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Federal prosecutors have charged Nathan Young, 39, and David Young, 71, with running a sober-living network that allegedly supplied illegal drugs and kickbacks to keep addicts in treatment solely to bill insurers. The Justice Department says the scheme generated more than $1.6 billion in claims and over $210 million in payouts between 2020 and 2026, with patients discarded once their coverage was exhausted.
The IEEE Computer Society announced that Terry Benzel, its current vice president, has been elected president-elect for 2027, meaning she will serve as the organization's president in 2028. Benzel is managing director of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California and an IEEE Fellow.
Recent storm-driven waves fueled by Hurricane Marie eroded parts of the Southern California coastline near the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear plant, reigniting concerns about the safety of nearby spent fuel storage. The 3.6 million pounds of radioactive waste sit in concrete canisters about 100 feet from a seawall that protects the site, and Southern California Edison has pledged to relocate the waste to higher ground if erosion modeling warrants it. Experts say near-term risk is low, but note the waste will remain on-site indefinitely as no permanent disposal solution exists.
USC PhD student Zhivar Sourati and colleagues published a March paper arguing that widespread reliance on large language models is homogenizing writing, creativity, and even cultural values, drawing a parallel to 'McDonaldization' of society. Unlike past information technologies, they argue, generative AI actively reshapes content rather than simply distributing it, flattening stylistic diversity across users. Duke computer scientist Emily Wenger adds that this convergence could pose an existential risk by encouraging groupthink and eroding independent judgment.
Jernej Barbič, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California, has received a 2025 technical achievement Academy Award for creating Ziva VFX, software that simulates realistic muscle, fat and skin for digital humans and creatures. The technology, launched in 2016 through his startup Ziva Dynamics and later acquired by Unity Technologies in 2021, has appeared in more than 60 films including Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.