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The consequences of gutting American science [letter]
American science is under attack, especially the National Science Foundation, the agency responsible for funding the enormous advances that have placed our nation at the forefront of scientific breakthroughs and
Los Angeles businesses call tariff refunds a huge relief amid financial uncertainty
New initiative set to help small businesses grow in El Paso's Mission Trail
El Paso’s Mission Trail small businesses are getting an SBA-funded boost as Rep. Veronica Escobar, the County, Revby, and EFO Media launch hands-on marketing and technical assistance, from workshops to 1-on-1 support.
Hochul warns Washington is gutting New York healthcare
Gov. Hochul was in Fredonia Thursday to highlight $124 million in state funding for the new Northern Chautauqua Hospital.
Wiregrass farmers embrace new ag tech as HudsonAlpha program brings science to the field
Grant-funded program tests soil product and integrates drone imaging on four Wiregrass farms.
DOJ Declares 3 Race-Based STEM Programs Unconstitutional
The programs received about $104 million in federal funds this past year.
$5 billion science research bond clears California Assembly committee
The California Assembly Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to advance a UC-sponsored bond measure that would fund scientific research across the state. The California Science and Health Research Bond Act – or Senate Bill 895 – would create the California Foundation for Science and Health Research to award $5 billion in grants and loans to public and private research institutions, including UC campuses.
State announces $4.5M in funding for Alaska health projects
The 19 projects across the state will receive federal funding under the Rural Health Transformation Program.
UF Diabetes Institute expands care across Florida with support from Google
UF Diabetes Institute Director Todd Brusko, Ph.D., speaks at Thursday's event announcing funding from Google.org to boost diabetes care in Florida. (University…
Memory may not work how we thought, study of mice in artificial hibernation finds
A new study induced artificial hibernation in lab mice and may have revealed something fundamental about the nature of memory.
HHS Secretary Kennedy in Atwater to unveil new funding opportunities for health centers
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will visit Castle Family Health Centers in Atwater on Thursday.Secretary Kennedy
HHS Secretary Kennedy in Atwater to unveil new funding opportunities for health centers
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will visit Castle Family Health Centers in Atwater on Thursday.Secretary Kennedy
Join “Hoy por Colombia” with Chivas and Fundación Jorge Vergara
Chivas and Fundación Jorge Vergara believe in one thing: we are people who care for people, beyond borders. Following the tragedy that struck Chocó, where an earthquake left thousands of families af...
Journalism is key to combating bad practices in science
Watchdog science journalism has become a fundamental tool to counter scientific malpractice, such as publication fraud, abuse and political and corporate manipulation of science. A study by the Universitat ...
AI needs science’s search history
“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.
Common Health Coalition receives funding from OpenAI Foundation for new initiative
The Common Health Coalition announced Aug. 13 that it will receive $100 million in funding from the OpenAI Foundation for a new initiative using artificial intelligence-powered tools to help states and localities treat and cure various infections and diseases
What Americans Want Fixed in Health Care — and Who They Think Should Do It
What Americans Want Fixed in Health Care — and Who They Think Should Do It, New Commonwealth Fund Survey conducted by SSRS
A Public Health Approach: Using Alcohol Regulation Strategies to Reduce Online Sports Betting Harms in Higher Education
The O’Neill Institute believes that the law is a fundamental tool for solving critical health problems.
Proposed changes to NSF proposals
Share your feedback about concerning, proposed, updated changes to National Science Foundation funding guidance. The comment period will close on Aug. 24, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET.
Professor’s Alleged Role in China Programs Leads to Ban From US Funding
Tao Li failed to disclose participation in Chinese talent plans while helping to award US research money, probe concludes.
California Dem ripped for 'perverted agenda' ahead of fundraiser at risqué nightclub
Marni von Wilpert is hosting a congressional campaign fundraiser at a San Diego nightclub known for LGBTQ nightlife and adult-themed specials.
Rural health panel divvies $205M in federal funds for Wyoming healthcare
by Katie Klingsporn, WyoFile In its marathon meeting Tuesday, Wyoming’s new rural health advisory panel earmarked roughly $200 million in President
Rural health panel divvies $205M in federal funds for Wyoming healthcare
by Katie Klingsporn, WyoFile In its marathon meeting Tuesday, Wyoming’s new rural health advisory panel earmarked roughly $200 million in President
Dutchess County Awards $107K to Expand Youth Sports and Education Opportunities for 2026-27
Dutchess County Executive Sue Serino today announced eight municipal and nonprofit organizations have been awarded a combined $107,471 through New York State’s Youth Sports and Education Opportunity funding.
Trump administration finalizes rule to end federal support for gender-affirming care
Move blocking funds through Medicaid and Chip to make it harder for vulnerable children to get healthcare, experts say
KCK abruptly stops key health services. Advocates say it speaks to a bigger need
Local health advocates said they think area collaboration, increased funding could make a difference to health outcomes in Wyandotte.
Common Health Coalition secures $100M from OpenAI Foundation to boost hepatitis C cure rates
The OpenAI Foundation invested $100 million towards a new public health initiative with the Common Health Coalition aimed at helping states and local jurisdictions close discovery-to-delivery gaps, | Funding will support the deployment of AI-enabled tools to help identify patients who have fallen out of care, reduce administrative burden, strengthen care coordination and improve patient outcomes.
Generational wealth strategies are shifting as families and business owners eye Trump Accounts
Half of small business owners want their company's success to fund generational wealth, says Guardian Life research.
Nepal maternal and infant mortality increases following loss of US aid, according to health officials
The Associated Press has found that the decision by the United States to slash its foreign aid funding last year has increased pregnancy complications and deaths in Nepal.
A Surprise Credit After an Overseas Purchase: the Tariff Refunds Now Flowing Through Shippers
NEW YORK (AP) — If you bought something from an overseas vendor last year, it might be time to check your bank account. Shippers including FedEx and UPS that acted as customs brokers for imported packages and received tariff refunds from the U.S. government have started to pass on those refunds to ...
UCR researchers join DOE effort to speed scientific discovery
Two UC Riverside computer scientists are joining federally funded projects that use artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. Their work will focus on making quantum computing faster and more reliable and building smarter networks for sharing scientific data and research resources.
Is the World Bank Ready for a Bigger Role in Global Health Financing?
The global health architecture is facing a financing crisis. Various proposals have been put forward, including an IDA Health Window—a ring-fenced fund at the World Bank for countries to seek support for financing their health systems. But could the World Bank absorb and effectively channel a greater share of health financing in the future? As the largest and most influential multilateral development bank, it is an attractive option: it works directly with country governments, provides financing through national budgets, offers both loans and grants, and supports investments across sectors based on country demand.
Gov. Hochul puts $7M toward legal services for immigrant minors
The funding is meant to fill a hole left by the federal government that allowed a multimillion-dollar contract to lapse.
5 PE Companies to Watch in 2026 and Beyond
This is an exclusive BHB+ article. It's been a turbulent year for behavioral health and investors value certainty. While deals are still crossing the
$5K fee to fund universal child care leads businesses to sue Prince George's County
A lawsuit filed by a group of Prince George’s County business owners challenges a newly adopted county charge intended to help fund an ambitious child care init
Warnock Leads Inquiry into State Department Efforts to Seek Personal Health Data in Exchange for Aid to Developing Nations » Reverend Raphael Warnock
In a new letter, Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock presses the Trump Administration on their efforts to obtain personal health data from African countries in exchange for global health funding The Trump Administration has requested direct, real-time access to the health data of citizens in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Liberia, and several […]
7NEWS POLL | Should certain businesses, like liquor stores, pay fees to fund child care?
TELL US:Should certain businesses, like liquor or gun stores, pay annual fees to fund child care?
Two business-focused grants available in York County
HANOVER, Pa. (WHTM) — Main Street Hanover announced two grant opportunities that are currently open for application. According to Main Street Hanover, there are currently two grant funding op…
Science funding and unnecessary fear
Letters: Prof Stephen Blundell on the plight of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and Peter Forbes on bacteriophages and AI
Gates Foundation’s $540 million gift to science comes as the federal government pulls back on funding
The historic gift to a University of Washington research institute lands as the federal government retreats from funding science.
His wedding guests gave $6k to fund a health startup. Now it's won a $3 million prize
Dr. Raj Panjabi founded Last Mile Health to bring healthcare to people living in remote areas. The group is the 2026 recipient of the Conrad H. Hilton Humanitarian Prize.
His wedding guests gave $6k to fund a health startup. Now it's won a $3 million prize
Dr. Raj Panjabi founded Last Mile Health to bring healthcare to people living in remote areas. The group is the 2026 recipient of the Conrad H. Hilton Humanitarian Prize.
Real Estate Fund Set to Lose Boston Life Science Investment
A small US commercial real estate fund run by Deutsche Finance Group, the asset manager tied to many of the soured deals at German pension fund BVK, plans to file for insolvency after its investment in a Boston life sciences complex soured.
NV lawmakers mull maternal health protections for '27 session, punt on child welfare funding fix
Nevada state lawmakers are considering a wide-range of health-related policies in the next year’s legislative session that includes implementing a slate of maternal health protections in a “momnibus” bill, bolstering efforts to investigate Medicaid insurance fraud, and reducing reporting requirements for state health agencies. Also at Tuesday’s interim Health and Human Services committee meeting, discussion […]
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ENTERTAINMENT ($MSGE) Releases Q4 2026 Earnings
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ENTERTAINMENT ($MSGE) posted quarterly earnings results for Q4 2026 on Wednesday, August 12th. The company reported earnings of -$0.13 per share, beating estimates of -$0.42 by $0.29. The company also reported revenue of $196,320,000, beating estimates of $169,951,125 by $26,368,875.You can see Quiver Quantitative's $MSGE stock page to track data on insider trading, hedge fund activity, congressional trading, and more.
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center Team Prepares Joint US Military Medical Personnel for Global Health Engagements
The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center Directorate of Global Health Engagements, in collaboration with cadre from the Uniformed Services University (USU), National Institute for Defense Health Cooperation (NIDHC), and U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM), successfully conducted a Fundamentals of Global Health Engagements (FOGHE) course at the Ramstein Air Base Aug. 3-7.
Weird Science: Flush with data, North Carolina sewage is exposing community nutrition and food insecurity
A newly published study has successfully demonstrated that analyzing residual plant and animal DNA in municipal wastewater can deliver accurate, real-time population nutrition data. Researchers say this breakthrough could fundamentally change how public health officials monitor dietary habits, food insecurity, and economic health.
Rural health panel divvies $205M in federal funds for Wyoming healthcare
Panel assigned money to hospitals, EMS services and maternal care in attempt to shore up medical access.
Fauci, RFK Jr., and the latest in American health
Epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera breaks down the public health breakdowns
Rebecca Cooke Wins Democratic Primary for Key Wisconsin House Seat
Ms. Cooke, a three-time congressional candidate, held a huge fund-raising edge in a western Wisconsin race that Democrats consider pivotal to their hopes of flipping the House.
San Mateo County may require permit for businesses using humanoid robots
San Mateo County is considering a plan surrounding the use of humanoid robots to help firefighters put out fires caused by lithium-ion batteries.
Culinary Health Fund's first look at new Tropicana health center ahead of opening
US bars federal funding of gender-affirming care for low-income minors
WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - The Trump administration finalized a rule on Tuesday barring two major federal health programs from funding puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries to treat gend...
Trump administration bans the use of federal Medicaid funds to cover gender identity healthcare
The Trump administration finalized a rule that will bar Medicaid from covering gender identity healthcare for children.
Health Brief: Tariff refunds are rolling in
Medical device companies are getting millions of dollars back from Trump’s overturned tariffs. Now they’re bracing for what comes next.
Are LLMs shifting the balance between ‘exploration and exploitation’ in research funding?
The meteoric rise of large-language AI is quietly altering if not effectively upending scientific inquiry. It’s been doing so almost since the technology’s public debut in late 2022. And medical research has been anything but exempt.
Oracle is planning another round of job cuts this month
The potential layoffs reduce Oracle's payroll as it racks up billions in debt to fund AI infrastructure.
Kevin Weil is raising a new round of funding for an AI science startup
Kevin Weil, the former chief product officer of OpenAI, is in discussions to raise a round of funding for a new AI science startup.
Alphabet's AI Story No Longer Runs Through The Business That Funds Everything Else
The advertising line management once pointed to for AI money has been speeding up, not slowing down.
AI Could Help Researchers Get Funding—But at What Cost?
Scientists who use AI to draft research proposals are earning more money, but their ideas may be less likely to move the field forward.
Scientists say U.S. will suffer if White House bars science with China
A proposed Office of Management and Budget rule will ban all research funding for U.S. science collaboration with China, which has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top investor and producer of science and engineering research and development.
Joby to buy Resonant Sciences, establish defense business in $500 million deal
The acquisition will be funded by roughly $450 million in cash and $50 million in Joby common stock and is expected to close "in the first half of 2027," according to a press release.
Much-wishlisted 100-player shooter Wardogs gets an early access release date and promises refunds for anyone unhappy with the closed beta
Indie multiplayer shooter Wardogs will soon be available to anyone who doesn't want to wait around of a closed alpha invite.
Bridge OKC Fund awards $794,750 to boost housing and mental health care in OKC
The Oklahoma City Community Foundation's Bridge OKC Fund has awarded $794,750 to three organizations that will fund housing and mental health care.The three org
Sick Kids, Stalled Science: America’s Pediatric Health Funding Crisis
Pediatric health is critically underfunded, despite 1/3 of the global population being kids. But the ROI of investing in kids yields profound health and economic returns.
Under 500 Employees, Over $500 billion: Small Business Payroll Taxes
Small businesses, those with fewer than 500 employees, are a pillar in the U.S. economy and account for a large share of federal payroll tax revenues. These taxes are paid by both the employer and employee and are primarily used to fund the Social Se
Yankees receive $2.6 billion in deal with private equity fund
The Yankees may use the money to handle debt and pursue new ventures.
America Already Built the World's Largest Science-Vetting Machine | The Foundation for American Innovation
Every year, federal agencies assess over a hundred thousand proposals that they never fund. Treating those peer review as public infrastructure could help unlock much more philanthropic capital for American research.
WHO receives US$4 million from CERF to sustain health services and strengthen health system resilience across Syria
Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic, 11 August 2026 – The World Health Organization (WHO) has received US$4 million from the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to protect access to essential health...
The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized
Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA
A trail of business disputes preceded FBI raid on developer Andy Card
Lawsuits accused the Westfield developer of setting up 'alter ego' companies and commingling funds. Card has fought back against the allegations.
Medical systems, health agencies get $80 million from feds to boost rural health
Dozens of projects from county health departments, healthcare systems and Maryland hospitals will share $80 million in new federal funding to improve access to healthcare in Maryland’s rural communities, the Moore administration announced Monday.
Battlefield 6 Player Successfully Refunds Game After 470 Hours of Game Time Due to Game Modes Being Removed by Devs
One Battlefield 6 player managed to successfully issue a refund for the game, and this is despite pouring in 470 hours of playtime.
DOGE said it saved $1.7 billion by terminating a military health IT contract. GAO found the contract was never terminated.
DOGE reported $1.76 billion in savings from terminating a contract, but GAO found that the contract was never terminated and no funds were deobligated.
Tennessee athletics sets fundraising record
University secures more than $175 million in donations in fiscal year 2026, breaking 2025 mark of $169.5 million
Players lose access to Aliens: Fireteam Elite on Nintendo Switch without refunds
A reminder of the perils of digital ownership.
'Every life is worth another chance': OKC breaks ground on $12 million mental health crisis center
Oklahoma City leaders broke ground on a new mental health crisis center funded through MAPS 4, designed to provide critical services and ease the strain on emergency rooms, jails and first responders.
Battlefield 6 Player With Over 400 Hours Gets Full Refund from Steam After Key Modes Were Removed
A Battlefield 6 player with hundreds of hours of playtime has scored a full refund of the game after Battlefield Studios removed key modes from the game's quick-play matchmaking.
State finalizing agreements for about $39 million in Rural Health Transformation funding, Singh says
The West Virginia Department of Health is finalizing agreements to award approximately $39 million in federal funding.
82 northeast Minnesota businesses sign letter to lawmakers requesting wildfire relief funds
The letter comes after Gov. Walz said there would not be a special session held to address the economic impacts of the fire.
Battlefield 6 Removed A Fan-Favorite Mode, As Devs Look For "Best" Way To Bring It Back
Battlefield Studios is, however, looking for the "best" ways to bring it back.
Bank announces philanthropic funding to get small businesses ready for 2028 Olympics
Will the Dome be deflated? Anchorage sports facility launches fundraising campaign.
The Dome has been the home of the state's largest indoor field for nearly 20 years. The facility's operators are asking for help funding the replacement of its exterior.
Defunding America’s ‘best idea’
Trump administration policies have left many national parks short on staff and money.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite on Nintendo Switch Shut Down With No Refunds, as Owners Become The Latest Victims of Gaming's Increasingly Digital Future
Aliens: Fireteam Elite has had its cloud servers shut down, leaving Nintendo Switch owners unable to play the game without any form of refund.
Gates Foundation gives $540 million to UW health institute, the largest gift in university history
The Gates Foundation is giving $540.2 million over 10 years to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the largest charitable gift in UW history. The grant will expand the institute's Global Burden of Disease study and comes as global health funding falls sharply.
Lifeways getting new van to help mental health services in Jackson
Rep. Schmaltz secures funding for innovative van to help people in need State Rep. Kathy Schmaltz has secured $210,000 in the new state budget for LifeWays, the Jackson-Hillsdale Community Mental Health program, to purchase an Innovative Mobile Mental Health Crisis Unit that will expand access to mental health services throughout Jackson County. The innovative unit […]
Funding Science for the Long Term: The Role of Private Philanthropy
A drug that reaches a pharmacy shelf today often rests on discoveries made decades earlier. Yet the institutions financing scientific research do not
Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe
Key Takeaways The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combined more than 263,000 telescope exposures to make the largest 2D map of the universe in visible and near-infrared light. Astronomers can pair the Legacy Surveys map with their own observations to explore our universe and search for rare phenomena. The 2D map serves as the foundation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey to measure the universe in 3D and investigate dark energy. Hold on to your telescopes: the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. The data is available for all to use and publicly viewable through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer. Astronomers and citizen scientists can explore the map or combine it with their own observations to better understand our universe. Researchers can search for rare phenomena like gravitational lenses, observe fleeting events like supernovae, and investigate two of physics’ biggest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for most of the mass in our universe, and dark energy, the force driving our universe’s accelerating expansion. The new map builds on earlier versions from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys that have already proved invaluable. To date, more than 1,800 science papers that reference the Legacy Surveys data have been published. “It’s part of the fabric of astronomy research now,” said David Schlegel, a co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “When you’re working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you’re looking at.” Covering roughly 75% of the sky in visible and near-infrared light, the updated map provides a deep view of the extragalactic universe not blocked by the dust and stars of our own Milky Way. Researchers expect it will remain the most comprehensive 2D map of our universe for years to come. More than 160 scientists contributed to data collection for the project, and a team of 20 produced the final dataset released today. It was built by combining 263,407 telescope exposures from three ground-based sky surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS) at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. That was supplemented by years of data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite mission and additional public data. “For our team, these data are fundamental to our investigation of the expansion history of the universe and the formation of our galaxy,” said Arjun Dey, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and an astronomer at NSF NOIRLab. “But the skies belong to everyone, and this survey gives everyone the chance to explore the sky and marvel at its wonders.” Here be galaxies The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys were originally conducted to prepare for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. The Legacy Surveys’ 2D map is essentially a deep photograph of the sky; it records where galaxies and stars appear and how bright they appear. This crucial step enables DESI to select objects and measure their light in different wavelengths to determine their distances, building the largest high-resolution 3D map ever made. Scientists study the way galaxies have clustered at different ages of the universe to track dark energy over time. In April 2026, DESI completed its original five-year survey ahead of schedule and with vastly more objects than expected. The early results have shown surprising hints that dark energy’s impact may be weakening over time — a paradigm shift that could potentially shape the predicted fate of our universe. DESI expects to publish improved results using their first five years of data in 2027 and is continuing observations into 2028. DESI was so efficient at observing galaxies, the Legacy Surveys map needed to expand. Early on, “it became clear we might run out of galaxies to look at and run out of sky, and we better start doing something about that,” said Schlegel, who also works on DESI. The new Legacy Surveys map has been used to select DESI targets since June 2026 and will guide the telescope’s operations over the coming years. Computing the cosmos Merging hundreds of thousands of images taken on 2,285 nights, each with unique atmospheric and telescope conditions, was a massive computational effort. It took about a year to develop the computer code and eight weeks to process all the images at the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab. Beyond supporting DESI, the Legacy Surveys will be a foundational reference for the next generation of telescopes. As new observatories like the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (jointly funded by NSF and DOE’s Office of Science) and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope come online, researchers can compare their observations with one of the deepest and most comprehensive views of the sky ever assembled. The Legacy Surveys data will also help scientists train artificial intelligence tools to analyze petabytes of astronomical data and accelerate new discoveries. It will be among the datasets used in an astrophysics pilot project within the American Science Cloud, part of the DOE’s Genesis Mission. The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility; the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences; and the partner institutions. DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and NERSC. Additional support for DESI is provided by the NSF; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI) of Mexico; the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain; and by the DESI member institutions. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Thousands of Endangered Species Condoms Distributed to Health Clinics, Mutual Aid Groups After Federal Funding Cuts
TUCSON, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity has distributed more than 20,000 free Endangered Species Condoms so far this year to health clinics, mutual aid groups and social service organizations in the wake of federal funding cuts, including recent cuts to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
Political Identity Now Drives Billions In Consumer Funding
Wearables, wallets and scanners show political and lifestyle identity now drives billions in venture funding across a 2x2 consumer market map.
Science and Innovation Fund for Ukraine Partners with Ukrainian Catholic University to Launch New Center of Excellence
The Science and Innovation Fund for Ukraine and the Ukrainian Catholic University have announced the establishment of the Center of Excellence in Formal Methods and Verification, a new initiative that will train a new generation of specialists across the fields of mathematics, computer science, and artificial intelligence.
New rules for federal funding would threaten critical research, St. Louis scientists say
“Those are profound changes to how science would be administered in America."
Nintendo Switch game made permanently unplayable with no refund for $30 price tag
Unfortunately, there's just no way to play it on Nintendo Switch anymore even if you bought it.
Pacer Advisors Inc. Sells 972,954 Shares of Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. $LYV
Pacer Advisors Inc. lessened its holdings in shares of Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:LYV - Free Report) by 99.2% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 7,898 shares of the company's stock after
With Medicaid cuts ahead, Louisiana’s rural health providers battle over payments
As the pool of Medicaid patients shrinks and Medicaid funding runs up against new limits, independently owned health clinics will receive a much larger share of what’s available once their new reimbursement rates go into place.
USF College of Marine Science receives $1.5 million to improve coastal hazard forecasting research
The funding is part of a spending package enacted back in February, aiming to support seven different projects on all three USF campuses.
Preventing a Health Service Continuity Crisis in Syria - Donor Briefing Note - Evidence period: 2025 and 2026 Impact of Underfunding of Health Sector Syria June 2026
Other in English on Syrian Arab Republic about Health and Humanitarian Financing; published on 16 Jul 2026 by Health Cluster and WHO
Norris Consultant Group Launches New Credit-to-Capital Curriculum on The Wealth Blueprint Platform
ANDERSON, S.C., Aug. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Norris Consultant Group, the parent company and operating entity behind The Wealth Blueprint, today announced the launch of a new curriculum module on its educational platform, expanding the program's business credit and funding-readiness training for aspiring entrepreneurs. The new module went live in early August 2026 and is now available to members of The Wealth Blueprint community. Norris Consultant Group operates The Wealth Blueprint as its