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Supreme Court tosses $1B copyright verdict in record companies' battle over illegal internet downloads

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Wednesday that internet providers are not liable for copyright infringement by their users, delivering an opinion in Cox v. Sony and tossing a $1 billion verdict.

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Mar 25 • 10:28 AM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com
Glyphosate: A story of science, risk, and nuance

In the summer of 2014, a California groundskeeper named Dewayne Johnson started noticing patches of raw, weeping skin spreading across his body. He had spent years applying Roundup, Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide, for a school district, sometimes drenched in it when equipment malfunctioned. By 2014, he had a diagnosis: non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In 2018, a jury awarded him $289 million in damages, later reduced on appeal. Tens of thousands of lawsuits followed. The story hasn’t quieted down. It’s all over the internet, swinging between “this will kill you, buy organic” and “relax, you’re fear-mongering.” Some of that recent chatter stems from an Executive Order protecting glyphosate and its production, which set off intense infighting within the MAHA movement. Some of it reflects a deeper truth: Americans genuinely care about harmful chemicals in their environment (see poll below). And the conversation isn’t going anywhere, with a Supreme Court case involving Monsanto set for this April. Glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. But does glyphosate cause cancer? And how much exposure is actually risky? With so much mistrust in institutions and corporations (and some genuine conflicts of interest), making sense of the actual scientific evidence is genuinely hard. Here is a translation of what the scientific evidence actually says. Does glyphosate cause harm? Glyphosate is an herbicide that kills most plants it contacts rather than targeting specific species. It works by blocking an enzyme pathway (EPSPS) that plants and many microorganisms need to produce essential amino acids. Without those amino acids, the plant can’t grow and dies. Glyphosate was first developed by Monsanto in the 1970s and became ubiquitous after the company introduced “Roundup Ready” crops in the 1990s. In 2024, Bayer removed glyphosate from residential Roundup-branded products due to litigation pressure. But today it is still the most widely used herbicide in the world. Farmers also discovered they could spray it directly on crops like oats, lentils, beans, and peas just before harvest to dry them out faster and make harvesting easier. Because of its widespread use, it’s obviously really important to understand if it’s harmful to humans. The key principle: The dose makes the poison The most important concept in toxicology is that “the dose makes the poison.” Sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus articulated what remains the foundational principle of toxicology: sola dosis facit venenum. Water will kill you if you drink enough of it. Aspirin saves lives at 81 milligrams and causes internal bleeding at higher chronic doses. So, at what dose is glyphosate poisonous? The LD50 in rats (the dose that kills half the test animals) is around 5,600 mg/kg body weight. Table salt is roughly 3,000 mg/kg. By that classic measure, glyphosate is less acutely toxic than salt. But some people are exposed to a lot of glyphosate through their work. And among the general public, there are many questions about low-dose, cumulative exposure from multiple sources over long periods. Does glyphosate cause health problems? Cancer Correlation maps are striking, with one analysis finding that 60% of counties that spray the most glyphosate have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma rates above the national average. But correlation alone doesn’t establish cause, which is why animal and human studies matter. In animals: Rat studies are typically what most fear is rooted in, but most people don’t know the study details on the dosage given to rats. A pooled analysis of the 13 most rigorous rat studies found evidence that very high doses, around 55,000 times greater than typical food residue exposure, can cause certain cancers. In humans: One of the strongest studies followed 55,000 herbicide users over 20 years and found no overall increased cancer risk. There was one signal: among those with the highest use, rates of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) appeared elevated. A broader meta-analysis of 18 human studies also found no overall cancer risk, though a separate meta-analysis focused specifically on non-Hodgkin lymphoma found that people with high cumulative glyphosate exposure faced a 41% higher relative risk compared to those with low or no exposure. These human studies are observational studies (randomized controlled trials would be unethical), and meta-analyses are only as reliable as the studies they pool. But the story seems consistent: at very high exposure levels, there may be some cancer risk. But that’s about as far as the science currently takes us. Emerging research: gut and reproductive health Gut: Because glyphosate targets a pathway that exists in some gut bacteria, scientists have questioned whether it could affect the microbiome. In mice, a 2023 University of Iowa study found that glyphosate altered gut bacterial composition and raised markers of intestinal inflammation. A 2024 systematic review found similar patterns: disrupted gut bacteria and problems with the mucus layer that protects the intestinal wall in mice. Whether this translates to humans is an open question. The human gut is highly variable and resistant, and we don't yet have strong studies confirming the same effects in people. Reproductive health: Animal studies have found that glyphosate-based herbicides can interfere with reproductive hormones, including disrupting egg cell development in mice and reducing the number of eggs available in sheep’s ovaries. However, the doses used in these experiments were high, so it’s not yet clear whether the same effects would occur in humans. On the human side, a 2021 pilot study led by Mount Sinai researchers tested urine samples from pregnant women across the U.S. and found glyphosate in 95% of them. The study also found a possible connection between higher glyphosate exposure during pregnancy and a subtle physical difference measured in female newborns. That said, some connections weren’t statistically reliable and this was a small study. The researchers themselves said more and larger studies are needed before drawing firm conclusions. What do regulators say about glyphosate safety? In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans" (Group 2A). The classification is worth taking seriously. But, there’s an important distinction: IARC classifies hazard, meaning the potential to cause harm under some conditions. It does not assess risk, which accounts for actual exposure levels and the real-world probability of harm. The U.S. EPA, the European Food Safety Authority, Health Canada, and regulatory agencies in Australia and Japan have all concluded that glyphosate is “unlikely to be carcinogenic to humans” at realistic exposure levels. They’re asking a different question: given how much of this people actually encounter, what is the probability of harm? Your actual exposure is what determines your actual risk. What does glyphosate mean for your daily life? At the grocery store: Food residues are small. The EPA’s acceptable daily intake is 1.75 mg/kg of body weight per day. To hit that threshold from oatmeal alone, a 150-pound adult would need to eat roughly 50 pounds of oats every day. But this calculation addresses only one pathway (food), and we don’t yet have robust tools to measure people’s actual total exposure. If reducing exposure matters to you, organic certification prohibits synthetic herbicides, and organic oat products generally test at lower or undetectable levels. Either way, a diet rich in whole grains, conventional or organic, is far better for your health than one that omits them out of fear of residues. On the farm: Occupational exposure is orders of magnitude higher than consumer exposure. Farmers and farm workers who mix, load, and apply glyphosate-based herbicides, especially without protective equipment, face meaningfully different risk profiles. Proper PPE isn’t optional. Integrated weed management strategies that rotate chemical modes of action are also worth taking seriously, both for health and for long-term effectiveness. If you live near a farm: Spray drift is real. Concentrations near field edges can spike during and after application, particularly on windy days. This is an area where I think public health could really step up and empower rural communities with buffer zones, rather than placing the onus on individuals. But for now, knowing your local agricultural calendar and keeping windows closed during application are the first steps. Bottom line Dewayne Johnson was exposed to glyphosate at levels most people will never encounter, and a jury decided he deserved compensation. That outcome is not evidence that the oatmeal in your pantry is dangerous. But it is a reminder that the dose, the context, and the person doing the exposing all matter enormously. Glyphosate is a chemical tool with benefits, trade-offs, and genuine open scientific questions. Learning to hold that complexity without collapsing into panic or dismissal is, honestly, one of the most useful and hardest things to do in navigating modern health science. Love, YLE Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. Hannah Totte, MPH, is an epidemiologist and YLE Community Manager. YLE reaches more than 425,000 people in over 132 countries with one goal: “Translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below: Subscribe

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Mar 25 • 10:25 AM EDT • Science • yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com
This Week in Politics: Developments in the U.S. and Iran War

The U.S. war with Iran rages on and continues to draw mounting public opposition and to induce harsh economic impacts. The conflict has prompted substantial blowback for the Trump administration. A recent poll from Quinnipiac University found that a majority (53%) of U.S. voters disapproved of U.S. military action against Iran, with a larger percentage...

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Mar 25 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • villanovan.com
‘Project Hail Mary’ Is Out-of-this-world Entertainment

Back in 2017, filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were hired and, several months into filming, fired from the Han Solo prequel movie, “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”

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Mar 25 • 5:29 AM EDT • Entertainment • mountaintimes.info
Hubert Davis out as UNC coach after five years, ushering in historic break from Carolina family tradition

A stunning NCAA Tournament collapse, eroding donor support and mounting internal pressure culminated in North Carolina cutting ties, a move that breaks the program's 70-year coaching lineage

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Mar 24 • 9:00 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
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Scientists just discovered bees and hummingbirds are drinking alcohol

Flower nectar often contains small amounts of alcohol, meaning pollinators like hummingbirds are drinking it all day long. Despite consuming human-equivalent amounts, they show no signs of intoxication—suggesting a surprising evolutionary tolerance.

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Mar 24 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Board Approves Horvath Motion to Evaluate Warner Bros Acquisition and Protect LA Entertainment Jobs - Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath

Today, the Board approved a motion to analyze the potential economic impacts of the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. merger and advance efforts to protect the region’s entertainment workforce.

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Mar 24 • 3:45 PM EDT • Entertainment • lindseyhorvath.lacounty.gov
Blaise Ingoglia targets Citrus County for 'wasteful' spending

'That’s an amazing amount of government growth in six years.'

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Mar 24 • 2:34 PM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
Dimon warns on AI job losses, calls for government-business incentives

The potential AI-related disruption of the job market is a critical issue in Washington, with lawmakers trying to curb the amount of job displacement.

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Mar 24 • 2:23 PM EDT • Business • cnbc.com
Marathon has sold 1.2M copies across Steam, PS5, and Xbox

Alinea Analytics estimates show that Marathon has generated gross revenues of $55M via 1.2M copies sold on Steam, PS5, and Xbox: Looking at the split between Steam, PS5, and Xbox, Steam is clearly the main platform for Marathon, accounting for a little under 70% of the audience (800K copies sold). Meanwhile, PS5 takes about 19% (217K) and Xbox (including console, PC, and cloud) accounts for a bit over 11% or 133K. Marathon is technically a first-party Sony title, so seeing the home console struggle to break 20% of the volume is a notable data point for the ongoing platform-agnostic debate. PlayStation Studios online games will almost certainly continue being multiplatform (despite Sony reportedly pulling back on PC releases). Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe As for Marathon, the consensus among hardcore players who pushed through the awkward onboarding phase – myself included – is that it’s fantastic. The gunplay, aesthetic, and presentation are among the best in the shooter genre. A great game doesn’t always equal an immediate hit, though, as shown by our estimates. Things are looking lukewarm right now. But this might be one of those marathon-not-a-sprint situations. Had to, didn’t I? Why wasn’t Marathon a hit on the same level as Arc Raiders? One topic that came up in a lot of conversations at GDC this year was why Marathon hasn’t hit the same stratosphere as Arc Raiders. On paper, they’re both extraction shooters, and Marathon has the Bungie pedigree – the house that built the gold standard for gunplay in Halo and Destiny. Marathon’s neon-futuristic aesthetic also distinguishes itself from the gritty realism of Tarkov or the post-apocalyptic hope of ARC Raiders. But vibes can only get you so far for first impressions if the onboarding feels like a brick wall. Marathon is a sweaty PvP-focused experience with a first-time user experience and UI that I can only describe as dreadful. Players are dropped into a complex ecosystem where the UI, though visually striking, is functionally uninformative, forcing users to manually hover over nondescript, identical icons just to identify basic gear or weapon mods. This lack of clarity is compounded by punishing mechanics like a severe heat gauge for movement and a scarcity of vital resources, all without a clear tutorial or a low-stakes mode to learn the ropes. Most people – even top streamers and veteran shooter players – have no idea what’s going on in Marathon at first. Arc is on the complete other end of the spectrum. As we covered here and here, Arc Raiders offers a more collaborative, approachable loop where players often work together toward shared goals. And the objectives are instantly clear. To many players, this contrast only emphasised Marathon’s issues, especially during the testing period. Players understand the Arc Raiders loop within 30 minutes, while Marathon acts as a massive filter, chewing up newcomers and spitting them out before they can experience the depth of Bungie’s signature gunplay. What I’m getting at here is that the poor first-time user experience of Marathon’s Server Slam likely stifled launch sales, while the opposite was true for Arc. Let’s look at the pre-launch copies sold for each game during their respective Server Slams (launch-aligned) : Looking at the trajectory: Arc Raiders saw a massive 80% jump in copies sold during its three-day Server Slam (day -13 to -11). Players jumped in, realised the water was fine, and immediately opened their wallets. Marathon, meanwhile, saw a 49% increase in the four days following its Slam (Day -7 to -3). At the time of each game’s respective launch, Arc Raiders had nearly double the Steam footprint of Marathon – and word of mouth only continued to grow. Bungie could have had more time to fix the onboarding process had the beta happened earlier. But Marathon launched three days after the beta finished. These factors limited the launch sales quite a bit, I reckon. Marathon has found a niche audience, though Despite the friction-heavy start, the data suggests that those who survived Marathon’s onboarding are loving life. We’ve been tracking cross-platform DAUs, and while there’s the expected post-launch leakage, many players are sticking with it. After peaking at 478K total DAUs on its first Saturday, Marathon has settled into a respectable rhythm, holding 345K DAUs as of yesterday and averaging 380K DAUs across the weekend. Steam continues to do the heavy lifting here, consistently accounting for the lion’s share of the daily players. Players have been putting in the hours, too: On Steam, Marathon’s average playtime has climbed to 27.8 hours, significantly outpacing the console averages on PS5 (16.5h) and Xbox (17.3h). Even more telling than the averages: 22% of the Steam audience has surged past the 50-hour mark, and nearly 7% have already logged over 100 hours. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe This data suggests that once the Bungie magic clicks, it hooks players deeper than the average extraction shooter. There’s also started to be a shift in the game’s discourse. Marathon launched as one of those games that’s cool to hate. But as Marathon’s 100-hour club grows, we’re seeing conversations around its mechanical merit outweigh the negativity. Several high-profile creators, who were initially vocal critics, have spent the last week coming around on the mechanical depth of the endgame. It’s a subtle but positive signal; the hate train is losing steam, and a new narrative about the game is emerging. Bungie faithfuls unite Another interesting metric in Marathon’s first few weeks is who, exactly, is playing. Bungie leans heavily on its prestige as the “makers of Halo and Destiny,” in its marketing, and that message has clearly hit the mark. On Steam, the gravity (hammer) of Bungie’s previous work is unavoidable. A staggering 78.2% of Marathon players also played Destiny 2. The trend carries across other platforms, with 74.2% of PS5 players and 82.7% of Xbox players also having played Destiny 2. The Halo legacy lives on, it seems. More on that in a bit. While Destiny 2 went free to play, these numbers still represent a high-intent migration of a fanbase that trusts Bungie’s specific brand of kinetic gunplay and cryptic world-building. The Xbox data adds another layer of legacy. About 85.7% of Marathon players on Xbox have played Halo Infinite, while over half of the Steam audience has spent time in Halo Infinite and 36.1% in the Master Chief Collection (a paid collection of the old Bungie-made legacy games). Interestingly, we see a 55.9% overlap with ARC Raiders on Steam. Overlap is even higher there on PlayStation (60.5%) and Xbox (66.5%). And there’s also significant crossover with Helldivers 2 on all platforms, too. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe Bungie has found some of its fans with Marathon, and the challenge now is keeping this engaged in a high-stakes PvP environment when they’ve spent the last decade primarily enjoying the power fantasies of PvE. On that note… Go the full 26 miles? Or cut and run? Time for some could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. These things would have improved Marathon’s performance at launch: A more robust onboarding process, perhaps in the form of a short single-player/PvE campaign. We know Bungie fans love this stuff. A traditional arena-based mode akin to Destiny’s Crucible could have been a bridge for the cautious players who’d have been otherwise deterred by the Server Slam. It’s also a great palate cleanser after getting merked. Introducing a dedicated PvE environment would have similarly diversified the conversation and lowered the barrier for the Bungie faithful who found the pure PvP extraction loop too abrasive. PvE is safer than PvP these days. There’s an argument that a thin PvE mode would have just felt like a budget Destiny, potentially hurting the brand more. But given how dire the FTUE is, I think it would have been a net positive. Any kind of tutorialised loop that demystifies the stakes, really. While there is merit in a studio sticking firmly to a singular creative vision, and going all in on the hardcore extraction loop. Less forgiving is the technical reality is that the user interface and first-time user experience (FTUE) were not at a commercial standard for launch. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe In a landscape where player time is oversaturated and the most contested currency, a flawed FTUE is a critical failure point. But it’s not all doom and gloom, as Marathon has an incredible, unique gameplay loop, suggesting that financial success is still attainable if Bungie can pivot effectively. Bungie and PlayStation now face a difficult strategic crossroads, though – one within a challenging games market. They could: Double down on Marathon with a long-term Rainbow Six Siege- or No Man’s Sky-style recovery plan, which is something I heard Last Stand Media’s Chris Maldonado mention last week. While this could be a sunk-cost fallacy in action, it could eventually yield the audience the game’s mechanical depth deserves. Shift focus toward the inevitable Destiny 3 or another project, mitigating the escalating opportunity cost and cutting their losses, so to speak. Doing both is an expensive proposition, given the high overhead and burn rate of operating out of Bellevue, Washington. With Sony recently demonstrating a lower threshold for underperforming studios and projects, the margin for error has vanished. Whatever happens, the next six months will determine whether Marathon becomes a cornerstone of Sony’s live-service portfolio or a cautionary tale of vision exceeding accessibility. I’m hoping it’s the former, because Marathon rocks. As always, hit subscribe to get updates on Marathon and other relevant games. Subscribe Want to get your hands on our data for yourself – for free? We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply to this email, and we’ll set you up. The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

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Mar 24 • 2:06 PM EDT • Technology • alineaanalytics.substack.com
The OnePlus 15T is officially here with a crazy amount of power squeezed into a compact body

By "here", of course, we mean China, and by "crazy amount of power", we mean a Snapdragon Elite Gen 5 SoC and 7,500mAh battery.

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Mar 24 • 12:32 PM EDT • Technology • phonearena.com
Mouse study shows repeated cloning causes grave genetic mutations

1,206 cloned laboratory mice were generated by the scientists from a single female donor mouse from 2005 to 2025 in research conducted in Japan.

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Mar 24 • 12:22 PM EDT • Science • detroitnews.com
Age Comes for Us All—Even Politicians

Don’t look now, but the period from now through the 2028 presidential election will be a historic inflection point in our politics. We’ll see enormous generational change take place amid enormous uncertainty and volatility.

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Mar 24 • 11:15 AM EDT • Politics • cookpolitical.com
Public health alert issued for ground beef product; possible foreign material contamination

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY)– The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a public health alert for a ground beef product. Officials say the R…

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Mar 24 • 10:20 AM EDT • Health • wavy.com
Communicating Across Disciplines in Climate Change Litigation

Climate change litigation must climb many mountains to advance justice and reshape human behaviors for the well-being of people and our planet. On this long, arduous journey, litigants, lawyers, scientific witnesses, and judges face challenges of communicating across disciplines. UCS’s new resourc

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Mar 24 • 9:15 AM EDT • Science • blog.ucs.org
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Louisiana mourns loss of health care pioneer Ruth Kennedy

Ruth Kennedy, former Medicaid Director for the Louisiana Department of Health, passed away on March 20 after dedicating over 40 years to expanding health care access in the state.

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Mar 24 • 8:20 AM EDT • Health • yahoo.com
Steven Corcelli named William K. Warren Foundation Dean of the College of Science

Steven A. Corcelli, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame, has been appointed the William K. Warren Foundation Dean of the College of Science by University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., effective April 1. Corcelli, who has served as interim science dean since July, was selected through a comprehensive national search launched after his predecessor, Santiago Schnell, was appointed as Dartmouth’s provost.

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Mar 24 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • news.nd.edu
How Bans on Corporate Political Donations Influence Campaign Platforms

Julia Cagé, Caroline Le Pennec, and Elisa Mougin discuss their recent research on France’s 1995 ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns. The ban pushed candidates to de-emphasize local politics in favor of national issues and, in many cases, adopt more extreme rhetoric.

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Mar 24 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • promarket.org
Ex-Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp rubbishes Real Madrid links

Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has dismissed speculation linking him with the Real Madrid head coach job this summer.The German tactician branded the rumours nonsense as publications continue t...

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Mar 24 • 2:20 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Neal Stephenson, who coined the term ‘metaverse’, says head-mounted VR hardware will never happen

: ‘People don’t like wearing things on their faces and don’t trust those who do’

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Mar 23 • 11:45 PM EDT • Technology • theregister.com
Businesses in the mountains trading ski rentals for bike rentals during warm spring
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Mar 23 • 11:01 PM EDT • Business • cbsnews.com
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Firefighters control fire near excavating business off Stan Miller Drive near Breckenridge

7:15 p.m.: Crews from Red, White & Blue Fire Protection District and the Breckenridge Police Department are on scene at a fire off of Stan Miller Drive near Breckenridge. Black smoke turned white as crews...

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Mar 23 • 9:37 PM EDT • Business • summitdaily.com
Review: Inside the night Jo Koy and Fluffy made comedy history at SoFi Stadium

The veteran comedians created an intimate experience despite the enormous venue, drawing the crowd together through storytelling and humor from start to finish.

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Mar 23 • 3:06 PM EDT • Entertainment • latimes.com
Thousands in taxpayer funds spent on horse, hair and makeup expenses for Kristi Noem’s Mount Rushmore ad

Tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars were spent on expenses for hair and makeup artists and a horse for the advertisement showcasing outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in front of Mount Rushmore, according to invoices seen by CNN.

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Mar 23 • 12:51 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Voice of America Journalists Sue, Saying Trump Officials Interfered in Coverage

The journalists said in the complaint that the administration was trying to force them to be a “mouthpiece” and that one official demanded “loyalty” if reporters wanted to “keep their jobs.”

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Mar 23 • 12:15 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Revolutionary Submarine Mysteriously Disappears Without a Trace – Scientists Are Now Preparing for a Bold Return

A pioneering robotic submarine that explored beneath Antarctica’s glaciers has been lost, but its discoveries are reshaping our understanding of ice melt as a more advanced successor is prepared to continue the mission.

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Mar 23 • 10:04 AM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com
Cycling, crystals and cutting-edge science: the secrets of Hodgkinson and Hunter Bell’s success

The training duo who oversaw famous medal success in Torun believe the best is yet to come for their athletes

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Mar 23 • 8:59 AM EDT • Science • theguardian.com
Today's hefty Crimson Desert patch includes "beginning of improvements" to keyboard and mouse controls, plus much more

Pearl Abyss has detailed a rather chunky patch for Crimson Desert, after its launch last week was marred by multiple issues and AI controversies.

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Mar 23 • 5:52 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Business closed after new Ohio law banning intoxicating hemp products went into effect

Senate Bill 56 grants law enforcement the authority to remove intoxicating THC products from unlicensed retail locations,

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Mar 22 • 5:56 PM EDT • Business • whio.com
Minnesota Wild, NHL mourn hockey writer Jessi Pierce after death in house fire

Pierce and her three children were killed in a house fire outside of Minneapolis early Saturday morning.

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Mar 22 • 3:56 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Your Thymus and Your Healthspan

Our thymus gland plays a central role in the development or our immune system, specifically for supporting T cell development (how these cells got their name, maturation and differentiation in the thymus) and discriminating between self and foreign, non-self antigen proteins with production of dendritic cells. As we age, our thymus gland shrinks—the process known as involution—with progressive change from spongy to fatty tissue, with loss of functionality. But this process, with respect to timeline and extent, markedly varies from one person to the next. And to make things even more complicated, our thymus gland anatomy and precise location in the chest also is highly variable. So the famous Frank Netter diagrams from the 1960s (such as at left below) don’t capture the remarkable heterogeneity that a random set of 12 chest CT scans (below at right). What I consider as 2 landmark papers in Nature this week (here and here) used AI to quantify health of the thymus in 2 large cohorts, and then correlate the metric to a broad array of health outcomes. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’m going to cover three questions: (1) How was thymus health determined by AI?; (2) How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? and (3) Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? Subscribe 1. How was thymus health determined by AI? This was accomplished by extensive work developing and validating an AI pipeline for 2 stages, the first for localization and segmentation of the thymus bed, and the second to quantify a digital marker, termed the thymic health score. There’s a lot to this algorithmic development, so I won’t go into all the details, but just provide a rudimentary outline of what was done. The 1st stage used supervised learning with 2 radiologists reviewing 2,461 chest CT scans. That work trained a 3D U-Net model to automatically identify the thymic bed’s 3D cropped region using center of mass coordinates, which reached 99.8% accuracy. The 2nd stage used a foundation model that was pre-trained with SwAV (which stands for Swapping Assignment between multiple Views), a self-supervised model, that generated a high-dimensional thymus representation of 4,096 features. That compares to the radiology reductionist and subjective scoring of 0 to 3 where 0 means the thymus is fully degenerated and fatty, and 3 is considered dense, intact glandular soft tissue. Notably, the self-supervised learning (SSL) performance was superior to supervised (AUC ~0.75 vs 0.55, respectively) reflecting the shallowness of the 0-3 classifier vs SSL’s holistic, self-taught AI. The thymic health score ranged from 0 to 100, with the highest number indexed to fully preserved thymic health. The algorithmic work extended to explainability with both Shapely value distribution, meaning the model was holistic not relying on any “magic” pixel, and occlusion sensitivity, demonstrating the model’s performance was not affected by ribs, sternum, lung tissue, but rather focused on the thymic bed directly. Below are a few saliency maps from the occlusion sensitivity that indicate the thymic bed focus, not affected by neighboring structures, using the jet color scale. Now the AI was ready for processing ~25,000 CT scans, each over 30 MB files, from the 2 large participant cohorts to provide a thymic health score, it did so in less than 14 hours, which is less than 2 seconds per scan! Share 2. How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? The two cohorts were the National Lung Screening Trial, NLST (N=25,031) and the Framingham Heart Study, FHS (N=2,581) each with baseline demographics and long term follow up of >12 years for health outcomes. From the NSLT, you can see below that increased age and body-mass index were correlated to reduced thymic health. And, overall, men had reduced thymic health scores compared with women. There are a lot of graphs in the paper for outcomes, for both the NLST and FHS cohorts. To simplify the major outcomes, below is a composite Figure with striking reduction of all-cause mortality and for the different causes of death. The results were consistent between the 2 cohorts. For example, the cardiovascular mortality hazard ratio average was 0.57 in NLST and 0.38 in FHS (weighted to be 0.53 for the aggregate). The reduction of mortality also extended to digestive diseases and pulmonary disease (data not shown below). Lung cancer incidence was reduced by 36% for high vs low thymic health (Figure below, with a panel -incidence and b panel-mortality, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, smoking status). Notably, there was a smoker’s paradox: lower incidence and improved survival for lung cancer in smokers who had a high thymus health score. Smoking was associated with lower thymic scores whereas alcohol was not. Higher thymic health was linked to higher HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower fasting blood glucose, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Inflammation biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, were elevated in the people with lower thymic health scores. In their second paper, the same team looked at the relationship between thymic score and outcomes for 3,476 patients receiving cancer immunotherapy. The non-small cell lung cancer progression-free survival was reduced in patients with low thymic health score. A parallel relationship for survival was seen for other types of cancer including melanoma, breast, and kidney with a 44% lower risk among high thymic scores (Figure). A similar pattern was seen with different immune checkpoint inhibitors. The thymus health score outperformed programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)and tumor mutation burden (TMB) assay of the tumor and was an independent prognostic marker of progression-free survival. In this dataset, a direct connect with thymus score and adaptive immune function was noted with a correlation before cancer treatment for both T-cell diversity and thymus T-cell production (a metric known as T cell receptor excision circles). Thymus Removal Study There is a highly relevant citation about thymus function before moving onto ways to rejuvenate it. In 2023, a very important study of thymus removal during cardiothoracic surgery was published, with 1146 patients undergoing thymus removal vs 1146 matched controls (mean age 55 years). The adverse outcomes for thymus removal were striking, with a 2.9 higher risk of all-cause mortality and doubling of cancer incidence, 1.5 fold increase in cancer mortality, and 1.5-fold increase in autoimmune diseases. The immune function showed marked compromise after thymus removal, as reflected by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Figure below) Share Ground Truths 3. Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? In recent months we’ve learned a lot about the process of thymus involution and the pathways by which this may be modulated. Thymus involution is primarily due to loss to thymus epithelial cells (TECs) and there are 2 subtypes with different functions: the cortical, responsible for positive selection of T cells, and the medullary, for negative selection. When adipose tissue infiltrates the thymus, thymic adipocytes are pro-inflammatory, knocking out T-cell output. Likewise, systemic inflammation, or “inflammaging,” from smoking, obesity, and chronic stress promote thymic adipocytes. Now, from preclinical studies, we know about key pathways that account for these processes. Historically, back in 2014, FOXN1 was recognized as a single master transcription factor essential for TEC function, with studies in mice with forced FOXN1 upregulation leading to thymus regeneration. That laid the foundation for potential regrowth of quiescent thymus cells. It took awhile to find pathways to accomplish this goal and to even refute its role as the master regulator. The Liver-Thymus Axis Feng Zhang and his team recently showed that injection of an mRNA vaccine to the liver encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination, factors known to support thymopoiesis (Figure), successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. However, the effect was transient. The FGF21 Story Two reports in 2025 addressed the thymus gland’s production of FGF21, a growth factor (fibroblast growth factor 21) and its control of thymus involution. This growth factor is also produced by the liver, but it doesn’t have impact on the thymus in aged rodent models. In contrast, The liver’s hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to reverse senescent TEC structural changes. Growth hormone stimulates production of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the liver and the thymus. Two small studies in human participants (TRIIM, for Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) of 6 and 50 people, respectively, treated with combined human growth hormone, metformin and DHEA, suggested the potential of slowing epigenetic aging and improving thymus mass and function. But the combination of drugs, small sample, and lack of controls make conclusions murky. Increased thymus FGF21 led to increased CD8 T cells in old mice and extended healthspan and improved physical performance. Building on the previous FOXN1 data, ablation of β-klotho, the obligatory co-receptor for FOXN1, accelerated thymic aging. The benefit to FGF21 was confirmed in a companion paper using an FGF21 knock-in mouse model showing thymus enlargement and increased TECs throughout the lifespan. (schematic Figure below). The accompanying editorial for these 2 papers speculated: “The proposed link between age-associated thymus involution and organismal aging is intriguing, and suggests we might seek to achieve systemic rejuvenation by counteracting thymic involution.” Other Factors Lessons from the Axolotl (Mexican Salamander) In an elegant set of experiments of the axolotl (Figure), known for its complete thymus regeneration after total surgical removal, mediators were identified. Surprisingly FOXN1 was dispensable. But midkine, a growth factor, appeared to be the driver, the initiator of thymus cell growth, survival, and repair. Other components that contributed were Postn+ (periostin-expressing mesenchymal niches) and Ccl19, a chemokine protein from the bloodstream. RANK and RANKL RANK (receptor activator of nuclear factor κB its ligand (RANKL) have been considered key regulators of medullary TECs. In a study of both aged mice and human thymus cell cultures, their key role was confirmed, with multiple benefits of resorting TEC function, recruitment of progenitor cells, and T cell development. Subscribe Summing Up This body of work strongly supports the health of the thymus gland as a critical regulator of human healthspan, not just a correlate or link. The new landmark studies are reinforced by the regenerative biology experimental models that have shown, via an array of mediators, that healthspan of aged mice is at least in part dependent on thymus gland function and its critical role for maintaining adaptive immunity. It sure seems that we’d be better off having an immune reservoir of naive T cells instead of a profile in older adults of exhausted, low quality, memory T cells, with a senescent phenotype. It is striking that we ignored the importance of the thymus gland for many decades. A wake-up call was the results of the thymectomy matched control study reviewed here, with the opposite of high thymic health score improved health outcomes. The convergence of AI and healthspan here is notable. The exceptional and laborious work for developing and validating (no less explaining) the AI to quantify thymus health set the foundation for probing the connect the major health outcomes in two cohorts with extensive follow-up. We’ve never had a way to meaningfully quantify the thymus gland before, so this represents important leverage of supervised, self-supervised, and transformer models. The study wouldn’t have been possible without AI. And it begs the question as to whether there are ways we can maintain our thymus at a high health score. But it’s not so simple to rejuvenate our thymus. There are multiple risks including the induction of autoimmunity, increasing the risk of cancer, and inducing a pro-inflammatory state. For example, factors that increase TEC proliferation could compromise the medulllary negative selection process and leak out auto-reactive (self-attacking) T cells. Thymic cells could be induced to proliferate, but we know, for example, that growth hormone and IGF-1 are associated with an increase risk of cancer. If thymus rejuvenation doesn’t clear out the accumulated senescent cells in older adults, then inflammation within the gland could block the production of TECs. Keeping these risks in mind, we now have identified many ways to keep our thymus healthy as we age that undoubtedly will be tested in clinical trials going forward. Ultimately, the benefit-to-risk tradeoffs will be defined. In the meantime, we have desperately needed an immunome. As I’ve stressed in multiple prior Ground Truths, we have no test in the clinic to assess a patient’s immune status! It was very encouraging for me to get an email from Hugo Aerts, the senior author of the landmark papers in the days after they were published: “I also wanted to say that your Substack on “Why We Need an Immunome” was inspiring for this work. We found it a very compelling perspective and greatly enjoyed reading it.” Just having an assessment of a person’s immune status via a chest CT scan, with millions of these performed per year, might help in guiding the right immunotherapy for cancer (e.g. more intensive, combinations for those with low thymic health scores) and help define people who are increased risk for age-related diseases of cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative. The main theme of Super Agers is that we now have many layers of data (genetics, proteins, biomarkers, organ clocks that can be integrated via multimodal AI) for us to define a person’s specific risk decades before one of these age-related diseases leads to symptoms, enabling prevention. From the new studies this week, we can add thymus health score as yet another way to understand a person’s risk, a window into their adaptive immune system and healthspan. And perhaps someday we will be able to safely rejuvenate the thymus, or maintain its health through one’s life, and use the thymus health score to monitor. NB: I wrote this post (No A.I.) A Quick Poll Loading... ********************************************************************* Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (now > 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Leave a comment Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.

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Mar 22 • 2:18 PM EDT • Health • erictopol.substack.com
‘Trump should keep his reckless mouth shut’: Jeffries responds to Trump calling Democrats America’s ‘greatest enemy’
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Mar 22 • 10:43 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Titans sign ex-Browns linebacker

The Titans have signed former Browns linebacker Mohamoud Diabate to a contract after he wasn't tendered as an RFA.

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Mar 22 • 8:24 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
A secret weapon to fight carbon emissions was just discovered: Beavers

A new study in Switzerland finds that beaver-built wetlands can trap and store large amounts of carbon, offering a low-cost boost for restoration and climate resilience.

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Mar 22 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Pompey's hopes of staying up now unsure

BBC Radio Solent commentator Andrew Moon gives his thoughts following Portsmouth's 6-1 defeat at Queens Park Rangers in the Championship.

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Mar 22 • 7:50 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
In the Fight to Defend the Amazon, This Indigenous Community’s Secret Weapon Is Science

In the copper-rich mountains of southeastern Ecuador, Shuar people are combining ancestral knowledge and modern science to protect their forest from a Canadian mining giant.

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Mar 22 • 5:00 AM EDT • Science • insideclimatenews.org
Eating More Ultra-Processed Foods Could Damage Your Bones. Here's Why

Eating higher amounts of ultra-processed foods is associated with lower bone mineral density and a higher risk of hip fractures, even in younger adults under 65.

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Mar 22 • 3:33 AM EDT • Health • healthline.com
The perfect amount of wine to drink to lower your risk of dying from heart disease by 21%
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Mar 21 • 3:10 PM EDT • Health • nypost.com
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UFC Fight Night odds, lines, predictions, time: Evloev vs. Murphy picks from proven MMA expert

Expert Kyle Marley reveals his UFC Fight Night best bets for the March 21 London card on Paramount+

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Mar 21 • 1:21 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
Farmers and rural community members can access free mental health resources

KGAN CBS 2 and KFXA Fox 28 provide local news, weather forecasts, notices of events and items of interest in the community, sports and entertainment programming for Cedar Rapids and nearby towns and communities in the Corridor and throughout eastern Iowa, including Iowa City, Waterloo, Dubuque, North Liberty, Coralville, Marion, Morengo, Williamsburg, Washington, Tiffin, Tipton, Solon, Mount Vernon, Lisbon, Central City, Urbana, Independence, Manchester, Dyersville, Oelwein, Cedar Falls, Waverly, Evansdale, Guttenberg, West Union, New Hampton, Decorah, Waukon, Maquoketa, Sigourney, Fairfield, Grundy Center, La Porte City, Dysart, Fayette, Elkader, Strawberry Point and Belle Plaine.

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Mar 21 • 12:14 PM EDT • Health • cbs2iowa.com
Crimson Desert Dev Promises Patch to Address 'Discomfort Many Players Have Experienced With the Controls,' Apologizes for Awful Keyboard and Mouse Experience

Crimson Desert developer Pearl Abyss has issued a message to players addressing complaints around the game’s controls, which have been widely criticized.

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Mar 21 • 11:30 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Aspen hosts an eve of storytelling with famed sports photographer

Led by the lens, acclaimed American sports photographer Jean Fruth will share tales from her work covering Major League Baseball and beyond.

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Mar 21 • 11:28 AM EDT • Sports • aspentimes.com
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Hubert Davis' future at North Carolina in serious doubt as pressure mounts after historic collapse

Sources tell CBS Sports that Hubert Davis' future at North Carolina is in serious doubt after a historic NCAA Tournament collapse, with boosters losing faith and questioning their willingness to fund the program.

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The surprising ways menopause can affect your mouth — and what you can do about it
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UFC Fight Night odds, lines, predictions, time: Evloev vs. Murphy picks from proven MMA expert

Expert Kyle Marley reveals his UFC Fight Night best bets for the March 21 London card on Paramount+

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Mar 21 • 8:46 AM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
Big money flows into state attorney general races as legal battles shape American politics

There are races in 30 states this year for attorney general, and groups that support those candidates prepared for the elections by raising record amounts in 2025.

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Mar 21 • 8:05 AM EDT • Politics • newsday.com
Big money flows into state attorney general races as legal battles shape American politics

There are races in 30 states this year for attorney general, and groups that support those candidates prepared for the elections by raising record amounts in 2025.

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Giant Study May Have Found The Ideal Amount of Coffee to Lower Stress

There's actually a sweet spot.

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Mar 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • sciencealert.com
Giant Study May Have Found The Ideal Amount of Coffee to Lower Stress

There's actually a sweet spot.

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A massive freshwater reservoir is hiding under the Great Salt Lake

A hidden freshwater system deep beneath the Great Salt Lake has been revealed using airborne electromagnetic surveys. Scientists found that freshwater extends much farther under the lake than expected, reaching depths of up to 4 kilometers. The discovery began with mysterious reed-covered mounds formed by pressurized groundwater pushing upward. Researchers are now investigating whether this underground water could help control hazardous dust from the drying lakebed.

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The biggest medieval march in English history never actually happened

A famous detail in the Battle of Hastings is based on a major misunderstanding.

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Small business and entrepreneurship growth a point of focus for Secretary of State’s Office

LEWISBURG, WV (WVNS) – Entrepreneurs and small business owners in the Mountain State have gotten some extra support with the passage of new legislation. West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner me...

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The mental health effects of gun violence near schools

Dr. Scott Hadland from Mass. General Brigham discusses new data that shows the amount of shootings near schools is trending downwards.

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Police responding to business explosion in Carroll County

According to a spokesperson for the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department, the explosion occurred Friday afternoon at the address of Catoctin Mountain Growers.

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Argyle record-breaker Campbell signs first pro deal

Plymouth Argyle's youngest-ever goalscorer Seb Campbell signs his first professional deal with the club.

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This Infamous Radioactive 'Tomb' Is Leaking, And Experts Are Worried

"The integrity of the dome could be in jeopardy."

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Weymouth teen, dad start birdhouse business Chirp

A Weymouth father and daughter turned a backyard project into a growing business inspired by architecture and family time.

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New dispute emerges around Subnautica 2’s early access release

Lawyers for the ousted—and now partially reinstated—leadership team of Unknown Worlds, the studio behind Subnautica 2, are crying foul over news that the game will be released into early access in May. The release announcement earlier this week was made improperly, potentially “damaging the game and sowing additional confusion among the Subnautica community,” the lawyers said in a letter sent on Tuesday to Vice Chancellor Lori Will of Delaware’s Court of Chancery. In their letter, the lawyers also floated the idea of asking Will to find Krafton in contempt of the court’s ruling. The letter was sent just one day after Will’s bombshell ruling that publisher Krafton had breached its contract with Unknown Worlds’ executive team, when it fired them last June. The new issue isn’t necessarily the May early access timeframe, but how the news was announced. The letter and Krafton’s response have not been previously reported. A quick recap of prior events: Subnautica 2 is an unreleased, underwater survival adventure and the most-wishlisted game on Steam. Last year, longtime Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill, along with studio co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, were fired by Krafton. They swiftly sued, saying the publisher had terminated them to avoid paying out up to $250 million in potential performance-based bonuses. The studio leaders had hoped to earn that with an early access release of the game, which Krafton had blocked. The publisher argued in court that Subnautica 2 wasn’t ready, which the ousted execs disputed. On Monday, Will ruled that Krafton had violated its contract, firing the execs to avoid the performance payouts, and that it had to reinstate Gill and give him full authority over any early access release for Subnautica 2. On Tuesday, IGN reported on a new memo issued that day to Unknown Worlds staff by Steve Papoutsis, the executive Krafton had put in charge of Unknown Worlds after the 2025 firings. In the note, Papoutsis said that Subnautica 2 had passed a key development milestone “last week” and that he and Krafton had determined the game “is ready for Early Access release in May.” This news appeared to catch the lawyers for Gill, Cleveland and McGuire by surprise. On Tuesday night, they sent a letter to Will expressing “serious concerns” about whether it would be possible to forge an agreement with Krafton consistent with the judge’s order. Papoutsis’ memo was a problem, they wrote. He didn’t have the authority to declare anything about Subnautica 2’s release. As of 9am ET on Monday, March 16, the effective date of Will’s order, Papoutsis wasn’t CEO of Unknown Worlds. Gill was. And, per Will’s order, only Gill could make Subnautica 2 release decisions. They continued: Krafton self-servingly announced the launch without any regard to its impact on the game, the team, or the community—let alone this Court’s Opinion. Announcing the release of a game is momentous, and it is typically accompanied by significant marketing activity, fanfare, and community coordination. And most importantly, the announcement is carefully designed to maximize excitement for the game. That entire process was supposed to be driven by Mr. Gill. However, in defiance of the Court’s Opinion, Krafton has now taken that away, further damaging the game and sowing additional confusion among the Subnautica community. The lawyers speculated that Krafton had “intentionally leaked” Papoutsis’ memo and then issued an official statement to confirm the leak. Game File is a reader-supported publication. My reporting is only possible through support from readers like you. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe On Wednesday, lawyers for Krafton defended their client in their own letter to vice chancellor Will, saying nothing they did violated her order nor showed contempt: Papoutsis’s message was simply celebrating the UW employees’ efforts toward a past event: Krafton’s pre-Opinion determination that Subnautica 2 was ready for Early Access release. There was nothing improper about conveying the results of the milestone review or thanking the development team for their dedication and talent. They added that Gill could still make his own call about Subnautica 2’s release: In his role as CEO, Gill will be able to assess independently his views on the state of Subnautica 2 and the appropriate release schedule; nothing in Papoutsis’s message alters Gill’s authority or discretion. Vice chancellor Will has not responded to the letters and doesn’t necessarily have to. Both parties were previously ordered by Will to confer this week and submit a proposed judgment consistent with her ruling. The letter from Gill’s attorney’s this week doesn’t indicate whether he would or would not support a May release for Subnautica 2. But it could limit his options. And, if Gill’s lawyers are right, the lack of marketing fanfare around the leak of the May date could dull the launch of the game. Any harm to Subnautica 2’s launch is an extra sensitive issue given the context of the legal dispute: millions of dollars of payouts are on the line, tethered to the scale of the game’s initial performance. In her ruling on Monday, Will noted that there was obvious “bad blood” between Gill’s side and Krafton but that the two would need to work together: “They can—and must—act in good faith to navigate their remaining contractual relationship.” Item 2: A new kind of couch co-op game A highlight of GDC each year is the Alt.Ctrl showcase that features games played with extremely experimental controllers. Perusing this year’s offerings last Friday, I found a game controlled with giant scissors, another with big toothbrushes and one that amounted to dumpster diving. My favorite was Pivot, a co-op game about collectively maneuvering a couch. It was developed by students at the University of Utah’s masters of arts and engineering games program. Players lift and tilt the physical couch in order to control the position of a virtual one. That virtual one is moving through an obstacle course on-screen, while being pursued by a giant skull. Developer Nishant Verma told me at GDC that the couch is made of styrofoam (this became more evident as I watched!) and that the name was a riff on an episode of the sitcom Friends. Item 3: In brief… 🚫 Ubisoft is laying off more than 100 workers at its Red Storm studio, as the North Carolina location known for decades for its Tom Clancy games, ceases in-house game development, VGC reports. 👀 On Monday, Nvidia’s revealed its DLSS 5 AI-driven graphics technology that purports to improve game graphics… and it has been roasted about it by the media and the online gaming public for the remainder of the week. The tech changed the faces of characters in footage from Resident Evil Requiem, Hogwarts Legacy and EA Sports FC, drawing accusations of giving carefully art-directed games the generic look of AI “slop.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had said on Monday that “DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics—blending handcrafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.” By mid-week, Huang was telling Tom’s Hardware that the new tech’s critics were “completely wrong” because game-makers could still “fine-tune the generative AI” to suit their game’s aesthetics.

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Mar 19 • 5:28 PM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news
Are You One of Those Weirdos Who Wants More Money in Politics? Move to West Virginia!

A shady new political donations law just passed, and so the age-old effort to keep the Mountain State an oligarch’s playground rolls onwards.

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Mar 19 • 5:23 PM EDT • Politics • esquire.com
Arts and Entertainment Agenda: March 20-27

Consensual Improv, March 20 Roaring Fork Valley’s one-and-only improv comedy troupe is back. Consensual Improv will be hosting an upcoming show at 8 p.m. March 20 at The Arts Campus at Willits. Since 2016, they...

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Mar 19 • 1:37 PM EDT • Entertainment • aspentimes.com
Implementing the Trump Administration’s America First Global Health Strategy in Angola - United States Department of State

Today, the United States and the Republic of Angola signed a five-year bilateral health cooperation Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), advancing the Trump Administration’s America First Global Health Strategy in Africa. Working with Congress, the Department of State intends to provide $71 million to support HIV, malaria, and global health security programming, while Angola will invest […]

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Mar 19 • 12:40 PM EDT • Health • state.gov
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Spring Position Battles: Cornerback

If there’s one constant across the Mizzou defense entering the 2026 season, it’s transition — and nowhere is that more apparent than at cornerback. Like nearly every other defensive position group, the Tigers lost a massive amount of production at corner this offseason. Both starters from last fall, Dreydon Norwood and Toriano Pride, Jr., have […]

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Mar 19 • 9:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Uber strikes deal with Rivian to buy thousands of robotaxis

The two companies announced a deal that will see Uber buy 10,000 fully autonomous Rivian robotaxis and invest up to $1.25 billion in the Tesla rival.

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Mar 19 • 8:25 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
This Cleveland County restaurant closed after 20 years in business

Mountain View Restaurant in Kings Mountain has closed its doors after 20 years serving homestyle cooking to the community.

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Mar 19 • 5:04 AM EDT • Business • yahoo.com
The Best Restaurants to Book in Copenhagen Right Now

The Danish capital shows off spots that make for destination dining, even as its most famous dining spot, Noma, comes under fire.

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Mar 19 • 12:01 AM EDT • Business • bloomberg.com
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Beach parking, money in politics and more: Four San Diego measures move one step closer to November ballot

Support was unanimous for three of the measures, but the committee vote was only 3-2 in favor of a measure to ban paid parking at beaches and bays.

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Mar 18 • 8:38 PM EDT • Politics • sandiegouniontribune.com
Snowmass considers defining new ‘business district’ for Draw Site, among other updates

Snowmass Town Council might consider a new business district after it was proposed Monday as a way to include small businesses in funding and priority housing for the Draw Site housing project.

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Mar 18 • 5:41 PM EDT • Business • aspentimes.com
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Pre-litigation meeting fails to resolve dispute between businesses and Black Mountain

An update now on a story we’ve been following for you, the ongoing dispute between Black Mountain Brewing and the Town of Black Mountain.

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Mar 18 • 5:31 PM EDT • Business • wlos.com
Chris Weidner: Climbing past the politics: the Iran I remember

Our first impression of Tehran was overwhelming. From the hillside beneath the Alborz Mountains we looked upon a sea of mostly white buildings — a metropolis home to more than 8 million people. Down there, thick pollution stung my eyes and …

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The World's Best Business Class Airline Lounges: My Top Picks Globally

What are the best business class lounges in the world? Here are my top picks, from Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong, to Delta in New York.

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Scientists Discover the Brain Chemical That Helps Break Old Habits

A mouse study highlights the role of acetylcholine in behavioral flexibility, offering new insight into the brain mechanisms involved in addiction and obsessive compulsive disorder.

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Snowflake Launches Project SnowWork, Bringing Outcome-Driven AI to Every Business User

MENLO PARK, Calif. – March 18, 2026 – Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), the AI Data Cloud company, today announced the research preview of Project SnowWork, a new autonomous enterprise AI platform designed to help business users massively accelerate workflows.

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Mar 18 • 2:03 PM EDT • Business • snowflake.com
Shohei Ohtani will return to the mound for Dodgers Wednesday

Roberts said the plan is for Ohtani to pitch in one more preseason game

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Mar 18 • 9:20 AM EDT • Sports • spectrumlocalnews.com
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Video: Business Report Hall of Fame honoree Bob Greer

A respected figure in the insurance and banking industries, Robert Stephenson “Bob” Greer Jr. made an indelible impact on Baton Rouge, combining an abiding love for his hometown with ambitious ideas on how to make it better. Greer was recently named a 2026 Hall of Fame laureate (posthumous) by Business Report. Watch the video of Bob […]

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Mar 18 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • businessreport.com
Oil prices hold steady even as Iraq resumes some exports via Turkey

Oil prices held steady Wednesday after Iraq clinched a deal to resume some crude exports via Turkey. It’s not a ton of oil, but it’s what amounts for good news these days as the Strait of Hormuz remains largely blocked.

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Mar 18 • 6:56 AM EDT • Business • cnn.com
Madison County considers rezoning along scenic byway near Marshall

Lonesome Mountain Market owner Johnny Moore purchased the building in 2022 with the purpose of operating a general/convenience store, he said.

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Mar 18 • 5:01 AM EDT • Business • citizen-times.com
Foxboro approves World Cup entertainment license - Boston News, Weather, Sports

FOXBORO, MASS. (WHDH) - Foxboro town leaders voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the entertainment license needed for the FIFA World Cup games to move forwardRead More

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Mar 17 • 10:16 PM EDT • Entertainment • whdh.com
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Foxborough Select Board unanimously approves entertainment license for FIFA World Cup

The Foxborough Select Board unanimously approved an entertainment license for the FIFA World Cup matches at Gillette Stadium.

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Mar 17 • 7:35 PM EDT • Entertainment • turnto10.com
Bill to tighten mental health diversion passes key Senate committee

Assembly Bill 46 took a big step toward becoming law on Tuesday. The bill, designed to address what many believe is a loophole in the state’s mental health diversion program, was unanimously approved by the Senate Public Safety Committee.

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Mar 17 • 7:20 PM EDT • Health • kcra.com
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Spigen's New AirPods Pro 3 Case Is Modeled After the Original Macintosh Mouse

Accessory maker Spigen this week expanded its lineup of case options that are designed to look like vintage Apple Macs. The clever new Classic LS AirPods Pro 3 Case resembles a the iconic Apple Macintosh mouse, so it goes well with Spigen's Mac-style iPhone cases. Priced at $25 from Amazon, the case features the stone color that was used for the Classic Macintosh, along with a gray mouse button.

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Mar 17 • 7:16 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Project SnowWork: The easiest way for business users to get work done

Today, we are announcing Project SnowWork (Research Preview), a new autonomous AI platform for business leaders and knowledge workers across finance, sales, marketing, operations and more designed to move beyond simple answers.

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Mar 17 • 6:53 PM EDT • Business • snowflake.com
40th Annual San Joaquin County Science Olympiad Division B/C Results

Teams from Wicklund Elementary and Mountain House High take first place at the 40th annual San Joaquin County Science Olympiad Division B/C Competition.

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Mar 17 • 5:30 PM EDT • Science • sjcoe.org
Starfield finally lands PS5 release date, along with new story DLC and Free Lanes update which - among other things - adds a Milliewhale pet

After plenty of rumours and rumblings, Bethesda has today announced that Starfield is coming to PlayStation 5.

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Mar 17 • 11:15 AM EDT • Technology • eurogamer.net
Talking Tactics: Brighton Defeat Exposes Sunderland’s Mounting Injury Crisis

Sunderland suffered their third home defeat against Brighton despite an encouraging performance - let’s look at the data…

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Mar 17 • 1:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Autonomous businesses – from Waymo to mattress stores – are on the rise

Have you ever walked into a business with no employees? You may soon; autonomous businesses are becoming more popular.

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Mar 16 • 11:57 PM EDT • Business • cbsnews.com
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Coal Ridge athletic director named best in state after landmark year of Titans prep sports

Ben Kirk did not dedicate his life to the art of sports for recognition or praise. He did it because he knows how much sports can shape a young kid, and how much impact a...

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Mar 16 • 5:45 PM EDT • Sports • postindependent.com
Merlin and Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. IV Announce Closing of Business Combination

Merlin's Cessna Caravan Merlin's aircraft flying overhead at the company's Quonset, RI hangar Merlin's Quonset, RI Hangar A C-130J flying overhead at Merlin’s Quonset, RI hangar Transaction provides more than $200M in gross proceeds to accelerate commercialization of AI-powered autonomous aviation Merlin to Begin Trading on March 17th on the NASDAQ Under Ticker Symbol “MRLN” BOSTON, March 16, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Merlin, Inc., an aerospace and defense technology company building the operatin

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Mar 16 • 4:01 PM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com
Cornyn clashes with progressive Rep Greg Casar in heated airport face-off over DHS shutdown

Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Greg Casar clashed over the DHS shutdown as TSA workers missed their first paycheck and airport delays continue to mount.

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Mar 16 • 3:41 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
'Empty refrigerators and eviction notices': TSA union leaders demand end to DHS shutdown

TSA workers in Atlanta face a mounting financial crisis as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown continues, with agents dealing with evictions and hardships.

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Mar 16 • 2:55 PM EDT • Business • foxbusiness.com
Aspen Valley Health partners with electronic health record platform

Aspen Valley Health has announced the launch of an Epic Connect partnership, aiming to shift how independent rural hospitals access advanced healthcare technology in alignment with local governance.

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Mar 16 • 2:44 PM EDT • Health • aspentimes.com
Sen. Schmitt accuses Democrats of playing ‘petty politics’ as DHS funding fight continues

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., discusses the mounting national security concerns amid the DHS shutdown, responds to Democratic criticism of ICE and more on ‘America’s Newsroom.’

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Mar 16 • 11:07 AM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
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Men’s Health 2026 Grooming Awards: Shave Kit, Hair Serum, More

Men’s Health editorial director Richard Dorment joins TODAY to share some of the winners from the 2026 Grooming Awards. Products include hydrating pillow pads, mouthwash packets and more!

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Mar 16 • 10:08 AM EDT • Health • today.com
Haims: Jujube(s) have health benefits for sleep, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s

If you’re old enough to remember enjoying a box of Jujubes at the movie theater, you’re old enough to question this article’s title. If not, here’s the scoop. For decades, Jujubes candy was a movie theater staple. They look like very short rabbit pellets, similar in size and...

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Mar 16 • 10:00 AM EDT • Health • aspentimes.com
Grapefruit vs. Grapefruit Juice: Which is Better for Immunity and Fiber?

Whole grapefruit and grapefruit juice both have substantial amounts of vitamin C. However, whole fruit is a better way to get antioxidants and fiber that your body needs.

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Mar 16 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • health.com
Alto Neuroscience Reports Full Year 2025 Financial Results and Recent Business Highlights

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 16, 2026--Alto Neuroscience, Inc. ("Alto") (NYSE: ANRO), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel precision medicines for neuropsychiatric disorders, today reported financial results for the full year ended December 31, 2025, and highlighted recent progress across its pipeline of clinical-stage product candidates.

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Mar 16 • 6:03 AM EDT • Business • finance.yahoo.com
Scientists Reveal the Simplest Rule for Building Strength

New resistance-training guidelines show that any amount of strength training can significantly improve muscle, strength, and physical function.

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Mar 16 • 12:01 AM EDT • Science • scitechdaily.com
Battle of the Badges Hockey Championship raises $285K for Dartmouth Health Children's

This year, the event raised $285,000, the largest single-day total in the event's 18-year history.

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Mar 15 • 9:27 PM EDT • Health • wmur.com
Dartmouth Health to open new addiction treatment center in Claremont

Dartmouth Health opens an outpatient addiction treatment center at Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont, providing convenient and timely care.

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Mar 15 • 8:42 PM EDT • Health • vnews.com
How Foreign-Trained Health Workers Saved the NHS £14 Billion

This blog is part of a series focused on the UK’s recruitment of foreign-trained health workers. This first blog details the amount of money the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has saved by recruiting foreign-trained health workers. The second blog examines whether this saving is offset by foreign aid contributions to health systems strengthening (HSS) and human resources for health (HRH) in countries of origin.

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Mar 15 • 8:00 PM EDT • Health • cgdev.org
Venomous Snakes Represent a Serious Public Health Problem. Scientists Are Biting Back With a Grou...
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Mar 15 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • smithsonianmag.com