SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " observed " 100 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Sign in to save shuffle history.
Color Health moving deeper into cancer services, complete with virtual 'tumor boards'
Color Health, which coordinates cancer screening, is moving into a gap it observed — obtaining and coordinating actual cancer care.
Graphene just defied a fundamental law of physics
In a major breakthrough, scientists have observed electrons in graphene flowing like a nearly frictionless liquid, defying a core law of physics. This exotic quantum state not only reveals new fundamental behavior but could also unlock powerful future technologies.
Where do citizen science data come from?
Citizen science projects are playing an increasingly important role in ecological and conservation research worldwide. In these programs, members of the public support researchers by submitting photographs, audio recordings, observations, or even by contributing to data analysis. In Hungary, no fewer than 17 such initiatives combined their datasets in a joint study. The authors aimed to understand which socio-economic and environmental factors influence participation patterns in Hungary. By comparing the spatial distribution of citizen science data with an independent administrative dataset (municipality level data on income, education, demography, density and protected areas), the researchers identified several general trends as well as numerous project-specific relationships. For example, they found more per capita observations from municipalities with higher proportions of protected natural areas and lower population densities. Furthermore, excluding Budapest, the capital, both the proportion of people with diplomas and the proportion of elderly people showed a positive correlation with participation activity. In contrast, no consistent general pattern emerged regarding wealth or the proportion of children, although several project-specific relationships were observed. The study not only reveals how citizen science data are distributed across Hungary, but also provides robust support for the view that various biases must be taken into account when analyzing such data. The authors hope that their findings will help researchers in other countries design more effective projects and produce more accurate analyses by accounting for some of these or similar biases.
In nearly seventy years of deep-sea exploration, researchers compiled 43,681 submersible dive records — and found that humans have visually observed less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, according to a Science Advances study published in May 2025.
In almost seven decades of deep-sea exploration, the direct human view of the deep ocean floor is still smaller than many people would guess. A Science
Polish scientists and students rally in campaign for better conditions
Polish scientists and students have been flooding social media with calls on the government to raise research and development spending as part of 3% for Science, 100% for Poland, a campaign born earlier this month out of frustration with chronic underfunding in the academic sector. On May 27, thousands took the slogan on to the streets.The EU has been trying to convince member states to raise their R&D expenditures to 3% of GDP for more than two decades, but the idea has never gained traction in capitals. Finance ministers were too busy plugging budget holes created in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, then the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and now the war in Iran.Critics say that countries missed or ignored the target because it is voluntary, but also because research communities have rarely raised their voice to put pressure on national governments. The European Commission hopes to make the target legally binding in the upcoming European Research Area Act, an EU-wide regulation that should be announced by the end of the year. Academia in Poland has been faced with a funding crisis for years, often leaving its members with no other choice but to work abroad in order to access better resources, or leave the sector altogether in the hope of earning a decent living. The risk, in the long-term, is that brain drain stifles local innovation capacity and technological competitiveness.In just a few weeks, the movement rallied nationwide support, including from major academic bodies and trade unions such as the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland and the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Its public petition collected more than 23,000 signatures. On May 27, it formed the first large protest for science in Poland, gathering thousands of people in front of the parliament building in Warsaw.Ilona Uryga-Bugajska, representative of the Marie Curie Alumni Association Poland Chapter, was there. “The protest was peaceful, with no incidents reported, and the entire event took place in a respectful and calm atmosphere,” she said. Banners she saw in the crowd carried slogans such as “A little longer and I’ll be teaching in a supermarket,” “National culture, starvation salary,” “Stop the destruction of science,” “Passion will not pay the rent,” “Without action, don’t expect a better future,” and “Pull science out of the hole.” She also observed a strong presence of young researchers, who are on the frontline of Poland’s academic crisis.“Academics are usually people who prefer discussion, analysis, dialogue and compromise. We are not a group that protests easily,” said Katarzyna Marzec, professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Jagiellonian University Medical College and AGH University of Krakow, who also took part. “But many of us feel that we have been pushed against the wall.”Aleksandra Rutkowska, translational neuroscientist and research group leader at the Medical University of Gdańsk, agreed. “Frustration in the scientific community is very high,” she said. “Science is often used politically as a symbol of innovation and modernity, but the everyday reality inside many institutions is much more difficult. There is a large gap between the public narrative and the actual condition of the sector.”Maria Wiktoria Górna, head of the structural biology group at the University of Warsaw and one of the organisers of the movement, told Science|Business that the campaign would continue without proven results. This might involve another strike in the autumn, she said. “Empty promises are not enough by now.”Campaign demandsAccording to Uryga-Bugajska, the organisers officially presented their demands and concerns to representatives of the government present at the event. These included Marek Gzik, deputy minister of science and higher education, and Karolina Zioło-Pużuk, secretary of state of that same ministry.The headline demand, for the government to increase national spending on R&D to 3% of GDP by 2030, should be within Poland’s economic capacity, Rutkowska said. “The real question is whether there is genuine long-term political commitment to treating science as a strategic priority rather than a slogan.”In 2024, R&D expenditure in Poland stood at 1.41% of GDP, which is slightly above the average for central and eastern Europe, with countries such as Czechia recording 1.82%, Hungary 1.31% and Romania 0.46%. However, it falls noticeably short of the EU average of 2.24%, which just a handful of countries exceed, including Germany, Belgium and Sweden.Campaigners are also asking for fair wages for scientific staff, including PhD stipends and junior academic salaries, which are widely considered uncompetitive. Starting doctoral scholarships amount to some €843 gross per month, when the statutory minimum wage stands at €1,135. By pushing early-career researchers out of Poland, growing precarity has caused a generational gap in the academic workforce, with just 25% of lecturers aged under 40. In this context, the movement fears that scientific careers could soon be accessible to a privileged minority only.Grzegorz Spólnik is a case in point. After 15 years working in mass spectrometry at the Polish Academy of Sciences, he decided to leave partly “to earn enough money to live a normal life,” he said. “At that time, my earnings were similar to those of people working in grocery shops, and the work-life balance is something that does not exist in science, or is very hard to achieve.”Now a senior field service engineer for Polish laboratory equipment supplier Bioanalytic, he would consider going back to research, “but never in the public sector, maybe some start-up or a big private company with ambitious R&D.”The campaigners want to see more support for basic research and have called for €236 million to be added to the budget of the National Science Centre (NCN) in 2027 so that the average grant application success rate does not fall below 25%.“At the protest, there was a banner I particularly liked: ‘NCN is not a lottery.’ Unfortunately, for many researchers, it increasingly feels exactly like one,” Marzec said. “Personally, I am one of the lucky ones. I work at two of the strongest institutions in the country, where the research standards are very high. I know that in many other institutions, the situation is much worse and obtaining funding for research at an early-career stage is becoming nearly impossible.”Rutkowska also considers herself fortunate. After studying abroad and holding a postdoctoral position, she returned to Poland, where her pay was supported through an NCN-funded project linked to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. “This also made me very aware that good research conditions in Poland often depend on external competitive funding rather than on stable support from the system itself,” she said.Long-term strategyBeyond the lack of funds for both salaries and grants, scientists believe that the issue is structural. “The biggest problem at the moment is the complete lack of a clear long-term strategy for the development of science and research from the current government,” Marzec said. “Everything ends with declarations and promises that are never truly followed by concrete actions or structural reforms.”Rutkowska agreed, citing a lack of infrastructure, continuity and long-term institutional support.“Running a research group in Poland often means functioning as an entire institution at once,” she said. “I am a principal investigator, a mentor, a recruiter, a project administrator and, when needed, still someone who returns to the lab bench to help with experiments,” she went on. “This creates a large hidden workload that takes time and energy away from actual science. At times, it feels as though scientists are no longer expecting extra help; we simply hope the system will stop creating additional obstacles that make research unnecessarily difficult.”Related articlesStrategic thinking: Germany funds joint research with Poland and FrancePoland to transfer €30M of regional funds to boost Horizon Europe participationPoland is funding fewer basic research grants as high inflation hitsIn short, “academics are expected to teach, publish papers, apply for grants and conduct high-quality research, while funding and salaries remain very limited,” said Uryga-Bugajska, who returned to her home country after 13 years in the UK.According to Marzec, another issue is the way that research institutions are evaluated. Previously, this took place every four years, with a clear differentiation between stronger and weaker institutions. “The current government, perhaps to avoid political backlash, effectively concluded that everyone is doing well, so in practice no meaningful evaluation took place,” she said.But in her view, “some form of serious assessment is necessary” to ensure the excellence and international competitiveness of Polish institutions, and to determine how to best use public resources and where institutional structures need reform. “Some institutions may need to rethink hiring practices in order to attract ambitious young researchers who are capable of obtaining competitive grants and building internationally visible research groups.” Rutkowska has already had to adapt. “When hiring PhD students, I often have to combine different funding sources creatively to make positions attractive enough for talented people to stay in science,” she said. “Many young researchers do not see a stable future in academia in Poland, and that is deeply worrying.”
Binational health event kicks off this week to promote better access
EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The Consulate General of Mexico in El Paso will host its 26th Binational Health Week, which will be observed throughout October. The idea is to expand access to health services, promote prevention and “foster a culture of well-being among the Mexican, Hispanic, and local communities,” the Consulate General said in […]
Quantum computers reveal heat that flows the wrong way
Researchers have observed unusual patterns of heat flow inside quantum computers, revealing behaviors that defy classical thermodynamics.
How can scientists visualize cellular life with greater precision? - Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Highlights Salk researchers collaborated with scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine to develop a new class of probes for imaging living cells The probes, called visible-spectrum antigen-stabilizable fluorescent nanobodies (VIS-Fbs), generate high-contrast images with minimal disruption to normal cellular activity The technology enables more precise investigation of complex biological processes, including cell signaling, development, and disease progression LA JOLLA—Fluorescent proteins have revolutionized science, enabling researchers to tag and visualize individual molecules in living cells, tissues, and animals. Using these tools, researchers have watched viruses infect cells in real time, observed cellular trash collection, and tracked the signaling that spurs tumor growth.
9/11 observed with somber remembrance on 25th anniversary
A quarter-century after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, families returned to the World Trade Center site Friday to read aloud the names of the dead, marking a milestone anniversary
Scientists discover bacteria that lock toxic uranium into a stable form
Deep underground, bacteria may be capable of doing something remarkable: trapping toxic uranium before it spreads. When researchers fed microbes in uranium-contaminated mine water with glycerol, about 95% of the dissolved uranium disappeared within 130 days. The bacteria helped convert it into an unusually stable uranium compound that had rarely been observed before.
Scientists have now made the most comprehensive tally yet of deep-sea exploration — 43,681 dive records dating back to 1958 — and found that humans have directly seen less than 0.001% of the deep ocean floor, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, leaving the vast seafloor across 66% of Earth’s surface essentially unobserved.
Humanity has sent cameras to the Moon, Mars, Venus and the outer planets, but on Earth itself there is still a larger frontier that has barely been looked at directly. A 2025 study in Science Advances has now put a number on that gap: since 1958, researchers have compiled 43,681 records of dives deep enough […]
The Big Holes in Wearable Heart Rate Variability And Readiness Scores
On September 9th, Apple announced it was revamping its Apple Watch Health Sensing System, rolling out a Readiness score (0 to 10), and increasing the frequency of heart rate variability (HRV) outputs 24-fold. This can be viewed as upping its competition with various other consumer wearable sensors. These “readiness scores” as a composite of multiple metrics, with heart rate variability (HRV) being front and center for most. The majority of Americans are now using wearable sensors, which equates to well over 100 million adults. HRV and Readiness scores are increasingly being marketed as a measurement of autonomic nervous system health, a digital marker for future disease, a clock for biological age, and a holistic metric to promote healthspan and even longevity. (Apple also introduced a new longevity tab and “Health Age”.) None of this has been proven. In this edition of Ground Truths I am going to review what we know about heart rate variability and readiness scores. Heart Rate Variability HRV is the variation in normal heart cycle timing. The variability of the heart rate, the barely perceptible millisecond changes in time between consecutive heart beats (see R-R intervals in the Figure below, left panel), is due to interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic (vagal nerve) inputs. Distinct from heart rate, individuals with the same heart rate can have very different HRVs. It is a rough reflection of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity, inadequate to say whether a person’s ANS function is abnormal. For more than three decades, heart rate variability (HRV) has been measured and several studies have found an association of low HRV and clinical outcomes, particularly a link with higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. There have also been less well established links of low HRV to risk of early cognitive impairment, dementia, mental illness, Type 2 diabetes and substance abuse. An important reminder is that HRV is a surrogate marker without any established cause-and-effect relationship. If you increase your HRV, that doesn’t mean it will improve health outcomes. In fact, there is no hard evidence for that. All that work linking to health outcomes was done with electrocardiogram (ECG) derived HRV. Now, in the era of consumer wearables, this is getting assessed differently, by optical pulse (yes, the lights you see) plethysmography (PPG) or what is called pulse rate variability (PRV). They are not the same, as shown below (right panel) and only concordant when the delay between the ECG and pulse is kept constant, which basically means at rest. I should mention there’s also what I will call MPV, a mattress mechanical movement sensor, a derived heart rate variability, that companies like Eight Sleep use, even further away from directly measuring HRV. HRV has not one uniform measurement but many different types of quantification, such as RMSSD, the magnitude of difference between successive R-R intervals of normal sinus beats (N-N) or SDNN, the standard deviation of NN intervals, both in milliseconds. SDNN is one of the so-called frequency domain HRVs (others are LF, HF, LF/HF). Different wearable sensors use different metics; Apple has relied on SDNN and nearly all of the others use RMSSD, which is generally considered the more accurate metric. There’s also the different length of time measured, such as for a matter of minutes, all day, or an overnight’s sleep. Short measurements are especially problematic since they don’t capture enough of respiratory modulation and other factors that influence HRV. Share Ground Truths How well does HRV correlate with PRV? There are very limited studies, especially independently done. One that is commonly cited was conducted by Air Force researchers in only 13 healthy adults assessing Oura ring 3 and 4, Whoop 4.0, and Garmin Fenix 6 and showed a correlation coefficient of 0.88 to 0.97 and a mean absolute percentage error from 6 to 10%. The correlation is not a perfect 1.0, but there’s at least a fairly high level of correlation. HRV is supposed to increase during the night due to takeover of the parasympathetic nervous system, and higher during deep sleep. A recent example of my 1 week, all day “HRV,” and one during sleep is shown below. As you can see, the N of 1 data are inconsistent for the same days from different sensors (Oura, AppleWatch, Fitbit Air, and Eight Sleep) by patterns, absolute numbers, and comparison with prior days and weeks. The largest study in over 8 million Fitbit users (the old version, not Google Fitbit Air, introduced in May 2026) gives you a sense of the effect of age, sex, and the 2 different main HRV (here PRV) metrics, with RMSSD on the left and SDRR (=SDNN) on the right below. That study, from data collected in 2018, is a major outlier, since all the more recent ones are tiny with respect to sample size. Many of the companies have not had independent evaluation of their HRV, such as Eight Sleep, but have published a low standard error on their website. There are some other published studies on the correlation between HRV and PRV, but they are all small and only in healthy adults. A scoping review emphasized the lack of study in underrepresented individuals, including the aged, people of color (which affects the PPG signal), and individuals who are underweight or obese. Add the typical adult age 60 plus with one or more chronic diseases. For example, one study in over 900 adults found poor correlation of HRV and PRV, non-uniformly underestimated across many chronic diseases (cardiovascular, endocrine, neurological, respiratory, and others), concluding PRV is “an invalid surrogate for HRV.” A recent systematic review of 43 studies comparing HRV and PRV found reasonable pooled absolute standardized error (HRV as gold standard) but only 10 of the studies provided quantitative synthesis in ideal conditions. Their main conclusion was similarly cautious: “PPG-derived HRV [PRV] should not be regarded as universally interchangeable with ECG-derived HRV across all devices, populations, and recording contexts.” Factors Affecting HRV and PRV That gets me to the long list of factors that affect HRV (and PRV) besides the device, the type of measurement (RMSSD, SDNN or others), the person’s signal, the sensor site, the duration of data capture, if weighting by sleep stage is used, how artifact is processed and corrected. And this list is not complete!: Oura puts out data from their community of users (who input data) on what affects their overnight HRV. The factors currently provided are: no alcohol (increase 8%), melatonin (increase 2%, float tank (increase 2%), wine (decrease 4%), and party (decrease 14%) in overnight HRV. Must be some big parties! Subscribe What is a PRV measurement good for? It has been falsely characterized as an index of “autonomic balance” and a specific indicator of stress. A 2018 review of the studies available for HRV and its relationship to stress, not using any of the current wearables, found that stress can lower HRV. But so can many other factors. The non-specificity of the signal, indexed to the table above, is striking. Evidence from a UK Biobank study of over 46,000 participants with actual HRV looked at genetically predicted HRV, a genetic risk score, that failed to show the expected HRV-mortality link, indicating that _HRV is likely not causa_l, but rather a reflection of person’s physiologic state. A review of consumer wearable HRV data from 5 longitudinal studies showed that nighttime PRV was not associated with perceived stress, and surprisingly higher HRV, in the largest cohort (N=717 participants), was correlated with higher stress. An Oura ring cohort of 525 first-year college students found a link between overnight PRV and perceived stress, but that was also seen with resting heart rate, sleep, and respiratory rate. Several very small studies have examined the relationship of HRV and athletic injuries or guiding training with mixed, and predominantly negative results. HRV biofeedback training with paced breathing had no significant effect on reducing stress or raising HRV, as demonstrated with sham controlled trials. When HRV for multiple days showed a decline in conjunction with body temperature, the Oura ring published data for prediction of Covid. The WHOOP company sponsored an observational study, published in 2026, of 30,000 users for 72 weeks, without a control group, that reported reduced alcohol intake (5.8 % points) by self-report. That doesn’t tell us much, and particularly about the merits of HRV for behavioral change. If you use the same device and conditions as longitudinal trends for multiple (at least 2-3) weeks that may be the one way to get something useful from the measurements. Data for overnight sleep with minimal motion and using RMSSD is the best proxy for real HRV. The reason to look at trends rather than any given night is that it more likely represents something, even though you won’t know with certainty what the “it” is. Keep in mind there are no data, no peer-reviewed evidence, to show that HRV fluctuation in-person has any correlation with health outcomes. Share Readiness Scores These are proprietary scores that integrate different metrics for each of the wearables: no algorithms have been disclosed. They are unvalidated against health outcomes. In a review of 14 composite health scores of readiness and recovery, HRV contributed 86% to the scores, followed by reading heart rate (79%), physical activity and sleep duration (both at 71%). That review noted the substantial variability in measurement protools and lack of standardization. Sleep staging is notoriously inconsistent and inaccurate by these sensors, which adds further to the HRV uncertainties for what the scores, which use sleep stage data, mean. Only resting heart rate has been shown consistently across devices to be extremely accurate. I’ve made a Table to summarize what we know about which metrics are included, the scores, any peer-reviewed studies that compared the readiness score with health outcomes, and the corresponding (if any, NA-not available) citation. You will note that some companies do not use the term “readiness," such as WHOOP for recovery, and Garmin, which has 2 different scores, one of which is Body Battery. Eight Sleep uses the term “Fitness Score.” They all include HRV; Apple includes a new metric they call “Recovery HRV” which among other components uses 7-days of sleep, but it is unclear what this means or how it is differentiated from other scores (there are clearly no data for outcomes). We have no knowledge of how the different components are weighted or whether any of these scores are better than resting heart rate, HRV alone, physical activity, or any other single metric. Since none of these are standardized, they are not interchangeable, so if you get a 90 for Oura that has no relationship to a 90 on a Google Fitbit Air. Notably, the company can update its algorithm for readiness score at any point without notification to device users. Without any useful evidence of actionability for these scores or established relationship with health outcomes, it is hard to make a case for their value. At the Apple recent announcement they showed their Readiness score (0-10) on the watch (Figure below) but there are no published data on this score, not even on their website. It’s available only on their new Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4 [of course, ;-)]. That exemplifies the problems with these scores, lack of data and evidence for being meaningful to promote health. Perhaps the best study (which isn’t saying much) is the WHOOP Recovery for golfer performance, because it did correlate with an objective outcome, even though there was no control group and the authors were all from the company. Among the 389 pro golfers, an absolute 10-per cent point increase in Recovery score was associated with about 0.5 fewer strokes per round. But that’s hardly a health outcome! WHOOP is also conducting a study in over 2,700 runners to see if their recovery score will be linked to less injuries and improved performance, but that is not yet published and has no control group or randomization. Putting This in Context For two decades I’ve been enthusiastic about the potential for digital health and particularly wearable biosensors. Over the years, we’ve seen some great progress for their ability to promote physical activity and accurately detect atrial fibrillation (the first FDA cleared deep learning AI for consumers). That work was the subject of rigorous research. But there are holes in the data and evidence for other metrics. One notable one is the “VO2 max” story that I wrote about earlier this year. At that time many subscribers asked me to cover heart rate variability, which I finally got to here. When I dived into the research and publication for HRV and readiness scores, I expected to find at least some that were of high quality and demonstrated their utility by linkage to health outcomes. To my surprise, I found none. The wearable sensor measurements for HRV (PRV) are, for the most part, accurate, but that validation work has only been done in small studies of healthy adults and does not take into account the long list of factors, from the device, software side, and the user side, that affect HRV measurements. Moreover, this metric chiefly relies on optical sensing and, as we have learned for heart rate PPG sensing, may be less accurate in people of color. Keep in mind that all of the health outcome association evidence comes from ECG-derived HRV; none are from wearable sensor data. I will repeat the key point: there's no peer-reviewed evidence to show that in-person HRV fluctuation—or efforts to raise your HRV— has any correlation with health outcomes. For those of you who look at your HRV on awakening, or even 2+ week trends of it being low, I hope this context helps to relieve any anxiety. Yes, low HRV (not PRV) has been shown to increase risk of some diseases as summarized above. But efforts to raise your HRV—a surrogate metric— has not been established for improving any health outcomes. HRV does not have any evidence of causality (the genetic evidence actually goes against this possibility). In this summary, I have not included data for other wearable sensors such as Polar, Samsung, Withings, Suunto, Amazfit, Coros, Ultrahuman, or additional mattress sensors. These are beyond my first-hand experience, and as far as I know from my in-depth review none have any peer-reviewed published data that differ from the 6 sensors I’ve reviewed here. From the points I’ve gone over above, we’re not ready for readiness scores. Besides being proprietary, they are predominantly based on metrics that have their own issues. It’s compounding the problem, like building a house without a solid foundation that has never undergone a rigorous inspection, and then selling it. Like I mentioned for PRV, you can look at trends over weeks rather than any single day, to get a handle, but even that may not be helpful. There’s simply no evidence that these scores meaningfully relate to health outcomes. I’d emphasize they might, but that requires doing prospective or randomized studies to prove it. None exist. There’s great promise for HRV/PRV utility_. For example**,**_ Prof Maiken Nedergaard, who discovered the brain glymphatics that are essential in eliminating metabolic waste products from the brain during sleep, has posited that HRV could be a non-invasive marker for neuromodulator oscillations, brain-body regulatory circuits, and brain clearance. That would be extremely useful, but like everything else on HRV and readiness scores it requires solid research and validation. The lay media isn’t helping much to get the story straight. Earlier this year The Economist published a piece entitled “The most useful indicator of your overall health” which ordained HRV as an “accumulated stress score.” That’s akin to the false assertion about VO2max: “V02 max is the singular most powerful marker for longevity.” As I’ve summarized here, that is not established. The fact is that so many things can lower HRV, including physical exercise (especially an intense workout), reduced sleep quality, stress, the list above, no less the device, signal, and software. Whatever fluctuations observed have not been correlated with any health outcome. Sadly, “datamaxxers” are widely using HRV and readiness scores that have never been validated to mean anything. We already know that for some people using the sensors for sleep metrics, it can induce “orthosomnia,” an obsession to get high sleep quality, with associated high levels of anxiety. In an experiment done by a company to promote sleep quality for its employees, “For those employees who did use the trackers, many reported feeling perfectly rested until their tracker told them they had had a terrible night. Others were told that they had slept like a baby when they had actually been lying awake worrying about the quality of their sleep. “ The same problem can result from preoccupation with HRV or readiness scores, with anxiety that would lead to further reduction in both. It you are using a wearable like >100 million American adults, it’s OK to look at these data, but contextualized with the major caveats reviewed here. If you are one to require evidence that HRV or readiness scores are linked to health outcomes, you may not even want to look. The companies make it hard to turn them off! Let me end with the companies that make and sell wearables. Apple’s doubling down on HRV (24-fold more reporting and heart rate very 5 seconds) and introduction of a Readiness score tells us that consumers have bought into these metrics and they are joining the club. However, all of this is occurring with a backdrop of tens millions of users, claims about the data that are not backed up by adequate evidence, marketing way out in front of whatever limited data exists, and not being transparent about their readiness score algorithms. The companies can well afford to do the research that is needed to connect these metrics with health outcomes show, once and for all, that increasing HRV or using readiness scores promotes our health. If they believed and invested in the products they are selling, we’d not be in this position of not knowing. That’s essentially where we are with HRV and readiness scores. Perhaps someday this will change and we’ll have good reason to embrace them. NB: I wrote this post. No AI. I have no conflicts of interest with any of its content. Loading... Ground Truths has 215,000 subscribers from every US state and 214 countries. There are over 300,000 followers of Ground Truths so more than 90,000 folks who can easily convert to be free subscribers. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths The proceeds from all voluntary paid subscriptions go to support our summer internship program. It enabled us to accept and support a record number of 62 summer interns that joined us in 2026! These are high school, college and medical students selected from thousands of applicants. We couldn’t do this expanded program without the funds coming in through Ground Truths. Thank you!
Scientists discover dangerous water oscillations between Lake Varna and Black Sea
For years, pilots have observed strong and unusual currents in the 2.4-kilometer-long (1.5-mile-long), 300-meter-wide (984-foot-wide) canal connecting Lake Varna with the Black Sea. Maarja Kruusmaa, an ...
Scientists Document Sharks Scraping Against Manta Rays. But What Does It Mean?
Sharks have been observed rubbing against manta rays and other large marine animals, likely as an alternative way to remove parasites when cleaner fish aren’t accessible.
Towards a responsive health system and equitable access to quality RMNCAH services
Indonesia’s vast geography and sociocultural diversity shape the delivery of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) services in ways that are both enabling and challenging. Across provinces, significant variation has been observed in how services are planned, resourced, and delivered. These variations in service standards and quality are felt daily in the lives of women, newborns and adolescents. Despite these challenges, progress is visible. National estimates show a drop in maternal mortality ratio, from 331 to 140 per 100 000 live births since 2000, signaling improvements in care quality and access. Fertility has stabilised and contraceptive use has grown, yet unmet reproductive health needs persist, and adolescent pregnancies continue to reflect early marriage and limited access to youth-friendly services.To better understand how Indonesia’s health system has evolved under decentralisation, the Ministry of Health, supported by World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), IPAS and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), conducted a joint external review of RMNCAH programmes. This review draws on multiple sources of evidence, including existing literature, policy documents, national health system data, as well as field visits to six selected provinces to represent Indonesia’s geographic and administrative diversity. During the field visits, review teams observed service delivery in health facilities, spoke with health workers and local leaders and met mothers and families to understand how RMNCAH policies are operationalised. One of the challenges identified was the management of low birthweight (LBW) infants, a major contributor to neonatal deaths, under resource constraints. One midwife described a severe case of extremely LBW twins, one stillborn and the other died after three days of care. She recalled how the surviving infant struggled to swallow and may not have received breast milk, while simultaneous emergencies required the team’s attention, affecting the care provided to the infant.A subsequent review of the case by the district health office revealed insufficient antenatal care, fragmented maternal medical history due to population mobility, referral delays, limited provider capacity in neonatal intravenous access and a heavy workload that constrained proper newborn monitoring. These insights informed recommendations to strengthen both system-wide and service-level responses. Since the early 2000s, Indonesia’s decentralisation initiative has given much of the responsibility for funding, staffing and managing health services to regional governments. While the Ministry of Health sets national clinical standards, daily management of public health facilities falls under regional authorities through the Ministry of Internal Affairs. While this arrangement allows services to be tailored to local needs, it also depends heavily on local capacity for planning, budgeting and management. Health facilities and district health offices are better positioned to translate national priorities into local action when they have access to consistent technical support, helping health workers manage resource constraints and infrastructure gaps.The complexity of Indonesia’s health system governance is no easy feat to navigate. Understanding these dynamics is essential to strengthening policy, improving coordination and ensuring more equitable access to services across Indonesia. Under the leadership of Ministry of Health, recommendations from this exercise will be key in guiding the nation’s roadmap to an equitable and quality health system for RMNCAH.Written by Edit Oktavia Manuama, National Professional Officer (Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health), and Jessie Yunus, National Professional Officer (Gender, Rights, Equity, and Disability Inclusion)
The same scientists who reported water erupting from Europa in 2014 have now reanalysed 14 years of Hubble data and cut their confidence from 99.9% to below 90%. The signal may have been statistical noise, leaving Europa’s famous geysers physically plausible—but never conclusively observed, and never proven to connect with the ocean below.
A 2026 reanalysis finds no localized Hubble signal requiring a Europa plume, weakening the original claim while leaving smaller or intermittent eruptions physically possible.
Chimpanzees in Uganda are locked in a deadly 'civil war' after their group split apart — and scientists don't know why
The first well-observed "civil war" in wild chimpanzees reveals that shifting social ties alone can fracture a group, igniting deadly conflict between former friends.
Ex-Google engineer says Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai share the same trait—it’s the lesson he swears by as a $7.2 billion AI CEO
$7.2 billion AI founder Arvind Jain ‘observed’ Sundar Pichai at Google for years before he became CEO—he learned you need to ‘think crazy’ to be successful
Scientists observe Einstein’s gravity in the quantum world for the first time
Physicists have directly observed a long-predicted quantum effect of gravity, putting one of Einstein’s foundational ideas to a striking new test. Using ultracold atoms, researchers split an atom’s quantum wave so that one part was held in place while the other fell freely under gravity, then reunited the two to measure the tiny difference that emerged.
Is Germany benefitting yet from the crisis in US research?
Science|Business - Table.Media partnershipScience|Business has partnered with Table.Media, a leading source of news about higher education and research in Germany. Each week, we are publishing one of each other’s stories to give readers an even broader range of insight into R&D policy across Europe.Drawing over 500 participants, the German Academic International Network conference in San Francisco brings together researchers, universities, scientific organisations and policymakers in the US as part of an attempt to recruit international talent for Germany. It also serves as an annual barometer for the uncertainty triggered by the Trump administration’s science policies. As was the case last year, Germany’s political presence was unusually strong: federal lawmakers, nine state ministers of science and research, and federal research state secretary Marcus Pleyer all attended. Joybrato Mukherjee, president of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), has observed a marked shift at US universities a year after the Trump administration began sweeping interventions: the initial state of "shock and paralysis" has given way to a strategic approach to the situation. Universities are seeking new funding sources, mounting legal challenges against interventions and opening themselves up more to international collaborations, including with Germany, he said. Early-career international researchers with expiring visas are considered particularly vulnerable. Germany is benefiting from increased demand among this pool of young talent; the country’s 1,000 Minds Plus programme, designed in part to lure German academics back home, has already filled up around one-third of its capacity. Meanwhile, Markus Blume, Bavaria’s science minister and current chair of the federal Conference of Science Ministers, sees an "enormous outflow of talent from the US." An increasing number of international researchers want to leave. Applications to Canada have risen by 42% January, and those to Europe by 32%. Meanwhile, the number of people drawn to the US is plummeting. "In this context, Germany must position itself as a prime destination offering reliable conditions, institutional stability and academic freedom, including through smart collaborations," Blume told Table.Briefings.“Darkest hour”At the get-together in San Francisco, the former president of the US National Academy of Sciences, Marcia McNutt, highlighted the gravity of the situation on the ground in a keynote address. She described the present moment as the "darkest hour for the US scientific system." At the same time, she said that cooperation should be maintained, especially during a crisis. Established researchers in the US are less likely to leave. Ulrike Malmendier, a former member of the German Council of Economic Experts and an economist at Berkeley, explained why established researchers are not packing their bags and leaving the US in droves: working conditions and the concentration of talent at places like Berkeley and Stanford remain unparalleled. According to Peter-André Alt, managing director of the Wübben Foundation, which helps Germany attract international academics, political restrictions are not the only grievance voiced by US-based researchers. "There are evidently still many areas where, fortunately, unfettered research is possible," Alt told Table.Briefings. Instead, the primary complaint concerns the cost of living, which has "skyrocketed” to absurd levels. "Runaway inflation, like that currently seen in the US, is certainly no draw for young scientific talent,” he said. Return homeA growing number of early-career researchers from Germany appear to be considering a return home. Jörn Benzinger, who is responsible for recruiting early-career researchers from abroad at Ruhr University Bochum, reports numerous conversations with researchers who are taking a closer look at the German academic landscape."Germany has definitely moved more into the spotlight,” he said. States, university alliances and research organisations joined forces to recruit talent. Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia were prominently represented, as were alliances such as the Berlin University Alliance and the University Alliance Ruhr. Benzinger sums up Germany’s approach with a new formula: "collaboration is the new competition." He notes that it is becoming increasingly difficult for individual universities to gain international visibility, while regional research ecosystems and collaborations are growing in importance. Afraid to leaveThe crisis in the US academic sector is also straining transatlantic research relations. Benzinger reports that some US-based researchers had to decline brief invitations to Germany because they could not be certain of being allowed to re-enter the US afterward.He considers the simple poaching of researchers to be the wrong approach; what is needed, he says, are "reliable offers and long-term partnerships."However, Green Party politician Ayşe Asar, who also attended the conference, sees a significant need for improvement, particularly regarding career paths in Germany.While lifetime professorships and academic freedom certainly make Germany attractive, young researchers also require predictable career paths, tenure-track positions and flatter hierarchies.
Astronomers spot the closest, fastest star ever seen orbiting our galaxy's monster black hole
A star is whipping around the Milky Way's central black hole incredibly fast, setting a record for the tightest orbit ever observed
AB Science reports completion of the step 3 of phase 1, evaluating the combination of AB8939 with venetoclax for the treatment of refractory or relapsed AML
PRESS RELEASE AB SCIENCE REPORTS COMPLETION OF THE STEP 3 OF PHASE 1, EVALUATING THE COMBINATION OF AB8939 WITH VENETOCLAX FOR THE TREATMENT OF REFRACTORY OR RELAPSED ACUTE MYELOID LEUKEMIA THE COMBINATION OF AB8939 WITH VENETOCLAX GENERATED A 67% OVERALL RESPONSE RATE (ORR) AND A 100% DISEASE CONTROL RATE (DCR), WITH NO DOSE-LIMITING TOXICITIES (DLT) OBSERVED, IN A POOR-PROGNOSIS POPULATION WITH ADVERSE GENETICS TREATED IN THE SECOND - TO FOURTH-LINE RELAPSED OR REFRACTORY SETTING Paris, June 2
CERN Physicists Observe New Exotic Particle
Physicists with the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have observed the Bc*+ meson, an excited version of the Bc+ meson -- both consist of a charm quark and a bottom antiquark.
Whale Song Appears To Travel Faster Than The Speed Of Sound Without Breaking Einstein's Theory Of Special Relativity
A phenomenon observed in whale song makes soundwaves appear faster than they should be. It's possible in light, too, but despite whales being very smart, they haven't found a way to break the speed limit of the universe… yet.
The Invisible Disability: An Employer’s Guide to Mental Health and the ADA
As Mental Health Awareness Month (annually observed each May) draws attention to the prevalence of mental health conditions in the workplace, employers should be reminded that mental health conditions may qualify as disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and, if so, employers have the same reasonable accommodation obligations they would for any physical disability.
Vieu launches AI-ready map of business relationships, challenging tech incumbents
Vieu, a Seattle startup founded by former Microsoft leaders, launched its "Business Graph" — a live map of business relationships built from observed signals like shared work history and board affiliations, rather than the self-reported connections on LinkedIn.
Polish scientists and students rally in campaign for 3% funding target
Polish scientists and students have been flooding social media with calls on the government to raise research and development spending as part of 3% for Science, 100% for Poland, a campaign born earlier this month out of frustration with chronic underfunding in the academic sector. On May 27, thousands took the slogan on to the streets.The EU has been trying to convince member states to raise their R&D expenditures to 3% of GDP for more than two decades, but the idea has never gained traction in capitals. Finance ministers were too busy plugging budget holes created in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, then the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and now the war in Iran.Critics say that countries missed or ignored the target because it is voluntary, but also because research communities have rarely raised their voice to put pressure on national governments. The European Commission hopes to make the target legally binding in the upcoming European Research Area Act, an EU-wide regulation that should be announced by the end of the year. Academia in Poland has been faced with a funding crisis for years, often leaving its members with no other choice but to work abroad in order to access better resources, or leave the sector altogether in the hope of earning a decent living. The risk, in the long-term, is that brain drain stifles local innovation capacity and technological competitiveness.In just a few weeks, the movement rallied nationwide support, including from major academic bodies and trade unions such as the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland and the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Its public petition collected more than 23,000 signatures. On May 27, it formed the first large protest for science in Poland, gathering thousands of people in front of the parliament building in Warsaw.Ilona Uryga-Bugajska, representative of the Marie Curie Alumni Association Poland Chapter, was there. “The protest was peaceful, with no incidents reported, and the entire event took place in a respectful and calm atmosphere,” she said. Banners she saw in the crowd carried slogans such as “A little longer and I’ll be teaching in a supermarket,” “National culture, starvation salary,” “Stop the destruction of science,” “Passion will not pay the rent,” “Without action, don’t expect a better future,” and “Pull science out of the hole.” She also observed a strong presence of young researchers, who are on the frontline of Poland’s academic crisis.“Academics are usually people who prefer discussion, analysis, dialogue and compromise. We are not a group that protests easily,” said Katarzyna Marzec, professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Jagiellonian University Medical College and AGH University of Krakow, who also took part. “But many of us feel that we have been pushed against the wall.”Aleksandra Rutkowska, translational neuroscientist and research group leader at the Medical University of Gdańsk, agreed. “Frustration in the scientific community is very high,” she said. “Science is often used politically as a symbol of innovation and modernity, but the everyday reality inside many institutions is much more difficult. There is a large gap between the public narrative and the actual condition of the sector.”Maria Wiktoria Górna, head of the structural biology group at the University of Warsaw and one of the organisers of the movement, told Science|Business that the campaign would continue without proven results. This might involve another strike in the autumn, she said. “Empty promises are not enough by now.”Campaign demandsAccording to Uryga-Bugajska, the organisers officially presented their demands and concerns to representatives of the government present at the event. These included Marek Gzik, deputy minister of science and higher education, and Karolina Zioło-Pużuk, secretary of state of that same ministry.The headline demand, for the government to increase national spending on R&D to 3% of GDP by 2030, should be within Poland’s economic capacity, Rutkowska said. “The real question is whether there is genuine long-term political commitment to treating science as a strategic priority rather than a slogan.”In 2024, R&D expenditure in Poland stood at 1.41% of GDP, which is slightly above the average for central and eastern Europe, with countries such as Czechia recording 1.82%, Hungary 1.31% and Romania 0.46%. However, it falls noticeably short of the EU average of 2.24%, which just a handful of countries exceed, including Germany, Belgium and Sweden.Campaigners are also asking for fair wages for scientific staff, including PhD stipends and junior academic salaries, which are widely considered uncompetitive. Starting doctoral scholarships amount to some €843 gross per month, when the statutory minimum wage stands at €1,135. By pushing early-career researchers out of Poland, growing precarity has caused a generational gap in the academic workforce, with just 25% of lecturers aged under 40. In this context, the movement fears that scientific careers could soon be accessible to a privileged minority only.Grzegorz Spólnik is a case in point. After 15 years working in mass spectrometry at the Polish Academy of Sciences, he decided to leave partly “to earn enough money to live a normal life,” he said. “At that time, my earnings were similar to those of people working in grocery shops, and the work-life balance is something that does not exist in science, or is very hard to achieve.”Now a senior field service engineer for Polish laboratory equipment supplier Bioanalytic, he would consider going back to research, “but never in the public sector, maybe some start-up or a big private company with ambitious R&D.”The campaigners want to see more support for basic research and have called for €236 million to be added to the budget of the National Science Centre (NCN) in 2027 so that the average grant application success rate does not fall below 25%.“At the protest, there was a banner I particularly liked: ‘NCN is not a lottery.’ Unfortunately, for many researchers, it increasingly feels exactly like one,” Marzec said. “Personally, I am one of the lucky ones. I work at two of the strongest institutions in the country, where the research standards are very high. I know that in many other institutions, the situation is much worse and obtaining funding for research at an early-career stage is becoming nearly impossible.”Rutkowska also considers herself fortunate. After studying abroad and holding a postdoctoral position, she returned to Poland, where her pay was supported through an NCN-funded project linked to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. “This also made me very aware that good research conditions in Poland often depend on external competitive funding rather than on stable support from the system itself,” she said.Long-term strategyBeyond the lack of funds for both salaries and grants, scientists believe that the issue is structural. “The biggest problem at the moment is the complete lack of a clear long-term strategy for the development of science and research from the current government,” Marzec said. “Everything ends with declarations and promises that are never truly followed by concrete actions or structural reforms.”Rutkowska agreed, citing a lack of infrastructure, continuity and long-term institutional support.“Running a research group in Poland often means functioning as an entire institution at once,” she said. “I am a principal investigator, a mentor, a recruiter, a project administrator and, when needed, still someone who returns to the lab bench to help with experiments,” she went on. “This creates a large hidden workload that takes time and energy away from actual science. At times, it feels as though scientists are no longer expecting extra help; we simply hope the system will stop creating additional obstacles that make research unnecessarily difficult.”Related articlesStrategic thinking: Germany funds joint research with Poland and FrancePoland to transfer €30M of regional funds to boost Horizon Europe participationPoland is funding fewer basic research grants as high inflation hitsIn short, “academics are expected to teach, publish papers, apply for grants and conduct high-quality research, while funding and salaries remain very limited,” said Uryga-Bugajska, who returned to her home country after 13 years in the UK.According to Marzec, another issue is the way that research institutions are evaluated. Previously, this took place every four years, with a clear differentiation between stronger and weaker institutions. “The current government, perhaps to avoid political backlash, effectively concluded that everyone is doing well, so in practice no meaningful evaluation took place,” she said.But in her view, “some form of serious assessment is necessary” to ensure the excellence and international competitiveness of Polish institutions, and to determine how to best use public resources and where institutional structures need reform. “Some institutions may need to rethink hiring practices in order to attract ambitious young researchers who are capable of obtaining competitive grants and building internationally visible research groups.” Rutkowska has already had to adapt. “When hiring PhD students, I often have to combine different funding sources creatively to make positions attractive enough for talented people to stay in science,” she said. “Many young researchers do not see a stable future in academia in Poland, and that is deeply worrying.”
What Does the Science of Climate Change Really Look Like?
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series on how the Right should think about environmental and climate policy. Read Chris Barnard on Reclaiming Environmental Policy from the Left. More than a decade ago, the world’s governments negotiated and signed the Paris Climate Agreement, committing to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. In the following years, climate had immense cultural power. Greta Thunberg emerged. Fortune 500 companies established net-zero plans. The U.S. got the Inflation Reduction Act. Then the pendulum swung back. President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, speaking of green energy as a “scam” and carbon footprints as a “hoax” and on all matters of international policy emphasizing bilateral engagement and power over globalism and cooperation. The technology companies that had been at the forefront of net-zero pledges and green leadership discovered the importance of all-of-the-above power to their visions for artificial intelligence and began quietly postponing or removing their targets. On the left side of the political spectrum, rising concerns about inflation and cost pushed climate lower down in the stated priorities of voters and stump speeches of politicians. The moment is ripe for a reset on the politics of climate change and for conservatives especially to chart a course that acknowledges and addresses the real challenges in plausible ways. So what should we think about climate change as we enter a post-peak climate era? If it is neither an apocalypse nor a hoax, what will hold up as a durable view of climate change? And how does it project onto the concerns and priorities of the right-of-center’s emerging coalition? New to Commonplace_? Subscribe below to get the magazine in your inbox._ Subscribe A Solid Foundation As the politics and economics of climate careened over the past ten years, the physics carried on regardless. In 2015, the year the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted, the world emitted 41.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. By 2025, emissions had risen only 2.4%, to 42.2 gigatonnes, because falling emissions from land use offset increasing emissions from fossil fuels. But slow growth in annual emissions is not rapid decline, let alone net-zero, so carbon dioxide kept accumulating in the atmosphere, going from 399 to 426 parts per million. Global temperature kept rising too, from about 1.1 degrees Celsius above the 1850–1900 average in 2015, to 1.4 degrees above it in 2025. None of this should surprise anyone. Even most prominent skeptics, like the authors of the 2025 report commissioned by the Trump administration’s Department of Energy, accept the basic physics. Carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere at industrial volumes accumulates and traps heat that would otherwise escape to space. That heat warms the upper ocean and increases temperatures at the surface. Increased ocean heat and melting of land ice cause sea levels to rise. Changes in the climate become noticeable to us as subtle shifts in temperature and precipitation, seasons arriving early or late, changes in the surrounding ecosystem, and weather extremes. The much more meaningful debate is not about whether these things are happening, but about what it all means for human societies. (While it is a proxy measure of overall risk, no one experiences global surface temperature.) This debate invokes at least three interesting questions: how much today’s warming is showing up in regional climate trends, how much more warming we should anticipate, and how extreme weather events can be understood in the context of climate change. Recent scientific advances give us new insights into each of these, but there is still much to learn. This is the context in which the next generation of conservative leaders will be the first to deal with significant climate change as a fact, not a forecast. It will be with them for their entire careers. Our evolving scientific picture of climate change will come from weather and climate records stretching further into the past, new kinds of observations in the present, better modeling tools for the future, and simply more time to observe the emergence of climate signals and their tangible effects on ecosystems and communities in the United States and around the world. The policy landscape will be shaped by not only the impacts of changes in the climate, but also by the ways in which societies respond and by the emergence of new technologies for both altering the trajectory of emissions and adapting to new climate realities. Global climate records now show the fingerprints of warming in different phenomena around much of the world. The IPCC, in its most recent assessment report, documents warming trends over all land regions, even as natural variability adds substantial variance to local trends. And the highest temperature extremes have become more intense and frequent, almost everywhere, since the 1950s. Scientists are highly confident that these changes are attributable to human influence. But confidence in detecting trends and attributing them to human influence degrades across heavy precipitation events; drought trends are heterogeneous and not attributable to human activity with great confidence. For hurricanes, tornadoes, and other severe storms there is even less confidence in trends or their relationship to climate change. In general, a fair summary of the evidence is that for well-observed phenomena, like surface temperature or heavy rainfall, with a clear relationship to warming, our multidecadal observations are consistent with human influence overcoming natural variability over long time periods and extremes increasing. For regions that are sampled more sparsely, or phenomena with a higher noise-to-signal ratio, we will need to observe them longer to understand the magnitude of the climate signal or improve dynamical understanding using models and observations together. But for Climate For those who can’t wait, we also have new techniques that attempt to understand the role climate change has in influencing particular extreme events. When the climate is changing and disaster strikes, it is natural to ask whether that disaster was somehow “caused” by climate change. For scientists and policymakers acting in good faith, answering that question helps develop a more accurate picture of the problem, how it may be getting worse, and what preparations we should be making to respond to it. It may, at some point, give some weight to how liability is assigned by courts or adaptation funding is distributed by society. But how we ask this question is extremely important. It is easy to get the analysis wrong by discounting the role that meteorology plays. As meteorologist Theodore Shepherd explained in a clear 2016 review of climate attribution methods, “if a weather or climate event is truly extreme in the present climate, then perforce it requires unusual meteorological conditions, which means that climate change is at most a contributing factor.” Share Scientists have two ways to probe climate as a contributing factor, both of which have entered media coverage of extreme weather events. One asks a probabilistic question: How much more likely is a particular event (e.g., a temperature record over a particular area) amid global warming? The answer involves using historical records and computer simulations to estimate the likelihood of such an event in both a changed and a preindustrial climate. The findings are less about the specific event, and more about events of that nature. The other question is: How has the changed climate affected the specific event in question? Here, scientists try to understand what a similar event would have looked like in the preindustrial climate. This is sometimes called the storyline approach, where the story is the specific meteorological details of the event. These methods offer ways to test the intuition of scientists about real weather extremes. In late June and early July of 2021, a persistent high-pressure ridge, or heat dome, set up over the Pacific Northwest and an extraordinary heat wave affected the area from Oregon to British Columbia. For six days, it shattered temperature records across the region and hundreds died from heat-related causes, in an area where such high, and persistently high, temperatures were well outside of experience and many live without air conditioning. Scientists have studied its connection to climate change using multiple approaches. This specific event was created by a rare combination of meteorological factors, a strong high-pressure ridge created the conditions for extreme heat, which occurred on top of higher average temperatures in the region from global warming. Probabilistic analyses showed that climate change increased the likelihood of such an event by at least 8-fold to more than 100-fold. One standout example found that such an event had effectively zero probability of occurring in the preindustrial climate. The enormous range in these assessments reflects how hard it is to estimate probabilities of events at the tail of the historical record. Estimates of the effect on the temperature of the event are more clustered. A recent review paper documents how multiple methodologies have found a positive influence, roughly 1-2 degrees Celsius of an anomaly that exceeded 15 degrees, of climate change on the temperature magnitude of the event. Multiple studies have investigated and found some positive influence of climate change in other extreme events. Attribution studies found climate likely increased the heavy rainfall that accompanied Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and surrounding regions in 2024. The extensive fires that struck Los Angeles in 2025 illustrate how the causal chain can become messy, though. Studies do detect a positive influence of climate on the event’s likelihood, but while climate change likely contributed to underlying aridity, it would not have played a role in the heavy winds or land practices that preceded disaster. These event attribution studies will become more common for extreme, or damaging, weather events. They can be produced quickly, and often are reported before peer review. As the Pacific Northwest heatwave example shows, when multiple methods converge on a positive attribution, the finding should probably carry some weight even if you have to be careful about accepting the results from a single study. I expect that as climate change proceeds and the climate thus departs further from a preindustrial counterfactual, the influence will become more detectable across a variety of extreme events and more easily identified. This will be used to cast blame, but can also be used to inform how communities and society adapt to ongoing change. We May Still Be Surprised One positive development, insofar as less climate change is better, has been that our central estimates for future climate change should probably be revised downward. Mostly, that is because the high-end warmings that scientists regularly analyzed about ten to 20 years ago, driven by high emissions throughout the twenty-first century, now appear to be somewhere between unlikely and impossible. At one time, the upper end of mainstream climate projections extended well into 4 to 6 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of this century, which, models suggest, would have wrought enormous real-world damage. Current energy and policy trends now point toward 2.5 or 3 degrees. Damages and risks are commonly modeled as increasing steeply with more warming, so this is already a better-than-previously-expected outcome for the climate (which is independent of the physical response to emissions). But we should maintain a wide range for plausible outcomes and prepare for the possibility of being surprised. Emissions trajectories are subject to deep uncertainty, the physical climate response is still developing, and whatever change occurs in the climate will then be mediated through unpredictable economic, social, and political institutions. Over the past decade, the pace of warming surprised some keen observers and appeared to accelerate, though not yet outside the range of expectation provided by climate models. The reasons for that apparent acceleration are being actively studied (as was the apparent pause in warming from 1998 to 2012), but no single driver has emerged. Some blame it on the El Niño, variability which would have no bearing on climate. Some think it is a result of factories in East Asia and global shipping fleets cutting aerosol emissions, which in the strongest version of the argument would indicate higher climate sensitivity to carbon-dioxide emissions. Others are more measured, not yet ready to draw solid conclusions as to whether climate projections require revision. We will have to see. Long-Term Thinking Climate change asks us to think over long time scales. But the pace of human-driven warming is compressing a large global change into a century. Changing weather patterns and extreme events are already causing adjustment costs and damages and will do more. Adaptation will help, but it is not free. For some communities, these costs will erode livelihoods and well-being, and may force migration. Are we prepared for large-scale managed retreats in the United States? Thankfully, American wealth, geographical diversity, and moderate climates may leave us better prepared than many around the world. But wealthy countries can still suffer serious disruption from narrowly concentrated costs, even if they appear entirely manageable in aggregate. Readers of Commonplace are familiar with the challenges of rapidly adapting to economic forces. The displacement that came from the China Shock is barely perceptible in aggregate GDP and employment data, but it affected millions of people and those people were far less mobile than economic models tended to assume. Deindustrialization rippled through the nation with enormous effects for not only our economic vitality, but also our national security. The forces surrounding climate change may not be so different; the world gets richer and must accept some diffuse costs. Those may be modest overall, but cause all manner of unpredictable effects with which policymakers must cope. In the case of the China Shock, our faith in a growing pie served us poorly. We’ll need to do better on climate. Leave a comment
Scientists observe Einstein's gravity in the quantum world
An international team including Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Sir Roger Penrose has observed a long-predicted effect of gravity on a falling quantum object for the first time. The result shows ...
Vieu launches AI-ready map of business relationships, challenging sales-tech incumbents
Vieu, a Seattle startup founded by former Microsoft leaders, launched its "Business Graph" — a live map of business relationships built from observed signals like shared work history and board affiliations, rather than the self-reported connections on LinkedIn.
Scientists Discover Weird Conditions at Site of Star That Exploded During the Period of Japanese Samurai
Astronomers observed a star that had survived its own explosion some 845 years ago. New observations raise even more questions.
‘I’m listening hard’: Teens increasingly turn to AI chatbots for mental health support
In the past year, researchers have observed a 50% increase in reliance on AI chatbots for mental health support among teens.
MBA Voices: Business Schools Don’t Just Tell You Who They Are
The questions asked -- and the red flags observed -- that helped one MBA identify the right business school for her.
A Giant Cloud Appears on Mars Every Morning. Scientists Finally Think They Know Why.
An enormous Martian volcano may create clouds through a process never before observed in nature.
A CDC survey finds 4 in 5 US teenagers fall short of high heart health scores
A CDC study of 5,192 US high school students found that approximately 80% had low or moderate cardiovascular health scores based on five measures assessed in a national survey. Diet, sleep, and physical activity received the least favorable scores, with differences observed across sex, grade, and racial and ethnic groups.
Dark matter surprise has scientists scrambling for explanations
UCLA's Alvine Kamaha and her colleagues on the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment observed an event that could be interpreted as a signal from WIMPs.
Spread of Seafloor Directly Observed for the First Time
The spread of the ocean floor, as tectonic plates spread apart, is known but hard to observe. Scientists have now documented the process in action.
Scientists watch particles emerge from empty space for the first time
Scientists have observed particles forming from the vacuum, revealing how matter may emerge from seemingly empty space.
NYC Health + Hospitals Recognizes Twelve Long-Term Care Residents Celebrating More Than 100 Years on National Centenarian Day
In celebration of National Centenarian Day (observed on September 22), NYC Health + Hospitals honored twelve residents who have reached an
Real-time quantum jump in sound observed for first time
A Stanford team has documented the first direct observation of quantum jumps of sound in a mechanical resonator, completing an arc of scientific exploration that started more than 100 years ago.
Efzimfotase alfa demonstrated improvements in bone health in treatment-naïve pediatric patients with hypophosphatasia achieving median difference of 1.67 vs placebo in RGI-C Score at week 25 in MULBERRY Phase III trial
Positive results from the MULBERRY Phase III trial showed that efzimfotase alfa (ALXN1850), an investigational enzyme replacement therapy, demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in bone health in children (2 to
Scientists discover a way to reverse coral bleaching at record speed
For the first time, scientists have observed bleached corals on the brink of death fully recover through brief contact with healthy clones. Ghostly white corals returned to full health in a laboratory ...
'Really, really weird': Physicists entangle two moving atoms for the first time, validating 'spooky' quantum theory
For the first time, scientists have observed quantum entanglement in the momentum of massive particles. The result, decades in the making, could help physicists probe the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity.
Good science requires much more than evidence
Empiricists believe that scientific theories are true only if they make correct empirical predictions: if we can't verify these predictions, then there is no reason to expect that they tell us anything about reality. However, Professor of Philosophy at King's College David Kyle Johnson argues that this is mistaken. In response to Bas van Fraassen, who has written on this subject for the IAI, he argues that we have many reasons for believing a theory to be true, such as it being parsimonious and having large scope — qualities which have been used throughout the history of science as criteria for judging theories. In 2024, Princeton philosopher Bas van Fraassen wrote a short article for IAI News entitled “Science Does not Describe Reality: The Limits and Benefits of Explanation.” At the time, I was working on two projects (a science book and a Great Course) that, when completed, would (among other things) defend science’s ability to describe reality. I wanted to write a response to van Fraassen, but the projects demanded too much of my attention. But now that those projects are complete, I am in a position to explain the objections to van Fraassen’s thesis. Summarizing van Fraassen’s argumentIn a nutshell, his argument is this: What scientists do is make predictions based on theories and then invite others to test to see whether those predictions are borne out. “If theory T is right, result R should happen in experimental condition C.” Many think that running an experiment that shows that R happens in condition C is proof that theory T is true (and should be believed). But, van Fraassen argues, that R happened in condition C is only a reason to think that R happens in condition C. That’s the only observable, or empirical, result we can actually see, so that is all that we are really justified in believing. (The underlying theory that made that prediction still may or may not be true.) That is why he calls those who accept his position “empiricists.”Before I explain what is wrong with this position, let me explain what it gets right. What van Fraassen Gets RightFirst, a theory correctly predicting the results of an experiment is not, strictly speaking, “proof” that the theory is correct. The basic line of reasoning is this:If the theory T is true, result R should happen. Result R did happen. Thus, theory T is true.In other words:“If T then R. R. Thus, T.”This is a deductively invalid, fallacious mode of reasoning, called “affirming the consequent.” Those premises do not guarantee that the conclusion follows. “If I am in Pennsylvania, then I am in the USA. I am in the USA. Thus, I am in Pennsylvania.” Clearly that argument doesn’t guarantee its conclusion; neither does the above argument.However, science is not a deductive method of reasoning; it is an inductive one. And inductive arguments merely try to raise the probability of their conclusion, not “prove” them for certain. Thus, the fact that an experimental result doesn’t prove a theory is true is irrelevant; it’s not supposed to. That is not what scientific reasoning is about.___If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational.___Second, it’s also true that a single experimental result doesn’t provide enough justification to believe that a theory is true. Scientists do not come to a consensus about whether a theory is true by looking at a single experiment; they look at all the evidence to determine where the preponderance of evidence points. The mere fact that I am in the USA raises the probability that I am in Pennsylvania, but not nearly enough to conclude that I am in Pennsylvania. However, if I am also regularly encountering people wearing Eagles and Phillies hats and seeing advertisements for Founding Father tours, I probably am. In the same way, a theory successfully predicting the outcome of one experiment is not enough to conclude that it is true; but if a theory makes a wide variety of predictions that are all vindicated by multiple experiments, performed by many different groups and people, all actively trying to prove the theory false (which is what good scientific experiments are designed to do)—that is a good reason to conclude that the theory is true. In other words, if you repeatedly try to prove something false but can’t, that is a very good indication that it isn’t. The problem of underdeterminationIn reply, those whom van Fraassen calls “empiricists” often point to the “problem of underdetermination.” For any given theory that makes successful predictions about what happens in experimental conditions, there are countless other possible theories that make exactly the same predictions—and since they do, the experimental evidence in question is just as much reason to accept any of those theories as it is to accept our original one. Thus, the argument goes, we have no way of knowing whether our original theory is true, or one of the other “predictively equivalent” theories is true. SUGGESTED VIEWING How Occam's Razor changed the world With Johnjoe McFadden As an example of underdetermination, philosophers often offer this example. The evidence of fossils seems to provide reason to conclude that the universe is quite old; ancient fossils are what the “ancient universe” hypothesis predicts. But it’s also possible that God created an ancient-looking universe 200 years ago, complete with a “fake” fossil record for us to find, to make it look old. The existence of fossils is what that theory predicts too. So, the argument goes, the fossil record can’t be used as evidence that the universe is ancient; the fossil record supports the “200-year-old ancient-looking universe” theory just as much. The problem of underdetermination points out that, for any theory with supporting evidence, we could invent another completely different theory that predicts exactly the same evidence, and thus undermine that evidence’s ability to support the original theory.But this “argument from underdetermination” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what scientific reasoning is and how it works. To explain, let me use another rather strange (but very real and commonly discussed) philosophical thought experiment called “The Grue Problem.” The “Grue” ProblemSuppose I want to know what color emeralds are, so I observe a few, see that they all appear green, and form the theory that “all emeralds are green.” I thus predict that the next 100 emeralds I find will also appear to be green. And let’s say that happens, and so I thus conclude that my theory that all emeralds are green is true. Now, one might rightly point out that I don’t know for sure that all emeralds are green—I have not seen them all. Maybe some I haven’t found yet are blue. Fair enough. After all, we used to think that all swans were white, until we found some black ones. But let’s say that I go on a quest and collect every emerald in the universe—and, for the sake of the argument, let’s say I can do this, and can even know that I have every one of them. So, I collect them all, look at them all, and verify that they all appear green. Can’t I now rightly conclude that all emeralds are green?Inspired by the problem of underdetermination, a friend might argue that I cannot.Sure, they all appear green now—but there could be another kind of color called “grue.” Something is grue if it is green up to a certain point in time, but then spontaneously turns blue. And there could be an infinite number of “shades” of grue. Something that is one shade of grue will turn blue at noon today, but something that is another shade of grue will turn blue at noon tomorrow, etc. So yes, the emeralds appear green now; and since they haven’t turned blue yet, they are not some “past” shade of grue. But they might be some “future” shade of grue (e.g., they may turn blue at noon tomorrow). And since all future shades of grue are consistent with “being green up to this point in time,” the evidence you have is completely consistent with the notion that all emeralds are some future shade of grue, rather than green. Indeed, that they would appear green until now is what the “some future shade of grue” hypothesis predicts. So, we have just as much reason to conclude that all emeralds are some shade of grue as we do to conclude that they are green.You’re probably thinking “It’s not equally possible that the emeralds are grue; they are obviously green.” You are right! But explaining why your instinctive reaction to my friend’s argument is correct will help inform why van Fraassen’s “empiricist” is wrong and science actually does describe reality.The main mistake my friend makes is in thinking that the “empirical evidence” (of all the emeralds appearing green) is (or even should be) all I am using to draw the conclusion that all emeralds are green. It is not. I am also considering known facts about how colors typically work; things don’t usually change color, and when they do, they don’t do so suddenly, without cause, and all at once. So, even though the simple evidence of the emeralds all appearing green up to this point is consistent with them being some future shade of grue—that is even what the grue hypothesis “predicts”—it is still exceedingly unlikely that they are. The hypothesis that they are green is much more likely. Understanding science refutes the problem of underdetermination The misunderstanding about science that the “empiricist” pointing to “the problem of underdetermination” makes is similar to the one that my friend made. Science is not just about considering experimental evidence; in fact, it’s not even just about considering empirical evidence. As Ernan McMullin and many other philosophers of science have pointed out, the inference that makes science is “inference to the best explanation” (sometimes called “abduction” or “retroduction” by McMullin). While, depending on the circumstances, scientists use many different kinds of reasoning, science as a whole is, simply put, the process of considering multiple competing explanations and comparing them to certain criteria—explanatory criteria (the kinds of things explanations must be and do, by definition, to be a good explanation)—to see which explanation is the best.And these criteria do not deal only with empirical results. Yes, successful predictions raise the probability of a hypothesis, but it’s also the case that the more new assumptions a theory makes, the less likely it is to be true; every new assumption presents an opportunity for the theory to be false. (The fewer assumptions a theory makes, the simpler or “more parsimonious” it is said to be.) Likewise, the more existing evidence a theory contradicts, the less likely it is, because in order for a theory to be true, every piece of evidence it contradicts has to be somehow faulty. (The fewer established theories a new theory contradicts, the more “conservative” it is said to be.) And, obviously, the more something explains, the better explanation it is. (This is called having “scope.”) If a theory raises unanswerable questions, it’s not expanding our understanding, and thus is not wide-scoping. Scientists consider all these things when deciding which theory to accept, because the theory that adheres best to these explanatory criteria is most likely to be true.___the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth.___The reason the grue hypothesis is no good is because it invents an entirely new kind of color—not just a new shade, but an entirely different category of color (a different way colors work)—and thus is not parsimonious. It raises unanswerable questions about how and why emeralds would just spontaneously change from green to blue (and thus does not have wide scope). And it contradicts what is already well established about how color works (and thus is unconservative).The theories that the problem of underdetermination points to do the same thing. Yes, the theory that God created an “ancient-looking universe” (complete with an ancient-looking fossil record) two hundred years ago is also consistent with the empirical evidence (of a fossil record) that presently exists; but that theory is monumentally unparsimonious (it requires many extra assumptions about infinite entities) and not wide-scoping (it raises unanswerable questions about why God would do such a thing). So, I can rationally conclude that it is false.Indeed, the history of science includes many examples of theories that were rejected because they lacked parsimony and/or scope, even before their falsity (and the truth of their competing theory) was confirmed by observation. As I point out in my book, geocentrism was rejected by the scientific community because it lacked parsimony, almost 200 years before the observation of parallax confirmed that the Earth moves around the sun. And the continuum theory of matter was completely rejected by 1860, because it couldn’t explain chemical reactions or organize matter into a periodic table, even though the experiments that eventually confirmed atomic theory weren’t even proposed until the 1870s. Solving the best of a bad lot problemIn response, the “empiricists” are likely to object, this time pointing to the “best of a bad lot” problem. “We have no reason to conclude that an explanation that has been shown to be better than others is true because we have no guarantee that the true theory was among those that we were considering.” If you have a “lot” (a collection) of poor explanations, even the best one is not true.The responses to this problem, however, are numerous. Peter Lipton argues that the set of hypotheses that scientists consider are not just randomly selected and thus unlikely to contain a theory that is true; they use existing knowledge to home in on what is most likely to be true. A doctor trying to explain abdominal pain is not going to bother wondering whether demons are causing it; they are going to stick with things like appendicitis and kidney stones, because they are most likely. Further, despite its name, inference to the best explanation is not just the process of comparing hypotheses and accepting the best one; we also want one that is a good explanation in its own right. If it’s not, we are going to keep looking until we find an explanation that is. And while that process does not guarantee that we will come across the exact truth, it’s very likely that the theory that emerges as the best will be at least approximately true, and thus we will be justified in believing it. And lastly, as I point out in my book, although many theories not based in scientific evidence (like geocentrism and continuum theory) have been completely overturned, science almost always progresses by the refinement of scientifically established theories—not their replacement. (Although our sun is not the center of the universe, heliocentrism was our first step in understanding the Earth’s true place in the universe.) So even if a theory we accept today may not be completely right, accepting it is a step on the journey toward the complete truth. The example of atomic theoryNow, it’s worth pointing out that most empiricists are not skeptical of all scientific theories; they are only skeptical of the ones that hypothesize the existence of “unobservables.” It’s not like they think that round Earth, heliocentrism, and germ theory are just useful (but untrue) “instruments” for making predictions about how to most efficiently navigate the seas, predict planetary motion, and treat diseases. They admit that the Earth actually is round, that the planets revolve around the sun, and that germs exist and cause disease. These facts and entities can be observed; the theories that suggest they exist are true. It’s only when theories start hypothesizing the existence of unobservables—like electrons, or quantum fields—that can’t be observed directly, that we should start doubting the theories’ truth. And to be fair to van Fraassen, in this published work, he doesn’t really say that we should doubt the truth of such theories. Only that scientific reasoning does not rationally force us to accept them as true. Skepticism, or agnosticism, he argues, is warranted. SUGGESTED READING Science is based in metaphor By Andrew Reynolds But the history of atomic theory throws a monkey wrench into that argument. Atoms used to be unobservable; again, scientists first accepted the theory that they exist because it had such grandiose explanatory power. But then atoms were seen with electron microscopes. They thus moved into the category of the observable. But this didn’t substantially change anything about what scientists were justified in believing; it certainly didn’t change any “atomic skeptics’” minds. It just confirmed what everyone already knew! If the hypothesis that something exists clearly provides the best explanation for what we can observe, then the belief that it exists is what is rational. The fact that the thing itself is not technically observable does not make doubting its existence rational.What’s more, the atoms were seen with an electron microscope. But electrons are themselves unobservable. How can an electron microscope reveal an atom if electrons are not real? This leads us to what is famously known as Hilary Putnam’s “miracle argument.” It’s (not) a miraclePhilosopher Hilary Putnam’s miracle argument is somewhat famous. Basically, he argued that a scientific theory being able to repeatedly make successful predictions—even about unobservables—without being at least approximately true would require a “miracle.” In other words, it would be such an improbable occurrence that it could not rationally be believed—the better explanation for why scientific theories about unobservables make the right predictions is because the unobservable entities and structures they hypothesize exist.Van Fraassen has addressed this argument. Indeed, in his original article, where he references Alison Gopnik’s point about orgasms not being “necessary for procreation” even though the desire for orgasm “drives the creation of progeny,” he is pointing to his own argument about how organisms are not naturally selected by evolution to get true beliefs; to the extent that belief-forming processes are selected for, the ones that are selected are the ones that are useful for survival—not the ones that produce true beliefs. In the same way, van Fraassen argues, scientific theories are accepted, not because they are true, but because they aren’t falsified; they make successful predictions; that’s what makes them “stick around.” So, the fact that they make successful predictions (and thus became accepted) is not a reason to think they are true.This argument is similar to C. S. Lewis’s “argument from reason,” which he used to argue against evolution: “The truth of evolution undercuts our ability to know that it is true.” Lewis’ argument famously failed; Elizabeth Anscombe, by Lewis’s own admission, demolished Lewis in a debate on the topic, and I have explained elsewhere why modified versions of the argument fail as well. In short, it’s because it fails to recognize that a belief-forming process can make an organism more likely to survive because it reliably produces true beliefs. It is therefore not the case that beliefs generated by naturally selected belief-forming processes are automatically false or unjustified.In the same way, the reason a theory “sticks around” could be because it’s not falsified, because it “makes correct predictions.” But the reason it makes correct predictions is most likely because it is true. (In pointing this out, I am echoing the arguments of Musgrave, Lipton, Psillos, and Kitcher, who refuted van Fraassen’s argument and analogy long before his 2024 article.) It would be a huge coincidence that it could do so without being true. And that is the point of Putnam’s miracle argument. Thus, contrary to van Fraassen’s suggestion, the mere fact that a theory’s predictive success is why it “sticks around” or “becomes accepted” in the scientific community is not a reason to be skeptical about its truth. ConclusionLet me close by saying something about the fact that empiricists don’t doubt the truth of all scientific theories, just the ones that hypothesize unobservables. In today’s society, this theory is dangerous to espouse publicly. The nuance between being skeptical about all of science, and just the highly technical theories about unobservables, is guaranteed to be lost to the average reader. And there is so much unjustified skepticism and doubt about the findings of science and experts that a headline like “Science Does Not Describe Reality” could easily fuel the anti-science movement, worsen climate change denial and cause the next pandemic.This is why I believe it was important to still respond to van Fraassen’s article, a full two years after he wrote it. Not only, as I have argued, does it represent a philosophically inaccurate view of how scientific reasoning works and what scientific reasoning can do, but it is a dangerous view to boot. It should thus be rejected.
Hubble tracks new decagon encircling Saturn’s south pole
Recent observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have revealed a giant, evolving 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn’s south pole. This discovery marks the first time a large regular-sided jet pattern has been observed in the planet’s southern hemisphere. The feature appears remarkably similar to Saturn’s famous hexagon at its northern pole, but is also distinctly different, suggesting scientists may be witnessing a new atmospheric phenomenon develop on the iconic gas giant.
Politics as Preventive Responsibility
For the celebration of the 60th World Day of Peace, which will be observed on 1 January 2027, the Holy Father has chosen the theme: “Disarming ...
Humpback whale mother may have mourned her dead calf for days
Researchers observed a humpback whale mother staying beside her presumed stillborn calf for hours and possibly days off Australia’s Gold Coast. She maintained eye contact and remained close to the calf in behavior resembling caregiving and nurturing. Scientists say the rare observation may provide new insight into grief, maternal attachment, and emotional complexity in humpback whales.
ClickFix Smuggles Payloads Through Browser Cache to Bypass Windows Run Limits
Microsoft observed ClickFix attacks using browser cache smuggling to execute cached VBScript and launch a credential-targeting malware chain.
This strange new phase of matter could transform quantum technology
By stacking custom-designed silver nanoparticles like nanoscale LEGO bricks, scientists stabilized a mysterious crystal phase that had never been observed before. The material not only solves a longstanding puzzle in materials science but also exhibits promising quantum properties at room temperature.
Airbnb Externship Shows 3L Isabel Samayoa How Legal Strategy Drives Business Growth - UC Law San Francisco (Formerly UC Hastings)
An externship at Airbnb provided 3L Isabel Samayoa exposure to areas such as contracts, licensing, risk management, and growth strategy, helping her develop the skills and experience to thrive in her future career as a corporate transactions attorney. 3L student Isabel Samayoa reflects on her work with Airbnb’s in-house legal team through UC Law SF’s Corporate Counsel Externship Program. Supported Airbnb’s legal team on commercial contracts, open-source licensing, external partnerships, product counseling, and legal research. Observed how legal advice aligns with business strategy and risk management. Gained exposure to strategic decision-making while preparing for a career in corporate transactions. Q: What did you do in this corporate externship? A: I supported the Airbnb legal team across several functions, including commercial contracts, open-source licensing matters, strategic external partnerships, legal research, real estate matters, internal AI integration, and product counseling. I also gained exposure to corporate structure counseling, litigation, patent counseling, and the company’s broader business strategy. Q: What did you take away from this experience? A: One of the most valuable parts of this experience was learning how a business actually operates. I had never worked on such a large team in the private sector, so I had little exposure to how companies run internally. I learned how lawyers can provide valuable advice to support business goals, seeing how leadership evaluates risk and develops growth strategies. Understanding those priorities allows me to calibrate my legal advice to clients, balancing the client’s goals against the level of risk they are willing to take. Q: How does this experience support your career goals? A: Exploring the anatomy of a successful company was incredibly valuable because I plan to pursue a career as a corporate transactions lawyer. Being in the room with the teams discussing important decisions allowed me to see firsthand the factors that contribute to that success and how lawyers help guide those decisions. Q: Would you recommend UC Law SF and this externship? Why? A: I would absolutely recommend this opportunity. While the team worked on high-stakes matters at a highly successful company, they still created an environment where I felt welcomed. They trusted me with meaningful work and supported me every step of the way. This helped me build confidence in my analytical abilities. Q: What’s your favorite UC Law SF memory so far? A: Some of my favorite UC Law SF memories, aside from my time at Airbnb, involve mentorship. I have benefited from mentorship and have also had the chance to mentor other law students. Watching the students I mentored go on to mentor others has been particularly rewarding. I think mentorship is integral to the legal profession, and it has been inspiring to see that culture thrive at UC Law SF and continue beyond the classroom. The Evidence of Success series highlights UC Law SF students as they share how the College’s opportunities equip them with the experience, skills, and confidence to excel in the legal profession.
Watch the first-ever video of a newfound spider’s spring-loaded death trap
Scientists discovered that the Australian “ballista spider” uses a silk cone trap to catapult prey into its web, a feat of spider engineering never before observed.
A black hole shredded a “super sun” — but something strange may have survived
Astronomers have witnessed a black hole violently shredding a massive star, creating one of the most energetic stellar explosions ever observed. The event, nicknamed “the Whippet,” briefly released about 400 billion times the Sun’s energy and sent a shock wave racing outward at one-fifth the speed of light. Months later, scientists spotted unexpectedly fast-moving helium, suggesting that some structure may have survived the destruction.
Scientists Catch a Hidden Electronic State Forming Almost Instantly
Researchers observed a hidden state triggered by light forming within 30 femtoseconds. A pulse of light sent a metal-organic framework into a hidden electronic state in just 30 femtoseconds. By watching the transformation almost as it happened, researchers uncovered a fleeting intermediate stage that appears to guide the material into its new state. The work
Wearable ultrasound patch boosts REM sleep without drugs or surgery
A new wearable patch may help people reach REM sleep faster and remain there longer without medication or surgery. In a study of 28 participants, the device shortened the time to REM by 43 minutes and extended it by about 16 minutes. Researchers also observed signs of improved stress regulation and changes in brain circuits tied to emotion.
Scientists capture two DNA strands zipping together for the first time
Scientists have directly observed how two negatively charged DNA molecules can pair up despite normally repelling each other. Positively charged metal ions appear to bridge the gap, helping matching DNA helices align groove for groove like a molecular zipper. The discovery confirms a theory proposed two decades ago and could help researchers understand DNA interactions involved in cancer and other cellular processes.
One arrested, another cited in shoplifting incident at business on East Avenue in Chico
CHICO, Calif. - A Paradise man was arrested and a Forbestown woman was cited by Chico Police in connection to a shoplifting incident at a business in Chico.The Chico Police Department says that at around 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 18, a loss prevention employee observed two suspects stealing several items from a retail business on the 700 block of East Avenue in Chico.Upon exiting the building, the two suspects, a man and a woman, were contacted by the loss prevention employee regarding the stolen items. The employee was able to persuade both suspects to return to the store and hand over the items they had stolen.Authorities say the business expressed their desire to press charges against the suspects and contacted Chico Police to report the crime.Officers reviewed video surveillance that confirmed the employee's account of what happened. Officers then made arraignment for both suspects to turn themselves in the following day.When the suspects, identified as 51-year-old Jamie Leal of Forbestown and 62-year-old Melvin Royal of Paradise, arrived the next day to turn themselves in, authorities say both admitted to their involvement in the incident and elected to write handwritten apology letters to the business.Leal was cited by Chico Police on a misdemeanor charge of shoplifting.Royal was taken into custody and transported to the Butte County Jail, where he was booked on the following charges:Shoplifting with 2+ priors (felony)Shoplifting (misdemeanor) googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('ad-1514992'); });
Arctic Winter Sea Ice Ties Record Low, NASA, NSIDC Scientists Find
For the second consecutive year, winter sea ice in the Arctic reached a level that matches the lowest peak observed since satellite monitoring began in 1979.
Curiosity rover detects building blocks of life in first-ever experiment on Mars
The Curiosity rover conducted a first-of-its kind experiment on Mars, detecting organic molecules that have never been observed before on the red planet.
How a controversial camera system is monitoring mental health patients
The Lampard Inquiry started back in September 2024 and I remember going to the first hearing in Chelmsford. Subscribe The bereaved families made placards of their loved ones, they stood outside in silence and then laid flowers to mark the moment. Now, two years on, in a process meant to last another two years, there’s been a development. Last week, we were told the chair, Baroness Lampard, pictured below, could be looking at making interim recommendations. Throughout the process, she has remarked that although this inquiry is looking at almost 2,000 people who were under the care of Essex mental health services from 2000-2023 when they died, the findings could have national implications for other trusts. ‘Records 24 hours a day in patient’s bedroom’ So why has this happened? One system that the inquiry is going to take a closer look at is a controversial monitoring system called Oxevision. It monitors some vital signs of patients remotely by using a camera placed in a room. It’s used by 40% of NHS mental health trusts. But campaigners, particularly the group Stop Oxevision, have asked for this technology to be removed from mental health wards as soon as possible. I spoke to a member, Hat Porter, today and they described to me what they thought this technology did and explained their concerns: “It records 24 hours a day and it’s located in a patient’s bedroom, which is obviously somewhere you’d usually expect to be a private place. “Our concerns are that the use of the technology has been has been kind of implemented as a substitute for proper in-person support, that it’s kind of over relied on and that there’s a lot of misunderstandings and that the presence of a camera, which has often been used without people’s consent, sometimes without even their knowledge, that that has a really big impact on privacy, dignity and human rights.” ‘Not sufficient’ I put it to them that the company behind Oxevision would dispute their claims about consent and in videos I’ve seen online from NHS trusts, they make it clear that the technology is complementary to trained staff and not a replacement. [ ](https://channel4news.substack.com/p/the-nottingham-inquiry-what-lessons) [ How the Nottingham inquiry shines a spotlight on other key mental health care failings ](https://channel4news.substack.com/p/the-nottingham-inquiry-what-lessons) Victoria Macdonald · Feb 12 [ Read full story ](https://channel4news.substack.com/p/the-nottingham-inquiry-what-lessons) A team of lawyers has been working on the inquiry and with bereaved family members who have concerns about this technology. I spoke to solicitor Priya Singh, from Hodge Jones & Allen, who made the point that questions usually asked by nurses would be missing from using devices like this. “It’s not sufficient to say, oh, the patient is moving around. Somebody must go in and say, are you okay? Are you distressed? Do you want help? Is there anything I can do? Share Channel 4 News “How are you spending your time? So I think a lot of our families cannot see the function of it when ultimately the patient should only really be observed when they’ve been prescribed to be observed, they can be observed more, but that more should really be happening face to face.” The Chair will hear evidence over the next two weeks and then a decision made after that, which could have national impact if she does decide this technology should be investigated or even removed. The Department of Health and Social Care said: “The Government is committed to ensuring that lessons are learned from the Lampard Inquiry to improve patient safety. “We are confident that the Inquiry will play an important role in identifying wider learnings for the health system following the tragic events in Essex and will contribute to improvements in patient safety.” We approached LIO Health, which runs Oxevision, for comment. Subscribe Share Channel 4 News Leave a comment
Scientists catch antimatter “atom” acting like a wave for the first time
Quantum physics once shocked scientists by revealing that particles can behave like waves—and now, that strange behavior has been pushed even further. For the first time, researchers have observed wave-like interference in positronium, an exotic “atom” made of an electron and its antimatter partner, a positron. This breakthrough not only strengthens the weird reality of quantum mechanics but also opens the door to new experiments involving antimatter, including the possibility of testing how gravity affects it—something never directly measured before.
Health-ISAC warns of rising ShinyHunters data theft attacks on healthcare
Health-ISAC is warning healthcare and medical technology organizations of an observed increase in successful attacks by ShinyHunters, which are using social engineering to compromise single sign-on accounts and steal data from cloud services.
Eat This, Age Slower: The Diet Habits Science Now Urges You to Try - Futura-Sciences
Can What You Eat Really Slow Down Cellular Aging? For years, scientists have observed that people who eat a balanced diet tend to live longer and healthier lives. But how exactly do the foods we eat affect the aging of our cells? Until recently, the detailed mechanics remained a vast...
Large Hadron Collider gives scientists their best look yet at conditions right after the Big Bang
"This is the first time we have observed, for a large interval in momentum and for multiple species, this flow pattern in a subset of proton collisions in which an unusually large number of particles are produced."
In 1967, US satellites hunting secret nuclear tests detected a flash from deep space; the accidental signal became the first observed gamma-ray burst
For more than half a century, gamma-ray bursts have remained one of the most puzzling events observed in space. These bursts are sudden flashes of gamma rays, a very high-energy form of light.
Beyond Weight Loss: New Grant Supports Study on Weight Stability, Black Women's Health
'From a public health perspective, prevention is as important as treatment. Still, what I observed was a large gap in prevention approaches to address ...
The Future is Now: The Roy Blunt Health Science Building Nears Completion
Beginning in April of 2024, both MSSU’s faculty and students have closely observed the construction of the Roy Blunt Health Science building. Over the course of two years, the building has quickly taken shape, signifying the beginning of a new future for MSSU’s health students. Linda Eis, MSSU’s Chief Financial Officer, and Dr. Dean Van Galen, president of the university, share insight on the building’s...
The scores are in. Who received low, high scores in health inspections?
Health inspection shows Springfield Huddle House received a score of 64, observed mold-like substance.
Davenport promotes mental wellness during Mental Health Awareness Week
Davenport University focuses on mental wellness during Mental Health Awareness Week and beyond. Mental Health Awareness Week is observed Oct. 4-10 and is designed to break down the stigma surrounding mental illness, connect people with community resources and emphasize the importance of early detection and care. The university’s Wellness Center provides free
US strikes Iranian island where forces were preparing to launch mines, official says
The US military on Sunday struck Iran’s Larak Island, where forces were observed preparing to launch mines into the Strait of Hormuz, according to a US official, marking the first strikes in the war in over a month.
Engrams Embedding Entendre: Codesign for Efficient DRAM/SSD Offloading
Engram extends standard token embeddings with learned multi-token lookups. Recurring local patterns retrieve vectors directly, reducing the need to reconstruct them through attention and feed-forward layers. With Engram model architecture optimization, it allows for lower HBM capacity to be needed for models at the same quality. This does not mean there won’t be an insane demand for HBM but it just means that model architecture will continue to innovate around constraints. This model architecture design is naturally codesigned for parameter offloading: each token accesses a few embedding rows whose addresses depend on token IDs, not hidden states. The runtime can prefetch those rows from host DRAM while earlier layers compute, keeping the table outside HBM without transferring entire weight matrices. Our Memory model contains our latest estimates of quarter by quarter HBM, DRAM, & NAND supply and demand. Offloading frees HBM for model weights and KV cache, potentially supporting larger batches or more concurrent sessions. When DRAM becomes the next constraint, NVMe offers another tier. Recommendation systems already cache frequently or recently accessed embedding rows in faster memory while backing colder rows with SSDs. After NVIDIA roadmap had to change due to massively despec’ing Rubin Ultra from 1024GB to now ~200GB of HBM per chip, model architecture optimizations like emgram maybe helpful. Our DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash configuration uses roughly 189 GiB of memory for Engram. We replace it with a memory-mapped (mmap) file and measure serving performance with offload to SSD. Later on in our report, we will show our Engram offloading experiments along with the official InferenceX agentic inference serving results on Engram models like DeepSeekv4.1 Flash across all 6 NVIDIA GPU SKUs along with MI355X. Unsurprisingly, the CUDA Moat is still mogging MI355X on the ultra popular DeepSeekV4.1 Flash model. We also show how even on high capacity HBM SKUs, offloading emgrams to DRAM could result in even better performance for most of the pareto than keeping the emgram in HBM. Our benchmark has been widely reproduced, validated and/or supported by almost every major buyer of compute from Google Cloud to Microsoft Azure to Oracle, to Meta and many more. Furthermore, it has the support of the ML community including from vLLM, LMCache, SGLang, PyTorch, Huggingface and the support of major labs like OpenAI, MiniMax, ZAI, Qwen, Moonshot Kimi, etc. Star the InferenceX GitHub repository if you find the open-source benchmark and data useful!. InferenceX is the only inference benchmark in the world to have TPUv7, Jalapeño, Nvidia Rubin NVL72, AMD, and soon, SambaNova and Trainium. Due to how realistic AgentX scenario is to real world agentic inference workloads, AMD has committed to collaborating on MI455X UALoE72 too. DeepSeek did not release the original paper’s two trained Engram models. We replicated its setup on fineweb-edu using the released code and training hyperparameters, at an estimated 6E18 FLOPs per run. We observed the same U-shape scaling: Engram improved performance over pure MoE baselines. We also reproduced DeepSeek’s results, where earlier-layer representations with Engram resembled those of later layers. Like the original Engram paper, it is possible to probe Engram’s gate scores to see what n-grams DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash makes the most use of. Our gate scan finds names, code fragments, relational phrasing, and boilerplate. These examples prioritize interesting-ness over gate strength. One unexpected result was Wright : Ace Attorney. These examples suggest learned memory optimizes the training objective, not a judgment of which facts deserve storage. Licenses, bibliography fragments, API scaffolding, and website furniture can provide prediction shortcuts, so the value of additional Engram capacity may depend on what survives data preparation. This does not show that table capacity is “wasted”: the evaluation-corpus scan establishes neither training exposure nor the capacity occupied by each category. For offloading, strong gates do not identify cache-hot rows. Low gates do not automatically save reads either: computing the gate requires the retrieved key and undoes the performance gain of a fused kernel. Skipping reads would require a separate usefulness predictor before retrieval. In the original paper’s inference-time ablation, factual-knowledge benchmarks retained just 29–44% of their original performance, while reading comprehension retained 81–93%. This is due to the training–inference mismatch. The resulting degradation therefore measures this trained model’s dependence on Engram, not the performance difference between models trained with and without it. In our ablations, suppressing Engram worsens token likelihood across all evaluated domains, especially encyclopedia text and several code corpora. Surprisingly, GSM8K accuracy stays within measured run-to-run variation and removing Engram has no effect. Engram is not a detachable dictionary beside an unchanged MoE. Removing it changes downstream features and expert selection. We tested whether rerouting hurts or compensates by holding tokens fixed in a teacher-forced experiment on CRUXEval, a code-reasoning benchmark of small Python functions where the model predicts a function’s output from its code and an input, and scoring the reference answer. Removing Engram raised answer loss from 0.2848 to 0.3093 bits/token. Forcing the ablated model to use the original Engram-on expert choices made it worse still, at 0.3375 bits/token. Rerouting partially compensates for the missing memory. Memory features and expert selection work together, rather than following a clean “memory stores facts; experts reason” division. On the same CRUXeval, removing Engram during either phase reduced accuracy and increased generated tokens; removing it throughout produced the largest changes. Keeping Engram for prefill leads to more correct answers than keeping for decode likely due to semantically richer KV cache transferred to decode workers, allowing it to mitigate some of the performance loss. Engram’s table is large, but each lookup is small. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash requests 24 rows at each of two Engram layers, about 12.4 KiB per processed token position across the model, or 3.1 KiB per GPU when split across four GPUs. Currently as of Day 7 since Model Release, MI355X is still 2-4x worse performance per dollar compared to B200 even when normalized by Mi355X’s lower TCO. Our full total cost of ownership breakdown comes from our AI Cloud TCO Model along with monthly market surveys of over 100+ gpu clouds & gpu cloud customers. On the Day 0 release of DeepSeekv4.1 Flash, NVIDIA vLLM works out of the box with zero issues across all 6 SKUs: H100, H200, B200, B300, GB200, GB300! This was thanks to the amazing work by the NVIDIA & Interact teams! In comparison, AMD vLLM did not work on day 0 for DeepSeekv4.1 Flash.Source: SemiAnalysis InferenceX AMD’s vLLM documentation points to using vllm/vllm-openai-rocm:deepseekv41-flash-0909, but from hour 0 of the model release to hour 23, AMD has not publicly released the image. AMD claims, “SPEED IS THE MOAT,” yet it has still not released it by the 23rd hour. We wish that, going forward, the AMD team has a better process for hour 0 model releases. Eventually when they did publicly release for “day 0” image support, performance-wise, it is currently up to 14.8x worse perf per dollar than H200 and up to 42x worse perf per dollar than B200/B300. The power of the CUDA MOAT is NVIDIA’s collaboration with its massive 6 million-developer community ecosystem including most of the vLLM & SGLang & Tokenspeed maintainers which means that CUDA is optimized on day 0. Overall, AMD did make significant improvements but the performance per dollar is still currently 2-4x worse than B200. AgentX Engram DRAM Offloading Improving Performance The HBM and DRAM offload use the same GPU kernel to select and dequantize rows. With HBM, it reads GPU memory; with Unified Virtual Addressing (UVA), it reads pinned host memory directly. Both support full decode graphs. Moving the table into HBM accelerates only the sparse lookup, leaving decoder computation and communication unchanged, resulting in little overall benefit while consuming memory otherwise available to KV cache. Another benefit of Engram offloaded to DRAM which means you can reduce the communication overhead by using less HBM GPUs per replica. For example, when enabling Engram offloading on B300, we are able to switch from TP4 to now TP2 which improves the pareto curve by up to 1.6x. When iso-model quality, less HBM is required as the engrams could be offloaded to host DRAM. Thus HBM bandwidth matters way more than HBM capacity. For inference workloads where memory bandwidth matters the most, 4-hi HBM provides the best $/bandwidth and therefore lowest cost per token. If China continues to make more and more revolutionary model architecture innovations, soon it could potentially 0Hi HBM stacks. [ ](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/long-live-the-short-king-why-4-hi) [ Long Live the Short King: Why 4-hi HBM Wins ](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/long-live-the-short-king-why-4-hi) Myron Xie, Bryan Shan, and 3 others · Sep 13 [ Read full story ](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/long-live-the-short-king-why-4-hi) Moreover, on B300 and week-0 stack, moving the Engram table back to HBM did not improve results and stay within run-to-run variance. This is a result of the work optimizing DRAM offload, such as async, and overlap. SSD Offloading On B200, we created a unoptimized vLLM fork and stored the Engram tables in memory-mapped files on local SSDs. File backing lets the OS reclaim table pages when other applications need RAM. Pages already cached in memory can be served without reading the SSD again. Furthermore, note that we were unable to turn on GDS The unoptimized SSD implementation changes how rows reach the GPU. It copies row IDs to the CPU, deduplicates them, gathers the requested rows into pinned buffers, copies those rows back to the GPU and dequantizes them. This work runs between segments of the GPU execution graph. Native UVA performs row selection and dequantization directly on the GPU, avoiding the CPU round trip. A warm filesystem cache removes physical SSD reads, but leaves the coordination, row gathering and transfers. This is why a file already cached in RAM can still perform worse than a pinned DRAM table. The comparison measures the whole serving path; it does not separate the time spent on each of these operations. B200 DRAM dominates both measured SSD serving curves in total tokens per dollar and P90 interactivity. Near 125 tokens/s/user, DRAM delivers 121 million total tokens per dollar versus 52 million for SSD. For production serving, SSD offloading is likely not worth the tradeoff. On the B200 configurations we measured, SSD offloading loses on both measures: every observed SSD point has a DRAM alternative that delivers higher P90 interactivity and more total tokens per dollar. The only points where Cheaper storage does not automatically produce a cheaper inference service. Moving Engram to SSD leaves the same four expensive GPUs and the rest of the server in place. Reclaiming RAM only creates an economic benefit if it enables a cheaper server configuration or additional useful capacity. The current unoptimized path provides neither benefit, and the filesystem cache still consumes RAM when table pages are resident. Next we will look at the mechanisms and specific implementation of ngrams from DeepSeekv4.1 Flash, LongCat, Qwen3.8 Flash Next.
Ten bucks says you’ll love this community science project
Today marks the first day of Rut Watch 2026 With another season of Deer Spy in the books thanks to community scientists like you, biologists are now on a mission to pinpoint the peak of the white-tailed deer breeding season in Maine. Every observation of deer breeding behavior and sign helps define the timing of the rut, and this project uses the power of community science to collect deer data all fall long. Hunters, hikers, and wildlife watchers - Rut Watch pairs well with any outdoor adventure you have planned this season. It’s a perfect excuse to slow down and connect with nature as you look for clues. So get outside, rack up that deer data and submit rut reports from now through December 1. The online form is science made simple: Location Date and time Breeding behavior observed Submit a Rut Report What to watch for Active Breeding The most obvious breeding behavior to observe is a buck mounting a doe, but that is a rare sight as it only lasts a moment. You are more likely to witness a buck “tending” a doe, following closely, chasing, nuzzling, or pawing at her rump until she is receptive. Sparring After bucks shed their velvet, sparring helps sort out who is who in the dominance hierarchy. Early season matches are often less intense than later season matches between similar sized bucks. Most sparring is complete by the time breeding begins. Rubs Don’t just look for deer, pay attention to the trees. Rubs are marks made by bucks when they rub their antlers on trees, removing bark and leaving their scent calling card in the process. Scrapes Look to the forest floor for this sign of breeding season behavior. Scrapes consist of two parts - a licking branch, and a patch of cleared earth. Bucks break a low branch around head height, then paw at the leaves below to expose the dirt. Covered in scent, a scrape tells does and other bucks, “I’m here!” Learn More More information What’s next for deer community science: Northern Maine Wintering Deer Survey Other active community science projects: Fish Tag Reporting Maine Golden Eagle Study Maine Amphibian & Reptile Atlas Project Maine Deer Management: Maine’s Big Game Management Plan Game Species Conservation & Management Report The Benefits of Hunting: Supporting Wildlife, Conservation, and Community Subscribe Share Leave a comment
What we observed as the Pirates played the A's in a (surprisingly pleasant) minor league ballpark
WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — I hadn’t even made it inside Sutter Health Park when someone asked me what I thought of the stadium. Those conversations...
FBI presence at Senator Lucas’ office in Portsmouth
10 On Your Side’s Andy Fox is currently in front of Senator L. Louise Lucas’ office in Portsmouth, where he observed multiple FBI units.
Scientists Expose Unexpected Driver of the May 2024 Superstorm
Even though the solar wind was unusually dense during the May 2024 superstorm, ions from the solar wind contributed very little to the ring current, marking the first time both were observed simultaneously during a storm of this magnitude.
What 3,600 adults with diabetes revealed about lifestyle and heart health
In 3,612 British adults with type 2 diabetes, greater adherence to the Mediterranean Lifestyle Index was associated with lower risks of major adverse cardiovascular events, cardiovascular death, and all-cause mortality over more than a decade of follow-up. Dietary patterns, physical activity, rest, and social habits all contributed to the observed associations, although the observational study cannot establish causality.
Gravity Waves From Super Typhoon Sinlaku
Satellites observed striking upper-atmosphere phenomena generated by an intensifying tropical cyclone.
US consumers are rethinking their spending, retailers say
U.S. consumers haven’t stopped spending money since the Iran war drove up fuel prices, but many shoppers are reassessing what they buy and where, according to company executives and retail analysts. The behavior changes observed so far are subtle, such as altered routines for buying gasoline and fewer visits to clothing and furniture stores. They […]
How Science Works
The 2nd Weather and Climate Livestream is now underway. It is organized by a group of early-career researchers concerned about declining funding for the field and eager to demonstrate how weather and climate research makes a difference in our lives. Last year’s event was a great success, drawing terrific press coverage including a piece in the NY Times. This year features a strong lineup of talks aimed at a general audience — I highly recommend tuning in. Share I gave a talk yesterday about How Science Works in Three Steps. You can see the short presentation here (I’ve appended a transcript below): And please tune into the livestream here. It runs through tomorrow at 6 pm ET. Thanks for reading The Climate Brink! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Cleaned up transcript: Thank you, and thanks to everyone tuning in. I want to talk about something I think a lot of people don’t really understand: how science actually works. Arguments over any scientific topic — climate change, vaccines, you name it — revolve around competing claims. For climate change, the claims are: Is the Earth warming? Are humans to blame? What will the impacts be? Over the last 150 years, the scientific community has developed a remarkably robust method for sorting out which claims are true and which aren’t. That method is what I want to walk through. So how does science generate knowledge? If you ask a high schooler, they’ll give you the version they learned in ninth grade: an individual scientist forms a hypothesis, runs an experiment, and draws a conclusion. That’s more or less what happens at the individual level, though in practice it’s more iterative — you design, test, and refine all at once, landing on a slightly different idea each time until you reach a conclusion about whatever hypothesis you’ve ended up with. But this isn’t science. It’s only step one. Any individual scientist can make mistakes — scientists are human. Maybe there’s a bug in the code, maybe there’s an error in the experiment. Just because someone ran an experiment and reached a conclusion doesn’t mean it’s right, and scientists don’t treat a single result as settled truth. Step two is peer review, the first layer of quality control. The scientist writes up what they did and submits it to a journal, which sends the paper to other experts in the field. Those experts judge whether the methods are sound, whether it properly references prior work, and whether the conclusions actually follow from the data. Ask any scientist and they’ll tell you peer review is miserable — the comments come back brutal, often harsh, and you have to revise and resubmit, sometimes multiple times, before an editor finally accepts the paper. Peer review catches an immense amount of bad science, but it can’t catch all of it. Reviewers get sloppy or overworked, they miss obvious mistakes, and they can’t catch hidden errors — a bug in the code, a misread instrument. So a peer-reviewed paper making it into a journal doesn’t mean the paper is right. Nobody treats a single paper as the final word. That’s where step three comes in: the crucible of science. Important results get retested by the broader community. If you publish something interesting, it gets dissected. Sometimes people try to reproduce your work directly but more often they test its implications. If someone claims X is true, and that implies that Y is also true, then scientists will go check Y. If a claim survives this gauntlet long enough, it becomes accepted. That’s how we generate knowledge. Let me give an example: the ozone hole. In 1985 — and I doubt many people watching were around then, but I remember it well — Joe Farman and his colleagues published observations from Antarctica showing that a huge chunk of ozone was disappearing every year. This was shocking because most atmospheric chemists had expected ozone loss to occur at mid-latitudes and high altitudes, not over the South Pole. When scientists see something they don’t understand, they rush to explain it, and several competing hypotheses quickly appeared in the peer-reviewed literature. One pointed to chlorine chemistry from chlorofluorocarbons. A second blamed nitrogen chemistry, possibly driven by solar proton events — meaning the sun was responsible. A third argued it wasn’t chemistry at all but dynamics: winds were carrying naturally low-ozone air from the lower atmosphere up into the stratosphere. Then the community went to work testing which theory could survive the crucible. Aircraft flew into the ozone hole and found no nitrogen, ruling out the nitrogen theory. Measurements showed the air in the polar vortex was descending, not rising — which would bring high-ozone air down, eliminating the dynamics theory. Meanwhile, those same flights measured enormous amounts of chlorine, strongly correlated with exactly the regions where ozone was being destroyed. That became known as the “smoking gun” paper, and it established that chlorine chemistry was the cause. Through this process, a consensus emerged. And it’s worth being clear that this consensus is organic. There’s no vote, no poll, no meeting where it gets decided. Scientists go to conferences, talk to one another, and independently arrived at the same answer. It’s the ultimate free market of ideas. After the consensus was established, the peer-reviewed literature doesn’t even mention the rival theories — it simply takes chlorine chemistry as given. That’s what a consensus looks like. It doesn’t mean every single scientist agrees, but it does mean there’s no longer any legitimate debate. So where can you see what scientists actually think? It’s all in the peer-reviewed literature, which contains the entire historical record of the argument: the discovery, the competing theories, the debate, the testing, and finally the community coalescing around one answer. But there’s a lot of room for misrepresentation. You can dig up an old paper claiming the ozone hole was caused by dynamics and wave it around as if there still was a debate about the cause of the ozone hole — without mentioning that the idea was disproven long ago and that even its own authors no longer believe it. There’s a bigger problem, though: the peer-reviewed literature is written in a language I call “nerd.” It’s extremely hard to read — honestly, some of it is hard for me to follow. It takes graduate students years to work through the literature in a single field, so we can’t expect policymakers or ordinary people to do it. This is where scientific assessments come in. The most famous is the IPCC — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The job of an assessment is to read and summarize the peer-reviewed literature, synthesizing what’s settled, what’s been disproven, and what remains genuinely debated. To ensure the assessments accurately summarize the peer-reviewed literature, assessments are written by large teams, which are far less prone to bias than individuals and which dilute the influence of any one scientist with an axe to grind. The teams are deliberately assembled to avoid stacking the deck, and the reports themselves go through multiple rounds of peer review. That rigorous process is exactly why you can trust them and why people consider the IPCC to be the gold standard of what we know about the climate system. An assessment produced through a different process may well not be credible. You can even watch the consensus evolve across assessments. Take the attribution of warming. The 1990 IPCC report said the observed warming was broadly consistent with model predictions but also comparable to natural variability — in other words, we don’t know whether humans are responsible. By 1995, it concluded that the balance of evidence suggested a discernible human influence — a sentence only a committee could write, and one that barely commits to anything. By 2001, most of the warming over the previous 50 years was judged “likely” due to greenhouse gases; by 2007, “very likely”; by 2013, “extremely likely.” The 2023 report says essentially the same as 2013 — there’s not much stronger language available. So, to wrap up: science is our ultimate tool for deciphering the universe — the most successful method we’ve ever developed for determining what’s true and what isn’t. Our understanding is written into the peer-reviewed literature, so if you want to know what scientists think, that’s where to look. And for those of us who don’t speak nerd, scientific assessments are the Rosetta Stone — they translate nerd into English. Let me open the floor to questions. Thank you.
Ex-Google engineer says Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai share the same trait—it’s the lesson he swears by as a $7.2 billion AI CEO
$7.2 billion AI founder Arvind Jain ‘observed’ Sundar Pichai at Google for years before he became CEO—and learned you need to ‘think crazy’ to be successful
Bone and Joint Health Awareness
Protecting Your Bones and Joints for the Long Run Bone and Joint Health National Action Week, observed the third week in October, raises awareness about the prevention, management and treatment of musculoskeletal conditions. Betty Vale, a family and orthopedic nurse practitioner at UT Health East Texas Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Institute, shares simple steps people…
Join Healthy Kids Here in Celebration of Every Kid Healthy Week™
IDEA Public Schools’ Healthy Kids Here program is a proud partner of Every Kid Healthy Week™, an annual national celebration led by Action for Healthy Kids, observed this year during April 20-24, 2026. […]
Scientists Discover a Strange New Quantum State Where Two Materials Meet
Researchers have directly observed an unusual quantum state emerging at the boundary between an atomically thin material and a metal. Scientists have directly observed an unusual quantum state forming where a material just one atom thick meets a metal. The discovery, made by a research team led by the University of Osaka, demonstrates how interactions
On This Mexican Island, Raccoons Make and Play With Toys (and Also Sip Margaritas)
Scientists observed a family of pygmy raccoons near a Cozumel beach club learning from one another how to craft balls from paper, an indication that the animals have a culture.
How Attribution Science Uses Models to Uncover Climate Change’s Effects on Weather
Running climate model simulations with—and without—observed human influences can quantify how emissions changed the probability or intensity of a weather event.
Jared Freid finds his comedy calling in new Netflix hour 'The Family Plan'
Jared Freid’s new Netflix hour, “The Family Plan,” turns a beach blowup with his dad into a sharply observed, big-hearted look at boomer-millennial family warfare and reconciliation.
NASA-JAXA XRISM Mission Sees Pulsar Gathering Companion’s ‘Wind’
Using data from the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory, astronomers have directly observed a giant star’s outflow, called a
Scientists just captured trees glowing with electricity during storms
Scientists chasing thunderstorms in a retrofitted minivan finally captured something never seen before in nature: faint electrical glows shimmering from treetops during a storm. These “corona discharges,” long suspected but never observed outside a lab, appeared as tiny UV flashes at the tips of leaves. The discovery could reshape how we understand forests, since these bursts may help clean the air by breaking down pollutants.
The Silent Crisis: Suicide Among Native Americans Reflects Global Mental Health Emergency
Overview: World Suicide Prevention Day, observed annually on September 10, highlights the global toll of suicide while drawing attention to the disproportionately high rates experienced by American Indian and Alaska Native people. AI/AN communities face the highest suicide rates of any racial or ethnic group in the United States, with particularly alarming rates among males, […]
Volunteers Help NASA Astronauts Record Lunar Flashes
As NASA’s Artemis II astronauts zipped around the Moon in early April, they observed flashes of light caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. At the same time, volunteers for the NASA-funded Impact Flash project scanned the Moon with their own telescopes and sent their videos to scientists to share what they saw from Earth.
The universe has plenty of hydrogen. So why is star formation collapsing?
Star formation across the universe has fallen dramatically over the past 4.5 billion years, but astronomers have uncovered a surprising twist: the supply of neutral hydrogen, a key ingredient for making stars, has barely declined. Using China’s FAST radio telescope and data from roughly 2.5 million galaxies observed by DESI, researchers found that star formation was about 2.5 times higher 4.5 billion years ago, while neutral hydrogen levels were only about 1.4 times higher.
Azerbaijan health officials deny mumps epidemic in Baku
The Ministry of Health of the Republic of Azerbaijan reports posts have been circulating on social networks about the widespread spread of epidemic mumps in Baku do not reflect the current epidemiological situation. Health officials say the epidemiological situation of mumps in the country is stable. The registered cases of infection consist of individual sporadic cases, no epidemics or mass spread have been recorded. The current situation is constantly under epidemiological surveillance by relevant medical institutions, and the necessary preventive and counter-epidemic measures are consistently implemented. Epidemic mumps is observed more often among unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated individuals. The disease is transmitted mainly by airborne droplets - during coughing, sneezing and close contact. The incubation period usually lasts 11–23 days. The main symptoms of the disease are fever, swelling and pain in the parotid salivary glands, discomfort when chewing and swallowing, general weakness, headache and loss of appetite. In most cases, mumps is mild and results in complete recovery. However, in rare cases, certain complications may develop in unvaccinated adolescents and adults. Therefore, timely vaccination is of particular importance in preventing the disease. Subscribe to Outbreak News TV on YouTube In accordance with the National Vaccination Schedule in Azerbaijan, the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is administered to children at 12 months of age, with a booster dose at 6 years of age. The MMR vaccine is the most reliable and effective means of protection against mumps. The Ministry of Health recommends that parents check their children’s vaccination status. If for any reason the vaccination has been delayed or missed, it is recommended to contact the medical facility in your area of residence and consult a doctor. To protect yourself from the disease, it is recommended to follow preventive measures such as avoiding close contact with sick people, following personal hygiene rules, washing hands regularly, and frequently ventilating closed spaces. If you experience symptoms of the disease, avoid self-medication, seek medical attention, and do not return to work until you are fully recovered. Citizens are asked to refer only to official sources and not to believe or share unverified information circulating on social networks. Outbreak News Today is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
The core anti-Pangram constituency is phony writers
Welcome to The Closing Argument, our verdict on the news, plus everything The Argument published and appeared in this week. The Verdict, by Kelsey Piper A lot of people hate AI for drowning the internet in slop and displacing human creatives. You might think that these people would be thrilled by a program that can identify and flag AI-generated work. But many people who hate AI also hate Pangram, an impressively accurate AI detector that produces very few false positives, according to high-quality independent research. This loathing found its most recent expression in a bizarre Wired article that amplifies a wide range of false arguments from Pangram skeptics: that AI detectors are racist (they’re not) or ableist (they’re not)1 or don’t work (this one does)2. Rather than starting from the premise that it would be really valuable to have a working AI detector and scrutinizing Pangram to make sure it lives up to that promise, the article starts from the premise that Pangram obviously has bad vibes and sets out to discover why. (One answer: The CEO microwaved lunch during an interview!) Why aren’t writers who resent Pangram more eager to distinguish themselves from posters who are having ChatGPT ghostwrite all their work? There are a few different things at play, but I think one key dynamic is this: These are often the same people. A core constituency for arguments like Wired’s is “writers” who are using AI to write their posts but resent this fact being made public. They stand to lose from AI detectors because AI detectors call them out. Share When Substack announced a partnership with Pangram, a sizable fraction of the platform’s authors rose up in outrage. Some people had experience with other AI detectors that didn’t work, and some felt that AI writing ought to be encouraged — both of which are fair enough. But the fury was fueled by authors passionately insisting that Pangram kept wrongly accusing them on almost every post they published. Pangram can be wrong, especially on short passages. But in the overwhelming majority of cases where Pangram looked at a whole blog post rather than a single paragraph, the program correctly detected work as AI. Even if we can’t be 100% sure in any individual case, we can notice the trend in the aggregate. Wired quotes Sam Illingworth, a professor of critical AI literacy at Edinburgh Napier University, who said, “I don’t think [AI detectors] work. … I think that detectors are prejudiced against certain people.” This spring, he said that he used AI for research and editing; this summer he acknowledged that in addition to research and editing, he also uses it “now and then for a turn of phrase I keep.” Pangram informs us that most of his posts are 100% AI-written (some are mixed AI-and-human) and that 100% AI-written posts started appearing last year. The favorable interpretation is that, as someone whose recent work Pangram consistently mistakes for AI, Illingworth sees Pangram’s flaws firsthand. The unfavorable interpretation is that the tool’s credibility trades off against his own, because its account of who writes his posts is not consistent with his. Illingworth is not alone in insisting the detector does not work. “It’s a Monday night in late July, and I’m pasting my own Substack draft into an AI detector for the first time. Not because I’m worried. Because I’m curious. I wrote every word of it myself, the way I write everything, out loud in my head first, in a rhythm that still carries the accent of a language I learned to think in before I learned to write in this one,” begins one Substack post by an author indignant that Pangram flags her writing as AI. “That’s the part I had to sit with before I could write this.” If you, like me, have worked with AIs a lot, you won’t even need Pangram there. The author of that piece is AI. It is obviously AI! I checked 10 other posts on the blog, and they were also obviously AI! “I have spent 22 years as an award-winning author and essayist. And now this bullshit tool that learned from MY writing is going to accuse me of plagiarism,” popular Substack writer Carlyn Beccia wrote in an anti-Pangram post. “For the last and final time, AI DETECTORS DO NOT WORK.” Here’s what her writing sounded like in 2020: “Most success stories revolve around one person who believed enough in you to say — give it a try. We call these people muses, but they are so much more than that. They are the strong man giants whose shoulders we stand on so we can see the horizon. Throughout the editing process, I am sure my editor felt less like a giant of greatness and more like Atlas with the world on her shoulders.” Pangram says it was 100% human-written. (So were other articles of hers in 2020.) And here’s what it sounds like now: “And then there is the reshuffling, which sounds like paperwork until you remember that empires have always loved paperwork. The Trump regime recently moved special education oversight from the Education Department to HHS. That is not a minor bureaucratic transfer. It changes the frame.”3 Pangram says this is mostly AI. I am not convinced that Pangram is wrong. In my own experience, Pangram is very effective on long texts — if it marks a long essay as AI, the essay was either written by AI or deliberately written to sound like AI. On tweet-length or paragraph-length texts, it’s not perfectly reliable. It seems to work just as well for non-native English speakers as for native speakers. While I have seen dozens of claims of pre-2022 text returning a positive result on Pangram, I have tried repeatedly to corroborate those and have never once succeeded. To be clear, I’m absolutely not saying that complaining about Pangram suggests a writer is a cheat. There are plenty of other concerns. Most are mistakenly premised, such as the false claim that Pangram trains on work you put into it, but others are reasonable: It’s unreliable on sufficiently short text segments; it creates an internet witch-hunt mentality when there are defensible uses of AI; people who are open about their AI use are sometimes blamed, when the only people really doing something wrong are the ones who hide it; and it isn’t perfect, so a single positive result shouldn’t be taken as decisive proof of misconduct. I’m happy to concede that Pangram is imperfect and possible to over-rely on. If an author’s posts are mostly non-AI and one scans as partially AI, this could be a mistake. It’s also possible to defeat Pangram with intentional effort. If you think we need something more robust and more reliable, fine! But if you don’t like AI and don’t like Pangram, your attitude really ought to be that it’s a shame that our existing tools for AI detection are imperfect, and it’s important to invent better ones. If your stance is instead that AI is evil and so is looking for AI, then ultimately you’re contributing to the sloppification of the internet. You’re making it harder for people who write their own text to distinguish themselves, and providing cover for authors who are definitely not writing their own text. Subscribe Top stories this week, by Kobe Yank-Jacobs Commentators often worry that the decline of reading could mean the decline of liberal democracy — but deliberative governance actually predated widespread literacy. This week, Maibritt Henkel pointed out that many liberal cultures thrive on a culture of raucous, interactive debate, which can happen in-person as easily, if not more so, than in text. Read on, dear reader, to learn more. It may actually cheer you up: [ ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/reading-wont-save-liberalism) [ Reading won’t save liberalism ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/reading-wont-save-liberalism) Maibritt Henkel · Sep 1 [ Read full story ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/reading-wont-save-liberalism) It used to be bad to downplay climate change (if we mean denying its reality). Today, it’s actually good to downplay climate change (if we mean keeping the issue out of political fights so we can make real progress). This counterintuitive view is called “climate hushing,” and contributor Alex Trembath argued that it’s the key to enacting good policy going forward. Get up to speed on the latest in climate politics: [ ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/we-wont-stop-climate-change-by-talking) [ We won’t stop climate change by talking about it ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/we-wont-stop-climate-change-by-talking) Alex Trembath · Sep 2 [ Read full story ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/we-wont-stop-climate-change-by-talking) Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney is standing up for the forces of liberalism against Donald Trump’s assault on our closest ally. So, why is one prominent left-wing commenter attacking Carney? Columnist Matthew Yglesias explains: [ ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-economic-liberty-means-central) [ When "economic liberty" means central planning ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-economic-liberty-means-central) Matthew Yglesias · Aug 31 [ Read full story ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-economic-liberty-means-central) 🌟Abundance Wins of the Week🌟 Shout out to my home state of California, whose legislature passed two housing bills this week. One requires a housing density minimum in transit-oriented areas of the state’s most transit-rich cities (Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, San Diego, and Long Beach). Another bill closes two common loopholes used by third parties to delay housing projects, including an opportunity to challenge maps of a given lot created by the developer after a project has been approved. Shout out to our big-state rival, Texas, where pro-housing SB 785 took effect this week. The new state law requires municipalities to have at least one district permitted for manufactured housing without a special permit. This will promote zoning changes in 44% of municipalities. The company Fervo Energy signed a deal with Google for what is set to be the world’s largest enhanced geothermal facility, proving a technology can work at a scale that could be crucial to a decarbonized, energy-abundant economy. Share Worth watching… This week, forecasting legend Nate Silver joined Jerusalem, Matt, and Jeremiah on a crowded episode of the pod. It was a party. And speaking of parties, our round table debated the factional lines within the Democratic Party: Is it possible to be center-left and also anti-establishment? Watch or listen to find out: The Rio Grande Valley in Texas is one of the areas that swung hardest toward Trump in 2024, but musician Bobby Pulido is running to flip it back. Right now, The Argument/Split Ticket’s model has him running 1.1 points behind his Republican opponent in a district Trump won by 18 points. Tune in to find out how he differs from national Democrats and what he thinks he can to do win this seat. On Thursday, Bernie Sanders was among the first politicians to call for a ban on superintelligence. My guest this week, Andrea Miotti, has been lobbying to ban superintelligence for several years, most recently in the U.K., U.S., and Canada. I asked him how he gets legislators to take speculative risks seriously, and we dug into what plans might look like to actually pass a ban. Listen to learn more: What’s News with The Argument The Argument recommends, by Kobe Yank-Jacobs If we ever lose track of Justin Zuckerman, I’ll have the team split up and check all the movie theaters in the city. I’m shocked (and a little jealous) at how often he gets out to see good cinema. This week, he brings us It Ends, a “horror-ish movie,” which he described as a “Gen Z Waiting for Godot.” I was intrigued before he added that it was “funny, dark and existential” — at which point I was fully locked in. I guess I also had existential themes on the mind this week. One morning, a single line from a poem I read long ago just came to me: “Is death a stretch of time in which a life is just a flash?” The poem is called “From 20,000 Feet” by Heather McHugh. I suggest the version in The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, which, by tradition, my best friend and I always bring backpacking, extra weight be damned. We’ll stay thematically dark for just one more rec from senior editor John Robert Thomason, whose upcoming trip to Baltimore reminded him to suggest Michael Clune’s memoir White Out (about being addicted to heroin in Baltimore in the 1990s). Ben Lerner’s blurb called it _“_Disturbing, brilliant, hilarious—it’s as if Proust had written Jesus’ Son.” John told me this “seems accurate, with the caveat that I’ve never read Proust.” I, personally, have also shelved Proust until retirement. At this point, I was a little concerned for the team since all of us tossed out such psychologically grim material — maybe we’re all down about the end of summer — but thankfully, at least a few of us were into more upbeat selections. Milan Singh recommended Made In’s 5-quart stainless clad saucier, suggesting he had some fun in the kitchen. Jeremiah Johnson asked if he could recommend yet more Carly Rae Jepsen. Once denied, he offered up Game Changer instead_,_ calling it “the most wildly creative game show, maybe in the entire history of the genre.” Eli Richman mentioned _Lucky, “_a B-tier show with an A-tier cast and an S-tier theme song.” I suppose he was recommending the song, Horns of a Bull. Still, despite these cheerier recs, I couldn’t help but be concerned that we were subconsciously worried about racing toward summer’s end — the end of swim trunks and splashing around. Then a message landed reminding me of the three-day weekend to come. A whole extra day for sunshine. One more swim in the lake. I was grateful this called to mind yet another line from a poem, one by Mary Oliver, the patron saint of every gorgeous summer day (and about whom a documentary is now out). Speaking to God in the poem “Thirst,” she wrote: grant me, in your mercy,a little more time. Love for the earthand love for you are having such a longconversation in my heart. We have merch! We have quarter-zips, keychains, hats, and stickers. Each one is a great conversation starter in its own way. Buy them here. Subscribe More to read: [ The Opening Argument ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/seeing-like-an-elite)[ Seeing like an elite ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/seeing-like-an-elite) Kobe Yank-Jacobs · Sep 4 What do Americans hear when they watch Sen. Bernie Sanders or Vice President JD Vance rail against the elite? Are they thinking of right-wing tech billionaires? Imperious college professors? Liberal magazine writers? [ Read full story ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/seeing-like-an-elite) [ The Weekly Scroll ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/god-is-back-on-the-timeline)[ God is back on the timeline ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/god-is-back-on-the-timeline) Jeremiah Johnson · Sep 5 This week, we’re talking about Substack’s new religious debates, the continuing MAGA influencer scandal, how to retire from YouTube, and aura battles. [ Read full story ](https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/god-is-back-on-the-timeline) 1 This was a legitimate thing to worry about, but doesn’t seem to be a problem given the actual technology: Marijke Van Vlasselaer, Filip Van Droogenbroeck, and Bram Spruyt’s 2026 paper looks at whether Pangram is less accurate when evaluating the work of non-native speakers of English. It isn’t. That’s because Pangram isn’t really looking at how “unusual” a piece of writing is but whether it has the characteristic patterns of LLMs. The Wired article makes an odd gesture at a different Pangram-is-racist argument. There were several controversies this summer during which upcoming books were canceled after being discovered to be AI-written: “The three novels mentioned earlier — Shy Girl, Daggermouth, and Call Me, easily publishing’s biggest AI-detection scandals — were all written by writers of color.” But come on! As Zvi Mowshowitz put it: “They were not primarily written by people of color. They were primarily written by AIs.” That’s the whole problem! And as my colleague Jeremiah Johnson recently observed with respect to Cambridge’s Arday scandal, a community being unwilling to call out fraud if it’s perpetuated by people of color is not an anti-racist tendency; it is ultimately quite racist. 2 Many non-Pangram detectors don’t work, but many possible airplane designs also don’t work, and no one considers this a general argument against aviation; the thing that matters is whether any detection works. 3 The phrase “empires have always loved” mysteriously became all the rage in the last few years. See here, here, here, here and here. Before 2025, the only use of that phrase I have been able to find is a single Tweet. The logic of the sentence, too, is incoherent in an AI-characteristic way. “...sounds like paperwork, until you remember that empires have always loved paperwork”? Does remembering that make it sound less like paperwork? It’s a craft-ful sentence, but what is it actually saying??
SC observes National Public Health Week, April 6-12
Each April, National Public Health Week is observed to recognize public health contributions and address key health issues.
Rapid evolution helped a wildflower survive California’s megadrought
Wild scarlet monkeyflowers in California survived a historic drought by relying on a rapid evolution, marking the first time the process has been observed in the wild.
MIami Dolphins OTA observations, notes and quotes; Kyle Louis INT
The Miami Dolphins had an OTA open to media on Tuesday, May 19. Here’s what we observed.
Fastest star? Scientists find super-speeder around Milky Way black hole
Never before has a star been observed going as fast as S301, which is estimated to be moving at a mere 56 million miles per hour.
Why Elephants Will Never Jump: Scientists Reveal the Jaw-Dropping Truth - Futura-Sciences
The Science of Not Jumping It’s an old, thoroughly observed fact: elephants don’t jump. They won’t leap across a ditch, won’t hurdle an obstacle, and never have all four feet off the ground at once. What’s really surprising is that science hasn’t taken a deep dive into this question until...
Listening for quantum oscillations in the Kondo insulator YbB12
Magnetic quantum oscillations have been unexpectedly observed in insulators, where freely moving charge carriers are not expected to exist. A joint study by researchers from Tokyo University of Science, The University of Tokyo, and Kobe University investigated this puzzling behavior in the Kondo insulator YbB12 using ultrasound. While no oscillations were detected in the insulating state, clear signals emerged after the material became metallic, offering new insight into unusual quantum behavior in next-generation materials.
Scientists Solve a 70-Year Mystery Behind the Universe’s Strange Magnetic Fields
Researchers have identified a potential mechanism that explains how turbulent plasma can produce the vast, ordered magnetic fields observed across the universe Cosmic magnetic fields are everywhere, but their origin has remained one of plasma astrophysics’ most persistent mysteries. Planets, star