Wastewater and environmental surveillance (WES) – the analysis of water and environmental samples like sewage to enable early, non-invasive tracking of biological and chemical markers across a population – is a powerful and increasingly common public health tool. When paired with clinical data, it offers a real-time window into community health that can inform faster, more targeted responses to infectious disease. However, its use in carceral settings like jails and prisons remains ethically underexamined.

In a brief analytic essay in the American Journal of Public Health, a team comprised of Boston University and University of Louisville researchers found that carceral WES is neither fully covered by human subjects protections nor fully accountable to traditional public health guidelines, producing a fragmented regulatory landscape in which some safeguards impede informed and effective research while others fail to prevent misuse or harm to incarcerated individuals and surrounding communities.

Insilico Medicine ("Insilico", HKEX: 3696), a clinical-stage drug discovery company powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI), announced that it will be included in MSCI Global Small Cap Indexes compiled by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI). The change will take effect as of the close of August 31, 2026.

Researchers searching for genetic clues to the growing problem of malaria drug resistance identified new mutations associated with the parasite’s decreased susceptibility to current treatment. By sequencing the whole genomes of malaria parasites from the blood of hundreds of infected people in Uganda, a team of researchers lead by scientists at Brown University found that a cluster of genetic variants in some parasites showed significantly decreased susceptibilities to the drugs most commonly used to treat malaria in Africa and the United States. The findings of the federally funded study were published in Nature Medicine.