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Dietitian wins top science communicator award
A dietitian and researcher investigating the impact of plastics in our diet on health outcomes has won FameLab Australia 2026
Free all-day science forum set for Saturday; food, $200 gift cards for participants
A national science think tank is holding a free public forum in Charleston, West Virginia, on Oct. 3, 2026, to help shape the future of American science. The forum, to be held at the Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center, is sponsored by American Science@250: Rethink, Reimagine, Redesign, a nationwide initiative led by the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University.
Stormont future depends on Drumcree outcome
Divisions that had been dormant over Drumcree have flowed angrily again between Stormont parties.
MTA axes G train shutdowns planned for December after outcry from small businesses
The dreaded December G train shutdowns have been scrapped, to the relief of business owners and residents in North Brooklyn. Long-overdue repairs initially scheduled to stretch through the end of the year have been finished ahead of schedule, according to the MTA, and though the G still needs some work, it will run like…
Giants believe Brian Burns' knee injury is worst-possible outcome
This might be another season-ending injury for the Giants this season.
Trump and Xi's 'stalemate' summit was a glitzy gift to China
The limited outcomes reinforced a view that Xi sees little reason to grant Trump major political victories ahead of November's midterm elections.
Understanding the Role of Medicaid Fraud Control Units (MFCUs)
This brief describes the role of Medicaid Fraud Control Units (MFCUs) in program integrity efforts, examines caseload and case outcome data, and current issues facing MFCUs.
How a UTC professor is helping first-year chemical engineering students explore career paths
What does a chemical engineer do? How can a student prepare for medical or pharmacy school? Where can students find people and resources to help answer those questions? Dr. Bradley Harris, head of UTC’s Department of Civil and Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS), is helping students begin those conversations through A Moc’s First Year, a campuswide program designed to help incoming first-time, full-time undergraduates make connections to UTC, Chattanooga and one another.
13,000-year-old butchered bones of long-tusked beast found in Chile give more evidence of early first Americans
Archaeological excavations in the Lake Tagua Tagua basin in central Chile have revealed stone tools and animal bones with cut marks dated to 13,000 years ago.
WELL Health Subsidiary WELLSTAR Announces Conditional Approval for TSXV Listing and Files Filing Statement
WELLSTAR has received conditional approval from the TSX Venture Exchange as a Tier 1 issuer, subject to satisfaction of the TSXV's customary listing conditions, and is expected to commence trading on or around October 1, 2026, under the ticker symbol "WSTR".Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 28, 2026) - WELL Health Technologies Corp. (TSX: WELL) (OTCQX: WHTCF) ("WELL"), a digital health company focused on positively impacting health outcomes by leveraging technology to...
Dungeon Crawler Carl’s Hero Is a Coast Guard Veteran. Here's Why That Matters
A reluctant hero in boxer shorts and ill-fitting pink Crocs stumbles through a galaxy wide dungeon clutching a show cat and wit.
Brookfield Business (TSX:BBUC) Rebound Hopes Meet A Fair Value Reality Check
Brookfield Business (TSX:BBUC) has been drawing attention after its share price closed at CA$35.96, with recent returns showing mixed momentum over the past week, month, and past 3 months for investors tracking the stock. For context, Brookfield Business is coming off a weak stretch, with the share price down 27.31% year to date and 15.15% over the past 3 months. However, the 3-year total shareholder return of 84.94% still points to a much stronger longer-term outcome than the recent pullback...
Bellamy 'hurting' as Denmark outclass Wales
Craig Bellamy says he is "hurting" on the back of Wales' 2-0 Nations League A defeat away to Denmark, but feels his side will continue to improve.
Glen Powell, Michelle Randolph enjoy Texas-Tennessee matchup
Glen Powell and Michelle Randolph are bringing their love to the football field. Powell and Randolph were beaming at one another while they were in attendance at the University of Texas and University...
Where Republicans are playing offense ahead of the midterms
The outcome of the 2026 election will be determined primarily by how well Republicans play defense across the growing list of GOP-held House and Senate seats Democrats are targeting. But the GOP is also hoping to play offense by flipping some House and Senate seats Democrats now control.
Sustainable Development Impossible without Peace: Araqchi
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Sustainable development is impossible without peace, respect for international law and multilateralism, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said, calling for international solidarity to be translated into tangible development outcomes.
Max Verstappen Reveals What Went Wrong in Baku Qualifying
The Dutchman reveals that the internal combustion engine stopped working correctly from Q1 causing a loss of half a second and a chain of electrical failures. He trusts in changing the unit without penalty and aspires to the podium from eighth place.
Netherlands XI vs Serbia – Predicted lineup and team news
On Sunday, the Netherlands will press ahead with their UEFA Nations League campaign as they travel to Belgrade to take on Serbia at the iconic Stadion Rajko Mitić.The Dutch side arrives in Serbia rid...
Arizona at Washington State: Players of the Game
Saturday night saw the Arizona Wildcats travel to Pullman, Washington to take on the Cougars of Washington State. After a pretty up and down first half, the ‘Cats settled down and found their rhythm in the second half, winning a hard-fought contest 34-24. Even with the inconsistencies, there were plenty of clutch plays and career […]
Maryland football destroyed by UCLA, 54-3, in 9th straight Big Ten loss
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Maryland was outclassed from the start. In a game that was scoreless after one quarter but quickly devolved into another lopsided loss, nothing went the Terps’ way. Maryland couldn’t establish a running game despite a questionable insistence on doing so; quarterback Malik Washington never got going in the one-dimensional offense and threw four interceptions; and the Terps’ ...
Man Utd Eye Sunderland's Brian Brobbey As Price Tag Revealed
Manchester United target attacking reinforcements to revive a stagnant front line, but the Black Cats demand a premium for their prolific Dutch talisman.
Local Family Business Celebrates a Major Milestone - WHIZ - Fox 5 / Marquee Broadcasting
ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Four generations ago, the Rittberger family, began a retail butcher shop in the Zanesville City Market. 116-years-ago, they expanded that business into a wholesale operation based from their farm on Lutz Lane. “Carl Rittberger Sr. came from Germany in 1897, as a 16-year-old kid, with his family. And was trained in Germany in the meat trade. Came...
The UTC program where students learn to sell — and land the job before they graduate - Gary W. Rollins College of Business
At UTC's John "Art" Phillips Sales Institute, students train in a filmed sales lab, practice with AI buyers and connect with vetted corporate partners — three of four land their first job with one.
Steelers Left With One Outcome for Penn State's Joey Porter
Joey Porter needs a new team and there's nothing more to say.
Certified Nurse-Midwife Practice Authority as a Structural Determinant of Maternal Health
Certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) provide evidence-based maternity care associated with improved birth outcomes, yet half of US states do not grant them independent practice authority. State scope-of-practice regulations may function as structural determinants of maternal health by constraining both the midwifery workforce and the conditions under which care is delivered.
Grizzlies' Most Realistic 2026-27 Outcome Could Be Ideal
The Grizzlies may hover around the Western Conference play-in race in 2026-27, an outcome that could balance development with favorable lottery positioning.
Margaret Atwood donates $1-million to establish research chair for bird science
Donation will allow Western University to add a new hire to its biology faculty with the goal of advancing scientific knowledge about birds and bird migration
Pioneer of China NewCo model sued in US over trade secret misuse, double-dealing
A legal feud unfolding in New York is putting a spotlight on the work of a business development veteran who is credited for pioneering one of biopharma’s hottest dealmaking mechanism: the China “NewCo” model. In a lawsuit originally filed in New York state court and recently moved to federal court, China’s Lepu Medical Technology has alleged that biopharma business development consultant Su Zhang, who was hired to help shop its GLP-1 weight-loss candidates to Western partners, engaged in corporate double-dealing and trade secret leaks. According to the complaint, while acting as Lepu’s primary dealmaking liaison for a group of obesity and metabolic disease drug candidates, Zhang was secretly double-dipping as the acting chief business officer for a direct competitor, BrightGene Pharmaceutical. “She never adequately disclosed the role, never sought Lepu’s consent, and never proposed any safeguard,” Lepu alleged in its complaint, which was filed in July after Zhang’s consulting firm, CoDevCo, sought certain transaction-based success fees from its angry customer through an arbitration process in Singapore. Lepu, the parent company of Lepu Biopharma, has asked Zhang to pay back its $500,000 retainer and disgorge all benefits she received during the alleged breaches of fiduciary duty, plus other damages and relief. The company has also requested the court grant injunctions to protect Lepu’s trade secrets. The ill-fated partnership officially kicked off in December 2024, when Lepu tapped CoDevCo as its “exclusive business development mechanism” to identify collaborators for the company’s drug candidates. According to Lepu’s complaint, Zhang personally negotiated and signed the agreement as managing director for CoDevCo, which used her home address. Before the Lepu deal, Zhang made a name following a short stint as the global head of business development for Hengrui Pharmaceuticals. It was during her tenure that Hengrui signed a landmark deal granting exclusive rights for a portfolio of GLP-1 assets to Hercules, which was at that time newly established by a group of private equity and venture capital firms. In addition to the regular upfront and milestone payments, Hengrui also gained an equity stake in Hercules, which later became Kailera Therapeutics. The Hengrui-Hercules deal opened a new paradigm, where a Chinese biopharma company spins off certain early-stage assets to investors for further development through the creation of a new company abroad. The “NewCo” model quickly came into vogue as it allows Western investors to access high-potential assets originating from China at an early stage while giving the Chinese licensors an opportunity to reap long-term benefits through equity stakes in the new firms. The NewCo model proved its value when Kailera staged a record-breaking $625 million IPO on Nasdaq this April, merely two years into the Hengrui deal. Related Kailera CEO 'knew we were in a good spot' before obesity biotech's record-breaking $625M IPO On her LinkedIn page, Zhang described her work at Hengrui as “[b]uilding team and capability from the ground up,” forming NewCo and major pharma partnerships worth billions of dollars. Lepu clearly wanted that kind of track record to help boost its own cardiometabolic portfolio, which includes a range of assets for obesity, Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and muscle preservation during weight loss treatment. “Lepu’s pipeline is very valuable, but only if Lepu could secure the right international partner to expand into the overseas market during the available commercial window,” the company argued in its complaint. The Chinese biotech said it had little knowledge of U.S. laws, customs or business practices in the business development field, and therefore “needed to rely entirely” on the expertise of Zhang and her team as the firm’s first engagement of a U.S.-based BD consultant. “Zhang’s dominating influence on the business development strategy is further evidenced by the fact that she personally controlled the business-development communications on behalf of Lepu with potential partners,” Lepu said in its complaint. After entering the deal, Zhang introduced Lepu to her four associates. According to Lepu’s version of events, all of them were allegedly employed at different time points to perform similar jobs at other Chinese companies that Lepu described as its competitors, while having access to Lepu’s confidential information. As such, Lepu described Zhang’s team as “a roster of individuals whose primary professional loyalty, by virtue of their concurrent full-time employment, ran to Lepu’s competitors.” As well as the specific examples set out in the case, a look at Lepu’s deals over the period suggests Zhang may have been involved in at least one transaction. During their partnership, Lepu, through its subsidiary Shanghai Minwei Biotechnology, also out-licensed its GLP-1/GIP/FGF21 agonist MWN105 to a NewCo called Sidera Bio in the fall of 2025. The deal included an upfront and near-term payment of $35 million, up to $1.01 billion in milestones, and a 9.99% stake in the Danish startup. It seems likely that Zhang facilitated the Minwei deal given that Lepu is on record as having used CoDevCo as its “exclusive business development mechanism.” The big shock for Lepu came in the form of a news article on June 25, 2025. The article, reporting on phase 2 data for BrightGene’s GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist BGM0504, identified Zhang as acting chief business officer of the Lepu rival. Blindsided by her association with BrightGene, Lepu confronted Zhang in July 2025. “Lepu was given assurances that there was nothing to be concerned about and told that Zhang would explain the matter to Lepu,” Lepu alleged in its complaint. “Zhang never did.” Lepu claimed that Zhang had the motive and opportunity to steer potential prospective partners toward BrightGene or other competitors. Later, in February 2026, one of Zhang’s associates joined BrightGene as the vice president for global business development, according to the complaint. Around the same time, Lepu sent written demand letters asking Zhang to account for her BrightGene role, identify what confidential data were shared with the rival firm, and provide any conflict-of-interest or firewall policies during the engagement. According to Lepu, neither CoDevCo nor Zhang answered the questions in their responses. Related Novo vs. KBP: How a $1.3B deal turned into a fraud accusation and an international legal fight In a motion to dismiss filed with the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York on Sept. 4, Zhang’s legal team argued that Lepu’s agreement was signed with CoDevCo, and that an employee of the contractor does not owe fiduciary duties to the client. In its complaint, Lepu said: “That CoDevCo was the contracting entity does not insulate Zhang from personal liability for duties she personally undertook and personally breached.” Taking the argument one step further, the defending party argued that the consulting agreement “does not create a fiduciary relationship even between CoDevCo and Lepu; instead, it identifies CoDevCo as an independent contractor retained to market Lepu’s business to potential western partners.” Although CoDevCo was Lepu’s exclusive business-development contractor, there were no terms stipulating that the consulting firm should serve only Lepu, Zhang’s lawyer noted. As to Lepu’s claims that Zhang misappropriated trade secrets, the defendant argued that Lepu authorized the use of the information so Zhang’s team could perform their service per the agreement. In a rebuttal filed on Sept. 11, Lepu’s lawyer set out why they believe the Chinese biotech satisfied New York law’s misappropriation definition by alleging that the defendant used a trade secret “in breach of a duty or through improper means.” As an alternative to dismissing the suit, the defendant suggested the action should be stayed pending outcomes from the arbitration of a separate case in Singapore. While NewCo pioneer Zhang is defending her business arrangements, momentum behind the NewCo trend has continued unabated into 2026. Through August, Chinese biotech assets have spurred 15 NewCo deals this year, according to local trade publication PharmaDJ.
Florida Blue Foundation Awards Grants to Address Food Insecurity and Improve Health Outcomes
September 23, 2026 – This September, during Hunger Action Month, Florida Blue Foundation, the philanthropic affiliate of Florida Blue and part of the GuideWell portfolio of companies, is awarding $3.1 million in grants to eight community-based food initiatives across Florida. These grants directly address food insecurity—a critical driver of health—while strengthening communities’ access to nutritious […]
Three Bold Predictions for Jets vs. Lions at Ford Field
Expect a Ford Field fireworks display as Detroit’s high-octane offense prepares to dismantle New York’s secondary, headlined by Aidan Hutchinson’s relentless pursuit of a career-high sack record.
Reedijk 'not an academic guy' despite doctorate
New Hibernian manager Marink Reedijk insists he is more a man of action than an academic despite having a philosophy doctorate in sports coaching. The Dutchman is only 35 but had already worked in coaching with Ajax and West Bromwich Albion, Roeselare, Vitesse and Anderlecht before leading Beveren to the Belgian second-tier title and promotion last season. "I'm not a really an academic guy," he told Hibs TV.
No More ‘Trump Avenue’: Canada’s Capital Moves to Rename Street Amid Tense Trade War
“I don't like the idea of anything that's named for Donald Trump, who's demonstrated hostility towards Canada,” said Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, referring to the all-out trade war.
Mental Health Board Swears in New Member, Hears Agency Reports
The Geauga County Board of Mental Health and Recovery Services heard outcome reports from nine agencies under its oversight during its Sept. 16 meeting, as representatives reviewed their work during fiscal year 2026. The board also swore in new member Dave Fabiq. Vice Chair Kathy Johnson said she expected Fabiq to bring valuable experience to
USA TODAY Sports predicts Florida vs Ole Miss outcome in Week 4
Here are the picks from USA TODAY Sports' college football experts for the Florida Gators vs Ole Miss Rebels' battle in the Swamp in Week 4.
Dutch consumer group files lawsuit against Epic for misleading young players on Fortnite, seeking more than €100m in compensation
"Epic deliberately designed the game to pressure players into buying. Young consumers are supposed to be protected from exactly that," says group
Regenerative fields, animal science and new markets
What does the future of farming in the Western Balkans look like? The LAN Belgrade team went looking for answers at three recent events. We visited a regenerative farm near Subotica that works with Dutch machinery, joined an animal science...
Diginex Consolidates Group-Wide Expertise and Launches Sustainability Science & Intelligence Initiative to Accelerate Product Innovation and Drive Measurable Client Outcomes
Group-wide activity integrates advisory, regulatory and methodological expertise across Diginex products and solutionsUnder the leadership of new interim CEO, Archana Kotecha, the intention is to turn insight into practical action and ultimately help clients achieve better, measurable outcomes.Johannes Weber named VP of Sustainability Science and Intelligence LONDON, Sept. 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Diginex Limited (NASDAQ: DGNX) (“Diginex” or the “Company”), a leading provider of Sustainabili
Hibs appoint Dutchman Reedijk as new manager
Former Beveren head coach Marink Reedijk vows to develop a "brave, intense and committed" Hibernian team after becoming the club's new manager.
Calling all current and future scientists: Kiel is the place to be this week
This week, Kiel has become a meeting place for science in Europe. Researchers, school pupils, young scientists and members of the public are coming together through a series of major events led or co-organised by Kiel University.At the centre of it all are around 150 of Europe’s most talented young researchers, aged 14 to 20, who have travelled to Kiel from nearly 40 countries for the 37th European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS). Running from 22 to 27 September, the European Union’s flagship competition for young scientists brings together winners of national science competitions to present around 100 original research projects across fields ranging from engineering and computer science to medicine, environmental research and the social sciences. The winners will be announced at the Award Ceremony on Saturday.For Kiel University, hosting EUCYS is both an honour and a natural extension of a much longer story. Germany’s northernmost comprehensive university has invested for many years in supporting young scientific talent and bringing research into dialogue with society. The Kiel Science Factory gives school pupils opportunities to experience research first-hand, while programmes such as Rent-a-Scientist send researchers directly into local classrooms. Major annual public events including Kiel Week and the European Researchers’ Night take science beyond the campus through talks, exhibitions and hands-on activities.That long-standing commitment has increasingly taken on a European dimension – and this week, many of those efforts are coming together.One of the foundations for this success is the European Researchers’ Night (ERN), which celebrates its tenth edition in the Kiel region this year. The initiative is funded through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, with Kiel University developing the successful EU proposals and securing the funding, while regional partner KielRegion coordinates the many activities on the ground. Together with research institutions, schools, companies, local authorities and civil society, they have built ERN into a major platform for public engagement.Over the years, Kiel’s ERN programme has grown far beyond a single evening into a whole “Science Summer”, beginning with “Science Shopping” in spring and culminating tomorrow, 25 September, in Science Day.“We have developed a wide range of public engagement formats, often together with the other research institutions in the region, the city and regional authorities, schools, companies and civil society,” says Eckhard Quandt, Kiel University’s vice president for research, academic infrastructure and transfer. “Over the past decade, we have increasingly taken this commitment to the European level.”That combination of European funding expertise and strong regional partnerships also helped Kiel University take the next step. Drawing on its experience with ERN and its European networks, including the SEA-EU University Alliance, the university brought together Brest in France and Split in Croatia for a successful bid to the EU’s new Science Comes to Town initiative. Throughout 2026, the three cities are serving as Europe’s first Science Ambassadors, with more than one thousand activities bringing science into schools, public spaces, cultural venues and everyday life.EUCYS is perhaps the clearest example of how Kiel University is using Science Comes to Town to create new connections between major European initiatives. From the outset, the university deliberately planned the contest for the week of European Researchers’ Night and opened the EUCYS exhibition to the wider Science Day audience. Tomorrow, that means thousands of visitors can encounter the next generation of scientific talent first-hand, while the young researchers themselves gain a much bigger public stage.“Because we opened EUCYS up for European Researchers’ Night, there will be a lot of people actually visiting the exhibition,” says organiser Stefanie Altemark of Kiel University.“We wanted Europe’s most talented young scientists not only to compete with one another, but also to become visible to the wider public. At the same time, people in Kiel will have the opportunity to see what the next generation of scientists are already capable of,” says Quandt.“We’ve shown over the last years that science is a big part of Kiel, and it’s always been the goal to not only show that to people in Germany, but also to show it to people all over Europe. Thanks to Kiel University’s expertise in European funding programmes, we have been able to turn that ambition into reality,” says Sünje Fock, who is coordinating the Science Summer at KielRegion.The model is characteristic of Kiel University’s approach: combining European funding expertise and international networks with strong regional partnerships to give major initiatives greater reach and visibility.This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, giving Kiel University the special opportunity to welcome Vanessa Debiais-Sainton, Head of Department for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions at the European Research Executive Agency, to Kiel tomorrow. Her visit brings together two priorities that have shaped Kiel University’s work over the past decade: supporting researchers and bringing science closer to society. Debiais-Sainton emphasises how closely the two are connected: "For thirty years, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) have given more than 150,000 researchers the chance to pursue their dreams and open up new fields. Doctoral Networks and Postdoctoral Fellowships give them the freedom to move, to connect, to train and to follow their curiosity across borders, sectors and disciplines. But excellence cannot live only in laboratories. Researchers’ Night takes science out of the lab and into the city, to the families, the schoolchildren and the curious minds who will become the next generation. Kiel shows what that looks like at its best. That is the MSCA promise: open science, open borders, open doors."For Kiel University, these activities are not separate endeavours. They are part of a broader understanding of academic excellence in which outstanding research, talent development, international cooperation, knowledge transfer and engagement with society strengthen one another.“For me, one of the most important lessons from the past decade is that scientific excellence, knowledge transfer, talent development and engagement with society cannot be treated as separate tasks,” stresses vice president Quandt. “They reinforce one another.”That philosophy is also reflected in Kiel University’s current bid for Germany’s Excellence University status. The designation is part of Germany’s national Excellence Strategy, which provides substantial long-term funding to selected universities to strengthen internationally competitive research and their overall institutional development. A successful outcome would provide new opportunities to build on what has already been created: deepening international cooperation, creating more opportunities for knowledge exchange and public engagement, and extending the university’s reach across the region and beyond. “If we are successful, it would allow us to take what we have built in Kiel considerably further – including expanding our networks and transfer activities beyond the region and increasingly across the Baltic area,” says Quandt.This week’s events offer a glimpse of what that could mean in practice: a university using its research strength, European expertise and regional partnerships to create opportunities for scientists at every stage of their careers while making science more visible, accessible and exciting to the wider public.
Virgil van Dijk: Liverpool captain slams Dutch reporter following claims he forced Ronald Koeman to change World Cup tactics
Virgil van Dijk claimed media in the Netherlands had said that he had ruined Dutch football after allegedly telling Ronald Koeman to change formation during the World Cup; Koeman switched to a back five against Morocco, but would be eliminated on penalties
Aidan Hutchinson Makes His Stance on Kelvin Sheppard Clear
Aidan Hutchinson says he still has faith in Kelvin Sheppard and Dan Campbell after the Lions’ defensive collapse against Buffalo.
UVA Health study examines incision-less liver tumor treatment
UVA Health researchers reviewed outcomes from nearly 1,000 patients treated with a procedure called histotripsy.
Government inaction, cuts are worsening Louisiana’s health outcomes
Advocates are trying to improve Louisiana’s health rankings. But Louisiana is still ranked last, with few signs of improvement.
Vanderbilt Health study identifies drugs with potential to improve outcomes associated with preterm labor
A team of Vanderbilt Health investigators has identified drugs with previously unrecognized potential as treatments for preterm labor.
Ultra-Processed Foods Linked with Multiple Health Outcomes
Ultra-processed food is linked with multiple chronic disease outcomes with each 100g contributing to an increase in risk, a meta-analysis involving more than eight million people suggests.
Columbia, Maryland ranks as No. 1 city for women due to good job, health outcomes
Columbia, Maryland has been ranked the No. 1 city in the nation for women due to its favorable conditions for good job prospects and positive health outcomes, according to a new survey released by the financial website WalletHub.
Chelsea and Arsenal set to battle for Dutch league midfielder
Gjivai Zechiel is developing into one of the finest players in the Netherlands, and the midfielder has now caught the attention of Arsenal, who believe he could be the real deal.The 22-year-old plays ...
Aidan Hutchinson Is a Defensive Player of the Year Favorite
Aidan Hutchinson has forced his way into a national award race two weeks into the season. #Lions
Why Arsenal international missed training on Tuesday
The Netherlands held Tuesday’s training session without Arsenal’s Jurrien Timber, with the Dutch media explaining why.Photo by Clive Rose/Getty ImagesArsenal right-back Jurrien Timber has been cal...
Vanderbilt Health to lead nationwide initiative to improve outcomes for critically ill patients
Funded via ARPA-H, CIRCLE will combine advances in diagnostics and AI to speed development of next-generation interventions that identify and respond to harmful immunoinflammatory states before life-threatening complications occur.
Why HIV stigma still shapes health outcomes
Jerrell Hardnett remembers the moment his mother, Stephanie, an HIV nurse, learned he was HIV‑positive. He says she was driving on the highway when “she started crying and praying because […]
Heart health with 40+ Double Dutch Club
"The Marissa Mitchell Show" is a live news and lifestyle program with the goal to inform, inspire, and entertain through discussions about a variety of topics, ranging from current events and relationships, to finances, parenting, wellness, and more.
Turkish military pension fund OYAK eyes foreign partnership on energy as it expands business
Turkish military pension fund OYAK is in talks with a major global energy company over a strategic partnership in fuel distributor Guzel Enerji, with the outcome expected to become clear by early next year.
Sabbatical Spotlight: Associate Professor of Political Science Jeremy Strickler
Dr. Jeremy Strickler, an associate professor of political science and UTC faculty member since 2016, used his professional development leave to advance research on presidential leadership and U.S. drug control policy, co-author a book chapter about camping, and develop a new course on American political culture.
Voices: No single organization can address Utah’s mental health crisis alone. We need a new response.
“No single organization can address behavioral health outcomes alone,” Valley Behavioral Health President and CEO Jared Sanford writes in an op-ed. “Progress depends on sustained collaborations.”
“Politics Are Desperately Important at the Moment”: Bill McKibben on Midterms, Trump & Climate Crisis
Ahead of the midterm elections, activist and writer Bill McKibben says he has been traveling across the United States with Third Act, the environmental group he founded to harness the power of seniors who care about the climate and democracy. “These elections are also starting to set the groundwork for 2028,” says McKibben, who calls the next U.S. presidential vote “maybe the last election that happens in a timeframe when we still really have an opportunity to affect some of the outcomes of these things.”
Argentina gifts Lionel Messi special jersey for final retirement match
A few weeks ago, soccer legend and World Cup-winning captain Lionel Messi announced his goodbye to international soccer . After representing his country for almost 207 games, Messi is now all set to don the blue and white jersey for one final time. Messi, 39, will play his last international match against West African nation Benin on Oct. 6, 2026. […] The post Argentina gifts Lionel Messi special jersey for final retirement match appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Observability should start with business outcomes, not infrastructure
A dashboard full of metrics is only useful if it can tell you what those numbers mean for customers and the business.
Jiang Feng: The Unravelling of German & European Politics
A state election in eastern Germany has become a revealing test of the changing political landscapes of Germany and Europe, writes Jiang Feng, Professor and Chairman of the Council of the Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies (SAGGAS) at Shanghai International Studies University. His analysis follows the decisive victory of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) (which has been classified as right-wing extremist by German authorities)in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September, in which it finished far ahead of its mainstream rivals. Jiang previously served as Minister-Counsellor at the Chinese Embassy in Berlin. The following article was published on 8 September 2026 on huanqiu.com, the online platform of the Global Times. On 6 September, the results of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, were announced. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), classified as far-right by German authorities, made history by becoming the largest party in the state parliament, winning 43.8 per cent of the vote — twice its share in the previous election. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which had governed the state continuously for 24 years, won just 17.2 per cent, its worst result ever in Saxony-Anhalt. On the night the results were announced, the atmosphere at the CDU gathering was unusually calm. There was neither shock nor argument, as if the defeat had long been expected. Several veteran party members who had spent years working in the state government said: “Defeat is not a bad thing. It is time to make changes.” This state election has not only upended Saxony-Anhalt’s political landscape, but also laid bare the deep tensions between Germany’s traditional party structure and model of governance, on the one hand, and an increasingly polarised society on the other. Its repercussions are already being felt at the federal level, making Saxony-Anhalt a useful case study of the broader trend towards political polarisation and realignment in Europe. Governing Difficulties after Electoral Victory The most immediate consequence of the election is a historic setback for the mainstream party order that took shape in post-war Germany. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has leapt from a peripheral party to the largest political force in the state. Its electoral base has expanded beyond the traditional category of “marginal protest voters” to take on the characteristics of a cross-class coalition. The party has not only consolidated its support in rural areas, but also attracted many middle-class voters and even members of the social elite with stable jobs, their own homes, and substantial incomes. It has thus evolved from a “protest party” into one with the potential to govern. Despite its commanding lead in the vote, however, the AfD faces an institutional obstacle to governing the state: the mainstream parties’ long-standing “firewall” against it. Neither of the two potential routes to forming a government appears likely to break the current political deadlock. The first would be a coalition of establishment parties, led by the CDU and bringing together the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, the Left Party (Die Linke) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in a cross-camp government. In terms of parliamentary arithmetic, such a coalition could prevent the AfD from forming a government and preserve the outward stability of the traditional political order. Yet these parties are fundamentally divided over key issues including immigration, the energy transition, economic management, and cultural and education policy. Coalition negotiations would therefore be extremely difficult, and even if a government could be formed, it would most likely prove short-lived. More importantly, an alliance of establishment parties aimed at keeping the largest party out of government would play directly into the AfD’s narrative that “political elites are suppressing public opinion”. It could deepen perceptions of political unfairness, further strengthening the AfD’s political capital, and creating a dynamic in which “the more it is suppressed, the more people vote for it”. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s candidate for state premier, has said that if efforts to form a government fail because other parties refuse to cooperate, the AfD will push for a fresh election, which he believes could deliver the party an absolute majority of seats. This points to more intense political battles ahead. The second option would be a coalition between the AfD and the BSW. Together, the two parties would command a simple majority in parliament, making this, on paper, the quickest route to forming a government. The BSW is the only elected party that has not ruled out cooperation with the AfD, and the two parties share some common ground, including on policy towards Russia. There is therefore a degree of political basis for cooperation. Were such a coalition to materialise, Germany would see its first state government jointly formed by a party defined as far-right and one with a far-left background, creating what might be called a “bipolar anti-establishment alliance”. Such an outcome would fundamentally break with the ideological boundaries of post-war German party politics. It is worth noting that even if the AfD ultimately fails to enter the state government, its roughly 47 per cent share of parliamentary seats would give it a powerful blocking minority. Without its consent, major decisions requiring a two-thirds majority — including constitutional amendments, significant budgetary adjustments, and state-level institutional reforms — would be extremely difficult to pass. Therefore, whoever ultimately forms the government, the AfD will be an unavoidable force in Saxony-Anhalt politics, with a direct influence on the state’s legislative process. Systemic Failures in Germany’s Governance Model The Saxony-Anhalt election result reflects a systemic failure of Germany’s post-war mainstream-party model of governance to adapt to rapidly changing socioeconomic conditions. It stems from multiple, mutually reinforcing structural tensions and highlights the existing political system’s difficulty in adapting to “an increasingly polarised society First, collective anxiety has replaced individual material hardship as a central driver of political mobilisation. The rise of the AfD can no longer be explained simply by poverty or social marginalisation. Its increasingly cross-class electoral base suggests that what is driving voters towards the party is, above all, concern about the broader direction of society. This anxiety about the future of the political community goes beyond individual gains and losses. In political discourse, economic anxiety has become closely intertwined with immigration, while immigration and refugee issues are, in essence, questions of social fairness. This perception turns conflicts over the distribution of social resources into negative assessments of governing parties, providing a broad social basis for far-right political narratives. Second, regional disparities and East German identity have undermined the strategy of addressing eastern Germany’s structural challenges at the regional level. More than three decades after German reunification, eastern states such as Saxony-Anhalt have experienced periods of economic growth, but their underlying economic structures remain weak, and household incomes and wealth remain significantly below those in western Germany. At the same time, they continue to face population outflow, an ageing population, labour shortages, and other structural challenges. At a deeper level, historical experiences — including the collapse of the former East German economic system, mass unemployment during the transition, and the westward shift of decision-making power over major issues — have left some residents with a sense of being “second-class citizens” and of being excluded. For years, the German government treated the “syndrome” of reunification as a regional problem to be gradually addressed at the local level. That approach is becoming increasingly unsustainable, as regional development disparities emerge as a core structural factor shaping national politics. Third, the erosion of institutional trust is perhaps the most decisive factor. AfD supporters tend to distrust establishment institutions, including parliament, government, and the mainstream media. Their concerns about economic security, pensions, and social fairness are significantly greater than the social average. Increasingly, their support for the AfD reflects not an expectation that the existing system can be improved, but a search for an alternative to the current political order. Such a systemic deficit of trust will be extremely difficult for the traditional parties to repair in the short term. Fourth, a generational shift in political mobilisation has amplified political polarisation. Unlike traditional parties, which rely heavily on offline rallies and mainstream media coverage, the AfD has developed a social-media mobilisation strategy built around “raising an issue — identifying who is responsible — offering a simplified solution — building a shared identity”. It turns complex social tensions into concise political narratives, rapidly channelling public sentiment into political support. The contrast on the eve of the election was particularly telling. The establishment parties, together with trade unions and churches, organised an offline march attended by more than 10,000 people, but its reach was largely confined to those present and to traditional media coverage. The AfD held a much smaller indoor event, yet livestreaming on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms, combined with the involvement of online influencers, gave it a reach and mobilising capacity far beyond that of the march. The contrast illustrates how the traditional parties’ methods of political mobilisation are increasingly struggling to keep pace with a political environment transformed by changes in media technology. A Microcosm of Structural Political Change in Europe The shockwaves from the Saxony-Anhalt election quickly travelled beyond the state to the federal level. Calls for political accountability followed immediately after the results were announced. The governing CDU and SPD are now under enormous pressure, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil face an unprecedented test. Political polarisation in Germany is no longer simply a regional phenomenon. The post-war model of multiparty government by establishment parties is breaking down and being reshaped. Viewed in a broader European context, the Saxony-Anhalt election is part of a continent-wide wave of party polarisation, mainstream-party decline, and rising right-wing forces. Far from an isolated phenomenon, it is a microcosm of the structural political changes unfolding across Europe. Weak economic growth, cultural tensions over immigration, and declining trust in institutions are fuelling the rise of right-wing forces in several countries, challenging the liberal internationalist order established in post-war Europe. As a core member state of the European Union, Germany’s ability to adapt its political system and the direction of its politics will have profound implications for both European integration and the evolution of the international order. Subscribe [ Pekingnology China’s Germany watchers take stock of Berlin’s uneasy turn On 7 December 2025, nearly 50 Chinese scholars and policy researchers gathered in Beijing for the 2025年德国形势年终研讨会 “2025 Year-End Seminar on the Situation in Germany… Read more 9 months ago · 31 likes · 1 comment · YIRUI LI and Yuxuan JIA ](https://www.pekingnology.com/p/chinas-germany-watchers-take-stock?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=1151841) [ Jiang Feng on Germany's 2025 and beyond: no easy exit ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/jiang-feng-on-germanys-2025-and-beyond) Yirui LI and Yuxuan JIA · Jan 24 The following is an op-ed by Jiang Feng, published on 29 December 2025 at Shanghai Observer 上观新闻, the digital platform of Jiefang Daily, the official newspaper of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). [ Read full story ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/jiang-feng-on-germanys-2025-and-beyond)
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Whether you like it or not, celebrities have an impact on politics
The global groundswell of support for Macklemore’s pro-Palestinian advocacy serves to remind us that maybe celebrity activism really is that deep after all, writes Cheek’s Varsha Yajman. Subscribe In the last week, publications, podcasts, and influencers that have either rarely or never spoken about Israel’s genocide in Palestine have flooded my social feed. And it was all because singer Ed Sheeran and his team dropped Macklemore as his opener for saying “Free Palestine” on stage. Millions raised, millions speaking up in support of Palestine - all of this confirming my view that, whether I like it or not, celebrities do have an impact on political outcomes. And this is interesting when much of the time celebrity activism can induce an eye roll - I love to see Charli XCX pointing out a Palestinian flag in the crowd, but it’s hardly the bold symbol of allyship that some fans would make it out to be. But there’s a line between healthy scepticism and outright dismissal - and I’d argue that the latter lets the rich and powerful off far too easily. For instance, actress Jennifer Lawrence, once outspoken about her political views, last year told The Times she no longer believes celebrities have a role to play: “Celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.” While it’s a narrative she might find comfort in, it simply is not true. Grassroots movements often garner worldwide attention when celebrities and other high-profile spokespeople bring a mainstream platform to their causes. And this frustrates me. We have had three years of a live-streamed genocide. Macklemore himself has been calling for a Free Palestine long before he booked the Sheeran concert. Yet it’s the high-profile fallout of the last week that finally seems to have made saying “Free Palestine” socially acceptable in the mainstream. It feels like the collective mood has shifted, where calling out censorship is now the obvious response - not just the business of ‘radical’ activists. To recap, Sheeran’s decision followed an ultimatum from billionaire Robert Kraft, owner of Gillette Stadium, one of the venues Sheeran was scheduled to perform at: either drop Macklemore as your opener after only two of the eight scheduled shows, or you do not play at any stadiums. Sheeran’s disappointing decision to stand on the side of billionaire-led censorship has ultimately seen a surge in support for Free Palestine. It began when all his openers and his backing band pulled out of Sheeran’s tour, in solidarity with Macklemore and with the Palestinian cause. It was met with an uproar of support from those who had never or barely touched politics before: influencers lip-syncing to Macklemore’s music, singers like Jack Antonoff singing “Free Palestine,” and publications and podcasts standing with Macklemore. And finally, we saw material support: Macklemore donated $1 million in profits from his two nights opening for Sheeran’s tour to several Palestinian aid groups and called for Sheeran and Kraft to match it, which they have since promised to do. We’ve also seen children’s entertainer Ms Rachel follow suit with a $1 million donation to Palestinian aid, and publication PopBase has donated $10,000. Anera, a humanitarian aid group working in Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan, said donations since Macklemore’s announcement were more than triple this month’s daily average. The group’s Instagram page has also gained 8,000 followers. Macklemore far from the first celebrity to speak and participate in politics in the Western World. In 1924, singer Al Jolson supported Republican candidate Warren G. Harding for president, and decades later, celebrities such as Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, and Aretha Franklin voiced their public support for the Civil Rights movement. More recently, in the lead-up to the 2024 US election, ‘The Daily Show with Trevor Noah partnered with the organisation Power the Polls to recruit poll workers to address shortages- a problem disproportionately affecting voters of colour. The campaign saw 170,000 new sign-ups - 35,000 of which came directly through the TV show’s link - resulting in the recruitment of 713,000 total poll workers that year, an almost three-fold increase on the organisation’s goal. Alongside recruiting workers, celebrities in the US (where voting in elections is not compulsory) have made a huge difference by calling for people to register to vote. Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024 saw over 400,000 visitors on the voter registration site within 24 hours of her Instagram post. In 2023, Swift had urged her fans to register, resulting in 35,000 new voter registrations. Similarly, Ariana Grande promoted voter registration in 2019 by setting up booths at concerts on the American leg of her tour, resulting in over 33,000 voters registering. And the same thing is happening closer to home. This year, musician Jack River successfully called for government action to ensure creatives in Australia do not have their work scraped by generative AI companies. Celebrity as the mediator between the punter and the politician Celebrity activism isn’t just a feel-good news story - research tells us it actually makes a difference. By directing attention to issues affecting the average person, like voting inaccessibility or a lack of action on a genocide, researchers Alfred Archer and Amanda Cawston state that “celebrities can play a useful bridging role between political elites and the people they represent”. Alternatively, in a world where talking about politics is “not cool,” or where people lack exposure or knowledge to engage with politics, celebrities can act as an educational resource or an entry point into the political world - when they speak up about an issue, their audience gets exposed to it. Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields festival is a perfect example. Rodrigo partnered with twelve organisations focused on women’s issues, such as reproductive rights. These organisations had stalls at the festival for people to meet them and were also featured heavily on social media, giving their issues global attention and raising $20 million for the organisations. We have also seen celebrities at award shows such as the Emmys wearing F*CK ICE pins, referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s treatment and detainment of people - generally people of colour. When celebrities speak up about political issues in public forums, they put the issue at the forefront of mainstream media, rally their supporters, and make it clear that, however much they disagree, the government cannot simply ignore it. Our over-reliance on celebrities versus our politicians As much as I love seeing my favourite celebrity use their platform for a good cause, there is an important question to ask: not whether celebrity activism is good or bad, but whether we should have to rely on celebrities. And the answer would, in an ideal world, be no. In an ideal world, or merely a just world, action on Palestine would’ve happened decades ago, climate change would be taken seriously, and most importantly, people would understand their democratic rights. However, that is not our reality. Only around 28 per cent of Australian Year 10 students reach proficiency in civics and citizenship. In the US, almost two-thirds of people under 30 say high school civics education didn’t prepare them to understand voting deadlines, how to research candidates, or how to vote by mail. When civics education is weak, our trust in these institutions and our understanding of change-making processes also decline. This is where celebrity steps in and becomes our main source of reliance. As Mary R. Connelly notes in _The Tartan, “_Celebrities will always be involved in campaigns in one form or another, but their presence is not what causes people to vote blindly. The lack of political engagement and literacy is what allows celebrities to wield their influence on the political sphere so impactfully.” About the author Varsha Yajman is the Digital Content Producer at Cheek Media. She is a youth advocate and lawyer with a background in climate litigation and is passionate about looking at the intersection between race, climate justice, and mental health. Thanks for reading Cheek Media Co. ! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share
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The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Restaurant Barn. BAR HARBOR—Parents again raised concerns this week about how Bar Harbor students receive science instruction after fifth grade, months after the same issue came before the Bar Harbor School Board. The concern centers on a past scheduling change at Conners Emerson School that gives fifth graders a full year of science rather than switching between science and social studies at midyear. Principal Dr. Heather Weir Webster told the board that the school has been monitoring test scores, teacher feedback, and the experience of students as it considers whether the current approach is working. If it is not, the approach may be changed, but that would not likely occur this school year. In fifth and sixth grade, the school used to have one semester of social studies and one of science in each year. That schedule shifted because switching at midyear often broke up the learning units. So, approximately two-three years ago, they decided to shift that a bit. Science became a dedicated focus in fifth grade. Social studies was the dedicated focus in sixth grade. The school staff members are hoping to dive deeply into the data and see if the students are having a more quality experience throughout their time in those grades when it comes to science and social studies. If not, things could shift again. This year, Dr. Webster said at the September meeting, potential changes to curricula have been a bit complicated by moving into the school’s new building in late October and early November. “There have been no changes this year because it’s hard enough to handle the move. That allows them to have consistency,” Dr. Webster said. Dr. Webster said that after the Covid pandemic which prevented students from attending school in person, many fifth graders were struggling. “We tried several different configurations,” she said, including a co-teaching model to help with that struggle, but to also see how to best schedule and support those students. “We found that a January switch” where classes switched from social studies to science was really difficult. Part of the decision making stemmed from science being more hands-on and accessible to fifth graders. Social studies was a bit more abstract content, which was why the school tried the current configuration. In a letter submitted as public comment, parent Beth Dumont wrote, “In May 2026, I wrote to express my concern that our middle school students are not receiving consistent instruction in science and social studies. I appreciate that the Board took this concern seriously and requested a presentation from Principal Webster. I am also grateful for the opportunity to meet with Principal Webster and Julie Keblinsky in July to learn more about the current curriculum and scheduling. “During that meeting, I learned that the current model is intended to integrate science and social studies into other subjects during the years or semesters when they are not offered as standalone courses. “While I appreciate the intent behind this model, I remain concerned about its premise. Science and social studies are core academic disciplines that provide students with essential knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking. Yet under the current schedule, students are not guaranteed consistent instructional time in these subjects. Instead, exposure to content in these disciplines may depend on whether opportunities for integration arise within other classes. “To be clear, I strongly support interdisciplinary learning. Integrating science and social studies across the curriculum can enrich students’ educational experiences and help them make meaningful connections across subject areas. My concern is not with integration itself, but with relying on integration as a substitute for dedicated instruction in core disciplines.” Dr. Webster said that they’ve been monitoring test scores, talking to teachers, seeing how the pilot program works. It’s in its third year now of this schedule. One science teacher, she said, told her he’d seen positive outcomes with full year science and that there was a stronger classroom community. Another science teacher had concerns over the readiness last year, but she isn’t feeling that way about this year’s current class. A third teacher for social studies said he loves the full year. A fourth teacher of social studies hasn’t said that anything has changed. For the three fathers who spoke at the school committee meeting, the fractured science curriculum caused concerns. One father said that when he spoke to others, “all were surprised and confused as to why there was no dedicated, continuous science education,” at the school. Though students are testing well in science and math, he worried that without continuity in education, learning is lost. “We shouldn’t have to choose between key learning disciplines,” he said. Matthew Bergin, another father, agreed, adding, “I’m just a little concerned.” In her letter, Dumont wrote, “As the parent of a recent sixth grader who completed an entire year without a dedicated science course, I saw very little evidence that this integration was occurring in a consistent, systematic, or readily identifiable way. This is not a criticism of our middle school teachers, who have been uniformly excellent. Rather, it is a structural criticism of the current schedule.” Dr. Webster gave an update about all aspects of the schedule and how it’s created and she also spoke to social and emotional learning (SEL) in middle school. It’s explicitly taught but also embedded. Science is embedded as well and explicitly taught at all but that one grade. The school schedule is built from lunch out, then electives like art and physical education are placed, before going into the instruction time, teacher planning time, multi-tier support systems (MTSS), and then social and emotional learning. Teachers have to have 250 minutes a week of planning time per their contracts. That’s the minimum and occurs when their students are at specials. “The schedule is really not the purview of the board,” School Board Chair Marie Yarborough reminded the other board members and the public and thanked Dr. Webster for the presentation. The parents were also thanked for coming. LINK TO LEARN MORE [ ](https://barharborstory.substack.com/p/despite-strong-rankings-some-bar) [ Despite Strong Rankings, Some Bar Harbor Parents Raise Concerns About School's Science Education ](https://barharborstory.substack.com/p/despite-strong-rankings-some-bar) Carrie Jones · Jun 4 [ Read full story ](https://barharborstory.substack.com/p/despite-strong-rankings-some-bar) HELP SUPPORT THE BAR HARBOR STORY When we started The Bar Harbor Story, we didn’t know if anyone would read it. But you showed up. You shared. You sent tips. Now—over 400,000 views every month later—it’s clear: people here care about their community and each other. We’ve kept everything free because news should never be out of reach, but every one of our stories takes time to write, and your support keeps The Bar Harbor Story going. If you value our work, please consider a paid subscription, a founding membership, or a sponsorship. It truly helps us cover one more meeting, tell one more story, shine one more light. Even $5 a month makes a difference. Click here to become a one-time supporter now. Thank you so much for being here. Founding member information can be found here. Have questions about sponsorships? Just send Shaun an email at sfarrar86@gmail.com, he’d love to hear from you. Subscribe Share Bar Harbor Story Share Leave a comment
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The Big Holes in Wearable Heart Rate Variability And Readiness Scores
On September 9th, Apple announced it was revamping its Apple Watch Health Sensing System, rolling out a Readiness score (0 to 10), and increasing the frequency of heart rate variability (HRV) outputs 24-fold. This can be viewed as upping its competition with various other consumer wearable sensors. These “readiness scores” as a composite of multiple metrics, with heart rate variability (HRV) being front and center for most. The majority of Americans are now using wearable sensors, which equates to well over 100 million adults. HRV and Readiness scores are increasingly being marketed as a measurement of autonomic nervous system health, a digital marker for future disease, a clock for biological age, and a holistic metric to promote healthspan and even longevity. (Apple also introduced a new longevity tab and “Health Age”.) None of this has been proven. In this edition of Ground Truths I am going to review what we know about heart rate variability and readiness scores. Heart Rate Variability HRV is the variation in normal heart cycle timing. The variability of the heart rate, the barely perceptible millisecond changes in time between consecutive heart beats (see R-R intervals in the Figure below, left panel), is due to interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic (vagal nerve) inputs. Distinct from heart rate, individuals with the same heart rate can have very different HRVs. It is a rough reflection of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity, inadequate to say whether a person’s ANS function is abnormal. For more than three decades, heart rate variability (HRV) has been measured and several studies have found an association of low HRV and clinical outcomes, particularly a link with higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. There have also been less well established links of low HRV to risk of early cognitive impairment, dementia, mental illness, Type 2 diabetes and substance abuse. An important reminder is that HRV is a surrogate marker without any established cause-and-effect relationship. If you increase your HRV, that doesn’t mean it will improve health outcomes. In fact, there is no hard evidence for that. All that work linking to health outcomes was done with electrocardiogram (ECG) derived HRV. Now, in the era of consumer wearables, this is getting assessed differently, by optical pulse (yes, the lights you see) plethysmography (PPG) or what is called pulse rate variability (PRV). They are not the same, as shown below (right panel) and only concordant when the delay between the ECG and pulse is kept constant, which basically means at rest. I should mention there’s also what I will call MPV, a mattress mechanical movement sensor, a derived heart rate variability, that companies like Eight Sleep use, even further away from directly measuring HRV. HRV has not one uniform measurement but many different types of quantification, such as RMSSD, the magnitude of difference between successive R-R intervals of normal sinus beats (N-N) or SDNN, the standard deviation of NN intervals, both in milliseconds. SDNN is one of the so-called frequency domain HRVs (others are LF, HF, LF/HF). Different wearable sensors use different metics; Apple has relied on SDNN and nearly all of the others use RMSSD, which is generally considered the more accurate metric. There’s also the different length of time measured, such as for a matter of minutes, all day, or an overnight’s sleep. Short measurements are especially problematic since they don’t capture enough of respiratory modulation and other factors that influence HRV. Share Ground Truths How well does HRV correlate with PRV? There are very limited studies, especially independently done. One that is commonly cited was conducted by Air Force researchers in only 13 healthy adults assessing Oura ring 3 and 4, Whoop 4.0, and Garmin Fenix 6 and showed a correlation coefficient of 0.88 to 0.97 and a mean absolute percentage error from 6 to 10%. The correlation is not a perfect 1.0, but there’s at least a fairly high level of correlation. HRV is supposed to increase during the night due to takeover of the parasympathetic nervous system, and higher during deep sleep. A recent example of my 1 week, all day “HRV,” and one during sleep is shown below. As you can see, the N of 1 data are inconsistent for the same days from different sensors (Oura, AppleWatch, Fitbit Air, and Eight Sleep) by patterns, absolute numbers, and comparison with prior days and weeks. The largest study in over 8 million Fitbit users (the old version, not Google Fitbit Air, introduced in May 2026) gives you a sense of the effect of age, sex, and the 2 different main HRV (here PRV) metrics, with RMSSD on the left and SDRR (=SDNN) on the right below. That study, from data collected in 2018, is a major outlier, since all the more recent ones are tiny with respect to sample size. Many of the companies have not had independent evaluation of their HRV, such as Eight Sleep, but have published a low standard error on their website. There are some other published studies on the correlation between HRV and PRV, but they are all small and only in healthy adults. A scoping review emphasized the lack of study in underrepresented individuals, including the aged, people of color (which affects the PPG signal), and individuals who are underweight or obese. Add the typical adult age 60 plus with one or more chronic diseases. For example, one study in over 900 adults found poor correlation of HRV and PRV, non-uniformly underestimated across many chronic diseases (cardiovascular, endocrine, neurological, respiratory, and others), concluding PRV is “an invalid surrogate for HRV.” A recent systematic review of 43 studies comparing HRV and PRV found reasonable pooled absolute standardized error (HRV as gold standard) but only 10 of the studies provided quantitative synthesis in ideal conditions. Their main conclusion was similarly cautious: “PPG-derived HRV [PRV] should not be regarded as universally interchangeable with ECG-derived HRV across all devices, populations, and recording contexts.” Factors Affecting HRV and PRV That gets me to the long list of factors that affect HRV (and PRV) besides the device, the type of measurement (RMSSD, SDNN or others), the person’s signal, the sensor site, the duration of data capture, if weighting by sleep stage is used, how artifact is processed and corrected. And this list is not complete!: Oura puts out data from their community of users (who input data) on what affects their overnight HRV. The factors currently provided are: no alcohol (increase 8%), melatonin (increase 2%, float tank (increase 2%), wine (decrease 4%), and party (decrease 14%) in overnight HRV. Must be some big parties! Subscribe What is a PRV measurement good for? It has been falsely characterized as an index of “autonomic balance” and a specific indicator of stress. A 2018 review of the studies available for HRV and its relationship to stress, not using any of the current wearables, found that stress can lower HRV. But so can many other factors. The non-specificity of the signal, indexed to the table above, is striking. Evidence from a UK Biobank study of over 46,000 participants with actual HRV looked at genetically predicted HRV, a genetic risk score, that failed to show the expected HRV-mortality link, indicating that _HRV is likely not causa_l, but rather a reflection of person’s physiologic state. A review of consumer wearable HRV data from 5 longitudinal studies showed that nighttime PRV was not associated with perceived stress, and surprisingly higher HRV, in the largest cohort (N=717 participants), was correlated with higher stress. An Oura ring cohort of 525 first-year college students found a link between overnight PRV and perceived stress, but that was also seen with resting heart rate, sleep, and respiratory rate. Several very small studies have examined the relationship of HRV and athletic injuries or guiding training with mixed, and predominantly negative results. HRV biofeedback training with paced breathing had no significant effect on reducing stress or raising HRV, as demonstrated with sham controlled trials. When HRV for multiple days showed a decline in conjunction with body temperature, the Oura ring published data for prediction of Covid. The WHOOP company sponsored an observational study, published in 2026, of 30,000 users for 72 weeks, without a control group, that reported reduced alcohol intake (5.8 % points) by self-report. That doesn’t tell us much, and particularly about the merits of HRV for behavioral change. If you use the same device and conditions as longitudinal trends for multiple (at least 2-3) weeks that may be the one way to get something useful from the measurements. Data for overnight sleep with minimal motion and using RMSSD is the best proxy for real HRV. The reason to look at trends rather than any given night is that it more likely represents something, even though you won’t know with certainty what the “it” is. Keep in mind there are no data, no peer-reviewed evidence, to show that HRV fluctuation in-person has any correlation with health outcomes. Share Readiness Scores These are proprietary scores that integrate different metrics for each of the wearables: no algorithms have been disclosed. They are unvalidated against health outcomes. In a review of 14 composite health scores of readiness and recovery, HRV contributed 86% to the scores, followed by reading heart rate (79%), physical activity and sleep duration (both at 71%). That review noted the substantial variability in measurement protools and lack of standardization. Sleep staging is notoriously inconsistent and inaccurate by these sensors, which adds further to the HRV uncertainties for what the scores, which use sleep stage data, mean. Only resting heart rate has been shown consistently across devices to be extremely accurate. I’ve made a Table to summarize what we know about which metrics are included, the scores, any peer-reviewed studies that compared the readiness score with health outcomes, and the corresponding (if any, NA-not available) citation. You will note that some companies do not use the term “readiness," such as WHOOP for recovery, and Garmin, which has 2 different scores, one of which is Body Battery. Eight Sleep uses the term “Fitness Score.” They all include HRV; Apple includes a new metric they call “Recovery HRV” which among other components uses 7-days of sleep, but it is unclear what this means or how it is differentiated from other scores (there are clearly no data for outcomes). We have no knowledge of how the different components are weighted or whether any of these scores are better than resting heart rate, HRV alone, physical activity, or any other single metric. Since none of these are standardized, they are not interchangeable, so if you get a 90 for Oura that has no relationship to a 90 on a Google Fitbit Air. Notably, the company can update its algorithm for readiness score at any point without notification to device users. Without any useful evidence of actionability for these scores or established relationship with health outcomes, it is hard to make a case for their value. At the Apple recent announcement they showed their Readiness score (0-10) on the watch (Figure below) but there are no published data on this score, not even on their website. It’s available only on their new Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4 [of course, ;-)]. That exemplifies the problems with these scores, lack of data and evidence for being meaningful to promote health. Perhaps the best study (which isn’t saying much) is the WHOOP Recovery for golfer performance, because it did correlate with an objective outcome, even though there was no control group and the authors were all from the company. Among the 389 pro golfers, an absolute 10-per cent point increase in Recovery score was associated with about 0.5 fewer strokes per round. But that’s hardly a health outcome! WHOOP is also conducting a study in over 2,700 runners to see if their recovery score will be linked to less injuries and improved performance, but that is not yet published and has no control group or randomization. Putting This in Context For two decades I’ve been enthusiastic about the potential for digital health and particularly wearable biosensors. Over the years, we’ve seen some great progress for their ability to promote physical activity and accurately detect atrial fibrillation (the first FDA cleared deep learning AI for consumers). That work was the subject of rigorous research. But there are holes in the data and evidence for other metrics. One notable one is the “VO2 max” story that I wrote about earlier this year. At that time many subscribers asked me to cover heart rate variability, which I finally got to here. When I dived into the research and publication for HRV and readiness scores, I expected to find at least some that were of high quality and demonstrated their utility by linkage to health outcomes. To my surprise, I found none. The wearable sensor measurements for HRV (PRV) are, for the most part, accurate, but that validation work has only been done in small studies of healthy adults and does not take into account the long list of factors, from the device, software side, and the user side, that affect HRV measurements. Moreover, this metric chiefly relies on optical sensing and, as we have learned for heart rate PPG sensing, may be less accurate in people of color. Keep in mind that all of the health outcome association evidence comes from ECG-derived HRV; none are from wearable sensor data. I will repeat the key point: there's no peer-reviewed evidence to show that in-person HRV fluctuation—or efforts to raise your HRV— has any correlation with health outcomes. For those of you who look at your HRV on awakening, or even 2+ week trends of it being low, I hope this context helps to relieve any anxiety. Yes, low HRV (not PRV) has been shown to increase risk of some diseases as summarized above. But efforts to raise your HRV—a surrogate metric— has not been established for improving any health outcomes. HRV does not have any evidence of causality (the genetic evidence actually goes against this possibility). In this summary, I have not included data for other wearable sensors such as Polar, Samsung, Withings, Suunto, Amazfit, Coros, Ultrahuman, or additional mattress sensors. These are beyond my first-hand experience, and as far as I know from my in-depth review none have any peer-reviewed published data that differ from the 6 sensors I’ve reviewed here. From the points I’ve gone over above, we’re not ready for readiness scores. Besides being proprietary, they are predominantly based on metrics that have their own issues. It’s compounding the problem, like building a house without a solid foundation that has never undergone a rigorous inspection, and then selling it. Like I mentioned for PRV, you can look at trends over weeks rather than any single day, to get a handle, but even that may not be helpful. There’s simply no evidence that these scores meaningfully relate to health outcomes. I’d emphasize they might, but that requires doing prospective or randomized studies to prove it. None exist. There’s great promise for HRV/PRV utility_. For example**,**_ Prof Maiken Nedergaard, who discovered the brain glymphatics that are essential in eliminating metabolic waste products from the brain during sleep, has posited that HRV could be a non-invasive marker for neuromodulator oscillations, brain-body regulatory circuits, and brain clearance. That would be extremely useful, but like everything else on HRV and readiness scores it requires solid research and validation. The lay media isn’t helping much to get the story straight. Earlier this year The Economist published a piece entitled “The most useful indicator of your overall health” which ordained HRV as an “accumulated stress score.” That’s akin to the false assertion about VO2max: “V02 max is the singular most powerful marker for longevity.” As I’ve summarized here, that is not established. The fact is that so many things can lower HRV, including physical exercise (especially an intense workout), reduced sleep quality, stress, the list above, no less the device, signal, and software. Whatever fluctuations observed have not been correlated with any health outcome. Sadly, “datamaxxers” are widely using HRV and readiness scores that have never been validated to mean anything. We already know that for some people using the sensors for sleep metrics, it can induce “orthosomnia,” an obsession to get high sleep quality, with associated high levels of anxiety. In an experiment done by a company to promote sleep quality for its employees, “For those employees who did use the trackers, many reported feeling perfectly rested until their tracker told them they had had a terrible night. Others were told that they had slept like a baby when they had actually been lying awake worrying about the quality of their sleep. “ The same problem can result from preoccupation with HRV or readiness scores, with anxiety that would lead to further reduction in both. It you are using a wearable like >100 million American adults, it’s OK to look at these data, but contextualized with the major caveats reviewed here. If you are one to require evidence that HRV or readiness scores are linked to health outcomes, you may not even want to look. The companies make it hard to turn them off! Let me end with the companies that make and sell wearables. Apple’s doubling down on HRV (24-fold more reporting and heart rate very 5 seconds) and introduction of a Readiness score tells us that consumers have bought into these metrics and they are joining the club. However, all of this is occurring with a backdrop of tens millions of users, claims about the data that are not backed up by adequate evidence, marketing way out in front of whatever limited data exists, and not being transparent about their readiness score algorithms. The companies can well afford to do the research that is needed to connect these metrics with health outcomes show, once and for all, that increasing HRV or using readiness scores promotes our health. If they believed and invested in the products they are selling, we’d not be in this position of not knowing. That’s essentially where we are with HRV and readiness scores. Perhaps someday this will change and we’ll have good reason to embrace them. NB: I wrote this post. No AI. I have no conflicts of interest with any of its content. Loading... Ground Truths has 215,000 subscribers from every US state and 214 countries. 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Three Heroes from Brewers' 6-5 Win vs. Orioles
Jackson Chourio’s home run, clutch hitting in the 10th, and a resilient bullpen fueled a gritty extra-innings victory for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Science Vs on the 49ers Substation: Anatomy of a Hatchet Job
In August, Pablo Torre Finds Out and Science Vs released an episode about my theory that electromagnetic fields from the electrical substation beside the 49ers facility may be contributing to the team’s run of soft-tissue injuries. As the originator of the theory, I was also a subject of the episode. I sat was interviewed by Wendy Zukerman and Rose Rimler of Sciene Vs. I sent them research, connected them with scientists, and spent hours digging through the City of Santa Clara’s and Silicon Valley Power’s records to help clarify critical details. Both Wendy and Rose came off as affable and professional, showing curiosity during the interviews, with Wendy going out of her way to question the “conspiracy theory” framing itself. Then they titled the episode We Solve the 49ers Viral Conspiracy Theory. I was familiar enough with their catalog that I never expected them to agree with my theory, but I did expect them to give it a fair hearing and to deliver their findings honestly. On both counts they came up short. They were not directly dishonest in anything they said, but rather in what they left out, in how what remained was cut, and in the picture painted by those two things in combination. They asked me to recorded the interview on my phone for better audio quality, and I held on to my copy for reference later. That turned out to be a fortuitous decision. Here is the raw audio of my first interview, unedited*. Only my side was recorded, so their questions aren’t on it, but you can generally infer them from the answers, and every claim I make below about what I said can be checked against my statements in this clip. (Note: Wendy had connection trouble at the beginning of the interview and was cutting in and out, which accounts for the false starts.) 0:00 -1:19:13 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Science Vs is a fun show. It is pitched at roughly a high-school understanding of science, for an audience that is skeptical, Snopes-oriented, and worried about misinformation. Take a claim circulating online, interview a supporter of the claim, interview consensus scientists, and then tell people which side of the line it lands on. I have listened to their episodes on raw milk, seed oils, 5G and other contested issues in the wellness space. I have problems with all of them, but each at least made an honest attempt to represent the actual range of scientific opinion by talking to credentialed scientists with differing perspectives. Dissenting researchers were heard from, answered, and often given a chance to respond. This episode did not do that. This article is not a relitigation of the science. I have written extensively about that already. This post is for the record. It is simply an accounting of what was wrong with their episode. Contents Is there a power plant next to the 49ers practice facility? — the clearest single example of getting something objectively wrong For the record — a high-level overview of all of the problems with their investigation Draw your own conclusions — why they had to make this episode at all What they left out about childhood leukemia — the exposure threshold, and playing games with statistics to minimize sick children What they left out about the mechanism — the body of literature they refused to cover, and evidence for the mechanism used against it The scientists Science Vs interviewed and did not air — four credential scientists who support myhe theory, recorded and cut, or not even called How they misrepresented me and my case — an answer severed from its question, and three telling edits How you would actually study the injuries — it doesn’t actually matter which team is the most injured, overall The theory: magnetic fields, oxidative stress, and collagen Since the episode never states my theory, here it is below. Those who are familiar with my work can skip this section. Electrical equipment produces magnetic fields, and those fields induce faint electrical currents in anything that passes through them, including people. My argument goes further than induced current. Mitochondria — the structures that generate a cell’s energy — run on continuous flows of electrons and protons, and those flows carry faint electromagnetic fields of their own. Maxwell’s principle of superposition shows that when two fields share the same space, they add together. An external field does not need to be strong to alter an internal field, it only needs to be present. The electron transport chain inside the mitochondria leaks a small fraction of its electrons by design, and those become reactive oxygen species — free radicals, which healthy cells use as signals. External magnetic fields cause the rate of leakage to change, increasing free radicals. When free radicals accumulate faster than the cell’s antioxidant systems can clear them, the result is oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is a recognized driver of chronic illness, including cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, diabetes and cancer, and it is in every medical school curriculum. One of its ordinary effects in connective tissue is that it switches on matrix metalloproteinases — MMPs, the enzymes that break collagen apart — while suppressing new collagen synthesis. Tendons are made of collagen. An athlete loading his soft tissue heavily six days a week is already creating oxidative stress in the tendons, so the addition of magnetic field exposure compounds the damage and inhibits repair, making him more susceptible to injury when enormous force lands on a tendon in a fraction of a second. That is the theory. We know that EMF causes oxidative stress, and we know that oxidative stress degrades collagen. The only thing missing is a study showing that direct connection. I have never claimed certainty that the substation is contributing to the elevated injury rate. I do believe it is likely, and I believe it warrants caution, and that a revenue machine like a major NFL team can easily afford to remove the exposure out of precaution. Is there a power plant next to the 49ers practice facility? Here is the clearest single instance of the problem with this episode. It requires no knowledge of electromagnetic fields at all. This story first came to me through Jon Feliciano, a former 49er, in an interview on Willard & Dibs on 95.7 The Game. Asked about why the 49ers are always injured, he said players used to joke that it was the power plant behind the practice fields. Wendy Zukerman corrects him on air. “It’s important to say that it’s not a power plant near the 49ers site.” Torre then asks her to explain the difference between a substation and a power plant. Her answer: a power plant generates electricity and transmits it to a substation, which converts the voltage into something your house can use and sends it on to your home or your business. There are two problems with that. The first is that there is a power plant on that site. The Gianera Generating Station is a natural-gas-fired peaker plant owned by Silicon Valley Power, and it has been there since 1986. I have published aerial photographs of the location from 1987 in which the gas plant is the only thing standing, before the practice facility was even there. I even mentioned the gas plant in my first interview. (Feliciano has since gone on record about this issue, and it is clear he had the substation in mind rather than the gas plant.) The second is that her definition describes a distribution substation, and the facility beside the 49ers is not that. It is the Northern Receiving Station, which takes in bulk power from outside the city’s grid and delivers it to distribution substations. Silicon Valley Power’s own map distinguishes receiving stations from substations, and Rose Rimler even reads the label out loud in the episode when she walks through that map on air. A few minutes before the map segment, Zukerman tells Torre: “like I said, we fact check everything.” Well, maybe not everything. I made a mistake On the morning of July 6th, at 10:20, I sent Rose and Wendy two studies. During the interview I had been asked which human studies show oxidative stress from electromagnetic fields, and I had not been able to name one on the spot. Rose emailed asking for the studies, I quickly searched for a couple, and I wrote that I thought these were the most relevant from that search. Unfortunately, I was busy and did not read either one closely at first. I picked them because they were topically relevant — one on substation workers, one on power plant workers. Neither were great studies, and their problems go past the ones raised in the episode. That was careless on my part. There is context that did not make the episode, though. Before that email I had been on a Zoom call with Rose talking about EMF and oxidative stress, and I pointed her to Dr. Henry Lai at the University of Washington, who has spent years aggregating the literature on this question. His tallies show that roughly 90% of studies since the late 1990s find oxidative effects from electromagnetic field exposure — hundreds of studies, systematically counted. Rose told me she was already aware of his work. So when she asked for studies, I understood her to have the aggregate view already and that she would report anything within that context. Not reading those two carefully was still a mistake, but the larger mistake was assuming the episode would be based on a thorough review of the actual body of literature, rather than on whatever I happened to send that morning. The second email At 1:49 that same afternoon — three hours and twenty-nine minutes after the first — I sent them a second email that I had been preparing for a while. It was a structured document in six numbered sections, written in response to a request they had made two weeks earlier, laying out my entire argument with citations attached to every link in the chain. The episode aired on August 13th, five weeks later, and not a single item from the second email is in it. Here is how it opens: The full email is included at the bottom of this post in Appendix B. Nearly 1,500 words in total. It contains two named mechanisms with the physics behind them. Occupational studies in humans. The literature on oxidative stress and collagen. A section addressing the strongest counter-evidence against my own theory, which I raised myself. And a closing section stating plainly what the theory cannot yet show. My entire argument, in writing, with detailed citations for every claim, provided to them five weeks before broadcast, and none of it made it into the episode. That is the single largest omission, but it is not an isolated one. The whole episode is riddled with similar problems, and the conclusion they came to is not merely a difference of opinion about the scientific evidence. Through omission and through strategic editing, Science Vs misinformed its audience — about what the evidence shows, about what I argued, and about who they spoke to. That is a notable outcome for a show whose stated purpose is correcting misinformation. For the record I am not going to tell you that Science Vs set out to discredit me, or that they had come to their conclusion before they reported the story, or that they used misleading editing to make me look like a man retreating from his own theory. I cannot know what was in anyone’s head, and I am not going to pretend otherwise, either. What I can tell you is what is on the record. They asked me for evidence and aired the weakest thing I sent. They interviewed three scientists who supported my theory and aired none of them. They discussed childhood leukemia without ever saying the exposure level at which it appears. And they took an answer I gave weeks before Ken Karipidis, the one EMF scientist who was put on air, was interviewed, and placed it directly after his critique, where it comes off as a major concession. A friend of mine who has worked as a journalist for thirty years read that last one and called it sleazy. I agree with her. Those are just the four issues that are impossible to defend as pure editorial decision, but they are not the only issues. The most glaring issues stem from what they left out: The exposure level at which the childhood leukemia association actually appears — three to four milligauss, a number the episode never states despite it being much lower than what I measured. The mechanism itself: The episode gets as far as “oxidative stress could weaken collagen,” which leaves it sounding like speculation, rather than a known pathway. The second email, and all the studies in it. Dr. Paul Héroux at McGill, whose work my proposed mechanism rests on, whose contact details I supplied, and who was never called. Dr. Beatrice Golomb at UC San Diego, who runs a research group on oxidative stress and mitochondrial function and has specific expdertice in collagen, interviewed and not aired. Dr. David Carpenter at Albany, the most prominent academic voice on the harm from magnetic field exposure, interviewed and not aired. Dr. Joel Moskowitz at Berkeley, interviewed and not even credited. The specific, testable condition I put in writing that would make me abandon the theory. My own unprompted statement of the theory’s evidentiary gap. My caveats about my own measurements. My ranking of EMF as one factor among several rather than the only one. The new equipment installed at those facilities between 2010 and 2014, and the sharp rise in system load from 2013 onward. But that is not all. What they kept, they selectively edited to serve a narrative that was not served by the raw transcripts of the interviews. A description of thousands of commercial routers in a workplace, reduced to the Wi-Fi in your house. My own acknowledgment, multiple times, that "I'm not a scientist" clipped in an episode that spends considerable energy pointing out that I am not a scientist. And a qualification I volunteered about my own measurements, cut from my answer and delivered later by their EMF expert as a correction. Together their edit produce a portrait of a wellness guy with Wi-Fi phobia and two bad studies, backing away from his theory the moment a “real” scientist looked at it. A practice facility where nothing changed because no new substation was built. Injuries written off as random because the 49ers were not quite the single most injured team in the league over the period in question. That portrait is false even though almost no individual statement made in the episode is. Draw your own conclusions At the top of the episode, Pablo Torre says his show had been flooded with requests to investigate the substation — that it was the thing they were asked to look into over and over again. Neither show went hunting for this story. It arrived from their own audience, in volume, and it could not be waved off. A thread I posted on X reached twenty-two million people. A guy with a gaussmeter and a brand-new Substack obligated a Pultizer prize winning program to spend an hour on a question about player health, that is considered fringe enough that most media operations won’t touch it. Pablo Torre Finds Out could not ignore it. So Science Vs came in and ran a “debunking” operation instead of an investigation. Everything below is what had to be left on the cutting room floor to deliver the “debunking”. They could not ignore it. So they tried debunked it instead. The demand was strong enough to force an episode, and since the episodes release the 49ers have sustained more injuries, including season ending ones, and interest has only grown. Demand from fans and playets is strong enough to force a better investigation from someone else. An omission is not a lie until you find out what was omitted. What follows is the detailed record so you can see the full picture. Draw your own conclusions. I have drawn mine. I am going to keep publishing. A note about Pablo Torre Finds Out After the episode aired I posted publicly, calling out Pablo Torre Finds Out for concerns I had about the integrity of their investigation, and about an interview directly with Pablo Torre which had been offered but never happened. I have since spoken with a producer at PTFO. The offer had rested on a misunderstanding about where things stood between us, and it fell away as the Science Vs part of the production widened past the science. He apologized for the miscommunication and I accepted. The producer also confirmed to me that they did essentially hand off the entire investigation to Science Vs for narrative purposes — so Pablo would be genuinely curious or potentially surprised by their findings — while still taking responsibility for what went out under their name. I appreciated the candor and the accountability, and I am comfortable with where we left things. So this post is not about PTFO. My disagreement is with Science Vs. What they left out about childhood leukemia Childhood leukemia appears at three milligauss. They gave no number at all. 1. They built an EMF ruler, then discussed childhood cancer without it. The sequence on air went like this: First I measured almost 9 mG, then I measured up to 50 milligauss. Torre reacts with concern — “that sounds high.” Cut to Karipidis: the public limit is 2,000 milligauss. Torre reacts again — “What happens at 2,000?” Karipidis explains that nothing happens at 2,000, that safety factors are built in. Then: at more than 50,000 milligauss you get flickers of light in the retina, and higher still, nerve stimulation. The listener now has a ruler (their ruler) to measure these numbers with. Fifty is nothing by their ruler. Then the episode turns to childhood leukemia and states, accurately, that there is a real association — but tellingly, they never give the exposure level at which that association appears. Childhood leukemia appears at three milligauss. They conveniently left that out. The pooled analyses that produced the World Health Organization’s carcinogen classification found roughly a doubling of childhood leukemia risk above three to four milligauss. That is the number that belongs in that segment, and it is more than ten times below the reading that had just been dismissed as trivial. I gave them that number myself, on tape, in the interview. Describing my own threshold, I said my comfort level for long-term chronic exposure is three to four milligauss, but preferably one. 2. Six children in thirteen million. The episode reports that these fields might explain one to four percent of childhood leukemias, then reframes it as a German estimate of perhaps six cases among thirteen million children. Torre, to his credit, is uncomfortable. What never gets explained is why that number is small. Almost no children lives above three milligauss in Europe. Fewer than two children in a hundred, in the Italian data. So even if the risk to those children doubles, the number of additional cases across an entire country stays small — not because the hazard is small, but because hardly anyone is exposed to it. Count the whole population and the few who are exposed disappear. And the reason hardly anyone is exposed is that siting rules keep housing away from transmission lines. In Europe, at least. The Dutch government has a standing precautionary policy against building new homes in any zone where the annual average magnetic field exceeds 4 milligauss — the same number the episode never mentioned. Denmark and Norway treat 4 milligauss as the level that triggers a look at mitigation. That is five hundred times below the ICNIRP figure quoted on air. The United States has no federal equivalent. That is evidence of infrastructure siting policy working. It is not evidence that there is no hazard. It is evidence that we already act as though there is one. If you listen to the raw audio you will hear that my proposed solution is EMF exposure is to build better infrastructure. What they left out about the mechanism 3. They accused me of cherry-picking, and then cherry-picked themselves. On air, Zukerman tells Torre that people who worry about electromagnetic fields dismiss the studies showing null results and collect the ones showing harm, and that this is why you have to be careful not to cherry-pick. They had two papers I had rattled off in a hurry, and a second email containing a carefully chosen set. They ran the two weakest, graded them on air, and presented the result as the state of the evidence for not only my theory, but the whole question of oxidative stress from magnetic fields. That is cherry-picking from my emails. The bigger picture is what they did with the literature as a whole. Zukerman acknowledges it exists, dismisses it, and disposes of it in a single stroke. You can go online right now, she tells Torre, and find scores of studies showing these fields increase oxidative stress. The issue, she says, is that they are not studies in people. Many of them are in people. The occupational studies in my second email are in people. That email had been in her inbox for five weeks. She waved off the literature on a factual claim that the documents in her possession contradict. (I have written separately about the evidentiary standard at work here). The effect was that they essentially baited me: ask the subject to supply the evidence, take the weakest thing he sends, and let that stand as a proxy for the whole argument. Wendy has been doing this show for ten years and clearly knows how to extract what she needs for her desired narrative. 4. They presented the collagen-improvement research as a gotcha, but I had already addressed it. The episode treats the existence of studies showing that EMF can improve collagen as a surprise that undercuts me, but I had pre-emptively addressed that five weeks earlier in the email they ignored. Those studies use measured, high-intensity pulsed dosing. The mechanism by which they work is oxidative signalling. The cell reads a controlled rise in reactive oxygen species as a warning, upregulates its antioxidant defenses, mounts a repair response, and the therapy stops before the system is overwhelmed. The key point is that it induces an oxidative response, which means those studies are actually evidence for my proposed mechanism, not against it. A field that produces a therapeutic effect cannot be biologically inert (which is the implication when they say “Nothing happens at 2,000 milligauss). Chronic ambient exposure is the same pathway with no off switch, and it is most consequential during the evening and while sleeping, when the body is in repair mode and the exposure does not stop. Section 5 of my email is titled What about the study showing improved collagen synthesis. I raised the counter-evidence myself, explained why I did not think it refuted the theory, and wrote that I was disappointed the question had not come up in the interview. That is worth holding against the cherry-picking charge in the item above: the studies they presented as inconvenient for me were studies I had gone out of my way to put in front of them. 5. Section 1 of my email stated a critical argument that was never put to the expert directly responsible for it. My email says the exposure limits exist to prevent acute effects and do not address chronic exposure at all, and that my dispute is with the entire framework. Zukerman gestures at this once. After Karipidis gives the 2,000 milligauss figure, she tells Torre that I would object because those levels do not capture “more subtle effects.” That is not my argument, and “subtle” is doing a lot of work here. My argument is that the limits are built to prevent acute effects — nerves firing, muscles twitching, etc — and were not designed to address chronic exposure at all. In fact, ICNIRP’s own documents state as much themselves. Mine is a structural objection to what the standard measures, reduced as a concern about subtlety, it becomes a matter of degree, rather than a categorical difference. They interviewed Ken Karipidis, vice chair of ICNIRP — the body that writes those limits. He was asked what the limit is, but he was never asked how it applies to chronic exposure. The scientists Science Vs interviewed and did not air 6. They interviewed four officials of the standards body. The episode credits roughly a dozen researchers. Four of them are associated with ICNIRP. Ken Karipidis is the vice chair. Rodney Croft chaired ICNIRP from 2020 to 2024 and led the development of its current guidelines. Dan Baaken is ICNIRP’s scientific secretary. Frank de Vocht sits on the Main Commission. One of them speaks in the episode. Their institution’s position is more than adequately represented — the 2,000 milligauss figure, the safety factors, the assurance that nothing happens below the line. 7. The four who were left out. Dr. Beatrice Golomb is Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego — a physics undergraduate degree, a PhD in biology, an MD. She directs a research group whose stated focus is the relationship between oxidative stress, mitochondrial function and health. That is the mechanism the episode spent its first half dismissing. Her published work includes the fluoroquinolone case series behind the FDA’s black box warning on an antibiotic class that ruptures tendons, where the accepted mechanism is oxidative stress and mitochondrial toxicity — the back half of my chain, already on a drug label. She is in the credits. She is not in the episode. She has told me she finds my theory biologically plausible, and that she has a recording of her interview. Dr. David Carpenter directed the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany for decades and is the most prominent academic voice arguing these fields cause harm. Childhood leukemia is the reason these fields carry a WHO classification at all, and Carpenter is the person you call if you want that case made by someone who has spent a career on it. He is in the credits. He is not in the episode. He has told me that when he was interviewed they could not have been less interested in what he had to say. Dr. Joel Moskowitz directs the Center for Family and Community Health at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. He told me directly that they interviewed him and that he thought it went well. He does not appear in the episode, and unlike Golomb and Carpenter, he does not even appear in the credits. Dr. Paul Héroux at McGill is the researcher whose work provides the foundation for the oxidative stress mechanism my theory rests on. I gave Rose his email address and phone number. He was never interviewed. They never even called him. 8. “He’s not a scientist.” The episode leans hard on the fact that I am not a credentialed scientist. Zukerman says it. Torre repeats it. “At all.” Having built a segment on that, they then left out the physicist-biologist-physician, the professor of public health, the director of a university environmental health institute, and the McGill researcher whose work the primary mechanism comes from. They spent the episode telling their audience I am not a scientist, and then kept four actual scientists who support the theory off because their argument does not survive otherwise. How they misrepresented me and my case 9. They played my words as a response to an interview I had never heard. Near the end of the hour, Zukerman says she went to me and told me the evidence was lacking. Then she plays me saying I am not wedded to it being an EMF, that I have staked my reputation on it needing more study, and that I am not certain of anything. That segment was placed immediately after Karipidis had finished taking the cherry-picked papers apart. It plays as a man folding under expert scrutiny. Commenters have used it against me since, but it is incorrect. Here is the sequence as it happened. I was interviewed. Karipidis was interviewed weeks later. I was never told what he said, or even who he was. I was never asked to respond to it. I did not know his name until the episode aired. That is not a simple editing decision. That is a quote from one interview, moved to follow a critique from a different interview it was not a response to, so that it would land as a concession. A friend of mine who has spent thirty years as a journalist read that sequence and called it sleazy. She is right. The full passage is reproduced in Appendix A, and it is worth reading. What airs is the preamble. Four paragraphs later I say “to directly answer your question” — and that answer, about what would change my mind if the team relocated, is not in the episode. Neither is the sentence two paragraphs on, where I say the EMF might turn out to be ten percent of the problem. I will say the underlying point again, though, because I meant it and I still do. I am not wedded to my theory that magnetic fields from the substation are contributing to the 49ers injuries. I could be wrong. What I am wedded to is the process of scientific inquiry, and the fact that we should be cautious around these exposures and we need more independently funded studies. 10. Three telling edits. They cut “I’m not a scientist” mid-sentence. What I said: “...and I am not certain of anything. I’m not a scientist. To me, I find the mechanisms compelling. I will go back to the fact that I got into this not because of the 49ers, but because of clients I was working with who suffer from EDS...” What aired: “...and that I am not certain of anything. I’m not.” The clip ends on the first two words of the sentence in which I say I am not a scientist, in an episode that spends considerable energy establishing that I am not a scientist. The full sequence is in Appendix A. They cut my own description of my work. Asked what I do, I said I run a wellness business, that I am focused on writing software to help people navigate environmental stressors, that environmental health is my focus, and that I also do independent journalism and research. What aired is the wellness business and the environmental health, with the software and the journalism removed from my own answer. The software engineering does come up later — narrated by them, as a hacker who grew up to write firmware — but my current work, in my own words, arrives as “wellness guy.” Thousands of commercial routers became home Wi-Fi. What I described: working at a wireless networking company surrounded by thousands of Wi-Fi routers, and a stress-induced health collapse afterward that working in that environment contributed to. What aired: Wi-Fi, the kind you have at home — reinforced by a clip of Christian McCaffrey talking about turning his router off at night. Three cuts, and every one of them makes me seem less credible. That is not a coincidence. 11. I gave them my own caveats and the test that would disprove me. In the first email I wrote that a well-designed chronic, ambient-level exposure study in tendon showing no collagen degradation, run over many months, would undercut my confidence in the theory. That is a specific, testable condition, stated in advance and in writing. There was a second interview, weeks later, which was not used in the episode, but in that I asked again for the falsification criterion to be included. What the episode presents instead is a man saying “we need more study,” which reads as a hedge, an open-ended request for the benefit of the doubt. It is the opposite of a hedge. Section 6 of my second email says, unprompted, that as far as I am aware there is not a single study showing EMF-driven oxidative stress degrading collagen in a human in vivo or in human tendon in a lab. I wrote that because it is true and because it is the first thing anyone should check. Under their standard it becomes the hinge of the entire first half, framed as something they had to surface without my cooperation. I had handed it to them five weeks earlier. And in the interview I said that my 25 to 50 milligauss readings were taken at knee level, and that these fields attenuate quickly, so by the time it reaches your head it is not that high anymore. That did not air either. The qualification arrives later, from Karipidis, as a correction. How you would actually study the injuries 12. They measured the wrong thing. The episode spends its final act on whether the 49ers are the most injured team in the NFL, finds no clean ranking, and lands on “injuries are random”. That is the wrong test. You would define the exposure — measured field levels at the facility — and the outcome narrowly: soft-tissue injuries, not a single MSK injury count that a broken finger and a ruptured Achilles both land in. Then you would compare the 49ers to themselves before and after the exposure changed, and compare that change against every other team over the same window. That controls for league-wide shifts in rules, turf and training load. It is a difference-in-differences design, and it is standard. I sent them that argument on July 28th, in writing, along with the fact that in eleven of the past twelve seasons the 49ers had finished top ten in Adjusted Games Lost. And by the episode’s own reporting, the 49ers are second in games lost to injury over the past decade, with FTN’s Aaron Schatz confirming that once you adjust for starters they come out second worst in the league — after having been one of the healthiest teams for years before that. A finding like that is where an investigation starts, not where it stops. 13. I did a lot of substation research for the episode that was never aired. I had reported that the substation next to the facility was expanded in 2014. That was wrong, and Rose Rimler and I sorted it out together. They gave me credit on air, which I appreciated, but framed it as a concession on my part to something they had found. In fact I had been investigating it myself, was uncertain before they asked, but was waiting for clarification from Silicon Valley Power. The uncertainty centered around a substation named “Esparanca” that was proposed right behind the facilities as part of the stadium construction, but now appears to never have been built. I spent days in Silicon Valley Power’s records, and did eventually reach Silicon Valley Power for confirmation and indentified the mistake myself. I also gave them highly detailed documents on what we do know about those facilities: new equipment installed between 2010 and 2014, and load growth across the system with an inflection around 2013–2014, with the Northern Receiving Station carrying the highest capacity in the system and sitting closest to the data center corridor. None of that is in the episode. I have a separate piece about it coming out soon. *I cut 2 seconds from the raw audio to remove personal information that had no connection to anything in the episode. Appendix A: the passage the clip was taken from This is the sequence from my first interview, in full. The episode uses one fragment of it. It’s tricky because my understanding is that there’s something like a 15-year half-life on collagen remodeling issues. They’re going to get a new crop of players. What I really need, though, is for the injuries to be broken down so we can see the soft tissue injuries. Right now, they’re categorized as MSK injuries, but let’s say we can actually identify them more specifically. Is that right? He was able to do that? Oh, cool. I wasn’t able to find that information. Interesting — I didn’t know that data existed. I tried so hard to get it, and I didn’t know it was available. Maybe you could connect me with that person. That would be amazing. I’m not wedded to it being an EMF, honestly. I’m not. I would say that, to a certain extent, I’ve staked my reputation on the fact that it needs more study. It’s important to look into it, and I am not certain of anything. I’m not a scientist. To me, I find the mechanisms compelling. I will go back to the fact that I got into this not because of the 49ers, but because of clients I was working with who suffer from EDS, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a tendon hypermobility issue. This condition is documented to be partially caused by oxidative stress. I’ve worked with them to mitigate their EMF exposure and have seen people improve. I think it’s a bigger story. In a way, the 49ers represent an occupational cluster with specific exposure risks. If someone would conduct a study on this, I believe we could learn a lot. Perhaps we would discover that it’s like, okay, maybe it’s 10% of the problem. I don’t know the exact number, but I think either way, conducting the study would provide valuable insights. To directly answer your question, it’s challenging for me because it’s part of a bigger story. If the 49ers move and stop having injuries, I might conclude that it was related to the substation. However, if they move and still experience injuries, I would want to analyze the nature of those injuries. Are they primarily soft tissue injuries? I don’t think it’s necessarily a case closed, but the story might lose traction at that point regardless. Three things are worth noting. The aired fragment stops immediately before the sentence in which I say I am not a scientist — the cut described in item 10. It also stops four paragraphs before the words “to directly answer your question.” What the episode plays is the throat-clearing. The actual answer, about what would change my mind, never airs. And two paragraphs in, I say the EMF might turn out to be ten percent of the problem. That is the ranking the episode says I never gave. Appendix B: the full email, July 6th, 1:39 PM Hi Rose, You asked me to send you some studies a couple of weeks ago. I apologize for the delay. I have been incredibly busy. I also wanted to give you a chance to dig in yourself, and get your own perspective before I influenced you too much with mine. That said, I do want to make sure that the actual argument is abundantly clear, so here it is! One note before I begin, there are really two separate questions here: Does the substation cause the soft-tissue injuries? That was my specific claim, and what the podcast is about. Is the theory biologically sound? Can 50/60 Hz fields at these levels do anything biological below the safety limits? Question two is why people have been calling me a conspiracy theorist. The regulatory and advisory bodies (ICNIRP, etc) maintain that anything below their exposure limits is biologically inert, and that position is broadly accepted within the mainstream, but the actual science paints a different picture. To defend my theory I’ve had to defend a much larger claim: that the advisory bodies have the biology wrong. I can’t honestly answer question 1 without first addressing that. Here’s is a simplified outline of my theory, with links to studies: 1. Advisory body thresholds for biological effects The ELF magnetic-field limits (ICNIRP’s ~2,000 mG public / 10,000 mG occupational) exist to prevent acute effects from exposure. If a magnetic field is strong enough, it makes nerves fire and muscles contract. Muscles twitch. You can see faint flashes of light in your vision. People can even feel tingling or even a shock. That happens due to Faraday’s law, which states that a time-varying magnetic field induces an electric field inside the body via the creation of Eddy currents.The standards assume that those currents do nothing below the twitch threshold. They do not consider chronic effects at all. My argument is that they are biologically active and do have chronic effects. 2. There are multipe ELF-EMF mechanisms for inducing oxidative stress. This is basic biophysics. Below are the two primary mechanisms. Simplest first. Dr. Paul Héroux of McGill has the most intuitive explanation, which rests on Maxwell’s principle of superposition: because Maxwell’s equations are linear, two sets of electromagnetic waves sharing the same space simply add together. In the interview I pictured a pebble dropped into a pond, sending out clean ripples. Then a boat motors past at distance, sending larger waves, and where they meet the ripples, the two add together and the original pattern gets distorted. In our cells, the mitochondria run on continuous currents of electrons and protons that carry their own faint electromagnetic fields. An external field from a substation, by the principle of superposition, adds to those internal currents and shifts the pattern. The electron transport chain in the mitochondria leaks a fraction of its electrons by design as reactive oxygen species (ROS), which act as signalling molecules in a healthy cell. Distorting that field increases that electron leakage, creating oxidative stress. A tiny electromagnetic interference results in a large downstream effect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844025006474 The more complex pathway is Dimitris Panagopoulos’s Ion Forced-Oscillation / Voltage-Gated Ion Channel (IFO-VGIC) mechanism. Weak, polarized, low-frequency fields force the ions (calcium, potassium, sodium) next to an ion channel’s voltage sensor to oscillate; because that force scales with the inverse cube of the distance involved, fields far below the stimulation threshold can still force the channel open, disrupting the cell’s ion balance and driving ROS overproduction (Nitric oxide and superoxide interact and produce peroxynitrite, a highly unstable cytotoxin that breaks down into free radicals). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366088934 https://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/59/5/92 https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/18/10041 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1585441/full https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3772193/ 3. Evidence of oxidative stress, in vivo, in humans from ELF-EMF There are many studies, and the strongest are occupational, which applies to the 49ers situation. 115 power-plant workers vs. 145 office controls. Serum malondialdehyde (MDA, the standard lipid-peroxidation marker), superoxide dismutase, and catalase were all significantly higher in the exposed group, and the markers rose with increasing field exposure. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3233/WOR-203244 A follow-up where they reversed the oxidative stress in power plant workers. A double-blind randomized controlled trial: 91 power-plant workers given vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or placebo for 90 days. The antioxidant groups showed reduced lipid peroxidation and raised antioxidant capacity versus controls. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32191586/ A spot-welder study: 46 welders occupationally exposed at 50 Hz, showed significantly altered red-blood-cell antioxidant enzyme activity and concluded ELF-MF “might act as an oxidative stressor… even at the recommended levels of exposure.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18504600/ A substation-specific study found oxidative stress and DNA damage https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24460415/ 4. Oxidative stress degrades collagen This half isn’t controversial at all. Oxidative stress activates the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) that break collagen down and suppresses its synthesis. Here are three example studies: Siwik et al. 2001: Oxidative stress raises MMPs and lowers collagen synthesis in cardiac fibroblasts. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11121376/ Fisher et al. 2009: Collagen fragmentation drives oxidative stress and elevates MMP-1 in aged human skin. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2631323/ Varani et al. 2006: Decreased collagen production in oxidatively aged skin. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16723701/ 5. What about the study showing improved collagen synthesis I’m glad you asked this question, and I’m bummed we didn’t get to it in the interview because it is a great question, and very important to understand. Superficially it may appear to be a refutation of my theory, but I would argue that it actually supports the underlying argument. That study used a short, high-intensity pulsed dose: therapeutic-PEMF, the same type of field used clinically to stimulate bone and tissue healing. The reason this works is because it triggers the very same biological pathways that can lead to oxidative stress. The exposure still stimulates ROS production, but done at a controlled dosage, for a limited duration it has a different effect. The cell reads the ROS as a warning signal and it upregulates its antioxidant defenses, and mounts a repair/proliferation response. The therapy is then stopped before the cell gets overwhelmed. That is essentially a hormetic response: a small dose of a stressor producing a beneficial adaptation. Two things follow: At the very least, this means the field is biologically active, which by itself undercuts the regulatory claim that these fields are inert below their thresholds. There is a wealth of literature on PEMF (pulsed EMF) bone regeneration and calcium channel signalling (which is the second mechanims in section one). Here is one. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep13856 At best, it leads us straight to my actual concern, which is that under chronic, chaotic and unregulated exposure, the cell’s antioxidant capacity gets overwhelmed, resulting in oxidative stress. There are plentiful examples of things that are beneficial at controlled doses, but harmful at uncontrolled doses. Excecise is one obvious, uncontroversial example. Botox is perhaps a more interesting example. 6. What about a study that shows EMF causing collagen degradation in humans? As far as I am aware there is not a single study showing EMF-driven oxidative stress degrading collagen in a human, in vivo, or in human tendon in a lab. There are studies involving isolated fibroblasts though, which secrete collagen. The most relevant one showed that human fetal scleral fibroblasts exposed to 50 Hz ELF-EMF showed a significant decrease in collagen synthesis and that MMP-2 expression was upregulated, which is the exact mechanism I described in section 2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3626379/ That’s it! Thanks again for the interview. Best, Peter Anthony Cowan Environmental Health · Wellness Tech · Researcher & Journalist Publisher & Editor, Living Energy Bio: petercowan.comSocial: X · Instagram · TikTokApp: sunlightis.lifePhone: [redacted]
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16th Asian Chief Dental Officers Meeting: Advancing universal health coverage for oral health in the WHO Western Pacific and South-East Asia Regions
Session 3 of the 100-Day Sprint BackgroundOral diseases remain among the most prevalent noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) across Asia, affecting people throughout the life course and placing a significant burden on individuals, families and health systems. Countries across the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific Region and South-East Asia Region have committed to strengthening oral health through regional action plans and by advancing universal health coverage (UHC). The 16th Asian Chief Dental Officers Meeting (ACDOM) serves as a regional platform for Chief Dental Officers in Asia to exchange experiences, strengthen collaboration and accelerate implementation of oral health commitments. For the first time, the meeting is being jointly organized by the WHO Regional Offices for South-East Asia and for the Western Pacific and the ACDOM Secretariat. This year's meeting introduces a 100-Day Sprint, bringing together oral health and UHC leads and technical experts to support countries in strengthening integration of oral health within national UHC benefit packages. Through the Sprint, participating countries will develop, refine, cost and operationalize country-specific essential oral health-care benefit packages using WHO tools, including the Service Package Delivery and Implementation (SPDI) Platform. The in-person 16th Asian Chief Dental Officers Meeting represents Session 3 and the midpoint of the 100-Day Sprint, providing an opportunity for countries to review progress, exchange experiences, identify challenges and refine their approaches before continuing with the remaining Sprint sessions. 100-Day SprintSession Date Format Title Session 1 (Day 0) 19 Aug Virtual Setting the Scene and Introducing Key Principles and Frameworks Session 2 16 SepVirtual Introduction to the SPDI Platform and Initial Mapping Exercise Session 3 27-29 Sep In-person, 16th Asian Chief Dental Officer Meeting, Malaysia Review and Refinement of Oral Health Service Packages Session 4 14 Oct Virtual Finalizing National Essential Oral Health Services Packages and Costing Exercise Session 5 (Day 100) 26 Nov Virtual Country Presentations and Closing of the 100-Day Sprint ObjectivesLeverage the 100-Day Sprint to define priority implementation actions for oral health in countries; Strengthen national capacity to design, cost and operationalize country-specific essential oral health care packages using SPDI platform; andExplore cross-country collaboration to expand access to essential oral health supplies and products, including harmonized specifications and pricing, and improve supply chains for essential dental preparations and medicines.Expected outcomesA draft country-specific essential oral health care benefit package developed using the SPDI platform and aligned with WHO’s Essential Oral Health Care packageA strengthened regional network in Asia of oral health and UHC leaders, fostering collaboration among South-East Asia and Western Pacific countries, WHO offices and WHO Collaborating Centres to support sustained implementation beyond the meetingParticipantsChief Dental Officers and national oral health programme leads;National focal points responsible for universal health coverage, health financing and health systems;Representatives from WHO country offices, regional offices and headquarters;WHO Collaborating Centres; andAcademic institutions and technical partners.