fortran, however it has the identical ambiance, in a manner that Fortan and PDP-11 machine directions don’t.
Up to now I’ve not had the chance to do greater than dabble with the most effective Gen-AI instruments, however I’m fascinated as I hearken to pals and colleagues share their experiences. I’m satisfied that that is one other basic change: speaking to the machine in prompts is as totally different to Ruby as Fortran to assembler. However that is greater than an enormous leap in abstraction. After I wrote a Fortran operate, I might compile it 100 occasions, and the consequence nonetheless manifested the very same bugs. LLMs introduce a non-deterministic abstraction, so I can’t simply retailer my prompts in git and know that I’ll get the identical habits every time. As my colleague Birgitta put it, we’re not simply shifting up the abstraction ranges, we’re shifting sideways into non-determinism on the identical time.
As we study to make use of LLMs in our work, we now have to get determine reside with this non-determinism. This alteration is dramatic, and somewhat excites me. I’m positive I’ll be unhappy at some issues we’ll lose, however there will even issues we’ll acquire that few of us perceive but. This evolution into non-determinism is unprecedented within the historical past of our career.
Fashionable functions more and more depend on exact timestamped knowledge and deep community insights to make sure seamless operation for billions of customers. Initially vital in sectors like telecommunications and high-frequency buying and selling, time synchronization has turn out to be indispensable throughout various industries. Knowledge facilities, cloud operators, utilities, and energy grids improve effectivity, visibility, and safety by using time synchronization, underscoring its rising significance to each service and piece of content material in at the moment’s interconnected world.
Cisco Agile Companies Networking structure addresses this vital want whereas emphasizing AI-driven connectivity, enhanced monetization of assured providers, and the supply of transformative experiences. By leveraging superior time synchronization protocols, the brand new Silicon One and 8000 Collection platforms central to this structure empower community operators to assemble dependable and environment friendly networks. They allow correct occasion timestamping, environment friendly knowledge ordering, improved community visibility, and expedited difficulty decision—finally enhancing general efficiency and safety.
PRTC-B GNSS integration: Powering 5G-Superior and 6G operational precision
5G-Superior and the transition in direction of 6G are considerably extending the position of precision timing in communication networks. Foundational new options in 5G-Superior and rising 6G networks that hinge upon precision timing embody inference administration, beamforming, positioning providers, and AI-driven RAN, as follows:
In TDD (Time Division Duplex) use circumstances, exact synchronization mitigates cross-link interference by guaranteeing cells transmit concurrently, stopping co-channel and adjoining channel interference.
Beamforming and null forming methods rely on exact timing knowledge to precisely calculate azimuth and elevation angles, that are essential for enormous MIMO operation, particularly within the midband spectrum.
In positioning programs, even a timing error of some nanoseconds may cause a number of meters of positioning error. 5G networks make use of methods like time of arrival (ToA), time distinction of arrival (TDoA), angle of departure (AoD), and angle of arrival (AoA) to find out high-precision positioning knowledge, important for location-based providers.
AI-driven RAN requires exact time-stamped knowledge for congestion management, useful resource allocation, high-frequency telemetry, predictive upkeep, and utility evaluation.
Precision timing is enabled by next-generation receivers. Major Reference Time Clock, class B (PRTC-B) World Navigation Satellite tv for pc System (GNSS) receivers supply dual-band reception for improved accuracy, enhancing resiliency, accuracy, and safety over conventional PRTC-A GNSS receivers.
By listening to a number of frequency bands, a PRTC-B receiver can instantly measure and compensate for ionospheric results (because the radio waves are delayed in another way throughout frequencies), thereby considerably enhancing stability and precision. In distinction, PRTC-A receivers, which function on a single band, can’t carry out this compensation and are extra prone to timing errors.
Moreover, single-band PRTC-A GNSS receivers are extra prone to spoofing and jamming assaults, posing vital threats to programs reliant on correct timing and positioning. Twin-band PRTC-B receivers supply enhanced safety in opposition to these threats and supply improved resiliency.
Fashions of the Cisco 8000 Collection platform combine PRTC-B receivers instantly into the {hardware}, offering built-in protection in opposition to timing-related vulnerabilities. Cisco IOS XR software program enhances the 8000 PRTC-B platforms by providing complete visibility, monitoring, and administration instruments to deal with rising GNSS sign threats and vulnerabilities.
Deepening community perception with time synchronization
Implementing time synchronization protocols might be advanced—particularly when the community structure lacks acceptable instruments. Let’s take a look at how Cisco Agile Companies Networking structure mitigates these challenges by integrating important synchronization monitoring capabilities into the IOS XR with options akin to PTP-PM, PPM, and APM.
PTP Efficiency Monitoring (PTP-PM)
Knowledge-driven observations are key to guiding choices that improve community efficiency, reliability, and effectivity. PTP-PM (primarily based on ITU-T G.8275 Annex F) collects synchronization efficiency knowledge at structured time intervals. This characteristic displays ahead and reverse path delays, offset from time transmitter, and the imply path delays throughout 3-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour, and 24-hour measurement home windows.
PTP efficiency metrics additionally seize the per-port statistics together with PTP counters for packet despatched, obtained, and dropped for every of the Sync, Delay-request, Delay-response and Announce messages on the port.
Passive Port Monitoring (PPM)
PTP PPM (from ITU-T G.8275.1 Annex G) includes observing and analyzing PTP messages on the peer PTP community ports. When the offset between native port and peer port turns into extreme (determine 2), the node generates an alert to focus on attainable community inconsistencies that would come up as a consequence of fiber asymmetries, hyperlink failures, site visitors re-routing, PTP safety assaults on weak hyperlinks, or easy configuration errors.
Superior Port Monitoring (APM)
APM extends passive monitoring by serving to operators validate community PTP efficiency in opposition to an alternate time supply. Through the use of an alternate trusted reference (akin to GNSS) as a probe, the first or secondary PTP accuracy might be measured and validated instantly on the node (determine 3). This characteristic helps keep community stability and effectivity, ensures redundancy and resilience inside the timing system, and helps predict clock habits throughout failures.
By deploying PTP-PM, PPM, and APM options, operators achieve deeper visibility into their networks. This allows them to detect varied community anomalies, mitigate optical path and packet routing points, enhance fault detection, monitor potential safety threats, and improve the standard of timing distribution. In the end, these insights contribute to delivering extra strong and dependable community providers.
Simplified configuration to keep away from synchronization failures
The algorithms specified by the ITU-T use totally different and impartial mechanisms to pick out the very best sources of PTP and SyncE, and this usually requires handbook configurations and precedence settings to keep away from timing loops. Nevertheless, this might nonetheless lead to a situation the place nodes can find yourself deciding on PTP and SyncE from totally different clock sources and result in excessive offset between the clocks.
Cisco IOS XR, the working system for 8000 Collection Routers, introduces a brand new CLI command, particularly “synchronous-ethernet prefer-interface ptp-receiver,” to simplify handbook configuration checks and keep away from timing loops. This command ensures that the node mechanically follows ABTCA (Superior Greatest Time-Transmitter Clock Algorithm) to pick out each the PTP and SyncE clock sources whereas sustaining compliance to the ITU-T G.781 customary.
Your basis for exact community time synchronization
The Cisco 8000 Collection, constructed on the ideas of scale, reliability, efficiency, visibility, and safety, presents a necessary basis for constructing networks the place exact time synchronization is vital.
By integrating PRTC-B with enhanced timing options like PTP-PM, PPM, and APM, operators achieve deep insights into community habits–enabling them to establish community anomalies, enhance redundancy and resiliency, and elevate general service high quality by sustaining compliance with business requirements and guaranteeing operational excellence. These capabilities guarantee alignment with business requirements whereas supporting operational excellence in time-sensitive environments which are turning into more and more integral for contemporary functions.
Be taught extra about evolving IP community structure
So, briefly, a VPC isn’t a standalone product you purchase from a distinct segment vendor. It’s the foundational community layer upon which you construct and deploy all of your different cloud sources (digital machines, databases, serverless features, and so forth.) inside a public cloud atmosphere. And not using a VPC, you may’t logically isolate your sources inside these massive public clouds.
Solely hyperscalers have the capital, engineering expertise, and international presence to construct and keep the underlying bodily infrastructure that makes VPCs potential at scale. They move on the advantages of those economies of scale to clients by way of their pay-as-you-go fashions.
The ability of a VPC comes not simply from its isolation but in addition from its seamless integration with the hyperscaler’s huge ecosystem of different providers (e.g., id and entry administration, monitoring, load balancers, managed databases, AI/ML providers). Some extent answer vendor would wrestle to duplicate this stage of integration and breadth of choices.
Key options of a digital non-public cloud
Inside the public cloud supplier’s bigger community, every VPC is separated through non-public IP addressing and divided into subnets that isolate sources internally. Custom-made routing protocols (or route tables) work to maintain web site visitors safe throughout the VPC. Until they’re explicitly designed to be related, one VPC won’t be related to or able to speaking with one other VPC.
There are additionally safety checks in-built at a number of ranges. Community entry management lists (NACLs) assist handle inbound and outbound site visitors to the VPC’s subnets and act like a firewall. Community deal with translation (NAT) works to assist provoke safe outbound web connections from throughout the VPC. NATs hold backend sources non-public by translating an inner non-public IP deal with to a public one for an outbound web connection.
Many VPCs additionally embody id and entry administration (IAM) instruments, which permit management over permissions associated to who can see and alter completely different features throughout the VPC at an much more granular stage.
On the Open Supply Summit North America, it was introduced that Google donated its Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol to the Linux Basis.
The A2A protocol affords a normal approach for connecting brokers to one another. On this approach, it enhances Anthropic’s Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP), which offers a solution to join brokers to totally different knowledge sources and functions.
“Drawing on Google’s inner experience in scaling agentic techniques, we designed the A2A protocol to deal with the challenges we recognized in deploying large-scale, multi-agent techniques for our prospects. A2A empowers builders to construct brokers able to connecting with some other agent constructed utilizing the protocol and affords customers the flexibleness to mix brokers from numerous suppliers,” Google wrote in a weblog publish when it first launched A2A in April.
When it was first introduced, Google revealed that there have been over 50 companions contributing to the undertaking, together with Atlassian, Cohere, Datadog, Deloitte, Elastic, Oracle, and Salesforce. Based on the Linux Basis, there at the moment are over 100 know-how companions concerned within the undertaking.
By becoming a member of a company just like the Linux Basis, the undertaking will profit from vendor neutrality and inclusive contributions. The group may even proceed the protocol’s deal with extensibility, safety, and real-world usability.
“The Agent2Agent protocol establishes a significant open normal for communication, enabling the trade to construct really interoperable AI brokers throughout various platforms and techniques,” stated Rao Surapaneni, vp and GM of Enterprise Functions Platform at Google Cloud. “By collaborating with the Linux Basis and main know-how suppliers, we’ll allow extra modern and useful AI capabilities underneath a trusted, open-governance framework.”
