Author: openjargon

• Conceivable Life Sciences is building robots and AI models to automate crucial parts of IVF.
• The robots, though in the prototype stage, can suck sperm into needles and place them into eggs.
• The cofounders say automation will challenge an industry rife with arbitrary decision-making.

Normally, in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, is a manual affair.

A doctor performs a small surgery, places the patient's eggs in a test tube, and passes the tube through a little window to a lab, where a scientist combines them with sperm.

At a small clinic in Guadalajara, Mexico, the process is radically different. Once that test tube makes it through the window, it's handed over to robots backed by a vast AI infrastructure. There, a startup called Conceivable Life Sciences is automating the IVF lab from start to finish. The scientists kick back and supervise.

Conceivable imagines its IVF labs all around the world, each containing lines of shiny white boxes working together in untouched harmony. For now, its work is limited to small studies and robotic prototypes. But the prototypes are working, according to Conceivable's data, interviews, and videos shared with Business Insider.

At the push of a button or two, Conceivable's robots immobilize sperm with lasers; suck them into needles; insert them into eggs they've plucked from bloody fluid; and, after incubation, give the resulting embryos free rides on a microscopic tennis racket into vials of liquid nitrogen, freezing them faster than you can blink.

Eleven women so far have become pregnant with help from one or more of these Conceivable robots.

Along the way, the company says it has achieved several breakthroughs.

In recent months, Conceivable became the first company to robotically perform intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI or "icksee"), the delicate process by which a sperm is placed inside an egg, according to Conceivable and video footage shared with BI.

In December, the famed embryologist Jacques Cohen, Conceivable's chief scientific officer, steered the robots through ICSI with his keyboard and mouse. The procedure was in Mexico; Cohen was in New York City sitting at his desk.

The embryo was transferred on February 23, leading to a pregnancy.

"We're doing transcontinental ICSIs all the time now, making them routine," Joshua Abram, Conceivable's co-CEO and cofounder, told BI in an interview. "We're the first company in the world to have ever done this."

The robots can now perform ICSI autonomously, another "world's first," according to Abram.

"No baby, no fee"

Today, IVF demand is surging, despite the treatment being slow, uncertain, and expensive. Millions of women live in places without infertility centers, and the clinical experts who run them are in short supply. Plus, it's punitively expensive. In the US, IVF costs as much as a new car and usually has to be repeated before it works. For many patients, this can mean borrowing heavily, if they're lucky enough to have a good credit score.

In other parts of the economy, robots have taken on a range of assignments, from moving product in Amazon warehouses to helping surgeons perform minimally invasive surgeries. That's made goods and services more available and cheaper.

Conceivable, which has raised $20 million in venture capital, is betting that robots are ready for IVF, too. Automation, the cofounders argue, will offer more dexterity in handling microscopic cells than shaky human hands fumbling with pipettes. Plus, it should collapse costs; the startup plans to charge most patients $15,000 for IVF, and only when it works, potentially saving patients tens of thousands of dollars.

"No baby, no fee," Abram said.

In interviews with BI, experts in the field were skeptical of Conceivable's plans, but not dismissive. Many like Dr. Lora Shahine, a fertility physician based in Seattle, believe automation could help the supply-demand mismatch that constrains care for a prevalent disease.

"But it must be done without compromising success rates and patient care," she said.

IVF's tole

Fertility care as it stands today can be just as terrifying as the notion of babies created with robots.

In 2014, Emma wasn't looking to have kids. But a blood test showed she had limited time. She felt pushed into IVF, during which her relationship buckled and broke from the strain of a miscarriage.

Emma had to make an arbitrary choice, based on not-enough information, from a dizzying cast of providers, she told BI. Implant the eggs now? Or save them for later? When is later? What if you meet someone else?

"Then, do you want to save the eggs so they can fertilize them, or do you want to have the knowledge that you have viable embryos?" Emma said of her thinking at the time. (She asked to be referred to by a different name to keep her health history private. BI knows her identity).

In 2016, Emma froze her eggs and walked away from the unwanted role of being a project manager of her own body.

At the time, she was working for Abram and Alan Murray, his longtime business partner. One day, the three of them got to talking about opportunities for startups in the healthcare industry.

"And then I remember saying, 'Well, here's a sector you might want to consider,'" Emma said.

"Milk jugs" and a Catholic Eucharist

Troubled by her experience, Abram and Murray started visiting IVF labs in 2017. The lack of automation astounded them.

In their travels, "milk jugs" (low-tech cryogenic storage tanks), sticky notes, and sharpie markers were being used to locate, label, and store eggs and embryos, they told BI. People with extensive vocational training — embryologists who oversee the lab portion of IVF — were spending much of their time squishing little drops out of pipettes.

On one visit to a premier lab, the scene was reminiscent of a Catholic Eucharist: Everyone was holding specimens with such delicacy while trying not to bump into each other.

"We kept seeing those milk jugs pop up. Milk jugs underneath desks, milk jugs underneath stairways, milk jugs in the hallways, milk jugs in rooms," Murray said. "We kept looking for the wires. How are they connected?"

"Little drop, little drop, little drop," he added. "Handwriting on the back of Petri dishes."

In 2018, they founded TMRW Life Sciences, which makes a kind of futuristic ATM machine that stores eggs and embryos more securely. The following year, Abram and Murray set their sights on the rest of the IVF process.

There was a big push on the part of pharmaceutical and life sciences companies to automate labs. Robots were improving while research needs, such as using genetic insights to make new drugs, were getting more complicated.

Curious about how it all worked, the pair toured the San Francisco lab of biotech company Invitae, where it processes DNA samples. The 50,000-square-foot facility was stuffed with robots. Conveyor belts moved trays of test tubes. Robots extracted droplets from the tubes and put them onto chips that rode into DNA-ciphering machines. There were only about three people helping move the process along, Murray recalled.

"That was a partial aha moment," he said. "There's a whole other world outside of IVF that's figured out how to use robotics."

After the trip, Murray attended lab-automation trade shows, walking from booth to booth for days at a time. When a piece of equipment had a potential use in fertility care, he wrote it down — eventually forming a kind of shopping list for the IVF lab of the future.

From prayer to AI

Half a continent away, a physician was growing frustrated by the constraints of his job.

Dr. Alejandro Chávez-Badiola became a reproductive endocrinology and infertility (REI) doctor, the kind that oversees IVF, because he was drawn to the idea of helping families reach their happiest moments. Every time he performed an embryo transfer, he prayed: "Let it be a good person."

After training in the UK, he opened his first clinic in Guadalajara, hoping to make an impact in his hometown.

When things went wrong, he wanted to know why. But some of the most crucial decisions in IVF occurred beyond the wall separating his clinic from the lab. He had a trustworthy team of embryologists, but US clinics kept poaching them, and the tools at their disposal were limited.

One year, when one of the physician's healthier, younger patients didn't get pregnant after two IVF cycles, he called a meeting with staff to ask about the quality of her eggs and embryos. To his frustration, they said they were "beautiful."

"Guys, come on," Chávez-Badiola replied. "The patient is not getting pregnant."

With the goal of making moments like this more scientific, the young doctor started working with professors, mathematicians, and engineers to put artificial intelligence to use in IVF.

They trained one AI model to rank sperm based on insights from real patient data. During fertilization, his embryologists usually picked out good-enough-looking swimmers from the Petri dish that were close to the needle. Now, the computer told them which ones to select based on movement patterns associated with the creation of embryos.

But he was running into another problem.

It didn't matter if Chávez-Badiola's AI could find the best sperm if a human couldn't reliably catch it. A typical droplet contains thousands of sperm. The right one could swim out of view of the microscope, or get squished.

The physician needed robotic assistance.

A meeting of the minds

Thanks to COVID-19, Chávez-Badiola got his chance.

In March 2020, when the pandemic ended travel to the US, Chávez-Badiola found himself stranded in London with Murray and Abram. Having run into each other before in IVF circles, they met at the bar of the Langham Hotel, where the conversation turned to the sorry state of the fertility industry.

They discussed how aging maternal populations, declining sperm counts, and other factors had increased demand for IVF. But the supply side had not responded. There are just north of 1,000 REIs in the US; competition for embryologists is fierce; and their existing manual process is slow. A standard IVF operation may struggle to retrieve eggs from 5-10 patients in a day, according to BI interviews with independent fertility doctors.

What's more, on average, women have to undergo two or three IVF cycles to get pregnant. But AI and automation, which could hypothetically improve success rates, aren't prominent. In a typical clinic, embryos are removed from the incubator in batches according to human schedules, not when best suits the individual embryos; robotics could change that.

The Langham meeting kicked off a two-year conversation in which Abram, Murray, and Chávez-Badiola rethought IVF from the ground-up, steadily convincing themselves that automation on a grand scale was possible. In 2022, emboldened by robotics and AI gains in other industries, they founded Conceivable to prove it.

Inspiration from chip manufacturing and Tesla

The task at hand was building robots and AI capable of handling the five stages of an IVF lab: egg preparation, sperm selection, fertilization, incubation, and freezing.

For the hardware, Conceivable turned to the microscopic worlds of chip manufacturing and lab automation, buying motors that allow its roughly 20 robots to move by increments as small as five millionths of a millimeter, plus sensors and tiny tools.

For the software, Conceivable took inspiration from the likes of Tesla. Its core "object-recognition" AI systems are the same used in self-driving cars, but trained on images of sperm and eggs instead of stop-signs and pedestrians. They tell the robots where to move and how far, based on data from microscopes, 30 times a second.

"It doesn't matter if you're taking a picture of the highway from the front of a car or an egg through the lens of a microscope," Brian Bixon, Conceivable's head of product, told BI. "The first-principle thinking is the same."

For a while, the robots practiced on hamster and rabbit eggs in Conceivable's office in Guadalajara. Then engineers gradually introduced them into Chávez-Badiola's clinic six blocks down the street for a clinical study. Fifty hopeful patients with infertility, whose care is overseen by other doctors, volunteered.

The study has mostly tested the robots working in isolated IVF processes, including, lately, ICSI. The machines originally tackled ICSI in about 20 steps, each allowing for interventions. "We'd stop, look, hit the next go button, stop, look," Murray explained.

Since December, the team has been carefully linking the steps together, with the goal of full robotic autonomy.

Automating conception

On March 6, Conceivable had a rocket-launch moment.

That morning, eggs from three patients were retrieved and passed through the little window between the clinic and the lab in Guadalajara. The tube of fluid was poured into a dish, which Conceivable's AI system scanned for eggs with a technology that renders images in 3-D.

In the afternoon, half the eggs went to human embryologists. The other half went to Conceivable's setup, and the first egg was placed, along with a droplet of sperm, on a 2×2 inch square.

The square was situated underneath two needles, each held by a petite, four-axis robot. One handled the sperm; the other, the egg.

With the push of a green button on a touchscreen, the robots went about automating conception.

In the lab, there were two engineers and two embryologists. Video footage was simulcast to more experts, who whispered commentary like golf announcers, and Conceivable employees around the world, who huddled around screens. It felt like a "rocket launch," recalled Murray, who traveled to Guadalajara for the occasion.

First came sperm selection. An AI-guided laser underneath the square was supposed to zap the best one. In this case, it shot the swimmer "a little toward the midsection," Murray said. Oops. They went with a lucky runner-up.

Once the second sperm was immobilized, one of the robots sucked it inside a needle, tail-first.

Next, the other robot moved its needle close to the egg and used suction to hold it in place.

The AI-guided laser shot a wedge out of the egg's outermost membrane to clear an easier path for the sperm. Once the sperm needle was hovering right at the egg's midpoint, the first robot used "fluid dynamics" and other technical know-how to position the sperm at the very tip, Murray said.

"Are you ready to inject?" the computer asked the humans.

The first "embryoneer"

The answer was yes. So Gerardo Mendizabal-Ruiz, a top Conceivable engineer and VP, pushed the green button while everyone held their breath. (Colleagues now call him the first "embryoneer.")

An electrical signal vibrated a crystal motor at the end of the needle holding the sperm, which helped a tiny blade more easily cut into the egg's membrane. The needle went in, but not too far: Six algorithms prevented it from piercing the egg's other side.

Then, using a little puff of air, the robot discharged the sperm and retracted.

Applause erupted over Zoom and around Murray, who watched the broadcast with Conceivable engineers down the street.

Chávez-Badiola felt the tension dissipate, comparing the moment to watching his oldest son walk for the first time.

Conceivable repeated the process until it created five would-be embryos, from 12 eggs in total, slightly outperforming the human embryologists, Murray and Bixon said.

One of the embryos led to a successful pregnancy for a patient in April. Carla Patricia Barragan Álvarez, a Conceivable biologist, taped a picture of it to a whiteboard, where she keeps a personal tally of Conceivable pregnancies, like relatives on a fridge.

"Fully automatic," the description reads.

A new test

Conceivable has a long road ahead.

In Guadalajara, the new instruments have improved enough to perform above industry standards, according to the startup. But they've largely not been put to the test as a full ensemble.

This September, Conceivable plans to launch another clinical study in Mexico City, enrolling 250 patients from a nearby hospital. Similar to the Guadalajara effort, half their eggs will go through a conventional lab, while the other half go to Conceivable robots. This time, though, the robots will automate every IVF process for every specimen, end-to-end.

Conceivable will mainly be looking for how many embryos it can produce from 10 eggs. The higher the ratio, the fewer cycles of IVF are required for patients. The startup intends to publish the results.

Plugging into the system

Still, proving the technology is only step one. In healthcare, a greater challenge for companies can be plugging into the existing system.

In the short term, Conceivable plans to work with existing IVF providers to provide an alternative to their labs. With private-equity buying up IVF clinics, Conceivable will make a bid to help these investors boost growth.

"We thought the large PE-backed incumbents would be hostile," Abram said. "In fact, they're coming to us and asking to partner."

Longer-term, Conceivable plans to run independent labs in partnership with OBGYNs, who would oversee patient care leading up to the egg retrieval and lab work. REIs employed by Conceivable would oversee these cases, intervene when needed, and perform the surgeries.

Hot-button issue

OBGYNs aren't trained in the bulk of fertility care. Involving them more is a hot-button issue in the REI community, according to Dr. Eduardo Hariton, a fertility physician and executive.

Still, REIs aren't meeting demand. The community, therefore, should take the lead on designing frameworks for this kind of collaboration before the market beats them to it, he said.

"We need to have very clear guidelines about what the scope of practice is," Hariton told BI.

As for regulatory hurdles, Conceivable's path might be more straightforward.

The fertility industry is more self-policed than other areas of healthcare. Since the startup doesn't aim to sell equipment for other people to use, it would largely fall under the same regulatory scheme as lab companies LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics, Murray said.

If all goes to plan, Conceivable thinks it could be running labs as soon as 2025.

• Ukraine reported no shortages of artillery shells for the first time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
• Ukrainian forces have been suffering from severe shortages of shells in recent months.
• Ukraine has been unable to fire more than 2,000 artillery shells a day, its defense minister said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that Ukraine's forces had reported no shortages of artillery shells for the first time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Kyiv Independent reported.

"For the first time during the war, none of the brigades complained that there were no artillery shells," Zelenskyy said on May 16.

According to reports, the refreshed artillery is now helping to blunt Russian advances around Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city.

In sharp contrast to battles in January-April, during which the US halted all military assistance to Ukraine, Ukrainian soldier and milblogger Stanislav Osman, author of the popular Hovoryat Snaiper channel, observed that Russian forces attacking in the Kharkiv sector have been facing punishing artillery fire and even attack helicopter strikes, The Kyiv Post reported.

The shell famine

Ukraine's armed forces have faced severe artillery shortages in recent months, partly due to a US military aid package being stalled in Congress.

Ukraine's defense minister, Rustem Umerov, wrote in a letter to EU counterparts in February that the shortages had left Ukraine unable to fire more than 2,000 artillery shells a day, roughly one-third of Russia's capacity.

Ukraine has also lost significant territory in eastern regions since late 2023, and it has blamed munitions shortages on major losses, such as the city of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region.

Despite President Zelenskyy's upbeat messaging this week, a frontline report by BBC News this week appeared to suggest shells could still be in short supply for some units.

Petr Pavel, the president of the Czech Republic, told reporters in March that eighteen countries are participating in the initiative to fund the purchases.

The release of $61 billion in US aid in April also boosted Ukraine's hard-pressed forces battling the Russian invasion.The release of $61 billion in US aid in April was also a boost to Ukraine's hard-pressed forces battling the Russian invasion.

Despite this, Russian artillery will likely outmatch Ukraine's for most of 2024, officials and analysts told Foreign Policy.

Russia can produce around 250,000 artillery munitions a month — or around 3 million a year, CNN reported, citing NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production.

Russian forces are now focused on conducting an offensive on the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, which Russian President Vladimir Putin claims is part of an attempt to create a "buffer zone" to protect Russian border areas from Ukrainian attacks.

Gen. Christopher Cavoli said earlier this week that Russia likely does "not have sufficient forces to achieve a 'strategic breakthrough' in Ukraine," however, per the Institute for the Study of War think tank.

He added that he expected Ukrainian forces would "hold the line" near Kharkiv City.

• Eric Newland, 56, lives in New Braunfels, Texas, one of America's fastest-growing cities.
• The city between Austin and San Antonio wins over movers with relatively affordable homes, he said.
• The transplants lead to benefits, like higher wages, and drawbacks, like increased traffic, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Eric Newland, a 56-year-old retired Medical Service Corps officer who is now a real-estate agent in New Braunfels, Texas. Census data shows that New Braunfels' population has surged by more than 15% since 2020, making it one of the fastest-growing cities in the US. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2005, I moved to New Braunfels while going through my master's program at Fort Sam Houston. Since then, I've lived here off and on during my military career.

I've spent time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, and, most recently, Germany. In 2020, I moved back to New Braunfels.

The city is about 32 miles northeast of San Antonio and roughly 40 miles southwest of Austin, within the Texas Triangle." This area, primarily along Interstate 10 and Interstate 35, spans between Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston, and has seen the bulk of the state's population growth.

New Braunfels is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country.

With many people relocating here from various locations, there have been a lot of vibrant changes.

The city is growing but retaining its identity

Despite its growth, the city maintains its small-town charm, with quaint shops and restaurants. In the heart of downtown, there's a central plaza that has smoke trees and a pavilion where people often gather to watch local bands perform.

Further away from the downtown area, there are many new neighborhoods. Moving towards San Antonio and Austin, the city begins to feel like a larger town with several strip malls and new homes.

New Braunfels has a mix of Mexican and German cultures. I have lived in Germany three separate times, and the closest feeling to that is probably here in New Braunfels.

The city was founded by German settlers and many businesses like to maintain that theme. For example, if you're at an Autohaus, it would be spelled with an "h-a-u-s" instead of "h-o-u-s-e." We even have an old German bakery called Naegelin's.

Every year in November, the city hosts Wurstfest, the largest German fest in the United States. New Braunfels is also home to Schlitterbahn, a German water park that is the largest in the country.

Californians are flocking to New Braunfels

I became a real-estate agent a few years ago when I retired from the Army. I began my training in 2020 and got my license in 2021.

New Braunfels has always been growing, but since then, there has been a significant increase in interest in the area. There's a lot of construction going on, and big housing developments and new businesses just keep popping up everywhere.

There's been a mass migration of people from California moving to New Braunfels.

In fact, a common theme among Realtors in the area is hearing, "I have another client from California."

While I can only speak for a handful of clients I've talked to, it seems that many of the movers coming here have been priced out of California and believe their money goes further in Texas.

For instance, a friend of mine from San Diego said that the cost of living became too expensive relative to income levels, and that Texas offered them more affordability on everyday expenses.

Similarly, another person I know sold their Los Angeles home, purchased a house here in New Braunfels, and used the profit to start a business. Their move even encouraged some of their family members to relocate here.

There have been some growing pains

With more people moving here, the real-estate market has changed. Home prices have risen significantly compared to the 19 years that I've been associated with this area.

When I first moved here in 2005, I bought a three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home for $130,000. We sold it for $144,000 in 2008, and then purchased another home for $171,000, sold it in 2017 for $194,000.

In 2019, my wife and I purchased a 2,400-square-foot home for $370,000. Today, I'd estimate its value to be somewhere in the mid-500s, potentially up to $600,000.

As a retired veteran with disability benefits, I am exempt from paying property tax. However, I am aware that property taxes in this area have increased. I believe one of my neighbors saw theirs increase from around $1,500 to $1,600 a year.

When you have growth, it does change the fabric of the area.

An upside is that there have been a lot of new businesses, more income to the city, and even live music. A downside has been that there's definitely more traffic.

Even still, I think our city leaders have done the best they can to accommodate our larger population.

• Ex-Google recruiter Nolan Church explains why candidates might get ghosted after interviews.
• Recruiters often forget, shift priorities, or are unaware of internal changes affecting hiring.
• Nolan says a strategic follow-up strategy can help, but moving on if unresponsive is crucial.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nolan Church, a 35-year-old former recruiter for Google and Doordash from Salt Lake City. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Job interviews can be exciting, especially after applying for a wide variety of positions, but the process can quickly become stressful when a candidate doesn't hear back from the recruiter right away.

As a former recruiter at Google and the ex-head of talent at DoorDash, I've seen my fair share of candidates get ghosted by jobs they've interviewed for, and I've definitely ghosted candidates, too, but never intentionally.

Still, ghosting does happen. Before assuming it has intentionally happened to you, here are four scenarios to consider. Also, here's how to follow up with a recruiter properly and when to move on.

1. Recruiters forget

When candidates interview for a role and think, "I really want this job, but I'm not hearing back," I advise them to email the recruiter. Then, if they don't hear back within 24 to 48 hours, send another email.

Candidates often make assumptions about why they aren't hearing back on jobs they've applied for, but, in many cases, the recruiter just got really busy.

Right now, recruiters are expected to do more with fewer resources. This means they're hiring more, working more, and handling more candidates. With everything going on, recruiters often get buried in tasks and forget. Try to give recruiters the benefit of the doubt and assume good intentions first. But when needed, follow up.

One way to follow up with a recruiter is to send them a thank-you email within 24 hours after the interview.

You could try something like:

Email #1: Hey [recruiter/hiring manager name] —

Thank you for coordinating the on-site interviews today. The caliber of the team is impressive. I'm excited about the role and opportunity for impact.

When can I expect to hear back on next steps? Let me know if you need anything in the interim.

Your email should thank them for setting up the interview, and it should give your impressions about the team and role. Then, let them know you're excited about the company and team and ask for the next steps and a timeline.

If the recruiter responds, maintain contact and respond quickly to their messages.

2. Recruiters shift priorities

Recruiters are constantly buried with tasks, which requires them to focus on the business's top priorities. Even though a candidate might feel excited and think they're about to receive an offer, something else might emerge, diverting the recruiter's attention.

For example, perhaps a new role has just opened, or maybe an internal matter requires immediate attention. Recruiters should strive to treat every candidate as a top priority, but sometimes, internal priorities do take precedence.

If you feel ghosted after sending your thank you note, you could try sending this other email 48 hours after the first email:

Email #2 Hey [recruiter/hiring manager name] — Is there any feedback you can pass along from the team?

This gives a gentle nudge.

3. Something has changed within the business

Sometimes, business circumstances change, including layoffs and hiring freezes, and unfortunately, recruiters aren't always informed first. The tech industry is experiencing a significant wave of layoffs, for example.

When this happens, open roles are often the first to be closed. As a result, there's usually a delay in informing recruiters about these changes, as decisions are made at the management level and require thorough consideration before being communicated.

This leaves recruiters uncertain about how to update candidates on the situation. If you still have yet to hear back, wait 72 hours from the time you sent your second email, and then send:

Email #3: Hey [recruiter/hiring manager name] — Is everything OK?

This is a great strategy because it enables the candidate to push for an answer while being perceived as empathetic and caring. I love this one, personally.

4. Recruiters are talking to other candidates

If a candidate gets ghosted early in the hiring process, the recruiter is most likely talking to other candidates. But if it's later in the process, especially if the recruiter has indicated an offer and the candidate hasn't heard back, it's much less likely to be the case. Still, there's no way of knowing, so following up is still your best bet.

If you still haven't heard anything, it's time to move on to email four, the last email in the sequence. Again, wait 72 hours, and send something like:

Email #4: Hey [recruiter/hiring manager name] — Checking in one last time. Can you pass along any feedback from the team?

If they don't respond to this fourth email, it's safe to assume you've been ghosted.

A solid follow-up strategy is the antidote to ghosting, but nothing is 100% guaranteed

Unfortunately, in today's culture, ghosting does happen, but it doesn't mean it's intentionally happening to you. After all, recruiters are human, and they get busy. But if you've followed up and you haven't heard back, it's time to move on.

Take comfort in knowing that if a company has truly ghosted you, it's a sign that you've dodged a bullet, and that's not a place you'd want to work anyway.

Whether a company moves forward with you or not, you deserve to hear back, and with the right company, you will.

If you're a recruiter or hiring manager and want to share your unique advice, email Manseen Logan at mlogan@businessinsider.com.

• 1st Sgt. Micah Symmonds is a jumpmaster for the Army's 11th Airborne Division in Alaska.
• Symmonds said he still gets nervous before jumps, but keeps an outward appearance of calm for his paratroopers.
• He's in his element once things get going though, but a lot goes into getting ready.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 1st Sgt. Micah Symmonds, a US Army jumpmaster in the 11th Airborne Division based in Alaska. It's been edited for length and clarity.

To be a jumpmaster, you need to be a good leader. Attention to detail and being able to exude calmness for your paratroopers before a mission is important, even if I'm still nervous in the preparation for it. Once the ball starts rolling though, I feel in my element.

I've had over 60 jumps, and I still cheese out over it every time. It's a huge adrenaline rush every time, and if you're not feeling that, then it's probably time to retire. There's a reason why so many people choose to be in an airborne division for their entire career.

I've been able to jump into Guam, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines. I've also been stationed in Kuwait and have gone around the Middle East. Especially being in the 11th Airborne Division, we have a very unique geographical position, so we're able to reach a lot of places in the Indo-Pacific region.

Jumping in the freezing cold

Jumping in the Arctic, the biggest change is what you're wearing on your body depending on the temperature. It's very different than jumping into Thailand, for example.

The coldest I've ever jumped in was -50 degrees Fahrenheit. I was wearing a balaclava, goggles, gloves, and vapor barrier boots on that jump. But I wasn't wearing any sort of insulating clothing on my body because inside the aircraft, the temperature is about 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't want to sweat as I exit in that environment, so I keep my insulating layers in my rucksack.

Packing, especially of insulating layers, is the huge difference between our summer and winter jumps. And we're packing a lot of water and water purification materials, or a stove and fuel to melt snow.

The hardest part is balancing what soldier gear you need with what kind of life-saving gear you need. You want your paratroopers to be safe and have all the stuff to make them comfortable in the cold weather, but having a rucksack in excess of 100 pounds isn't sustainable to jump and do a mission that can last weeks or months.

Having to play that balancing game between what is inside your rucksack and on your person versus what can be delivered later is a very fun and challenging game in the Arctic.

Can't miss anything that would injure a jumper

When you are training to become a jumpmaster, there is a very high standard for what you need to do at the schoolhouse.

Inspecting paratroopers before a jump — when you're meticulously going item by item on each jumper and checking for each item's serviceability and that everything is in the correct configuration to exit the aircraft — is a pretty daunting task. You can't miss any major deficiencies that would cause injury to a jumper on that.

You also have to learn all of the equipment nomenclature. Each piece has its own special Army name that usually doesn't make sense in regular English, but you just have to learn it and know what it means.

So, for example, instead of saying something like helmet pad, it would be referred to as a front trapezoid pad, which refers to a very specific piece of equipment. Another is a rubber band, which is called a retainer band.

Specific words have specific meanings. If I just ask for a rubber band, I could be asking for any sort of thing. If I ask for a retainer band, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm getting this specific piece of equipment that everyone in the operations knows. If I ask for a helmet pad, there are about three or four different shapes you could get depending on the helmet you're using.

It is all about having it down and knowing exactly what you need in the heat of the moment, and that can be vital in terms of timing and communication.

Three opportunities to make the jump

Jumping has that extra thrill, and there's a special camaraderie that comes with being in an airborne unit. And then becoming a jumpmaster, you're a leader in that organization, you really need to show the want and drive.

Missions are sort of like a leveling event where it doesn't matter who you are. We're all paratroopers, and we're doing our jobs, helping each other rig and checking for safety for the person in front of you and trusting the person behind you to check your chute.

On each jump, you're generally exiting from both parachute doors of an aircraft, and each door will have a jumpmaster. Once the green light comes on, meaning that we're safe to exit paratroopers, most people click right into their training and know what they're doing. They've prepped for this. They're ready to go.

Each trooper gets three opportunities to go and if they don't go, for whatever reason, they're getting removed from the door and told not to touch their equipment. They'll fly back, and then a jumpmaster who wasn't a part of the team will look at their equipment and chute thoroughly for a technical inspection.

Basically, we want to make sure we're giving the paratrooper every benefit of the doubt that they didn't just get scared before the jump but maybe found something wrong in their equipment.

If nothing is wrong, it goes up a chain of command to make a determination whether that trooper should do some remedial training or a larger discussion about the mission and what's expected of them. This is all exceedingly rare, but there is a plan if it does come up.

Hitting the ground the right way

Paratroopers go through a lot of training, and then before a mission, we rehearse the jump, how they're going to exit the aircraft, what they need to do while they're in the air, and how to land properly.

Once you load onto the aircraft, you can wait to jump anywhere from 20 minutes if it's at your local station to 18 hours if you're traveling far. You wait for the 20-minute call, then the 10-minute call, and you stand up and hook up. Depending on the aircraft, there can be different configurations, but there's always going to be an anchor line cable, which is just a thick metal cable that runs down the entire body of the aircraft.

And once you jump, there's obviously a correct time to pull the parachute and best ways to land, which is with your feet and knees together, slightly bent, and basically you want to hit the ground with the balls of your feet and just kind of roll along, trying to let the energy dissipate.

Landing in the Arctic is a gamble. Even if you're coming down in what you think is a blanket of light snow, it could be hard ice and it's almost like hitting concrete. There are challenges in other places as well though. In Thailand or Australia, for example, you could have a nice sandy landing or sand that's sun-baked and hard. So it's really hit-and-miss.

The training for landing is extremely important because you need to be able to land regardless of the environment, regardless of what's happening, and still be able to go and achieve whatever the objective is at the time.

• Liv Arnold met her now-husband at work after they bonded over how much they hated their job.
• Even though they were dating other people, they started hanging out a lot after work. 
• Once they broke up with their partners, Liv started dating her now-husband.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Liv Arnold, a 29-year-old who met her husband at work. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Tim and I met 12 years ago when we were both working for one of Australia's "big four" banks. We were on the same team and sat next to each other. We bonded over the fact that we both really, really hated our job. We fantasized about quitting together.

Nevertheless, we both stayed on that team for a year before moving to other roles in the company. Our job was in the home loans team and we had the same manager. We hated it because we were expected to sell a product — home loans — to customers who couldn't necessarily afford it. It was the worst kind of sales job. But our shared sense of humor got each other through it.

We started as coworkers and then became friends, and now, we have been a couple for 11 years.

We bonded in and out of the office

We'd play silly games to distract ourselves from the awfulness. One was called "Would you rather?" We'd ask each other things like: "Would you rather eat a newborn baby or get a sexually transmitted disease?" It was really stupid stuff, but we'd giggle when we should've been working.

We had the same group of office friends, but they were flaky. We'd arrange dinners, movies, or after-work drinks. But one by one, they'd all bail at the last minute, leaving just Tim and me. Tim proved to me then that he was reliable; he'd show up when he said he would. And so would I.

Often it was just Tim and I alone — even though we both were in relationships at the time. I initially saw Tim just as a friend. I didn't have any romantic hopes or ideas for the first few months.

But then Tim's relationship ended. He discovered his partner was having an affair. Meanwhile, I was in a long-distance relationship. We saw each other about once a month, but neither of us wanted to move for the other. So we knew it wasn't right.

I didn't break up with my boyfriend till the following year. During that time, Tim and I were strictly just friends and colleagues; there was no affair.

Even though we sat next to each other, we'd started messaging each other on the instant messaging service at work so we could discreetly send each other jokes and make each other laugh, making the day go quicker. Colleagues started making jokes that maybe something was going on between us.

But then we started dating for real

Valentine's Day was around the corner. We'd all planned to go out, but, yet again, all our friends canceled as usual. So it was just Tim and me again. We were having drinks, and Tim got pretty drunk. I realized he had feelings.

We finally got together and continued to work on the same team, sitting next to each other for another four months. When we told our colleagues we were dating, they thought we were joking. We had to convince them we were serious.

The senior managers said they could see it coming a mile away and were really happy for us, even congratulating us.

We've been together ever since

Now, I'm a copywriter and author. I write romance novels about office romances. I guess I have some experience there. Tim thinks the charming heroes in my books are based on him, but they're not at all.

We've been together for 11 years and got married in 2016. Tim has a new job at an energy company. I don't worry about him meeting someone else at work, as we have a lot of trust.

Office romances are common. My advice is to go for it. As we worked for a big bank, I at least knew Tim had cleared a police check, extensive background checks, and a credit check. So I knew he wasn't a criminal or bankrupt. That's a good start if you ask me. You don't get those reassurances on Tinder.

• The IDF recovered three hostages' bodies from the Gaza Strip, including Shani Louk's.
• Hamas militants killed the hostages on October 7 during the Nova Music Festival massacre.
• Shani Louk became symbolic of October 7 after photos and video footage of her abduction went viral.

The Israel Defense Forces recovered three hostages' bodies from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military announced on Friday.

In a press briefing, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, IDF spokesperson, said, "It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that last night the Israel Defense Forces and ISA forces rescued the bodies of our hostages: Shani Louk, Amit Buskila and Yitzchak Gleren-ter."

Shani Louk became a symbol of Hamas' October 7 terrorist incursion into Israel after photos and video footage of her body being abducted went viral.

Hamas militants killed the three hostages on October 7 as they tried to flee the Nova Music Festival massacre, and their bodies were taken into Gaza.

Louk's father, Nissim Louk, spoke of the "relief" of finally having secured the body of his 22-year-old daughter.

"We were informed that soldiers of a commando team were found bodies, and the condition of the body was really good. It was in a relatively deep place in a deep tunnel and very cold," he said, per The Daily Mail.

The three bodies were transferred to medical professionals for forensic examination and identification, per Hagari's statement. After the procedure was complete, the IDF notified their families.

"We will leave no stone unturned," said Hagari. "We will do everything in our power to find our hostages and bring them home. We will not rest until we do."

The Associated Press freelancer Ali Mahmud won the Reynolds Journalism Institute's award for the team picture story of the year for an image showing Shani Louk's lifeless body in the back of a pickup truck and surrounded by Hamas militants.

Louk's father, Nissim Louk, defended the controversial decision to award the distressing image.

"It's good that the photo won the prize," he said. "This is one of the most important photos in the last 50 years. These are some of the photos that shape human memory."

More than 360 people were killed at the Nova festival near Kibbutz Re'im, and 40 were captured, per the Times of Israel.

On October 7 Hamas militants also seized 252 hostages in Israel; 129 hostages are still in captivity in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli broadcaster Kan.

Since October 7, Israel's retaliatory military campaign on Gaza has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. More than 10,000 are missing or trapped under rubble from the IDF's bombardments.

• Warren Buffett's warning that AI is like the atomic bomb is too negative, one expert says.
• Georgetown professor Babak Zafari compared it to nuclear energy given the benefits and risks.
• AI could free human workers to create things and solve problems instead of replacing them, he said.

Warren Buffett's grave warning about artificial intelligence is too pessimistic, according to one expert.

The elite investor compared AI to the atomic bomb during Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting this month. He cautioned that humanity was letting another genie out of its bottle.

"The power of the genie scares the hell out of me," Buffett said. "We may wish we'd never seen that genie."

Babak Zafari, an associate professor at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business, suggested nuclear power was a better analogy.

"Like nuclear energy, AI offers benefits for efficiency and advancements in many areas but it also brings substantial risks if not managed carefully," he told Business Insider.

Zafari, an expert in areas like machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) models, trumpeted AI's potential to transform work, creativity, and problem-solving.

Fraud 2.0

Buffett flagged fraud as a major concern during the Berkshire meeting, predicting AI would make scamming the "growth industry of all time."

He joked that one deepfake video of himself was so convincing that it nearly fooled him too: "I practically would have sent money to myself over in some crazy country."

Zafari agreed it was a "serious concern," especially as AI regulation is nascent and the pace and complexity of the tech make it tough for authorities to govern.

The statistics and analytics guru noted the internet stoked similar fears in the 1980s and 1990s. But a combination of imposing and enforcing rules, and teaching people how to protect themselves, allowed the tech to realize its potential and revolutionize global communication, information sharing, and commerce.

Zafari also discussed how AI could affect Buffett's planned successor as Berkshire CEO. Greg Abel will have to navigate the morass of privacy, accuracy, and ethical concerns, but harnessing the tech could boost efficiency and customer engagement in Berkshire's key insurance business, he said.

Moreover, the Georgetown professor tackled the pressing question of whether AI will replace human workers and spark mass layoffs. He suggested it might handle operational and data-driven tasks, freeing up human employees to creatively solve problems and work on innovative projects.

"This shift could lead to more fulfilling roles, potentially reshaping job descriptions to emphasize creative competencies and soft skills, thereby enhancing overall job satisfaction," he said.

Buffett is clearly wary of the dangers of unleashing truly intelligent technology into the world. But he may be underestimating the positive impacts that AI could have if it's managed responsibly.

• Two sitting House Republicans are dating each other — and one of them is getting a divorce.
• It's not the first time two lawmakers have dated while serving in Congress together.
• Here are 4 other congressional couples throughout the decades.

Two current members of the House Republican conference are dating each other.

On Friday, Rep. Beth Van Duyne of Texas confirmed to the Daily Mail that she's "happily engaged in a relationship" with Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia.

That's appeared to cause some trouble back home for McCormick: according to the Daily Mail, his wife filed for divorce earlier this month. Van Duyne — who's been divorced for over a decade — told the outlet that the congressman's marriage has "been over for quite some time as I understand it."

A spokesperson for Van Duyne declined to comment further, while a McCormick's spokesperson confirmed that the congressman and his wife have been "separated for quite some time." Neither disputed the Daily Mail's reporting.

The two mid-50s lawmakers, both of whom were only elected in recent years, aren't the first congressional couple.

In fact, there are four known cases of lawmakers dating one another — and ultimately marrying — while serving in Congress.

• When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, it caused enormous devastation.
• The eruption triggered mudslides, an explosion, and plumes of ash that did enormous damage.
• The death of 57 people led to large changes in how the US monitors and prepares for eruptions.

On May 18, 1980, Don Swanson placed a frenzied call to his wife to let her know that he was OK. "That's nice," she said, unconcerned. She had no idea her geologist husband had spent the morning in a plane flying by an erupting volcano.

At 8:32 a.m. Pacific Time that day, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake had shaken Mount St. Helens, leading to its eruption.

Its conical top collapsed into a horseshoe crater, sending rivers of mud and rock down its side and an enormous blast of heat and gas to the surrounding forest. Ash clouds wafted for over 930 miles, all the way to central Montana.

The devastating natural disaster killed 57 people and was the most destructive volcanic eruption in US history. It leveled trees, destroyed bridges, and caused more than $1 billion in damages.

Just a few years before the eruption, The New York Times described Mount St. Helens as a "relatively little known volcano 50 miles north of Portland, Oregon." Its eruption forever changed the way volcanologists, geologists, and other scientists perform their jobs.

To commemorate the anniversary of Mount St. Helens' eruption, here's a series of photos that captured the immense devastation it caused 44 years ago.