Latest from Fast Company
Fast Company
2 hours ago
- Health
- Fast Company
Ear wax may hold the key to early Parkinson's diagnosis
An unlikely body byproduct may be able to help doctors diagnose Parkinson's Disease early. According to a new Chinese study, which was published in Analytical Chemistry, ear canal secretion, or ear wax, contain chemical compounds which can be telltale signs of Parkinson's. During the study, researchers examined ear canal secretions from 209 people. About half (108 of the participants) had Parkinson's. In their examinations, scientists were able to identify four volatile organic compounds (VOC) that were notably different in those with the disease. Those compounds, or biomarkers, were ethylbenzene, 4-ethyltoluene, pentanal, and 2-pentadecyl-1,3-dioxolane. The scientists then trained an artificial intelligence olfactory (AIO) system on the biomarker data. And once training was complete, the AIO system was able to successfully determine which patients had Parkinson's and which did not. The system was accurate 94% of the time. Currently, Parkinson's is a tough disease to diagnose. According to Mayo Clinic, it requires expensive imaging, neurological tests, blood tests, genetic testing, and more. And often, a diagnosis is still often not conclusive. Likewise, treatment is a work-in-progress, with current therapies aimed at slowing progression rather than curing it. Therefore, ear wax testing could be a breakthrough first-step screening tool that's inexpensive, noninvasive, and accessible. The researchers who worked on the study say the findings are a major step in Parkinson's early detection, which currently, doesn't exist, but that more research is needed. 'This method is a small-scale single-center experiment in China,' study coauthor Hao Dong said in a press release. Hoa Dong continued, 'The next step is to conduct further research at different stages of the disease, in multiple research centers and among multiple ethnic groups, in order to determine whether this method has greater practical application value.'
Fast Company
3 hours ago
- Health
- Fast Company
You don't need to accomplish things to matter
Not long ago, a client of mine—let's call her Maya—shared something that struck me. 'I had a rare Sunday with nothing urgent on my plate. My kids were with their grandparents. My inbox was quiet. I could have done anything. Instead of feeling relaxed, I panicked. I literally didn't know what to do with myself.' She laughed softly but tears were in her eyes. 'I realized . . . I don't know how to exist without a task list. If I'm not accomplishing something, I feel like I don't matter.' Maya isn't alone. In my coaching work, I've heard this story many times— women who have full, meaningful lives yet feel they're only as good as what they checked off today. In a culture that rewards output and treats busyness like a badge of honor, it's easy to confuse productivity with worth. But what happens when you slow down —or are forced to? Who are you without the to-do list, the perfect calendar, and the high performance? This article invites you to pause and honestly examine where your worth may be tied to how much you get done. It's about recognizing patterns that keep you in constant motion—and beginning to loosen their grip so your value is rooted in something more lasting. Warning signs you might be outsourcing your self-worth to productivity You don't have to be burned out or in crisis to be stuck in this trap. Often, it's invisible—especially when things seem to be going well. Here are some subtle signs: You feel anxious or restless when you're not actively 'getting something done.' You judge your day's success by accomplishments, not feelings. You feel guilty or uncomfortable during downtime. You struggle to enjoy activities unless they're 'productive' (reading must educate, exercise must burn calories). You only feel good about yourself when exceeding expectations—at work or home. Another client, Elena—a physician and mom of three—said, 'I know rationally that I'm a good mom and doctor. But the only time I feel that way is when I'm accomplishing something measurable—publishing, presenting, finishing charts. Otherwise, I feel like I'm failing.' Elena wasn't asking to do less. She wanted to feel enough even when she wasn't at full throttle. That distinction matters. Reclaiming your self-worth doesn't mean abandoning ambition. It means building a foundation where your identity isn't tied to output highs and lows. Why this runs so deep Tying worth to productivity isn't a personal flaw—it's shaped by powerful cultural forces. We live in a society that prizes output, where worth is measured by results, not relationships or inner experience. Women are socialized to be competent, accommodating, and endlessly available—to anticipate needs, keep things running, and never drop the ball. Add motherhood, with its endless work and little feedback, and it's easy to internalize that your value depends on how much you handle without breaking. The pandemic intensified this. With work, school, and home merging, many working moms became the nerve center—managing logistics, meals, meetings, and everyone's emotions. The doing never stopped. And when people praised our resilience and ability to 'keep it together,' we absorbed the message that being useful was what made us worthy. The costs of outsourcing your worth This isn't sustainable. Even if it works temporarily, it erodes well-being. Your sense of self rises and falls with accomplishment. Burnout looms as rest feels like failure. Disconnection creeps in—you struggle to be present with loved ones unless everything is tied up. When things go off script, disappointment turns to shame, as if falling short means you're fundamentally flawed. Most damagingly, this mindset convinces you rest, joy, and self-compassion are rewards to be earned, not essential parts of being human. When worth is always up for reevaluation, peace remains out of reach. What reclaiming your worth looks like This work is slow and layered—not a quick fix or a slogan. It's a recalibration of how you relate to yourself. Start here: 1. Notice the Narratives Pay attention to thoughts that arise when you're not productive: ' I should be doing more,' ' I'm falling behind,' ' I don't deserve to rest yet. ' Notice whose voice this echoes—a parent, boss, or cultural script? Naming these is the first step to disarming them. 2. Redefine Success Create space for a fuller definition of success: being present for bedtime without planning tomorrow, holding a boundary at work, or letting something be 'good enough.' Reflect daily: What felt aligned? When did I feel like myself? Where did I honor my values? 3. Practice Being, Not Just Doing Choose small moments to simply be: sit with coffee without scrolling, walk without exercising, and rest without 'earning' it. Your nervous system may resist at first—that's normal. Over time, you'll build capacity to sit with yourself without judgment. 4. Anchor to Identity, Not Output Ask: Who am I when I'm not performing or producing? This can feel scary but also freeing. You are more than a multitasking manager—you are a person with humor, intuition, creativity, and resilience. Begin rooting your worth in being human, not heroic. One client, a lawyer and mom of two, shared: 'I still work hard, but now I can pause during the day to breathe. I let dishes wait without calling myself lazy. And strangely, I feel more powerful—not less—because my worth isn't riding on every task.' Being enough High-achieving moms are admired for how much they handle—but that admiration can come at a cost. Beneath competence and reliability often lies a quiet desire: to feel whole even when nothing is getting done. You don't need to give up your drive or goals. But you deserve a life where worth isn't constantly measured: a life where rest is allowed, not earned; where joy has space without justification; where being enough isn't something you prove—it's something you simply trust.
Fast Company
4 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
How Cisco has been quietly retooling for the AI revolution
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company 's weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. Exclusive Interview With Cisco's Jeetu Patel Data centers are popping up all over the world to support the quickly growing demand for all kinds of AI apps and services. Cisco, of course, is no stranger to the data center, and it's been working hard over the past few years to make itself a vital part of the AI technology stack. I asked Cisco EVP and chief product officer Jeetu Patel how he sees the current situation in generative AI, and about how his company fits into the picture. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Can you give me your 30,000-foot view of the transition to generative AI? We're now moving from this mode of chatbots intelligently answering questions for us to us now moving into a mode where agents are conducting tasks and jobs almost fully autonomously on behalf of humans. As that happens, there's going to be an augmentation of the capacity of billions and billions of agents that'll actually get added on over the course of the next few years. But the requirements that you have around low-latency, high-performance, high-energy-efficiency infrastructure, as well as around safety and security so that the user can establish trust with these AI systems, is going to have to be fully reimagined. Can you describe in simple terms how Cisco plays in the AI tech stack? At the very baseline, we build our own silicon and ASICs [application-specific integrated circuits] for the network itself. I think we're the only non-Nvidia silicon provider that is part of Nvidia's reference architecture where our networking is tied with their GPUs and we actually make sure that those work together in a reference architecture that an enterprise can deploy. We then have our own systems, which are the physical boxes for the networks and the servers on the compute side, and the optics and the optical systems that actually can do ultra-long haul data center interconnect, as well as interconnect between clusters. We then provide the safety and security platform that's needed to secure AI as well—we're one of the largest security players in the market. We provide a data platform in Splunk. We're actually building our own bespoke custom models for security and networking. You mentioned latency as a key challenge. How critical is response time for AI applications? If it takes three seconds for an AI voice agent to respond to you, you know it's a robot and you don't want to talk to it. But if you do it within 500 milliseconds, you have a very different kind of behavior from the human. In our user testing, outside of efficacy, latency is one of the most important things. It has to be interruptible and it has to have enough training on EQ [emotional intelligence] and sentiment analysis, so that if you're sounding annoyed, it doesn't say, 'How's the weather today?' How do you handle the security challenges with multiple AI models? Most of these models are putting their own safety and security guardrails in the models. But models can get tricked through jailbreaking techniques. We've built a product that not only does the visibility of what data is flowing through the model and when the model is getting fine-tuned, so you can do a continuous validation. . . . We validate the model within a matter of minutes through an algorithmic red-teaming exercise rather than it taking weeks or months for companies to validate the model. We jailbroke DeepSeek within 48 hours. We can take that model and then create runtime enforcement guardrails for every application developer. The end outcome is that no developer has to rebuild the security stack every time they build an application, and no model provider needs to be responsible for every single way that a model can be jailbroken. So every app developer building on top of DeepSeek will benefit from this pool of knowledge that Cisco knows about how to jailbreak the model and how to protect against that? That's exactly right. We believe that you need a neutral party that provides a common substrate of security for every app developer, every model builder, every agent developer, so that the developer can innovate fearlessly. Are AI companies putting big data centers in the Middle East because they have plenty of power and room to grow, or is it to better service customers in that region? It's literally both. You don't have enough power to fuel all the demand for AI right now. The amount of usage that OpenAI is getting right now is literally like breaking the internet. They came up with $20 a user—they're losing money on $20 a user, from what the industry says. So they added a plan for $200 a user. My guess is they're going to lose money at $200 a user. They have a plan for $2,000 a user. They will lose money for $2,000 a user. Tha''s not a bad thing. It tells you that there is intrinsic demand. The demand for data centers is going to be insatiable for a very long time. As models get more efficient over time, you'll have small models with very large context windows—you might have a million-token context window, very small model, very small data set with a very small footprint to be able to get the inference done. But we're not quite there yet. Is it because of inference costs that they can't make money? What's the big cost driver? Right now it's the usage and the cost of GPUs. It's expensive. But the beauty about this is it's the wrong thing to focus on to get a company to profitability at this stage. What they should focus on is the acquisition of as many users as possible so that they can have the daily workflow fusion of ChatGPT for both consumers and enterprises. Once that happens, they can figure out a way to optimize later. But right now, starting to optimize would be putting cycles in the wrong thing.
Fast Company
4 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Carnival is overhauling its cruise rewards program: Changes, launch dates to know
Rewards programs are getting revamps all over the place. Earlier this week, JPMorgan Chase announced major changes to its Chase Sapphire Reserve rewards credit card. That announcement came shortly after competitor American Express teased an upcoming overhaul to its premium Platinum rewards card. And now, one of America's most popular cruise lines, Carnival, has announced it will radically shake up its rewards program come 2026. Here's what you need to know about Carnival Cruise Line's upcoming overhauled rewards program. Bye-bye, Very Important Fun Person (VIFP) Carnival Cruise Line's current rewards and loyalty program is called the Very Important Fun Person (VIFP) program. The program has been in existence since 2012 and is beloved by many Carnival Cruise enthusiasts. One of the reasons frequent Carnival customers love the VIFP program is its simplicity. You earn points based on how many days you cruise—that's it. There's no complicated earning structure or confusing rules. The total number of these points based on the total number of days cruised slots you into one of five groups: blue, red, gold, platinum, or diamond. The higher the group (diamond is tops), the more perks you get, including everything from free bottles of water to priority reservations at Specialty restaurants. However, Carnival has now announced that the VIFP program is being discontinued. Its last day of operation will be May 31, 2026. Hello, Carnival Rewards Carnival's VIFP program is being replaced with a new rewards and loyalty program called Carnival Rewards. The program will officially launch on June 1, 2026, and it represents a radical departure from the current VIFP program. One of the biggest changes to the new Carnival Rewards program is that points are no longer earned based on how many days you cruise with the line. Instead, points will be earned based on what you spend with Carnival Cruise Line. This spend includes the cost of tickets, drinks you buy on board, and even what you spend in the ship's casino. Points can also be earned through the use of a new Carnival Rewards Mastercard, which will be debuting. However, you won't just be collecting points to move up the group rankings anymore. The new Carnival Rewards program will use a dual-earning structure. The dollars you spend will earn you both stars and Carnival Rewards points. The stars will dictate which group you are slotted into—there are only four this time: red, gold, platinum, or diamond (blue is going away). The more prominent the group, the better perks you get, such as embarkation and debarkation priority, if you are a member of the diamond group. The Carnival Rewards points you earn can be redeemed for anything from cruise fares, transfers, onboard purchases, and more. Why is Carnival revamping its rewards program? The business answer to this question is that Carnival Cruise Line likely believes that the revamped rewards program will lead to a better bottom line. As points and group tiers are now dependent on what you spend, customers who are keen to collect Canrival Rewards points may be more willing to spend more onboard to keep earning those points. But Carnival would likely argue that the revamped program is now a little fairer than its current VIFP program. Under the VIFP, Carnival customers would receive the same amount of rewards regardless of whether they paid for the lowest or highest class of cabin on the ship. That's because the rewards were simply linked to the number of days cruised. The new program will mean that customers who book higher-priced cabins will now earn a higher number of reward points. But there is some bad news for customers under the new Carnival Rewards program, no matter how much they spend: the new status tiers they earn—red, gold, platinum, and diamond—don't last forever. Under the VIFP program, when a customer earned a status, they could only move up, not down. That means someone who earned diamond status would keep it for life. But the new status program will see customers lose their status after two years. And the points earned to achieve a status must be earned within a two-year period; otherwise, they do not count towards a status upgrade. In a FAQ about the new rewards program, Carnival says that this move is consistent with loyalty programs across the travel industry. The company says it recognizes 'that change can be difficult, but the current program based on cruise frequency makes it difficult to properly recognize our loyal guests.' Carnival stock price still well below pre-pandemic levels The owner of Carnival Cruise Lines, Carnival Corporation & plc, filed its most recent earnings report on March 21 for the first quarter of 2025. The company announced that its Q1 revenues increased by over $400 million from the same quarter a year earlier, reaching $5.8 billion. At the time, Carnival Corporation & plc's CEO, Josh Weinstein, boasted that the quarter 'was truly characterized by outperformance.' That growth is something investors are undoubtedly happy to see, especially after Carnival, like all other cruise lines, took a major hit in 2020 following the outbreak of the pandemic. In January 2020, Carnival Corporation & plc's stock (NYSE: CCL) was trading at above $50 per share. But by April, it had fallen to below $8 per share. As recently as October of 2022, CCL stock was trading below $7 per share. However, the stock's fortunes have improved as the cruise industry has slowly recovered from the pandemic's impact, receding from people's memories. As of yesterday's close, CCL stock is trading at above $23 per share. However, that is still down more than 5% since the beginning of the year. We won't know whether Carnival's new rewards program will have a material impact on the company's business, and thus its stock price, until it launches next year.
Fast Company
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Fast Company
Why defunding research on misinformation and disinformation isn't what Americans want
Research on misinformation and disinformation has become the latest casualty of the Trump administration's restructuring of federal research priorities. Following President Donald Trump's executive order on ' ending federal censorship,' the National Science Foundation canceled hundreds of grants that supported research on misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation refers to misleading narratives shared by people unaware that content is false. Disinformation is deliberately generated and shared misleading content, when the sharer knows the narrative is suspect. The overwhelming majority of Americans —95%—believe misinformation's misleading narratives are a problem. Americans also believe that consumers, the government and social media companies need to do something about it. Defunding research on misinformation and disinformation is, thus, the opposite of what Americans want. Without research, the ability to combat misleading narratives will be impaired. The attack on misleading narrative research Trump's executive order claims that the Biden administration used research on misleading narratives to limit social media companies' free speech. The Supreme Court had already rejected this claim in a 2024 case. Still, Trump and GOP politicians continue to demand disinformation researchers defend themselves, including in the March 2025 ' censorship industrial complex' hearings, which explored alleged government censorship under the Biden administration. The U.S. State Department, additionally, is soliciting all communications between government offices and disinformation researchers for evidence of censorship. Trump's executive order to 'restore free speech,' the hearings and the State Department decision all imply that those conducting misleading narrative research are enemies of the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. These actions have already led to significant problems— death threats and harassment included—for disinformation researchers, particularly women. So let's tackle what research on misinformation and disinformation is and isn't. Misleading content Misinformation and disinformation researchers examine the sources of misleading content. They also study the spread of that content. And they investigate ways to reduce its harmful impacts. For instance, as a social psychologist who studies disinformation and misinformation, I examine the nature of misleading content. I study and then share information about the manipulation tactics used by people who spread disinformation to influence others. My aim is to better inform the public about how to protect themselves from deception. Sharing this information is free speech, not barring free speech. Yet, some think this research leads to censorship when platforms choose to use the knowledge to label or remove suspect content or ban its primary spreaders. That's what U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan argued in launching investigations in 2023 into disinformation research. It is important to note, however, that the constitutional definition of censorship establishes that only the government—not citizens or businesses—can be censors. So private companies have the right to make their own decisions about the content they put on their platforms. Trump's own platform, Truth Social, bans certain material such as 'sexual content and explicit language,' but also anything moderators deem as trying to ' trick, defraud, or mislead us and other users.' Yet, 75% of the conspiracy theories shared on the platform come from Trump's account. Further, both Trump and Elon Musk, self-proclaimed free-speech advocates, have been accused of squelching content on their platforms that is critical of them. Musk claimed the suppression of accounts on X was a result of the site's algorithm reducing 'the reach of a user if they're frequently blocked or muted by other, credible users.' Truth Social representatives claim accounts were banned due to 'bot mitigation' procedures, and authentic accounts may be reinstated if their classification as inauthentic was invalid. Is it censorship? The ' censorship industrial complex ' hearings held by the House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee were based on the premise that not only was misleading narrative research part of the alleged 'censorship industrial complex,' but that it was focused on conservative voices. But there isn't evidence to support this assertion. When research does show that conservative authors have posts labeled or removed, or that their accounts are suspended at higher rates than liberal content, it also reveals that it is because conservative posts are significantly more likely to share misinformation than liberal posts. This was found in a recent study of X users. Researchers tracked whose posts got tagged as false or misleading more in 'community notes'—X's alternative and Meta's proposed alternative to fact checking —and it was conservative posts, because they were more likely to include false content than liberal posts. Furthermore, an April 2025 study shows conservatives are more susceptible to misleading content and more likely to be targeted by it than liberals. Misleading America Those accusing misleading narrative researchers of censorship misrepresent the nature and intent of the research and researchers. And they are using disinformation tactics to do so. Here's how. The misleading information about censorship and bias has been repeated so much through the media and from political leaders, as evident in Trump's executive order, that many Republicans believe it's true. This repetition produces what psychologists call the illusory truth effect, where as few as three repetitions convince the human mind something is true. Researchers have also identified a tactic known as ' accusation in a mirror.' That's when someone falsely accuses one's perceived opponents of conducting, plotting or desiring to commit the same transgressions that one plans to commit or is already committing. So censorship accusations from an administration that is removing books from libraries, erasing history from monuments and websites, and deleting data archives constitute 'accusations in a mirror.' Other tactics include ' accusation by anecdote.' When strong evidence is in short supply, people who spread disinformation point repeatedly to individual stories (sometimes completely fabricated) that are exceptions to, and not representative of, the larger reality. Facts on fact-checking Similar anecdotal attacks are used to try to dismiss fact-checkers, whose conclusions can identify and discredit disinformation, leading to its tagging or removal from social media. This is done by highlighting an incident where fact-checkers 'got it wrong.' These attacks on fact-checking come despite the fact that many of those most controversial decisions were made by platforms, not fact-checkers. fact-checkers are rated the most effective. When Republicans do report distrust of fact-checkers, it's because they perceive the fact-checkers are biased. Yet research shows little bias in choice of who is fact-checked, just that prominent and prolific speakers get checked more. When shown fact-checking results of specific posts, even conservatives often agree the right decision was made.
