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Winston Marshall: UK politicians ‘won’t do anything’ to stop violence
WARNING: Graphic content — Grammy-winning musician Winston Marshall discusses a Sudanese migrant accused in the stabbing of a Belfast man in Northern Ireland on ‘The Will Cain Show.’
SpaceX Owns a Real Business That Makes Big Money
A simple view of SpaceX is that it’s a low-cost rocket launcher that created the profitable Starlink satellite business and which is now burning cash to build orbital data centers and colonize Mars. Starlink doesn’t have the lead role in SpaceX’s $1.8 trillion initial public offering. But it is the real business inside the company, and the telecoms industry and its regulators can ill afford to be complacent about the disruptive threat it poses.
We can create the future of science right now
Paul Litvak is the founder and Executive Director of the Robyn Dawes Institute and a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley. He has a PhD in Behavioral Decision Research from Carnegie Mellon where he studied emotions and the sunk cost bias. Over 15 years in industry, he solved a wide range of challenging technical problems. At Meta he created models optimizing the ad review process. At Google he ran experiments to measure social influence. At Airbnb, he was a product manager leading machine learning teams optimizing search ranking and price suggestions. He also co-founded and led product at Rhythmic Health, a venture-backed biosensing startup, creating an accurate low cost system using a color changing strip and a smart phone to measure salivary lactate. The bottleneck At this point, it is uncontroversial to say that science needs to stop using the PDF article as the unit of knowledge and currency. The unbearable slowness of scientific publishing, the profit motive and margins: I’m not saying anything new. The PDF also sucks because it’s hard to extract structured information, which makes it hard to do evidence synthesis. As a result, we do much less evidence synthesis than is needed. And evidence synthesis ultimately undergirds most policy and medical decision-making. I can see second-by-second real-time odds for any sporting or newsworthy event, but a school board can’t see the best evidence on whether their 8th graders should be taught algebra. As a society, we don’t treat this as an important problem. Again, not controversial. Not only is the problem well understood, but the solution has already been laid out. What we need is AI-assisted living evidence synthesis - (1) an open knowledge graph of atomic claims, (2) claims linked to evidence, (3) assessment and synthesis of each piece of evidence, and (4) continuous updating with new data. What few realize (yet) is that the technical capacity to build this vision for a significant portion of science already exists. Not only that, scientists and startup teams are already building many of these components. I know this because I’ve been surveying the space and talking to many of the builders. There are some missing pieces: for example, evaluations of how well some of the components work. But at this point, most of what’s missing is a fully end-to-end working integration of all of these parts. In the rest of this essay, I’m going to lay out all the parts of a working living evidence layer for science and who is working on them, and propose concrete next steps for building this system. What’s now possible The diagram above outlines the components of a living evidence synthesis platform, including some of the teams working on each component1. Scientific PDFs are processed into claims with associated evidence. The evidence is subjected to a forensic audit, methodological evaluation and robustness and reproducibility checks. Finally it’s given a weight in a continuously updating synthesis. What follows is a description and status of each component and a few of the teams working on them. Document understanding The first thing you need to be able to do is turn an article into structured data. Mostly that means parsing PDFs. There are often multicolumn layouts that confuse non-specialized PDF to text processing libraries. For scientific papers, there is the added complexity of parsing formulas and tables and figures. This is a really hot area - there are startups offering APIs, and it seems like a new open source package gets posted to Github every few weeks. What follows isn’t exhaustive. A package called GROBID was the state of the art for a while, they didn’t update their package for nearly two years until very recently. In the meantime reducto.ai released an AI powered PDF extraction API, PaddleOCR became popular, IBM released a model called Docling, and both Mistral and Gemini created models and libraries. I also know of at least one other well-funded psychology research group working on a paper parser. By contrast, there are few open evals in this space, with no extensive evals for complex table comprehension in particular. Nonetheless, I’m confident this will be a solved problem soon, given the combination of LLM advances and developer interest. Hypothesis level extraction There has been increasing interest in comprehending the extracted text of papers and linking information to evidence for each hypothesis. A lot of work has already been done. Trialstreamer (Marshall et al. 2020) and RobotReviewer LIVE (Marshall et al. 2023) demonstrated automated extraction of trial population, intervention, and outcome at scale on clinical RCTs. PaperQA2 (Skarlinski et al. 2024) and Ai2 ScholarQA (2024) extended this to retrieval-augmented question answering with citation grounding. Elicit, Consensus, and SciSpace operationalized claim-level extraction for end users. OpenEval (Booeshaghi et al. 2026) is the most recent and most ambitious: 1.96 million atomic claims extracted from 16,087 eLife manuscripts using Claude Sonnet 4.5, grouped into ~299,000 results, with LLM evaluations showing 81% agreement with human peer review on a 2,487-paper subset. None of these solutions link claims to test-statistics, as you would need to evaluate randomized controlled trials. This is why I built the evidence.guide API - to extract hypotheses and associated test statistics from behavioral science papers. The best public eval of this kind of extraction I’m aware of comes from the recent SCORE project - they had humans code thousands of psychology papers to extract their claims by hand. It would be extremely helpful to the world if all scientific PDFs were available as structured open data. I’ve been working to make this happen, both directly at Berkeley and through coordination with large entities I can’t yet speak of; as hard as it is to do, I think it’s possible2. Forensic audit A lot of work has been done on forensic audit, but some gaps remain. Of course, for biology papers that rely on images for evidence, there are a variety of tools (notably Proofig and ImageTwin) to spot anomalies. These are still well short of what sleuths like Elizabeth Bik can do on her own, but these tools are constant companions among fraud analysts. There’s someone working on auditing Excel files for anomalies, and a number of teams are automating numerical checks like GRIM and SPRITE, including Scrutiny project, the INSPECT-SR team as well as statcheck. The regcheck team is building a way to use AI to compare preregistrations to analyses in papers, to ensure there aren’t significant deviations. Nonetheless, there are many other kinds of anomalies to screen for, both public and less publicly known. And there are no formal evals for anomaly detection that I’m aware of. Still, there’s a lot to draw from in this space and I’m pretty certain we will be able to scan papers for most kinds of obvious anomalies in the near future. Methodological review This area has been white hot, though I fear for many of the startups in this space, because this capability may become commoditized. There are at least six different AI peer review companies, including Refine.ink, Reviewer3, ReviewerZero.ai, Q.E.D. Science, Paper Wizard, and Isitcredible. Coarse (a pun on refine) was also recently created as an open source alternative. These systems provide qualitative feedback on the content of papers, spotting methodological weaknesses and mathematical errors. They seem to work pretty well, and many academics report bitterly that they exceed the average quality of typical peer reviewers. But there are few evals here either. What evals exist so far involve using LLM-as-judge (circularity problems abound) or comparing against human reviews of questionable quality. What you’d ideally want is an eval that measures capturing known errors in papers3. Reproducibility and robustness Another active area has been using AI agents to automate computational reproducibility4 and robustness5 checks in papers that report numerical results. For more recent papers where data and code are available, AI agents can see whether they can re-run the analyses and produce the numbers reported in the published paper. In addition to a handful of individual academics who have been experimenting using Claude Code for this, the Institute for Replication is a leading group working on building an end to end system. The evals related to this problem are the most mature, with CORE-Bench (Siegel, Kapoor, Narayanan 2024) and PaperBench (OpenAI 2025) available to benchmark agents on this task. There is also work on getting AI agents to test alternative ways of analyzing the data to ensure the results are robust to small analytic design choices. Synthesis This is the most underdeveloped area where significant investment is required. Although some automated evidence synthesis systems exist — for example, otto-sr is building an AI agent to write systematic reviews — none of these incorporate the full range of paper level signals to weight evidence appropriately. Nor is there anything like an eval or a gold standard for a good systematic review. Arguably Cochrane reviews are the closest we have to gold standard human systematic reviews, though I’ve heard academics in the know complain about their uneven quality. A key question for a synthesis platform is how to weight anomalies and methodological issues in assessing the quality of a piece of evidence. This is an unsolved problem and one I’m very keen to work on. Continuous updating There are many pieces of basic infrastructure available for monitoring for new research and initiating updates. OpenAlex is the current open citation graph. Retraction Watch integrated into Crossref in October 2023. Scite tracks how citations support, contrast, or mention prior claims. The Living Evidence Network demonstrated continuous-update workflows in clinical guidelines. Engineering this is a relatively straightforward task. When you look over this technical architecture and all the progress being made, it’s hard not to be optimistic that a living guide to scientific evidence will be built. The stakeholders are ready The social infrastructure for this is starting to coalesce — it’s not just a pie in the sky academic exercise to imagine this coming into existence. Institutions like the Center for Open Science, the Institute for Replication, the INSPECT-SR, the Living Evidence Network and more are all working on scaling work to improve research quality. Funders are also aligned. The Sloan Foundation has funded living evidence work through COS. Coefficient Giving supports the Institute for Replication and COS. The Astera Institute and the Institute for Progress have shown interest in this space. NIH has established an Office for Replication and Reproducibility. Although there are (very unfortunately) serious headwinds in science funding generally, there is an active group of funders interested in metascience. A brief word about what I’ve been doing at RDI. First, as a Visiting Scholar at Berkeley I’ve been actively figuring out how a non-profit and a public university can conduct and make public the results of large-scale academic article data mining. With some of the money I raised from donors, I commissioned a legal analysis of recent case law and publisher text data mining (TDM) agreements in order to understand whether a massive open data mining of academic articles is possible (with caveats, it is). I’ve also been working to bring together stakeholders in this space, and identify gaps. I’ve also been doing some software development in this space, with more to come. A pilot proposal The assumption undergirding all of this is that an AI, given all this information, would make the right judgment about a scientific claim with lots of conflicting evidence, weighing all the factors appropriately. That’s the hypothesis we need to test. Randomized control trial research is the best place to focus on first. RCTs are used to make many of the important decisions in society - from medical trials to public policy changes. And they use a relatively uniform set of inferential statistics with lots of known and available diagnostics. Behavioral science experiments, within the broader realm of RCTs, should be first used as a testbed whose results can be generalized. Because behavioral science is at the vanguard of open science practices, replications abound (there are thousands of them) to serve as ground truth training data. Key Hypothesis Therefore the pilot would test, in behavioral RCTs that have been replicated, whether the quality of evidence for a claim can be used to accurately predict whether that claim will replicate. Secondary Hypotheses Compared to claims that replicated, non-replicated claims demonstrate a greater share of forensic anomalies in their source literatures. Hypothesis level claim and statistic extraction is accurate enough to scale living evidence without onerous human review costs. Replication prediction is more accurate than prediction markets6 or journal prestige. If all the different quality signals we gather do accurately predict which studies will replicate, then we can use that model to score evidence to power the living evidence layer. Why this is informative regardless of outcome If the pilot succeeds, the architecture extends to medical RCTs (where Living Evidence already operates and integration is mostly about claim representation), then to slices of basic biology with stable replication structure. If it fails, the field learns which quality signals are load-bearing and which ones metascience has oversold. Either result is a contribution to knowing what the literature supports. Implications for funders Because this burgeoning ecosystem of builders already exists, a well-informed philanthropic or government funder could play a crucial catalyzing role in bringing this future about. They could play at least three roles: creating open structured datasets, publishing open benchmarks and incentivizing the solving of key technical challenges. First, open archives of papers that the government maintains, like PubMed, could be turned into structured data amenable to large scale metascience and claim aggregation. I know the US government already has an interest in doing this, though some key open questions remain unanswered. How do you determine the best models and systems for accurately extracting information from papers? How can you establish a robust way to allow researchers to flag errors and correct them? And finally, how do you create a legal regime in working with publishers to maximize the scope of available papers? For the latter, a university or a private philanthropy may be better positioned to make structured data publicly available under journal subscription terms or fair use. Philanthropists or government funders could also coordinate to create or commission benchmarks that evaluate whether important problems have been solved. For example, an open benchmark for claim extraction from a range of different scientific article types would be extremely helpful. Ensuring the underlying data are accurate is vital for creating these evaluations. I’ve discussed opportunistically using various human-created datasets for this purpose, but a consistent problem is that errors in human data make it difficult for them to serve as a gold standard. Finally, with structured data and benchmarks available, the government or private philanthropy could use them to incentivize groups to develop machine learning systems that meet these benchmarks. Prizes are one potentially valuable tool for this. For example, you could establish a prize for a system that accurately updates a living meta-analysis for a small set of claims. Prizes are particularly useful as signals of problem importance, and can help create vibrant ecosystems of public and private research—see, for example the role the government played in kickstarting the current work on nuclear fusion. Conclusion The drawbacks of the current scientific publishing system are known. Scientists agree, metascientists agree, philanthropists agree: the published PDF plus citation graph isn’t the right substrate for maintaining a representation of the evidence base in science. The pieces needed to build the alternative either already exist or are rapidly taking shape. The community is forming around exactly this problem, with concrete partnerships and shared infrastructure. A pilot should start on behavioral science RCTs because that’s the slice of empirical science most amenable to legibility, where replication ground truth is richest, and where the failure modes are best documented. What’s been missing is the galvanizing mission to assemble these pieces into something that works. That’s what I’m proposing to build. *** 1 I have a broader field map that I’ll release publicly soon. This is me, building in public! 2 If this is something that you are excited about, please reach out and talk to me. 3 More on this very soon too! 4 This tests whether, given the code and the data, you can get the same statistics as reported in the published paper. 5 This tests whether the results are the same as a paper’s given alternative analytical decisions in conducting the analysis (like outlier omission). Closely related is the idea of a “multiverse” where you come up with many different ways of answering the same underlying research question with the same data, and test whether the results hold in all those alternative methods. There’s been work on the latter as well. 6 Some of the replications, e.g. those from the SCORE project, had paired the experiments with forecasts from prediction markets. So we get to look at this for free.
A science-driven journey to "safe food everywhere"
This year’s global theme for World Food Safety Day, “From burden to solutions – safe food everywhere,” is a call to action that reflects our core belief at Mars: if it’s not safe, it’s not food.
open 42-bed medical rehabilitation hospital in South Point, Ohio
PAM Health, a leading national healthcare provider, in partnership with regional healthcare leader Marshall Health Network, announced plans to open a 42-bed physical medicine and rehabilitation hospital in South Point, Ohio. This location will be PAM Health’s third hospital in Ohio, joining PAM Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Miamisburg and PAM Health Specialty Hospital of Miamisburg. Located at 510 Commerce Lane in South Point, Ohio, the hospital is expected to open in October […]
Overcoming Aaron: Phillies 9, White Sox 6
Brandon Marsh and the Phillies’ lineup was able to overcome yet another bad start by Aaron Nola.
Sporting director confirms Arsenal loan won’t be extended
Lucas Nygaard’s time with Brabrand IF is at an end, with the club’s sporting director confirming his initial loan spell won’t be extended.Photo via Brabrand IF on InstagramArsenal youth goalkeep...
Ndicka wanted by Inter, Tottenham and Marseille
Roma defender Evan Ndicka is reportedly on the market for €35m with Tottenham Hotspur, Inter and Olympique Marseille interested, but could also remain.The centre-back came to the Eternal City as a f...
Marshall Milton ANC review: Making the rare case for premium on-ear headphones
Marshall's latest headphones are like its Major and Monitor models had a baby.
Greenwood is Roma’s top target as opening offer ready
Reports in Italy claim that Roma are ready to make their opening offer for Mason Greenwood, who is valued at €50m by Olympique Marseille.Several sources in Italy claim that English winger Greenwood ...
NASA Says Goodbye to its Longtime Mars MAVEN Mission
The space agency announced that the MAVEN spacecraft, which has circled Mars for more than a decade, is being decommissioned.
Marshall Health Network, Intermed Labs advance next-generation surgical visualization through spatial arthroscopy
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Marshall Health Network, in collaboration with Intermed Labs (IL), has announced the development of spatial arthroscopy, an innovative technology designed to transform how surgeons visualize and interact with minimally invasive procedures. The project, currently in development, was conceptualized by Chad D. Lavender, M.D., and represents a new frontier in surgical ergonomics and digital […]
TAHOE FUND AND BARTON HEALTH LAUNCH $25,000 MATCH FOR THE MARSH CAMPAIGN
250 donors can help unlock a $25,000 matching gift from Barton Health for the Upper Truckee Marsh The Tahoe Fund and Barton Health have launched an exciting new fundraising campaign to help restore the Upper Truckee Marsh South in South Lake Tahoe—the former site of the Motel 6 property. If 250 community members donate $50 […]
Sand Bass Festival underway in Madill
The National Sand Bass Festival in Madill, Oklahoma, is a highlight event featuring food vendors, carnival rides, and family-friendly activities all week. The festival takes place in Marshall County on the Madill square, which is closed to regular traffic to accommodate the festivities.
Marseille’s Nayef Aguerd attracts interest from the Gulf
Olympique de Marseille’s Nayef Aguerd (30) is reportedly attracting interest from clubs in the Gulf, according to La Provence. Other clubs are also said to be interested in signing the Kenitra-born ...
Match for the Marsh with Barton Health
We’re back with another awesome opportunity to transform the south end of the Upper Truckee Marsh, this time with help from our friends at Barton Health! Now that the California Tahoe Conservancy has demolished the former Motel 6 building, restaurant, and parking lot from the Upper Truckee Marsh in South Lake Tahoe, planning is underway […]
Marshall Health hosts Hope Blooms fundraiser to support Project Hope for Women & Children
Scientists Say They’ve Found Fungi That Turn Dead Martian Soil Into Fertile Cropland
This certainly beats using human waste to grow potatoes on Mars.
Dirt on Dirt - Feger starting on MARS pole for Red Hill Rumble
DirtonDirt.com covers Dirt Late Model racing like no other publication, magazine or website with massive amounts of original content including videos, photos, stories, columns, blogs and more. Eldora Speedway's World 100 and Dream, the Dirt Track World Championship, Lucas Oil Late Model Knoxville Nationals and all the major races are covered along with the major tours, including the World of Outlaws Late Model Series and Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.
Protesters deliver petitions to demand Sen. Roger Marshall meet with Kansans
Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, hasn’t hosted a town hall open to the public since March of last year. On May 29, protesters delivered 3,800 signed petitions from Kansans across the state to Marshall’s Overland Park office.
Marshall’s Elli Barry Taking Part In NCAA Career In Sports Forum
Marshall Volleyball's Elli Barry is currently in Indianapolis taking part in the NCAA Career in Sports Forum, which runs from May 27-30 at the NCAA Headquart...
NASA Uses Mineralogical Marker to Understand Ancient Martian Climate
Scientists analyzed 20 Martian samples collected by NASA's Curiosity Rover and found that differences in hematite crystallite size at varying elevations could serve as a new mineralogical marker for understanding Mars' ancient climate.
Artists drop out of DC Freedom 250 festival over reported political ties
WBFF Fox45 provides local news, weather forecasts, traffic updates, notices of events and items of interest in the community, sports and entertainment programming for Baltimore and nearby towns and communities in Maryland, including Annapolis, Crofton, Glen Burnie, Linthicum, Pasadena, Severn, Cockeysville, Dundalk, Essex, Parkville, Owings Mills, Towson, White Marsh, Woodlawn, Hampstead, Sykesville, Taneytown, Westminster, Elkton, Perryville, Pt. Deposit, Rising Sun, Aberdeen, Abingdon, Bel Air, Edgewood, Fallston, Havre De Grace, Columbia, Elkridge, Ellicott City, Fulton, and Ocean City.
Marshfield Clinic invests $90K in community health through United Way
Marshfield Clinic donated $90,000 to United Way of Wisconsin to boost community health initiatives within its service area.
UToledo Scientists Develop New Method to Estimate Hidden Species
The new model for collecting species data within ecosystems is published in the May issue of Ecological Informatics.
Highlighting A Science Strategy For Human Exploration Of Mars
A Science Strategy for Human Exploration of Mars
Correction to B.3 Living With a Star Science
B.3 Living With a Star Science (LWS) emphasizes the science necessary to understand those aspects of the coupled Sun-Earth system that affect life and
Netflix Removing Drama Series Starring Jason Segel, Andre 3000
Only one season of the show was created.
I Smell Parsecs and Candy: 5 Fun Science Fiction Books
Psychic cats in space, an alien rom-com, a cruise on Mars: these fun science fiction books have everything!
Schwarber slugs, Luzardo grinds Phillies to Memorial Day win
A numbers-first look at Kyle Schwarber’s power at Petco Park, Jesús Luzardo’s six scoreless innings and Brandon Marsh’s late insurance.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft uses Mars as a giant slingshot toward a mysterious metal world
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft just used Mars as a giant gravitational slingshot to continue its journey toward a strange metal rich asteroid. The close flyby boosted the spacecraft’s speed by about 1,000 mph while also producing rare crescent images of Mars glowing through its dusty atmosphere.
Creative compassion: Scatter Joy Project Founder Zach Thompson brings mental health advocacy to his hometown
Class of 2008 Marshalltown High School (MHS) graduate Zach Thompson, who went on to play baseball at Marshalltown Community College (MCC) before relocating to his current home state of Ohio, started the Scatter Joy Project in Columbus as part of an effort to destigmatize conversations around mental health and highlight the intersection between mental health […]
In ‘For All Mankind,’ America Wins by Losing
The current season of this space drama is set largely on Mars. The creators say this alternate world could have been possible if the nation had stayed focused on the stars.
How to Watch Marshals Season 1 Finale
Watch Marshals live with TV channel, start time and streaming info. Stream Season 1 Finale on Fubo — no cable required, free trial available.
20 New Watches You Missed from Omega, Audemars Piguet, Seiko, Timex and More
Keep time with the industry's most exciting new watches, including Omega, Audemars Piguet, Seiko, Timex, and more.
Belmar mayor resigns, citing health and family. Here's what's next
Belmar Mayor Gerald Buccafusco announced his resignation due to health concerns, ending a term headlined by affordable housing.
Bond breakout? Big effects of bad data. Immigration and thermostatic politics & dad-chat is coming for dad-books.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. Anna Airy, A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London, 1918 Bond breakout - John Authers Across the developed markets, bond markets are staging a slow-motion car wreck. Looking at the drastic moves in the US, Japan, the UK and France, Barclays’ Ajay Rajadhyaksha commented: “Last week, long bonds broke. Not in one country. In all of them. Simultaneously. Four countries. Four different political systems. Four different central banks. But the same trade — “get me out of duration!”” Each country has its own contributing political problems, but the uniformity of the shift out of long-term bonds with high duration makes clear that something broader is afoot. For Rajadhyaksha, it is “simple and uncomfortable.” The developed world “has too much debt, too little fiscal discipline, and no political appetite for fixing either.” If there’s a trigger, it has been the Iran war and the resulting shock to oil supply. Source: Bloomberg G7 countries are now borrowing at rates that were enjoyed by EM in the early 2020s For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Trade between China and Russia has grown in recent years For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Big effects of bad data A decade ago nearly nine in ten Americans, when approached, agreed to fill out the Current Population Survey, which is administered to about 60,000 households each month and asks about, among other things, employment. Fewer than seven in ten do so now (see chart 1). For the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which tries to capture 3,700 households monthly, the response rate is down from 68% to 40%. … When the information becomes less reliable, investment decisions get more difficult to make. Some may be delayed, creating a potential drag on the economy. A new working paper by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Erica Groshen, former head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) now at Cornell University, and Duncan Hobbs and Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, hazards an estimate. Preserving trust in “the integrity and quality of official statistics”, the authors claim, generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the BLS, the agency with an annual budget of $700m that is responsible for many of these data. To arrive at their conclusion the quartet analysed an ignoble episode in the BLS’s recent history. On August 1st 2025 Donald Trump sacked Erika McEntarfer, appointed as the agency’s commissioner by his predecessor, Joe Biden. The president alleged, without evidence, that the BLS’s steep downward revision to recent jobs numbers had been “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”. In fact, it was the wanton dismissal that looked bad in the eyes of many observers. In the following seven days there was a 50% leap, relative to the week before, in the average value of the index of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), which tracks the number of articles mentioning such uncertainty that are published daily in American newspapers. This was a discernible jump even when compared to the chaos caused by Mr Trump’s trade war in April 2025 and his real one in Iran in the past two months (see chart 2). Based on Mr Bloom’s earlier study with other colleagues of the EPU’s impact on business investment, industrial production and employment, the authors estimate that the jump reduced American GDP by over $100bn (0.3%) and non-farm payrolls by 168,000 (0.1%). Source: The Economist Immigration and thermostatic politics (Sarah O’Connor in the FT) A strange thing happened a year and a half ago. No sooner had Americans elected Donald Trump as president on an explicitly anti-immigration platform than US public opinion began to swing much more favourably towards immigration. … to political scientists who study “thermostatic” politics, this development is no surprise at all. Public opinion often moves against the prevailing party, especially if they are perceived to have gone “too far” in one direction. The phenomenon was first explored in the 1990s with reference to fiscal policy, but in recent years it has been particularly evident in the realm of immigration policy. While these swings in opinion polls can make it seem as if people don’t know their own minds, they can be a useful democratic check on governments by sending bright flashing warning lights when policies stray too far from the public’s comfort zone. The problem comes when politicians misinterpret those signals. When people tell pollsters they want less immigration, or think it is bad for the country overall (or the converse), they are often expressing an opinion about how things appear to be going in that moment relative to their preferences, rather than a deep shift in their underlying views. According to Alexander Kustov, a political scientist, most Americans’ views are quite stable and moderate: they support immigration that is controlled and in the national interest, and oppose flows that are disorderly or under-enforced. In the US, he argues the Trump administration over-interpreted dissatisfaction with high immigration under Joe Biden, and implemented policies that went too far for many voters. “People don’t necessarily change their idea about their ideal immigration policy, but they can react to what the government is currently doing,” he told me. “A lot of people are not happy with what the Trump administration are doing — right now we’re not talking about border enforcement, we’re talking about people not just getting harassed, but killed.” But similarly, he added, pro-immigration advocates would be making a mistake to interpret the recent, more favourable swing towards immigration as a deep-seated ideological shift in attitudes. The recent history of UK immigration policy offers another cautionary tale. After the 2016 Brexit referendum, public concern about immigration fell. This was partly because net migration statistics declined, but also because people felt a sense of catharsis and control, says Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think-tank. By 2019, the public ranked immigration as only the ninth biggest issue of concern, according to Ipsos polling. But when the Conservative government liberalised visa routes for students and care workers between 2019 and 2022, that helped net migration to surge. And so, too, did public concern. Today’s Labour government has implemented another sharply restrictive turn in immigration policy. As Kustov and researcher Caitlyn Yates argue, thermostatic public opinion should be a useful check on politicians. Instead it seems to have helped to magnify the pendulum swing in the UK. The government over-interprets and overreacts to a change in public opinion, which reacts in turn, prompting a sudden swing the other way. Source: Financial Times HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe Anna Airy, Shop for Machining 15-Inch Shells: Singer Manufacturing Company, Clydebank, Glasgow, 1918 Racing for a vaccine … we have been here before! The deadly Ebola outbreak in two African countries driven by a virus species with no vaccine has triggered an urgent search for a potential jab, in a test of troubled global efforts to avert threats posed by emerging diseases. A World Health Organization advisory group is due to would meet on Tuesday to recommend candidate jabs to prioritise for clinical trials, the global health body said. It will assess data including an analysis by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which was set up after failures in the international response to a previous Ebola crisis. The latest Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has infected hundreds of people and killed more than 80, health authorities say. Cepi’s reaction will be a crucial indicator of its progress towards its wider goal of producing vaccines for pandemic threats in just 100 days, despite steep cuts to international health funding. “If there was ever a time that we could show the world why Cepi is needed and show the world why the 100-day mission is needed, it’s now,” Nicole Lurie, the organisation’s executive director for preparedness and response, told the FT. “We’re happy to accept that responsibility, but obviously we need help from partners — particularly financial help in the long run.” DR Congo and Uganda would make the final decision on whether to press ahead with any vaccine candidates endorsed for clinical trials by the WHO experts, the global health body said. “Other ethical and community acceptability issues will be considered,” said the WHO, which declared the latest outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. “This will be important to make sure that the trial, if it happens, will be adequately communicated to the population.” Lurie said Cepi had provided information from a survey of research teams and companies working on drugs that might be effective against the Bundibugyo virus behind the outbreak. The organisation hoped soon to announce partners in the quest for a jab, she added, although she declined to give a timescale for when one might be developed. Cepi’s Nicole Laurie said global health bodies were ‘getting some live-fire drills’ with hantavirus and the latest Ebola outbreak. The hunt for a vaccine should be helped by scientific advances including the use of artificial intelligence to find drugs active against viruses, Lurie said. Existing jabs against the Zaire Ebola virus responsible for many previous outbreaks might provide a basis for tackling the Bundibugyo species, she added. “We’ll see how far and how fast we can get,” Lurie said, adding that Cepi had done preliminary work recently on a possible jab for the rat-borne hantavirus responsible for a recent fatal outbreak on a cruise ship. “Both with hantavirus and now with Ebola, [we] are getting some live-fire drills.” Source: Michael Peel in the Financial Times Dad-chat is coming for dad-books. (By Pamela Paul and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the WSJ) They were the go-to gifts for Father’s Day: a book about some little-known chapter of World War II, the sweeping narrative of a shipwreck, perhaps the latest presidential biography. These days, dad books are a dying breed. Nonfiction book sales have been in decline for the past four years, and are now the most challenged segment of the print book market. Publishers say certain types of books still fare well—including celebrity memoirs and religious titles. But in recent years, print sales in such categories as biography, current affairs and business and economics—what publishers refer to as “serious nonfiction” and which tend to resonate especially with men—have fallen considerably. Sales of nonfiction print titles were down nearly 8% through May 9 this year, and sales of books about politics and current affairs were down 19%, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. Publishing has long been subject to cyclical changes, with trends in format and genre taking over bookshelves in grand sweeps. (Remember the adult coloring-book craze? Or the stratospheric rise of romantasy?) But many in publishing believe the decline in serious nonfiction is more existential. “The trend couldn’t be clearer,” said Jonathan Karp, the former chief executive of Simon & Schuster and publisher of the new Simon Six imprint. “This is a sea change and people should wake up and realize we’re living in a new world.” One culprit for the shift: a new media diet for fans of more serious nonfiction. … Sixty-two percent of men and 54% of women consumed a podcast in the prior month, according to a recent survey by Edison Research at SSRS, up from 46% and 39%, respectively, in 2023. “When we have internal meetings to talk about this problem, it always comes around to podcasts,” said Jonathan Burnham, president and publisher of the Harper Group at HarperCollins Publishers. “The man who wants to read American history is now tuning into one of the many good podcasts about history that lends the quiet attention to a serious subject he’s looking for. It makes the idea of sitting down with a 700-page Ron Chernow book less appealing. You’ve scratched that itch.” Source: Wall Street Journal Remarkable report by Novara from the nationalist rally in London in mid May. Anna Airy, Leopard Moth and Plums, 1915 If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe
Politics of potholes: why Bristol can’t fix its broken roads overnight
Marsh Street has been cited as Bristol’s worst for potholes. But it’s just one of many crumbling roads in Britain as councils face repairs backlogs and lack of funds
A legacy built to last: Vanderbilt Health Patient Transport creates Charles "Pete" Marshall Legacy Award to recognize the best of its own
The award is named for Charles "Pete" Marshall, a long-tenured patient transporter who started a summer job at Medical Center North in 1981 after graduating from high school.
Braxton Ashcraft bedevils Cardinals, who lose to Pirates 6-2
Another sixth inning collapse mars a good start by a Cardinal pitcher
Marshall Health Network to offer free sports physicals on June 4
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Marshall Health Network will offer free sports physicals by appointment to middle and high school students Thursday, June 4, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Marshall Sports Medicine Institute (MSMI), located at 2211 Third Avenue, Huntington. All students must bring their West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission or Ohio High School Athletic Association physical form completed and signed by a parent or legal guardian. To schedule an appointment, visit https://tinyurl.com/MSMIphysicals2026. Sports physicals are also available throughout the year at […]
Waste Watch: How community colleges spent taxpayer-funded mental health recovery dollars
WLOS News 13 provides local news, weather forecasts, traffic updates, notices of events and items of interest in the community, sports and entertainment programming for Asheville, NC and nearby towns and communities in Western North Carolina and the Upstate of South Carolina, including the counties of Buncombe, Henderson, Rutherford, Haywood, Polk, Transylvania, McDowell, Mitchell, Madison, Yancey, Jackson, Swain, Macon, Graham, Spartanburg, Greenville, Anderson, Union, Pickens, Oconee, Laurens, Greenwood, Abbeville and also Biltmore Forest, Woodfin, Leicester, Black Mountain, Montreat, Arden, Weaverville, Hendersonville, Etowah, Flat Rock, Mills River, Waynesville, Maggie Valley, Canton, Clyde, Franklin, Cullowhee, Sylva, Cherokee, Marion, Old Fort, Forest City, Lake Lure, Bat Cave, Spindale, Spruce Pine, Bakersville, Burnsville, Tryon, Columbus, Marshall, Mars Hill, Brevard, Bryson City, Cashiers, Greer, Landrum, Clemson, Gaffney, and Easley.
Sen Blackburn says sports betting hearing likely first of ‘several’ as Congress weighs federal action
Sen. Blackburn says Congress must determine where federal regulation is needed as sports betting and prediction markets rapidly expand in the U.S.
SpaceX IPO filing reveals Elon Musk's space economy vision
SpaceX IPO filing reveals Elon Musk's vision for Mars factories, asteroid mining, and space tourism.
Mars shines in ethereal photo from Psyche space probe
NASA's asteroid explorer is on a 2-billion-mile mission.
Scientists use DNA from poop to save the world’s rarest marsupial
Scientists in Australia are using cutting-edge DNA techniques to help save one of the world’s rarest marsupials — the critically endangered Gilbert’s potoroo, with fewer than 150 left in the wild. By analyzing tiny traces of DNA in the animals’ scat, researchers uncovered clues about the elusive fungi the potoroos depend on for survival. The findings could help conservationists identify safer new habitats and establish backup populations before disasters like bushfires wipe them out.
Scientists discover over 1,100 new marine species
Scientists have named 1,121 new marine species in a single year - from deep-sea ghost sharks to cave shrimp off Marseille.
Electric Entertainment acquires exclusive North American rights to feature film All There Is
Directed by Emmy Award-winner Kit Williamson, the award-winning coming-of-age feature stars Jason Priestley, Mena Suvari, Elsie Fisher, and breakout actress Laurel Marsden.
Audemars Piguet walks a fine line between hype and cheapening brand
Fans had to endure long lines, fistfights, and even tear gas to cop the $400 Audemars Piguet and Swatch "Royal Pop" pocket watches.
NASA’s MAVEN Makes 1st Discovery of Atmospheric Effect at Mars
In December 2023, scientists looking at Mars data stumbled across something completely unexpected — observations of an atmospheric effect never before seen in
Business News: Royal Pop Sales Resume After Launch Rush For Audemars Piguet X Swatch Collaboration Forced Store Closures
This weekend's Royal Pop launch ends in disappointment and frustration at more than a dozen Swatch boutiques globally.
Bruno Mars show selling fast, but there's still time to buy tickets
Bruno Mars, a 16-time Grammy winner, will play at Ohio Stadium on May 20. A venue rep says tickets are selling "exceptionally well."
How Cassidy’s loss could turn into an even bigger win for RFK Jr.
Sen. Roger Marshall, a Make America Healthy Again devotee, is angling to replace the defeated Louisiana senator atop the Health Committee.
How Cassidy’s loss could turn into an even bigger win for RFK Jr.
Sen. Roger Marshall, a Make America Healthy Again devotee, is angling to replace the defeated Louisiana senator atop the Health Committee.
Mars Experienced Catastrophic Flooding 3.5 Billion Years Ago, Reshaping Planet's Surface
The new images highlight how dramatically different Mars' climate and geology were during its early history.
Entertainment: Bruno Mars' hits a historic milestone
I Just Might is now in its 12th consecutive week atop the Billboard Radio Songs Chart.
Perseverance Checks In From Mars With A Selfie, The Mounting Pollution From Satellite Launches, And More Science Stories
This week’s science news.
Watch adorable animals compete for best chewer in 2026 Crunch-a-Thon
The campaign spotlights an endangered marsupial.
Helio and You: Seasons on Earth, Mars, and Beyond
Earth has four seasons - spring, summer, fall, and winter. Other planets can experience seasons, too, but they might be wildly different from the ones that we are used to. Find out about how seasons work and what role the Sun plays in causing them.
NASA’s new AI space chip could let spacecraft think for themselves
NASA is testing a next-generation space computer chip that could give spacecraft the ability to operate far more independently in deep space. The radiation-hardened processor is showing performance levels hundreds of times beyond current spaceflight computers while surviving punishing tests designed to mimic the harsh conditions of space. The technology could enable AI-powered spacecraft, faster scientific discoveries, and smarter missions to the Moon and Mars.
‘There’s science happening all around us’
MARSHALL — As another school year approaching the end, more than 900 area students and participants went on a field trip and made memories at the 2026 Science and Nature Conference on Tuesday at Southwest Minnesota State University, hosted by the Southwest West Central Service Cooperative (SWWC). This was the SWWC’s 32nd annual Science and […]
Kara Wildman receives 2026 Woman in Business Award
Kara Wildman, owner of Happy Tails in Marshalltown, was presented the 2026 Woman in Business Award during the Marshalltown Area Chamber of Commerce Women in Business Luncheon held at Iowa Valley Business & Community Solutions Dejardin Hall on Thursday, May 14. Presenting Kara with the award was Stella and Jonas Wildman, Kara’s children. It was […]
ASU graduate proves the best science happens outside
Victoria Concepcion didn't come to Arizona State University just to earn a degree. She came tracking a Mars rover.Concepcion, from Rancho Santa Margarita, California, is graduating this May from the School of Earth and Space Exploration with a Master of Science in geological science. She started with a clear goal: to work with the Curiosity rover's DAN instrument. Along the way, she discovered even more rewarding experiences.
Lawmakers & Trump Admin. Officials Discuss The Advancement of Health Care
Lawmakers and top Trump Administration officials, including Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, participate in discussions on U.S. advancement in health care.
Mars rover snaps a selfie near skyscraper-sized boulders
NASA's Perseverance rover has traveled nearly 26 miles since landing on the Red Planet in 2021.
Innate Pharma Reports First Quarter 2026 Business Update and Financial Results
MARSEILLE, France, May 13, 2026--Regulatory News: Innate Pharma SA (Euronext Paris: IPH; Nasdaq: IPHA) ("Innate" or the "Company") today reported its business update and consolidated financial results for the quarter ending March 31, 2026.
Marseille sporting director Medhi Benatia subject of Al-Ittihad approach
It has already been confirmed that Medhi Benatia will leave Olympique de Marseille at the end of the season. He initially departed back in February, alongside Roberto De Zerbi, who left OM by mutual c...
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4886-4892: Ingenuity and Perseverance, Curiosity Style
Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator
Colorado ethics panel finds probable cause in complaint against Democrat caucus leader
The colleagues of a Democrat unanimously concluded they have probable cause to believe she committed an ethical violation by mismanaging her party caucus’s funds as its co-chair. The House Ethics Committee was charged with examining a complaint from Rep. Marshall, D-Highlands Ranch, alleging that Rep. Mandy Lindsay, D-Aurora, mishandled and improperly used caucus funds for […]
Science news this week: The latest on the cruise ship hantavirus infections, a shortcut to Mars, and a fast-charging quantum battery
May 9, 2026: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend
NASA’s Psyche Mission to Fly by Mars for Gravity Assist
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will get a boost from Mars on Friday, May 15, passing just 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) from the planet’s surface at some 12,333
2026 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Award
First year Materials and Nanoscience graduate student Stéphane Miaule (Tolbert group) has been awarded the 2026 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, one of the country’s most prestigious honors for graduate students in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). The program, jointly sponsored by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, supports doctoral students across a broad range of scientific and technological fields of strategic importance. This highly competitive fellowship provides full tuition, fees, and a monthly stipend for three years. In 2026, only 102 fellowships were awarded nationwide, and Stéphane is the sole recipient from UCLA. Before transferring from Santa Monica College to UCLA, Stéphane interned at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center, where he researched the mechanical and thermodynamic properties of lunar regolith, as well as radiation shielding materials for lunar habitation development. At UCLA, he joined the Soft Materials Research Laboratory under Professor Qibing Pei, focusing on the synthesis and characterization of hafnium oxide nanocomposite scintillators. After earning his bachelor’s degree in chemistry, he remained in the Soft Materials Research Laboratory as a post-baccalaureate researcher for one year before joining Professor Sarah Tolbert’s group as a Ph.D. student. Stéphane’s Ph.D. research is focused on improving the properties of conjugated polymers, which are a family of plastic materials that can conduct electricity. Stéphane is specifically looking at self-assembling polymers that can be processed in water to create light-weight, flexible, high-conductivity polymer devices without the need for toxic or volatile organic solvents. After completing his Ph.D., Stéphane hopes to work in a national laboratory, researching semiconducting polymers for applications in new electronic devices. “The Graduate (1967) featured a memorable scene in which the protagonist was told that ‘there’s a great future in plastics.’ We know this still holds true today, as polymer research has expanded rapidly due to the wide variety of applications these materials enable. Through my work on semiconducting polymers, I hope to contribute to the continued development of plastic electronics,” Stéphane said. Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.
‘Mars’ is 2025’s most popular planet baby name
Thankfully, no one named their kid Uranus.
Frederic Massara auditioned to become Marseille’s new sporting director
Frederic Massara is reported to have been interviewed by Mehdi Benatia for the role of Olympique de Marseille’s next sporting director, according to Foot Mercato.Currently in charge at AS Roma, the ...
Hillhouse Is Said to Near Deal for Marsh’s Risk Adviser and Broker PCS
Hillhouse Investment is nearing a deal to buy Marsh’s financial risk manager and life insurance broker for high-net-worth individuals, primarily in Asia, according to people familiar with the matter.
Meet the Marshal: Business student marshal, Andrew Harshe
Meet Andrew Harshe, Penn State Scranton's business student marshal, who will lead the group of business grads at the campus' 58th commencement ceremony on May 9 at the Scranton Cultural Center at the Masonic Temple. Harshe shared insights about his Penn State Scranton journey, future plans and advice for incoming students.
Small business relief has come, but more is needed, Sen. Marshall says
Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall calls attention to tax breaks and reduced regulation; advocates for competition on credit card swipe fees.
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4879-4885: Struggle at Atacama
Written by William Farrand, Senior Research Scientist, Space Science Institute
'I was not looking for this': Scientist accidentally finds shortcut to Mars that could slash travel time in half
A new study suggests early asteroid trajectory data could help design faster Mars missions, potentially cutting round-trip travel time to under a year.
Political Science Professor Named 2026 Andrew Carnegie Fellow
Wayde Marsh will research and write two books on rhetoric and political psychology.
Political Science Professor Named 2026 Andrew Carnegie Fellow
Wayde Marsh will research and write two books on rhetoric and political psychology.
Lunar Resource-Seeking Technologies
To support long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars, NASA and industry are developing technologies that can extract resources such as hydrogen and helium-3
Business Leaders Recast Insurance as Strategic Resilience Tool, Not Just a Cost
A global survey of C-suite leaders found that 87% expect commercial insurance to become increasingly strategic over the next three years, according to a report from the Worldwide Broker Network and MarshBerry.
Florida child with cerebral palsy in tent OK? Pope, politics
Florida homeless solutions unable to help family with girl, 13, move from tent home in western Martin County marsh area. Like environment? Pay for it.
Restaurant proposed for Marshall. Some say prioritize pre-Helene ones
Anthony Willis said the Bojangles in Mars Hill, which he has owned since 2015, has only helped bring business to local eateries such as Wagon Wheel.
‘Marshals’: Kayce Dutton’s Family Secrets Come Back to Haunt Him
Plus, Belle's mother and dark history revealed.
Mars will tear its own moon apart. Now scientists think it could be sooner – and more destructive – than expected | BBC Sky at Night Magazine
New modelling suggests the Martian moon Phobos’s demise could be earlier – and much more dramatic – than we expected
NASA Fires Up Futuristic Plasma Thruster Designed to Take Us to Mars
Earlier this year, NASA fired up a "next generation" prototype electric thruster, cranking it up to record power levels.
NASA's Lithium-Fed Nuclear Thruster Flares to Life in First of Its Kind Test
The next-generation thruster could one day propel humans to Mars.
Marshall Athletics, Marshall Health Network Announce All-Sport Jersey Patch Partnership Through Learfield
Marshall Athletics and Marshall Health Network have announced a five-year partnership through Learfield that will provide an all-sport jersey patch on every ...
Marshall Athletics, Marshall Health Network Announce All-Sport Jersey Patch Partnership Through Learfield
Marshall Athletics and Marshall Health Network have announced a five-year partnership through Learfield that will provide an all-sport jersey patch on every ...
New Lithium-Plasma Engine Passes Key Mars Propulsion Test
You’re on the fourth human mission to Mars, and you’re told the Odyssey spacecraft designed to take you there will be the smoothest ride you’ll ever take. It features a newly christened electric propulsion engine which was in the late stages of testing during the first three missions. The mission starts and the spacecraft travels at a crawl, and you wonder if it’s broken. A week goes by and you’re now traveling at more than 400,000 kilometers (250,000 miles) per hour, and your mind is blown as to how fast you’re going, how quickly that happened, and that this mission might be more awesome than you thought.
Entertainment this week: Wild and Scenic Film Fest, Cushing Crossing and more
Friday, May 1 Coloso – 8 p.m.-12 a.m., Crystal Bay Casino, 14 Highway 28. Roots For The Depths Benefit Feat: COLOSO For more information, visit https://www.bandsintown.com/e/1038305529?app_id=pkvts0on0m&came_from=287&utm_medium=api&utm_source=partner_api&utm_campaign=event or call (775) 833-6333. Jeshua Marshall and The Flood...
12 million images later, Mars starts to make sense
Mars has been photographed to death. Orbiters have mapped it in high resolution, low resolution and even infrared. Scientists are drowning in data, and the problem isn’t seeing Mars anymore. It’s understanding it.That’s where Mirali Purohit comes in.