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In Retrospect: Poland, Russia, Europe

In April I spent a few days with Zryw, a Polish non-profit organization that recruits young people to enter politics and public life. Their aim is to build a new generation of civic leaders in Poland. I’ve followed their evolution from the beginning; my son is one of the founders. (“Zryw” means “impulse” or “burst of speed” in Polish). Julie Chmielewska, one of Zryw’s leaders, interviewed me at the event. Here is the conversation, lightly edited for grammar and context: Julia Chmielewska: Assuming that culture shapes institutions, could we conclude that some cultures are more prone to authoritarianism? Anne Applebaum: I don’t think so. Every culture, every nation, and every country has the potential for change. When we look at history, we can see that nations do change. Poland has changed, for example, from the 1980s to today. There’s a completely different mentality here than the one I encountered when I first visited, in 1988. The current generation sees the world through a different frame. So no, I don’t believe that certain nations are doomed to authoritarianism, or to anything. Of course, there are political and cultural traditions, but they can always be challenged. JC: So do you think there’s something intrinsic in human nature that pushes people to democracy, freedom? AA: I think there is something in human nature, a deep instinct, that pushes people towards freedom, yes. People who live in authoritarian countries – and I’ve heard this from them over and over again – sooner or later find themselves angered by a feeling of helplessness. They can see the unfairness of crooked courts, irrational political decisions. They naturally dislike the fact that somebody has all the power while they have none. In those circumstances, people who have no political background at all sometimes are politicized just by that frustration. I’m thinking of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, for example, who was a Belarusian housewife, until the circumstances of her husband’s arrest forced her to become a politician. I met a woman who is a Uyghur from China, and who had come to live in Turkey. After several of her family members were arrested, she too was propelled into a political role. These kinds of experiences make people interested in democracy or political reform, even if they thought they didn’t care. I also think that the opposite is true: some people instinctively prefer homogeneity, order, hierarchy. They don’t like the confrontation of opinions or the noise of debate, and they lean towards a single leader or a unified regime. I think that most of modern history is shaped by the clash between those two different sides of human nature. JC: Which force do you find more powerful today? AA: I think they both have a lot of power and there’s no way of predicting who wins. Even in countries that seem very shut off or stuck in an authoritarian system can change. We’ve seen that happen. And vice versa, I think democracies can also begin to fail and slide into authoritarianism. So it’s very important not to be complacent in either direction. JC: I want to go into your history and your experiences. You’ve lived in Russia during a time of incredible change in the late 80s, and then you came back to do research in post-Soviet Russia. AA: I was a student in Russia just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I then traveled and worked there extensively in the 1990s, and I met people who really were full of hope. They hoped that Russia could become a democracy, or at least a place that guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of the press. These weren’t ideas that came from Washington. Although now the narrative in the Kremlin is different, I met many people who were working towards exactly that kind of transformation. A friend of mine ran a series of seminars – once a year, and then later several times a year, in cities all over Russia – designed to get people to discuss politics in new ways. She invited young politicians and journalists, as well as foreigners. I went to many of them, in Moscow as well as Volgograd and Novosibirsk. Over two decades, hundreds of people came to these seminars, and all of them wanted Russia to be different. I remain convinced that many Russians still want Russia to be different. It’s just that the old system, in the form of Putin, a representative of that system, returned. The KGB reimposed their power. And this wasn’t because of something to do with culture, this was to do with money and politics, and who was in charge. JC: You’ve partially answered my question... I wanted to ask whether that excitement of the 1990s was an exception from the Russian historical norm which has been rather authoritarian? AA: Of course, if you look at the history of Russia since the 18th century, there have always been liberal groups, reformers and revolutionaries. There were the Decembrists, in the early 19th century, and the rural populists later on, who tried to organize the peasantry. A significant group of liberal Russians appeared at the turn of the 20th century, people like the father of the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was a Russian politician before the revolution. These groups were small in number, but sometimes had a broader significance. The Russian dissident movement in the 1950s and 1960s actually invented the modern human rights movement. It was their idea to hold the leaders of the Soviet Union accountable for the language they used, to remind them of the treaties they had signed and the promised they had made. They created the Helsinki group, for example, that held Soviet leadership to the language of the Helsinki Treaty, which formally ended the Second World War and which contained guarantees of human rights, at least on paper. That idea spread to Eastern Europe, and similar tactics were used here in Poland. (Benjamin Nathans recently wrote a great book about the Soviet dissidents, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause) JC: But seemingly, even if they do ever get power, they could never hold on to it. AA: We don’t know, because they have never really had power. But in any case, we also don’t know what will happen in the future. There is no reason to assume that Russia will forever be condemned to totalitarianism. Even during the first fifteen years of Putin’s regime there was some form of democratic politics. Only when the full-scale war began did he bring everything to an end: he shut down all remaining independent organizations and killed his most important opponent, Alexi Navalny. But does that mean he is popular, that he enjoys legitimacy? Even now, we don’t really know what Russians think about him, or about the war. There is no way of doing real polling in Russia because nobody will answer an independent pollster over the phone. JC: Do you think that the flock of young people, especially young men, who fled Russia after the start of the war represent a continuation of liberal movements that refuse to partake in the authoritarian state, or do you think they are moving for the sake of self-preservation – “I don’t want to go to the army, so I leave”? AA: I’m sure it’s both. I actually know many people who left Russia for political reasons either in the very last years before the war, or else just after the war began. JC: And do you see a change in the young generation versus the old one that have fled? AA: It’s hard for me to say because the people who I know were mostly already politicized. I do know some younger people who left, but most of them were already either active in the opposition, or working as journalists. Many of them very self-consciously think of themselves as maintaining Russian culture abroad, just as in the 20th century the Soviet dissidents or the anti-communist White Russians once thought of themselves as people who maintained the true Russian culture, outside of Bolshevik Russia. JC: Let’s move on to Poland. One of your first experiences with Poland was reporting on Margaret Thatcher’s first state visit, in the autumn of 1988. You followed her around the farmers’ market. AA: She was making a symbolic gesture. She wanted to welcome free markets, but the only one she could really visit was the farmers’ market at Hala Mirowska. JC: And I want to talk about this area because today you can look out of any window in that district, Mirów, and see rows and rows of skyscrapers. How does it feel to see a country built from the ground in such a short time, both politically and economically? AA: You know, when you’re living in a period of dramatic change, it’s always hard to know whether the change is positive or negative. The transformation in Poland created winners and losers, as well as new classes of people, new political movements of different kinds. At the time, it sometimes just felt like turbulence. Now, we can look back at the 1990s and early 2000s in Poland and see in retrospect that the country was headed in towards prosperity and European integration. In around 2009 or 2010, I remember speaking to a woman who worked cleaning government offices, and who asked me if her daughter should study in Amsterdam or in London. This seemed to me to be a real transformation, and it happened very fast: within a few years, Poles stopped feeling like second-class Europeans, and a generation of younger Poles appeared who had no qualms about crossing borders. JC: We again live in turbulent times. Do you think we’re heading towards positive outcomes? AA: I can’t make predictions, because everything that happens tomorrow depends on what people do today. Also, history doesn’t have a trajectory. It doesn’t move in a particular direction. You only think it does afterwards. As I said, you can look afterwards at Poland in the 1990s and you could say this was a period of great progress. But not everybody at the time saw that. Sometimes people are very wrong about a given country’s trajectory. I remember people writing about Ukraine in the 1990s, about how dangerous it was that Ukraine was independent, that this was going to be an anti-semitic state, that Ukrainian nationalism was going to come back... and although you can say many bad things about Ukraine, the country made many bad choices, actually it became a pretty tolerant state which now has a Jewish president and until recently a Muslim defense minister. JC: In the 1990s Poland’s and Ukraine’s GDP were roughly similar. Ukraine was even a bit richer. So the starting point was similar for both of these countries, but they’ve turned out very, very differently. Even if we stop in 2014. Why do you think Ukraine “chose East”? Was it external influence? AA: No, I think Ukraine was in a different position. First of all, central and eastern Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union since the 1920s, and had therefore experienced a longer period of occupation, repression, Sovietization and even Russification. Ukraine did not have, as Poland did, an alternative elite: a large cadre of economists and politicians, who already had some experience in opposition politics and in independent thinking. In Poland, the transformative finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, had already thought about how an economy might be decentralized before he took office. We can argue about how successful he was, but at least he was prepared to try something new. In Ukraine, people weren’t prepared. For one, there hadn’t been much space even for an illegal opposition in the previous couple of decades. Ukraine was also in many ways still emerging from colonial occupation. For the previous couple of centuries, many of the most capable Ukrainians had moved to Russia, and the first generation of leaders in independent Ukraine tended to be former Soviet apparatchiks. They didn’t immediately seek to become closer to western Europe. Instead, they looked for some kind of economic and political “third way” and an accomodation with Russia. Ukraine became stuck in this position, half-in, half-out and became pretty profoundly corrupt. JC: The Polish alternative elite had a vision of where they wanted the country to go. I think the general perception now is that this vision ends with the next election, right? Is this a natural process of gaining power? AA: Their vision, and it was shared by the time by politicians who now call themselves both left and right, was that Poland should join the EU and NATO, as fast as possible. My husband (Radek Sikorski) was in the very first government that said it wanted to join NATO. At the time this was taken very badly in Washington: the demand for NATO membership absolutely came from Poland, not from the US. But even then, in the early 1990s, many Poles already understood that the Russian sphere of influence would grow once again, that it was important to become part of the transatlantic alliance and an integrated Europe as fast as possible: NATO, the EU, the Council of Europe, all of the trading and security alliances. That consensus lasted through several different governments and over many years, even governments containing former communists. For twenty years, right, left and center disagreed about many things, but they all agreed on the direction that the country should go. In retrospect, that consensus created the basis for prosperity in Poland. JC: And regarding the Polish-Ukrainian relations. We know that antagonisms, e.g. the myth of Wołyń [a massacre of Poles that took place in what is now Western Ukraine, in 1943] are increasingly used in Polish political discourse today. In Ukraine, nationalist historians make heroes out of UPA, the Ukrainian revolutionary army, which is held responsible for this tragedy. Where do you see a start for burying the hatchet? Is the reconciliation of our nations possible? AA: So here’s a strange thing: For more than a decade after they both gained independence, Poland and Ukraine participated in a number of projects that were designed to solve exactly these kinds of Polish-Ukrainian differences. Books were published that were jointly written by Polish and Ukrainian historians, monuments were built. These projects were successful: If you’d asked me this question in 2010, I would have said that there are no real historical issues between Poland and Ukraine, that the two countries had mostly reconciled. For a number of reasons, this began to shift. In Poland, children and grandchildren of victims of the Wołyń massacre felt their tragedy hadn’t been fully recognized. In Ukraine, nationalist groups wanted the UPA partisans who had fought against the Soviet Union recognized for their heroism, despite the fact that some in this broad and not well-defined group were also linked to Wołyń. In both eastern Poland and western Ukraine, the memory of the ethnic cleansing that took place there in the late 1940s - Poles were moved West, Ukrainians East - to accomodate new borders has left feelings of displacement and bitterness. The wave of Ukrainian immigration, which started before the war, may have provoked some of this. But don’t underestimate the role played by Russia, which has always wanted to create discord between Poland and Ukraine, and pumps out propaganda to that effect in both countries. Vandalism on both sides of the border, damage done to cemeteries and monuments, is sometimes carried out by provacateurs working for Russia, just to create bad feelings. The Polish-Ukrainian conflict also hides a different reality: although there are real grievances and bad memories, the truth is that the biggest tragedies both nations experienced in the twentieth century were inflicted by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. That should unite these two countries, not divide them. JC: This week (19.04.2026 – Ed.) in Hungary we saw that using historical narratives to create grievance has no longer worked. Are you optimistic about the direction after Orban’s loss? AA: The Hungarian election was really important because it shows that people can actually resist powerful, dominant propaganda. The ruling party Fidesz controlled all of the TV, 90% of the newspapers, the constitutional court, the bureaucracy... and yet people had the nerve to vote against it and resist it. It’s also an important election because Hungary created a huge network of well-funded think tanks and foundations that were funding other far right groups and projects. So that loss is going to have a knock-on effect in other places too, maybe even in Poland. JC: What you’ve said about resisting propaganda reminds me of one of the interviews you did about talking to Russians in the post-Soviet era who claimed that people knew that the system was lying. Why do people choose to believe in these regimes anyway? AA: Because it’s useful. Stephen Kotkin, an American historian, once described how people would learn how to “speak Bolshevik”: It was just a language that you needed to use in order to get by in society. If you didn’t talk the way the regime wanted you to talk, then you might have problems, or lose your job, or your kids would not get into university. It was a way of getting along. Communist Poland was similar, at least in the early years. When I was writing a book about the Sovietization of Eastern Europe after World War II, I met a lot of people who wanted to talk a lot about the war, when many of them had done really heroic things. But almost nobody wanted to talk about the decade afterwards, between 1945 and 1956. This was when you had the short period of terror, violence and Polish Stalinism. To stay safe, people felt the need to just go along with what others were saying, or stay out of politics, or use communist jargon without necessarily believing it. I don’t judge them for it, and I wouldn’t describe all of those people as collaborators. It’s easy to feel moral certainty in retrospect, because we know that communism ended. But if you were living in 1949, it might not have been clear to you that communism was going to end. In very repressive societies, maybe about 10% of people who are really evil – collaborators, torturers. Maybe 10% of people are really brave and who find ways to resist. And then around 80% of people have kids, they have parents, they have to have jobs and they’ve had to get through it somehow. Strange though it may sound, I’ve found that the work I did on that book is now very useful in explaining some of what’s going on in the United States today. There are plenty of members of the Republican Party in Congress who know perfectly well that Donald Trump says many things that aren’t true. But they avoid criticizing him because it’s inconvenient, because they would get in trouble, because someone would attack them on the internet. So actually you don’t even need mass terror to get people to conform. JC: Is Gen Z reinventing agency? AA: We’ll see. In any generation you can find groups of people who want agency. If you live in a society that’s unfair, for example where a tiny number of people have captured most of the wealth, then at a certain point people rebel. This is always easier for younger people, who have you have less to lose. The question now is how the internet will affect the relationships between citizens and the state, and how it will change organizations. The “Twitter revolutions” people spoke about as early as 2008-9, mass protests organized online, have often proved to be very superficial. Although you can easily join something just by clicking, the work of creating a real movement requires physical participation. Successful mass movements of the past, for example the Civil Rights movement in the United States, were built by people who had spent many years together. They had participated in non-violent workshops together. They practiced and prepared. Just using the you can get everybody to show up at a certain moment, but then when the protest is broken up, nothing happens. It’s also true that the repressive regimes have more recently learned how to use the internet to undermine leaders and movements. Most of all, they now understand how to make people cynical. The form of propaganda that most modern authoritarians use - and I think the Russians really pioneered this - deploys sneering cynicism. Instead of praising the rulers, the regime propagandists mock the opposition movement leadership for being supposedly corrupt or sexually degenerate, with the goal of undermining any kind of idealism. JC: MAGA grew on the internet? AA: MAGA is a real grassroots movement. They had symbols, red hats, they showed up at rallies. But you’re right that the cynicism, the sarcasm and the distrust that the movement embodies came originally from the internet, and this is different. Fifty years ago, most European political parties had a social base in real organizations, in trade unions for Social Democrats, in church groups for Christian Democrats. As people stopped going to church and as the trade unions became smaller, the social base of these parties disappeared. Now people who wouldn’t have known one another in the past meet on the internet and create new movements, many of which don’t last. JC: Is history ending? Going in stale circles? AA: History never ends. In truth, human beings want contradictory things at the same time: order and freedom, stability and change. These things are never resolved, and when a society swings too far in one direction, people always push it the other way. But each time that happens, the result is different. Certainly it is true that we are now in a period when old philosophers and ideas from the 1930s are undergoing a revival. Carl Schmitt, who was a philosopher who was very influential on the Nazis, is back as an influence on both the far left and the far right, once again inspiring people to think that all politics has to be existential, that all politics is about defining and defeating enemies. In the US, some are also bringing back dominionism, the idea that we need a Christian and not a secular state. It’s also true that we are living through a more fundamental shift. The old left-right divide, which was mostly about the size of the state, is much less important now. Instead, we are arguing about more fundamental things: what are our rights, what protects our freedom. Or how much power do we want to give small elites, versus how much power to give ordinary people. In America a small group of very wealthy people now control information, because they control the social media platforms and AI, which means they determine what people will read and learn. Finding a way to preserve preserve zones of autonomy and independent thinking, this is going to be the main task for the next generation. JC: What is the one book that a person interested in Central Europe should read? AA: You could read my book “Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe” which tells the story of how the Soviet Union imposed its culture on the region. Or read Tim Snyder’s history of the region, “The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999.” And everyone should read “The Captive Mind” by Czesław Miłosz, which describes exactly the phenomenon we were talking about: why do people collaborate? I joined Scott Galloway and the brilliant Fiona Hill in a discussion about the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the future of global power, and what these conflicts reveal about America's role in the world. Scott told us that this was the 400th edition of his podcast, which is quite a number: My friend Francesco Chiamulera runs a brilliant series of literary events, Una Colline di Libri, A Hill of Books, in the Prosecco Hills, a region of vineyards and elegant hill towns in the Veneto, north of Venice. We did an event in Vittorio Veneto and also drove and biked around the countryside. Buy Autocracy Inc Buy Iron Curtain Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe

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Jun 13 • 4:15 AM EDT • Politics • anneapplebaum.substack.com
Seattle businesses ready to cash in as World Cup kicks off downtown

For Sage Lavner, a bartender at Baba Yaga in Pioneer Square, the excitement is hard to miss.

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Jun 12 • 7:24 PM EDT • Business • komonews.com
Saints blank Mud Hens for second-straight win

Five pitchers combined on a four-hit shutout as St. Paul made it two wins in a row at Toledo with a 1-0 victory Thursday night. Austin Voth made his second start for the Saints. He didn’t qualify for the win, but struck out eight batters while allowing three hits and four walks over 4 2/3 innings of work. Drew Smith relieved him with two on and two out in the fifth and extinguished the Mud ...

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Jun 11 • 10:55 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Thomas Best, M.D., Ph.D., Earns ACSM Honor Award for Transforming Sports Injury Recovery

Dr. Thomas Best receives ACSM’s highest honor for pioneering sports injury recovery research and mentoring the next generation of clinicians.

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Jun 11 • 11:25 AM EDT • Sports • news.med.miami.edu
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K-Pop Powerhouse SM Entertainment Elevates Global Hitmaking with Solid State Logic ORACLE

Seoul, South Korea, June 9, 2026 — SM Entertainment, the multinational record label, talent agency, production company and music publisher that pioneered the introduction of Korean music artists to a wider global audience, has integrated a new Solid State Logic Oracle into BigShot Studio at its facility in Seoul, South Korea. Oracle, which introduces SSL’s […]

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Jun 9 • 2:43 PM EDT • Entertainment • mixonline.com
K-Pop Powerhouse SM Entertainment Elevates Global Hitmaking With Solid State Logic ORACLE

Seoul, South Korea, June 9, 2026 — SM Entertainment, the multinational record label, talent agency, production company and music publisher that pioneered the introduction of Korean music artists to | From shaping the sound of modern K-pop to scaling world-class production, SM adopts ORACLE to supercharge workflow, streamline sessions, and deliver signature SSL analogue excellence.

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Jun 9 • 2:41 PM EDT • Entertainment • livedesignonline.com
New Jersey AI Pioneer Honored at Liberty Science Center’s 2026 Genius Gala

Rumson resident Yann LeCun's work in the 1980s at the former AT&T Bell Labs facility helped revolutionize U.S. Postal Service mail-sorting systems.

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Jun 8 • 1:55 PM EDT • Science • njmonthly.com
NYU Launches Earth Systems Institute

Interdisciplinary science and tech hub aims to develop pioneering solutions for a changing planet

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Jun 8 • 8:10 AM EDT • Science • nyu.edu
Joy Crichlow: A Trailblazer in Minority Business Development Has Passed

Fern GillespieA pioneer in minority business development has died. For decades, Brooklyn resident Joy Crichlow was responsible for minority business owners achi

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Jun 6 • 11:06 AM EDT • Business • ourtimepress.com
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World Cup 2026: USA pioneer Desmond Armstrong and his legacy

When Desmond Armstrong faced the media at the World Cup in 1990, the first question he got was one that would stick in his mind for the wrong reasons.

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Jun 6 • 2:11 AM EDT • Sports • bbc.com
World Ocean Assessment highlights urgent need for science and global action

In the wood-panelled rooms of New York’s storied Explorers Club, where portraits of pioneering adventurers line the walls, diplomats, scientists and ocean advocates gathered on Tuesday evening with a shared sense of urgency – and anticipation.

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Jun 4 • 10:18 AM EDT • Science • news.un.org
Pioneering AI Founders Join to Accelerate Roblox Reality Vision

Founders from Morpheus AI, Dynamics Lab, Lucid AI Make Playable Photorealistic Roblox World Models Possible

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • about.roblox.com
School for the Digital Future pioneers new Sport Impact Certificate

Sports and academics may seem like opposite ends of the university, but the School for...

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Jun 2 • 1:31 PM EDT • Sports • boisestate.edu
Silicon Valley’s $140 Billion Tax Break Is Going Mainstream

At business breakfasts and investor lunches across the US, the topic du jour is a strategy pioneered in Silicon Valley to avoid paying taxes on billions of dollars of capital gains.

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Jun 2 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • bloomberg.com
Sound Royalties Strengthens International Presence With Appointment of Music and Entertainment Veteran Melanie Cameron, as Regional Director of Business Development for the United Kingdom

/PRNewswire/ -- Sound Royalties (the "Company"), the pioneering provider of creator-friendly financing for music and entertainment professionals, announces the...

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Jun 1 • 7:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • prnewswire.com
Houston Ship Channel bridge honors Dr. Richard Tapia, National Medal of Science recipient

Harris County names Houston Ship Channel bridge after Dr. Richard Tapia, a pioneering mathematician who transformed STEM education nationwide.

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May 27 • 11:08 AM EDT • Science • click2houston.com
Photo Gallery: French surgeon who pioneered vocal cord repair visits Vanderbilt Health, observes seventh procedure

Marie, a physician from France who has spent over two decades honing the selective laryngeal reinnervation, presented at the second annual Robert H. Ossoff Lecture and was a guest in the operating room for Vanderbilt Health’s seventh such surgery.

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May 26 • 1:43 PM EDT • Health • news.vumc.org
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New Instrument Used Antarctic Ice Sheet to Probe Extreme Universe

The Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO) is a NASA Astrophysics Pioneers Program mission designed to detect the most energetic particles in the universe.

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May 26 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
Lidwave Appoints Eyal Assa as Chief Business Officer to Lead Global Expansion as Physical AI Reshapes the Real World

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL / ACCESS Newswire / May 25, 2026 / Today, Lidwave, a pioneer in 4D coherent LiDAR-on-a-chip technology, announced the appointment of Eyal Assa as Chief Business Officer to lead the company's global commercial expansion as Physical ...

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May 25 • 10:50 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com
BottleRock artists criticize Trump, spark anti-ICE chants

Concious hip-hop pioneers Arrested Development and performers Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker delivered some of BottleRock’s most political moments at BottleRock Napa Valley 2026.

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May 24 • 5:43 PM EDT • Politics • sfchronicle.com
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Science teacher at Fisher Hill Elementary School in Orange earns accolades

Chrislyn Newton, a dedicated science educator, receives a Pioneer Valley Excellence in Teaching Award for her passion and commitment to students.

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May 24 • 10:00 AM EDT • Science • recorder.com
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Pols & Politics: Massachusetts government workforce at an ‘all-time high in 2025,’ report says

State government costs were 24% of total spending or $23.5B last year, according to the Pioneer Institute. Plus: A budget amendment would add $25k of funding for a local voter education nonprofit.

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May 24 • 4:02 AM EDT • Politics • bostonherald.com
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InRESPONSE, Santa Rosa’s crisis team, faces operational changes amid proposed funding cuts

County funding for Santa Rosa’s InRESPONSE program is slated to be cut by about half as officials wind down spending from the expiring Measure O sales tax. That means big changes ahead for a pioneering, civilian-led team.

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May 23 • 1:59 PM EDT • Health • pressdemocrat.com
Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO filing just told us what business he’s betting on for the future—and it’s not rockets

Elon Musk's creation has essentially re-invented itself from a commercial space pioneer facing little competition, to an AI-centric player battling all the hyperscalers.

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May 23 • 4:00 AM EDT • Business • fortune.com
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Navy Researcher Kathryn Wahl ’87 Receives Award for Breakthroughs in Interfacial Science

Kathryn Anderson Wahl ’87, a senior researcher at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), has been awarded the 2025 E.O. Hulburt Annual Science Award for pioneering research that has advanced the…

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May 21 • 1:27 PM EDT • Science • wp.stolaf.edu
Big science and uncanny prescience: Laurie Anderson’s greatest songs

Forty years since her pioneering concert film Home of the Brave, and ahead of a European tour, we count down the best of a surprisingly poppy avant garde catalogue

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May 21 • 11:09 AM EDT • Science • theguardian.com
Col. Patrick Madigan: Pioneer in connecting mental health to combat effectiveness

Col. Patrick Madigan, was known as the “Father of Army Neuropsychiatry,” strengthening how U.S. Army medicine provided mental health support for the force

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May 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • dvidshub.net
Barney Frank, liberal icon and gay-rights pioneer, dies at 86

The former congressman was politically engaged until the end.

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May 20 • 9:52 AM EDT • Politics • wgbh.org
Dexter Students Shine at Local Science Olympiad - The Sun Times News

By Marissa Dunham, Chrissy Hladky, and Rob Hladky On Saturday, May 9, over 2000 students from forty local elementary schools participated in a fun day of learning and competition at the Washtenaw County Science Olympiad (WESO), held at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor. WESO was founded in 2002 and is an annual event offering ... Read more

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May 20 • 7:42 AM EDT • Science • thesuntimesnews.com
Clyde Best documentary honors a pioneer who helped shape the sport in Portland and abroad

As the soccer world looks ahead to the FIFA World Cup, Portland fans will get a chance to celebrate one of the most influential figures in Timbers' history with

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May 20 • 1:57 AM EDT • Sports • katu.com
Darden’s Christoph Herpfer Named One of “Best 40 Under 40 Business Professors” by Poets & Quants

Citing his holistic teaching approach, research with real-world application, and pioneering work to develop Darden's healthcare offerings, Poets & Quants named Christoph Herpfer to its list of the Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors for 2026.

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May 19 • 3:04 PM EDT • Business • news.darden.virginia.edu
Liberty Science Center honors AI pioneer, physician-innovator and de-extinction scientist at Genius Gala

The 14th Annual Genius Gala was held on Monday at the Jersey City center

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May 19 • 11:08 AM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute secures $5M grant to prevent childhood disease

Prime Minister Albanese announces a $5 million grant for MCRI to launch a pioneering research team focused on preventing childhood health conditions.

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May 18 • 2:14 PM EDT • Health • foxnews.com
New MatterChat Model Helps AI to ‘See’ the Language of Science

From writing emails to generating computer code, much of the artificial intelligence prevalent in our daily lives has succeeded by mastering one domain: text. However, this leaves a major blind spot in the physical sciences, where models depend on the high-resolution, three-dimensional data of the physical world, like the intricate lattice of atoms in a crystal. Delivering on the promise of using AI for science requires teaching these data-driven text models to seamlessly “talk to” physics-based models. Now, a new AI framework from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), called MatterChat, solves this problem by creating a specialized “bridge.” It connects the conversational power of a Large Language Model (LLM) with a physics-based AI that models “interatomic potentials”: the complex physical forces between atoms. The resulting system already significantly outperforms general-purpose AI tools like GPT-4 at predicting material properties, and the team hopes it can accelerate scientific discovery by serving as a robust research partner that provides grounded insights and generates step-by-step instructions for synthesizing novel materials. A paper describing this work was recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence. “Traditional simulations can provide the physical rigor required for materials science, yet their computational cost remains prohibitive for high-throughput screening. Conversely, while LLMs excel at rapid knowledge synthesis, they inherently lack the ‘structural vision’ to interpret materials directly from their underlying atomic coordinates,” said Yingheng Tang, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Applied Math and Computational Research Division (AMCR) and lead author on the paper. “MatterChat was built to solve this dilemma, empowering LLMs with a structural ‘vision’ that allows researchers to leverage their full potential for solving complex, real-world materials challenges.” Empowering language models to solve complex challenges in materials science To build MatterChat, the Berkeley Lab team drew inspiration from technologies like Vision Question Answering (VQA) and Text-to-Image (T2I) generation. In these tasks, AI must translate high-level text concepts into visual images, or vice versa. Doing so requires developers to build tools that “bridge” two fundamentally different forms of data. The researchers adapted this concept to the physical sciences. With MatterChat, they created a “bridge model” that successfully connects an LLM’s general knowledge with the deep understanding of the atomic-scale world encoded in scientific interatomic potentials. Until now, researchers using LLMs to solve materials problems usually had to feed them raw data files as if they were just strings of text. It’s like asking an AI to understand a complex 3D engine based only on a parts list: the LLM can read the names, but it can’t “see” how the atoms fit together in space. MatterChat solves this by training a specialized AI bridge model, pre-trained on millions of crystal structures and an LLM, to align the LLM’s representation of the world with the interatomic potential’s representation of the world. The bridge model can translate physical insights into a format the LLM can actually understand. By giving the LLM these “scientific eyes”— a scientific “inductive bias” in the terminology of AI — the Berkeley Lab team has transformed it into a robust research tool capable of providing grounded scientific insights into complex materials challenges, such as predicting thermal stability or analyzing electronic band gaps. “We think of atoms as living in a physical space, but from a machine learning perspective, they are just vectors living in some very non-trivially structured manifold in a high-dimensional Euclidean space; and, of course, the same is true for the sentences and paragraphs that we use to express our ideas about those atoms,” said co-author Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Lab’s Scientific Data Division (SDD) AI Initiative Research Lead. “The bridge model basically gets those two structures to ‘talk with’ each other.” As a proof-of-concept of this general approach, the team trained their bridge model on a dataset curated by pairing nearly 143,000 stable atomic structures from the Materials Project with their corresponding physical properties. This training data was automatically assembled using the Materials Project’s API and deliberately enriched with properties fundamental to microelectronics design — like formation energy and bandgap — allowing MatterChat to learn the complex patterns connecting a material’s atomic blueprint to its functional performance. To validate their model, the researchers benchmarked MatterChat against a suite of other AI systems, from general-purpose LLMs to other specialized scientific AI methods. The results show that MatterChat consistently outperformed its competitors across a range of tasks. The model was more accurate in classifying material types and demonstrated superior precision in predicting numerical properties. For example, it excelled at predicting a material’s bandgap, a property critical for designing new electronics from high-capacity energy storage to next-generation computer chips. “Our design is significantly more efficient because we don’t have to build a massive AI model from the ground up,” said co-author Zhi (Jackie) Yao, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s AMCR. “Instead, we take two powerful, pre-trained models — a structural encoder for materials physics and an open-source LLM — and use them off-the-shelf. The only component we actually train is the lightweight ‘bridge model’ that translates between them. It’s the difference between building an entire car factory and simply designing a smart adapter that connects a world-class engine to a world-class navigation system. This approach is not only computationally efficient, but also makes the system modular, so we can easily upgrade components or adapt the bridge for other scientific domains in the future.” Crucially, this modular design highlights exactly how institutions like Berkeley Lab and the Department of Energy are carving out a highly valuable niche in the booming AI landscape. Rather than competing with Silicon Valley tech giants to build ever-larger language models from scratch, the lab is focusing on the specialized connective tissue that makes commercial AI useful for hardcore science. Because the bridge model approach underlying MatterChat is forward-compatible, it is perfectly positioned to leverage these parallel tracks of innovation. As Mahoney pointed out, “We expect that industry will continue to develop improved LLMs, and we expect domain scientists and facilities will continue to generate new data. An important part of scientific machine learning is not simply to solve problems on today’s data, but instead to develop general methods that will be forward-compatible with orders of magnitude more data, whether from scientific domains or from LLMs.” According to Yao, the MatterChat project, which was initially developed and enhanced with funding from a Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) Program, will now expand its capabilities. In a collaboration with Fermilab, MatterChat is already contributing to a U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission project — called Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon (AXESS) — that aims to speed up the development of next-generation, high-speed, radiation-hardened detectors for challenging particle physics experiments by using advanced 3D integrated circuits (chiplets) and AI-driven data analysis. In addition to the LDRD support, the team also credits supercomputing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located at Berkeley Lab, with MatterChat’s success. “We are incredibly grateful to NERSC; this research simply would not have happened without access to the Perlmutter supercomputer through their AI for Science program,” said Tang. Wenbin Xu, a NERSC postdoctoral fellow at the time, was also a major co-author of the work, as was Benjamin Erichson, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s SDD, highlighting the benefits of AMCR-SDD collaboration on AI for science. ### 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.

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May 18 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • newscenter.lbl.gov
Ball State’s Dr. Renee Twibell Recognized Nationally for Pioneering Contributions to Nursing Science

Dr. Renee Twibell, a Ball State University alumna and associate professor emerita in the University’s School of Nursing, has been selected to receive the 2026 Pioneering Spirit Award from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN).

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May 18 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • bsu.edu
Ronda Rousey entered Gina Carano fight injured

Former UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey only needed 17 seconds to finish women's mixed marital arts pioneer Gina Carano at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif. on Saturday. The two met in the featured fight of Most Valuable Promotions and Netflix's debut MMA event. It ...

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May 18 • 1:50 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Now What? With Carbon Pricing Eroded and Pipeline Politics Advancing, Here Are the Pathways for Climate Success

At the end of a whirlwind week of news on carbon pricing and electricity strategy, capping a madcap year of pretty much non-stop, dramatic change, the word across much of Canada’s climate and energy transition community is that climate policy in this country has been shredded. Eviscerated. Hit with a sledgehammer by policy rollbacks that have pushed the country’s 2050 net zero target “well out of reach”. That means it’s never been more important to look for the rays of hope and glimmers of possibility. To glimpse the seeds of the next set of strategies to get Canada’s climate pollution under control and the country into the accelerating global dash away from fossil fuels. And then, once we’ve spotted those possibilities, get on with the hard, day-to-day slog of trying to make them a reality. Nothing takes away from the frustration and the deep disappointment so many climate and energy hawks are expressing, the sense of betrayal by the author of Value(s) and the former UN special envoy for climate action and finance. But we knew two things as the week drew to a close. We’re looking at the world as it most definitely is. And we don’t get to give up finding the pathways to confront climate change and deliver faster, deeper carbon cuts that leave no one else behind. So really, the first question we all have to ask ourselves is: What’s next? Subscribe All the Oxygen in the Room The outpouring of anger and grief over the carbon pricing deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been absolutely understandable. So much of the climate community poured years, more than a decade, into dragging the current federal pricing regime across the finish line, then defending it from a deluge of three-syllable rhymes after the Trudeau government proved utterly incapable of delivering its own message. The policy foisted on us by neo-classical economists took up all the oxygen in the room, burned through years of climate response time that we won’t get back, while cornering climate hawks into the position that the best response to the crisis of our lifetimes is a new tax…in an era of historic anti-tax sentiment. I mean, really—what could possibly have gone wrong? Against that history, let’s appreciate columnist Max Fawcett’s point that even a modest carbon pricing agreement with a government as off-the-wall libertarian/conspiracist as Danielle Smith’s—those adjectives are mine, not Max’s—is a win worth savouring (as long as Smith keeps her promises for a change). But part of living in the world as it is (no, I’m not letting that go) is to be clear-headed about what we can and can’t control. And one thing we get to decide, after seeing this week’s carbon price festivities take up all the oxygen yet again, is whether we want to keep letting that happen. Particularly when success down that road depends on a factor that no one with a climate agenda can control or influence—a provincial carbon pricing mechanism that has been manipulated and eroded beyond its lowest possible denominator. Thankfully, that’s not the way it has to go. Not when we have so many other powerful, practical tools at our disposal, including the ones still available to us through this abominable Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. Tools In Our Toolbox When I started roughing out this list, I didn’t expect it to grow to nearly a dozen bullet points. It’s probably still incomplete. Some of the greatest hits in today’s climate solutions toolbox include: • No Carbon Capture, No Pipeline: On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly stated that there’s been no change to the MOU provision that there will be no West Coast pipeline without an industry commitment to build its massive, $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage (CCUS) hub in Northern Alberta, and vice versa. The two megaprojects were joined at the hip when the MOU was signed Nov. 27, and the implementation agreement this week affirmed that they still are. A parade of independent analysts have spent years pointing to the economic and technical flaws in CCUS, while the industry kept postponing its investment decision until it could arm-twist the government for more “clarity” (by which it meant even more lavish taxpayer subsidies) on the project. Now the industry itself is running away from the CCUS hub and insisting the pipeline should proceed without it, but Carney doesn’t seem to be budging from a central tenet of the MOU to which Smith has signed on. • No Subsidies, No Investors: Climate analysts and advocates have quite rightly been hammering away at Carney and his team, insisting that any new capacity the industry wants to build must proceed without new subsidies. The government has responded with a growing collection of funding and financing mechanisms for the very wide menu of industrial development and nation-building projects they say they want to take on, and that menu always includes fossil fuel infrastructure. But it’s hard to see how even the combined fiscal clout of the federal and supportive provincial governments will deliver the financial backing private investors would need when the business case for new fossil fuel development is evaporating before their eyes. Particularly when… • No Market, No Demand, No Investors: As our friend Markham Hislop at Energi Media (our apparently sleepless friend, given the massive volume of great material he’s been churning out) points out this morning, the biggest vulnerability in any pipeline deal is the assumption that Asian buyers will want the oil or liquefied natural ga that our fossil industry is so keen to send them. Hislop writes in part: Ottawa and Alberta are effectively betting that countries like China and India will continue increasing oil imports for decades as their economies grow and energy consumption rises. That assumption underpins the entire economic rationale for expanding oil sands production and building billions of dollars in new export infrastructure. But Asian energy systems are changing rapidly… China, India, South Korea, and other major hydrocarbon importers are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into electricity systems built around wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, hydro, and expanded transmission infrastructure. Domestic “energy sovereignty” is increasingly replacing the old energy-security model based on stable oil and gas imports. Those investments are expected to sharply slow oil demand growth and eventually reverse it, even as overall energy consumption continues rising. There are also refining constraints. Many Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes are already optimized to process discounted heavy crude from the Middle East and Latin America. That raises serious questions about how much additional Canadian bitumen Asian markets can absorb at profitable prices. Small wonder that there’s still no private sector investor for the project, despite Smith’s government desperately beating the bushes to put together a deal. For now, Alberta is acting as proponent and covering early start-up costs for a pitch to the federal Major Projects Office, which could actually turn into the next tough hurdle for Smith and her pipeline to jump. • Canada Day Looms: How ironic that Canada’s birthday this year could become a major chokepoint for the provincial premier who’s been working so diligently to tear the country apart! The July 1 target date for Alberta’s pipeline proposal is baked into the MOU, was reaffirmed by the implementation plan, but it hadn’t dawned on me that it cuts both ways. As one very smart colleague wrote in an email yesterday, “they’ve thrown the ball into Alberta’s court to get the project proposal on the table really quickly and to have to do a whole pile of work to put together a massive, complicated project that would typically take years to assemble, and they’ve given them weeks to do it.” That makes July 1 a looming deadline that Smith won’t be able to run away from politically, especially with the separatists in her party and her caucus breathing down her neck. (See previous ref to off-the-wall.) But if Alberta comes in with a sloppy, incomplete submission, even after Carney bent over backwards to simplify the application process and the rules that govern it, it may be harder for the province or the industry to blame Ottawa and insist on the faster process they claim their investors are demanding. (Oh, wait—which investors would those be??) • We’ll See You In Court (Then We’ll See You Again): If Carney did cave, that would be just one more reason for Indigenous and other affected communities to take the government and the process to court—Just as Alberta First Nations did, successfully, in response to Smith’s half-baked separation referendum. Veterans of the Harper era have been warning that a shoddy process around fossil fuel infrastructure or other major projects will be a recipe for the very delays that process seeks to avoid. And now more than ever, with renewable energy and energy storage eating fossil fuels’ lunch in import markets around the world, a delayed pipeline or LNG terminal may be as good as a cancelled one. • Charged Up, Ready to Go: With its goal of doubling Canada’s electricity supply to meet a doubling of demand by 2050, the national electricity strategy that Carney unveiled Thursday has a lot to like. With its explicit language about speeding the shift from fuels to more efficient and affordable electricity, global investment and deployment patterns that already favour that shift, an emerging bidirectional power grid, the role of front-line options like rooftop solar and heat pumps, the emergence of electric vehicles as behind-the-meter energy storage, and the domestic jobs and manufacturing to make it all happen, the document doubles down on the essential cornerstone of a faster shift off fossil fuels. The strategy envisions a more prominent role for gas and nuclear power. But some of those provisions were already in the Clean Electricity Regulations that climate hawks are now fighting so hard to defend, inserted as a compromise in a futile attempt to mollify the industry and its political representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But once again, gas will be a tougher sell when it’s more expensive and now so much more unpredictable than the clean alternatives. The new nuclear technologies are still speculative and deeply vulnerable to cost overruns. Increasingly, utilities, developers, and investors know it. Carney declared Thursday that “it doesn’t do us good to be sitting in court all the time with provinces. It doesn’t do us good to be talking past each other. What does do us good is to come together with specific projects.” There are no guarantees, but so much of the language and narrative-building in the electricity strategy suggests the lion’s share of those projects will be renewable. • The Party Has Already Started: The electricity strategy only rarely digs down to specific projects, but provinces representing three-quarters of Canada’s population are already embracing a faster transition. Hydro-Québec is working on a 10-year, $185-billion renewable energy and grid buildout by 2035. Ontario recently brought 10 provinces and territories together in a National Energy Corridor Agreement to boost interprovincial and -territorial transmission infrastructure. And the MOU implementation agreement commits Alberta to facilitate investment in renewable energy projects, a big step back from its continuing, punitive restrictions on renewables development. The electricity strategy envisions much of the financing and infrastructure that will be needed to pull those advances together into an integrated whole. • Delivering on Affordability: The MOU implementation plan has little or nothing to say about affordability (are you surprised?), but the electricity strategy does, with a top-line pledge to reduce home energy costs for seven out of 10 Canadian households by 2050, a total saving of $15 billion across the board. It’s just a start, but it puts affordability on the government’s narrative map. If they’re serious and deliberate about patching together a least-cost energy strategy, it’ll have little if any room for oil, gas, or nuclear—not with powerful evidence, for example, that electricity prices are higher when those prices are set by gas. • Smith Proves that Canada Works: By signing a deal that makes it harder to claim the federal government is blocking a new pipeline, Smith has helped prove Carney’s constant anti-separatist refrain that “Canada works”—incurring the rage, no doubt, of her own political base. Canada also needs to work for anyone who depends on a clean environment, healthy and thriving ecosystems, and safe, stable climate. But with Smith and her separatist constituents setting up as a fifth column for annexation by Donald Trump’s United States, let’s set aside any notion that 51st state status for Canada is a recipe for anything other than climate disaster (and so much else). Resisting and withstanding Trump (just 170 more sleeps until mid-term elections, which is a damn sight better than the 730 we started with) doesn’t mean a free pass for a pipeline, but we can still appreciate it that keeping Canada whole and sovereign is still Carney’s Job One. • The Words Not Spoken: Apart from a commitment to export a million barrels of “low-emission” Alberta bitumen per day (memo to Smith and Carney: You realize that that’s less than the industry is already exporting??), the MOU implementation plan says nothing about the international trade and economic sovereignty deals that Carney has been travelling the world to negotiate. It didn’t have to. Carney doesn’t need permission from Danielle Smith, her American enablers, or her separatist allies to continue building the alliances that will ratchet down our economic dependency on our unstable, unreliable neighbour to the south. But every connection he builds with countries outside North America helps align our economy and our future with a faster shift off fossil fuels. Little if any of this was on our bingo cards a year or two ago. But it’s the pathway that has opened up to us. And if it gives Canada any climate or energy gains at all in an era still dominated by Trump and his increasingly ridiculous tariffs, his loutish trade negotiations and his continuing annexation threats, we have to take the wins. Not least because they’ll be the point of departure for what we can achieve in 2027, 2029, and beyond, as Trump’s grip and this era begin to loosen and then fade. What is Carney Doing? If this line of thought is right—and it’s a possibility, not a prediction—it means that Carney’s actions and decisions are largely about buying time. Time for Trump’s power to wane. Time for Alberta’s separatist/conspiracist virus to spread, mutate, die out, or at least die back, with help from a vaccine of federal steadiness and calm (appropriate enough, for a movement populated largely by vaccine deniers) that no conspiracy theory can dismiss. And time for the government’s trade and investment agenda to deliver results—even knowing that some of those results will bring impacts that front-line communities will not and should not accept. In the immediate moment, none of this changes the way the wider climate community has to respond, from campaigners to investors to front-line practitioners. All of our voices are still essential. But those voices will be stronger and more confident if we have a clearer sense of the brutal game we’ve been pulled into, and a plausible path (or two it three) for playing it to the win we need. This conversation also underscores our biggest task for the remaining years of what was supposed to be the “decisive” decade for climate response: if we can shift the energy narrative in Canada, make it a mainstream view that the country’s preoccupation with oil and gas has us falling farther behind a changing world, we’ll see far better results in the 2030s and beyond. For many veteran climate advocates, taking on that part of the fight will begin with recognizing that most of our friends and family, neighbours and colleagues already understand that climate change is real and right in front of us: they’re looking away and staying silent because they don’t have what climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “efficacy”. As Hayhoe recently pointed out in a feature interview with The Energy Mix, it amounts to science denial to keep hammering away at the dire news about global warming without also helping audiences understand what they can do about it, with multiple studies telling us why that won’t work. Far better to open those conversations with the dominant crises like energy security, food security, emergency preparedness and business continuity, affordability, and financial security that have knocked climate change far lower on the list of public priorities, and will likely keep it there. We Knew This Would Happen Climate hawks have always known this day would come. For decades, we warned that everyone had to pay attention to climate change right now, because it would be much tougher to respond once the crisis itself started affecting our daily lives. We were right, and here we are. But now, thanks to decades of hard work, communities and countries have an alternative to doubling down on fossil fuels. “In 10 years everyone will have ‘always known’ that solar and batteries were going to win,” Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade writes on LinkedIn. With the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy priorities around the world, Canada and the United States are among the shrinking number of countries that are still very keen on fossil fuel development. Understanding that gap is a first, essential step in spotting the opportunities ahead, and averting the deep economic as well as environmental and social risk we face if we don’t seize them. Thanks for reading The Energy Mix Weekender! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender. Chart of the Week BYD Eyes 20 Dealership Locations After Canada Greenlights Chinese EV Imports ‘Sledgehammer’ Carbon Price Deal Boosts Emissions by 230Mt, Aims for Fall 2027 Pipeline Approval ‘Worse Than Harper’: Regulatory Rollback Would Stop Canada from Assessing Project Impacts, Critics Warn Electricity Strategy Aims for Doubling by 2050, Allows ‘Flexibility’ for Gas Power Plants Opposition Mounts as O’Leary’s Data Centre Approved in Drought-Stricken Utah Diluted Carbon Price Misses ‘Reality of the World We’re In’, Could Impede Diversified Trade: Climate Institute $200B in Clean Energy Investment Will Need On-Time Delivery, Reliable Policies, Trade Association Says ‘Sovereign Pipeline’: CEO Pitches to Keep Trans Mountain in Government Hands What a Supercharged El Niño Could Mean for Canada Canada’s future is electric, and here’s how a power grid superhighway would get us there (Toronto Star) The Perilous Waters of Hecate Strait (Globe and Mail) Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East (The Guardian) Farmers confront rising cost of fertilizer and fuel as spring seeding under way (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Clarkson forecasts 24% decline in offshore oil, gas capital expenditures (Oil & Gas Journal) Pipe Dreams: How Oil and Gas Fail to Deliver Economic Development in Africa (Oil Change International) Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition (Climate Home News) Iran war threatens the dream of a post-oil economy in the Gulf (Washington Post) U.S. Oil, Gas Work Force Hits Lowest Level Since 2022 (Rigzone) Why Polestar Is Doubling Down on Net Zero as Rivals Pull Back on EVs (Bloomberg) Why this Michigan utility plans to sell its hydro dams for $13 (E&E News/Politico) Levees can no longer save New Orleans (Vox)

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May 16 • 6:41 PM EDT • Politics • energymixweekender.substack.com
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Our understanding of Charles Darwin continues to evolve

Historian Janet Browne’s Darwin: A Biography lifts the curtain on the private life of Charles Darwin, one of science’s most controversial pioneers.

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May 15 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencenews.org
My unsung hero of science: Carolyn Wood Sherif, pioneer of feminist psychology who foresaw the risks of scientific bias

In 1979, Wood Sherif wrote my favourite psychological paper of all time.

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May 15 • 4:51 AM EDT • Science • theconversation.com
Craig Venter obituary

Pioneering and controversial geneticist who was one of the first to sequence the human genome, in part by using his own DNA

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May 14 • 12:33 PM EDT • Science • theguardian.com
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Apreo Health® Adds Independent Director and Strategic Investor to Advance Novel Airway Scaffold for Severe Emphysema

Apreo Health, a clinical-stage medical device company pioneering a tissue-sparing treatment for severe emphysema, today announced the appointment of David Amerson to its Board of Directors and a strategic investment from OSF Ventures, the corporate investment arm of OSF HealthCare. The company also announced it will present new clinical data at the American Thoracic Society (ATS) 2026 International Conference in Orlando, Florida.

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May 13 • 7:06 AM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com
Man accused of shooting Syracuse officers suffers from multiple mental health issues, lawyer says

All three injured officers have been released from the hospital. The shooting led to a 6-hour standoff at Pioneer Homes near downtown.

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May 10 • 12:16 PM EDT • Health • syracuse.com
Inspiring Grad: Macaiah Shendo, UNM College of Population Health

Macaiah Shendo, a student in The University of New Mexico College of Population Health (COPH), is pioneering a new field of brain health care for Indigenous peoples in New Mexico. But if you ask him, he’s no trailblazer. He believes he’s simply doing...

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May 10 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • news.unm.edu
Science, music, and stream bugs: Sierra Streams celebrates 30 years at Pioneer Park

Sierra Streams Institute will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a free community event on Saturday, May 16 from 1 to 5 p.m. at Pioneer Park in Nevada City, bringing together

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May 8 • 5:15 AM EDT • Science • theunion.com
The National Academy of Sciences Elects Two Berkeley Lab Researchers

Two Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. They are part of a cohort of 120 new members and 25 international members. The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and — alongside the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine — provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations. The 2026 electees bring the total number of active members to 2,705 with 557 international members. Gary Karpen is a biologist senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biological Systems and Engineering Division and a Professor of Cell and Developmental Physiology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. Karpen studies how the structure, organization, and maintenance of genetic material impact inheritance and cell function. His lab focuses on chromatin — a packaged form of DNA strands wrapped around proteins that comprises our chromosomes — with a particular emphasis on centromeres, rarely expressed sequences called heterochromatin, DNA repair, and regulatory RNAs. His research reveals insights into fundamental aspects of nuclear organization and genome regulation that are shared across the tree of life, broadening our understanding of cancer and other diseases, birth defects, and aging. Kam-Biu Luk is a Professor Emeritus of physics at UC Berkeley and a retired senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division. He is an experimental particle physicist whose research has focused on neutrinos: nearly massless, electrically neutral elementary particles that can pass through matter virtually undetected. Neutrinos are created during radioactive decay processes, including the fusion process occurring in stars and the fission process that powers nuclear reactors. Luk initiated and co-led the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, a project based in China with more than 200 international collaborators. In 2012, the Daya Bay experiment discovered a new form of a phenomenon called “neutrino oscillation” in which neutrinos change from one type to another. For this discovery, Luk and his collaborator Yifan Wang received the 2014 American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields W.K.H. Panofsky Prize for outstanding work in experimental particle physics, and he was also the co-recipient of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize. Luk is currently participating in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) hosted by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which will investigate any potential difference in behavior between neutrinos and antineutrinos that may shed light on the evolution of the universe, especially why antimatter is absent in the present universe. ### 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.

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May 7 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • newscenter.lbl.gov
Global Health & WASH: May 2026 Funding Opportunities (14 new opportunities!)

The May update for Global Health & WASH brings new calls that cluster around three distinct shifts: LMIC research leadership moving from funder encouragement into a hard eligibility constraint, pharmaceutical and corporate-linked funders running structurally independent education and use-inspired research portfolios at substantial scale, and AI adoption shifting decisively from speculative tool to operational capability across health and WASH systems alike. In LMIC Research Leadership as Eligibility, Not Encouragement, Wellcome anchors the dominant signal of the month with three separate major calls that all require or strongly center LMIC leadership in their basic eligibility architecture. Wellcome’s ESIC Hubs (£1.5-£1.9M per hub over 3-5 years) explicitly requires an LMIC-based lead applicant, treating Global South leadership as a design constraint rather than a participation goal. Wellcome’s Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Development Award funds transdisciplinary teams whose lead must be a mid-career or established researcher based at an organization in Africa, South Asia, or Southeast Asia. Wellcome’s larger Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Award (£1M-£8M for optimizing licensed interventions) requires the administering organization to be in eligible LMIC regions and at least 50% of applicants based there. Around Wellcome, the same pattern shows up at smaller scale and across funders: CHINNOVA channels $1M into West and Central African research institutions for climate-health work; IBRO’s Neuroscience Training Grants explicitly tier ceilings by region of residence with Africa receiving the highest amount ($5,000); IHME’s GBD Emerging Researcher Award reserves at least one of its two annual awards for an LMIC researcher; Sidaction’s HIV Cure call funds research teams across France, the Netherlands, and eligible African countries with a minimum two-country collaboration requirement. Taken together, these calls signal a meaningful shift in how research equity is being operationalized — not as encouragement language at the bottom of a call, but as a structural feature of who can lead, where the work must be administered, and what proportion of the team must be regionally rooted. In Pharma-Funded Independent Medical Education and Use-Inspired Research, the lineup this month is unusually deep. Pfizer alone runs four parallel calls under independent education and quality improvement frameworks: a Migraine and Women’s Health RFP (200K x 2-year, $500K pool), Migraine IME ($200K, $1M pool), JAK Inhibitor evidence-based education ($100K), and Maternal Vaccination HCP Education in Saudi Arabia ($75K), plus a separate Pediatric Pneumococcal Surveillance research call in Saudi Arabia ($400K per project). Novo Nordisk Foundation runs four parallel calls of its own at substantial scale: Infectious Diseases Catalyst Grants (DKK 60M pool, up to DKK 7M collaborative), Non-Diabetic Endocrinology Collaborative Grants (DKK 53M pool, DKK 5-10M per project), Pioneer Innovator Grant Health (DKK 1.1M), and Distinguished Innovator Grant Health (DKK 6.8M). LEO Foundation deploys DKK 2-4M per project for dermatology research excellence. Pfizer’s framing across calls deliberately separates the funding from product promotion, emphasizing measurable practice-relevant change and structural distance between scientific outputs and commercial activity. Novo Nordisk’s “use-inspired” hard filter pushes researchers toward a credible translation pathway from mechanism to deployable tool. The pattern: industry-aligned funders are running structurally independent portfolios at meaningful $ that fund implementation evidence, not promotion. In AI as Operational Capability, Not Speculation, several calls this month explicitly treat AI adoption as a near-term operational question with real evidence and governance requirements, rather than a speculative trend to be watched. Wellcome’s ESIC Hubs frames AI as “the accelerator” for evidence synthesis, asking hubs to translate technical innovation into adoption-ready workflows that can match real-world policy timelines. UNICEF Venture Fund’s new Climate Tech for Children’s Health call funds for-profit startups deploying AI, machine learning, and blockchain in low-resource environments, with a strict requirement that solutions must already have a working prototype with promising pilot results. The Water Research Foundation has launched two simultaneous AI calls treating reproducibility, cybersecurity guardrails, and human-in-the-loop deployments as core design constraints rather than nice-to-haves: one on GenAI and Agentic AI in water utilities ($200K), one on alternatives to water shutoffs that explicitly screens for implementation economics evidence. Nordic Innovation’s quantum technology call (NOK 4.5M) extends the same logic into life science and healthcare, demanding consortium-stage projects mature enough to test with real users. TEF-Health offers €300K in subsidized testing infrastructure for European healthcare AI and robotics SMEs. The pattern: funders are converting AI pilots into playbooks, requiring transfer evidence and risk controls before AI can move from experimentation to sector-wide operational practice. For LMIC-based researchers in infectious disease or evidence synthesis, the three Wellcome calls together represent the deepest concentration of LMIC-led research capital in recent memory — pair the Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Development Award (£200K, deadline May 19) as a strategic pipeline feeder into the larger Infectious Disease Clinical Trial Award (£1-£8M, deadline June 2), since the development award functions explicitly as a track into the larger trial scheme. For Nordic researchers, the four Novo Nordisk Foundation calls plus LEO Foundation and Nordic Innovation Quantum represent ~$30M in regional research capital this cycle, all with deadlines clustered in May-August. For WASH practitioners, the three Water Research Foundation calls together (each up to $200K) are a cluster worth reading across — one on AI deployment, one on shutoff alternatives, one rewarding applied innovation — and the strongest applicants will articulate how their work bridges utility operations to policy-relevant evidence. For US-based clinical researchers and educators, the four Pfizer calls plus the APF Portfolio’s 80+ programs form an unusually accessible recurring pipeline; APF’s prohibition on indirect costs is a meaningful structural feature for early-career applicants whose institutions might otherwise absorb significant overhead. Snapshot of New Opportunities Total Estimated Funding Pool: $100 Million+ USD The grants are organized into three categories: Open Calls: Current grant and opportunities with a deadline. Grants are listed by closing date. 39 open opportunities- 14 new! Rolling Applications: current grant and opportunities with rolling applications (but it’s still best to submit as early as possible). 14 rolling opportunities- 1 new opportunity! Long term planning: Grants that have closed their current rounds, but are expected to open new windows. 4 long term opportunities! A quick tip for returning readers: if you want to jump straight to the newest additions, use CTRL F to search for “New!” and navigate quickly to the latest funding opportunities This post is for paid subscribers. This helps support the time and effort it takes to curate and organize these opportunities. Subscribe To keep this accessible to everyone who needs it, we’re happy to offer pay what you can rates. You can find more details here. Open Calls: Migraine Competitive Grant Program: Migraine and Women’s Health (Quality Improvement and/or Research RFP), Pfizer.*Closing soon!* Pfizer, in collaboration with the American Headache Society, is seeking independent quality improvement and research projects that close persistent gaps in migraine care for women across the United States. The funding logic centers on measurable, practice-relevant change: proposals should generate actionable evidence, tools, or system improvements that can be shared and used widely, not just within a single site. Priority areas span menstrual migraine and screening in women’s health settings, the role of hormonal fluctuations across the lifespan, sex-specific risk factors, comorbidities and quality-of-life burden, and disparities in outcomes by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The call is structured as a two-step competitive process with an initial Letter of Intent, with the strongest concepts expected to translate scientific insight into implementable improvements in diagnosis, management, and equity. Geographies: United States. Who can apply: U.S.-based organizations (not individuals), including professional schools, healthcare institutions, professional organizations, and other entities focused on healthcare improvement. Funding amount: Up to USD $200,000 total over 2 years; total pool USD $500,000. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: migraine, women’s health, quality improvement, clinical research, menstrual migraine, health disparities. Deadline: LOI: May 5, 2026; Full proposal (by invitation): August 28, 2026. Learn more and apply here. This RFP rewards “shareable impact”: the most competitive submissions will pair rigorous methods with a clear plan for system uptake and dissemination beyond the originating institution. ReSSARC: Strengthening the Health Sector and Food Security in the Central African Republic (AID 013381/01/0) Call for Proposals, Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS). *Closing soon!* AICS is seeking a limited set of high-capacity humanitarian partners to deliver an integrated package that stabilizes essential health services while reducing acute malnutrition and strengthening food security resilience in priority areas of the Central African Republic. The funder’s logic is explicitly nexus-based: proposals should meet urgent, life-saving needs while reinforcing local systems, coordination mechanisms, and community-level capacity so results persist beyond the emergency window. AICS emphasizes inclusion and protection outcomes, expecting gender-sensitive design and explicit measures for groups facing compounded vulnerability, including women, children under five, internally displaced people, and people with disabilities. The call also signals a localization pathway, encouraging stronger collaboration with national NGOs and balanced partnerships, alongside clear coordination with existing cluster and humanitarian actors to minimize duplication and improve coverage. Geographies: Central African Republic (Bangui, Ombella-Mpoko, Ouham, Ouham-Pende, Lim-Pende, Lobaye). Who can apply: Non-profit organizations registered with AICS, plus eligible non-profits without an office in Italy that have a pre-existing collaboration agreement with an AICS-listed organization. Funding amount: Total pool EUR €1,800,000; max EUR €800,000 (single applicant) or EUR €1,000,000 (ATS). Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: malnutrition prevention and treatment, maternal and child health, community health services, food security and resilience, localization partnerships Deadline: May 5, 2026. Learn more and apply here. This call is structured to reward partners who can link frontline service delivery to system durability and localization, not just short-term coverage gains. Contracts for Innovation in drug and alcohol addiction healthcare, Innovate UK. *Closing soon!* Innovate UK, on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences Addiction Healthcare Goals program, is procuring R&D to accelerate innovations that can improve treatment outcomes, strengthen recovery, and reduce harm and deaths linked to drug and alcohol addiction. The competition is positioned as a market-facing readiness push: selected projects are expected to advance solutions toward later-stage validation, generate evidence of user acceptability and UK market fit, and map credible routes through regulatory and certification requirements. Innovate UK signals a preference for innovations that can be field-tested in relevant UK settings and progressed to TRL 6 or 7, with practical plans for commercialization after contract completion. This structure favors applicants that can execute most work in-house, co-develop with service providers and people with lived experience, and translate technical progress into deployable tools for addiction healthcare delivery. Geographies: United Kingdom. Who can apply: Single organizations of any size (including EU, EEA, or international) leading delivery, with most work and key deliverables carried out in the UK; subcontractors for specialist skills only. Funding amount: GBP £200,000–1.5 million per project (inclusive of VAT); Total pool: GBP £20 million (across two strands). Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Health; Focus areas: Mental Health, Health Systems Strengthening, Research & Development, Technology Access. Deadline: May 6, 2026 (11:00am). Learn more and apply here. This call uses procurement to pull near-market addiction innovations toward operational proof and adoption pathways in UK services.

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May 4 • 3:59 AM EDT • Health • impactfunding.substack.com
Jeeves and Ask.com Shut Down After Almost 30 Years

The pioneering search engine shut down on May 1, after nearly 30 years in operation.

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May 3 • 10:13 AM EDT • Technology • nytimes.com
ASK A COMMISSIONER: How Do I Support Local Businesses and Stimulate the Economy?

By Mary Faith Bell, Tillamook County Commissioner Recently a constituent asked me on Facebook to provide examples of things I have done in my current term to stimulate the economy and support…

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May 2 • 7:25 PM EDT • Business • tillamookcountypioneer.net
MAY IS MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH: NATION CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS DAY EVENT – YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH SELF CARE MAY 7TH AT TILLAMOOK LIBRARY

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The Tillamook County Suicide Prevention Coalition will be having a variety of events throughout the month to support our community. The first event is Thursday, May…

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May 2 • 2:49 PM EDT • Health • tillamookcountypioneer.net
Ask.com shuts down after nearly 30 years, marking the end of Ask Jeeves

After nearly 30 years, Ask.com has officially closed on May 1, 2026. It was the pioneer of question-answering search engines.

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May 2 • 11:37 AM EDT • Technology • piunikaweb.com
Spirit Airlines canceled all flights and is going out of business

Spirit Airlines, the pioneering discount airline that shook up the budget travel business, is shutting down its operations.

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May 2 • 10:01 AM EDT • Business • ksl.com
Civil rights pioneers of the sky: Pan Am's first Black flight attendants reunite

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forced airlines to end discriminatory hiring practices.

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May 1 • 8:41 PM EDT • Politics • ny1.com
The Next Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Will Take More Than Just Science

At WIRED Health, pioneering Alzheimer's researcher John Hardy outlined the stakes—and next steps—of where treatment is headed next.

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May 1 • 2:55 PM EDT • Science • wired.com
Synthetic biology promised to rewrite life – with the death of its pioneer, J. Craig Venter, how close are scientists?

Advances in genetic engineering have enabled researchers to seek ways to program new life. But has synthetic biology actually changed medicine and the environment, nearly two decades on?

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Apr 30 • 4:54 PM EDT • Science • theconversation.com
Viewpoint: A career in science is possible, and worth it

Starting a career in science is exciting, but also demanding, with researchers often faced with intense competition, long working hours and high levels of stress. A pioneer in the field of mass spectrometry, Carol Robinson has been there. She speaks with Science|Business on the importance of creating a supportive environment, particularly for women.Robinson did not wake up one day thinking that she would become a scientist. It was only late in school that she developed an interest in chemistry. “The more you work at something, the more you think, actually, this is fascinating. So, I went much further and deeper than I ever needed to pass the exam. And then I loved it,” she says. “I thought, I’m going to give it my all. I’m going to enjoy it while I’m here. But I didn’t think this would be my career for 50 odd years.”She left school at 16 to become a lab technician with the drug company Pfizer, which is where she first worked with mass spectrometry. Fascinated, she was encouraged to take a part-time degree and then a PhD. She went on to do pioneering work in native mass spectrometry, a technique that is used to study protein structures in their natural state, paving the way for breakthroughs in drug discovery. She also broke new ground by becoming the first female professor of chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and then the first female professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford, her current home.She now wants to show young researchers that a career in science is worth it. “Sometimes, I believe the culture isn’t very encouraging, and that’s something I have worked on,” Robinson says.In 2021, she launched the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at Oxford, whose acronym gives a sense of what she hopes it will achieve. “Maybe it is corny,” she says. “It’s just a reminder that I would like it if we could all be kind to each other and supportive, especially for early-career researchers of either gender, because there’s quite a big attrition rate in science, and maybe it just doesn’t feel like a very friendly place to work.”And yet, a career in science comes with a lot of flexibility. “There are few careers where you have that amount of freedom, to go to conferences, to the library. Just because you didn’t see me didn’t mean I wasn’t working,” she says. “And I’m excited to come in every day. So, I don’t want people to think it’s a terrible place.”Gender equality is also important when it comes to the quality of science as a career. “The more women we have, the better it becomes,” Robinson adds.Imposter syndromeAccording to EU data, women outnumber men in university education but account for just about a third of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem). And while the number of women working as scientists and engineers in the 27-member bloc is on the rise, their representation remains below that of men, at 41%. This discrepancy is even more pronounced in top-tier functions across these fields, where women fill just 20% of positions.Having supervised many young scientists, Robinson sees that women continue to have a greater propensity than men to doubt their abilities, a feeling she once shared. “When I was doing my PhD at the University at Cambridge, I really felt like an imposter,” she says. “I don’t think I ever felt I deserved to be there or owned it and was proud. I just thought I was lucky.” Later on, she adds, “I was always that person who said, I can’t apply yet because my CV is not strong enough.”She has now made it her job to encourage women to break with this imposter syndrome. For example, rather than calling for volunteers to give a lecture in the groups that she mentors or teaches, which nearly always results in men stepping forward, she goes straight to the women, “because I know they won’t push themselves forward.”But the gender gap in science is not just down to imposter syndrome. The “obvious” reason, Robinson says, and the reason that is on everybody’s mind when discussing workplace gender equality, is the balance between work and raising a family. Her own path was to choose between the two, taking an eight-year break after completing a postdoctoral training fellowship to bring up three children. And she continues to advise women not to work part-time while they raise a family. “You’ll just get half the pay and continue to work full-time because you are not able to fit everything in,” she says. “You should be able to have a family and come back to have the career that you want.”The solution is for men to also take career breaks. “That kind of evens it up, so that it’s not such a big thing for women,” Robinson says. “I always encourage men in my groups to do that. I think it’s important to take your share of the duties.”Support produces resultsAccording to the Women in Stem Network, a UK advocacy group, countries with strong childcare systems and equal pay policies retain more women in technical careers. In Europe, these are primarily found in the Nordic region and parts of central Europe.At the EU level, the European Commission asks all Horizon Europe applicant organisations to have a gender action plan in place. Since this criterion was introduced in 2021, the share of women leading consortia has increased to 31%, against 23% in Horizon 2020. Their overall participation, however, has risen just 1%, to 38%. After trying to weaken the requirement for gender action plans in 2025, the Commission now intends to adopt a plan for supporting women in research and innovation.Related articlesCommission scraps plan to water down gender requirements in HorizonHow gender balance can swing who wins Horizon Europe fundingRobinson herself has benefited from three Advanced Grants from the European Research Council. “I was extremely honoured and privileged to get those, because they really allowed me to fuel my passion,” she says. “Without that, it would have been a much harder slog.”Beyond applying gender rules, she says that more work is needed on translational enterprise, where women are, once again, largely underrepresented. The European Patent Office found that only 13.8% of applications were filed by women in 2022. “We have so many more women doing amazing science; why do they feel it’s not a thing to have a company?” she asks.She founded her own spin-out company, OMass Technologies, in 2016, and remains chair of its scientific advisory board now that it trades as OMass Therapeutics. As for research, Robinson is now studying how changes in the brain may be linked to depression, using port-mortem tissue. “We’re hoping to publish soon,” she says. “We had to consult with a lot of people who knew a lot more about the brain than we did. So, we’ve learnt a lot, and that’s always a lot of fun to learn a new thing. That’s what keeps you going.”

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Apr 29 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
Pioneer Crossing development aims to bring new retail, entertainment options to Northland region

A new retail and entertainment project called Pioneer Crossing is planned for the Northland, aiming to fill a grocery and shopping gap in the area.

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Apr 27 • 7:57 PM EDT • Entertainment • kshb.com
Pioneer Crossing development aims to bring new retail, entertainment options to Northland region

A new retail and entertainment project called Pioneer Crossing is planned for the Northland, aiming to fill a grocery and shopping gap in the area.

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Apr 27 • 6:13 PM EDT • Entertainment • kshb.com
Netflix Weighs Profit Discipline Against Growth In Sports Gaming Experiences

Netflix (NasdaqGS:NFLX) is sharpening its capital allocation approach, emphasizing profitability and margin discipline. The company is widening its focus beyond on demand streaming to advertising, live sports, gaming and experiential venues. Management recently chose not to pursue a potential merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, signaling a preference for self funded growth. Netflix shifted from a pure subscription streaming pioneer into a broader entertainment platform that includes ad...

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Apr 26 • 11:06 PM EDT • Sports • finance.yahoo.com
‘Father of modern cardiology’ Eugene Braunwald dies at 96

Colleagues from all over the world have shared loving tributes to Braunwald. ESC President Thomas F. Lüscher, MD, called him "the pioneering cardiologist of his time."

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Apr 24 • 1:55 PM EDT • Business • cardiovascularbusiness.com
Youtility Decision Science Raises Seed Funding for Decision Science Platform That Predicts Customer Behavior

Strategic investment from a consortium including Silver Falcon Capital, Fyllo and National Media supports development of behavioral AI technology designed to help companies understand and predict customer decisionsRICHMOND, Va. and LONDON, April 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Youtility, a pioneer in behavioral AI for consumer engagement focused on why consumers make decisions, today announced the second close of its seed round, bringing total funding to $4.2M. The round was supported by a consorti

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Apr 23 • 8:30 AM EDT • Science • finance.yahoo.com
How Nestlé’s pioneering China business fell into disarray

Chinese distributors are chasing the Swiss giant for refunds after it allegedly oversupplied the market as demand dropped

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Apr 22 • 12:00 AM EDT • Business • ft.com
Former Southern Miss president and polymer science pioneer Shelby Thames dies at 89

The University of Southern Mississippi is mourning the loss of one of its former presidents.

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Apr 21 • 10:42 AM EDT • Science • supertalk.fm
Pioneers in warfighter brain health discuss research agenda at annual brain health symposium

The Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence Center hosted the 2026 Annual Brain health Symposium March 18, featuring forthcoming updates to the Warfighter Brain Health Initiative and the latest in military medical research.

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Apr 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • dvidshub.net
Rosalind Franklin, chemist: “Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated”

A pioneering DNA scientist reflects on science, faith and purpose, offering a grounded view of how discovery and everyday life intertwine

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Apr 18 • 1:04 PM EDT • Science • en.as.com
Farewell to Prof. Michael Rabin, godfather of Israeli computer science

A pioneer of modern computing, Rabin shaped algorithms, cryptography and AI foundations, mentored generations and remains the only Israeli to win the Turing Award, the field’s highest honor, as computer science reshaped everyday life

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Apr 18 • 12:42 PM EDT • Science • ynetnews.com
Saints down IronPigs for third straight victory

Despite being outhit 12-5 by visiting Lehigh Valley, the St. Paul Saints claimed their third win in a row with a 7-4 defeat of the IronPigs at CHS Field. St. Paul emerged from the first inning with a 3-1 lead after two-run homer by Alan Roden was followed by a solo shot from Kyler Fedko. After a scoreless second inning, the Saints went up 6-2 after the third after another exchange of runs ...

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Apr 17 • 11:01 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
How our surroundings shape health: A conversation between environmental scientists | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

For more than 50 years, Jack Spengler has advanced our understanding of how environment shapes health through pioneering research on the importance of air quality, healthy buildings, and climate resilience.

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Apr 16 • 2:00 PM EDT • Health • hsph.harvard.edu
Union coach Eta wants focus on football after landmark appointment

Union Berlin coach Marie-Louise Eta said Thursday she was looking forward to questions about football rather than her pioneering role as the first female manager of a men's team in a top European league. Eta, who became the first female assistant coach in Bundesliga history at Union in 2023, is still slated to take over the club's women's team in the summer regardless of how the men's side finishes the season.

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Apr 16 • 11:43 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Mark Mobius, 'Indiana Jones of emerging markets,' dies at 89

Mark Mobius, widely credited as a pioneer in emerging markets investing, died on Wednesday at the age of 89, according to a statement on his LinkedIn page.

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Apr 15 • 6:00 PM EDT • Business • unionleader.com
The Tech Industry’s Latest Battleground Is Art-Style TV Sets

Amazon wants to capitalize on a category that Samsung pioneered. It’s also releasing a new $35 streaming stick.

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Apr 15 • 9:00 AM EDT • Technology • bloomberg.com
Forgotten scientist Foote gets her due as climate science pioneer

Kansas writer explores local 19th-century scientist Eunice Newton Foote’s overlooked climate science discovery, highlighting gender barriers that erased her contributions from scientific history.

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Apr 15 • 6:00 AM EDT • Science • timesunion.com
Atelerix Forms Strategic Partnership With JH Health Ltd to Expand Non-Cryogenic Cell Preservation Capabilities in the Middle East

NEWCASTLE, England, April 15, 2026--Atelerix, a biotech company revolutionising cell preservation and biological transport with its pioneering hydrogel encapsulation technology, today announced it has established a strategic partnership with JH Health Ltd, a Saudi Arabian company focused on medical and health-related technology. The partnership grants JH Health exclusive rights to use and distribute Atelerix’s hydrogel-based cell and tissue preservation solutions in the Middle East, significantl

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Apr 15 • 4:05 AM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com
Inertia moves to commercialize one of the world’s most elaborate science experiments

Inertia has signed three agreements with the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, paving the way for the company to bring its pioneering fusion reactor to market.

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Apr 14 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • techcrunch.com
Denver Pioneers win 3rd NCAA men's hockey title in 5 years

The Denver Pioneers of the National Collegiate Hockey Conference registered a 2-1 victory over the Wisconsin Badgers to complete the Frozen Four at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday in Las Vegas, the program's third national championship in five years.

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Apr 11 • 8:51 PM EDT • Sports • espn.com
Denver defeats Wisconsin to win 11th Frozen Four title

A late goal from Kyle Chyzowski lifted the Pioneers over the Badgers in the NCAA men's hockey championship.

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Apr 11 • 8:44 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
UC People: Mary Blackburn, public health pioneer

Trailblazing Black dietitian Mary Blackburn began her University of California career in the tumultuous Civil Rights era.

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Apr 10 • 1:51 PM EDT • Health • ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu
Underdogs Denver, Wisconsin advance to title game

The Pioneers defeated Michigan in double-overtime 4-03 while the Badgers held off North Dakota 2-1 to earn their spot in Saturday's Frozen Four championship.

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Apr 10 • 1:51 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa dies at age 68

Afrika Bambaataa, a hip-hop pioneer, has died of prostate cancer in Pennsylvania at age 68, according to his lawyer. Known for tracks like “Planet Rock,” Bambaataa was a key figure

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Apr 9 • 8:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • lancasteronline.com
Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa dies at age 68

Afrika Bambaataa, a hip-hop pioneer, has died of prostate cancer in Pennsylvania at age 68, according to his lawyer | KMBZ

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Apr 9 • 7:58 PM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa dies at age 68

Afrika Bambaataa, a hip-hop pioneer, has died of prostate cancer in Pennsylvania at age 68, according to his lawyer | WWL

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Apr 9 • 7:58 PM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
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Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa dies at age 68

Afrika Bambaataa, a hip-hop pioneer, has died of prostate cancer in Pennsylvania at age 68, according to his lawyer | 830 WCCO

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Apr 9 • 7:58 PM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
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Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa dies at age 68

Afrika Bambaataa, a hip-hop pioneer, has died of prostate cancer in Pennsylvania at age 68, according to his lawyer | Talk Radio 1210 WPHT

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Apr 9 • 7:58 PM EDT • Entertainment • audacy.com
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Encinitas school first in San Diego region to earn Green Business Certification

The City of Encinitas recently recognized The Grauer School as a newly certified Green Business through the Encinitas Green Business Network. A pioneer in holistic learning and sustainable practices, the school is the first in the San Diego…

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Apr 9 • 7:18 PM EDT • Business • sandiegouniontribune.com
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15 things to do around the Seattle area this weekend

From taking advantage of an extended ski season to visiting a new art gallery in Pioneer Square, here are the latest local things to do around the Seattle area.

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Apr 9 • 4:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • yakimaherald.com
Melissa Blotter: Advancing the Science of Seizure Intervention

Melissa Blotter is pioneering a bold new approach to treating life-threatening seizures by using ketone bodies to stop them in real time.

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Apr 6 • 10:00 AM EDT • Science • lifesciences.byu.edu
Female DJ from Omaha breaks down barriers in entertainment space once reserved for men

An Omaha native has followed her adventurous spirit to become a pioneering, enterprising DJ and hype girl in Miami and beyond. Branding herself DJ ReRe, this vivacious, visionary millennial thrives in a male-dominated field through her for-profit ReMixed Events that supply DJ and concierge services for elite weddings, corporate events, parties, fashion shows, cruises and […]

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Apr 6 • 9:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • thereader.com
Faster Detection of Forest Loss

Scientists pioneered a new system that combines data from multiple Earth-observing satellites to identify forest clearing up to 100 days earlier than current methods.

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Apr 6 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
Close Up: Highlighting women in history and Iowa politics

The contributions of female pioneers in Iowa's political history and their ongoing impact, and a candid conversation with CBS News Correspondent Norah O'Donnell

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Apr 5 • 1:01 PM EDT • Politics • kcci.com
Mary Rand, Pioneering Track and Field Olympian, Dies at 86

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, she became the first British woman to win a gold medal in track and field, and the first to win three medals in one Games.

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Apr 4 • 4:30 PM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
Meet NASA’s New Artemis II Science Officers

NASA’s first Artemis II science officers—Kelsey Young, Trevor Graff, and Angela Garcia—are pioneering a new era of mission operations by integrating advanced lunar science directly into Mission Control. Their work will shape how future Artemis crews observe, analyze, and deepen our understanding of the Moon.

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Apr 3 • 1:35 PM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
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Oregon sues to challenge Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting

If the order were to stand, it would have significant impacts on Oregon’s pioneering vote-by-mail system.

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Apr 3 • 12:55 PM EDT • Politics • oregonlive.com
Lynx bring back Janel McCarville as assistant coach

The Minnesota Lynx are bringing back former WNBA champion Janel McCarville as an assistant coach for the upcoming season. The team announced several additions to the team’s operations and coaching staff on Thursday. McCarville returns to Minnesota, where she was part of the Lynx 2013 championship team, as well as a star for the Gophers. Minnesota also hired Jasmine Allen as basketball ...

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Apr 2 • 8:33 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Business Briefs: April 3, 2026

Realtor Association of Pioneer Valley installs 2026 leadership SPRINGFIELD — Judy Nevarez has been officially installed as the 2026 president of the Realtor Association of Pioneer Valley (RAPV), a nonprofit trade association representing more than 1,800 real estate professionals throughout western Massachusetts. The installation took place during RAPV’s annual holiday celebration, which featured the Association’s 110th Installation […]

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Apr 2 • 9:29 AM EDT • Business • recorder.com
‘Impossible for Chinese’: Yale scientist Zhang Kai leaves US for China

Pioneering work involves observing proteins inside the body during exercise, effectively capturing their activity in a natural state.

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Apr 2 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • scmp.com
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Timex's Affordable Titanium GMT Watch Looks More Like a Rolex Explorer II Than Ever

Timex has added some updates to its Rolex-inspired titanium GMT watch, including a new model name and the addition of a bracelet.

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Apr 1 • 1:28 PM EDT • Technology • gearpatrol.com
Science, Music, and Stream Bugs: Sierra Streams Celebrates 30 Years at Pioneer Park on May 16

NEVADA CITY, CA — Sierra Streams Institute will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a free community event on Saturday, May 16 from 1:00 to 5:00 PM at Pioneer Park in Nevada City, bringing together art, music, and hands-on science to highlight three decades of watershed research, restoration, and education across the Sierra Nevada. The Sierra […]

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Mar 30 • 9:45 AM EDT • Science • yubanet.com
Remembering public health pioneer Barry Bloom: a scientist, a mentor, a mensch

Marc Lipsitch and Yonatan Grad pay tribute to their former colleague and mentor Barry R. Bloom.

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Mar 30 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com
🙂 Positive (35%)
Silicon Valley Has Stopped Talking Politics—Except for This Google Executive

AI pioneer Jeff Dean is a rare tech leader who has been publicly criticizing actions by the Trump administration.

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Mar 29 • 12:00 PM EDT • Politics • wsj.com
Dr. Judith L. Rapoport, Pioneer in Understanding O.C.D., Dies at 92

Her best-selling 1989 book, “The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing,” based on her groundbreaking research, brought public awareness to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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Mar 28 • 4:21 PM EDT • Health • nytimes.com
Winning teams bring business boost to Seattle’s Pioneer Square

Seattle business owners near the city’s sports stadiums are expecting a significant economic boost as the Mariners season begins and the region prepares for the upcoming World Cup.

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Mar 26 • 5:40 PM EDT • Business • kiro7.com
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