Establishing life on another planet is a multifaceted process with many problems. Housing is one major challenge, but a new study suggests researchers have found a way to build living quarters on Mars using materials already present on the planet, along with a couple of other clever ingredients. 

The study, published on Sept. 10 in the journal Chem Circularity, reports that researchers found a way to turn the sand on Mars into what is functionally low-grade concrete using little more than gelatin, yeast, and the natural Martian environment. Combine the three ingredients, and the dry, cold, low-pressure environment of Mars freeze-dries the mixture, turning it into a porous, foam-like material strong enough to build houses on the red planet. 

“My inspiration came from freeze-dried fruits that become harder,” senior author Jishen Qiu of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said in a statement. “So, I asked myself if we can take advantage of that and make some materials.”

According to Qiu, the concrete produced by this method measures 10 to 12 megapascals (a metric unit of pressure), putting it on par with low-grade concrete here on Earth. This concrete is strong enough to build a one- or two-story house on Earth, and since Earth has three times the gravity of Mars, it’s more than strong enough to build structures on Mars too. 

The gelatin is run-of-the-mill porcine gelatin, which means it’s made from pigs, and it’s quite literally the same stuff that Jell-O uses to make its jiggly dessert. For the yeast, Qiu created a specially engineered version covered in the same proteins mussels use to attach themselves to rocks. These two ingredients, along with pounded-up Martian rocks and water, create the material. 

Mars’ frigid cold, low-pressure environment effectively freeze-dries the material, causing water to sublimate, which means it turns directly from a solid to a vapor, leaving the Martian concrete behind. Because this process is so fast, items must be 3D-printed in real time to work properly.

The team tested it by 3D printing two small beehive-shaped structures about the size of a wine cork in a simulated Martian environment, but the team believes the process can scale up. Once the structures have reached the end of their usefulness, people on Mars can break them down, mix them in a bioreactor, and brew a new building with the same materials, as long as there’s still yeast alive to reproduce. 

An elegant solution to a long-standing problem

Delivering humans to Mars is already a tall order. Elon Musk tried to get it done by 2025 and missed the mark by at least a decade. However, getting people there is only half the battle. Once there, they need a place to live that can withstand the Martian environment, which includes temperature swings of nearly 100 degrees Celsius and virtually no radiation protection from the sun due to the thin Mars atmosphere. 

There are many ideas about the subject, ranging from inflatable domiciles to the idea of letting self-propagating fungi grow whole buildings. Some enterprising scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation even made space bricks from Martian soil, guar gum, urea, nickel chloride and a bacterium called Sporosarcina pasteurii, which converts urea and calcium into calcite. This lets the soil harden into something resembling concrete.

NASA held a habitat challenge from 2015 to 2019 that tasked companies and researchers to 3D-print homes using unique methods and materials. The winners took home over $2 million in prizes. In short, no stone has been left unturned, and people are using all sorts of exotic materials to try to find the best solution for habitats on Mars, including Qiu.

“I always ask myself: Is there any physical law or fundamental mechanism that prevents us from doing this?” Qiu said. “I can’t see any at this point in time. We are confident in scaling it up. It would surprise me if materials for future Martian engineering will not be as diverse as those used in Earth engineering, and biology will certainly contribute.”

Joe is a freelance journalist. It all started with a long-running affection for building his own PCs, which he did for the first time as a teenager. It evolved into a lifelong enjoyment of putting words on the internet about the subject. He’s written for CNET, PCMag, Mashable and SlashGear as a freelance writer, and worked as a Senior Editor at Android Authority for 10 years. When he’s not writing about tech and science, he’s learning the ins and outs of DIY home repair, gaming, playing his bass guitars and posting help on PC building and gaming subreddits. He is a staunch believer that orange juice should have pulp.

See full bio

Advertisement

A new report found that Irish employees’ workplace expectations and experiences are being transformed by artificial intelligence.

Microsoft Ireland has today (10 September) released the findings of its 2026 Work Trend Index. The report explores how Ireland’s employees are responding to a working environment under constant evolution in response to AI.  

This year’s Work Trend Index, in collaboration with 3Gem, surveyed 1,000 nationally representative adults based in Ireland, in casual and part-time work, including frontline employees and knowledge workers. 

The survey builds on the year-on-year comparisons of the changing trends, experiences and workplace expectations between 2022 and 2026.

What was discovered is that nearly half (48pc) of workers who participated in the research have changed employers in the last 12 months, a figure which has risen from 38pc in 2025.

47pc of professionals explained that AI is making them seriously reconsider their career path. This has risen from 34pc just last year. 

The AI influence

The report found that there is significant optimism around the potential of AI, as 76pc of participants believe it offers Ireland a major economic opportunity. Almost two-thirds believe skills in this area are critical when competing in the wider jobs market and 61pc are of the opinion that developing AI skills will support career progression.

There are some concerns also, as almost 60pc of people fear falling behind if they are too slow to adapt, and 13pc are considering changing their employer if there is insufficient access to advanced AI tools. This is perhaps not unexpected, as Microsoft’s report suggests that AI use at work has risen to 63pc. 

Many employers, however, are failing to meet the expectations of a workforce that is becoming increasingly used to embedded AI.

While 57pc of participant workers can identify where AI agents could help in their role and 48pc are already using AI agents regularly, organisations are in catch-up mode, with employers yet to provide the right levels of upkilling, investment and leadership, according to the index. 

Only 40pc of contributors feel that they have had enough AI training or guidance, less than half agreed that their employer provides the tools and resources they need, and only 48pc find that leadership expectations around AI use are clear. 

The report said: “The findings suggest Ireland’s AI opportunity is not constrained by employee appetite, but by how quickly organisations can translate that enthusiasm into practical capability, trusted adoption and business value.”

The Work Trend Index identified the ways in which organisations can accelerate their AI adoption to match employee needs and that is largely by viewing the workforce as an asset that requires consistent upgrading.  

65pc of employees are open to new ideas and ways of working with AI, 89pc said AI has improved the quality of their work, 61pc are curious about what AI could unlock for them or their team, and 65pc said they treat AI output as a starting point while remaining responsible for the final work. 

“Leadership will be critical to converting employee interest into confident adoption. However, more than half of workers (51pc) say leadership is out of touch with employees, while fewer than half say their manager actively uses AI, encourages AI adoption or supports experimentation,” the report said. 

“The findings point to a clear opportunity for leaders to model responsible use, set expectations and give employees the confidence and permission to explore where AI can add value.”

Catherine Doyle, general manager at Microsoft Ireland, said, “Ireland’s workforce is adapting quickly to a changing world of work. People are thinking differently about the skills they need, the career paths they want and the opportunities they expect from their employers. 

“At the same time, there is strong recognition of AI’s potential, both for individual careers and for Ireland’s future competitiveness. What is particularly encouraging is that workers are not waiting on the sidelines. They’re developing new future-ready skills and exploring how AI can help them in their current and future roles. 

“The challenge now is whether organisations can keep pace with this momentum. The next phase is about turning AI adoption into meaningful value by building organisational capability and trust, strengthening governance and security, and redesigning work around better outcomes.

“The organisations that get this right will be better placed to create meaningful value for their people, customers and the wider economy.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Collaborative Fund, the 15-year-old, New York-based generalist venture firm that has roughly $1 billion under management and which made early bets on Lyft, Reddit, Sweetgreen, and Olipop, among others, is taking a stake in the soccer club D.C. United and its stadium, Audi Field.

It’s the latest — and smallest — firm to try something that Thrive Capital opened the door to just months ago: turning venture money into pro sports ownership.

To recap, Joshua Kushner’s Thrive launched a new vehicle, Thrive Eternal, explicitly built to hold “iconic franchises and cultural institutions” for decades, funded by many of the same investors already in Thrive’s venture and growth funds. The firm kicked things off by announcing a stake in the San Francisco Giants. Months later, the same vehicle — with former Disney CEO Bob Iger, a Thrive partner, joining as co-owner — bought the Lakers outright for a record $12.5 billion.

That’s new. Historically, money has poured into pro sports two other ways: individual tech fortunes, and private equity. For example, Vinod Khosla and his family agreed this summer to buy the Seattle Seahawks for a record $9.6 billion soon after the Khosla family also took a stake in the San Francisco 49ers alongside OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor. That was a personal-wealth play, the kind we’ve seen over and over.

Private equity firms have also been at this for years, including Sixth Street, which holds stakes in the Boston Celtics, the New England Patriots, and MLB’s San Francisco Giants; Ares, which owns a piece of the Miami Dolphins outright and separately financed Chelsea’s stadium plans through a $500 million preferred-equity deal; RedBird, which owns AC Milan outright and holds a minority stake in Fenway Sports Group, the holding company behind Liverpool and the Red Sox; and Arctos, with minority positions scattered across MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and European soccer. (Apollo, the newest entrant, has mostly stuck to sports financing deals so far rather than ownership stakes.)

Thrive and Collaborative are doing neither of those things. At the same time, the two firms’ approaches to sports ownership look very different. Thrive built a standalone, permanent-capital vehicle specifically to hold trophy assets. Collaborative is investing out of the same early-stage fund it uses to write seed and Series A checks, and treating the deal less like something to buy and hold and almost more like infrastructure.

In a memo shared with TechCrunch, Collaborative Fund founder and managing partner Craig Shapiro framed the deal as an extension of what the firm already does. “A franchise is the ultimate consumer product,” he wrote, arguing that D.C. United’s status as one of Major League Soccer’s original clubs gives Collaborative access to an institution with a decades-long fan base to build on.

He pointed to the tailwinds around American soccer specifically (a World Cup just behind the sport, the LA Olympics ahead of it, soaring youth participation numbers in the U.S.) as well as D.C.’s ownership of Audi Field in Washington, D.C., plus a talent-development pipeline through Loudoun County, Virginia, and rights to a future Baltimore expansion team.

Indeed, the thesis Shapiro laid out at a TechCrunch StrictlyVC event Thursday night in New York is less about owning a piece of an appreciating asset – the sports team itself – and more about what the team makes possible. Collaborative wants to turn Audi Field into what he describes as a living showcase for its own portfolio.

As a backer of both fitness band maker Whoop and the beverage brand Olipop, for example, Collaborative Fund is imagining a WHOOP wearables activation for fans, or Olipop drinks woven into game-day concessions. He’s thinking about the stadium’s foot traffic — tens of thousands of people showing up on a predictable schedule — as a distribution channel at a time when, because AI is making more of daily life feel synthetic, live experiences are becoming more valuable.

Shapiro doesn’t dwell on this, but it surely helped sell Collaborative’s investors that team valuations have been soaring, so the stake could pay off on its own. Soccer valuations in particular have been on a tear. Inter Miami’s franchise value has roughly doubled in the two years since Lionel Messi arrived, MLS’s average club value is up roughly 134% since 2019, and D.C. United’s own valuation has climbed from $35 million in 2008 to $785 million today, factoring in its ownership of Audi Field and the surrounding real estate.

If Shapiro is right that a franchise is also “the ultimate consumer product,” it could be a pretty good place to park money. Time will tell.

The deal is subject to MLS approval.

The company has produced an extensive collection of case studies covering the ways its current AI models have been misused.

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle is pretty tough, with a diverse group of categories that might stump players. If you’re struggling with the puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group hint: When a player gets hurt.

Green group hint: Who’s on first?

Blue group hint: Hoopsters in Sin City.

Purple group hint: You might do this with a doughnut.

Read more: We Need to Talk About That One Doggone Connections Puzzle

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: NFL injury report designations.

Green group: Ways to reach first base.

Blue group: Las Vegas Aces.

Purple group: ____ dunk.

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is NFL injury report designations.

The four answers are doubtful, out, probable and questionable.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is ways to reach first base.

The four answers are error, hit by pitch, single and walk.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is Las Vegas Aces.

The four answers are Gray, Loyd, Wilson and Young.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ dunk.

The four answers are Nike, reverse, slam and windmill.

CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of “Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the ’70s and ’80s,” as well as “The Totally Sweet ’90s.” She’s been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She’s Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she’ll be first in line.

See full bio

Leah Feiger: I do like the nostalgic touch. I miss my Motorola Razr. I miss it every single day. Perhaps not the exact same capabilities, but it does the trick.

Brian Barrett: It is funny. It is. Imagine your Motorola Razr, but it opens side to side instead of up and down, and it’s all one big screen, so there’s no buttons to push. You can’t do T9 texting. Then you can watch YouTube on it.

Leah Feiger: I’m waiting, honestly, for the first story to drop from the quiet car of the Acela between DC and New York where someone, some sweet person from the administration, did not realize how big that screen is when you unfold it and how many messages are visible.

Brian Barrett: Oh, it’s going to be great.

Leah Feiger: It’s going to be, this is the new frontier for eavesdropping. Also, congratulations, Apple. But for me, that’s what I’m looking forward to.

Brian Barrett: Leah, what would it take to get you to purchase a foldable phone?

Leah Feiger: It would have to be a lot less than $2,000.

Brian Barrett: Yeah.

Leah Feiger: I can’t wait for Zoë to come back next week and tell us all about her new purchase. To be clear, I don’t think she’s gotten one, but it would be really funny if she did.

Brian Barrett: I bet she will.

Leah Feiger: So our next topic involves the US Census Bureau, which, definitely not as shiny or theoretically life-threatening as our previous topics, but really, really important. Last month, the bureau published a report that claimed to uncover evidence backing up President Donald Trump’s claims that noncitizen voting cost him the 2020 election. He touted the report on True Social saying, “I won the election.” This is, as you know, we’ve talked about this many times, one of Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories. He cannot let it go. And WIRED reporters, Vittoria Elliott and David Gilbert, dug into how this specific report actually got made, who wrote it, and they discovered a lot of holes with this. I kind of want to start by saying, if you’re listening to me and thinking, why do I care about a US Census Bureau report? They just do the census. They tell me how many people live in all of these different areas, how big families are, et cetera, et cetera. You’re not 100 percent wrong, but this is really important data. These are reports about people and their lives, and the average citizen shouldn’t have to know that much about it, but because of the situation we’re in with the current administration, knowing these weird little intricacies of what’s going on in government, I think has been really key to understanding the full picture here.

Brian Barrett: Also, to be clear, I do care.

Leah Feiger: You do care. There we go. All right. Can I run you through some of the quick down and dirty stuff, Brian, with what the report said?

I’ve known John Ternus for almost a dozen years, but not this John Ternus, the newly minted Apple CEO and sudden global tech celebrity. So, color me pleased when he and his Global Marketing SVP Greg Joswiak agreed to sit down with Tom’s Guide Global Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer and me for a podcast discussion that ranged from bringing Pencil to the iPhone and excitement around the foldable iPhone Duo to what AI means for innovation, and the big moment when Ternus realized he was about to become CEO of arguably one of the biggest and most important tech companies in the world.

It’s kind of wild to watch someone who you think of as a brilliant but also normal and approachable guy transform into an industry rockstar almost overnight, and while Ternus, who is a 25-year Apple veteran and came directly from leading Apple’s hardware operations, doesn’t seem outwardly fazed by the transition, he’s also attuned to the moment.

“What an extraordinary privilege, right?” said Ternus with a wide grin. The reality is, I just love this place, right? It’s in my blood. …I love the people I work with. I love to be able to build the products that we all build together. And so, goosebumps…and excitement.”

SECURITY

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Privacy is surveillance

With the release of Apple Watch Series 12, Apple has decided that it’s ok to capture people’s conversations without their consent.

The latest Apple Watch comes with Audio Intelligence, a set of AI audio processing capabilities tuned for the company’s S11 chip. Its features include: Sound Recognition, Music Recognition with Shazam, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap. 

“Live Rewind lets you instantly see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text,” Apple explains in its technical summary [PDF]. “Siri Recap summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later.”

With the double-press of the Digital Crown – as Apple grandly refers to the button on its Watch – Live Rewind takes in an audio stream from the Watch microphone, processes it in a Secure Exclave on the S11 chip, and routes the data to the user’s nearby iPhone, which runs a speech-to-text algorithm on the 15-second audio segment. The resulting text is saved and the audio is discarded. 

The wearer’s Watch emits an audible tone, even in silent mode, to alert those in the vicinity and provides a visual cue for those able to see the face of the device. 

Nonetheless, bystanders alerted to the recording – to the extent they recognize the meaning of the tone – have not consented to being recorded, which is a legal requirement in 11 US states that have all-party consent laws.

Apple characterizes its implementation of brief eavesdropping as respectful of personal privacy. It makes that claim in a section titled, “How Live Rewind respects those around you,” citing the audible chime and visual on-screen animation.

Siri Recap, meanwhile, “summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later.”

This too, Apple describes as an act of respect.

“By design, Siri Recap does not create a recording, does not produce a verbatim transcript, and does not identify and attribute speakers,” Apple’s technical documentation explains. “The output is a brief, high-level summary, comparable to notes a person might write after a conversation. There is no audible signal because no raw audio is retained, and there is no way to reconstruct the original audio from a Siri Recap or share raw audio with anyone.”

The implication here is that Apple’s non-consensual audio processing is less contemptuous of the public than the middle finger Meta has raised with its AI Glasses. That may be the case, but privacy advocates are still not impressed.

“Our right to conversational privacy must include freedom from other people, without our clear opt-in consent, using technology to document what we are saying,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy litigation director Adam Schwartz in an email to The Register. “Otherwise, people will self-censor, and conversation will lose its spontaneity and intimacy.

“So, EFF is disappointed that Apple is releasing a new Audio Intelligence feature that reportedly can create a transcript or written summary of what people are saying in the vicinity of an Apple Watch. People don’t really have a practical means to consent or decline recording.

“We suggest people should think twice before using this technology, out of respect to the conversational privacy of others. While it remains to be seen how state eavesdropping laws will apply to this new technology, it is clear that always-on monitoring of our conversations is an unacceptable burden on our conversational privacy.” ®

Franklin “Frank” Kuo

Codeveloper of ALOHAnet

Fellow, 91; died 14 April

Kuo helped develop ALOHAnet, a pioneering computer system at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, in Honolulu. The system went online in 1971 and represented the first public demonstration of a wireless packet data network. It was an inspiration for Robert Metcalfe’s development of Ethernet a couple of years later. In 2020 ALOHAnet was designated as an IEEE Milestone.

Kuo earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. After earning his Ph.D. in 1960, he joined Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., where he conducted research in computer communications.

After six years at the company, Kuo left to become a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Hawaii. From 1968 to 1971 he and one of his colleagues, IEEE Life Fellow Norman Abramson, developed ALOHAnet. The network connected computers on Hawaiian islands using ultrahigh-frequency radio, transmitting information over radio waves instead of cables.

ALOHAnet became the foundation for modern networks. Kuo pioneered the concept of a random-access protocol, or sharing a single channel without central coordination—which led to the packet-switching principles that underpin modern Wi-Fi and mobile networks.

Kuo authored or coauthored several books including Computer Communication Networks. Published in 1972, it was one of the earliest textbooks on the subject.

He served as director of the university’s Cosine committee, a project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation to develop computer engineering courses.

He took a sabbatical from 1975 to 1977 to work at the U.S. Pentagon as director of information systems in the defense secretary’s office. He oversaw computer communications applications used in command, control, and intelligence programs.

During the 1980s and ’90s, he helped develop China’s Internet. In 1982 he joined SRI International (formerly the Stanford Research Institute), in Menlo Park, Calif., as a researcher. He also was a consulting professor in Stanford’s electrical engineering department and taught computer networking at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

As a UNESCO lecturer in Beijing in 1994, he helped Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences connect to the Internet. He also worked with Tsinghua University to develop CERNET, the country’s first nationwide education and research computer network, which was managed by the Chinese Ministry of Education. For his work, he received an honorary degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In the mid-1990s, Kuo helped found General Wireless Communications, a developer of mobile phone messaging services and games that was renamed Mtone Wireless.

Muhammad Rezaul Karim

Bell Labs researcher

Life senior member, 86; died 18 May

Karim was a distinguished member of the technical staff at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J. His work was instrumental in the development of modern cellular communications technology.

He joined Bell Labs in 1972 and worked in its mobile telecommunications laboratory as part of the team tasked with creating one of the earliest cellular networks.

In 1975 Illinois Bell Telephone petitioned the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to develop and test a cellular system. The FCC, which now regulates radio, TV, telephone, Internet, satellite, and wireless services, authorized the project in March 1977. Karim and his team helped develop key elements of the technology, including the Bell Labs logic that controlled the cellular system, turning the concept into a working one. They also built radio receivers, transmitters, control systems, and cell-site equipment used in the first trial of the cellular system.

The following year, Bell Labs and Illinois Bell deployed the Advanced Mobile Phone Service system across Chicago, with its switching office located in Oak Park, Ill. The initial test used approximately 100 mobile phones to work through hardware, software, and system-design problems.

A subsequent test in 1979 involved 2,500 mobile users, providing a demonstration of the cellular technology in practice.

The trials in Illinois helped establish the technical foundation for the commercial cellular networks that followed.

Later in his career, Karim worked on the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technique, a high-speed networking technology crucial to the transition from traditional telephone networks to broadband and digital ones.

In 2000 he published ATM Networks: Application, Systems, and Design, a textbook that served as a guide for designing and implementing ATM-based services.

Karim received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, in Dhaka. He then earned a master’s degree in EE from the University of Manchester, England, and a Ph.D. in EE from Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, N.J.

Harry Bostic

Former IEEE Region 4 director

Life senior member, 86; died 18 March

Bostic was an active IEEE volunteer who served as the 1998–1999 director of IEEE Region 4. In 2007 he received a lifetime achievement award from the IEEE Central Indiana Section for “outstanding commitment and dedicated service as regional advisor to the volunteers and members of Region 4 and the Institute.”

He was an engineer for 30 years at U.S. Navy’s avionics facility, a research, development, and manufacturing concern in Indianapolis. He worked on flight control, navigation, and weapons systems there. (The facility closed in 1996.)

Edwin C. Jones Jr.

Professor

Life Fellow, 91; died 10 March

Jones was widely recognized for his contributions to engineering education, curriculum development, and accreditation through decades of service to IEEE, ABET, and the American Society for Engineering Education.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1955 from West Virginia University in Morgantown. The following year he earned a diploma of membership (equivalent to a master’s degree) from Imperial College, London. He went on to serve in the U.S. Army Signal Corps for two years. After his service ended, he studied engineering education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, earning a Ph.D. in 1961. Jones then joined the university’s faculty.

The following year, he left Illinois to join Iowa State University, in Ames, as an assistant professor. He was promoted to professor in 1995. Two years later he became associate chair of the electrical and computer engineering department and served in that position until 2001, when he retired and was named professor emeritus. In recognition of his commitment to students, Iowa State established a scholarship in his honor.

In 2006 he accepted a part-time position as an adjunct professor in Minnesota at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul. He advised graduate students and helped develop the university’s systems engineering program.

An active IEEE volunteer, he served as 1975–1976 president of the IEEE Education Society. He was a member of the IEEE Educational Activities Board, helping strengthen the relationship among engineering education, professional practice, and accreditation organizations. He received an IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984 and the EAB Meritorious Achievement Award in Accreditation Activities in 1986. The IEEE Education Society later named its Meritorious Service Award in his honor.

Jones was elected a Fellow of ABET in 1986. During his years of service as a program evaluator and leader, he helped advance the quality of engineering education and accreditation programs. ABET recognized him with its Grinter Distinguished Service Award, its highest honor.

Alexander Robert Spitzer

Clinical neurology researcher

Life senior member, 70; died 27 February

Spitzer was a neurologist for 40 years at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, in Detroit, where he also was a director of the electromyography laboratory at Harper University Hospital. The lab studied patients’ brain and spinal cord activity in response to sensory stimuli. The evaluations assessed nerve pathway integrity to help diagnose multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, and other conditions.

After earning his medical degree from the Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City, Spitzer completed a fellowship at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md. He then joined Wayne State as a clinical neurology researcher. His pioneering research in applying neural network analysis to electromyography and clinical neurophysiology resulted in peer-reviewed publications, grants, and several U.S. patents.

He mentored generations of neurologists in electrodiagnostic medicine, a medical specialty that uses nerve-conduction and electromyography tests to evaluate and diagnose muscle and nerve disorders.

In 2020 he founded Mackinac Neurology, a telemedicine-based practice that treated pa­tients virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A longtime IEEE volunteer, he held numerous roles on the IEEE Regional Activities Board, now known as the Member and Geographic Activities Board. He was a member of the IEEE Ethics and Member Conduct and Nominations and Appointments committees, as well as the IEEE Educational Activities and IEEE-USA boards. He served as 1977–1979 director of the IEEE Central Indiana Section.

Donald Leo Dietmeyer

Professor

Life Fellow, 93; died 13 February

Dietmeyer was a professor of electrical and computer engineering for 40 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He developed a lifelong interest in radio and electronics at high school in Wausau, Wisc., and earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1959 from the University of Wisconsin. He’d joined the university’s electrical engineering faculty as a professor in 1958 while pursuing his doctorate.

Dietmeyer’s research focused on computer-aided design in the areas of switching theory, hardware description languages, and the decomposition of Boolean functions. His research contributed to the development of automation tools for integrated circuit design.

He worked with Jim Duley, a former student, to pioneer the use of the digital system design language. He wrote the textbook Logic Design of Digital Systems, published in 1978.

In the early 1980s, Dietmeyer worked with researchers to develop ConLan, a language-construction method that combined hardware description languages in one underlying framework.

He served as associate dean of the University of Wisconsin’s electrical and computer engineering department from 1983 to 1995. In 1998 he retired and was named professor emeritus.

AI inference company Baseten has acquired Blaxel, a startup that builds secure execution environments, or sandboxes, for AI agents. Baseten co-founder and chief technology officer Amir Haghighat told Axios Pro about the deal, which the outlet reported first on Thursday. Baseten later announced the acquisition.

Axios describes Blaxel as a San Francisco startup. The announcement did not disclose financial terms.

What Blaxel builds

Blaxel builds sandboxes based on microVMs, small isolated virtual machines. Each agent gets its own. According to the release, the sandboxes spin up and resume up to five times faster than competing products.

In a joint blog post, the companies said a Blaxel sandbox can suspend and resume in 25 milliseconds. It can also sit idle for months at close to zero cost.

Its other products include Agent Drive, a distributed filesystem that agents can share, and a networking layer that connects agents to tools, MCP servers, APIs and other agents. The team has been building the platform for more than 18 months, the post said.

What changes for customers

According to the post, Blaxel will continue to operate and its product does not change. Baseten will add new products based on Blaxel’s technology, starting with sandboxes.

In the near term, Blaxel’s technology expands Baseten’s support for code execution, tool use and session persistence, the release said. Over time, Baseten plans to integrate it with its inference, storage, observability and enterprise infrastructure.

“Agents need models, but they also need a secure environment to run in that’s fast, scalable, and reliable enough for production,” Haghighat said in the release.

Paul Sinaï, Blaxel’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “We started Blaxel because agents need environments designed to work alongside the models powering them.”

Baseten’s run of deals

Baseten, founded in 2019, has raised more than $2bn. In June, TNW reported that it raised $1.5bn at up to $13bn. The release puts the valuation of that Series F round at $13bn.

In December 2025, Baseten acquired Parsed, a reinforcement learning startup. Its customers include Abridge, Clay, Cursor, Lovable, Mercor and OpenEvidence, according to the company.