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The Data Center Boom Reshaping Williamson County, Texas

Williamson County is at the center of one of the most significant data center buildouts in the United States. What started as a handful of projects near Samsung’s Taylor semiconductor fabrication plant has become a full-scale infrastructure rush.

According to a March 2026 Propmodo analysis using Cushman & Wakefield data, the Austin–San Antonio data center corridor now has 7,823 megawatts of planned capacity compared to just 1,154 megawatts currently operating. More than 70 projects are being tracked between Temple and San Antonio, with Williamson County capturing a disproportionate share due to its power infrastructure, fiber connectivity, and available land. Of the 615 megawatts under construction in the corridor, 96 percent is already pre-leased, a remarkable indicator of demand.

A Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center analysis found that between 2023 and 2024, Central Texas experienced a drastic increase in data center construction, totaling 463.5 megawatts of potential demand under development. That report specifically cited marquee projects in Williamson County as having reshaped regional land markets. Texas overall has 408 data centers listed statewide, second most in the nation, with the Austin market at 46 and climbing fast.

Earth observation operators push to deliver satellite images within minutes

Vantor employees were gathered for a sales kickoff in January, when an executive announced that a WorldView Legion satellite passing overhead would snap a photo of the California venue. Later, a buzzer sounded to alert the audience that the 30-centimeter-resolution image was available on the Vantor Hub portal. It had been 13 minutes.

The demonstration was meant to show how quickly satellite imagery can move from collection to delivery — since commercial and government customers want data quickly.

Data latency, the time between image capture and delivery, has long been a key metric for Earth observation customers. But expectations are shifting as customers want intelligence they can use in real time.

Optogenetics, Biohybrid Implants And The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces | Dr. Alan Mardinly

Optogenetics, Biohybrid Implants And The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces — Dr. Alan Mardinly Ph.D. — CSO & Co-Founder, Science

What if we could restore vision, communicate directly with the brain, and even extend human life—not with machines alone, but with living, engineered biology?

Dr. Alan Mardinly, Ph.D. is the Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Science Corp. (https://science.xyz/), a neurotechnology company developing next-generation brain interfaces and biohybrid neural implants aimed at restoring human function.

Dr. Mardinly leads the company’s biohybrid program, focused on combining genetically engineered cells with advanced optical hardware to create optogenetic therapies for vision restoration and new types of brain-machine interfaces.

Dr. Mardinly has spent more than 15 years working at the intersection of neuroscience, genetics, and neural engineering.

Continue reading “Optogenetics, Biohybrid Implants And The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces | Dr. Alan Mardinly” | >

A nanoparticle therapy to treat lung cancer and associated muscle wasting at the same time

Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a technique for simultaneously treating lung cancer and a serious muscle-wasting condition that often accompanies it. The study, published in the Journal of Controlled Release, involves lipid nanoparticles delivering therapeutic genetic material to lung tumors.

In a mouse model, scientists led by Oleh Taraula and Yoon Tae Goo of the OSU College of Pharmacy showed that a type of nanocarrier loaded with follistatin messenger RNA is able to accumulate in tumors. Once there, the mRNA triggers cells to produce the follistatin protein, which plays a key role both in inhibiting tumors and promoting muscle tissue growth.

The lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, can be administered intravenously and reach the lungs courtesy of another protein, vitronectin, that’s found in blood serum. Lipids are fatty acids and similar organic compounds, including many natural oils and waxes. Nanoparticles are tiny pieces of material ranging in size from one-to 100-billionths of a meter.

AI models don’t only show evidence of ‘self-preservation.’ They will scheme to prevent other AIs from being shut down too, new research shows

Models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google will inflate performance reviews and exfiltrate model weights to prevent “peers” from being shut down.

Scientists reveal a new way cancer cells survive DNA damage

A cancer drug target already being investigated in clinical trials turns out to be doing something even more consequential than researchers realized. Scientists at Scripps Research have discovered that the enzyme Pol theta (Polθ) drives a DNA repair mechanism directly at broken replication forks—one of the most frequent forms of DNA damage in cancer cells. The findings, published in Molecular Cell on March 16, 2026, help explain how tumors survive relentless replication stress and clarify why Pol theta inhibitors may be an effective strategy to selectively target cancer.

“We’ve uncovered a whole new dimension of how cancer cells cope with DNA damage at replication forks,” says Xiaohua Wu, professor at Scripps Research and senior author of the study.

Every time a cell divides, it must make an exact copy of its entire genome, a process carried out by molecular machinery that unzips the DNA double helix and reads each strand to build a new one. The point where this unzipping and copying actively happens is called a replication fork. But when this replication machinery encounters damage, forks can stall or collapse, leaving behind dangerous one-ended DNA breaks that are particularly difficult to repair and, if left unresolved, can kill the cell. This is particularly true in cancer cells, where replication stress is constant.

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