SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY

Search headlines

Find the stories shaping the conversation.

Search mode
Refine results
Active filters Keyword All time

Results for " cher " 6,115 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle

Vanderbilt Health physical therapist bound for Nationals after winning four medals at Tennessee Senior Olympics

Vanderbilt Health physical therapist Grant Schlisner, PT, DPT, Cert. MDT, won four medals in the recent Tennessee Senior Olympics, which qualifies him to compete in the national Senior Olympics, set for July 2027 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Senior Olympians are athletes 50 years or older who compete in regional events for an opportunity to move to state events, and eventually to the Nationals. Schlisner’s medals were in the javelin, discus and softball throw (gold) and shot put (bronze). Schlisner, who is based at Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks, grew up in the Chattanooga area in a family that valued physical fitness and playing sports, and he says, with considerable understatement, “The whole family is quite athletic.” Grant Schlisner (R) with brother Bret and sister Sue, all of whom won medals in the Tennessee State Senior Olympics. (photo courtesy Grant Schlisner) His brother Bret also competed in the Senior Olympics. So did his sister Sue. (His other sister Tammy did not compete, but, Schlisner said, “We’re still going to work on her.”) And their father, who now lives in South Dakota, competed in that state’s Senior Olympics in the category for athletes aged 84 to 89. Schlisner was a high school athlete in several sports, including stints as a baseball pitcher and a football quarterback. Since he was already playing positions in other sports in which he was throwing things, he was also recruited to the school’s track and field team, which is where he gained experience in the events that were his ticket to the 2027 Nationals. The medals are a reward for the hard work of training and preparation, but Schlisner said the real reward is the fitness that the medals represent. Schlisner competes in one of his medal-winning events, the shot put. (photo courtesy Grant Schlisner) “[Preparing for competition] got me working out to train for these events. I added more extensive weight training to promote injury prevention and building flexibility and strength have made me feel better overall.” He also said that, in addition to the physical rewards, he enjoys the camaraderie of the other athletes and a feeling of accomplishment. “It’s great to be able to have a goal,” he said. “If you aim low, you’ll hit it. This is aiming high. I want to bring home a medal in the Nationals.” His physical therapy patients, especially those who may be discouraged or need a little extra motivation, also benefit from his example. “I can connect with patients and say, ‘I’m 57 with previous injuries, and I’ve been doing these events, and you can get back to your ‘sport’ as well, whether that is chasing grandkids or participating in a competitive activity,’” he said. And being around the other Senior Olympians, especially in the older age groups, is motivating for him, as well. “One competitor was 90 years old,” he said. “She’s not just sitting around. That was super motivating and cool to see. I don’t want to be a lump on the couch at 90.”

news.vumc.org logo
Aug 6 • 9:51 AM EDT • Health • news.vumc.org
Scientists deploy AI agents to accelerate discovery of new materials

Researchers develop a system of AI agents to automate a powerful simulation method that accelerates discovery of new materials. The system makes these simulations easier to use and enables them to be much more widely adopted by the scientific community.

anl.gov logo
Aug 6 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • anl.gov
US Stand Up for Science movement expands to Europe

A grassroots movement by scientists in the US pushing back against threats to academic freedom is setting up a Swiss outpost to take the movement global. Stand Up for Science started in February 2025 to protest against politically-motivated grant cancellations by the Trump administration. Since then, it has organised numerous rallies by scientists and turned into a broader campaigning organisation, supporting “pro-science” political candidates and attempting to impeach Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the health and human services secretary the group accuses of advancing “quack” science. Now, Stand Up for Science is establishing a Swiss office to take some of its campaigning beyond the US, and its leader is urging European academics to organise similar pro-science groups in case they face similar threats in Europe. There will likely be “spillover” to Europe from what the Trump administration is attempting in the US, said Colette Delawalla, chief executive of Stand Up for Science, who last month returned from a tour of Europe. “Are we going to see a Trump-style scientific [. . .] take over in the same way?” she asked.Delawalla, who is doing a PhD in clinical psychology, said she was driven to help found the organisation after the Trump administration started cancelling health research grants in politically taboo topics, such as transgender people, diversity and HIV, in early 2025. Since then, the administration has introduced several other measures that infringe academic and institutional autonomy.It threatened to cut Harvard University’s federal funding unless the university accepted a “critical mass” of new faculty and students to create “viewpoint diversity.” And this year, it proposed explosive new rules that would allow political appointees at research funders to screen grants to make sure they “advance the president's policy priorities.”US scientists have been at times stunned by the volume of announcements, and the country’s researchers were relatively unprepared. “We sit in front of the fire hose every day,” said Delawalla. For this reason, European scientists need to prepare now for similar assaults. “If you've got a little bit of extra time to start thinking through, and making those preparations and building community and solidarity,” then European researchers will “start five steps ahead of where we were.” She plans to return to Paris in September to share experiences with concerned French academics. Is Le Pen the same?During her European tour, Delawalla said that French academics were beginning to worry about a National Rally (RN) victory in presidential elections next year. She said there were “chilling similarities” between Trump and Marine Le Pen, the RN’s likely candidate. However, so far, the RN hasn’t proposed anything nearly as radical as the Trump administration has carried out. Its current manifesto is all but silent on university and research policy. Le Pen’s 2022 manifesto bemoaned a lack of French R&D spending, including in fundamental research, and promised to modernise labs and strip away grant bureaucracy. The party’s 2024 European election manifesto explicitly supported the Erasmus+ student exchange programme, scientific exchange and joint European technology projects. However, a Le Pen victory next year could see France drastically cut its contribution to the EU, which would hit the budget for science and innovation. Meanwhile, more restrictive immigration policies could hit university recruitment of faculty and students. Climate science denial?As heatwaves and wildfires have ravaged France, the RN has sought to distance itself from previous comments casting doubt on climate science.In the UK, the radical-right party Reform UK, now second in the polls, denied climate research in a draft of its 2024 election manifesto, but its leader, Nigel Farage, then appeared to quietly U-turn and said he was “not arguing the science.” By contrast, Trump has repeatedly and explicitly denied climate change science, in 2025 calling it “the greatest con job.” Like the RN, Reform UK has been light on research and university policy. However, it did say in its 2024 manifesto that universities should suffer “heavy financial penalties” for allowing “political bias or cancel culture” on campus, building on laws brought in by a previous Conservative government. Ahead of September state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in Germany, the poll-leading Alternative for Germany has proposed abolishing gender studies and postcolonial studies, and promised money for “critical” climate research and studies of Islam. Starts with rhetoricEven if European radical right parties aren’t currently planning the draconian policy measures of the Trump administration, Delawalla said that academics should not be complacent, and fight even small funding restrictions or anti-science talk from the start. “It starts off with sowing distrust about institutions,” she said. “It starts off with these small things, and then all of a sudden it's there.” There are other, more established science and university advocacy groups in the US aside from Stand Up for Science. But the group stands out because of Delawalla’s refusal to attempt to appear politically bipartisan or conciliatory. “I firmly believe that the US is experiencing fascism,” she said. “We’re not trying to win over the super Maga people,” she said, “and we never have been.” The lesson of the US is that even if universities or other institutions capitulate to government demands, this doesn’t save them from cuts and restrictions. “It doesn’t matter what people do,” she said. Global “pseudoscience”Another aim of Stand Up for Science’s push into Europe is to better coordinate a campaign to protect people in poorer countries from what the group describes as “pseudoscientific exploitation,” trials outside the US used to build a case against things like vaccines. Earlier this year, the group sent an investigator to Guinea-Bissau to investigate a controversial, Danish-run Hepatitis B vaccine project funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The study would have withheld a proven vaccine from newborns, Stand Up for Science argued in a briefing it presented to Congress, risking their health. Significantly, the research group based in Guinea-Bissau, known as Bandim, focuses on the “non-specific effects” of vaccines: impacts on health beyond preventing the target disease. Related articlesEuropean researchers sound the alarm that Trump rule changes will hit cooperationData corner: which fields of health science is the US curbing? The US ‘golden age’ science strategy: what Europeans need to know The suspicion is that the study was funded as part of an attempt to shop around for results that could help build a case against vaccines in the US, said Delawalla. “This is just code for vaccines cause autism,” she said.Bandim has put out a rebuttal of Stand Up for Science’s criticisms, arguing its work has uncovered a number of vaccine side effects, both positive and negative, which need to be taken into account in public health. However, Congressional Democrats took up the Stand Up for Science cause, and in February, Guinea-Bissau said it had permanently halted the study. WatchdogBut for Delawalla, this is not the end of the fight. Kennedy has made a number of health claims that scientists think lack evidence, such as the idea that seed oils cause inflammation, for example. Delawalla worries that more studies could be launched in poorer countries to fish around for evidence to support this agenda. Stand Up for Science is talking to African science organisations to create a kind of “watchdog” to scrutinise any further trials. “Outsourcing the investigation to some of the most vulnerable children in the world who are desperate [. . .] is fundamentally wrong,” she said.

sciencebusiness.net logo
Aug 6 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
The Sports Report: Dodgers drop their sixth in a row

After learning catcher Dalton Rushing will be sidelined by a torn UCL, the Dodgers fall to the Cubs for their sixth straight loss.

latimes.com logo
Aug 6 • 7:25 AM EDT • Sports • latimes.com
Unearthed paper exposes Dem House hopeful's 'insane' proposal for meeting climate goals

Manny Rutinel's resurfaced paper argued governments should incentivize ranchers to transition to plant-based farming in Colorado's top cattle district.

foxnews.com logo
Aug 6 • 7:19 AM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
The most interesting sports on ESPN8: The Ocho: Jugglers, archers and racing dinosaurs

The Ocho returns to ESPN this weekend, What started as a joke from "Dodgeball" has become an enduring celebration of experimental sports.

nytimes.com logo
Aug 6 • 7:00 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
Unregulated use of peptides raises alarm among researchers

Driven by social media hype and a growing distrust of public health guidance, consumer demand for experimental peptides has exploded over the last decade.

latimes.com logo
Aug 6 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • latimes.com
Kevin Gausman Reacts to Joining Cubs After Blue Jays Trade

Newly acquired Chicago Cubs starting pitcher Kevin Gausman made his first comments for the Cubs since his trade from the Toronto Blue Jays.The Cubs traded two prospects, outfielder Brett Bateman and infielder Ty Southisen, for the veteran SP Gausman, who is in the final season of his five-year, $110 million contract.With Chicago primed for a […] The post Kevin Gausman Reacts to Joining Cubs After Blue Jays Trade appeared first on HEAVY.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 6 • 2:15 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
World’s most-used weedkiller disrupts honeybee brains

Glyphosate was long thought to be safe for honeybees because they lack the enzyme the chemical targets in weeds. However, researchers found that exposed bees foraged 13 percent less after only three days and showed changes in brain chemicals linked to behavior. Across a whole hive, that decline could reduce honey production, weaken pollination, and threaten long-term survival.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Viewpoint: Europe needs a new scientific contract

The White House's new science strategy should be required reading in the Berlaymont and every European capital.Not because Europe should copy it. Parts of it should concern Europeans deeply. But because it asks the question Europe has so far avoided while steadily losing ground in the global race for technological leadership.Europe already possesses many of the world's finest universities, scientists and research-intensive companies. It produces world-leading research in fields ranging from quantum technologies and biotechnology to climate science. Yet time and again Europe generates the scientific breakthroughs while others build the companies, industries and strategic advantages around them, particularly in digital technologies. Increasingly, we find ourselves regulating technologies whose underlying capabilities were developed elsewhere.This is not primarily a scientific failure. It is an institutional one.The settlement that shaped modern science policy emerged after the Second World War. In Science, the Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush argued that governments should invest in fundamental research while protecting scientists from political direction. Public investment was justified precisely because no government, university or company could predict where the next transformative discovery would emerge.That scientific contract served liberal democracies extraordinarily well. It underpinned decades of advances in medicine, computing, energy and communications, but the world for which it was designed no longer exists.Artificial intelligence is transforming not only technology but the production of knowledge itself. Advanced chips, computing power, data and scientific instruments have become strategic assets. Scientific knowledge now diffuses globally almost instantly. Competitive advantage increasingly lies not in making discoveries first, but in possessing the infrastructure, capital, engineering capability and institutions required to translate those ideas into products, industries and strategic advantage.The old boundaries between science, industrial policy, national security and geopolitics have largely disappeared. Dual-use technologies now underpin both economic power and military deterrence.The US has recognised this shift. In July, the White House published Science: A New Golden Age, a comprehensive attempt to rethink the relationship between science and national power. The report builds on Bush's legacy, but departs from his framework in important ways. Science is no longer treated simply as the source of future discoveries. It is presented as the foundation of economic resilience, technological leadership and national security. AI, advanced infrastructure and the capacity to build become as important as discovery itself.Yet the report also reveals a striking paradox. The same administration calling for “a new golden age” of US science has simultaneously proposed deep cuts to the federal research enterprise while expanding political influence over the allocation of public research funding. Europe should therefore distinguish between the report's diagnosis and its prescription. The diagnosis, that science has become a strategic asset, is compelling. But the prescription is self-defeating. Long-term technological leadership depends on strong universities, academic freedom and the institutional autonomy that makes scientific discovery possible. This distinction matters. Bush's achievement was never simply to make science serve national strength. It was to establish a division of labour in which governments invested in research without attempting to direct discovery itself. Scientific breakthroughs emerge precisely because researchers retain the freedom to pursue questions whose value cannot yet be demonstrated and whose conclusions cannot be anticipated.Neither China, nor the USAs science becomes more strategically important, the temptation to politicise it inevitably grows. But scientific freedom is not an obstacle to technological leadership, it is an essential precondition.China represents the opposite model. For decades it has integrated science, manufacturing, infrastructure and industrial policy into a single national strategy. Its ability to mobilise resources around critical technologies is formidable. But it does so within an authoritarian system where scientific priorities are increasingly inseparable from political power.Europe should imitate neither model. It should learn from the strategic ambition of the US without importing its growing politicisation of science. And it should learn from China's capacity to build without adopting its concentration of power.Instead, Europe needs a scientific contract of its own. Bush's scientific contract protected the freedom to discover because the defining challenge of the 20th century was producing new knowledge. Europe's next scientific contract must preserve that freedom while ensuring that scientific discoveries can be converted into technological, industrial and strategic capability. Because in a transactional world, Europe's freedom to shape its own future depends on its capacity to build it.Related articlesThe US ‘golden age’ science strategy: what Europeans need to knowEuropean researchers sound the alarm that Trump rule changes will hit cooperationNIH turmoil risks reciprocal EU-US access to health research fundingThis does not mean subordinating free science to competitiveness or industrial policy. On the contrary. Scientific autonomy remains the first principle of Europe's next scientific contract. Governments should not direct scientific discovery. Their responsibility is to ensure that Europe's scientific, industrial, financial and regulatory institutions work together rather than in isolation.Meeting that responsibility requires far more than research funding. European researchers need access to world-class computing infrastructure, advanced laboratories, shared datasets and scientific facilities. Innovative companies need patient capital, testing environments and a genuine single market in which they can scale without facing 27 different regulatory regimes. Public procurement must evolve from purchasing existing technologies to creating markets for new ones. Regulators must become partners in experimentation rather than guardians of yesterday's rules.A connecting architectureEurope does not need to invent the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) model from scratch. Britain's Aria, Germany's Sprind and Wellcome Leap already show that Europe can build institutions capable of taking high-risk, mission-oriented bets while preserving democratic accountability. The challenge now is not to create more isolated initiatives, but to connect them to Europe's broader scientific, industrial and financial system so that breakthrough discoveries can scale.Above all, Europe must stop treating research, innovation, industrial policy, finance and security as separate policy domains. The challenge is no longer to create excellent institutions in each of these fields, but to make them work as one European innovation system. Europe's strength will increasingly depend not on excellence within institutions, but on excellence across them.Europe's ambition should be neither to imitate the US nor to emulate China. It should demonstrate that scientific freedom, democratic legitimacy and technological capability are not competing objectives, but mutually reinforcing strengths. In an age of geopolitical rivalry, Europe's greatest advantage may ultimately be its ability to attract the world's best talent by combining scientific freedom, democratic openness and technological ambition.Bush's scientific contract helped define the 20th century because it protected the freedom to discover. Europe's challenge is not to abandon that achievement but to extend it. The defining task of Europe's next scientific contract is to preserve the freedom to discover while building Europe's capacity to translate scientific discovery into technological power.Kaare Nielsen is founder of Pomus, a Danish think tank on science and innovation.

sciencebusiness.net logo
Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
Science|Business summer reads of 2026

As most people in the European research and innovation policy bubble are going on a well-deserved summer break, we have come up with a list of our favourite books, podcasts and essays from the past year that ask deeper questions about science, technology and politics.BooksPasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation, by Donald StokesIf you haven’t read Pasteur’s Quadrant yet, now is the time. In the EU and elsewhere, we’re living through a period of dwindling faith that curiosity-driven research automatically leads to economic growth and technological progress. Pasteur’s Quadrant, published in 1997 by the Princeton academic Donald Stokes, is the most influential critique of the standard “linear model” of R&D: the idea that new discoveries made in ivory-tower labs get neatly passed on for commercialisation by start-ups. In reality, Stokes argues, practical applications often inspire more theorical lines of inquiry. Of course, we have long known that things are more complex than the linear model, but even today, it’s still often assumed in Brussels discourse. The book is a useful corrective, and is being used now to argue for new types of scientific institutions. David MatthewsThe Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism, by Jacob Hale Russel and Dennis PattersonAre society’s problems solvable by technical expertise alone? “If only the benighted would listen,” say Jacob Hale Russel and Dennis Patterson, two professors at Rutgers Law School who got frustrated with how scientists and politicians handled public health communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the book, they argue that clichéd mantras about scientific evidence and expertise perpetrated by academics, journalists and politicians have harmed public trust in the very institutions they were trying to defend. Paradoxically, slogans such as “we believe in science,” “follow the science” and “defer to the experts” can fuel mistrust in science, experts and democratic institutions. The authors criticise “condescension” and “technocratic paternalism” in the public discourse and make the case for a more nuanced approach to scientific and expert policy advice that rests on humility, doubt, scepticism and open dialogue. “Most complex social questions in fact revolve around values, not the recitation of unambiguous facts,” they say. Florin ZubascuBreakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan WangIn this book, Dan Wang compares the structural differences between the US and Chinese industrial policies, but raises a very timely question for innovation policy wonks: how can advanced manufacturing know-how contribute to technology-intensive economic growth? Wang says technology has three components: the tools, the blueprints and patents, and the process knowledge. The third component represents the “proficiency gained from practical experience, which isn’t easily communicated and requires years of implementation.” According to Wang, rather than seeing tools and blueprints as the ultimate ends of technological progress, policymakers should see them as milestones in the training of better scientists and manufacturers. Over the past decades, China has amassed “process knowledge” because capital flowed to complex fabrication facilities, while investors in the West have parked their money in capital-light businesses such as digital platforms or chip companies that focus on design. As it turns out, thanks to its oversized focus on manufacturing, China has gained remarkable advantages in the global technology race. Florin ZubascuBaltic: The Future of Europe, by Oliver MoodyWhat can Europe learn from the nine countries surrounding the Baltic Sea? Alongside the familiar stories about Estonia's digital transformation, the book examines how the region has used technology, resilience, education, governance and long-term thinking to respond to geopolitical, economic and security challenges. Innovation policy wonks might find fresh perspectives on how innovation can strengthen defence, societal resilience and Europe's capacity to adapt in an uncertain world. Whether or not you agree with all of Oliver Moody's conclusions, the book is a useful guide to a region that is increasingly shaping European debates on security, competitiveness and technology. Goda NaujokaityteThe Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf This book chronicles the wild and adventurous life of natural science pioneer Alexander von Humboldt who at some point in the 19th century seems to have been just about the most famous person in the world. Through scientific expeditions to the Andes Mountains and to the depths of Siberia, von Humboldt contributed a host of discoveries and concepts. During his life he met and formed relationships with historical figures as different as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Simon Bolivar, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles Darwin. He is also claimed to be the person in the world with most things named after him, a list that includes an ocean current, a penguin and a region of the Moon. Still venerated in Germany, with numerous scientific institutions named after him, von Humboldt has slipped out of public consciousness in most of the rest of the world. For anyone not familiar with him, this book does a good job of describing his fascinating life. Ole EllekrogCareless People, by Sarah Wynn-WilliamsYou may have heard this referred to as the book Meta doesn’t want you to read. The 2025 memoir from Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of global public policy at Meta, then just called Facebook, includes explosive claims about everything from a toxic workplace culture to how the company worked with advertisers to target vulnerable teens, and the lengths it was prepared to go to in order to break into China. It’s a fascinating insight into how and why the tech company gradually shifted its approach to policy, whether in the US, Europe or Asia. Meta has denied the allegations in the book, and last year won an emergency ruling to prevent Wynn-Williams from promoting it. In response, the author is now suing her former employer. If that doesn’t make you want to read it. Martin GreenacrePodcastsThe Europeans: Europe’s anti-ElonThis podcast is a great choice for a light-hearted dose of European policy and culture news. Most of it has little to do with research, innovation and technology, but this particular podcast features an interview with Mastadon’s founder Eugen Rochko. He talks about his experience running an open-source, federated, European-made social media platform, and leaving it all behind. The conversation, which starts 14 minutes in, gently encourages us to reflect on what kind of technology we, as Europeans, want to make. Goda NaujokaityteSolarpunk and how we escape dystopiaNew technologies are very often taken from science fiction. Alberto Santos-Dumont, inventor the airship, was inspired as a child by the adventure stories of Jules Verne. OpenAI’s attempt to build a personal assistant with the voice of Scarlett Johansson was lifted from the 2013 film Her, completely ignoring the movie’s cautionary message. So if we want better tech, we need to imagine it first. Unfortunately, the state of current sci-fi is relentlessly dystopian, giving inventors precious few ideas or hope. However, a new genre, Solarpunk, which envisages a technologically advanced but ecologically harmonious future, is now taking off. The actual tech the genre imagines, such as permaculture, renewable energy or community repair workshops, while nice, isn’t all that inspiring or ambitious. But it’s a first step towards rescuing sci-fi from its pessimistic Blade Runner rut. David MatthewsEveryday AbundanceLaunched in June, Everyday Abundance is a podcast that tells the stories of the inventions we now take so for granted that we barely given them a second thought. For example, the washing machine, which liberated women from a lifetime “bent over washtubs and washboards.” Or modern dentistry, which ended the reality that “tooth pain was simply part of human life.” Historians of technology, Virginia Postrel and Charles C Mann are very much on the optimistic end of the spectrum when it comes to the capacity of invention to improve human life. Here, they set out their case: if it wasn’t for progress, you might be hunched over a washtub with toothache rather than reading these words. David Matthews‘We will not know what we lost’: Conservation fallout a year after USAID shutdownSince his return to the White House, Donald Trump has been on a mission to undermine science. He slashed jobs at federal agencies, terminated grants in some research areas, took unprecedented control over university affairs and, within hours of his inauguration, suspended the US Agency for International Development. While its initial focus was to administer health and food aid around the world, it had since expanded to conservation projects. The result? Some of these projects were stopped abruptly. In this Mongabay podcast, environmental reporter Michelle Nijhuis tells the story of the EcoGuard conservation programme in Liberia, whose local patrols had helped protect rainforests, monitor endangered wildlife and track illegal threats. From one day to the next, these were left without salaries. Luckily, she notes, the initiative was able to get emergency funding from international NGOs, but its future remains “incredibly uncertain.” Juliette PortalaEssaysThe Mars Delusion, by Henry WismayerWhy is humankind so fixated on establishing a colony on Mars? asks London-based writer Henry Wismayer. From space evangelists promoting Martian settlement as an insurance policy, to billionaire Jeff Bezos, who said humans should settle on Mars “because it’s cool,” the mission is not running short of advocates. However, in this essay, Wismayer reminds us that some critics expect any future Mars pioneer to end up “irradiated, sick, mad and dead.” Scientists have already looked into the possible effects of prolonged exposure to Martian gravity, and it’s not pretty: muscle shrinking, bones weakening, changes to the central nervous system and other biological modifications to make us all reconsider the journey. “Some researchers have forecast that the future settler, after generations of evolutionary conditioning, will look less like an Übermensch and more like ET,” Wismayer writes. Juliette Portala

sciencebusiness.net logo
Aug 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
Researchers look into Operation Metro Surge's long-term health effects
cbsnews.com logo
Aug 5 • 7:15 PM EDT • Health • cbsnews.com
Deep dive High-Signal Publisher
😐 Neutral (22%)
ahah
34%
angry
22%
love
22%
Federal regulators invite industry, researchers, and lobbyists to closed-door meetings on clinical AI

Federal health officials invited tech companies and lobbyists to closed-door meetings as they seek to boost adoption of clinical AI.

statnews.com logo
Aug 5 • 4:05 PM EDT • Health • statnews.com
Apple's iCloud Private Relay is Leaking Users' Real IP Addresses

Apple's paid Safari protection feature that promises to keep your IP masked doesn't always work, according to security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry. It turns out iCloud Private Relay can expose your real IP to websites that use or pretend to use passkeys. iCloud Private Relay is a service included with paid iCloud+ plans. It is supposed to hide your IP and DNS information when you browse the web using Safari, but it is not a VPN that masks all traffic from a device.

macrumors.com logo
Aug 5 • 2:44 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Team's AI agent to speed Alzheimer's treatment

Vanderbilt researchers have received a grant to build an AI tool within the health record system to get patients with Alzheimer's disease to treatment faster.

news.vumc.org logo
Aug 5 • 2:20 PM EDT • Health • news.vumc.org
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (11%)
love
73%
wow
27%
Whoopi Goldberg suggests she’d exit ‘The View’ if she was richer

Whoopi Goldberg has suggested that she’d leave ‘The View’ if she had more money: ‘Don’t know if I’d still be doing the show,’ she told actress Keke Palmer in a new podcast interview.

ew.com logo
Aug 5 • 1:25 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
The startup idea that convinced a UW computer science legend to leave Google after 27 years

Jeff Dean, who earned his computer science Ph.D. at the University of Washington, is leaving Google after 27 years and taking three of the company's top AI researchers with him. Their startup, Discovery Loop, aims to automate the scientific method itself, and Google is helping fund it.

geekwire.com logo
Aug 5 • 1:23 PM EDT • Science • geekwire.com
Why AI Still Hasn't Had Its Einstein Moment

AI is having a remarkable run in science. It’s helping researchers predict protein structures, improve weather forecasts, discover new materials, and speed up drug discovery. Researchers are getting results far […]

hpcwire.com logo
Aug 5 • 12:22 PM EDT • Science • hpcwire.com
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Northwell Health lead international cohort of researchers to develop more than 150 next-generation cancer treatment models

Human Cancer Model Initiative releases compendium results of decade-long project to create cancer organoids Ten years and thousands of patient samples later, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has just published its results from the Human Cancer Model Initiative (HCMI) on the development of 665 organoid models of 25 types of cancer that are now available...

cshl.edu logo
Aug 5 • 11:00 AM EDT • Health • cshl.edu
Testing Astronaut Health in 30 Seconds of Weightlessness

UC Davis researcher Rich Whittle joined an international team aboard a parabolic flight to study how microgravity affects blood flow to protect astronauts during long-duration space missions.

engineering.ucdavis.edu logo
Aug 5 • 11:00 AM EDT • Health • engineering.ucdavis.edu
HDMI® 2.2 Specification: More Bandwidth for Richer Color and Immersive Entertainment

Color bit depth delivers image quality by enabling how many shades of red, green, and blue can be displayed for every pixel on the screen. But it needs the bandwidth.

cepro.com logo
Aug 5 • 10:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • cepro.com
Apple's ‘Private Relay’ Is Exposing Users' Real IP Addresses

Researchers found a group of issues that mean Private Relay isn't actually protecting users' real IP addresses. 404 Media verified the issues do expose IP addresses.

404media.co logo
Aug 5 • 9:46 AM EDT • Technology • 404media.co
Museum Of Natural History & Science Researchers Identify New Bird-Like Dinosaur Species In Northwest New Mexico

Artwork by Sergey Krasovskiy. Courtesy/NMDCA NMDCA News: ALBUQUERQUE — Paleontologists from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science have identified a new genus of two-legged dinosaur that lived in New Mexico more than 70 million years ago. “This new work illustrates the dynamic nature of dinosaur studies as we continue to test what […]

ladailypost.com logo
Aug 5 • 9:41 AM EDT • Science • ladailypost.com
New Mexico scientists identify new dinosaur species

Researchers at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science have identified a new bird-like dinosaur species from fossils discovered in northwestern New Mexico

koat.com logo
Aug 5 • 8:40 AM EDT • Science • koat.com
😐 Neutral (10%)
wow
100%
Researchers make movie of the first steps in a chemical reaction

Using ultra-fast X-ray flashes, SLAC scientists have captured the split-second movements that kick off the making and breaking of chemical bonds.

news.stanford.edu logo
Aug 5 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • news.stanford.edu
Science educator Bill Nye and comic Preacher Lawson to be featured at RIT’s Brick City Weekend

Science educator Bill Nye and comedian Preacher Lawson to appear at RIT’s 2026 Brick City Weekend Oct. 16-18.

rit.edu logo
Aug 5 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • rit.edu
Sitting up straight may improve your mood and decision-making

A simple change in posture may subtly affect how people feel and make decisions. Participants who sat upright reported greater feelings of pride and took more successful risks in a virtual balloon game than those who hunched over. Most did not realize researchers had influenced their posture, helping rule out the possibility that they were merely responding to expectations. The results suggest workplace ergonomics could influence more than physical comfort.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 5 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
How the O.J. Simpson Trial Inspired My Career in Forensic Science

Inspired by a famous trial, a NIST researcher makes sure the science law enforcement relies on is accurate and thoroughly tested.

nist.gov logo
Aug 5 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • nist.gov
Chartbook 464 The"China squeeze" - the politics of development counterfactuals.

There are three types of China shock discourse. Each has a distinct temporal register. China shock 1.0 was a phrase coined by US academics in the 2010s to retrospectively summarize the impact on particular US labour markets, which they identified through painstaking empirical investigation. China shock 2.0 on everyone’s lips in Europe in the mid 2020s is an alarm raised by trans-Atlantic policy thinkers warning of a coming disaster which they project onto Europe’s ailing car industry. The third type of China shock discourse - commonly known as the “China squeeze” launched most recently by Indian economists Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian in the pages of Foreign Affairs - mobilizes a different, more speculative temporal register: the counterfactual realm of alternate history. The China squeeze argument asks not what has happened, or what is going to happen, but what might have been. Specifically, what options for economic development might have been open to Global South economies like India or the economies of sub-Saharan Africa, had it not been for China’s spectacular industrialization since the late 1990s and the persistent competitiveness of China’s manufacture in low-skilled segments. Chatterjee and Subramanian’s argument is that whilst China has built a powerful position in electrical machinery and other high-skill manufacturing, which is now delivering China Shock 2.0, it also continues to run a trade surplus in low-skill, labour-intensive manufacturing. This surplus is large and has remained largely unchanged in fifteen years. Indeed, in the 2010s, in trade with low-income countries, China’s surplus rapidly increased. On their reading, this squeezes low-income producers in low-skill sectors in which they “should” be able to compete. Source: “China’s Mercantilist Squeeze on Developing Countries” Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian. Peterson Institute for International Economics 26-7 May 2026 Chatterjee and Subramanian’s wording is telling: (emphasis mine) The canonical trajectory of economic development in the post-World War II period is for countries to transition from agriculture to manufacturing, first in low-skilled manufacturing and then later on to high-skill manufacturing (Herrendorf, Rogerson, and Valentinyi 2013). At the global level, this implies that high-income countries (HICs) that once specialized in low-skilled activities cede manufacturing export space to poorer countries that come along to occupy that space. In 1965, advanced economies accounted for about 60 percent of global value-added exports in four key low-skilled manufacturing sectors, i.e., apparel, leather, textiles, and footwear. Over time this share declined and began to be occupied first by the East Asian tigers and, beginning in the late 1990s, by China. Today China accounts for about 50 percent of the global market. The question is whether China, with its rising prosperity, is continuing to behave like its richer counterparts and ceding export space to poorer followers or to behave unlike them and continuing to occupy space. In terms of the conceptual maneuvers it performs, of the three China shock discourses, the “China squeeze” argument is by far the most ambitious. After all, it bases its critique of China on a counterfactual imagining of the world. Like any counterfactual argument, to construct this alternative reality it must rely on a heuristic model. To make their argument Chatterjee and Subramanian mobilize two key claims. The first reference point is the actual history of rich-country industrialization, what they refer to as the “canonical path”. The idea is that countries transition from agriculture to light industry and low-skilled manufacturing and from there up the value chain. To make this useful as a standard of comparison and a means to construct a normative standard, they adjust sectoral export shares for two factors: 1. the underlying level of economic development of the exporting country, as measured by national income and 2. the degree to which the sector in question is internationalized. The idea being that for a high income country to have a high export share in low-skill sectors is anomalous and even more so if that particular product is highly internationalized and thus suitable for being “conceded” to lower-income competitors. Where should this process end? Here Chatterjee and Subramanian introduce their second benchmark. Their normative idea of a global development path is one in which, in due course, low-skill manufacturing exports are distributed in proportion to a country’s share in the global labour force. They imagine, in other words, a world of proportional, polycentric global development without much national specialization in low-skill manufacturing. A useful benchmark is that, in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors, a country’s share of world exports should be broadly commensurate with its share of the world’s low-skilled labor endowment. … In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, this would be true if value added per worker and export propensities, i.e., fraction of output that is exported, are the same across countries. It is this pleasant liberal vista of orderly global development, progressing towards a general distribution of low-skilled manufacturing against which they judge reality and conclude that the low-income countries are suffering a “China squeeze”. China is not exiting low-skill sectors fast enough Allowing for its gdp level and the degree of globalization, China’s share of low-skill manufacturing exports is far higher than it “should” be. Relative to population, its low-skill share of exports is far too high. That in turn yields the conclusion that huge numbers of jobs - the authors suggest tens of millions - are being hoarded by China. For the four sectors captured in figure 4, this excess in value-added exports is $110 billion in 2022. For all low-skilled sectors overall captured in appendix figure D.1, excess value-added exports amount to $365 billion. The crowding out of LMIC exports by China is therefore substantial. Both these claims have in common that they are strong structuralisms. The first is that development paths ought to resemble each other. The second is that broadly speaking as far as low-skilled manufacturing is concerned, all countries are alike. If the world currently diverges from the distribution of trade implied by these assumptions, if China is not following the advanced economy path and has huge exports, this must be the result of “policy”, which the authors then put in question as illegitimate or unfair. Thus the naturalistic construction of a canonical path leading to a “level” distribution of low-skilled manufacturing reveals itself to be a polemical tool. From the point of view of China shock polemics, this discourse is no doubt welcome. But as an account of economic history, it must surely be regarded as nothing short of bamboozling. Development paths do not follow a regular, natural sequence. As David Fishman put it aptly, “development is not a queue”. They are always and everywhere, through and through political. Development is not so much a process, as a project. Each such project is more or less well adjusted to its context. As Gerschenkron taught uneven and combined development implies differentiation rather than simple imitation on a single parth. It may be true that Europe and the US exited relatively early from low-skill work. But clearly technology has changed. As C&S themselves point out, China no longer enjoys a low wage environment. Do they really believe that such huge differences can be accounted for either by industrial policy, which as they admit does not operate powerfully in low-skill sectors, or by exchange rate manipulation? What is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining the persistence of “low-skill” manufacturing in China are surely the network effects of complex supply chains. Indeed the label of “low-skill” may miss the point. The degree of globalization which Chatterjee and Subramanian decide to conjure away in their model of the development path - to allow for the fact that Europe and American textiles exporters did not enjoy just-in-time logistics in the 1950s - obscures the point that the networks through which Chinese factories supply the world are themselves key parts of the low-skill industrialization project. China isn’t knocking out 1970s style “cheap”. It has redefined the entire product cycle. C&S’s casual reference to “T-shirts” is telling. In today’s “fast fashion”, there is weight on both terms. Fashion and fast. China’s success in delivering on both at unprecedentedly high speed and at unprecedentedly low cost, isn’t a low-skill operation at all. If we see development trajectories not as the serial repetition of the same, but as distinctive, crafted projects that cumulate in complex agglomerations of skill, technology and labor, then this explains why the assumption that low-skilled manufacturing should follow the distribution of population flies in the face of all experience. As countless cases attest, low-wage, low-income developed economies are not by themselves the makings of a competitive production base. As Leon Liao puts it quite fairly: “International trade has never been allocated according to population. A country’s population gives it no natural claim to an equivalent share of global exports." And the remarkable fact is that Subramanian alone and with co-authors has long been making this point, not to pillory China, as is the case of the tendentious _Foreign Affair_s and Peterson pieces, but to highlight the great counterpart to China’s industrial success, namely India’s relative failure. The much-quoted Foreign Affairs piece showed low-skill export shares only for China, not for India. If you put both countries in the picture as Chaterjee and Subramanian have done on other occasions, the picture looks like this. China is far above the line, but India, almost as large in terms of population, is no less anomalous, just in the opposite direction. As far as global populations are concerned, and the imagining of tens of millions of “squeezed” jobs, it is this Sino-Indian pair that account for a huge share of the action. What this graph reveals is not China’s cheating, but India’s “greatest development failure”, at least this is the argument made Arvind Subramanian, this time in co-authorship with Devesh Kapur, in their major book, A Sixth of Humanity. Independent India’s Development Odyssey which appeared with Oxford University Press earlier this year. In this highly critical work on India’s development, China is repeatedly evoked, not to criticize but as a benchmark against which to illuminate what India’s political economy has not delivered i.e. large-scale formal employment for hundreds of millions of citizens. Kapur and Subramanian leave no doubt, if you want to understand why China, not India was the main driver of manufacturing globalization from the 1980s, don’t look to slots opening up in the division of labour thanks to the liberal mindedness of advanced economies, look to the contrasting political economy of the Maoist PRC and India’s post-independence political economy. As Kapur and Subramian note: The great divergence between China and India did not begin in 1978 with the Deng reforms—it was well underway by then. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the conditions created by Maoism turned out to be a great launching pad for industrial globalization. As the comparison of India and China in 1980 makes clear, to imagine manufacturing would be equally distributed when populations are so differently endowed in terms of educational and nutritional is fanciful. Here is the data from Kapur and Subramanian, data which I explored back at the very beginning of Chartbook. As Kapur and Subramanian insist, the striking fact is that even as India’s growth accelerated from the 1980s, structural change has not. Formal employment in India lags woefully behind. Why? As Kapur and Subramanian note, the path-dependent impact of India’s poor early start was devastating. The list of factors they mention is long and weighty: We argue for a new five-fold explanation applicable at different stages of Indian history: in the initial stages, the legacy of two key pre-1980s policies, the neglect of agriculture and the strangling of the domestic private sector, were critical. The failure of broad-based agricultural growth militated against rural industrialization, which would have been devoted to satisfying local needs that would have necessarily been labour intensive. Then, when the boom came after 1980, the thicket of regulation and broader labour protections that were legislated prematurely in a nascent democracy, underpinned by a deep ideological aversion to private capital in general and big capital specifically, became a barrier to attaining the size that would be necessary to compete globally. Similarly, the reforms after 1991, while wide-ranging, did not quite encompass non-tradeable inputs critical to manufacturing, namely, land, logistics infrastructure and power. A combination of low investment (logistics infrastructure), regulation (land) and the continued monopoly supply by state governments (power), combined with residual socialism, kept costs at 75–100 per cent above efficient supply. These factors were compounded on the supply side by the government, which dominated the formal labour market and established exorbitantly high wages at the lower end of the skill spectrum. This made their employment in the labour-intensive sector by the private sector less attractive. Finally, when the services sector and its exports boomed, wages soared even further via a Dutch Disease effect: one successful tradeable sector killed and cannibalized another less-skilled tradable sector, namely, manufacturing. Thus, scarcity-inducing policies of the planning era, precocious democracy and a Gandhian aversion to size; inefficient, monopolistic supply of critical non-tradable inputs; the behemoth of government; and super-successful skill-intensive services successively undermined India’s unskilled labour employment opportunities. The employment failure seems to have been over-determined. … Less quantifiable but no less important are some of the sociological factors that have undermined manufacturing and factory jobs. Take the impact of the success of the IT sector—located in urban areas with better working conditions, such as air-conditioned offices, good schools for children and attractive entertainment options. It became a more attractive place for engineering and management graduates to flock to. … Consider manufacturing and female employment. Indian society makes it difficult for women to work, reflected in India’s unusually low female labour force participation (elaborated in Chapter XIII). Indian society, in particular the routine harassment of women in public spaces, makes it even more difficult for them to travel long distances to take up work.37 Combined with onerous regulations on creating hostels and dormitories for women—which, in turn, prevents multiple shifts of operation—factories need to be located in areas with a large female labour pool. While firms can take apparel plants to female labour or bring them to the plants by building large-scale dormitories, this raises costs. If there was a case for subsidies to encourage labour-intensive manufacturing, housing subsidies to build dormitories for women workers would be a good place to start. All of this meant, that when opportunities did open up, in part thanks to adjustments in China, India was in no position to take advantage. Here is the account of the 2020s from Kapur and Subramanian. It stands in dizzying contrast to the one-sided, “China squeeze” argument delivered in the Peterson and Foreign Affairs pieces: In 2022, for example, India’s share of global exports in clothing (the canonical labour-intensive sector) was 3.1 per cent compared to 32 per cent for China. This is extremely disappointing because China started vacating export space in this sector after the Global Financial Crisis as its wages started rising; it then vacated further space in the aftermath of geopolitical developments that led investors to seek alternative investment locations. Between its peak and today, China lost about 7.5 percentage points of global export share (worth about $43 billion in 2022); over this period, India’s export share remained stagnant at 3 per cent, while that of Vietnam and Bangladesh rose by 3.5 to 4 percentage points. China’s loss did not translate into any gain for India in terms of low-skill exports and employment. Put differently, when the conditions for dynamism and prosperity were established after 1991, and even more tantalizingly when the global export opportunities opened up, it was as if India was a high-wage economy and only skilled labour could benefit from the dynamism. It had converted its physically abundant unskilled workforce into an economically expensive resource, penalizing its use. It is not my mission here to argue for or against Kapur and Subramanian’s interpretation of India’s development trajectory. The point in this context is simply that the “China squeeze” such as it is can only be understood, in relation to the heavy burden of domestic constraints that Kapur and Subramanian so unsparingly enumerate. I am concentrating here on India because it is the great counterpart to China and the unspoken reference point of the “China squeeze” discourse. But the point is more general. Can anyone with a straight face suggest that the main problems afflicting the development of South Africa or Nigeria, the great centers of mass underemployment in sub-saharan Africa, are cheap competition from China driven by Beijing’s industrial policy and an undervalued RMB? Likewise, is the main problem of the American working-class the threat of Chinese competition or the manifest crisis of social reproduction in the United States itself? The point here, as in the discourse around China shock 2.0 in Europe, is to insist that we should not normalize the world and pathologize China, without actually investigating what is going on in America’s industrial wastelands, the German car industry, or India’s lopsided labour market. One-sided pathologization should be understood for what it is, a polemical gesture. Concepts like China shock and China squeeze are, what Reinhart Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, would have described as “asymmetrische Kampfbegriffe”, or “asymmetrical counter-concepts” or “asymmetrical combat concepts”. If the function of arguments like the “China squeeze” is to alert elites in the rest of the world of the need to rejuvenate and energize their development projects, so be it. But let us see the resulting discourses as the mobilizing interventions that they are. Interestingly, a significant slice of China’s public sphere - the so-called industrial party - have been obsessed for the last twenty years with precisely these questions of counterfactual economic history. Since the mid 2000s, a massive online discourse developed around an alternative history in which Chinese techno-patriots were asked to imagine how they would proceed if they had the possibility of traveling back in time to transport modern technology into the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) thus averting the “great divergence” of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is a fantasy of course, but also a goad. The point was not directed at Westerners. The alternate history is dramatically nationalist, but few n the West had even heard of it until recently. The adherents of the industrial party are not liberal moralists. They don’t project natural ladders of international development and ask why others don’t cede space. They take the Realpolitik of global economic development for granted. Their pointe was directed against fellow Chinese. The rallying cry of the alternative narrative was this: Now that we are beginning to gain steam and push forward on our national development path, now that we are breaking out of the inferior position assigned to us even in the early years following WTO accession, do not lose yourself in humanistic imaginings about better futures. In the spirit of Deng, they called on China to embrace the hard truth of development. Perhaps one might of the Industrial Party as a cultural trend born out of desire for symbolic revenge against those who had inflicted the century of humiliation. In terms of the various temporalities of the “China shock” - retrospective, prospective and counterfactual - one might think of the Industrial Policy discourse as truly speculative, conjuring up the China shock that never was. Or perhaps one might better think of it as imagining a world in which a powerful China was no shock at all, but simply a defining fact of modern history. I love putting out Chartbook. I am particularly pleased that it goes out for free to thousands of subscribers around the world. But, writing this newsletter takes a lot of work. If you are enjoying it and would like to support the project, sign up for one of the subscription options here. It is the equivalent of a fancy cup of coffee per month! Subscribe

adamtooze.substack.com logo
Aug 5 • 7:18 AM EDT • Politics • adamtooze.substack.com
Cardinals Outhit Yankees, But Yankees Outscore Cardinals Tuesday Night

The St. Louis Cardinals were hoping for an encore performance after a slugfest Monday night that they came out on top of against the New York Yankees. Tuesday night’s game was a completely different type of game as Hunter Dobbins for the Cardinals and Ryan Weathers were in a bit of a pitcher’s duel. The […]

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 4 • 9:31 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (16%)
wow
100%
US move to overhaul science funding prompts some agreement and much doubt

Although researchers agree with the some of the critiques in a new report about the US research system, they are wary of the proposed changes

cen.acs.org logo
Aug 4 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • cen.acs.org
Stanford scientists discover immune cells that explode like microscopic bombs

Stanford researchers discovered immune cells in flatworms that explode within minutes, killing nearby bacteria and foreign cells before vanishing completely. Their unusually fast and localized attack could offer clues for developing targeted treatments against infections and cancer.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 4 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
F&M Brewing Science

Rob Jinks, professor of biology, who teaches the Brewing Science class at Franklin & Marshall College, dispenses a New England Indian Pale Ale into a pitcher inside Fair Trade Cafe

lancasteronline.com logo
Aug 4 • 7:53 PM EDT • Science • lancasteronline.com
😐 Neutral (19%)
ahah
67%
wow
33%
Michele Tafoya blasts WNBA activism, says Sophie Cunningham is a hero for women's sports

Michele Tafoya says the WNBA has morphed from a celebration of women's basketball into "activism on display," citing Cheryl Reeve's bench attire.

foxnews.com logo
Aug 4 • 7:01 PM EDT • Sports • foxnews.com
AI-generated stories rated better quality than human-written ones, study finds

Researcher says simpler writing by AI is easier to read and digest, but this does not mean human authors are obsolete

theguardian.com logo
Aug 4 • 7:01 PM EDT • Technology • theguardian.com
‘Reacher,’ ‘The Last Sunrise’ and ‘Sterling Point’ Are 3 of Prime Video’s Must-Watch Releases This August

Plus, you can catch the new documentary Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter out this month, too.

cnet.com logo
Aug 4 • 5:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • cnet.com
UCLA-Led Team Selected for National Science Foundation Quantum Technology Award

A UCLA-led team of physicists, engineers and computer scientists has been selected by the U.S. National Science Foundation for $4 million in funding through the NSF National Quantum Virtual Laboratory, or NQVL, a national initiative designed to accelerate the development of useful quantum technologies and make advanced quantum tools and testbeds available to researchers across the country

samueli.ucla.edu logo
Aug 4 • 3:05 PM EDT • Science • samueli.ucla.edu
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (6%)
wow
69%
ahah
31%
A SpaceX rocket will hit the moon at 5,000 mph tonight. Experts explain what you could see, and when.

An upcoming collision of a Falcon 9 rocket part with the moon may be visible from Earth with telescopes, new research suggests. Here's what scientists and skywatchers are hoping to see.

livescience.com logo
Aug 4 • 12:36 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Super El Niño may push an already stressed climate ecosystem across a critical threshold, climate change researcher says

Live Science spoke with climate change researcher Jong-Seong Kug about how a super El Niño could cause lasting damage to our world.

livescience.com logo
Aug 4 • 11:31 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (13%)
wow
56%
ahah
44%
New NSF State and Regional AI Infrastructure Hubs will power AI-enabled scientific research across the country

New initiative will accelerate AI-enabled scientific discovery by expanding access to compute for researchers, students and educators through regional partnerships among state and local governments…

nsf.gov logo
Aug 4 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • nsf.gov
Astros acquire center fielder Daulton Varsho from Blue Jays

The first-place Astros acquired the center fielder from the Blue Jays for starting pitcher Spencer Arrighetti just before the trade deadline.

spectrumlocalnews.com logo
Aug 4 • 10:32 AM EDT • Sports • spectrumlocalnews.com
UT San Antonio scientist highlights growing threat of antifungal resistance

For decades, scientists have studied antibiotic resistance, which is how bacteria evolve mechanisms to evade lifesaving drugs. Now, researchers are warning that a similar challenge is emerging among fungi, where resistance to frontline antifungal medications is making serious infections increasingly difficult to treat. Nathan Wiederhold, PharmD, director of the Fungus Testing Laboratory and professor […]

news.uthscsa.edu logo
Aug 4 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • news.uthscsa.edu
Rice researcher honored for advancing science behind AI and human assessment

Rice psychological scientist recognized with early career award for distinguished contributions to research methods research, practice, education and service.

news.rice.edu logo
Aug 4 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • news.rice.edu
'He Was Ready to Take on the World': Jamaican Entertainment Community Mourns Ras Ajai After Fatal Shooting

'He Was Ready to Take on the World': Jamaican Entertainment Community Mourns Ras Ajai After Fatal Shooting - DancehallMag. The Jamaican entertainment industry is struggling to come to terms with the violent death of reggae artiste and actor Brian "Ras Ajai" Boucher, whose life. DancehallMag is an independent news outlet that covers all things Dancehall and Reggae music, the artists, and culture.

dancehallmag.com logo
Aug 4 • 7:36 AM EDT • Entertainment • dancehallmag.com
Trump challenged with cold reality by allies Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro

A president used to bending US politics to his will faces two stinging losses in a matter of days, writes the BBC's Anthony Zurcher.

bbc.com logo
Aug 4 • 5:11 AM EDT • Politics • bbc.com
What Bifidobacteria tell us about gut health and how diet can help

In this interview, microbiome researcher Sudarshan Shetty explains what shapes Bifidobacteria, how they change with age, and what diet can do

gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com logo
Aug 4 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • gutmicrobiotaforhealth.com
Digital Science Launches Papers AI: An AI-Native Researcher Workspace for Writing, Data and Code

Researchers and students now have a new AI-native workspace, with the launch of Digital Science's Papers AI – where they'll never have to re-explain their work every time they turn to AI for assistance.

newswise.com logo
Aug 4 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • newswise.com
Cubs insider retracts Reid Detmers trade report, apologizes

It was falsely reported on social media that Los Angeles Angels pitcher Reid Detmers was traded to the Chicago Cubs.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 4 • 1:04 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
UMass Chan receives Massachusetts Life Sciences Center funding to advance health equity in pregnancy care and biomedical discovery

UMass Chan Medical School researchers have received funding from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to advance research using artificial intelligence to improve early identification of pregnancy-induced hypertension and to establish a colorectal cancer biobank that will accelerate biomedical discoveries.

umassmed.edu logo
Aug 4 • 12:13 AM EDT • Health • umassmed.edu
Tigers’ Jack Flaherty Goes Viral For Heartbreaking Reaction After Trades

The 2026 MLB Trade Deadline is officially in the books, and the Detroit Tigers have made multiple moves involving high profile players.On Saturday evening, they traded away ace pitcher Tarik Skubal, the back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner, to the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. Additionally, not long after designating him for […] The post Tigers’ Jack Flaherty Goes Viral For Heartbreaking Reaction After Trades appeared first on HEAVY.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 3 • 10:48 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Scientists just 3D printed one of the hardest metals on Earth

A new 3D printing technique can produce exceptionally hard tungsten carbide cobalt while using less of its expensive raw materials. By softening rather than fully melting the material, researchers created defect-free samples with industrial-grade hardness and opened the door to more efficient manufacturing.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 3 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Dodgers trade for 2 former catchers immediately before MLB deadline

The Dodgers got the band back together

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 3 • 6:52 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Red Sox Land Adley Rutschman in Stunning Al East Blockbuster

The Red Sox just acquired catcher Adley Rutschman from the Baltimore Orioles, per Jeff Passan. The 28-year-old switch-hitting catcher was the first overall draft pick of the 2019 draft. Multiple outlets confirmed the rare AL East Blockbuster with multiple prospects traded in return for Rutschman. The Orioles will receive C Carlos Narváez. Other names include MLB’s No. […] The post Red Sox Land Adley Rutschman in Stunning Al East Blockbuster appeared first on The Lead.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 3 • 4:35 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
AI use surging for mental health help among young people

Survey researcher says popularity may help fill gap between rising national problem, shortage of clinicians — provided counsel is sound.

news.harvard.edu logo
Aug 3 • 3:16 PM EDT • Health • news.harvard.edu
🙂 Positive (48%)
ahah
50%
love
50%
Red Sox acquire catcher Adley Rutschman from the Orioles: Reports
sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 3 • 2:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Dodgers Trade For Fan Favorite Catcher Amid Injury Concerns

The Los Angeles Dodgers traded right-handed pitcher Chayce McDermott to the New York Mets for catcher Ben Rortvedt at the trade deadline. The post Dodgers Trade For Fan Favorite Catcher Amid Injury Concerns appeared first on LA Sports Report.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 3 • 2:04 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Summer Ventures at App State immerses NC high schoolers in hands-on science and math research

Each summer, high school students from across North Carolina become researchers at App State through Summer Ventures in Science and Mathematics. Offered at no cost to participants, this state-funded program engages students in hands-on, collaborative research alongside faculty and staff. App State is one of four UNC System schools that host the program.

today.appstate.edu logo
Aug 3 • 1:20 PM EDT • Science • today.appstate.edu
Could Eating Less Protein Help You Age Better and Live Longer?

More protein might not be beneficial for everyone, researchers say, as studies suggest protein restriction could boost longevity and health.

time.com logo
Aug 3 • 1:10 PM EDT • Health • time.com
Research links industrial pollution to health risks in Louisiana

By analyzing Louisiana Medicaid data, a recent study co-led by researcher Barbara Allen found elevated health risks among residents living near petrochemical plants and refineries.

news.vt.edu logo
Aug 3 • 11:42 AM EDT • Health • news.vt.edu
😐 Neutral (25%)
ahah
100%
Cherokee Nation Commerce Services Innovation Hub's Funding Your Business

August 4: Funding Your Business | Loans & Opportunity ZonesThere’s still time to register! Explore financing opportunities available through Cherokee Nation Commerce Services and learn how Opportunity Zones may support

cherokeephoenix.org logo
Aug 3 • 11:00 AM EDT • Business • cherokeephoenix.org
China’s political and scientific elite head to Beidaihe for summer retreat season

Cai Qi meets frontier researchers, urging them to play their part in Communist Party governance.

scmp.com logo
Aug 3 • 10:32 AM EDT • Politics • scmp.com
😐 Neutral (11%)
wow
75%
love
25%
The Lumbee Tribe Wants Better Health Care. It May Be On Its Own.

Researchers and health care providers say money from the Indian Health Service won't be enough to meet the tribe's needs.

borderbelt.org logo
Aug 3 • 10:03 AM EDT • Health • borderbelt.org
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (9%)
wow
68%
ahah
32%
HOMETOWN HEALTH: Are you eating too much protein?

Researchers said a protein-restricted diet could improve metabolism and promote healthy aging.

wdbj7.com logo
Aug 3 • 9:31 AM EDT • Health • wdbj7.com
Matthew Whitaker breaks down Trump's strategic deterrence on Iran

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker joins Cheryl Casone on ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss President Donald Trump's decision-making regarding Iran, emphasizing strategic deterrence over escalation.

foxbusiness.com logo
Aug 3 • 8:33 AM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com
UT San Antonio scientist highlights growing threat of antifungal resistance

For decades, scientists have studied antibiotic resistance, which is how bacteria evolve mechanisms to evade lifesaving drugs. Now, researchers are warning that a similar challenge is emerging among fungi, where resistance to frontline antifungal medications is making serious infections increasingly difficult to treat. Nathan Wiederhold, PharmD, director of the Fungus Testing Laboratory and professor […]

news.uthscsa.edu logo
Aug 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • news.uthscsa.edu
Scientists went looking for giant trees in Taiwan and found a lost world

Taiwan’s steep, remote mountains have sheltered extraordinary forests containing hundreds of giant Taiwania firs. After years of difficult expeditions, LiDAR mapping, and citizen-science detective work, researchers discovered an 84.1-meter (276-foot) tree, the tallest known in East Asia. They also found dense “temples of giants” where dozens of enormous trees grow together. These ancient forests rank among the world’s most carbon-rich ecosystems.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
The Sports Report: Dodgers have Skubal, but are swept by Red Sox

The Dodgers finalize their trade for pitcher Tarik Skubal, then get swept by Red Sox after bad start by Emmet Sheehan.

latimes.com logo
Aug 3 • 7:25 AM EDT • Sports • latimes.com
Decoding the gut microbiome's symphony in health and disease

The trillions of microorganisms living in our intestine influence our health, from digestion and metabolism to immunity. Yet scientists still struggle to understand how these microbes shape these important physiological functions because gut microbiomes are extraordinarily complex, redundant, and dynamic. New technologies are therefore essential for advancing microbiome research. Researchers at the University of Vienna have now reported effective strategies for simultaneously measuring thousands

newswise.com logo
Aug 3 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • newswise.com
Mets trade Huascar Brazobán to the White Sox

The Mets nabbed two minor league pitchers in return for Brazobán.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 3 • 5:49 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Fantasy Baseball Week 20 Preview: Two-start pitcher rankings highlight Troy Melton, Logan Henderson

Two-start pitchers for Week 20 including top fantasy baseball streaming options.

cbssports.com logo
Aug 3 • 3:05 AM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
Yankees Pitcher Sends Strong Message After Luis Garcia Jr. Trade

The New York Yankees made another move ahead of Monday’s trade deadline, acquiring Luis Garcia Jr. from the Washington Nationals. Manager Aaron Boone didn’t waste time reacting to the addition.“He rakes. He can really hit,” Boone said.Garcia Arrives in the Middle of a Career YearGarcia enters the Yankees lineup hitting .283 with a .313 on-base […] The post Yankees Pitcher Sends Strong Message After Luis Garcia Jr. Trade appeared first on HEAVY.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 3 • 2:10 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
BREAKING: Blue Jays Send Beloved Strikeout Artist to Chicago Cubs

The Toronto Blue Jays are trading right-handed starter Kevin Gausman to the Chicago Cubs, per Ken Rosenthal. The Chicago Cubs are acquiring right-hander Kevin Gausman in a trade with the Toronto Blue Jays, a source tells to ESPN. The Cubs have sought a playoff-caliber starting pitcher all deadline, and now they've landed one. First […] The post BREAKING: Blue Jays Send Beloved Strikeout Artist to Chicago Cubs appeared first on HEAVY.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 3 • 12:09 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Scientific talent is global. Access to the world’s scientific stage is not.

Neuroscience in Chile does not lack talent or ideas, but the systems that make science visible increasingly price its researchers out.

thetransmitter.org logo
Aug 3 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • thetransmitter.org
San Francisco Giants trade pitcher Tyler Mahle to Atlanta Braves

The San Francisco Giants made their first move ahead of Monday’s trade deadline, agreeing to trade pitcher Tyler Mahle to the Atlanta Braves on Sunday.

sfchronicle.com logo
Aug 2 • 9:36 PM EDT • Sports • sfchronicle.com
Kevin Gausman trade: Cubs land impact starting pitcher as Blue Jays sell off, per report

The reigning AL champs are moving the successful right-hander in a down season

cbssports.com logo
Aug 2 • 9:17 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
EHR-based AI beckons rapid-response team to head off avoidable in-hospital deaths

Researchers have demonstrated the use of machine–human teamwork for reducing mortality in inpatient care across a large health system.

healthexec.com logo
Aug 2 • 8:53 PM EDT • Health • healthexec.com
For AI to Drive Science Discoveries, Highly Reproducible Data Is Key

By convening four laboratories from across the nation to test an experimental catalyst, researchers demonstrated the importance of generating highly reproducible experimental data when building AI models for investigations in science.

newswise.com logo
Aug 2 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • newswise.com
Scientists twist crystal layers and reshape matter from within

Researchers have found a way to build much larger “twisted” oxide materials while precisely controlling how their atomic layers line up. Because these materials can be made over large areas and transferred onto different surfaces, the technique could help turn twistronics from a laboratory curiosity into a practical platform for next-generation electronics.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 2 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Blue Jays Announce Trade Amid Kevin Gausman Rumors

The Toronto Blue Jays made a trade for a recently designated for assignment pitcher. This has possible implications for Kevin Gausman at the MLB trade deadline.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 2 • 6:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Yankees acquire slugging Nationals INF Luis García Jr. for package of pitchers
sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 2 • 5:23 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Let’s do science: Share your wild turkey sightings

MAINE—All good wildlife management starts with science, and all good science starts with data. That’s where you come in. Maine’s Wild Turkey August Production Survey invites community scientists to play a direct role in monitoring our state’s wild turkey population. Whether you enjoy watching wildlife from your window, spend time hiking, hunting, or exploring the outdoors, or just need an excuse to get outside, you can help. Each summer, Maine’s wild turkey hens are busy raising the next generation of birds. By reporting your sightings and observations, you’ll help our biologists monitor annual reproduction rates, track population trends, and make informed management decisions that support healthy, sustainable turkey populations for generations to come. The information collected helps ensure there are abundant opportunities for both wildlife watchers and hunters to enjoy Maine’s wild turkeys. It’s easy to participate! Whenever you see wild turkeys anywhere in Maine during August, simply report: Date and location of your observation Number of adult females (hens) Number of adult males (gobblers) Number of poults (young turkeys) Estimated poult size relative to the adult hens Every observation counts, even if you don’t see poults. Together, these reports provide a clearer picture of turkey productivity across the state and are an important part of Maine’s wildlife management. Ready to help? Report your turkey sightings online using the Wild Turkey August Production Survey. Submit an Observation Subscribe Share Leave a comment

barharborstory.substack.com logo
Aug 2 • 4:11 PM EDT • Science • barharborstory.substack.com
Irish boxer Reeves 'critical but stable' in hospital

Irish boxer Lee Reeves is in a "critical but stable" condition in hospital after he was stretchered out of the ring in Dublin on Saturday.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 2 • 3:13 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (13%)
wow
100%
Adam Schefter Is Facing Criticism For 'Questionable' Business Move

ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter is a rich man. The prominent NFL reporter earns millions of dollars per year in salary at ESPN, covering the biggest league in America. But Schefter is an even richer man today, thanks to a smart investment. Schefter, who previously worked for the Denver Post and the ...

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 2 • 9:02 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
NH's Business: Local businesses' usage of AI in New Hampshire

Fred Kocher sits down with Jeff McPherson with Silvertech to talk about how small businesses in NH can integrate AI into the workforce.

wmur.com logo
Aug 2 • 8:56 AM EDT • Business • wmur.com
😐 Neutral (5%)
wow
100%
Without this protein, damaged muscle turns to fat and scar tissue

A protein once thought to mainly protect chromosome ends may also be essential for keeping muscle stem cells ready to repair injuries. Researchers found that TRF2 helps these cells maintain their identity and coordinate the cycle of rest, repair, and renewal.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 2 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
METR, led by Beth Barnes, confront AI safety research talent shortage

METR, a Berkeley lab started by an ex-OpenAI researcher, has become a prominent AI umpire. CEO Beth Barnes says AI safety research needs more people.

businessinsider.com logo
Aug 2 • 5:00 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
This once-a-week workout may help cut belly fat, study shows

A surprisingly small dose of exercise may deliver major health benefits for adults carrying excess fat around the waist. In a four-month trial involving 315 adults with central obesity, researchers found that completing 75 minutes of brisk interval walking in a single weekly session reduced body fat, trimmed waistlines, and improved cardiovascular fitness about as effectively as splitting the same exercise across three days.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 2 • 2:24 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Study finds Lahaina survivors’ mental health worsening

University of Hawaii researchers with the Maui Wildfire Exposure Study (MauiWES) said Maui is recovering, but insecurity, housing instability, health concerns and weakening social support continue to place many families at risk.

hawaiinewsnow.com logo
Aug 2 • 1:24 AM EDT • Health • hawaiinewsnow.com
Apple struggles to keep pace with AI ‘bug’ hunters

iPhone maker has limited the number of vulnerabilities researchers can submit to manage wave of reports

ft.com logo
Aug 2 • 12:00 AM EDT • Technology • ft.com
Dodgers acquiring pitcher Tarik Skubal in blockbuster trade

The Dodgers swing a deal for Detroit Tigers ace left-hander Tarik Skubal ahead of the trade deadline, bolstering their hopes for a third straight World Series title.

latimes.com logo
Aug 1 • 11:48 PM EDT • Sports • latimes.com
Dodgers acquire Tarik Skubal from Tigers, per reports

The Dodgers’ quest for the first threepeat in Major League Baseball in a quarter-century saw them shop in the high end during the free agent market. Now they’ve acquired the best player available at the trade deadline, getting two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal, per multiple reports. Heading to Detroit are pitcher River Ryan, […]

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 1 • 11:46 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Luis Castillo traded to White Sox: Mariners starter to bolster Chicago rotation hanging on to division lead

Reliever Seranthony Dominguez, outfielder Nolan Jones and catcher prospect Boston Smith are headed back to Seattle

cbssports.com logo
Aug 1 • 10:04 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
New York Yankees Make Jose Caballero Change During Cubs Series

The New York Yankees got a gem from pitcher Will Warren on Friday night, earning a 2-0 win over the Chicago Cubs in their series opener. On Saturday night, Max Fried will take the mound for New York, while the Cubs will counter with David Peterson. Ahead of first pitch, Yankees manager Aaron Boone made […] The post New York Yankees Make Jose Caballero Change During Cubs Series appeared first on HEAVY.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 1 • 9:23 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (1%)
wow
100%
Cheryl Reeve advocates for trans athletes before Fever game

Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve reiterated her support for trans athletes ahead of her team's game against the Fever, saying "every kid has a right to sports."

espn.com logo
Aug 1 • 9:17 PM EDT • Sports • espn.com
Cancer may be breaking its own DNA to keep growing

Cancer cells rely on powerful genetic switches to keep growth genes running at full speed, but that intense activity can damage their own DNA. The resulting breaks are repeatedly repaired, sometimes with small mistakes that allow new mutations to accumulate. Researchers believe this self-inflicted damage may help tumors evolve while also creating a potential target for new treatments.

sciencedaily.com logo
Aug 1 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Full Court Magic Episode 31 Notes

In the latest episode of Full Court Magic, I break down the duo of Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner and the future of Jalen Suggs with the team.

sports.yahoo.com logo
Aug 1 • 7:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (24%)
wow
64%
ahah
36%
WVU Medicine hosts Health and Wellness Day

Event provided immediate community health benefits, including vouchers for low-cost lab work and free health screenings.

wtap.com logo
Aug 1 • 3:18 PM EDT • Health • wtap.com
No cure, no vaccine: Experts warn of rare Bourbon virus after first NY case

A Long Island patient was hospitalized after researchers confirmed the first Bourbon virus case in New York, transmitted by the common lone star tick.

foxnews.com logo
Aug 1 • 3:15 PM EDT • Health • foxnews.com
Should the Pirates flip to sellers at the trade deadline? Here's why Paul Skenes thinks they should still buy

CINCINNATI — Last Sunday, Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said he wasn’t expecting results between then and the trade deadline to shift...

post-gazette.com logo
Aug 1 • 12:28 PM EDT • Sports • post-gazette.com
Science Inquiry Comes Alive for Jacket Middle Schoolers

Snails, sidewalks and Double Stuff Oreos... At Partnership Middle School, instructors are finding innovative ways to help students connect the classroom to what they see in the real world every day. By integrating hands-on experiences and scientific investigations into weekly lessons, 6th and 7th grade science teachers push their classes to explore the curriculum standards through the lens of critical thinking, communication with their peers, experimentation, and scientific inquiry. Last week, two different approaches for two different grade levels saw Jacket teachers ignite the same spark for learning. On Tuesday, 6th graders in Lydia Jones' science class took their lessons outside as they explored the school grounds to identify living and non-living things. Despite the warm temperatures, they engaged in discovering unexpected objects on the campus and connecting that to what they learned in class about the criteria for what qualifies a thing as "living". Ms. Jones tasked students with walking the grounds and listing as many living and non-living things they could find in just a few minutes. Students spotted a fire hydrant, construction vehicles, grass, trees, soccer equipment, rocks, sidewalks, and even a snail hidden in the plants. After they finished the exploration, students returned to the regular classroom to discuss their results and whether their objects were classified correctly. On Thursday, 7th graders in Omini Parks' science class participated in their first lab of the semester as they explored and identified the physical properties of a favorite snack -- Oreos. Ms. Parks identified the class objective before the lab activity began by writing the academic standard on the dry erase board in a declarative statement: "I can collect and evaluate qualitative data to describe substances using physical properties." Students watched a video about how Oreo sandwich cookies are made, and then engaged in a question and answer discussion to give observations on the manufacturing process, review various types of physical properties and their scientific terminology, and talk generally about how the lab inquiry would work. The Q&A ended with a predictable question from students... "Will we be able to eat the Oreos?" The hands-on lab exercise required the 7th grade scientists to observe and record the differences between regular Oreos and the Double Stuff variety based on their physical properties. They followed the instructions in their lab brief to chart a comparison between the two types of cookies by observing properties with their magnifying lenses, measuring the height and diameter of both, and weighing the cookies with and without their filling. The activity let students put their lessons about physical properties into practice with real objects while also practicing vocabulary and writing skills to record their observations and using math skills from the last school year like taking measurements and calculating averages. Of course, they ended the lab by charting the taste of the cookies as well! These types of activities allow students to see the science standards they are learning come to life in the real world and engage with the content in new ways. Beyond that, they serve as a foundation for encouraging and growing scientific inquiry. Later in the school year, students will use the scientific method they are learning to complete science projects that require real research and the ability to explain and answer questions about their process and results. At the school-level competitive Science Fair last year, 41 Partnership students earned a place in the 2026 regional Science Fair held at MSU. From there, 14 advanced to the State Science Fair conducted at Northeast Mississippi Community College in April.

starkvillesd.com logo
Aug 1 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • starkvillesd.com