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Pete Alonso unanimously named Most Valuable Oriole
There was only one real choice and that’s exactly who everyone picked.
Your Business Probably Has More Data Than Insight by Nathan Tayloe
Most businesses know more about themselves than they ever have. Leaders have access to financial reports, sales pipelines, customer data, employee metrics, website analytics, and dashboards for almost every part of the organization. CRMs track every stage of the sales process. Marketing platforms report results in real time. AI can analyze and summarize enormous amounts of information in seconds. Yet I've sat in plenty of meetings where all of that information is available, and some of the most important questions are still surprisingly difficult to answer. What's actually working? Why are customers choosing us? Where are we losing opportunities? What should we do differently? Having the data and understanding what it means are two very different things. More Information Doesn't Always Create More Clarity Over the past decade, businesses have invested heavily in visibility, and that's a good thing. We can understand performance with a level of detail that would have been unimaginable not long ago. But there's an unintended consequence. The easier something becomes to measure, the easier it is to assume it must be important. Website traffic goes up, so that looks positive. Leads increase, so marketing appears to be working. Sales activity climbs, so the pipeline looks healthy. Maybe. The numbers tell us what happened. Understanding why it happened, whether it matters, and what we should do next still requires judgment. Not Everything That Matters Fits on a Dashboard Consider a customer who ultimately contacts your company through Google. The data may attribute that lead to search. What it may not show is that the customer heard about you from a colleague six months earlier, saw your company mentioned in an industry publication, followed one of your employees on LinkedIn, and read several reviews before finally searching for your company. Google may have produced the click. It didn't necessarily create the decision. This happens throughout a business. Some of the things that matter most are difficult to reduce to a single metric: Why your best customers stay Why talented employees choose your company Why a prospect trusts one provider over another Why one service is gaining momentum while another isn't Why the market perceives your business the way it does Data can help answer those questions, but it needs context. Better Decisions Start With Better Questions One of the easiest traps for leaders is starting with the information in front of them rather than the decision they're trying to make. Instead of opening a dashboard and asking, "What does the data show?" it can be more useful to start with a different set of questions: What are we trying to understand? What decision are we trying to make? What would we need to know to make that decision confidently? That changes the role of data. Instead of looking at every number available and searching for meaning, you're using information to understand something specific about the business. Information Still Requires Judgment More sophisticated analytics and AI will continue to give leaders access to better information, faster. That's valuable, but I don't think it reduces the importance of experience and judgment. If anything, it increases it. Someone still has to decide which numbers deserve attention, which patterns matter, what context might be missing, and when the data isn't telling the whole story. The goal isn't to know more about your business simply because you can. It's to understand your business well enough to make better decisions. Good data can tell you what happened. Good leadership has to decide what it means. — Learn more about how we help organizations turn business, customer, and marketing insights into smarter strategies at tayloegray.com, or reach out directly at nathan@tayloegray.com.
Alonso urges Chelsea to learn from painful defeat at Arsenal
Xabi Alonso urged Chelsea to use their 2-1 defeat at Arsenal on Sunday as a valuable lesson in the race to catch the Premier League champions."It hurts because a defeat has to hurt.
Ranieri: ‘Luckily’ young Italian footballers get playing outside Serie A
Italy technical director Claudio Ranieri is focused on developing young players, but insists youth coaches must be paid more and notes that, ‘luckily’, many youngsters are gaining valuable playing...
3 Steps to Support Mental Health for Rural Youth
(Feature Impact) Young people face a growing number of pressures, including academic expectations, social responsibilities, complex family situations and uncertainty about their own futures. Mental health support is important for all – but in many rural areas, those pressures are even greater.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for rural youth ages 15-19 is 74% higher than their urban counterparts. Barriers like limited insurance coverage, unreliable internet for telehealth, scarce providers, long drive times and lack of public transportation make it harder to get mental healthcare when it’s needed. Plus, asking for help can feel like opening oneself up to judgment and stigmatization.That’s why Rural Minds, the only nonprofit focused on mental health for rural communities, created the Rural Youth Mental Wellness pilot program supported by Boehringer Ingelheim. It was developed by an advisory committee made up of rural youth to provide their peers with practical, free, accessible mental health resources. Incorporating feedback on the pilot, the updated program sponsored by the Sompo Foundation is now launching its national rollout.“A young person’s ZIP code should never determine whether they can access meaningful mental health support where and when they need it,” said Jessica L. Schleider, Ph.D., director, Lab for Scalable Mental Health, Northwestern University. “Our lab is thrilled to partner with Rural Minds as they champion evidence-based, anonymous, freely available support tools designed to overcome barriers to help-seeking faced by rural youth across the country.”If the rural mental health crisis affects you or a loved one, consider these ways to help.Break the Stigma Surrounding Mental HealthIn communities where self-reliance is valued, asking for help can sometimes be viewed as a sign of weakness. Young people who feel unheard and unsupported often struggle with being vulnerable, so they continue carrying their increasingly heavy burdens alone.Parents, educators, healthcare providers, community leaders and peers can work to change that culture by normalizing mental health conversations. This includes helping teenagers feel seen and accepted by educating them on mental health issues and coping strategies, listening to their experiences without judgment, sharing your own stories and reminding them it’s courageous to seek support.Consider Single-Session InterventionsThe first step is always the hardest when it comes to seeking mental health support, and not every struggling young person is ready or able to see a therapist. With access to free, confidential, self-guided materials to begin building mental wellness skills, the first step may be less scary.Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) are brief, structured online courses designed to teach youth practical skills for handling stress, low mood, self-image and more. The Rural Youth Mental Wellness Program offers SSIs in partnership with Project YES (Youth Empowerment and Support), a free digital resource developed with Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health at the Feinberg School of Medicine.Anonymous access to SSIs through the partnership provides strategies for:Improving moodRethinking body imageReframing negative thoughtsKnowing your power to changeTaking steps toward goalsProtecting LGBTQ+ prideHandling self-harm urgesStaying safe amid dark thoughtsEach SSI typically takes 5-10 minutes. Although SSIs are not a replacement for therapy, they provide a research-backed source of support for young people experiencing bouts of stress or low-to-moderate distress.Know When to Seek Professional HelpSelf-guided resources and supportive conversations are a valuable starting point, but sometimes young people need qualified professional help. Look for symptoms like worsening mood or behavior, substance use, self-harm or difficulty managing everyday tasks, and take teens seriously when they express dark feelings.Doctors and counselors can provide personalized support for youth in crisis, and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential 24/7 support for mental health by dialing 9-8-8.“I grew up in a small town where mental health was almost taboo,” said committee member Asheton Medlin. “Being part of the committee that built this program let me help make sure rural youth today have the support I didn’t. I’m excited to help bring these resources to them because this generation deserves the chance to grow up and change the world.”Find more information at RuralMinds.org.Photos courtesy of Shutterstock
Mike Macdonald learned valuable lessons regarding his media approach
Palm Beach business PAC backs Christina Romelus in School Board runoff
‘Her experience in education, public service, and the private sector gives her a valuable perspective.’
T-Mobile plans to limit customer discounts with new phone plans
T-Mobile is reportedly planning a new approach to phone plans that changes how customers access some of its most valuable offers.
Toronto Raptors Worth More In Latest NBA Valuation Report
The Toronto Raptors climbed to 11th place in Sportico's list of the league's most valuable franchises.
GDC Festival of Gaming 2027 moves to four-day format to "create a higher quality, more focused and valuable experience"
"We're concentrating programming and opportunities during the days when the community is most active," say organisers
Is your will worthless? Here’s how to add value
A will is as valuable as you make it. Thought, intention and effort today pay off after you’re gone.
Veterans Put Military Skills to Work in Business: Entrepreneurs Share How Service Helped Shape Careers
Starting a new business can be challenging and intimidating. For military veterans who take the entrepreneurial leap, however, the training and experiences they gained in the service can provide valuable tools for success — along with some challenges of their own. Five local business owners shared their experiences transitioning from military service to entrepreneurship during
3 Steps to Support Mental Health for Rural Youth
(Feature Impact) Young people face a growing number of pressures, including academic expectations, social responsibilities, complex family situations and uncertainty about their own futures. Mental health support is important for all – but in many rural areas, those pressures are even greater.#placement_1126603_0_i{width:100%;max-width:550px;margin:0 auto;}var rnd = window.rnd || Math.floor(Math.random()*10e6);var pid1126603 = window.pid1126603 || rnd;var plc1126603 = window.plc1126603 || 0;var abkw = window.abkw || '';var absrc = 'https://ads.empowerlocal.co/adserve/;ID=181918;size=0x0;setID=1126603;type=js;sw='+screen.width+';sh='+screen.height+';spr='+window.devicePixelRatio+';kw='+abkw+';pid='+pid1126603+';place='+(plc1126603++)+';rnd='+rnd+';click=CLICK_MACRO_PLACEHOLDER';var _absrc = absrc.split("type=js"); absrc = _absrc[0] + 'type=js;referrer=' + encodeURIComponent(document.location.href) + _absrc[1];document.write('');According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for rural youth ages 15-19 is 74% higher than their urban counterparts. Barriers like limited insurance coverage, unreliable internet for telehealth, scarce providers, long drive times and lack of public transportation make it harder to get mental healthcare when it’s needed. Plus, asking for help can feel like opening oneself up to judgment and stigmatization.That’s why Rural Minds, the only nonprofit focused on mental health for rural communities, created the Rural Youth Mental Wellness pilot program supported by Boehringer Ingelheim. It was developed by an advisory committee made up of rural youth to provide their peers with practical, free, accessible mental health resources. Incorporating feedback on the pilot, the updated program sponsored by the Sompo Foundation is now launching its national rollout.“A young person’s ZIP code should never determine whether they can access meaningful mental health support where and when they need it,” said Jessica L. Schleider, Ph.D., director, Lab for Scalable Mental Health, Northwestern University. “Our lab is thrilled to partner with Rural Minds as they champion evidence-based, anonymous, freely available support tools designed to overcome barriers to help-seeking faced by rural youth across the country.”If the rural mental health crisis affects you or a loved one, consider these ways to help.Break the Stigma Surrounding Mental HealthIn communities where self-reliance is valued, asking for help can sometimes be viewed as a sign of weakness. Young people who feel unheard and unsupported often struggle with being vulnerable, so they continue carrying their increasingly heavy burdens alone.Parents, educators, healthcare providers, community leaders and peers can work to change that culture by normalizing mental health conversations. This includes helping teenagers feel seen and accepted by educating them on mental health issues and coping strategies, listening to their experiences without judgment, sharing your own stories and reminding them it’s courageous to seek support.Consider Single-Session InterventionsThe first step is always the hardest when it comes to seeking mental health support, and not every struggling young person is ready or able to see a therapist. With access to free, confidential, self-guided materials to begin building mental wellness skills, the first step may be less scary. Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) are brief, structured online courses designed to teach youth practical skills for handling stress, low mood, self-image and more. The Rural Youth Mental Wellness Program offers SSIs in partnership with Project YES (Youth Empowerment and Support), a free digital resource developed with Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health at the Feinberg School of Medicine.Anonymous access to SSIs through the partnership provides strategies for:Improving moodRethinking body imageReframing negative thoughtsKnowing your power to changeTaking steps toward goalsProtecting LGBTQ+ prideHandling self-harm urgesStaying safe amid dark thoughtsEach SSI typically takes 5-10 minutes. Although SSIs are not a replacement for therapy, they provide a research-backed source of support for young people experiencing bouts of stress or low-to-moderate distress.Know When to Seek Professional HelpSelf-guided resources and supportive conversations are a valuable starting point, but sometimes young people need qualified professional help. Look for symptoms like worsening mood or behavior, substance use, self-harm or difficulty managing everyday tasks, and take teens seriously when they express dark feelings.Doctors and counselors can provide personalized support for youth in crisis, and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential 24/7 support for mental health by dialing 9-8-8.“I grew up in a small town where mental health was almost taboo,” said committee member Asheton Medlin. “Being part of the committee that built this program let me help make sure rural youth today have the support I didn’t. I’m excited to help bring these resources to them because this generation deserves the chance to grow up and change the world.”Find more information at RuralMinds.org.Photos courtesy of Shutterstock
Earn up to $4,300 in travel with the latest Capital One Venture X Business card offer
This Capital One Venture X Business card welcome bonus is more valuable than any previous offer for this card.
MVDs: Arkansas Edition
You don’t go on the road and take care of business in the SEC without a total team effort. Even then some Bulldogs are bound to distinguish themselves above and beyond the crowd. Those undaunted Dawgs are your MVDs, the Most Valuable ‘‘Dawgs from Georgia’s 45-17 victory over Arkansas. Offense: Gunner Stockton. Sure, we could […]
Tuesday ‘Dawg Bites Is More Valuable Than Not
Welcome to Tuesday, Bulldog fans! Paycheck games are now complete, alternate unis have been adorned to wow the recruits, (hopefully) the worst weather of the season is behind us, and we can now turn our attention to conference play. Head Coach Kirby Smart held his weekly press conference Monday afternoon, and he was consistent if […]
Greek takeaways: What did we learn from Lionesses' win?
England come away from Greece with a valuable first-leg lead in their Women's World Cup qualifying play-off - but who impressed in the 3-1 victory?
Padres’ Potential Game 4 Starter Comes Back from Paternity List
Walker Buehler has spent the season being one of the San Diego Padres' most valuable starting pitchers. That might not be immediately apparent from the overlying statistics, but the metrics under the surface show a different picture. San Diego will be all hands on deck after dropping both games to the Milwaukee Brewers at American …
Miller Names Morejon As Most Valuable Reliever In Baseball
Mason Miller gets most of the accolades in the San Diego Padres bullpen, but he thinks another reliever is valuable.
How an obscure government code unlocks opportunity for businesses
What rhymes with "snakes" and helps the government classify economic activity? NAICS — or the North American Industry Classification System. These codes categorize every industry from artificial turf installation to zucchini farming. But they’re not exactly easy to get. Today we look at one business’ quest for a NAICS code and what makes them so valuable. Fact checking by Leyla Doss. Your Next Listen — How to take the temperature of the US consumer Connect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s weekly newsletter! — Buy the Planet Money book — Find our socials, YouTube and more! — For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+ Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
5 parenting tricks I use on myself
As a parent, I’ve learned some invaluable tips to prevent my kid from having a meltdown. Now, I’m stealing them for myself.
Indiana football's Curt Cignetti teaches Nick Marsh a valuable lesson
Indiana football's Curt Cignetti teaches Nick Marsh a valuable lesson ahead of Big Ten play:
Enterprise AI Wants Your Most Sensitive Data. VAST Says It Can Keep It Safe
Enterprises have plenty of data they would like to use with AI. The problem is that some of their most valuable data is also the hardest to use. Think of all the customer records, financial information, internal research and other sensitive data that can’t always be sent to an outside AI service. There is another […]
3 Steps to Support Mental Health for Rural Youth
(Feature Impact) Young people face a growing number of pressures, including academic expectations, social responsibilities, complex family situations and uncertainty about their own futures. Mental health support is important for all – but in many rural areas, those pressures are even greater. TNCMS.AdManager.render({region: 'fixed-big-ad-top-asset', slot: 1, fold: "above"}); According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for rural youth ages 15-19 is 74% higher than their urban counterparts. Barriers like limited insurance coverage, unreliable internet for telehealth, scarce providers, long drive times and lack of public transportation make it harder to get mental healthcare when it’s needed. Plus, asking for help can feel like opening oneself up to judgment and stigmatization.That’s why Rural Minds, the only nonprofit focused on mental health for rural communities, created the Rural Youth Mental Wellness pilot program supported by Boehringer Ingelheim. It was developed by an advisory committee made up of rural youth to provide their peers with practical, free, accessible mental health resources. Incorporating feedback on the pilot, the updated program sponsored by the Sompo Foundation is now launching its national rollout.“A young person’s ZIP code should never determine whether they can access meaningful mental health support where and when they need it,” said Jessica L. Schleider, Ph.D., director, Lab for Scalable Mental Health, Northwestern University. “Our lab is thrilled to partner with Rural Minds as they champion evidence-based, anonymous, freely available support tools designed to overcome barriers to help-seeking faced by rural youth across the country.”If the rural mental health crisis affects you or a loved one, consider these ways to help.Break the Stigma Surrounding Mental HealthIn communities where self-reliance is valued, asking for help can sometimes be viewed as a sign of weakness. Young people who feel unheard and unsupported often struggle with being vulnerable, so they continue carrying their increasingly heavy burdens alone.Parents, educators, healthcare providers, community leaders and peers can work to change that culture by normalizing mental health conversations. This includes helping teenagers feel seen and accepted by educating them on mental health issues and coping strategies, listening to their experiences without judgment, sharing your own stories and reminding them it’s courageous to seek support.Consider Single-Session InterventionsThe first step is always the hardest when it comes to seeking mental health support, and not every struggling young person is ready or able to see a therapist. With access to free, confidential, self-guided materials to begin building mental wellness skills, the first step may be less scary. TNCMS.AdManager.render({region: 'fixed-big-ad-middle-asset', slot: 1, fold: "span"}); Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) are brief, structured online courses designed to teach youth practical skills for handling stress, low mood, self-image and more. The Rural Youth Mental Wellness Program offers SSIs in partnership with Project YES (Youth Empowerment and Support), a free digital resource developed with Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health at the Feinberg School of Medicine.Anonymous access to SSIs through the partnership provides strategies for:Improving moodRethinking body imageReframing negative thoughtsKnowing your power to changeTaking steps toward goalsProtecting LGBTQ+ prideHandling self-harm urgesStaying safe amid dark thoughtsEach SSI typically takes 5-10 minutes. Although SSIs are not a replacement for therapy, they provide a research-backed source of support for young people experiencing bouts of stress or low-to-moderate distress.Know When to Seek Professional HelpSelf-guided resources and supportive conversations are a valuable starting point, but sometimes young people need qualified professional help. Look for symptoms like worsening mood or behavior, substance use, self-harm or difficulty managing everyday tasks, and take teens seriously when they express dark feelings.Doctors and counselors can provide personalized support for youth in crisis, and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential 24/7 support for mental health by dialing 9-8-8.“I grew up in a small town where mental health was almost taboo,” said committee member Asheton Medlin. “Being part of the committee that built this program let me help make sure rural youth today have the support I didn’t. I’m excited to help bring these resources to them because this generation deserves the chance to grow up and change the world.”Find more information at RuralMinds.org.Photos courtesy of Shutterstock TNCMS.AdManager.render({region: 'fixed-big-ad-bottom-asset', slot: 1, fold: "below"});
The Motley Fool: Capital allocation explained
When management decides how to allocate capital, it should pursue the most productive plans to grow financially stronger and more valuable.
NASA Highlights Lessons Learned From Swift Boost Mission
A commercial mission to boost NASA’s Swift observatory concluded without raising the spacecraft’s orbit, but the agency and industry vendor gained valuable experience that will benefit future in-space servicing programs.
"30th Celebration" Pull Rates and Most Valuable Cards Worldwide...
The pull rates for 30th Celebration have been determined by our friends at TCGplayer after opening 3,000 English booster packs. As expected, like 2021's
Mac Users Reclaim Storage With New Apple Intelligence Removal Tool
A new open-source tool is making waves in the Mac community by helping users reclaim valuable storage space taken up by Apple's AI models. Called "RemoveMacAI," the tool disables Apple Intelligence on macOS 27, removes its downloaded models, and prevents them from being downloaded again. In macOS 27, Apple removed the toggle to disable Apple Intelligence wholesale, and simply disabling individual features doesn't remove the models from your Mac's drive.
Valkyries reach record $100M in annual revenue as world's most valuable women's sports franchise
The Valkyries have become the first professional women's sports team to generate $100 million in annual revenue, adding another milestone to their second season that has drawn sold-out crowds and helped make the franchise, nearing a $1 billion valuation, the most valuable team in women's sports.
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??
Veteran striker Jamie Vardy joins Burnley
Former England international Jamie Vardy has joined Burnley on a season-long deal. The 39-year-old striker, who won the Premier League with Leicester in 2016, was a free agent after leaving Italian club Cremonese at the end of last season. “His experience and leadership will be invaluable to our squad, and we believe he can make a significant impact on our campaign," Burnley head coach Nicky Hayen said.
Scientists turn seawater into fresh water without harmful brine
Scientists have developed a solar-powered desalination system that turns seawater into fresh water while removing nearly all of the leftover salt as a solid instead of producing harmful brine. The self-cleaning technology could also recover valuable minerals such as lithium, potentially turning desalination waste into a useful resource.
Bishop’s computer science chair says AI is eliminating ‘grunt work’ and reshaping digital jobs
Dr. Russell Butler, chair of Bishop’s University’s Department of Computer Science, says artificial intelligence is increasingly taking over routine digital “grunt work,” changing the skills students and workers may need in the years ahead. Photo courtesy of Bishop’s University. Click here to read our platform! Get local news like this every morning. Subscribe free below. Subscribe Pulse Newsroom Artificial intelligence is already taking over some of the routine digital work once performed by entry-level employees, according to Bishop’s University Computer Science chair Dr. Russell Butler — a shift he believes will make expertise, judgement and the ability to evaluate AI-generated work increasingly important. Butler described the change as automation reaching what he calls the “bottom of the cognitive pyramid” during an interview with The Pulse about AI, university education and the future of digital work. His argument is not that humans are disappearing from the workplace. Instead, he sees their role changing as AI becomes capable of handling more of the repetitive tasks involved in computer-based work. “Everything’s converging on just AI basically doing all the grunt work,” Butler said. The bottom of the cognitive pyramid Butler is from Lennoxville, completed his undergraduate studies at Bishop’s and later earned his PhD at the Université de Sherbrooke. He joined Bishop’s in 2019 and now chairs its Department of Computer Science. He uses AI in research, teaching and other creative work, and said the technology is increasingly capable of handling routine digital tasks that once required substantial human time. “You’ve got the grunt work, like moving things around in Excel, doing basic programming tasks,” Butler said. “That’s like the bottom grunt work that the entry-level worker would have done two or three years ago.” Butler went further, saying in his view that much of this type of work has already been absorbed by AI tools. He connected that change to a shift he sees taking place in computer science, where entry-level roles have declined while experienced workers can use AI to increase what they can produce. “A senior developer now has access to essentially an unlimited amount of junior developers on demand,” Butler said. He was describing AI systems metaphorically, not literal employees. His point was that one experienced developer can now ask AI tools to produce code or other technical work that might previously have been assigned to more junior workers. That raises a broader question for universities and employers. If some of the simpler work traditionally given to newcomers can now be done by machines, how do people gain the experience needed to become senior workers themselves? Students doing work that once required years of programming Butler said he is already seeing the change inside his classroom. He created a Bishop’s course called CS208, Coding in Plain English, to show students — including those without traditional programming backgrounds — what they can accomplish using AI. Some come from disciplines such as psychology or neuroscience with no previous programming experience. “What I’m finding is that students who have zero programming experience, they come in from another discipline like psychology or neuroscience or something, they are now able to get up and running with real data sets,” Butler said. Butler’s own doctoral work involved neuroimaging, and he said he has assigned students work he considers comparable to the kinds of analysis he performed during his PhD. He described giving students a real dataset, an expected result and instructions to use AI to complete the analysis. Butler said those students have been able to carry out work at a level he associates with tasks he once performed after years of programming experience. That does not mean a student using AI instantly acquires the same knowledge as an experienced computer scientist. But Butler sees it as evidence that AI can dramatically lower the technical barrier between having a problem to solve and producing a working result. The role of the person using the system then changes. They need to know what to ask for, understand enough about the subject to judge the answer and take responsibility for what is ultimately produced. What about AI hallucinations? One persistent concern surrounding generative AI is hallucination — when a system produces information that sounds convincing but is false or unsupported. Butler said that problem has improved substantially in newer systems and is not as severe as it was with earlier models. He pointed in particular to newer AI systems’ ability to search the web, consult scientific databases and return source links rather than simply generating a citation from their internal model. Butler nevertheless said users should verify what AI produces. “You should verify,” he said while discussing citations generated with AI. His position is that hallucinations have become less common in the systems he uses, not that incorrect AI output is impossible. Human checking remains part of the process. Hours of work compressed Butler offered another example from his administrative work at Bishop’s. The university has been comparing CEGEP courses with first-year Bishop’s courses to determine where students may qualify for advanced standing. Traditionally, Butler said, that means reviewing two sets of course descriptions and manually matching one institution’s courses with another’s. As department chair, that could require hours of reading and comparison. He said AI can now be given both sets of material and asked to generate an initial mapping automatically. “It saves me hours and hours of work,” Butler said. Butler said the AI-generated mapping can also produce a better result than he would produce himself. He sees similar opportunities in businesses. A company may receive specifications, drawings, emails or other digital material from customers and then have employees convert that information into an internal format before anything can be manufactured or delivered. AI can increasingly perform parts of that intermediate processing. In Butler’s view, the employee does not necessarily disappear. Instead, the job becomes more about checking the result. “The human is still there,” he said. Judgement could become more valuable That change is central to Butler’s view of where digital work may be headed. If AI can produce a first draft, write basic code, compare documents or process large amounts of information, he argues that knowledge and judgement become increasingly important. “The real scarce resource going forward is going to be domain knowledge, expertise, and… credentials, authority, the ability to work with other people,” Butler said. He is therefore encouraging students not only to learn AI tools but also to broaden their education. He mentioned acting, fine art and photography as examples of courses that can help develop what he described as taste and intuition — the ability to recognize what is good, what is not and what should be changed. “And that’s the skill that they need now because the grunt work has been automated and now it’s about evaluating what the AI produces and telling it how to improve or expand the output,” Butler said. That does not remove the need for technical knowledge. Butler’s argument is that the emphasis may shift away from manually completing every step of a task and toward directing, checking and improving work produced with AI assistance. He also stressed that humans remain responsible for final decisions. “At the end of the day, the human has to make the final call,” Butler said, pointing to the question of accountability. Physical work may be different Butler draws a distinction between digital work and jobs requiring people to manipulate the physical world. He expects AI to continue advancing quickly in tasks performed almost entirely on computers. He is more cautious about claims that humanoid robots will soon be able to replace workers such as plumbers or electricians. Butler said those trades would not be replaced “anytime soon” in his view and described some current robotics demonstrations as overhyped. He described the situation as counterintuitive. “It’s almost like we solved the highest level first,” he said, contrasting advances in digital AI with the harder problem of building robots capable of operating reliably in the physical world. Butler’s argument is that some digital occupations could face automation sooner than trades requiring complex physical work. The wider AI shift in the Townships Butler’s comments come as local institutions are increasingly grappling with how AI should be used. The federal government recently announced up to $162 million over five years for 10,000 AI-related placements through Mitacs. The Université de Sherbrooke told The Pulse that the number of its collaborative research and innovation projects supported through Mitacs has approximately doubled since 2018-19, while the number of placements has approximately tripled. UdeS also said it already has projects involving both AI adoption and the application of AI to other fields. At Bishop’s, Butler said part of his role involves building the Computer Science department’s local presence, connecting students with regional partners and strengthening relationships with the Sherbrooke technology ecosystem. Those developments put universities in a difficult position. They have to prepare students to use the tools employers increasingly have available while also making sure graduates understand enough to recognize when those tools are wrong, incomplete or being applied to the wrong problem. The risk of losing human skills Butler does not see AI as risk-free. Later in the interview, he raised a separate concern: as AI becomes better at reading, writing, programming and other cognitive tasks, people could lose some of the underlying skills that historically helped produce new ideas. “The other danger is that we’re going to lose the human skills,” Butler said. He specifically mentioned reading and writing and argued that people could lose some of the lower-level understanding that contributes to breakthroughs. Butler said AI systems are based on existing human knowledge and argued that they become much more powerful when paired with a capable person. That tension runs through his view of the technology. AI can remove hours of routine work. It can allow beginners to perform tasks that once required substantial technical training. It can give experienced workers significant leverage. But the more capable the technology becomes, the more important it may be for people to develop the judgement needed to decide what should be done in the first place. For Butler, that is where education may have to change. Students still need to understand their field. They still need to know when something is wrong. And they still need to be able to make the final decision. But if AI increasingly handles the bottom of the cognitive pyramid, the value of a worker may depend less on how quickly they can perform the grunt work and more on whether they understand what the work is supposed to accomplish. Don’t miss the next story that affects your community. Join thousands of readers getting The Pulse every morning—plus breaking news alerts when it matters most. If you value this kind of local journalism, consider supporting it. Subscribe, share and like! Subscribe Share
Mental Health Board Swears in New Member, Hears Agency Reports
The Geauga County Board of Mental Health and Recovery Services heard outcome reports from nine agencies under its oversight during its Sept. 16 meeting, as representatives reviewed their work during fiscal year 2026. The board also swore in new member Dave Fabiq. Vice Chair Kathy Johnson said she expected Fabiq to bring valuable experience to
Yale School of Medicine On the Science of Childhood Anxiety, Say, Anxiety Disorders Are the Most Common Mental Health Challenges In Youth
Credit: Matt Bradbury October 5, 2026 - By Isabella Backman - Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health challenges in youth. Left untreated, they can disrupt the lives of both children and their families. The good news is that with intervention, most children will overcome these conditions. Across Yale School of Medicine, scientists are working to understand anxiety at every level, from common anxious behaviors to molecular biomarkers in the brain. They are using their findings to develop and disseminate new evidence-based treatments for childhood anxiety. Today, the go-to treatment for childhood anxiety disorders is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This is a form of psychotherapy that teaches children skills for confronting anxious thoughts and helps them practice managing situations that cause anxiety. While it is the gold-standard treatment backed by considerable scientific evidence, up to 50% of children will not see sufficient benefit from CBT alone. Wendy Silverman, PhD, Alfred A. Messer Professor in the Child Study Center, co-directs the Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program alongside Eli Lebowitz, PhD, associate professor in the Child Study Center. One of their main interests is learning how to improve outcomes beyond CBT. “We’re developing cutting-edge, research-based knowledge that can reduce the suffering that anxiety causes children and their families,” says Silverman. Changing parent behavior YSM experts are investigating how to improve CBT outcomes for children by involving the parents. Silverman’s research has uncovered two main components of parent intervention that improve childhood anxiety: not enabling children to completely avoid the things that make them anxious and taking steps to enhance their autonomy. Parents may unintentionally reinforce their child’s anxiety by allowing them to avoid what makes them anxious. They also may unintentionally limit the children’s sense of autonomy by being overly intrusive. “One of the things that we take pride in is that we’ve focused on trying to understand what parents need to do, and to test our ideas and see if changing the parents’ behaviors is enhancing the effects of CBT,” Silverman says. “Our findings thus far suggest that they do." As much as CBT can be helpful, it can also be challenging to get one’s child to do the necessary steps for CBT to work. This is one important reason why Lebowitz created a novel intervention program for parents named Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE). Existing intervention programs often teach parents to act as therapists for their child, such as training them on how to practice breathing exercises. “It makes sense, but this doesn’t work very well in practice,” says Lebowitz. “And part of the reason, I think, is that it’s not easy to get your kid to do things, especially if they’re not excited about doing it.” SPACE is unique because it focuses entirely on parent involvement and changing parental behavior—children are not involved in the sessions. For example, parents learn how to use supportive messages that convey confidence that their child can tolerate and manage distress. “It might sound like a parent saying to a child, ‘I get that this is really hard for you, but I know that you can handle it,’” Lebowitz says. The program also works with parents to identify the ways in which they are accommodating anxious behaviors. “We’ll pick one thing that parents are doing that is an accommodation and help them make a detailed plan for how they’re going to change that,” Lebowitz explains. Treating Anxiety in Children and Adolescents Much of the existing research on SPACE has focused on parents of children under age 14. Ongoing studies are now exploring its use with parents of older teens. “Both anxiety and accommodation can interfere with normative developmental shifts during the teen years, including increased autonomy and individuation from parents,” says Rebecca Etkin, PhD, associate research scientist in the Child Study Center. “In this sense, SPACE may be particularly well-suited for anxious teens and their parents. We want to see whether it is effective during this distinct developmental window.” Unfortunately, many families in need of CBT face barriers, including limited availability of services and geographic constraints. One way to improve access is digital interventions. Silverman and her team are developing an evidence-based digitized intervention program for parents that they can access directly from their computer or smart phone. “The work we’re doing will be one of the very few parent interventions that is digitized and importantly tested for effectiveness,” she says. Creating interventions for anxiety-related challenges Silverman and Lebowitz recently received a generous gift to develop and test other interventions that help parents reduce other child anxiety-related behavioral and emotional difficulties, such as restrictive eating and unexplained somatic symptoms. One of these projects in particular focuses on understanding the risks of social media and its potential benefits, including offering a sense of connection. “A lot of research has focused on the idea that social media is harmful and the less of it the better,” says Lebowitz. “But we actually see is that this is not quite right—there are negatives, but there are also positives. So, we’re trying to get a little bit more nuanced of a picture.” The team is working with teens with social anxiety and their parents over an extended period to better understand their social media habits and how their anxiety levels affect engagement with different platforms. The teens will answer questions sent to an app on their phones about mood and social media usage in an effort to capture emotional responses as they unfold. “We hope to develop interventions that can help make the best of social media while protecting against the more problematic effects,” Lebowitz says. The brain’s role in anxiety Researchers are also testing therapies to address anxiety at the neurological and molecular levels. In collaboration with Dylan Gee, PhD, professor of psychology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Hilary Blumberg, MD, John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatric Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine, Lebowitz and Silverman are using brain imaging to identify changes in a child’s brain before and after parents enroll in SPACE. In one study, children viewed anxiety-inducing images while undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); the researchers conducted scans with and without the children’s parents nearby. Before SPACE, children’s brains were better able to activate the regulatory circuitry needed to turn off an anxious response when their parents were nearby. But after SPACE, children could activate this circuitry even without the parent around. “As parents work on gradually reducing some of their accommodations, you can see a child get better at regulating their own fear system in the brain,” Lebowitz says. “It’s remarkable.” Research into the molecular underpinnings of anxiety can also inform new childhood anxiety treatments. In a recent study, Lebowitz, Silverman, and Flora Vaccarino, MD, Harris Professor in the Child Study Center, discovered that a protein known as fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) could be protective from the toxic effects of stress. FGF2 levels in children and their parents were linked to the children’s risk of developing anxiety and depression, the study showed. The findings could help explain why some children who are exposed to early life trauma such as poverty or abuse are more prone to developing mental health disorders. And FGF2 could be a target for treatment. “This is very novel because it starts to give a clue to what is the molecular chain that connects those lived experiences to the actual psychological outcomes,” Lebowitz says. New ways to study and treat childhood anxiety Michael Crowley, PhD, associate professor in the Child Study Center, collaborates with Silverman and Lebowitz to study the role that attention plays in development and maintenance of childhood anxiety. There is a large body of research that shows that anxious children, like anxious adults, are prone to focus on threatening stimuli such as angry faces compared with neutral faces. This has led to innovative interventions that involve attention retraining. The idea is that if experts train children to look away from threatening stimuli, it may reduce their anxiety—especially children with social anxiety who are most prone to attend to threats. The researchers have just completed a clinical trial for attention retraining with 10- to 14-year-olds with social anxiety disorders and are currently analyzing the findings. Besides this innovative attention retraining research, as Crowly notes, “I like to design tasks that are engaging to kids,” Crowley says. “My goal is to assess something without the kids knowing what we are assessing.” With this goal in mind, Crowley has created a virtual game, named Boom, to study threat processing in children with anxiety disorders. The game is similar to that of hot potato—the child and three digital players take turns virtually passing a ball to each other’s gloves. At some point, the ball turns into a bomb, and as the bomb lands in each player’s glove, the outline of the glove turns yellow. The goal is to avoid having the bomb go off in your glove. What isn’t obvious is that the game is designed to measure different types of threatening stimuli, both ambiguous and direct. In the game, the direct threat occurs as the bomb is traveling towards your glove. The ambiguous threat is the yellow outlined glove as it is unknown where the bomb will travel next. While children play the game, Crowley’s team measures their brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). The researchers have discovered that in kids with anxiety, the brain reacts more strongly to ambiguous threats than it does in their peers, but less strongly to direct threats. They believe that the initial abnormally large brain response to not knowing where the bomb is going impairs the brain's ability to properly respond when the threat is actually traveling the child’s way. “The brains of children with anxiety are unable to differentiate between threats you need to do something about and those that are not your problem.” Michael Crowley, PhD, develops innovative games for studying anxiety in children and adolescents.Credit: Matt Bradbury Based on these insights, Crowley hopes to study whether interventions like attention training could restore appropriate threat processing. Crowley’s team is also working on a test called the Balloon Risk Avoidance Task, which evaluates risk-taking and avoidance behaviors. It features a digital balloon that is full of air and about to burst. Kids have six seconds to let air out of the balloon. The more air they let out, the less risk they face that the balloon will pop. But at the same time, the balloon becomes less valuable as it deflates. “The more air you keep in the balloon, the more points you get,” Crowley explains. So far, the researchers have found that when the balloons pop unexpectedly, teens with social anxiety show distinct brain responses. Studying these responses can help psychologists understand the underlying pathways driving the various manifestations of anxiety. The genetics of anxiety When Thomas Fernandez, MD, associate professor in the Child Study Center and of psychiatry, was still in training, there was a lot of excitement about understanding the genetics associated with autism spectrum disorder. Since then, scientists have identified around 250 genes associated with autism. The genetic contribution to anxiety disorders, on the other hand, has historically received less attention. Anxiety is less heritable than autism, but the genetic contribution for anxiety disorders that emerge in childhood may be higher than for anxiety disorders overall. While scientists estimate the heritability of anxiety disorders in general to be around 30% to 50%, some studies suggest higher heritability for certain childhood-onset anxiety presentations. “I saw firsthand how researchers in the field went about finding vulnerability genes for autism,” Fernandez says. “So, we’re using a very similar playbook for childhood anxiety.” “I saw firsthand how researchers in the field went about finding vulnerability genes for autism. So, we’re using a very similar playbook for childhood anxiety.” Thomas Fernandez, MD Associate Professor In the Child Study Center and in Psychiatry Now, Fernandez and Emily Olfson, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Child Study Center, are studying children and their parents to identify genetic changes that are present in the child but not the parents, known as “de novo mutations.” “All of us have some de novo mutations—maybe about 50 to 100 sprinkled throughout the genome,” Olfson says. “But when they occur within the coding regions of genes, they can be really disruptive.” Previous research shows that people with autism have higher rates of damaging de novo mutations than the general population. In 2022, Olfson, Lebowitz, Silverman, and Fernandez published a study on 68 children and their families that found that children with anxiety had similarly high levels of these mutations. Studying de novo mutations can help point the researchers to where they should be looking for genes associated with anxiety. “The end game is using the genes to steer us toward the right part of biology that we can then target to come up with better treatments,” Fernandez says. Building on those findings, the team is now studying more families to better understand how these de novo mutations, along with other genetic and environmental factors, shape pediatric anxiety disorders. They recently received a National Institutes of Health grant to enroll 750 new families over the next five years. Olfson is the principal investigator, with co-investigators Lebowitz, Fernandez, Silverman, and Shuangge Steven Ma, PhD, department chair and professor of biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health. Neurodevelopment, Risk Genes, and Mental Health Conditions - The Olfson Lab Joel Gelernter, MD, Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, is interested in how different anxiety disorders differ genomically. “We are studying social phobia, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, working to understand why people differ in their risk to these specific anxiety disorders and evaluating various risk factors,” he says. Gelernter was recently involved in one of the largest studies to date of the genomics underlying anxiety disorder. The study included around 122,000 people with anxiety disorders and around 730,000 without. It found that some genetic differences associated with anxiety were linked to signaling that helps reduce overactivity in the nervous system. Many anxiety medications available today work by targeting this process. “It’s nice when the biology that you get out of a large genome-wide study ratifies things that we already know because that can help increase confidence in further findings from the study,” Gelernter says. Uncovering the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders John Krystal, MD, Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Translational Research and chair of the Department of Psychiatry, is interested in the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), of which anxiety is a major symptom. In the late 1980s, Krystal’s team discovered that the drug yohimbine activated symptoms in patients with PTSD. “This was the first time we could link a specific biological mechanism to the symptoms of PTSD,” Krystal says. At the time, he adds, this finding was highly controversial. “A lot of people felt that PTSD was a purely psychological syndrome that didn’t have an underlying biology.” Since then, Krystal has dived deep into understanding the neurobiology of PTSD to learn how to better treat it. His team is evaluating the use of ketamine and psychedelics. These would be among the first treatments to be developed specifically for PTSD. They may also be applicable for other disorders including anxiety disorders, Krystal adds. An important gap in PTSD treatment is the absence of biological tests that inform how to best help patients manage their PTSD symptoms. A doctor doesn’t diagnose cancer based on how they feel. Rather, they use tests of the biology of the cancer to determine the best course of treatment. “And we can’t do that in any psychiatric disorder other than Alzheimer’s disease,” Krystal says. “But now we are building a foundation for this approach to the treatment of anxiety disorders for the first time.” Source: Yale School of Medicine
Los Angeles Chargers news: Would you trade Khalil Mack?
If this Chargers season is deemed a lost cause, should they think about trading away Khalil Mack while he’s valuable?
Sandhills Community College Small Business Center expands to Moore and Hoke Counties
Small Business Center Director, Laura Kinsman. Photo provided by: SCCSandhills Community College (SCC) is launching a redesigned Small Business Center model that expands no-cost entrepreneurial support across Moore and Hoke Counties. Rooted in the College’s commitment to strengthening small businesses and entrepreneurship as drivers of economic growth, the enhanced model is led by recently appointed Small Business Center Director, Laura Kinsman. The model also includes two new Senior Business Advisors who will provide trusted expertise, stronger community connections, and individualized guidance to entrepreneurs and business owners throughout the region.Kinsman brings a unique perspective to the director’s role as both a local business owner, operating in downtown Southern Pines, and a former Moore County educator. “Her combination of education, business ownership, leadership, and community involvement make her a great fit for the Small Business Center and the work we are continuing to build across Moore and Hoke counties,” said Taylor L. McCaskill, senior director of Workforce Development & Corporate Partnerships in a press release.Kinsman is an active member of the Southern Pines Business Association and has been connected to the Sandhills Small Business Center since the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey. She looks forward to building on that experience by strengthening the Center’s partnerships and expanding its connections throughout the community.She will lead the Center's efforts to support entrepreneurs and business owners throughout Moore and Hoke County and be the connector to the North Carolina Community College System Small Business Center Network operations. The Center offers no-cost, confidential one-on-one counseling, practical workshops, and connections to the resources and partners that help local businesses start, grow, and create jobs.A key part of this new approach, only offered at SCC, is a network of Senior Business Advisors, experienced professionals who will provide individualized guidance in areas such as business planning, finance, marketing, operations, growth strategy, and problem-solving. These advisors will serve as trusted partners to entrepreneurs and business owners, helping them turn ideas into action, overcome barriers, strengthen existing businesses, and pursue new opportunities. This one-on-one counseling is available at no cost, ensuring that high-quality business support is accessible to entrepreneurs at every stage.Senior Business Advisor for Hoke County, Kenna Parks. Photo provided by: SCCKenna Parks has been named the senior business advisor for Hoke County. She is a business professional, entrepreneur, and educator who brings a unique combination of academic training and real-world business experience. She earned her Master of Business Administration (MBA) in 2017 and has built her career around entrepreneurship, marketing, business development, and helping others turn ideas into sustainable opportunities.Senior Business Advisor for Moore County, Katrin Henderson. Photo provided by: SCCAs a military spouse, she has successfully launched and operated businesses across five states, giving her firsthand experience in adapting to diverse markets, building new customer bases and understanding the importance of global reach in today’s business environment. Over the last decade, her areas of focus include business planning, marketing strategy, branding, customer development, financial preparedness, operational planning and connecting entrepreneurs with educational programs and community resources.Parks brings an especially valuable perspective to business advising because she is an entrepreneur herself. She is the owner of Glamo Society Bridal & Formal Wear in Raeford, N.C., giving her firsthand experience with the realities of launching, operating, marketing and growing a small business. She understands that entrepreneurship extends far beyond developing a great idea; it requires strategy, financial awareness, adaptability, strong customer relationships, and consistent execution.Katrin Henderson will serve as the senior business advisor for Moore County. Thriving in hospitality and retail, Henderson has enjoyed positions in Food & Beverage Management and Retail Management in various fine dining and retail establishments in the area, before opening her own children's shop in 2015, in the Village of Pinehurst. She is a native of Moore County.Quickly immersing herself in this new world of small business ownership, Henderson joined various boards and committees, including President Elect of Pinehurst Business Partners and Event Chair for the Holly Arts & Crafts Festival. She also partnered with local organizations such as Moore County Economic Development and Moore County Chamber of Commerce and Sandhills Community College Small Business Center in events and educational opportunities. In 2026, Henderson sold her shop and now offers full-time support to both new and seasoned entrepreneurs through freelance consulting mentorship and the SCC Small Business Center program.The Small Business Center team is passionate about making business resources more accessible, and ensuring entrepreneurs know they do not have to navigate business ownership alone. Through their work with SCC, they are committed to building meaningful relationships with local businesses, community organizations, and industry partners while helping entrepreneurs move from idea to strategy, strategy to action, and action to sustainable growth.“Sandhills Community College believes deeply in the power of small business and entrepreneurship because strong local businesses create jobs, spark innovation, generate investment, and strengthen the communities we serve,” said McCaskill in press release. “Through this new Small Business Center model, Sandhills is building a stronger ecosystem where entrepreneurs can connect, grow, and thrive, while helping drive long-term economic vitality throughout our region.”To learn more about the Center's services or to schedule a consultation, please contact Kinsman directly at kinsmanl@sandhills.edu or 910-695-3938.
Daniel Perez appoints 3 to Florida Alliance to End Human Trafficking board
'Ignacio, Stephen and Yesenia each bring valuable expertise and a demonstrated commitment to public service and community engagement.'
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HONG KONG, Sept. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Xsight Group (known as Xsight), a Hong Kong–headquartered cross-border technology group founded in 2004, has been featured as a research case in "How AI Agents Orchestrate Work Across Silos," a special report published in the September–October 2026 issue of Harvard Business Review. The article examines how a new generation of AI systems can connect functions and reduce the coordination friction that slows companies down, citing Xsight's practice of decomposing complex cross-departmental decisions into modular tasks and building a layered agentic AI orchestration system as a valuable model for cross-border organizational coordination.
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Chicago Bears Get Valuable Jalen Hurts Lesson From Titans Star
Clearly, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts taught the NFL a valuable lesson at this point. The more players and coaches from the other side taunt or challenge him, the worse off it is for defenses going up against him. The Tennessee Titans recently learned a lesson from the former Super Bowl MVP. While the Titans […] The post Chicago Bears Get Valuable Jalen Hurts Lesson From Titans Star appeared first on HEAVY.
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When I tell people that I am a political science major, one of the first questions I am asked is, “So, are you going to law school?” as if political science comes with a predetermined career path: study government, graduate from college, take the LSAT and become a lawyer. While law is certainly a valuable...
Pioneer of China NewCo model sued in US over trade secret misuse, double-dealing
A legal feud unfolding in New York is putting a spotlight on the work of a business development veteran who is credited for pioneering one of biopharma’s hottest dealmaking mechanism: the China “NewCo” model. In a lawsuit originally filed in New York state court and recently moved to federal court, China’s Lepu Medical Technology has alleged that biopharma business development consultant Su Zhang, who was hired to help shop its GLP-1 weight-loss candidates to Western partners, engaged in corporate double-dealing and trade secret leaks. According to the complaint, while acting as Lepu’s primary dealmaking liaison for a group of obesity and metabolic disease drug candidates, Zhang was secretly double-dipping as the acting chief business officer for a direct competitor, BrightGene Pharmaceutical. “She never adequately disclosed the role, never sought Lepu’s consent, and never proposed any safeguard,” Lepu alleged in its complaint, which was filed in July after Zhang’s consulting firm, CoDevCo, sought certain transaction-based success fees from its angry customer through an arbitration process in Singapore. Lepu, the parent company of Lepu Biopharma, has asked Zhang to pay back its $500,000 retainer and disgorge all benefits she received during the alleged breaches of fiduciary duty, plus other damages and relief. The company has also requested the court grant injunctions to protect Lepu’s trade secrets. The ill-fated partnership officially kicked off in December 2024, when Lepu tapped CoDevCo as its “exclusive business development mechanism” to identify collaborators for the company’s drug candidates. According to Lepu’s complaint, Zhang personally negotiated and signed the agreement as managing director for CoDevCo, which used her home address. Before the Lepu deal, Zhang made a name following a short stint as the global head of business development for Hengrui Pharmaceuticals. It was during her tenure that Hengrui signed a landmark deal granting exclusive rights for a portfolio of GLP-1 assets to Hercules, which was at that time newly established by a group of private equity and venture capital firms. In addition to the regular upfront and milestone payments, Hengrui also gained an equity stake in Hercules, which later became Kailera Therapeutics. The Hengrui-Hercules deal opened a new paradigm, where a Chinese biopharma company spins off certain early-stage assets to investors for further development through the creation of a new company abroad. The “NewCo” model quickly came into vogue as it allows Western investors to access high-potential assets originating from China at an early stage while giving the Chinese licensors an opportunity to reap long-term benefits through equity stakes in the new firms. The NewCo model proved its value when Kailera staged a record-breaking $625 million IPO on Nasdaq this April, merely two years into the Hengrui deal. Related Kailera CEO 'knew we were in a good spot' before obesity biotech's record-breaking $625M IPO On her LinkedIn page, Zhang described her work at Hengrui as “[b]uilding team and capability from the ground up,” forming NewCo and major pharma partnerships worth billions of dollars. Lepu clearly wanted that kind of track record to help boost its own cardiometabolic portfolio, which includes a range of assets for obesity, Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and muscle preservation during weight loss treatment. “Lepu’s pipeline is very valuable, but only if Lepu could secure the right international partner to expand into the overseas market during the available commercial window,” the company argued in its complaint. The Chinese biotech said it had little knowledge of U.S. laws, customs or business practices in the business development field, and therefore “needed to rely entirely” on the expertise of Zhang and her team as the firm’s first engagement of a U.S.-based BD consultant. “Zhang’s dominating influence on the business development strategy is further evidenced by the fact that she personally controlled the business-development communications on behalf of Lepu with potential partners,” Lepu said in its complaint. After entering the deal, Zhang introduced Lepu to her four associates. According to Lepu’s version of events, all of them were allegedly employed at different time points to perform similar jobs at other Chinese companies that Lepu described as its competitors, while having access to Lepu’s confidential information. As such, Lepu described Zhang’s team as “a roster of individuals whose primary professional loyalty, by virtue of their concurrent full-time employment, ran to Lepu’s competitors.” As well as the specific examples set out in the case, a look at Lepu’s deals over the period suggests Zhang may have been involved in at least one transaction. During their partnership, Lepu, through its subsidiary Shanghai Minwei Biotechnology, also out-licensed its GLP-1/GIP/FGF21 agonist MWN105 to a NewCo called Sidera Bio in the fall of 2025. The deal included an upfront and near-term payment of $35 million, up to $1.01 billion in milestones, and a 9.99% stake in the Danish startup. It seems likely that Zhang facilitated the Minwei deal given that Lepu is on record as having used CoDevCo as its “exclusive business development mechanism.” The big shock for Lepu came in the form of a news article on June 25, 2025. The article, reporting on phase 2 data for BrightGene’s GLP-1/GIP receptor agonist BGM0504, identified Zhang as acting chief business officer of the Lepu rival. Blindsided by her association with BrightGene, Lepu confronted Zhang in July 2025. “Lepu was given assurances that there was nothing to be concerned about and told that Zhang would explain the matter to Lepu,” Lepu alleged in its complaint. “Zhang never did.” Lepu claimed that Zhang had the motive and opportunity to steer potential prospective partners toward BrightGene or other competitors. Later, in February 2026, one of Zhang’s associates joined BrightGene as the vice president for global business development, according to the complaint. Around the same time, Lepu sent written demand letters asking Zhang to account for her BrightGene role, identify what confidential data were shared with the rival firm, and provide any conflict-of-interest or firewall policies during the engagement. According to Lepu, neither CoDevCo nor Zhang answered the questions in their responses. Related Novo vs. KBP: How a $1.3B deal turned into a fraud accusation and an international legal fight In a motion to dismiss filed with the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York on Sept. 4, Zhang’s legal team argued that Lepu’s agreement was signed with CoDevCo, and that an employee of the contractor does not owe fiduciary duties to the client. In its complaint, Lepu said: “That CoDevCo was the contracting entity does not insulate Zhang from personal liability for duties she personally undertook and personally breached.” Taking the argument one step further, the defending party argued that the consulting agreement “does not create a fiduciary relationship even between CoDevCo and Lepu; instead, it identifies CoDevCo as an independent contractor retained to market Lepu’s business to potential western partners.” Although CoDevCo was Lepu’s exclusive business-development contractor, there were no terms stipulating that the consulting firm should serve only Lepu, Zhang’s lawyer noted. As to Lepu’s claims that Zhang misappropriated trade secrets, the defendant argued that Lepu authorized the use of the information so Zhang’s team could perform their service per the agreement. In a rebuttal filed on Sept. 11, Lepu’s lawyer set out why they believe the Chinese biotech satisfied New York law’s misappropriation definition by alleging that the defendant used a trade secret “in breach of a duty or through improper means.” As an alternative to dismissing the suit, the defendant suggested the action should be stayed pending outcomes from the arbitration of a separate case in Singapore. While NewCo pioneer Zhang is defending her business arrangements, momentum behind the NewCo trend has continued unabated into 2026. Through August, Chinese biotech assets have spurred 15 NewCo deals this year, according to local trade publication PharmaDJ.
Chase for Business Expands Its Integrated Digital Experience with Chase Payroll, Powered by Gusto
NEW YORK, October 07, 2026--Small business owners increasingly want the tools they use to run their businesses to work together and be managed in one place. In recent Chase research, 89% of business owners said they would find it valuable to manage payroll within the same platform they use for business banking and payments, highlighting growing demand for a more connected business experience. Additionally, 37% said meeting payroll put pressure on cash flow over the last six months, underscoring
Science Vs on the 49ers Substation: Anatomy of a Hatchet Job
In August, Pablo Torre Finds Out and Science Vs released an episode about my theory that electromagnetic fields from the electrical substation beside the 49ers facility may be contributing to the team’s run of soft-tissue injuries. As the originator of the theory, I was also a subject of the episode. I sat was interviewed by Wendy Zukerman and Rose Rimler of Sciene Vs. I sent them research, connected them with scientists, and spent hours digging through the City of Santa Clara’s and Silicon Valley Power’s records to help clarify critical details. Both Wendy and Rose came off as affable and professional, showing curiosity during the interviews, with Wendy going out of her way to question the “conspiracy theory” framing itself. Then they titled the episode We Solve the 49ers Viral Conspiracy Theory. I was familiar enough with their catalog that I never expected them to agree with my theory, but I did expect them to give it a fair hearing and to deliver their findings honestly. On both counts they came up short. They were not directly dishonest in anything they said, but rather in what they left out, in how what remained was cut, and in the picture painted by those two things in combination. They asked me to recorded the interview on my phone for better audio quality, and I held on to my copy for reference later. That turned out to be a fortuitous decision. Here is the raw audio of my first interview, unedited*. Only my side was recorded, so their questions aren’t on it, but you can generally infer them from the answers, and every claim I make below about what I said can be checked against my statements in this clip. (Note: Wendy had connection trouble at the beginning of the interview and was cutting in and out, which accounts for the false starts.) 0:00 -1:19:13 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Science Vs is a fun show. It is pitched at roughly a high-school understanding of science, for an audience that is skeptical, Snopes-oriented, and worried about misinformation. Take a claim circulating online, interview a supporter of the claim, interview consensus scientists, and then tell people which side of the line it lands on. I have listened to their episodes on raw milk, seed oils, 5G and other contested issues in the wellness space. I have problems with all of them, but each at least made an honest attempt to represent the actual range of scientific opinion by talking to credentialed scientists with differing perspectives. Dissenting researchers were heard from, answered, and often given a chance to respond. This episode did not do that. This article is not a relitigation of the science. I have written extensively about that already. This post is for the record. It is simply an accounting of what was wrong with their episode. Contents Is there a power plant next to the 49ers practice facility? — the clearest single example of getting something objectively wrong For the record — a high-level overview of all of the problems with their investigation Draw your own conclusions — why they had to make this episode at all What they left out about childhood leukemia — the exposure threshold, and playing games with statistics to minimize sick children What they left out about the mechanism — the body of literature they refused to cover, and evidence for the mechanism used against it The scientists Science Vs interviewed and did not air — four credential scientists who support myhe theory, recorded and cut, or not even called How they misrepresented me and my case — an answer severed from its question, and three telling edits How you would actually study the injuries — it doesn’t actually matter which team is the most injured, overall The theory: magnetic fields, oxidative stress, and collagen Since the episode never states my theory, here it is below. Those who are familiar with my work can skip this section. Electrical equipment produces magnetic fields, and those fields induce faint electrical currents in anything that passes through them, including people. My argument goes further than induced current. Mitochondria — the structures that generate a cell’s energy — run on continuous flows of electrons and protons, and those flows carry faint electromagnetic fields of their own. Maxwell’s principle of superposition shows that when two fields share the same space, they add together. An external field does not need to be strong to alter an internal field, it only needs to be present. The electron transport chain inside the mitochondria leaks a small fraction of its electrons by design, and those become reactive oxygen species — free radicals, which healthy cells use as signals. External magnetic fields cause the rate of leakage to change, increasing free radicals. When free radicals accumulate faster than the cell’s antioxidant systems can clear them, the result is oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is a recognized driver of chronic illness, including cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, diabetes and cancer, and it is in every medical school curriculum. One of its ordinary effects in connective tissue is that it switches on matrix metalloproteinases — MMPs, the enzymes that break collagen apart — while suppressing new collagen synthesis. Tendons are made of collagen. An athlete loading his soft tissue heavily six days a week is already creating oxidative stress in the tendons, so the addition of magnetic field exposure compounds the damage and inhibits repair, making him more susceptible to injury when enormous force lands on a tendon in a fraction of a second. That is the theory. We know that EMF causes oxidative stress, and we know that oxidative stress degrades collagen. The only thing missing is a study showing that direct connection. I have never claimed certainty that the substation is contributing to the elevated injury rate. I do believe it is likely, and I believe it warrants caution, and that a revenue machine like a major NFL team can easily afford to remove the exposure out of precaution. Is there a power plant next to the 49ers practice facility? Here is the clearest single instance of the problem with this episode. It requires no knowledge of electromagnetic fields at all. This story first came to me through Jon Feliciano, a former 49er, in an interview on Willard & Dibs on 95.7 The Game. Asked about why the 49ers are always injured, he said players used to joke that it was the power plant behind the practice fields. Wendy Zukerman corrects him on air. “It’s important to say that it’s not a power plant near the 49ers site.” Torre then asks her to explain the difference between a substation and a power plant. Her answer: a power plant generates electricity and transmits it to a substation, which converts the voltage into something your house can use and sends it on to your home or your business. There are two problems with that. The first is that there is a power plant on that site. The Gianera Generating Station is a natural-gas-fired peaker plant owned by Silicon Valley Power, and it has been there since 1986. I have published aerial photographs of the location from 1987 in which the gas plant is the only thing standing, before the practice facility was even there. I even mentioned the gas plant in my first interview. (Feliciano has since gone on record about this issue, and it is clear he had the substation in mind rather than the gas plant.) The second is that her definition describes a distribution substation, and the facility beside the 49ers is not that. It is the Northern Receiving Station, which takes in bulk power from outside the city’s grid and delivers it to distribution substations. Silicon Valley Power’s own map distinguishes receiving stations from substations, and Rose Rimler even reads the label out loud in the episode when she walks through that map on air. A few minutes before the map segment, Zukerman tells Torre: “like I said, we fact check everything.” Well, maybe not everything. I made a mistake On the morning of July 6th, at 10:20, I sent Rose and Wendy two studies. During the interview I had been asked which human studies show oxidative stress from electromagnetic fields, and I had not been able to name one on the spot. Rose emailed asking for the studies, I quickly searched for a couple, and I wrote that I thought these were the most relevant from that search. Unfortunately, I was busy and did not read either one closely at first. I picked them because they were topically relevant — one on substation workers, one on power plant workers. Neither were great studies, and their problems go past the ones raised in the episode. That was careless on my part. There is context that did not make the episode, though. Before that email I had been on a Zoom call with Rose talking about EMF and oxidative stress, and I pointed her to Dr. Henry Lai at the University of Washington, who has spent years aggregating the literature on this question. His tallies show that roughly 90% of studies since the late 1990s find oxidative effects from electromagnetic field exposure — hundreds of studies, systematically counted. Rose told me she was already aware of his work. So when she asked for studies, I understood her to have the aggregate view already and that she would report anything within that context. Not reading those two carefully was still a mistake, but the larger mistake was assuming the episode would be based on a thorough review of the actual body of literature, rather than on whatever I happened to send that morning. The second email At 1:49 that same afternoon — three hours and twenty-nine minutes after the first — I sent them a second email that I had been preparing for a while. It was a structured document in six numbered sections, written in response to a request they had made two weeks earlier, laying out my entire argument with citations attached to every link in the chain. The episode aired on August 13th, five weeks later, and not a single item from the second email is in it. Here is how it opens: The full email is included at the bottom of this post in Appendix B. Nearly 1,500 words in total. It contains two named mechanisms with the physics behind them. Occupational studies in humans. The literature on oxidative stress and collagen. A section addressing the strongest counter-evidence against my own theory, which I raised myself. And a closing section stating plainly what the theory cannot yet show. My entire argument, in writing, with detailed citations for every claim, provided to them five weeks before broadcast, and none of it made it into the episode. That is the single largest omission, but it is not an isolated one. The whole episode is riddled with similar problems, and the conclusion they came to is not merely a difference of opinion about the scientific evidence. Through omission and through strategic editing, Science Vs misinformed its audience — about what the evidence shows, about what I argued, and about who they spoke to. That is a notable outcome for a show whose stated purpose is correcting misinformation. For the record I am not going to tell you that Science Vs set out to discredit me, or that they had come to their conclusion before they reported the story, or that they used misleading editing to make me look like a man retreating from his own theory. I cannot know what was in anyone’s head, and I am not going to pretend otherwise, either. What I can tell you is what is on the record. They asked me for evidence and aired the weakest thing I sent. They interviewed three scientists who supported my theory and aired none of them. They discussed childhood leukemia without ever saying the exposure level at which it appears. And they took an answer I gave weeks before Ken Karipidis, the one EMF scientist who was put on air, was interviewed, and placed it directly after his critique, where it comes off as a major concession. A friend of mine who has worked as a journalist for thirty years read that last one and called it sleazy. I agree with her. Those are just the four issues that are impossible to defend as pure editorial decision, but they are not the only issues. The most glaring issues stem from what they left out: The exposure level at which the childhood leukemia association actually appears — three to four milligauss, a number the episode never states despite it being much lower than what I measured. The mechanism itself: The episode gets as far as “oxidative stress could weaken collagen,” which leaves it sounding like speculation, rather than a known pathway. The second email, and all the studies in it. Dr. Paul Héroux at McGill, whose work my proposed mechanism rests on, whose contact details I supplied, and who was never called. Dr. Beatrice Golomb at UC San Diego, who runs a research group on oxidative stress and mitochondrial function and has specific expdertice in collagen, interviewed and not aired. Dr. David Carpenter at Albany, the most prominent academic voice on the harm from magnetic field exposure, interviewed and not aired. Dr. Joel Moskowitz at Berkeley, interviewed and not even credited. The specific, testable condition I put in writing that would make me abandon the theory. My own unprompted statement of the theory’s evidentiary gap. My caveats about my own measurements. My ranking of EMF as one factor among several rather than the only one. The new equipment installed at those facilities between 2010 and 2014, and the sharp rise in system load from 2013 onward. But that is not all. What they kept, they selectively edited to serve a narrative that was not served by the raw transcripts of the interviews. A description of thousands of commercial routers in a workplace, reduced to the Wi-Fi in your house. My own acknowledgment, multiple times, that "I'm not a scientist" clipped in an episode that spends considerable energy pointing out that I am not a scientist. And a qualification I volunteered about my own measurements, cut from my answer and delivered later by their EMF expert as a correction. Together their edit produce a portrait of a wellness guy with Wi-Fi phobia and two bad studies, backing away from his theory the moment a “real” scientist looked at it. A practice facility where nothing changed because no new substation was built. Injuries written off as random because the 49ers were not quite the single most injured team in the league over the period in question. That portrait is false even though almost no individual statement made in the episode is. Draw your own conclusions At the top of the episode, Pablo Torre says his show had been flooded with requests to investigate the substation — that it was the thing they were asked to look into over and over again. Neither show went hunting for this story. It arrived from their own audience, in volume, and it could not be waved off. A thread I posted on X reached twenty-two million people. A guy with a gaussmeter and a brand-new Substack obligated a Pultizer prize winning program to spend an hour on a question about player health, that is considered fringe enough that most media operations won’t touch it. Pablo Torre Finds Out could not ignore it. So Science Vs came in and ran a “debunking” operation instead of an investigation. Everything below is what had to be left on the cutting room floor to deliver the “debunking”. They could not ignore it. So they tried debunked it instead. The demand was strong enough to force an episode, and since the episodes release the 49ers have sustained more injuries, including season ending ones, and interest has only grown. Demand from fans and playets is strong enough to force a better investigation from someone else. An omission is not a lie until you find out what was omitted. What follows is the detailed record so you can see the full picture. Draw your own conclusions. I have drawn mine. I am going to keep publishing. A note about Pablo Torre Finds Out After the episode aired I posted publicly, calling out Pablo Torre Finds Out for concerns I had about the integrity of their investigation, and about an interview directly with Pablo Torre which had been offered but never happened. I have since spoken with a producer at PTFO. The offer had rested on a misunderstanding about where things stood between us, and it fell away as the Science Vs part of the production widened past the science. He apologized for the miscommunication and I accepted. The producer also confirmed to me that they did essentially hand off the entire investigation to Science Vs for narrative purposes — so Pablo would be genuinely curious or potentially surprised by their findings — while still taking responsibility for what went out under their name. I appreciated the candor and the accountability, and I am comfortable with where we left things. So this post is not about PTFO. My disagreement is with Science Vs. What they left out about childhood leukemia Childhood leukemia appears at three milligauss. They gave no number at all. 1. They built an EMF ruler, then discussed childhood cancer without it. The sequence on air went like this: First I measured almost 9 mG, then I measured up to 50 milligauss. Torre reacts with concern — “that sounds high.” Cut to Karipidis: the public limit is 2,000 milligauss. Torre reacts again — “What happens at 2,000?” Karipidis explains that nothing happens at 2,000, that safety factors are built in. Then: at more than 50,000 milligauss you get flickers of light in the retina, and higher still, nerve stimulation. The listener now has a ruler (their ruler) to measure these numbers with. Fifty is nothing by their ruler. Then the episode turns to childhood leukemia and states, accurately, that there is a real association — but tellingly, they never give the exposure level at which that association appears. Childhood leukemia appears at three milligauss. They conveniently left that out. The pooled analyses that produced the World Health Organization’s carcinogen classification found roughly a doubling of childhood leukemia risk above three to four milligauss. That is the number that belongs in that segment, and it is more than ten times below the reading that had just been dismissed as trivial. I gave them that number myself, on tape, in the interview. Describing my own threshold, I said my comfort level for long-term chronic exposure is three to four milligauss, but preferably one. 2. Six children in thirteen million. The episode reports that these fields might explain one to four percent of childhood leukemias, then reframes it as a German estimate of perhaps six cases among thirteen million children. Torre, to his credit, is uncomfortable. What never gets explained is why that number is small. Almost no children lives above three milligauss in Europe. Fewer than two children in a hundred, in the Italian data. So even if the risk to those children doubles, the number of additional cases across an entire country stays small — not because the hazard is small, but because hardly anyone is exposed to it. Count the whole population and the few who are exposed disappear. And the reason hardly anyone is exposed is that siting rules keep housing away from transmission lines. In Europe, at least. The Dutch government has a standing precautionary policy against building new homes in any zone where the annual average magnetic field exceeds 4 milligauss — the same number the episode never mentioned. Denmark and Norway treat 4 milligauss as the level that triggers a look at mitigation. That is five hundred times below the ICNIRP figure quoted on air. The United States has no federal equivalent. That is evidence of infrastructure siting policy working. It is not evidence that there is no hazard. It is evidence that we already act as though there is one. If you listen to the raw audio you will hear that my proposed solution is EMF exposure is to build better infrastructure. What they left out about the mechanism 3. They accused me of cherry-picking, and then cherry-picked themselves. On air, Zukerman tells Torre that people who worry about electromagnetic fields dismiss the studies showing null results and collect the ones showing harm, and that this is why you have to be careful not to cherry-pick. They had two papers I had rattled off in a hurry, and a second email containing a carefully chosen set. They ran the two weakest, graded them on air, and presented the result as the state of the evidence for not only my theory, but the whole question of oxidative stress from magnetic fields. That is cherry-picking from my emails. The bigger picture is what they did with the literature as a whole. Zukerman acknowledges it exists, dismisses it, and disposes of it in a single stroke. You can go online right now, she tells Torre, and find scores of studies showing these fields increase oxidative stress. The issue, she says, is that they are not studies in people. Many of them are in people. The occupational studies in my second email are in people. That email had been in her inbox for five weeks. She waved off the literature on a factual claim that the documents in her possession contradict. (I have written separately about the evidentiary standard at work here). The effect was that they essentially baited me: ask the subject to supply the evidence, take the weakest thing he sends, and let that stand as a proxy for the whole argument. Wendy has been doing this show for ten years and clearly knows how to extract what she needs for her desired narrative. 4. They presented the collagen-improvement research as a gotcha, but I had already addressed it. The episode treats the existence of studies showing that EMF can improve collagen as a surprise that undercuts me, but I had pre-emptively addressed that five weeks earlier in the email they ignored. Those studies use measured, high-intensity pulsed dosing. The mechanism by which they work is oxidative signalling. The cell reads a controlled rise in reactive oxygen species as a warning, upregulates its antioxidant defenses, mounts a repair response, and the therapy stops before the system is overwhelmed. The key point is that it induces an oxidative response, which means those studies are actually evidence for my proposed mechanism, not against it. A field that produces a therapeutic effect cannot be biologically inert (which is the implication when they say “Nothing happens at 2,000 milligauss). Chronic ambient exposure is the same pathway with no off switch, and it is most consequential during the evening and while sleeping, when the body is in repair mode and the exposure does not stop. Section 5 of my email is titled What about the study showing improved collagen synthesis. I raised the counter-evidence myself, explained why I did not think it refuted the theory, and wrote that I was disappointed the question had not come up in the interview. That is worth holding against the cherry-picking charge in the item above: the studies they presented as inconvenient for me were studies I had gone out of my way to put in front of them. 5. Section 1 of my email stated a critical argument that was never put to the expert directly responsible for it. My email says the exposure limits exist to prevent acute effects and do not address chronic exposure at all, and that my dispute is with the entire framework. Zukerman gestures at this once. After Karipidis gives the 2,000 milligauss figure, she tells Torre that I would object because those levels do not capture “more subtle effects.” That is not my argument, and “subtle” is doing a lot of work here. My argument is that the limits are built to prevent acute effects — nerves firing, muscles twitching, etc — and were not designed to address chronic exposure at all. In fact, ICNIRP’s own documents state as much themselves. Mine is a structural objection to what the standard measures, reduced as a concern about subtlety, it becomes a matter of degree, rather than a categorical difference. They interviewed Ken Karipidis, vice chair of ICNIRP — the body that writes those limits. He was asked what the limit is, but he was never asked how it applies to chronic exposure. The scientists Science Vs interviewed and did not air 6. They interviewed four officials of the standards body. The episode credits roughly a dozen researchers. Four of them are associated with ICNIRP. Ken Karipidis is the vice chair. Rodney Croft chaired ICNIRP from 2020 to 2024 and led the development of its current guidelines. Dan Baaken is ICNIRP’s scientific secretary. Frank de Vocht sits on the Main Commission. One of them speaks in the episode. Their institution’s position is more than adequately represented — the 2,000 milligauss figure, the safety factors, the assurance that nothing happens below the line. 7. The four who were left out. Dr. Beatrice Golomb is Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego — a physics undergraduate degree, a PhD in biology, an MD. She directs a research group whose stated focus is the relationship between oxidative stress, mitochondrial function and health. That is the mechanism the episode spent its first half dismissing. Her published work includes the fluoroquinolone case series behind the FDA’s black box warning on an antibiotic class that ruptures tendons, where the accepted mechanism is oxidative stress and mitochondrial toxicity — the back half of my chain, already on a drug label. She is in the credits. She is not in the episode. She has told me she finds my theory biologically plausible, and that she has a recording of her interview. Dr. David Carpenter directed the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany for decades and is the most prominent academic voice arguing these fields cause harm. Childhood leukemia is the reason these fields carry a WHO classification at all, and Carpenter is the person you call if you want that case made by someone who has spent a career on it. He is in the credits. He is not in the episode. He has told me that when he was interviewed they could not have been less interested in what he had to say. Dr. Joel Moskowitz directs the Center for Family and Community Health at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. He told me directly that they interviewed him and that he thought it went well. He does not appear in the episode, and unlike Golomb and Carpenter, he does not even appear in the credits. Dr. Paul Héroux at McGill is the researcher whose work provides the foundation for the oxidative stress mechanism my theory rests on. I gave Rose his email address and phone number. He was never interviewed. They never even called him. 8. “He’s not a scientist.” The episode leans hard on the fact that I am not a credentialed scientist. Zukerman says it. Torre repeats it. “At all.” Having built a segment on that, they then left out the physicist-biologist-physician, the professor of public health, the director of a university environmental health institute, and the McGill researcher whose work the primary mechanism comes from. They spent the episode telling their audience I am not a scientist, and then kept four actual scientists who support the theory off because their argument does not survive otherwise. How they misrepresented me and my case 9. They played my words as a response to an interview I had never heard. Near the end of the hour, Zukerman says she went to me and told me the evidence was lacking. Then she plays me saying I am not wedded to it being an EMF, that I have staked my reputation on it needing more study, and that I am not certain of anything. That segment was placed immediately after Karipidis had finished taking the cherry-picked papers apart. It plays as a man folding under expert scrutiny. Commenters have used it against me since, but it is incorrect. Here is the sequence as it happened. I was interviewed. Karipidis was interviewed weeks later. I was never told what he said, or even who he was. I was never asked to respond to it. I did not know his name until the episode aired. That is not a simple editing decision. That is a quote from one interview, moved to follow a critique from a different interview it was not a response to, so that it would land as a concession. A friend of mine who has spent thirty years as a journalist read that sequence and called it sleazy. She is right. The full passage is reproduced in Appendix A, and it is worth reading. What airs is the preamble. Four paragraphs later I say “to directly answer your question” — and that answer, about what would change my mind if the team relocated, is not in the episode. Neither is the sentence two paragraphs on, where I say the EMF might turn out to be ten percent of the problem. I will say the underlying point again, though, because I meant it and I still do. I am not wedded to my theory that magnetic fields from the substation are contributing to the 49ers injuries. I could be wrong. What I am wedded to is the process of scientific inquiry, and the fact that we should be cautious around these exposures and we need more independently funded studies. 10. Three telling edits. They cut “I’m not a scientist” mid-sentence. What I said: “...and I am not certain of anything. I’m not a scientist. To me, I find the mechanisms compelling. I will go back to the fact that I got into this not because of the 49ers, but because of clients I was working with who suffer from EDS...” What aired: “...and that I am not certain of anything. I’m not.” The clip ends on the first two words of the sentence in which I say I am not a scientist, in an episode that spends considerable energy establishing that I am not a scientist. The full sequence is in Appendix A. They cut my own description of my work. Asked what I do, I said I run a wellness business, that I am focused on writing software to help people navigate environmental stressors, that environmental health is my focus, and that I also do independent journalism and research. What aired is the wellness business and the environmental health, with the software and the journalism removed from my own answer. The software engineering does come up later — narrated by them, as a hacker who grew up to write firmware — but my current work, in my own words, arrives as “wellness guy.” Thousands of commercial routers became home Wi-Fi. What I described: working at a wireless networking company surrounded by thousands of Wi-Fi routers, and a stress-induced health collapse afterward that working in that environment contributed to. What aired: Wi-Fi, the kind you have at home — reinforced by a clip of Christian McCaffrey talking about turning his router off at night. Three cuts, and every one of them makes me seem less credible. That is not a coincidence. 11. I gave them my own caveats and the test that would disprove me. In the first email I wrote that a well-designed chronic, ambient-level exposure study in tendon showing no collagen degradation, run over many months, would undercut my confidence in the theory. That is a specific, testable condition, stated in advance and in writing. There was a second interview, weeks later, which was not used in the episode, but in that I asked again for the falsification criterion to be included. What the episode presents instead is a man saying “we need more study,” which reads as a hedge, an open-ended request for the benefit of the doubt. It is the opposite of a hedge. Section 6 of my second email says, unprompted, that as far as I am aware there is not a single study showing EMF-driven oxidative stress degrading collagen in a human in vivo or in human tendon in a lab. I wrote that because it is true and because it is the first thing anyone should check. Under their standard it becomes the hinge of the entire first half, framed as something they had to surface without my cooperation. I had handed it to them five weeks earlier. And in the interview I said that my 25 to 50 milligauss readings were taken at knee level, and that these fields attenuate quickly, so by the time it reaches your head it is not that high anymore. That did not air either. The qualification arrives later, from Karipidis, as a correction. How you would actually study the injuries 12. They measured the wrong thing. The episode spends its final act on whether the 49ers are the most injured team in the NFL, finds no clean ranking, and lands on “injuries are random”. That is the wrong test. You would define the exposure — measured field levels at the facility — and the outcome narrowly: soft-tissue injuries, not a single MSK injury count that a broken finger and a ruptured Achilles both land in. Then you would compare the 49ers to themselves before and after the exposure changed, and compare that change against every other team over the same window. That controls for league-wide shifts in rules, turf and training load. It is a difference-in-differences design, and it is standard. I sent them that argument on July 28th, in writing, along with the fact that in eleven of the past twelve seasons the 49ers had finished top ten in Adjusted Games Lost. And by the episode’s own reporting, the 49ers are second in games lost to injury over the past decade, with FTN’s Aaron Schatz confirming that once you adjust for starters they come out second worst in the league — after having been one of the healthiest teams for years before that. A finding like that is where an investigation starts, not where it stops. 13. I did a lot of substation research for the episode that was never aired. I had reported that the substation next to the facility was expanded in 2014. That was wrong, and Rose Rimler and I sorted it out together. They gave me credit on air, which I appreciated, but framed it as a concession on my part to something they had found. In fact I had been investigating it myself, was uncertain before they asked, but was waiting for clarification from Silicon Valley Power. The uncertainty centered around a substation named “Esparanca” that was proposed right behind the facilities as part of the stadium construction, but now appears to never have been built. I spent days in Silicon Valley Power’s records, and did eventually reach Silicon Valley Power for confirmation and indentified the mistake myself. I also gave them highly detailed documents on what we do know about those facilities: new equipment installed between 2010 and 2014, and load growth across the system with an inflection around 2013–2014, with the Northern Receiving Station carrying the highest capacity in the system and sitting closest to the data center corridor. None of that is in the episode. I have a separate piece about it coming out soon. *I cut 2 seconds from the raw audio to remove personal information that had no connection to anything in the episode. Appendix A: the passage the clip was taken from This is the sequence from my first interview, in full. The episode uses one fragment of it. It’s tricky because my understanding is that there’s something like a 15-year half-life on collagen remodeling issues. They’re going to get a new crop of players. What I really need, though, is for the injuries to be broken down so we can see the soft tissue injuries. Right now, they’re categorized as MSK injuries, but let’s say we can actually identify them more specifically. Is that right? He was able to do that? Oh, cool. I wasn’t able to find that information. Interesting — I didn’t know that data existed. I tried so hard to get it, and I didn’t know it was available. Maybe you could connect me with that person. That would be amazing. I’m not wedded to it being an EMF, honestly. I’m not. I would say that, to a certain extent, I’ve staked my reputation on the fact that it needs more study. It’s important to look into it, and I am not certain of anything. I’m not a scientist. To me, I find the mechanisms compelling. I will go back to the fact that I got into this not because of the 49ers, but because of clients I was working with who suffer from EDS, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a tendon hypermobility issue. This condition is documented to be partially caused by oxidative stress. I’ve worked with them to mitigate their EMF exposure and have seen people improve. I think it’s a bigger story. In a way, the 49ers represent an occupational cluster with specific exposure risks. If someone would conduct a study on this, I believe we could learn a lot. Perhaps we would discover that it’s like, okay, maybe it’s 10% of the problem. I don’t know the exact number, but I think either way, conducting the study would provide valuable insights. To directly answer your question, it’s challenging for me because it’s part of a bigger story. If the 49ers move and stop having injuries, I might conclude that it was related to the substation. However, if they move and still experience injuries, I would want to analyze the nature of those injuries. Are they primarily soft tissue injuries? I don’t think it’s necessarily a case closed, but the story might lose traction at that point regardless. Three things are worth noting. The aired fragment stops immediately before the sentence in which I say I am not a scientist — the cut described in item 10. It also stops four paragraphs before the words “to directly answer your question.” What the episode plays is the throat-clearing. The actual answer, about what would change my mind, never airs. And two paragraphs in, I say the EMF might turn out to be ten percent of the problem. That is the ranking the episode says I never gave. Appendix B: the full email, July 6th, 1:39 PM Hi Rose, You asked me to send you some studies a couple of weeks ago. I apologize for the delay. I have been incredibly busy. I also wanted to give you a chance to dig in yourself, and get your own perspective before I influenced you too much with mine. That said, I do want to make sure that the actual argument is abundantly clear, so here it is! One note before I begin, there are really two separate questions here: Does the substation cause the soft-tissue injuries? That was my specific claim, and what the podcast is about. Is the theory biologically sound? Can 50/60 Hz fields at these levels do anything biological below the safety limits? Question two is why people have been calling me a conspiracy theorist. The regulatory and advisory bodies (ICNIRP, etc) maintain that anything below their exposure limits is biologically inert, and that position is broadly accepted within the mainstream, but the actual science paints a different picture. To defend my theory I’ve had to defend a much larger claim: that the advisory bodies have the biology wrong. I can’t honestly answer question 1 without first addressing that. Here’s is a simplified outline of my theory, with links to studies: 1. Advisory body thresholds for biological effects The ELF magnetic-field limits (ICNIRP’s ~2,000 mG public / 10,000 mG occupational) exist to prevent acute effects from exposure. If a magnetic field is strong enough, it makes nerves fire and muscles contract. Muscles twitch. You can see faint flashes of light in your vision. People can even feel tingling or even a shock. That happens due to Faraday’s law, which states that a time-varying magnetic field induces an electric field inside the body via the creation of Eddy currents.The standards assume that those currents do nothing below the twitch threshold. They do not consider chronic effects at all. My argument is that they are biologically active and do have chronic effects. 2. There are multipe ELF-EMF mechanisms for inducing oxidative stress. This is basic biophysics. Below are the two primary mechanisms. Simplest first. Dr. Paul Héroux of McGill has the most intuitive explanation, which rests on Maxwell’s principle of superposition: because Maxwell’s equations are linear, two sets of electromagnetic waves sharing the same space simply add together. In the interview I pictured a pebble dropped into a pond, sending out clean ripples. Then a boat motors past at distance, sending larger waves, and where they meet the ripples, the two add together and the original pattern gets distorted. In our cells, the mitochondria run on continuous currents of electrons and protons that carry their own faint electromagnetic fields. An external field from a substation, by the principle of superposition, adds to those internal currents and shifts the pattern. The electron transport chain in the mitochondria leaks a fraction of its electrons by design as reactive oxygen species (ROS), which act as signalling molecules in a healthy cell. Distorting that field increases that electron leakage, creating oxidative stress. A tiny electromagnetic interference results in a large downstream effect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844025006474 The more complex pathway is Dimitris Panagopoulos’s Ion Forced-Oscillation / Voltage-Gated Ion Channel (IFO-VGIC) mechanism. Weak, polarized, low-frequency fields force the ions (calcium, potassium, sodium) next to an ion channel’s voltage sensor to oscillate; because that force scales with the inverse cube of the distance involved, fields far below the stimulation threshold can still force the channel open, disrupting the cell’s ion balance and driving ROS overproduction (Nitric oxide and superoxide interact and produce peroxynitrite, a highly unstable cytotoxin that breaks down into free radicals). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366088934 https://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/59/5/92 https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/18/10041 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1585441/full https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3772193/ 3. Evidence of oxidative stress, in vivo, in humans from ELF-EMF There are many studies, and the strongest are occupational, which applies to the 49ers situation. 115 power-plant workers vs. 145 office controls. Serum malondialdehyde (MDA, the standard lipid-peroxidation marker), superoxide dismutase, and catalase were all significantly higher in the exposed group, and the markers rose with increasing field exposure. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3233/WOR-203244 A follow-up where they reversed the oxidative stress in power plant workers. A double-blind randomized controlled trial: 91 power-plant workers given vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or placebo for 90 days. The antioxidant groups showed reduced lipid peroxidation and raised antioxidant capacity versus controls. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32191586/ A spot-welder study: 46 welders occupationally exposed at 50 Hz, showed significantly altered red-blood-cell antioxidant enzyme activity and concluded ELF-MF “might act as an oxidative stressor… even at the recommended levels of exposure.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18504600/ A substation-specific study found oxidative stress and DNA damage https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24460415/ 4. Oxidative stress degrades collagen This half isn’t controversial at all. Oxidative stress activates the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) that break collagen down and suppresses its synthesis. Here are three example studies: Siwik et al. 2001: Oxidative stress raises MMPs and lowers collagen synthesis in cardiac fibroblasts. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11121376/ Fisher et al. 2009: Collagen fragmentation drives oxidative stress and elevates MMP-1 in aged human skin. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2631323/ Varani et al. 2006: Decreased collagen production in oxidatively aged skin. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16723701/ 5. What about the study showing improved collagen synthesis I’m glad you asked this question, and I’m bummed we didn’t get to it in the interview because it is a great question, and very important to understand. Superficially it may appear to be a refutation of my theory, but I would argue that it actually supports the underlying argument. That study used a short, high-intensity pulsed dose: therapeutic-PEMF, the same type of field used clinically to stimulate bone and tissue healing. The reason this works is because it triggers the very same biological pathways that can lead to oxidative stress. The exposure still stimulates ROS production, but done at a controlled dosage, for a limited duration it has a different effect. The cell reads the ROS as a warning signal and it upregulates its antioxidant defenses, and mounts a repair/proliferation response. The therapy is then stopped before the cell gets overwhelmed. That is essentially a hormetic response: a small dose of a stressor producing a beneficial adaptation. Two things follow: At the very least, this means the field is biologically active, which by itself undercuts the regulatory claim that these fields are inert below their thresholds. There is a wealth of literature on PEMF (pulsed EMF) bone regeneration and calcium channel signalling (which is the second mechanims in section one). Here is one. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep13856 At best, it leads us straight to my actual concern, which is that under chronic, chaotic and unregulated exposure, the cell’s antioxidant capacity gets overwhelmed, resulting in oxidative stress. There are plentiful examples of things that are beneficial at controlled doses, but harmful at uncontrolled doses. Excecise is one obvious, uncontroversial example. Botox is perhaps a more interesting example. 6. What about a study that shows EMF causing collagen degradation in humans? As far as I am aware there is not a single study showing EMF-driven oxidative stress degrading collagen in a human, in vivo, or in human tendon in a lab. There are studies involving isolated fibroblasts though, which secrete collagen. The most relevant one showed that human fetal scleral fibroblasts exposed to 50 Hz ELF-EMF showed a significant decrease in collagen synthesis and that MMP-2 expression was upregulated, which is the exact mechanism I described in section 2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3626379/ That’s it! Thanks again for the interview. Best, Peter Anthony Cowan Environmental Health · Wellness Tech · Researcher & Journalist Publisher & Editor, Living Energy Bio: petercowan.comSocial: X · Instagram · TikTokApp: sunlightis.lifePhone: [redacted]
Why Chris Simms’ Unbuttoned Approach Has Made Him a Sports Media Mainstay
"Simms is calculating, and I mean that in a good way. He knows what he is going to say and the reaction he is going to get. He is an intelligent commentator who wants whatever airtime he has to be valuable and memorable." The post Why Chris Simms’ Unbuttoned Approach Has Made Him a Sports Media Mainstay appeared first on Barrett Media.
MVP MMA On Netflix One And Done?
Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano was the first live MMA event to ever feature on Netflix. It may also be the last for quite some time. Jake Paul and Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) intended to disrupt the MMA world with their collaboration with the streaming giant, but Netflix has fallen on hard times. Its stock […]
Howie Roseman explains why Eagles drafted Jihaad Campbell
Jihaad Campbell’s ability to cover, blitz and rush made him valuable to the Eagles
3 Steps to Support Mental Health for Rural Youth
(Feature Impact) Young people face a growing number of pressures, including academic expectations, social responsibilities, complex family situations and uncertainty about their own futures. Mental health support is important for all – but in many rural areas, those pressures are even greater.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for rural youth ages 15-19 is 74% higher than their urban counterparts. Barriers like limited insurance coverage, unreliable internet for telehealth, scarce providers, long drive times and lack of public transportation make it harder to get mental healthcare when it’s needed. Plus, asking for help can feel like opening oneself up to judgment and stigmatization.That’s why Rural Minds, the only nonprofit focused on mental health for rural communities, created the Rural Youth Mental Wellness pilot program supported by Boehringer Ingelheim. It was developed by an advisory committee made up of rural youth to provide their peers with practical, free, accessible mental health resources. Incorporating feedback on the pilot, the updated program sponsored by the Sompo Foundation is now launching its national rollout.“A young person’s ZIP code should never determine whether they can access meaningful mental health support where and when they need it,” said Jessica L. Schleider, Ph.D., director, Lab for Scalable Mental Health, Northwestern University. “Our lab is thrilled to partner with Rural Minds as they champion evidence-based, anonymous, freely available support tools designed to overcome barriers to help-seeking faced by rural youth across the country.”If the rural mental health crisis affects you or a loved one, consider these ways to help.Break the Stigma Surrounding Mental HealthIn communities where self-reliance is valued, asking for help can sometimes be viewed as a sign of weakness. Young people who feel unheard and unsupported often struggle with being vulnerable, so they continue carrying their increasingly heavy burdens alone.Parents, educators, healthcare providers, community leaders and peers can work to change that culture by normalizing mental health conversations. This includes helping teenagers feel seen and accepted by educating them on mental health issues and coping strategies, listening to their experiences without judgment, sharing your own stories and reminding them it’s courageous to seek support.Consider Single-Session InterventionsThe first step is always the hardest when it comes to seeking mental health support, and not every struggling young person is ready or able to see a therapist. With access to free, confidential, self-guided materials to begin building mental wellness skills, the first step may be less scary.#placement_1042740_0_i{width:100%;max-width:550px;margin:0 auto;}var rnd = window.rnd || Math.floor(Math.random()*10e6);var pid1042740 = window.pid1042740 || rnd;var plc1042740 = window.plc1042740 || 0;var abkw = window.abkw || '';var absrc = 'https://ads.empowerlocal.co/adserve/;ID=181918;size=0x0;setID=1042740;type=js;sw='+screen.width+';sh='+screen.height+';spr='+window.devicePixelRatio+';kw='+abkw+';pid='+pid1042740+';place='+(plc1042740++)+';rnd='+rnd+';click=CLICK_MACRO_PLACEHOLDER';var _absrc = absrc.split("type=js"); absrc = _absrc[0] + 'type=js;referrer=' + encodeURIComponent(document.location.href) + _absrc[1];document.write('');Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) are brief, structured online courses designed to teach youth practical skills for handling stress, low mood, self-image and more. The Rural Youth Mental Wellness Program offers SSIs in partnership with Project YES (Youth Empowerment and Support), a free digital resource developed with Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health at the Feinberg School of Medicine.Anonymous access to SSIs through the partnership provides strategies for:Improving moodRethinking body imageReframing negative thoughtsKnowing your power to changeTaking steps toward goalsProtecting LGBTQ+ prideHandling self-harm urgesStaying safe amid dark thoughtsEach SSI typically takes 5-10 minutes. Although SSIs are not a replacement for therapy, they provide a research-backed source of support for young people experiencing bouts of stress or low-to-moderate distress.Know When to Seek Professional HelpSelf-guided resources and supportive conversations are a valuable starting point, but sometimes young people need qualified professional help. Look for symptoms like worsening mood or behavior, substance use, self-harm or difficulty managing everyday tasks, and take teens seriously when they express dark feelings.Doctors and counselors can provide personalized support for youth in crisis, and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential 24/7 support for mental health by dialing 9-8-8.“I grew up in a small town where mental health was almost taboo,” said committee member Asheton Medlin. “Being part of the committee that built this program let me help make sure rural youth today have the support I didn’t. I’m excited to help bring these resources to them because this generation deserves the chance to grow up and change the world.”Find more information at RuralMinds.org.Photos courtesy of Shutterstock
Take your health back with Alpha Kappa Alpha’s annual Health Resource Fair!
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Can researchers trust that AI models won’t leak their ideas?
Research funders are asking how they can stop confidential scientific ideas in grant proposals from leaking out through large language models (LLMs), for example if reviewers use AI to help them judge applications. Last week, a row erupted in mathematics after OpenAI announced it had solved a notoriously difficult problem, only for another mathematician to demand answers over whether the company had used ideas he had fed into its models. The spat, and the broader issue of idea leakage through AI models, was discussed by funders at an R&D policy conference held in Paris on September 14. At worst, it threatens to undermine the correct attribution of breakthroughs, one of the foundations of modern science. The mathematics dispute around OpenAI is “certainly something we're looking at” Jason Gallo, head of the newly established Office of Metascience at the US National Science Foundation (NSF), told the Blue Sky Forum, hosted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The controversy started on September 8, when OpenAI announced it had cracked a mathematical problem that had gone unsolved for 90 years. Using a swarm of AI agents, millions of dollars’ worth of computing power and a new internal model, the company said it had finally proved that a long-used formula for modelling fluid dynamics breaks down under certain conditions. However, Tristan Buckmaster, a New York University mathematician who had been independently working with collaborators on the same problem using OpenAI’s Codex tool, hit back with a statement questioning whether the company had snooped on his Codex sessions to gain an advantage. OpenAI has always denied it looked up the “specific user data” of Buckmaster and colleagues. However, the company initially admitted that “while unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models,” although its proofs “differ significantly” from Buckmaster’s. The firm later said that, following an investigation, it concluded that Buckmaster’s Codex prompts “could not have influenced the [OpenAI] system in any way, including through training.”Funder concernYet OpenAI’s initial admission that its model might have ingested Buckmaster’s ideas, then spat them out to its own mathematicians, has scientistsworriedthat their work could leak out if shared with AI. Some AI tools give users an opt-out option to stop their sessions from training the model. If such guarantees can be trusted, this gives scientists some confidence they can use an LLM to develop an idea without the risk of it leaking out.But there’s a bigger potential vulnerability. To win money to investigate ideas, scientists have to share them with funding bodies. These grant proposals are normally kept strictly confidential, to prevent other scientists from scooping them, or to protect commercially valuable intellectual property. To preserve this confidentiality, when the NSF uses AI models, “we have to be sure that it's not making server calls out to an external party, leaking that data,” said Gallo to delegates in Paris. Leaks through reviewersHowever, funders normally use external academic reviewers to assess proposals. And there are growing worries that these reviewers are feeding grant ideas into AI models to help them make a judgement. Research funders have noticed that peer review reports and funding recommendations have “suddenly become much longer, more detailed and complex,” said Diogo Machado, head of the data science unit at Technopolis, a science and technology-focused consultancy. “The sense is that reviewers are increasingly using generative AI in their review work, even where guidelines sometimes forbid it,” he told Science|Business. “This is very difficult for funders to control or prove.” Happening at scaleThis sharing of confidential proposals with AI models is “happening at scale already,” said James Wilson, executive director of the Research on Research Institute, based at University College London, during the debate in Paris. In response, Gallo said the NSF had “strict guidance” around the uploading of proposals to AI models. But he added the NSF was mulling new types of assessment to make sure applicants were truly the originators of their ideas, such as following a short-form proposal with an oral presentation, which would allow the foundation to “really interrogate the investigator on their intellectual contribution.” Related articlesHow can Europe cope with a flood of AI-assisted research grant proposals?The risks and benefits of AI in screening research grant proposals Viewpoint: AI could make scientific overload worse“For us as funders, a lot of the ways to ensure that the application remains the applicant's own intellectual contribution, those ways are quite regressive,” Peter Clifford, head of strategy at Research Ireland, told delegates. “They're maybe ten or 15 or 20 years old, and they don't scale particularly well.” Disputes over the origin of ideas are as old as modern science. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz spent more than a decade arguing over who invented calculus, for example. And long before LLMs emerged, academics would agonise over how much of their early work to reveal at conferences, in case their colleagues scooped them, Jack Leahy, a senior metascience advisor to the UK government, told delegates. But AI was “accelerating” the “problems of the system,” he said.
3 Steps to Support Mental Health for Rural Youth
(Feature Impact) Young people face a growing number of pressures, including academic expectations, social responsibilities, complex family situations and uncertainty about their own futures. Mental health support is important for all – but in many rural areas, those pressures are even greater.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for rural youth ages 15-19 is 74% higher than their urban counterparts. Barriers like limited insurance coverage, unreliable internet for telehealth, scarce providers, long drive times and lack of public transportation make it harder to get mental healthcare when it’s needed. Plus, asking for help can feel like opening oneself up to judgment and stigmatization.That’s why Rural Minds, the only nonprofit focused on mental health for rural communities, created the Rural Youth Mental Wellness pilot program supported by Boehringer Ingelheim. It was developed by an advisory committee made up of rural youth to provide their peers with practical, free, accessible mental health resources. Incorporating feedback on the pilot, the updated program sponsored by the Sompo Foundation is now launching its national rollout.“A young person’s ZIP code should never determine whether they can access meaningful mental health support where and when they need it,” said Jessica L. Schleider, Ph.D., director, Lab for Scalable Mental Health, Northwestern University. “Our lab is thrilled to partner with Rural Minds as they champion evidence-based, anonymous, freely available support tools designed to overcome barriers to help-seeking faced by rural youth across the country.”If the rural mental health crisis affects you or a loved one, consider these ways to help.Break the Stigma Surrounding Mental HealthIn communities where self-reliance is valued, asking for help can sometimes be viewed as a sign of weakness. Young people who feel unheard and unsupported often struggle with being vulnerable, so they continue carrying their increasingly heavy burdens alone.Parents, educators, healthcare providers, community leaders and peers can work to change that culture by normalizing mental health conversations. This includes helping teenagers feel seen and accepted by educating them on mental health issues and coping strategies, listening to their experiences without judgment, sharing your own stories and reminding them it’s courageous to seek support.Consider Single-Session InterventionsThe first step is always the hardest when it comes to seeking mental health support, and not every struggling young person is ready or able to see a therapist. With access to free, confidential, self-guided materials to begin building mental wellness skills, the first step may be less scary.Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) are brief, structured online courses designed to teach youth practical skills for handling stress, low mood, self-image and more. The Rural Youth Mental Wellness Program offers SSIs in partnership with Project YES (Youth Empowerment and Support), a free digital resource developed with Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health at the Feinberg School of Medicine.Anonymous access to SSIs through the partnership provides strategies for:Improving moodRethinking body imageReframing negative thoughtsKnowing your power to changeTaking steps toward goalsProtecting LGBTQ+ prideHandling self-harm urgesStaying safe amid dark thoughtsEach SSI typically takes 5-10 minutes. Although SSIs are not a replacement for therapy, they provide a research-backed source of support for young people experiencing bouts of stress or low-to-moderate distress.Know When to Seek Professional HelpSelf-guided resources and supportive conversations are a valuable starting point, but sometimes young people need qualified professional help. Look for symptoms like worsening mood or behavior, substance use, self-harm or difficulty managing everyday tasks, and take teens seriously when they express dark feelings.Doctors and counselors can provide personalized support for youth in crisis, and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential 24/7 support for mental health by dialing 9-8-8.“I grew up in a small town where mental health was almost taboo,” said committee member Asheton Medlin. “Being part of the committee that built this program let me help make sure rural youth today have the support I didn’t. I’m excited to help bring these resources to them because this generation deserves the chance to grow up and change the world.”Find more information at RuralMinds.org.Photos courtesy of Shutterstock
Three Roma players listed in Serie A’s Most Valuable XI
After the first five matchdays of the season, it’s time to take stock of players’ market values. Three Roma players feature in the top 11 in Serie A with the highest market value. These include go...
The Science Enabling a Steady Supply of Critical Minerals
Researchers are collaborating across disciplines to unlock domestic sources of valuable materials and lower costs.
Bank of America (BAC): Is Its Wealth Business More Valuable Than the Headline Bank Suggests?
Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC) has a wealth franchise that deserves attention beyond lending spreads. Second-quarter 2026 Global Wealth and Investment Management net income reached $1.41 billion, roughly 16% of group earnings. That contribution matters when comparing bank stocks favored by billionaires: advisory fees diversify revenue, although rising markets still influence their value. Bank of […]
Gears of War: E-Day sells 230K copies
Gears of War: E-Day has sold 230K copies since its advance-access launch on October 1 and full release on October 6. Steam accounts for 168K of those, with Xbox (console and PC) selling 62K. But there’s more to this story, as Xbox makes up the bulk of revenue. E-Day is the best-reviewed Gears game in nearly two decades (and the best one ever made, in my opinion). The Coalition has made a banger here (it’s currently in my top 10 of the year). Despite E-Day’s undeniable quality, this is a soft result. And it’s down to the business model, really. E-Day has made $37M so far, thanks to the Premium upgrade On Xbox, Game Pass is cannibalising much of the premium revenue. Our estimates show that 1.7M folks accessed E-Day via their subscription rather than a copy. But Xbox is having it both ways – or having it halfway, at least – via its Premium Edition Game Pass upgrade. Game Pass subscribers could pay $30 (or their local equivalent) for up to five days of early access starting October 1. Our estimates show that of the 1.7M who accessed E-Day through Game Pass, 722K paid for the upgrade. Between the review embargo lifting on October 1 and the full release, E-Day managed to shift another 250K early-access upgrades – no doubt helped by the campaign’s rave reviews. So despite selling far fewer copies on Steam, Xbox accounts for almost three-quarters of the revenue (roughly $26M of the $37M, versus about $11M on Steam). So “230K copies” undersells the paying audience. Including the 722K upgrades, nearly 950K people actually paid something for E-Day. The $30 upgrade is a halfstep from cannibalisation, but will Xbox go all the way? While E-Day is a sublime game, these are soft numbers for a flagship when Xbox badly needs revenue wins. E-Day sold 62K copies on Xbox against 722K Premium upgrades, so for every one copy sold on Xbox, nearly 12 Game Pass upgrades were sold. The $70 premium SKU is – functionally – dead on Xbox. Normally you can’t see what a Game Pass player would have paid, because the game’s just there in the subscription. But the $30 early-access upgrade estimate shows that 722K people demonstrated they’ll spend real money on this game. In a world without day-one Game Pass, many of these folks would have bought E-Day at $70. They paid $30 for five days early access to something they don’t own. Xbox is, in effect, charging its most valuable customers the least, based on a hangover from a tried-and-exhausted strategy from a previous administration. Those 722K willing-to-pay players generated about $21.7M via the upgrade. If three quarters of this group – mostly US and European audiences – bought E-Day outright, that’s nearly $40M. Of course, Game Pass does bring in meaningful recurring revenue, and E-Day is adding value for hundreds of thousands of subscribers. However, Game Pass is no longer growing, so Xbox is at a crossroads. Xbox is reportedly looking to do a Netflix and bolt on an ad-supported tier to pad it further. But that will just set a new floor, and leadership keeps telling us the priority now is revenue growth, which is subscriber-speak for ARPU. Xbox has already pulled Call of Duty from day-one Game Pass after day-one inclusion hammered its sales, with new CoD titles now arriving on the service around a year late. We know that some Microsoft executives believe the service devalues games outright, and rumours (which Microsoft has dismissed so far, to be fair) suggest that day-one releases could be taken off Game Pass. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe When a game this well-reviewed does this softly on its home platform, the model – not the game – gets brought into question. What else E-Day’s early adopters have played (including this month so far) Looking at E-Day‘s players on Xbox, most have played the franchise before (86% have played Gears 5, 76% Gears 4), and every game on the crossover list is either a shooter or a title from an Xbox-owned studio (though Game Pass is inflating those numbers, of course, more on that later): As for what else Xbox’s E-Day players have played this month, the top three are Fortnite (16%), Roblox (7%), and Call of Duty (6%). Another 5% played Minecraft Dungeons II, which is also on Game Pass and launched a couple of days before Gears‘ advance-access date. Many Game Pass players are happy to check out most big new additions. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Over on Steam, the top crossover games are also mostly shooters (slightly more PC-coded ones), including Space Marine 2, which was itself heavily inspired by Gears: Looking at what E-Day‘s Steam players are into this month shows who they are – as subscriptions don’t skew the data. The top three are Wardogs (13%), Deadlock (12%), and CS2 (10%), so you’ve got the restless shooter crowd checking out the new hotness. A little further down are Helldivers 2 and Space Marine 2, your co-op PVE shooter players who’ll feel right at home in Horde mode. Game Pass is skewing the playtime distribution on Xbox Looking at the playtime distribution in our platform, E-Day players on Steam are – relatively speaking – playing for longer: 54% of E-Day players on Xbox have played for five hours or less (versus 32% on Steam) 19% of Xbox players played for over 15 hours (versus 33% on Steam) 14% of Xbox players played for over 20 hours (22% on Steam) The absolute number of people playing for over 15, 20, and 50 hours is, of course, bigger on Xbox, thanks to the sheer volume of folks who came in through Game Pass (upgraders included). None of that is cause for alarm. Game Pass is the reason Xbox playtime skews lower, as when a game is free to try, people try it and bounce without putting in even an hour (17% under an hour on Xbox versus 6% on Steam). Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe The subscription brings in tourists alongside the committed, dragging down the average even when the game is excellent (but also perhaps winning over the uninitiated). It’s standard across every subscription-included title, on PS Plus too. Forza Horizon 6, for instance, had 11% of its Xbox players bounce under an hour, versus just 2% on Steam. So, Xbox’s crossroads So there we have it. Gears of War: E-Day is an incredible game whose revenues have been stifled by subscription inclusion and exclusivity. It’s the best-reviewed entry in the series in fifteen-odd years, but it still turned into one of the year’s softer flagship launches, not because players didn’t want it, but because Xbox’s own storefront gave its most willing buyers a reason not to pay. Which leaves Xbox at a crossroads. Will it keep making Gears games when the financial returns are this thin and the margins this low? And if it does, does the next one arrive off Game Pass at day one – the way CoD now does, or even on PlayStation? I think it should. Alright, back to E-Day for me! The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
Two astronauts who flew farther than anyone before are taking new NASA roles
Artemis II astronauts Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman are transitioning to emeritus status at NASA after their historic journey around the Moon earlier this year. The pair will continue advising and mentoring NASA teams as preparations accelerate for Artemis III and future lunar missions. Their experience with Orion and deep-space operations could prove especially valuable as NASA works toward returning astronauts to the lunar surface.
Two Billings brothers turn poop scooping into a growing small business
Two young Billings brothers are turning a stinky job into a growing business — and picking up some valuable life lessons along the way
Sundar Pichai: Google’s Frontier Imperative, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products and Businesses
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has little patience for doubts about Google’s willingness or capacity to compete at the frontier of AI. His company’s latest Gemini 4 Argon model — long-promised and recently delivered — beats OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest public models on coding, math, science, and knowledge-work benchmarks and has placed Google’s AI back among the world’s best. Amid chatter that Google was fine with good-enough lightweight ‘Flash’ models, Pichai pushed back hard against any suggestion that company is limiting its research ambitions. “We won’t do it any other way,” he told me in a Big Technology Podcast interview recorded this week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Pursuing cutting-edge research is costly for Google, requiring compute and chips that otherwise could be sold at a high markup by its cloud business. But Pichai said allocating resources to frontier AI development is “ground zero” for Google. “Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development,” Pichai told me. In our conversation, we discussed Argon (which Pichai says processed three times as many tokens as Gemini 3 in the 72 hours after launch), AI’s role in developing better models, the AI interface of the future, competition with OpenAI, Google’s partnerships with Anthropic and Apple, data centers in space, and the nature of his optimism. You can read the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, below, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. Alex Kantrowitz: Google is back at the frontier with Gemini 4 Argon, which beats OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s public models on benchmarks spanning coding, math, science, and knowledge work. The conventional wisdom was that Google had given up on the frontier to focus on fast, good-enough models for its products. That was wrong? Sundar Pichai: Very wrong. Look, we are so committed to being at the frontier. It’s in our DNA. We won’t do it any other way. We’ve been thinking about the AI frontier for well over a decade now. The frontier is very dynamic. It’s very competitive. It’s very exciting. I couldn’t be more pleased with how Argon has come together. We took our time with it. We made sure we tested it safely and deployed it carefully. We took a bit longer than our other models, given its capabilities. Across the board, be it for agentic work, knowledge work, coding, creative tasks, Argon is one of the really good frontier models. The first 72 hours since we launched, it’s almost up to 25 trillion tokens used, which is about three times what Gemini 3.0 had in the first 72 hours. And we are capacity constrained as we are serving it. Excited, but there are always areas….. You know, the frontier is very dynamic, and you have to keep evolving the models. There are areas which we can see we need to improve as well. We’ll be at work on all of that as well. Which areas? On any given model, Argon would be across the board better at everything if you just look even two months back. But the space is so evolving. Even on coding, for example, there are pockets where we know we need to do better, and there’s clear feedback. We’ll make it better. The argument for standard models is that they’re already good enough to build great products, with the frontier valuable only for certain tasks. Meta built Muse with good models rather than the best, and Google could put standard models into Maps, Gmail, and Search. Why isn’t that sufficient? It’s definitely not how I have thought about it at all. We are deeply committed to driving the state of the art and actually pushing where this technology can go, all the way from transformers. That’s a journey we’ve been on. You will see us continue to do that. When you’re at the frontier, you get an earlier look into the emerging capabilities, earlier than others, which helps you better prepare for the future. We are fortunate to have a wide set of opportunities across consumer and enterprise. Some of our cloud customers, for sure, want the model at the frontier. The frontier models will be better at developing the next set of models in an era of recursive self-improvement. I would argue it matters there. Internally, we have definitely seen a steep point of inflection by deploying Argon to our developers. It definitely tackles problems which our previous models could not do. Being at the frontier puts you at the innovation frontier and helps you drive that as well. There is room for models of all sizes and capabilities. That’s why we did Flash, Flash-Lite, etc. I agree with you that you can develop very good product experiences with not necessarily the most frontier model, because they tend to be slower and more expensive too. But we care about the Pareto frontier, and we’re committed to doing all of that. You said developing frontier models gives you a look at what’s coming. What do you see on the horizon? What makes this moment so exciting is you build something which you think is a culmination of months of work, and you put it out. You already see clear headroom ahead. We’ve all been working on these agentic, long-horizon capabilities, but clearly the frontier is going to have multiple of these agents working together to do things. That’s an example of an exciting paradigm underway. It’s also clear to me that users, both in consumer and enterprise, will have access to some multi-agent framework for them, working all the time doing things. It feels like a moment of infinite possibilities. Sergey Brin said one of Argon’s core innovations was relying more on the model to help develop the model. Yet incidents involving OpenAI’s bots breaking containment and Google’s bots accessing a site they shouldn’t have suggest these systems still aren’t perfectly aligned. Isn’t there reasonable cause for concern about accelerating toward recursive self-improvement? There are three parts to your question. Let’s first talk about RSI itself. You’re right, Sergey mentioned RSI being a critical contributor as we are developing Argon. But to be very clear, today, in a continuum, we are pretty far from the end state of RSI or something like that. The right way to describe it is you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. You almost have agents helping AI researchers in some automated way work together to build these models. It’s good to at least understand where we are today, and it’s super exciting. I expect that continuum to keep making progress as we go into next year. The second question is around safety. Security comes from defense in depth. You’re talking about alignment, obviously. We all are doing a lot of work to make sure the models are as aligned as possible. But it’s an active area of research, and there are clear gaps. That’s not the only thing we rely on. You have the work you do on alignment, but beyond that, we put a lot of effort into real-time monitoring as these models are working. Making sure you have good telemetry into what’s happening so that you can intervene in real time if you see unexpected behaviors. How you do that, the architecture with which you do that, how you make sure it’s all sandboxed and isolated in a way that it can continue doing its job during real-time monitoring — these are all areas of investment. Obviously, when we deploy these models, giving customers, enterprises, control, both with real-time monitoring, but their ability to decide where they deploy, what type of data which models ever have access to, etc. All that work is very, very important, and we are doing a lot of that. As an industry, we need to constantly up our game and take the time to do all this stuff, including dedicating the compute required to make sure you can safely deploy these models. The third part is: Is it all enough? This is why there are a lot of conversations in the industry, and I think it’s reasonable to be worried. The right way to approach something you worry about is early on thinking about what more we can do. As an industry, you’re definitely seeing increased levels of work on alignment, testing for safety, etc., as we deploy these models. The next step would be developing better standards so there are cross-industry standards of how we do these things, including the ability to evaluate using independent evaluators. If you look at areas like financial controls, we have accounting standards, we have independent auditors. Those are all the next natural steps for us as an industry to work toward, and regulation will end up playing a role as we go through all of that as well. Google pursues both language models and world models, while some other AI companies like OpenAI have focused more heavily on LLMs as the path to AGI. Why is world-model research important to you? As humans, you obviously perceive the world around you, and you’re taking all those inputs. Making sure these models are able to understand the laws of physics, simulate the world in high fidelity. All that, I think, are key enabling blocks for intelligence. We are working across all possible applications of this. Take an area like robotics. It’s not an accident: If you look at embodied reasoning benchmarks, Argon is state of the art. That all comes from our experience building world models. Inherently, I would expect there will be architectures which will converge all of this in the future. But for us, we view this as, today, this jagged frontier that is intelligence. We want to be at the frontier of all the possible approaches, and that will help us both drive better research, better insights, and develop a much better AGI model, is how we think about it. Some people argue Google should focus on selling its computing resources rather than using them for AI research. Cloud wants to sell compute at a high markup, while researchers need a very big computer to build the best models. How do you balance those demands? Ground zero for us is making sure we are investing in the compute that’s needed to be at the AI frontier. In 2015, I set the company to be AI-first. AI is that key horizontal ingredient across everything we do, all the way from Search to Cloud to Waymo. That is ground zero for us, making sure both for research and developing the models that we have enough compute needed. Beyond that, we have these independent businesses which each have their own long-range plans. They’re using those long-range plans to project forward, and we plan for compute for all of them. The cloud team, they have a business and they have a projection and they have demand signals. They have committed contracts. With that help, we can plan on a long-term compute trajectory for them. We’re fortunate to have this wide set of opportunities. There’s no company in the world which isn’t making trade-offs at any given moment in time. But the first principles we operate on is making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier, and that’s non-negotiable, and everything else works on top. Remember, we are building our own compute, our own data centers. There are long lead times. The compute we have today is a function of decisions I made in 2024. Even if you think back to a year from today, last year the agentic coding takeoff hadn’t happened. Today, obviously, when you sit and look at anything, everyone is short—not just us, other companies—and everyone wishes you had two times what you had planned for. That comes with the territory. At any given moment in time, we are planning for what we would need two to three years out in the future. You’re going to find some decisions you make may look suboptimal two years out, depending on where the state of the art is. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. The way I think about compute allocation is making sure Google DeepMind, both for research and frontier model development, is cutting edge in terms of compute access. After that, we plan for all our businesses. It’s great we can provide our compute to other people too, like we have done. It allows us to scale that up, get real tests for it in the widest application set possible, test it in the real world, and make sure we are at the cutting edge of technology at every layer of our AI stack as well. Ben Horowitz relayed on a podcast that Andy Jassy had said compute was sold out until 2028. Are you seeing the same thing? If today a customer is coming out and asking us for compute in ’27, that is incredibly difficult to do. Even last year we went out and leased some short-term compute to accommodate some customers and help them out. But yes, we are all dealing with similar timelines. Every major technology shift seems to involve overbuilding, from railroads to fiber. Do you think that’s happening here? It depends on the time frames you’re looking at. This level of build, if I take a long enough time frame, it makes complete sense to me. We are at early stages of the most consequential technology ever, and this is not like fiber. It’s not dark. We are using it. We are capacity constrained on a daily basis. The applications, the underlying technology is improving rapidly. But running a company, the way I work through the moment is you look at your demand signals. You look at your committed revenue opportunities that you’re getting in the form of contracts. You balance that with the underlying technical capability, or internally you balance how we are using it internally, the model trajectories. Based on all that, you take a disciplined approach—a confident, aggressive, but disciplined approach—to plan out compute. But when you talk about the broader economy as a whole, you’re having people operate with various levels of risk. I focus on what I can control as a company and plan through it. If your question is, can there be an overbuild? Yes, because you can have some constrained components. Remember, what matters is a set of everything you need to build out that compute. Memory, electricity, electricians…. Land. Like 2,000 components or more. You could get constrained at some point. There could be things which cause bottlenecks, and then you could have overbuilds. There could be external shocks to the economy. There are macro risks. All that is possible at any given time. But am I confident that the compute we are planning for, we will have uses for it given enough time? Absolutely, yes. I was in the room when you said AI would be as profound as fire and electricity. If you believe that, shouldn’t you give researchers the biggest possible computer, even at the expense of today’s cloud profits? We’re all doing some form of that. Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development. What you’re seeing is true already. But you want to be thoughtful. Even our AI researchers have some constraints, which are also good. That’s what inspires creativity. That’s what helps you come up with a more efficient algorithmic breakthrough, maybe to use less memory. What we are committed to is to invest what’s needed to stay at the frontier. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told me a few months ago that the ideal AI product might have no interface at all—just as natural as conversation. What do you think the interface looks like in the age of AI? Computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. With AI, it’ll be the other way around. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day life. You want to be able to speak to that AI when you want to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You’re not dealing with a lot of complexity. It’s natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean it won’t have any interface, however. Nowadays, even on my phone, Gemini voice models are so good. I can just press the microphone button. I can just ramble. That’s why we call it Rambler. I can ramble. It intelligently corrects with my personal context. Even my friends’ names, weird names, it gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It’s amazing. I’m not going in, backspacing, editing once I finish saying it. It’s remarkable how good it’s gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video. You may ask your AI to create something, and you want to watch it, consume it. The way I think about it is, you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is. The technology is adapting to how you’re working at any given moment in time. When I asked Sam Altman about competition from Google, he argued that OpenAI was building AI-native products and implied Google was bolting AI onto existing ones. Do you accept that framing, and can a “bolt-on” compete with an AI-native product? First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it. Yes, Google went into its own version of a code red too. In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time. We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about. Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always put these questions back. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment. How do you expect to make money from these AI interfaces? If an agent recommends a product and I buy it, should it take a cut of the sale, even if that’s disclosed? I’m going to put enterprise aside. Consumers are going to increasingly value this technology. Take software developers today. Developers are willing to pay for these coding models because it really helps make them more productive. Nobody would want to code the way they were coding three years ago, or even the same time last year. When you’re delivering value, there’s value to be had. I’ve never seen examples where consumer products really scale to billions of users, where people are using it intensely, and haven’t had monetization to go along with it. If you’re providing value to people, there is inherent value to be had. The nature of it may change. You’re asking a scenario in which agents are doing stuff for you. At the end of the day, you will have commercial needs. The agents need to fulfill those commercial needs. The providers on the other side are going to see value in that. There’s going to be some mechanism by which it gets fleshed out. That’s what an efficient system does. But what matters is that you’re building those world-class consumer experiences. I promised myself one product feature request: Can you make Gemini-powered search in Gmail as good as searching Gmail through ChatGPT? What’s going on here? One of the exciting things we announced recently is the unified Gemini agent for enterprise, and we’re bringing that to consumers. These are persistent agents which run 24/7 in the cloud. We’re spinning up a micro VM effectively for every query, and from the runtime, the harness, the model—it’s all a headless service. It’ll work everywhere, and it has your context with you. You can address this agent whether you’re in Workspace, in Search, in Gemini. Agents are going to drive this unification from a customer experience, which people are looking for. When you have a broad product portfolio and you’re moving forward fast, there are always areas where you’re moving forward faster than some other areas. That’s valid feedback. But we are putting a lot of time and effort into making sure, as we build out our agentic experience, that unification and that capability works well across all these services. People have asked where Google’s equivalent of Muse or Dots is. Do you anticipate creating a new product to compete with them? Our goal with Gemini is to be a personal, proactive, and powerful assistant. That’s what we are working toward. You saw us describe the early versions of it at Google I/O this year with Spark. Effectively, already, if you open the Gemini app as a Pro or an Ultra user, you see Chat and Task, and they start giving you that agentic experience. With Argon now, that capability is dramatically accelerated. What we announced recently in our enterprise event, we are bringing that to consumers as well. Soon in Gemini, you will be able to ask something, and it’s a continuum. You don’t need to think about whether you’re asking a chat or an agentic task. It’ll just automatically do the right thing, and it can work persistently in the background securely and get things done for you. Already, empirically, when I look at what’s coming into Gemini in our app, last year you would have tagged them and most of them would have been chats. But a steadily growing percentage is already agentic tasks in Gemini. Yes, we are going to bring personal agents to our consumers. It’ll work in the Gemini app. It’ll work in Google Search. It’ll work in Gmail. You can address it, call it, etc. We want to make sure we’re getting it right. It’ll be powered by Argon, and we are very excited to bring it to our users. Google has invested and committed tens of billions of dollars to Anthropic. What do you see in Dario Amodei that makes you want such a deep investment and partnership? Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models. We were quickly able to assess that they would be at the frontier. We’ve always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We’ve done that with SpaceX. We’ve done that with Anthropic. That’s what we saw, and we had a chance to partner. Is your partnership with Apple to license Gemini for Siri expanding, contracting, or standing still? For both us and Apple, that partnership was about translating the capabilities of AI into better experiences for users. I thought Apple has done a phenomenal job of incorporating—they customize these models and build it into Siri—and it’s been great to see the reception. We are committed to doing more. You’re going to do more with them? There’s nothing specific to comment, but it’s a partnership. It’s working well. What have you learned so far about the feasibility of data centers in space? It’s a very exciting project. Projects like this remind me—I still recall that moment in the desert for the DARPA Grand Challenge, watching the Stanley car compete in it, which ended up being the basis for Waymo. With all these technologies, you’re at a moment in time where it looks a bit like sci-fi, but 10 to 20 years down the line, it’s actually working in a meaningful way. I feel the same in space. We’ve always believed in betting big on these technologies. Quantum has been a great example of it. We’re probably 10 years into the journey. Waymo, we are almost 20 years into the journey. Space, we are two to three years into the journey. It’s clear to me that it’s an approach which will make a lot of sense in the future. Being in sub-synchronous orbits with 24/7 access to the most abundant form of energy we have access to will make a lot of sense for this exponential increase in compute that we are going to need. Having said that, this is a challenging project. The team has disciplined milestones. It was a super exciting milestone to send the TPUs up to space. Sometime, as we are speaking, we are expecting a “hello world” moment from them. I look forward to seeing that happen, and we’ll continue investing here too. You previously said 25% of the code written within Google was written by AI. What’s the number today? That number in our world today is meaningless in the sense that every part of what we now touch is influenced by AI deeply. What we are tracking with Argon, for example, it’s been a point of inflection. People are using Argon to really go tackle complex projects, including projects which affect millions of lines of code. In the four weeks since we have launched Argon, we have seen a 30% increase in CLs, and more importantly, almost a similar increase—a one-third decrease in rollbacks. People are writing code more productively and better code with it. We are tracking it with newer metrics now. How are you dealing with opposition to data centers? If you can’t build in the U.S. the way you want to, where else do you go? We’re very committed to building our data centers very responsibly. When I look at our largest data centers in some of the communities where we have been the longest, I visit them, I talk to people. There are people who come and tell us their kids have gone to college because of our investments in these communities, and we’ve grown in those communities. To me, this is about doing it right. Engaging with the communities early, doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power, and we cover 100% of the cost of our power needs for these projects. It’s understanding the impact on neighborhoods and making sure you’re working thoroughly to address them. Done rightly, you can continue making progress. But we are constantly taking feedback into account. I do worry not everyone operates the same way. People have been surprised by data centers showing up in their backyard. Those are all important. As an industry, we should continue to do better. But part of the reason, in a 20-year time frame, we are thinking about things like data centers in space is making sure we are able to put these data centers where maybe the trade-offs will be different. What unproven area of AI is Google working hardest to crack? Is it continual learning—getting models to keep updating after release—or something else? There are multiple parallel paths. You saw with Argon we have a million output tokens. With our Gemini models early on, we had a one-million context window on the input side. These are all examples of breakthroughs we are constantly working on. How do you think about synthetic data? How do you think about continual learning? How do you think about more efficient architectures? We do dedicate a meaningful percentage of our compute to these research bets too. It always goes hand in hand, including our world models. Those are all bets we are placing. Sometimes, as part of these bets, there are ideas that emerge which just make their way into the mainline models. Maybe we don’t fully talk about it, but we have multiple steps in these areas. Working in technology requires optimism that building something will improve the world, but those bets can leave real consequences when they fail. I recently returned to a town in El Salvador where enthusiasm for Bitcoin had given way to unfinished construction and something resembling a ghost town. How do you maintain the optimism you spoke about in your Stanford commencement address while accounting for those risks? I genuinely have a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people’s lives better. It’s been my personal experience in my life, out of which comes that deep conviction, optimism. But with that, I’ve always felt humanity’s journey is always about working hard to harness that technology to make it work well for society. The optimism is not an optimism that you just build whatever you want, whenever. You work hard to make sure you’re building technology in the service of humanity, to make the human condition better. That’s got to be the defining goal as we are approaching it. With that framework, I’m very, very optimistic. We are in very early stages of the kind of progress that we are going to see on many areas. We’re all talking about areas like healthcare. A lot of the progress is ahead. The ability to make things in a fundamentally cheaper way on many things where things have been getting expensive for a long, long time, discovering new materials, etc., which really bend the curve—it’s tough to step today and understand the impact of all that, but they’re going to be very profound. I’m very optimistic, but we have to be rightfully concerned about all the ways this technology can go wrong. Sundar, I know you don’t do many of these. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.
The Math Singularity Is Here, and Science May Be Next
OpenAI has released an extraordinary body of mathematical work produced by an unreleased frontier model: 722 manuscripts spanning 372 research families across fields including number theory, complexity theory, and mathematical physics. Each result required, on average, the equivalent of roughly three hours of ChatGPT Pro reasoning. A New Era of Discovery We may be witnessing the beginnings of a “math singularity”: a point at which machine-generated discovery accelerates beyond humanity’s ability to independently reproduce, verify, or fully absorb it. If frontier models can generate hundreds of meaningful results in the time it takes a human researcher to investigate one, the constraint will no longer be producing new mathematics. It will be our capacity to validate, interpret, and integrate it. This does not make mathematicians obsolete. It changes their role. They may increasingly serve as guides, critics, and meaning-makers. Increasingly, they will decide which questions matter, determining which results can be trusted, and explaining why they are important. Mathematical insight may become abundant, while human judgment becomes more valuable than ever. Mathematics May Be Only the Beginning Every scientific discipline could eventually experience a similar acceleration. AI systems could generate and test hypotheses, connect findings across specialized fields, and explore possibilities at a scale no human research community could match. In medicine, imagine models identifying overlooked disease mechanisms, designing drugs and clinical trials, personalizing treatments, or discovering cures in months rather than decades. In materials science, AI could help create better batteries and cleaner industrial processes. In climate science, it could accelerate advances in energy, forecasting, and carbon removal. In biology, it could uncover relationships hidden across enormous genomic and molecular datasets. The result would not simply be faster research. It could expand the frontier of what is scientifically possible. The New Bottleneck Scientific discovery, however, is not the same as scientific progress. A medical breakthrough must still survive laboratory testing, clinical trials, regulatory scrutiny, manufacturing constraints, and real-world deployment. As machine-generated ideas multiply, the bottleneck may shift from producing breakthroughs to validating them safely and translating them into practice. We may soon have more hypotheses than laboratories can test, more drugs than clinical trials can evaluate, and more mathematical results than experts can review. That imbalance will require better systems for automated verification, reproducible research, prioritization, peer review, and collaboration between AI and domain experts. The importance of OpenAI’s work is not merely the number of manuscripts produced. It offers a glimpse of a world in which intelligence can explore thousands of intellectual paths in parallel. If ideas cease to be scarce, humanity’s defining challenge will be deciding which are true, which matter, and how to turn them into progress. The math singularity is not the end of human inquiry. It is the beginning of a new kind—one in which machines expand the frontier of knowledge and humans decide where it should lead. Subscribe Share Leave a comment
Vitalize secures $31M to scale AI-powered operating system for hospital staffing and scheduling
Hospital staffing and scheduling is unglamorous, complex and tedious work, and Veeraj Shah, Vitalize CEO and co-founder, believes it's the most valuable healthcare task to tackle. | Vitalize positions its software as an "air traffic control" system for healthcare operations, helping health systems automate staffing, forecast demand, manage capacity and reduce reliance on overtime and agency labor.
After the theft of 3 Renoir paintings from a French museum, here's a look at other famous heists
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After the theft of 3 Renoir paintings from a French museum, here's a look at other famous heists
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Intel Panther Lake Teardown, 18A, BSPD, GAAFET, SemiAnalysis STEEL
Panther Lake debuts the first commercial implementation of backside power delivery (BSPDN), introduces Intel’s first iteration of gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, and showcases their advanced packaging capabilities with its Foveros-S assembly. With Panther Lake, Intel’s manufacturing arc has shifted from nebulous roadmaps to shipped silicon, a significant milestone on their long road back to competitive semiconductor manufacturing. To evaluate the extent of Intel’s comeback, we tore down Panther Lake. The SemiAnalysis STEEL teardown lab breaks down advanced datacenter and AI hardware. To learn more about our pipeline or to commission a teardown, contact sales@semianalysis.com. WE’RE HIRING: Architecture, floorplan, packaging, manufacturing, and labs experts. Opportunities from system to transistor and everywhere in between. Check out our Careers page. Our teardown traces 18A from its four-sheet RibbonFETs (Intel’s marketing name for GAAFETs) and gate stacks through contacts, frontside and backside wiring, and the bonded carrier. We explain how these material and integration choices improve gate control and reduce resistance, while adding capacitance, thermal resistance, and process complexity. Our measurements put Panther Lake’s 18A compute logic and TSMC N3E GPU logic at similar logic density. However, 18A does not lead TSMC N3P, N2 or Samsung SF2 in peak density. Panther Lake’s CPU cores are incremental updates, and the high-end GPU still uses TSMC N3E. Panther Lake assembles one compute tile, one GPU tile, and one I/O tile atop a passive base tile using Intel’s Foveros-S advanced packaging. Both compute tile variants use Intel 18A. The Xe3 GPU options are a 4-core GT1 tile on Intel 3 and a larger 12-core GT2 tile on TSMC N3E. Both I/O tile variants use TSMC N6. [1], [2] Our analysis centers on the PTL-U compute tile, both the 4-core and 12-core GPU tiles, as well as the 12-lane I/O tile. In conventional chips, power and signal are routed through the same frontside metal stack towards the device frontend. Power rails consume scarce routing resources near the transistors, while tall via stacks carry VDD and VSS from the coarse upper wires to local rails. Backside power delivery (BSPD) moves the main power network behind the transistor layer, to the backside, separating it from frontside signal routing. We covered BSPD and its impacts in 2024. [3], [4], [5] Intel’s BSPD implementation, branded as “PowerVia”, routes power through dedicated backside metals to nano-TSVs, which connect those rails to local source/drain (S/D) contacts. Implementing that separation requires Intel to build the interconnect stacks from both sides of the wafer. The frontside comprises the M0-M14 signal stack, while the backside comprises the BM0-BM5 power stack. M0 and BM0 are closest to the transistors. The nano-TSVs connect the two sides, but Intel patterns and etches each via from the front after forming the contacts. A narrow via runs from the side of the contact deep into the silicon substrate. Intel then completes the frontside signal metal stack, bonds the wafer to a carrier, flips it and removes the original substrate until the buried via tips are exposed. The backside metal stack is then deposited directly on the revealed vias. The nano-TSV and backside-via profiles taper in opposite directions because Intel forms them from opposite sides of the wafer. The transistor structures form the FEOL. Local contacts and nano-TSVs connect them to the wiring. M0 begins the frontside interconnect stack. The silicon carrier remains attached above the frontside interconnects. It supports the device wafer during substrate removal and backside processing and remains part of the finished chip’s thermal path. PowerVia removes the main power distribution from the congested frontside metals, routing supply through shorter and wider backside wires. Its lateral landing still occupies area in the standard cell, so it recovers less cell area than a direct backside contact. [3] Nano-TSVs beside the logic devices carry VDD or VSS from the backside power network, while signal connections continue upward through the frontside metals. Backside Interconnects Samsung SF2 data is included for comparison to Panther Lake’s within this article. SF2 is the incumbent GAA foundry node but lacks BSPD, serving as a useful reference to evaluate 18A. A full teardown of Samsung’s S26 products, processed on SF2, will be shared soon.Nanosheet-cut EDS comparison. The PowerVia supply path runs from the backside Cu rails through Mo-lined W nano-TSVs to the local transistor contacts. In this cross section, the tapered connection spans roughly 150 nm from the contact level to BM0. The Ta liner confines Cu and promotes adhesion to the surrounding stack; the AlOₓ etch stop controls the next dielectric etch above the rail. Dielectric beneath the ribbons electrically separates the devices from the backside wiring and removes the conducting silicon body below the channel. [6] AlOₓ serves as an etchstop (ES), enabling endpointing and protecting the underlying layers. Low-volatility aluminum fluoride reaction products resist the fluorinated plasma, allowing a thin AlOₓ film to protect the metal while the surrounding low-k dielectric is removed. [6], [7]. While the BM0 and layers above the M1 lines show double AlOx layers, Our SMIC N+3 teardown showed single AlOₓ layers. SMIC uses a simpler local AlOₓ substack, while the remaining cap and etch sequence provide the required landing protection. So why double layers? The closely spaced AlOₓ doublets provide two protected endpoints in the etch sequence. Intel documents an AlOₓ/SiN/AlOₓ stack that explains the benefit. The main dielectric plasma etch stops on the first AlOₓ film; a selective wet clear opens that film; a second plasma etch removes the intermediate SiN and stops on the second AlOₓ film. The final wet clear exposes the metal landing surface. SiN is the intermediate dielectric in Intel’s published example. [8] The second stop protects the metal through a cap breakthrough. Wide openings can etch faster than narrow ones, and etch depth varies across the wafer. Metal under an early-clearing opening would otherwise be exposed while other openings still need more etching. Staged protection widens the process window and reduces metal erosion, corrosion and void formation. [8] TSMC documents AlN/AlOₓ/SiOC/AlOₓ above Cu, with AlN blocking Cu diffusion, and a simpler AlN/SiOC/AlOₓ variant that omits one AlOx film. [9] Levels with different opening sizes, aspect ratios, pattern densities and cap materials need different etch margins. A double AlOx stop is useful where another protected endpoint justifies the added processing. The extra film adds formation, selective opening and cleaning steps, plus another set of interfaces to control adhesion, moisture, and stress. These blanket films are opened through the existing via pattern, so each film does not require another lithography mask. AlOₓ adds parasitic capacitance when it replaces lower-k dielectric; two thin AlOₓ films can nevertheless contain less AlOₓ than one thick film. Total thickness, placement, and theintermediate dielectric determine the electrical cost. Deposition chemistry also changes AlOx permittivity and residual hydroxyl content, which can oxidize the underlying metal. [7], [8], [10], [11] The backside stack separates into relatively fine BM0-BM2 wiring near the devices and coarser BM3-BM5 power distribution. The largest pitch increase occurs between BM2 and BM3. BM0’s pitch closely matches the logic-row height, fitting local power delivery to the cell rows. Higher levels aggregate current through larger conductors: routing density becomes less important than low resistance and current capacity as the network approaches the package. This hierarchy provides wide power wiring for the power delivery network without consuming scarce frontside signal-routing resources. [3] The SemiAnalysis STEEL teardown lab breaks down advanced datacenter and AI hardware. To learn more about our pipeline or to commission a teardown, contact sales@semianalysis.com. WE’RE HIRING: Architecture, floorplan, packaging, manufacturing, and labs experts. Opportunities from system to transistor and everywhere in between. Check out our Careers page. Frontside Interconnects Intel 18A combines Mo-lined W contacts and nano-TSVs with a separate backside Cu power network. Samsung SF2 keeps power on the frontside, using Ti-based contact interfaces and Ta-based barriers and Co liners around Cu wiring. In 18A standard-cell rows, backside power rails supply the devices through nano-TSVs within the cells, freeing frontside routing resources. Samsung’s M0 accommodates both power and signal connections. From the device toward M0, the connection runs through a Ti-based S/D interface, W contact fill, a Mo-lined W via, and the Cu M0 wire. Mo supplies a conductive nucleation and adhesion layer for W, replacing the resistive TiN liner used in conventional W integration. This increases the effective conduction volume within the feature while retaining W fill and its established polishing, cleaning and etching processes. Intel’s Mo/W patent describes this integration tradeoff. The nano-TSV uses the same Mo-lined W construction in the backside supply path. [12] The move from TiN to Mo is an incremental change. While a full Co or Mo fill can also reduce the volume lost to liners in very small features, it requires new integration schemes that increase complexity and risk. Cu remains attractive for wider wires due to its low resistance. As wires and vias shrink, the diffusion barrier consumes an increasing fraction of their cross-section. [12], [12], [14] Intel uses Co/Ru liners at M0-M1, Co at M2-M4, and Nb at M5-M9. The lower-level liners help Cu adhere and reduce void formation during trench fills. Applied Materials’ Endura has new thermal control that facilitate wetting process, so the thin film continuity is good enough that good capillary pressure will drive Cu atoms to the via bottom without voiding. Intel’s choice to use Nb is particularly interesting. Intel’s Nb patent describes a conductive diffusion barrier intended to reduce the barrier’s contribution to resistance relative to conventional Ta-based barriers, particularly at via bottoms where all current crosses the barrier. The patent pairs Nb in coarser levels with the option of lower-cost PVD processing. [15], [16] The upper metal layers support thicker barriers formed through physical vapor deposition (PVD) despite its worse coverage and uniformity. Meanwhile, the lower metal layers require thinner barriers deposited through conformal atomic layer deposition (ALD). Co/Ru adds another material interface and requires controlled deposition and Cu fill. Changing liners and barriers by metal layer allows Intel to optimize interconnect resistance, process complexity, and reliability. [15, 16] RibbonFET, Intel’s name for its gate-all-around FETs (GAAFETs), replaces the FinFET’s vertical fins with four stacked horizontal silicon nanosheets, allowing the gate to surround the channel on every side. The path to GAAFET begins with the planar transistor. A planar MOSFET places the gate above the channel between its source and drain. Pairing an NMOS with a PMOS transistor creates a CMOS inverter, in which the NMOS pulls the output low for a high input, and the PMOS pulls it high for a low input. The gate must retain electrostatic control of the channel to ensure clean switching. As gate lengths shrank, the drain began to compete with the gate for that control, increasing off-state leakage. Electrostatic control was restored through an architectural evolution that raised the channel into a vertical fin and wrapping the gate around three sides. Called “FinFET”, this new architecture packed more effective channel width into a smaller footprint. Further scaling made it harder to maintain both drive current and leakage within smaller cells, and reintroduced the same problems planar MOSFETs faced. Nanosheet GAAFETs close the fourth side by replacing the vertical fin with a stack of horizontal nanosheets, each surrounded by the gate. The tighter electrostatic control suppresses leakage at shorter gate lengths while stacking adds effective channel width within the cell footprint. In a FinFET process, channel width changes in discrete steps as designers must add or remove whole fins. Nanosheet width can instead be adjusted continuously within the process’s design rules. Wider sheets increase drive current, while narrower sheets reduce capacitance at the cost of drive current. Intel 18A uses stacks of four nanosheets each and varies their widths across logic and SRAM. At the process level, adding more sheets to each stack increases effective channel width and drive current, but complicates fabrication. RibbonFET vs MBCFET Samsung began GAAFET production in 2022 with SF3E, following with SF3 and now SF2. Its ‘MBCFET’ provides a useful structural comparison with Intel’s first RibbonFET implementation. [17] STEEL is digging deeper into SF2, used in the Exynos 2600, and TSMC’s GAAFET N2, used in Apple’s A20 Pro, in upcoming newsletter articles. We’re throwing some teasers on X. Let’s compare Samsung SF2’s MBCFET with Intel 18A’s RibbonFET. Subscribe Even to the untrained eye, Intel’s extra nanosheet is obvious. Intel stacks four ribbons to Samsung’s three. Samsung’s sheets are much wider in these fields, so both sheet count and width matter to the available channel perimeter. Sheet width also changes which silicon surfaces carry current. On conventional (001) silicon, wide nanosheets emphasize the broad top and bottom surfaces, favoring electron transport; the larger sidewall contribution in a narrow sheet favors hole transport. Thinner sheets improve gate control but increase confinement and scattering. This makes width and thickness part of the NMOS/PMOS balance, alongside strain and threshold voltage. [18], [19] GAAFET designs like 18A use different work-function-metal (WFM) stacks for NMOS and PMOS. Around each ribbon, a thin SiOx interfacial layer separates the silicon channel from the HfOx high-k dielectric, with La providing dipole tuning and the WFM wrapping the dielectric. NMOS uses a TiAl-based stack, while PMOS uses TiN WFM. W fills the remaining gate trench, providing a lower-resistivity path where the work-function layers are no longer needed. In this field, the PMOS stacks leave room for W between ribbons, while the NMOS stacks occupy more of those gaps. A silicon-based dielectric marks the P/N boundary, allowing the PMOS and NMOS gates, sharing the same gate trench, to be processed sequentially. Fast logic paths, retention circuits, and SRAM need a family of threshold options. Changing threshold without substantially changing device dimensions, capacitance or fabrication complexity is valuable. FinFET processes typically use different work-function-metal stacks. In a four-ribbon GAA stack, the narrow sheet-to-sheet gap limits how much WFM can fit around each channel. La in the gate dielectric creates interfacial dipoles at the SiOx/HfOx boundary, shifting effective work function and tuning threshold voltage. This gives Intel another control alongside its NMOS and PMOS WFM stacks. Low-threshold devices improve critical-path drive; higher thresholds reduce leakage elsewhere. Dipole tuning is especially useful in GAA because it changes threshold without consuming the narrow intersheet gap with thicker WFM. Precise control of La incorporation, diffusion and interface quality has long been a challenge, limiting viability in high volume production but is now seen from every leading-edge foundry. Intel’s patent describes depositing a dipole-forming oxide above HfOx and annealing it toward the interfacial oxide before completing the work-function and fill metals. This separates threshold tuning from the space available for metal. Newer research addresses the thermal cost: imec’s 2026 dipole-middle research inserts the shifter between two HfOx depositions, shortening the diffusion path while protecting SiOx during patterning. [20], [21]Matched-cut EDS, Intel 18A (left) vs. Samsung SF2 (right). Intel retains raised source/drain epi beneath its contacts, while Samsung recesses W deep into the epi to form a V-shaped Ti-lined interface. The deeper contact increases metal-to-semiconductor area and shortens the current path from the lower sheets, reducing contact and spreading resistance. It also removes epi volume and brings the contact etch closer to the channel ends. Retaining more epi preserves the material available for strain transfer, especially from SiGe into PMOS. These geometries balance contact access against stress engineering and etch margin. [22], [23] Samsung stacks three sheets to Intel’s four ribbons, and both processes use sheet width to tune drive strength. In our Samsung cross-sections, widths range roughly from 19 to 30 nm in the NPU rows and 37 to 50 nm in the CU cell. The Samsung nanosheets taper, with the widest sheet at the bottom and the narrowest at the top. Both processes use HfOx gate dielectric and Ti-based work-function stacks, with Al in the NMOS stack. In the Samsung devices shown here, the dielectric and WFM occupy the intersheet gaps, leaving W above the top sheet. Intel’s PMOS stack leaves more room between ribbons, and W fills those gaps while the thicker NMOS stack leaves W mainly in the upper trench. Gate-stack EDS maps. The W between Intel’s PMOS ribbons provides a conductive path close to the lower gates. Where WFM fills the entire gap, the gate still surrounds the channel, but voltage reaches it through the more resistive work-function films. Thinner WFM and dipole tuning preserve room for low-resistivity fill; Mo and Ru are alternative fill metals being developed for further scaling. [24] A masked, sequential WFM flow explains the different gate heights and inter-nanosheet fill. The proposed sequence below shows how separate NMOS and PMOS work-function steps produce that geometry. Enabled by the BSPDN process, Intel replaces the dense-logic silicon subfin with dielectric, removing the parasitic conduction path below the ribbons and reducing substrate-related capacitance. A retained silicon body as in classical, non-SOI, planar and FinFET designs needs junction and punchthrough-stop engineering to suppress leakage. Dielectric isolation makes that leakage less sensitive to the subfin doping profile but adds removal and fill steps. It also weakens the direct thermal path through silicon, making the contacts, metal stacks and package more important for heat extraction. [24], [26] Fluorine is concentrated around selected Intel device structures in the maps. WF6 is a standard precursor for W nucleation and fill, while barrier films protect adjacent dielectrics from fluorine attack. Low-fluorine W processes reduce the residual-F burden. Chloride-based precursors avoid introducing F during W deposition, but require control of chlorine attack, nucleation and fill quality. The integration target is a continuous, low-resistance W path with a thin protective liner and minimal chemical damage to the surrounding stack. [20], [27], [28] The SemiAnalysis STEEL teardown lab breaks down advanced datacenter and AI hardware. To learn more about our pipeline or to commission a teardown, contact sales@semianalysis.com. WE’RE HIRING: Architecture, floorplan, packaging, manufacturing, and labs experts. Opportunities from system to transistor and everywhere in between. Check out our Careers page. We measured cell height, gate pitch, metal geometry, and ribbon dimensions at the XTEM sites shown below. The tables group these dimensions by site and device polarity. Our “sheet cuts” cross the silicon channel and show the ribbons end-on. “gate cuts” run along the channel through successive gates. The 18A logic cell dimensions point to a five-track logic library while the N3E and Intel 3 cell dimensions evidence a seven-track logic library. The DDR-PHY uses wider M0 wires and much larger spacing than core logic. That trades routing density for lower wire resistance and weaker coupling between neighboring nets. The geometry suits the current delivery and coupling requirements of analog, clock, and I/O circuitry. PowerVia lets 18A combine a compact cell height with wider M0 geometry by moving the main power rails off the signal-routing tracks. That relaxes local wire scaling while preserving a small cell footprint. Cell height and gate pitch set the geometric density; pin access and routability determine how much of it a real block can use. [29] The biggest takeaway from our gate-pitch measurements is that Intel 18A compute logic and TSMC N3E GPU logic have similar density in the Bohr representative-cell model. The 18A example is 18.6% denser than the Intel 3 GPU example. Gate pitches are nearly identical across the three sites, so cell height drives most of the difference. The Bohr model combines a four-transistor NAND2 spanning three gate pitches and a 32-transistor scan flip-flop (SFF) spanning nineteen pitches, weighting their densities 60:40. The sensitivity column shows how independently changing cell height and gate pitch by ±1 nm changes the result. This compares representative cell geometries; whole-die density also depends on cell mix and placement. The 18A P-core gives M0 substantially more metal cross section than the N3E vector engine. Treating each profile as a trapezoid gives 2.63 times the area per line and 1.84 times the area after normalization by routing pitch. The larger section reduces the geometric contribution to line resistance and lowers current density for a given current. Taller and wider wires also add capacitance, so circuit delay depends on the balance of resistance and capacitance. The DDR-PHY has less metal area per routing width than the 18A core fields, while remaining above N3E. [30] Area = height × (top CD + bottom CD) / 2, including liners. Area/pitch normalizes by routing width. Taper is the symmetric sidewall angle from vertical, with the largest angle belonging to the DDR-PHY. Compute tile The measurements show how ribbon dimensions and gate-stack geometry vary across the compute tile and between NMOS and PMOS to balance channel drive, gate load and the space needed for the dielectric/WFM stack across logic, SRAM and the DDR-PHY. Width mainly changes available channel perimeter; thickness also changes electrostatic control and carrier confinement. Gate-stack thickness then determines the space left for low-resistivity fill P-core and LP E-core logic Both the P-core and LP E-core use multiple nanosheet widths. Widths are measured on high-magnification XTEMs while wider-field images demonstrate additional width choices within the LP E-core. Multiple widths are expected even within an LP E-core. Timing-critical paths, buffers and cells with different fanout need different drive strengths. The lower-magnification fields show this width diversity beyond the sites quantified in the table. L2 and L3 SRAM GAA gives SRAM designers another way to balance the pull-up (PU), pass-gate (PG), and pull-down (PD) transistors. FinFET bitcells set device strength through fin count while GAA adds nanosheet width as a sizing knob. In a 6T SRAM cell, a strong pull-down relative to the pass-gate limits read disturbance, while a strong pass-gate relative to the pull-up improves writability. During a write, the pass-gate and write driver pull the node storing “1” below the inverter trip point. During a read, the pull-down holds the node storing “0” low. Bias, threshold voltage, mismatch and assist circuitry set the remaining margin. FinFET high-current cells commonly use a PU:PG:PD fin-count pattern of 1:2:2, a device-sizing ratio rather than a current ratio. Ribbon width lets Intel balance SRAM strengths without adding whole fins. The L2 cell uses its narrowest ribbons for PU and widest for PD, improving writability and read stability respectively. Intel’s disclosed HCC operates without assist; its denser HDC uses negative-bitline write assist. Pulling the selected bitline briefly below ground increases pass-gate overdrive so it can overpower the pull-up at lower supply voltage. That buys density and low voltage writability at the cost of boosting circuitry, switching energy, and additional voltage stress that must be controlled. [31], [32] Four rectangular ribbons give the perimeter = 8 × (width + thickness), before corner rounding. PG/PU is 1.49 and PD/PG is 1.16. The L3 structures closely resemble L2 in layout and cell height. Fewer L3 nanosheet widths are tabulated because fewer high-magnification images were available. DDR PHY The DDR-PHY trades density for controlled analog behavior and reliable off-chip signaling. It contains drivers, receivers, delay circuits, and calibration logic that set drive strength, sampling time, and voltage margin. Repeated four-sheet devices with similar widths fit the use of regular transistor units for matching and programmable drive. Its wider local wiring provides room for current delivery and separation of sensitive signals, while consuming more area than a dense core-logic grid. The layout serves the memory channel’s electrical requirements as well as digital logic density. [33] The SemiAnalysis STEEL teardown lab breaks down advanced datacenter and AI hardware. To learn more about our pipeline or to commission a teardown, contact sales@semianalysis.com. WE’RE HIRING: Architecture, floorplan, packaging, manufacturing, and labs experts. Opportunities from system to transistor and everywhere in between. Check out our Careers page. Intel 3 GPU devices Vector engine logic Intel 3’s XVE logic uses two-fin PMOS and NMOS devices with power rails in M0. Its cell height and M0 pitch give a seven-track geometry, two tracks more than the 18A logic. One-fin groups also appear among the two-fin devices. Intel 3 L2 SRAM The Intel 3 L2 SRAM uses the familiar HCC sizing pattern: one PU fin, two PG fins, and two PD fins. N3E GPU devices Vector engine logic The N3E XVE field contains repeated two-fin devices with seven-track cell geometry. N3E remains a FinFET process, giving Panther Lake a direct FinFET-to-RibbonFET comparison. N3E L2 SRAM The N3E L2 SRAM uses the same PU:PG:PD fin-count pattern of 1:2:2. Panther Lake-U follows Lunar Lake’s floorplan quite closely. Both pair 4 P-cores with 4 LP E-cores and NPU, media and display engines in similar locations. Lunar Lake also uses Xe2, the direct predecessor to Panther Lake’s Xe3 GPU. This makes Lunar Lake the most direct basis for our comparisons. Arrow Lake differs in core count and uses the older Xe-LPG GPU architecture, so we only use it where it offers a more direct component-level comparison. Compute tile Panther Lake compute-tile floorplans remain sparse even months after launch. Intel 18A’s backside metal and dielectric stack must be removed without damaging the underlying structures before a clean transistor-level floorplan can be imaged. Most published die shots hide or heavily process the background, but we are quite proud of the die shot we achieved and are excited to show the work we have done. We measured the areas of the key components on the compute tile and compared them with their Lunar Lake predecessors on TSMC N3B. These help us to capture changes in block area and compare the two chips across process nodes and designs. Our total tile areas exclude the scribe-line area. The compute-plus-GPU subtotal below uses the PTL-U compute tile and GT1 GPU; it excludes the I/O tile and passive base. Individual block areas use the boundaries marked on the floorplans The compute-plus-GPU row is recomputed from the displayed PTL-U and GT1 areas. Component rows use their stated per-region counts and are not an additive partition of the whole tile. The P-core area remains almost unchanged between Lunar Lake and Panther Lake, despite L2 capacity increasing from 2.5 MiB to 3 MiB. Arrow Lake uses the same Lion Cove core as Lunar Lake but also has a 3 MiB L2. Cougar Cove fits 20% more L2 into the same P-core area. The larger private cache keeps more of each core’s working set close to its execution units, reducing access to shared L3 and DRAM. Extra capacity adds storage leakage and lookup energy, so designers balance it against avoided lower-level accesses. The shared P-core L3 cache also shrank by 14.8%. [2] Cougar Cove combines a similar footprint with Intel’s reported power-efficiency improvements. RibbonFET’s tighter channel control reduces leakage, while PowerVia reduces supply droop and allows tighter voltage guardbands. [1] Darkmont’s four-core LP E-core cluster is 5.0% smaller than Skymont’s on Lunar Lake, with most of the reduction in its L2 regions. The 1 MiB region shrank by 8.4% and the 1.5 MiB region by 14.9%. The tag arrays also use one fewer visible row. Tags identify which memory addresses the data array holds, so rearranging them changes the cache’s layout and wiring without requiring less data capacity. [2] The LP E-cores share one L2. This pools capacity and avoids duplicating all the cache machinery, but the four cores contend for its banks and bandwidth. Their separate cluster also keeps light work away from the performance cluster and its L3, allowing that larger domain to sleep. [1], [2] Cache area includes more than the storage cells. Tags identify each line, decoders select rows, sense amplifiers read the small bitline signal, and wires connect to the banks. Splitting an array into smaller sections shortens wordlines and bitlines, improving access speed, but duplicates peripheral circuits. Panther Lake’s smaller cache regions therefore reflect the complete memory implementation, including how much of each region is devoted to storage. [34] Unlike Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake, Panther Lake has no separate SoC tile. The NPU, LP E-cores, memory controllers, PHYs, media and display engines now share the compute tile. This removes an active die and keeps CPU memory traffic on one die. The cost is moving PHY and I/O-related circuitry onto 18A: drivers, receivers and analog circuits must still meet external voltage, loading and signal-integrity requirements, so their area does not shrink like dense digital logic. [1], [2] The biggest shrink comes from the NPU, which occupies 36.9% less area. NPU 5 consolidates the same total INT8 MAC count into half as many neural compute engines. Each of the three NCEs has a larger MAC array to make the complete NCE envelope 22.6% larger than an NPU 4 engine. Consolidation also halves the number of scratchpads and SHAVE DSPs, from 12 to 6. The MAC array handles matrix multiplication and convolution, while SHAVE executes vector and custom operations that fit the array poorly. [1], [2], [35] The paired floorplans identify each NCE envelope and its scratchpad, MAC, and SHAVE regions. Each measured MAC polygon is counted once per NCE in the area accounting below. The scratchpads store weights, activations, and intermediate results near the MAC arrays, allowing repeated use without fetching them again from DRAM. Halving their number delivers the largest measured area saving but leaves less local storage for the same total MAC count. Layers that no longer fit locally require smaller working tiles or more transfers of intermediate data. The benefit depends on keeping the enlarged arrays busy while managing that tighter storage budget. [36] NPU 5 also adds native FP8. Using half the operand width of FP16 reduces storage and transfer demand, helping workloads fit the smaller local memory budget. Lower precision and format-dependent range make scaling and model validation part of deployment. Hardware activation functions further reduce work that would otherwise occupy the programmable DSPs. [1], [2] Microsoft requires an NPU to deliver at least 40 TOPS for Copilot+ PCs. Both Lunar Lake and Panther Lake meet this threshold, but Panther Lake uses significantly less silicon. GPU tiles Panther Lake is Intel’s first product with Xe3, its latest GPU architecture. It offers two different GPU tiles: a smaller GT1 tile with 4 Xe3 cores on Intel 3 and a larger GT2 tile with 12 Xe3 cores on TSMC N3E. Panther Lake allows us to compare the same GPU architecture across both Intel 3 and TSMC N3E. Wildcat Lake adds a third Xe3 implementation on Intel 18A. A future newsletter will detail Xe3 and its implementation differences across all three process nodes. GT2 scales Xe3 to a different physical layout, with render slices arranged vertically instead of GT1’s horizontal arrangement. Slice placement sets the distances to shared cache banks and the D2D interface. Those wires consume area and add delay, so scaling the number of Xe cores also requires a new balance of cache placement, routing and timing. [1] What’s immediately obvious is that the GT2 tile on TSMC N3E has much smaller Xe cores than GT1. These block areas include logic, caches, and routing. An Xe core on the GT1 tile is ~69% larger than one on Lunar Lake, and ~55% larger than one on GT2. Intel 3 therefore uses substantially more area per Xe core. The block-area gap exceeds the measured logic and SRAM density gaps, bringing routing, timing targets, cell mix, and floorplan allocation into the comparison. The measured vector/matrix engine region is almost unchanged between Lunar Lake and Panther Lake’s GT2 tile. Xe3 retains eight 512-bit vector engines and eight 2048-bit XMX engines per core. Its gains also come from feeding those engines more effectively: more resident threads hide stalls, and variable register allocation lets shaders trade registers per thread against the number of threads kept active. [1] The shared L1/SLM capacity increased by 33% from 192 KiB to 256 KiB, while its area increased only 5%, raising effective density by 27%. L1 retains reused cache lines, while software-managed SLM lets a thread group share data locally. Both reduce traffic to more distant memory. Allocating more SLM per group can also limit how many groups reside on a core at once. [1], [37] The GT1 tile carries 4 MiB of L2 against 16 MiB on the GT2 tile. GT1 divides its L2 cache into four 1 MiB banks, while GT2 uses eight 2 MiB banks. Each bank contains 128 macros, but each N3E macro stores 16 KiB, twice the Intel 3 macro’s 8 KiB capacity. The N3E macro is only 54% larger while holding twice as many bits, giving it 30% higher density: ~23.7 Mbit/mm² versus 18.3 Mbit/mm². Including bank-level circuitry, the gap widens to ~16.9 Mbit/mm² on GT2 versus ~10.4 Mbit/mm² on GT1. GT2 gains density with its macros storing more bits per unit area, and those macros occupy more of each cache bank. Larger macros spread decoder and sense-amplifier overhead across more storage, while a more compact bank layout reduces the share spent on control and routing. The compromise is longer wordlines and bitlines that carry more capacitance. [34] I/O tile Panther Lake uses two I/O tile variants, both fabricated on TSMC N6. The smaller one provides 4 PCIe 5.0 and 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes and serves lower-tier systems as well as those without a discrete GPU, while the larger one adds 8 PCIe 5.0 lanes, bringing the total to 20 lanes, for discrete-GPU connectivity. Panther Lake SKUs with the larger 10- or 12-Xe GPUs use the smaller I/O tile. [38] The smaller I/O tile adds a PCIe 4.0 block and a Thunderbolt block to Lunar Lake’s I/O layout, providing four additional PCIe 4.0 lanes and another Thunderbolt 4 port. Its repeated N6 blocks retain nearly identical areas and layouts. Reusing these proven PHYs and controllers avoids porting and requalifying external interfaces on 18A, where faster digital logic offers less benefit to circuits constrained by the off-chip link. [38] SemiAnalysis’s teardown lab (STEEL) dives deep into the world’s advanced datacenter and AI hardware. To learn more about our pipeline or to commission a teardown, contact sales@semianalysis.com. We’re hiring technical experts from system to transistor and everywhere in between. Check out our Careers page. Panther Lake offers scalability and modularity through its disaggregated packaging that partition compute, GPU, and I/O silicon into separate tiles allowing for a suite of tile configurations. This partitioning makes the package part of Intel’s node economics as it determines how much leading-edge wafer area each product consumes, which functions can remain on other processes, and how much configuration freedom Intel can offer from a shared set of tiles. Furthermore, fabricating the compute and GPU tiles separately confines the new 18A process to the compute tile and allows graphics and I/O to use other, more established, and more cost-effective processes. For Panther Lake, the GPU and I/O tiles are assembled alongside the compute tile on a passive silicon base using Foveros-S. Intel’s current technology brief lists a nominal 36 µm pitch for Foveros-S. Through-silicon vias (TSVs) in the base connect the fine wiring above to the larger package connections below. The functional tiles sit side by side on that passive base in a 2.5D configuration. [39] Our cross-section through the compute and GPU tiles shows the package’s wiring hierarchy. Microbumps connect each active tile to the passive silicon base; its fine redistribution layer (RDL) carries the short, dense tile-to-tile links. TSVs carry connections through the base to the package substrate, which fans them out to the much coarser motherboard solder joints. The base supplies interconnect, while computation remains in the active tiles above it. [39] At the compute-tile edge, the higher-magnification inset shows a local microbump spacing of approximately 25.24 µm and a feature width of 12.33 µm. These local spacings are finer than Intel’s nominal Foveros-S value. The X-ray fields further confirm tighter neighboring bumps, consistent across every die-to-die area found on each tile. Additional X-ray analysis is offered after the paywall. Putting the memory controller beside the CPU removes the D2D transfer that CPU memory requests required in Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake. This avoids the extra transmitter, receiver, and link traversal, saving interface energy and latency. Panther Lake’s separate GPU still crosses a D2D link to reach DRAM, so its larger local caches also help contain package traffic. [1], [40] Smaller dies are less likely to contain a random fatal defect, and screening them before assembly prevents one bad tile from consuming a complete package of good silicon. Reuse also spreads design and qualification work across more products. Against those gains, Intel pays for the passive base, D2D circuits, extra bonding and test steps, and losses during assembly. Cost per working product across the portfolio captures the combined effect of wafer yield, reuse, test, and assembly. [29] Wildcat Lake packaging Intel launched Core Series 3, formerly Wildcat Lake, on 16 April 2026 for value mobile and edge systems. Wildcat Lake keeps 18A but removes the passive base and combines more functions on one die to simplify the package. The two products therefore reveal two distinct ways to commercialize the same leading-edge process. [41] Wildcat Lake’s 18A die combines up to two Cougar Cove P-cores, four Darkmont LP E-cores, two Xe3 cores and a smaller NPU. A separate platform-controller die supplies I/O, connected through UCIe, Intel’s first processor implementation of the standard. Consolidating graphics remove a tile boundary and the passive base, reducing assembly complexity for a modest-bandwidth value product. It also ties CPU and graphics scaling to the same die, giving up Panther Lake’s ability to swap in a much larger GPU. [42], [43] In July 2021, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger set out an ambitious process roadmap aimed at regaining performance leadership by 2025, later described as five nodes in four years. Five years and one CEO later, Intel’s comeback story is not as unambiguously positive as Pat may have hoped. [44], [45] Intel once set the pace for process technology, bringing high-k metal gate technology and FinFETs into volume production years ahead of the rest of the industry. Its 22 nm FinFET process reached consumers with Ivy Bridge in 2012. [46] Intel’s integrated device manufacturing (IDM) model allowed its architects and process engineers to co-optimize products and processes. Starting with Sandy Bridge, Intel dominated x86, while AMD struggled with Bulldozer. That lead faltered at 14 nm and broke at 10 nm. Intel targeted a massive 2.7× density increase, but the node arrived years late and required several revisions before it could support Intel’s full lineup. This delay forced Intel to stretch 14 nm across six generations, while TSMC moved ahead in process technology and AMD recovered in x86. By 2019, Intel was still shipping 14 nm across most of its product stack, with its 10 nm client ramp focused on Ice Lake mobile processors. Meanwhile, TSMC was shipping N7 and N7+, and AMD’s Zen 2 compute chiplets used N7 to raise core counts and improve efficiency. Intel’s process failures were central to its decline, but unsound business decisions furthered their downward slide. Product delays compounded product mistakes, pushing client, server, and FPGA roadmaps off schedule. Several attempts to enter AI (Nervana and Gaudi) and networking (Tofino) also failed to establish lasting businesses. Intel’s recovery has focused on consumer CPUs and advanced packaging. Tiger Lake, Alder Lake, Lunar Lake and now Panther Lake have restored Intel’s consumer roadmap. On the process side, Intel 4 shipped with Meteor Lake, Intel 3 with Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest, and Intel 18A with Panther Lake. Intel has also made advanced packaging part of its foundry offering. However, Intel is still playing catch-up in servers. Several Xeon generations arrived years late and trailed contemporary AMD and Arm server CPUs in performance, efficiency, and core count. The process roadmap is back, but Intel does not hold the same process-technology leadership position it held prior to 10 nm. The introduction of gate-all-around nanosheets and backside power delivery are two of the biggest changes to transistor integration in a decade. Intel took on both changes at once: 18A paired its first RibbonFET with PowerVia in Panther Lake. Panther Lake is a substantial manufacturing milestone. Our cross-sections show how RibbonFET and PowerVia reshape local contacts and wiring, while the floorplans show where architectural consolidation and process choices save area. A sustained competitive lead depends on product performance, cost, yield, and the next implementation. The SemiAnalysis STEEL teardown lab breaks down advanced datacenter and AI hardware. To learn more about our pipeline or to commission a teardown, contact sales@semianalysis.com. WE’RE HIRING: Architecture, floorplan, packaging, manufacturing, and labs experts. Opportunities from system to transistor and everywhere in between. Check out our Careers page.. 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Is 50 the new 60?
Subscribe TL;DR: Younger generations are showing signs of worse health compared to earlier-born cohorts at the same age This backward “drift” is showing up both in mortality risk and chronic disease Worsening trends in obesity and diabetes are the most consistent signals Taking the long view, we’ve made astonishing gains in health and life expectancy in the last century. Global average life expectancy has more than doubled from 32 years in 1900 to 73 years in 2024. (But don’t forget, there were still old people when life expectancy was 32). As people lived longer, they also generally lived healthier along the way. It turns out that avoiding things that can kill you early, like malnutrition and lots of childhood infections, also keeps you healthier later in life. In a classic 2004 paper, Finch and Crimmins proposed that cohorts of children who benefited from fewer early life infections had less lifetime exposure to inflammation and cardiovascular disease later in life, accelerating mortality improvements at older ages. Poor nutrition in the womb has also been linked to a higher risk of later chronic disease. The upshot is that improvements in childhood health can pay dividends many decades later. The combination of better living conditions (nutrition, sanitation) and medical advances (antibiotics, vaccines, blood pressure meds, etc) meant that people’s healthy lifespan generally expanded, even as they lived longer. Aging researchers call this best-case scenario “compression of morbidity”—meaning we delay the onset of disease and disability even faster than the years of life we are adding. During my 20+ year research career, we could generally bank on the idea that younger generations would not only live longer but also keep getting healthier along the way. “60 is the new 50” as they say… Enter “Generational Health Drift” Sadly, this expectation of steady progress may be changing. You’ve probably heard that US life expectancy gains have slowed to a crawl in the past couple of decades. Mortality improvements are also slowing (though less dramatically) in many other high-income countries (you can read more about that in a review paper I wrote here). Mortality is a very blunt health measure, but it is often a good barometer for the broader population health trends happening underneath. And we are now seeing that younger generations may be in worse health at similar ages compared to earlier born cohorts. My collaborator Prof. George Ploubidis at University College London coined this worsening health in more recently born cohorts “generational health drift.” “Generational health drift” is bad news on multiple fronts. Most obviously, we don’t want our health progress to go backward. But the timing is also bad, since our populations are aging. In demographic terms, “population aging” means that the proportion of the population at older ages (i.e >65 years) is increasing. Fun demography fact: Current population aging is not due to the recent declines in the birth rates making the news, but declines in fertility decades ago, after the “baby boom.” As baby boomers reach older ages, the smaller cohorts behind them mean the percentage of older adults will increase. For example, the share of the population age 65 and older in the US increased from 12.4% in 2004 to 18.0% in 2024. This story of population aging was written long ago. Many worry that population aging will put pressure on health care and pension systems. But if people reach older ages in better health than in years past, those fiscal pressures would be less dire than projected. Healthy older people can also continue to contribute to society in many valuable ways, including paid work, caregiving, community service….even high political office 🤷. On the flip side, if younger generations reach retirement age in worse health and with more disabling conditions, this could magnify the societal challenge of population aging. Evidence for worsening generational health A recent paper that I LOVED in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Leah Abrams and colleagues examined which birth cohorts (aka generations) were behind worsening US mortality. Behold the Lexis diagram (cue swooning demographers). Calendar time is on the x-axis, age on the y-axis. Birth cohorts can be followed over time as they age on the diagonal lines moving up and to the right. This figure plots the year-on-year % change in all-cause mortality at a given age. Green shading indicates mortality improvements over time, white is stagnation, and gray shading indicates worsening mortality. Following the diagonal line for those born in 1950, you can see a noticeable shift from green to gray that follows this cohort for most of their lives. This gray shading shows generally worsening mortality for the 1950 to 1959 birth cohorts compared to their predecessors across all ages. Concerningly for my GenX and elder millennial peeps, there was also a deterioration in mortality for birth cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, visible as dark gray areas at ages 30 to 45 during the 2010s. While some of these mortality changes reflect specific shocks such as the opioid epidemic, most deaths still occur from major causes of death such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. For cancer, the gray in the top left corner of the figure below reflects the legacies of smoking for older cohorts, followed by a period of green with improvements in cancer mortality as smoking rates declined. But the white/gray shading in the bottom right corner highlights a stagnation and reversal of the cancer trends, with cohorts born around 1970 to 1985 experiencing worsening cancer mortality. This deterioration was most noticeable for colon cancer mortality, possibly linked to obesity or dietary factors. Not just dying more, but less healthy along the way. A recent paper by Dr. Laura Gimeno of University College London (of which I am a co-author), found evidence that more recently born cohorts in Great Britain have stagnating or worsening health. A stylized picture of what“generational health drift” might look like: The review paper found: Rates of childhood overweight and obesity were highest among Gen Z. Rates of diabetes in the 40s almost doubled from 3.1% among the Baby Boomers to 5.9% in Generation X. Gen Z reported higher rates of poor mental health in adolescence compared to earlier-born groups. These UK results are consistent with studies showing worsening health across generations in the US as well. A 2021 US study found that more recently born cohorts had worse biological markers (like blood pressure and blood sugar) than earlier generations at the same age. A separate 2022 study of Americans aged 50 and over found that more recently born generations had a higher number of chronic diseases, with younger age of disease onset. A 2024 Lancet paper found that in the US, women born in 1945 had 33% obesity prevalence at age 50, rising to 48.2% for women born in 1970 turning 50. So what’s going on, and can we turn it around? We don’t have a definitive answer for what’s causing the deteriorating health of younger cohorts, but circumstantial evidence points to worsening trends in obesity and diabetes in both the US and UK. Remember that cohort trends reflect lagged effects of early environments, and younger generations have faced both earlier onset and more severe obesity across their lifetimes. Despite these very concerning trends, the future is not set in stone. We’ve reversed poor generational health trends before: drops in smoking are a major reason cancer and heart disease deaths fell so dramatically in recent decades. GLP-1 drugs may finally turn the tide against rising rates of obesity and diabetes, though it is still early days. But things could also get worse…for example from a return to higher levels of childhood infectious diseases that can have a lasting impact on health. See for example: [ ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) [ Don’t You Forget About Me(asles): The Virus That Erases Immune Memory ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) Jenn Dowd, PhD · March 24, 2025 [ Read full story ](https://jenndowd.substack.com/p/dont-you-forget-about-measles-the) Even as an optimist, emerging data on the “generational health drift” has my full attention. For most of my research career, we took it for granted that each generation would be healthier than the last. But if present trends continue, **50 could be the new 60….**and Gen Z celebrities will soon look older than Paul Rudd :). Stay well, Jenn Share the Health! If you found this post useful, please share it with a friend. Share
Patriots Add Former Bills Starter in $6M Deal: Report
The New England Patriots are expected to sign veteran defensive tackle DaQuan Jones. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported this Friday afternoon.Jones most recently played for the Buffalo Bills last season. He recorded 22 tackles, three sacks, a forced fumble, an interception, and 21 pass rush pressures. He was a valuable depth piece for a loaded […] The post Patriots Add Former Bills Starter in $6M Deal: Report appeared first on HEAVY.
Insurance professionals urged to adapt as industry changes
Insurance professionals should build their personal brands, develop skills that remain valuable as the industry changes and be prepared to take risks in managing their careers…
MVDs: Tennessee State Edition
You do t steamroll the mighty Tennessee State Tigers 63-3 without knitting together a total team effort. Even then, some Bulldogs are bound to distinguish themselves above and beyond the crowd. These dauntless Dawgs are your MVDs, the Most Valuable Dawgs from Georgia’s season-opening win. Offense: the offensive line.Sure, Gunner Stockton had an almost flawless […]
Dakota Fanning reveals valuable lesson she learned from working with Kurt Russell
Dakota Fanning reveals the valuable lesson she learned from working with Kurt Russell on the 2005 sports drama film ‘Dreamer.’
Will the Buccaneers be Able to Keep Guard Cody Mauch?
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Girona earns three points at El Molinón
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Scientists Discover a Hidden Hydrogen Pathway That Could Transform CO2 Into Valuable Fuel
Scientists have uncovered an unexpected pathway for hydrogen transfer during catalytic CO2 conversion. A computer model designed to predict how carbon dioxide becomes useful chemicals produced a surprising error: It identified formic acid as the main product instead of methanol. When scientists expanded the model to account for thousands of previously overlooked reactions, its predictions
China mines iron from tailings and low-grade ore to cut Australia, Brazil supply
Scientists have found a way to turn waste into a valuable resource on an industrial scale, reducing China’s dependence on iron ore imports.
💪 Chivas beat Necaxa and snap at América's heels
Chivas de Guadalajara earned a valuable 1-0 win over Necaxa on Matchday 13 of the Liga MX Apertura 2026 tournament, a result that lifts them into second place in the overall standings. An own goal bre...
3 Steps to Support Mental Health for Rural Youth
(Feature Impact) Young people face a growing number of pressures, including academic expectations, social responsibilities, complex family situations and uncertainty about their own futures. Mental health support is important for all – but in many rural areas, those pressures are even greater.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate for rural youth ages 15-19 is 74% higher than their urban counterparts. Barriers like limited insurance coverage, unreliable internet for telehealth, scarce providers, long drive times and lack of public transportation make it harder to get mental healthcare when it’s needed. Plus, asking for help can feel like opening oneself up to judgment and stigmatization.That’s why Rural Minds, the only nonprofit focused on mental health for rural communities, created the Rural Youth Mental Wellness pilot program supported by Boehringer Ingelheim. It was developed by an advisory committee made up of rural youth to provide their peers with practical, free, accessible mental health resources. Incorporating feedback on the pilot, the updated program sponsored by the Sompo Foundation is now launching its national rollout.“A young person’s ZIP code should never determine whether they can access meaningful mental health support where and when they need it,” said Jessica L. Schleider, Ph.D., director, Lab for Scalable Mental Health, Northwestern University. “Our lab is thrilled to partner with Rural Minds as they champion evidence-based, anonymous, freely available support tools designed to overcome barriers to help-seeking faced by rural youth across the country.”If the rural mental health crisis affects you or a loved one, consider these ways to help.Break the Stigma Surrounding Mental HealthIn communities where self-reliance is valued, asking for help can sometimes be viewed as a sign of weakness. Young people who feel unheard and unsupported often struggle with being vulnerable, so they continue carrying their increasingly heavy burdens alone.Parents, educators, healthcare providers, community leaders and peers can work to change that culture by normalizing mental health conversations. This includes helping teenagers feel seen and accepted by educating them on mental health issues and coping strategies, listening to their experiences without judgment, sharing your own stories and reminding them it’s courageous to seek support.Consider Single-Session InterventionsThe first step is always the hardest when it comes to seeking mental health support, and not every struggling young person is ready or able to see a therapist. With access to free, confidential, self-guided materials to begin building mental wellness skills, the first step may be less scary.Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) are brief, structured online courses designed to teach youth practical skills for handling stress, low mood, self-image and more. The Rural Youth Mental Wellness Program offers SSIs in partnership with Project YES (Youth Empowerment and Support), a free digital resource developed with Northwestern University’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health at the Feinberg School of Medicine.Anonymous access to SSIs through the partnership provides strategies for:Improving moodRethinking body imageReframing negative thoughtsKnowing your power to changeTaking steps toward goalsProtecting LGBTQ+ prideHandling self-harm urgesStaying safe amid dark thoughtsEach SSI typically takes 5-10 minutes. Although SSIs are not a replacement for therapy, they provide a research-backed source of support for young people experiencing bouts of stress or low-to-moderate distress.Know When to Seek Professional HelpSelf-guided resources and supportive conversations are a valuable starting point, but sometimes young people need qualified professional help. Look for symptoms like worsening mood or behavior, substance use, self-harm or difficulty managing everyday tasks, and take teens seriously when they express dark feelings.Doctors and counselors can provide personalized support for youth in crisis, and the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline offers free, confidential 24/7 support for mental health by dialing 9-8-8.“I grew up in a small town where mental health was almost taboo,” said committee member Asheton Medlin. “Being part of the committee that built this program let me help make sure rural youth today have the support I didn’t. I’m excited to help bring these resources to them because this generation deserves the chance to grow up and change the world.”Find more information at RuralMinds.org.Photos courtesy of Shutterstock googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('yup-rectangle-one'); });
Photographer captures octopus riding rarely seen dolphin, provides valuable evidence for ongoing research
Citizen scientist photographs incredible encounter with a Risso’s dolphin and an octopus just off the coast of Devon
Does AFC Bournemouth’s Atmosphere "Problem" Raise a Bigger Question?
Despite the emphatic 4-0 win, Bournemouth’s underwhelming atmosphere against Lincoln was tangible, and as The Price of Football recently explored, the Cherries’ growing hospitality offering highlights a wider debate about matchday revenue, premium seating and what makes a stadium truly "valuable".
Ketel Marte named NL least valuable player by columnist
Ketel Marte is carrying a batting average that's the second lowest mark of his career and he's hit his fewest home runs in a season since 2022.
The Sports Psychology Lessons Sunderland Can Learn From
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Steelers-Falcons Opener Gives Patriots Valuable Week 2 Scouting Opportunity
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Indian Health Service leaders follow gains from Indiana Federal EHR go-live
Indian Health Service leaders gained valuable insight by observing VA’s Federal Electronic Health Record (EHR) go-live operations in Indiana.
10/19/26 – HAWAIʻI CLIMATE REBATE FINDER HELPS RESIDENTS AND LOCAL BUSINESSES SAVE ON UPGRADES
JOSH GREEN, M.D. GOVERNOR RYAN K.P. KANAKAʻOLE CHAIRPERSON HAWAIʻI CLIMATE REBATE FINDER HELPS RESIDENTS AND LOCAL BUSINESSES SAVE ON UPGRADES HONOLULU – Hawaiʻi households and local businesses now have a direct way to keep more money in their accounts and avoid missing out on valuable financial incentives. The Hawaiʻi State Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation […]
Canelo, Connie, And Franny, Oh My!
Jake Paul is a man with options. Unlike all those UFC fighters locked down by impenetrable contracts, “The Problem Child” is a free man. Alongside former UFC executive Nakisa Bidarian, Paul is the co-founder of Most Valuable Fights (MVP), meaning he’s promoting his own fights and has the agency to seek out whatever opponents interest […]
Strategic sovereignty, social movements, and political agency: Evidence from the US-Israeli military campaign in Iran
Military intervention may be undertaken to weaken a hostile regime and strengthen the position of its opponents. This column argues that evidence from the 2026 US-Israeli strikes on Iran points to a different outcome: the strikes left total protest levels broadly unchanged but sharply reoriented mobilisation away from anti-government protest and toward pro-government activity. The findings suggest that overt foreign intervention can make sovereignty politically valuable to incumbent governments by making domestic opposition easier to portray as aligned with an external adversary.
Grealish leads chances created chart
After a successful spell at Hill Dickinson Stadium last season, Jack Grealish was a welcomed back with open arms by Everton fans. Although the 31-year-old sustained a season-ending foot injury in January 2025, Grealish's eight-goal involvements proved to be valuable to David Moyes' side. As a dark cloud hung over the Toffees for their lack of action in the summer transfer window, Grealish was a shining light as he returned once again.
Reds May Have Stumbled Into a Valuable Piece at the Trade Deadline
By flipping rental Nate Lowe for utility prospect Juan Brito, Cincinnati may have secured a versatile switch-hitter ready to spark the 2027 roster after a blistering debut.
Conceicao and Bremer score in win over Atalanta
The Men's First Team head into the international break with three valuable points after beating Atalanta 2-0 at the Allianz Stadium on Serie A Matchday 5.The goals came from Chico Conceicao and Gleiso...
After the theft of 3 Renoir paintings from a French museum, here’s a look at other famous heists
Thieves have hit the Renoir Museum on the French Riviera and made off with four valuable paintings by the French impressionist master.
The Indian business empire being forced to list against its will
A flotation of Tata Sons could open some of the country’s most valuable companies to rivals and raiders
Scientific Papers Can Now Become AI Agents
There are millions of scientific research papers that include tons of information. Of course, not all that information is valuable, but buried across those papers are experiments, datasets, methods and software that could help researchers answer new questions. The problem is that no scientist can possibly read and make use of more than a small […]
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Busy Fall
We have a busy fall ahead of us—and that’s always good news. We like to stay busy. We’re working on two special annual publications: the CNY Business Guide and the CNY Winter Guide. Both publications are designed to reach specific audiences in the community. We’re excited about these new editions and would like to share a few details about them. Let’s begin with the Winter Guide. Winter can be challenging, but it also offers plenty to celebrate. The new CNY Winter Guide will help readers embrace the season and make it more fun and enjoyable. This year’s annual publication will feature an extensive calendar of events, compelling stories, and curated lists of things to do and see throughout the winter. This will be our 31st annual issue. It is one of the few publications—if not the only one—devoted exclusively to winter in Central New York. For advertisers, it offers a valuable opportunity to reach readers across the region. As we tell prospective advertisers, one ad works for them all season long. Rates start in the low $200s. The guide will be available at hundreds of high-traffic locations, including all Wegmans stores and select Price Chopper and Tops Friendly Markets locations. It will also be available online, with every ad hyperlinked so readers can click directly through to the advertiser’s website or Facebook page. Our network of drivers will also deliver the guide to hundreds of high-traffic locations several times throughout the winter. The publication will be out by Thanksgiving. The CNY Business Guide is a one-of-a-kind publication that many readers use as a reference. Unlike the books of lists published by business journals across the country, it comes in a glossy, full-color magazine format. It also ranks employers in four counties, with a particular emphasis on Oswego and Onondaga and substantial information about Cayuga and Jefferson. It is an ambitious project that requires extensive research, phone calls, careful fact-checking, writing and design. In short, it takes a great deal of work—and we’re glad to take on the challenge. The guide is widely distributed to business and professional readers throughout Central New York. The Business Guide gives companies an excellent opportunity to highlight their growth and expansion, showcase new products, and share other noteworthy developments. For readers, it provides a valuable snapshot of companies across the region, including what they do and who leads them. The guide will be published in early December. We invite companies to advertise in both publications. Advertising costs are relatively low, and each guide offers access to a broad audience across Central New York. Wagner Dotto is the editor and publisher of Oswego County Business Magazine.
Could Your Chatbot Be Stealing Ideas From You? It’s a Thorny Question.
A controversy around OpenAI’s latest math proof raises a fear that might become increasingly common: that A.I. tools could take valuable insights from one user and hand them to another.
The science, instinct and hard work behind Roosters’ success
Enter your email address to get each Tribune edition sent to your inbox Subscribe There’s a fair bit of unseen work that goes into winning an NRL premiership, dating back many months - just ask Simon Jones. The Sydney Roosters Head of Performance, who hails from Southland, has been in the thick of it. He played a lead role in guiding the 2026 champions through a marathon campaign that ended with a grand final win over the Newcastle Knights. The Roosters had to navigate the lengthy round-robin competition, including the pre-season, before playing through all four weeks of the finals series. It was a demanding stretch that tested the players and the staff responsible for keeping them on the field. “It is a hell of a beast, mate, to be honest,” Jones told The Roar Podcast. “There’s such a great group of staff there that know what they’re doing, and the boys are pretty professional.” Jones believed the Roosters managed the physical demands well, pointing to the health of the squad throughout the campaign and the decision to rest a significant portion of the playing group in the final round of the regular season. That call, made by head coach Trent Robinson and his coaching staff, proved valuable as the Roosters entered the finals with some energy in reserve. “We did finish the season physically where we needed to be, and we’d sort of had a pretty healthy squad all year,” Jones said. “To the team that do that, mate, mission accomplished, really.” It is the sort of work that often goes unnoticed when the spotlight falls on the players scoring tries and making match-winning plays, but Jones knows the cumulative effect of those decisions can be significant over a long season. After a win over Penrith had helped establish them as premiership favourites, losses to the Wests Tigers and Dolphins were followed by a defeat to the Panthers in the opening week of the finals. Rather than panic, the club refocused to position itself to challenge for the title. “The Tigers’ performance was probably the only one where you’re really quite disappointed because it’s hard to get to the top of the competition,” Jones told The Roar Podcast. “We had proof that we could; we knew what we needed to do. We just had to get back to that.” For Jones, the answer was not necessarily a radical change to the programme. It was about executing the basics consistently, both on the field and in preparation. “We just do the basics better than anybody else,” he said. “Whether that is actually the way you play the game or how you’re preparing, it’s just be really consistent, do the basics really, really well.” Like many professional sports teams, the Roosters are entrenched in sports science and performance data. The club has access to a range of information, including players’ sleep, GPS metrics and neuromuscular scores, helping staff assess how individuals are coping with training and competition. “We are very science-backed, and some people would say data-driven, but it’s people first,” he said. “The reason you collect all this data is to try and be the best for that person.” Jones said the club was also prepared to reconsider testing methods if they were not generating useful discussions or helping staff make better decisions. In an environment where technology is continually evolving, he believes experience and gut instinct remain important. “The data is no good unless you have conversations,” he said. “When you strip it right back, mate, trust the gut still and obviously, you know, just doing the basics really, really well.” The return of halfback Sam Walker provided a further example of the importance of individual determination and the work of the club’s medical team. Walker underwent ankle surgery late in the regular season, with his premiership campaign appearing in doubt. However, he was determined to return for the preliminary final. Jones said Walker was back at the training ground three days after surgery, walking freely enough to surprise those around him. While the surgeon’s work was crucial, Jones credited the halfback’s mindset as a major factor in the remarkable turnaround. “He was quite clear with Robbo after he got the surgery that he was going to make it back for the prelim finals,” Jones said. The Roosters’ performance programme also sits within a wider club culture that Jones believes is central to their success. Each season, players develop their own team mantra through a lengthy process facilitated by Robinson. It provides principles that the squad can connect to its actions on the field. Rather than simply carrying over the previous year’s wording after a successful campaign, the club repeats the process because the players’ ownership of it is what gives it meaning. “When it’s led, player-owned and player-led, mate, it’s really powerful,” Jones said. Get more from Logan Savory in the Substack app Available for iOS and Android Get the app Jones joined the Roosters in 2024 and said the environment had evolved as experienced players departed and younger members of the squad took on greater responsibility. Maintaining continuity in the club’s culture and preparation had helped the group navigate those changes. The premiership was a significant achievement for Jones, who acknowledged how difficult it was to win the NRL’s ultimate prize. However, he is already looking at how the performance programme can improve. “There’s still things within my role and things that I’d like to help improve at the club,” he said. For Jones and his team, the challenge now is to review the season, refine their systems and prepare for another campaign. The celebrations may have followed a memorable title win, but the work behind the scenes never really stops. The Southland Tribune is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
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