SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " sly " 2,155 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Scientists warn popular vitamin D supplement may have a “previously unknown” downside
A surprising study suggests vitamin D2 supplements may reduce the body’s levels of vitamin D3 — the more effective form of vitamin D. Researchers found D3 not only boosts vitamin D status more efficiently, but may also play a unique role in helping the immune system fight off viruses and bacteria. The discovery is prompting scientists to rethink whether D3 should become the preferred choice for supplementation.
Bond breakout? Big effects of bad data. Immigration and thermostatic politics & dad-chat is coming for dad-books.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. Anna Airy, A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London, 1918 Bond breakout - John Authers Across the developed markets, bond markets are staging a slow-motion car wreck. Looking at the drastic moves in the US, Japan, the UK and France, Barclays’ Ajay Rajadhyaksha commented: “Last week, long bonds broke. Not in one country. In all of them. Simultaneously. Four countries. Four different political systems. Four different central banks. But the same trade — “get me out of duration!”” Each country has its own contributing political problems, but the uniformity of the shift out of long-term bonds with high duration makes clear that something broader is afoot. For Rajadhyaksha, it is “simple and uncomfortable.” The developed world “has too much debt, too little fiscal discipline, and no political appetite for fixing either.” If there’s a trigger, it has been the Iran war and the resulting shock to oil supply. Source: Bloomberg G7 countries are now borrowing at rates that were enjoyed by EM in the early 2020s For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Trade between China and Russia has grown in recent years For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Big effects of bad data A decade ago nearly nine in ten Americans, when approached, agreed to fill out the Current Population Survey, which is administered to about 60,000 households each month and asks about, among other things, employment. Fewer than seven in ten do so now (see chart 1). For the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which tries to capture 3,700 households monthly, the response rate is down from 68% to 40%. … When the information becomes less reliable, investment decisions get more difficult to make. Some may be delayed, creating a potential drag on the economy. A new working paper by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Erica Groshen, former head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) now at Cornell University, and Duncan Hobbs and Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, hazards an estimate. Preserving trust in “the integrity and quality of official statistics”, the authors claim, generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the BLS, the agency with an annual budget of $700m that is responsible for many of these data. To arrive at their conclusion the quartet analysed an ignoble episode in the BLS’s recent history. On August 1st 2025 Donald Trump sacked Erika McEntarfer, appointed as the agency’s commissioner by his predecessor, Joe Biden. The president alleged, without evidence, that the BLS’s steep downward revision to recent jobs numbers had been “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”. In fact, it was the wanton dismissal that looked bad in the eyes of many observers. In the following seven days there was a 50% leap, relative to the week before, in the average value of the index of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), which tracks the number of articles mentioning such uncertainty that are published daily in American newspapers. This was a discernible jump even when compared to the chaos caused by Mr Trump’s trade war in April 2025 and his real one in Iran in the past two months (see chart 2). Based on Mr Bloom’s earlier study with other colleagues of the EPU’s impact on business investment, industrial production and employment, the authors estimate that the jump reduced American GDP by over $100bn (0.3%) and non-farm payrolls by 168,000 (0.1%). Source: The Economist Immigration and thermostatic politics (Sarah O’Connor in the FT) A strange thing happened a year and a half ago. No sooner had Americans elected Donald Trump as president on an explicitly anti-immigration platform than US public opinion began to swing much more favourably towards immigration. … to political scientists who study “thermostatic” politics, this development is no surprise at all. Public opinion often moves against the prevailing party, especially if they are perceived to have gone “too far” in one direction. The phenomenon was first explored in the 1990s with reference to fiscal policy, but in recent years it has been particularly evident in the realm of immigration policy. While these swings in opinion polls can make it seem as if people don’t know their own minds, they can be a useful democratic check on governments by sending bright flashing warning lights when policies stray too far from the public’s comfort zone. The problem comes when politicians misinterpret those signals. When people tell pollsters they want less immigration, or think it is bad for the country overall (or the converse), they are often expressing an opinion about how things appear to be going in that moment relative to their preferences, rather than a deep shift in their underlying views. According to Alexander Kustov, a political scientist, most Americans’ views are quite stable and moderate: they support immigration that is controlled and in the national interest, and oppose flows that are disorderly or under-enforced. In the US, he argues the Trump administration over-interpreted dissatisfaction with high immigration under Joe Biden, and implemented policies that went too far for many voters. “People don’t necessarily change their idea about their ideal immigration policy, but they can react to what the government is currently doing,” he told me. “A lot of people are not happy with what the Trump administration are doing — right now we’re not talking about border enforcement, we’re talking about people not just getting harassed, but killed.” But similarly, he added, pro-immigration advocates would be making a mistake to interpret the recent, more favourable swing towards immigration as a deep-seated ideological shift in attitudes. The recent history of UK immigration policy offers another cautionary tale. After the 2016 Brexit referendum, public concern about immigration fell. This was partly because net migration statistics declined, but also because people felt a sense of catharsis and control, says Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think-tank. By 2019, the public ranked immigration as only the ninth biggest issue of concern, according to Ipsos polling. But when the Conservative government liberalised visa routes for students and care workers between 2019 and 2022, that helped net migration to surge. And so, too, did public concern. Today’s Labour government has implemented another sharply restrictive turn in immigration policy. As Kustov and researcher Caitlyn Yates argue, thermostatic public opinion should be a useful check on politicians. Instead it seems to have helped to magnify the pendulum swing in the UK. The government over-interprets and overreacts to a change in public opinion, which reacts in turn, prompting a sudden swing the other way. Source: Financial Times HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe Anna Airy, Shop for Machining 15-Inch Shells: Singer Manufacturing Company, Clydebank, Glasgow, 1918 Racing for a vaccine … we have been here before! The deadly Ebola outbreak in two African countries driven by a virus species with no vaccine has triggered an urgent search for a potential jab, in a test of troubled global efforts to avert threats posed by emerging diseases. A World Health Organization advisory group is due to would meet on Tuesday to recommend candidate jabs to prioritise for clinical trials, the global health body said. It will assess data including an analysis by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which was set up after failures in the international response to a previous Ebola crisis. The latest Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has infected hundreds of people and killed more than 80, health authorities say. Cepi’s reaction will be a crucial indicator of its progress towards its wider goal of producing vaccines for pandemic threats in just 100 days, despite steep cuts to international health funding. “If there was ever a time that we could show the world why Cepi is needed and show the world why the 100-day mission is needed, it’s now,” Nicole Lurie, the organisation’s executive director for preparedness and response, told the FT. “We’re happy to accept that responsibility, but obviously we need help from partners — particularly financial help in the long run.” DR Congo and Uganda would make the final decision on whether to press ahead with any vaccine candidates endorsed for clinical trials by the WHO experts, the global health body said. “Other ethical and community acceptability issues will be considered,” said the WHO, which declared the latest outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. “This will be important to make sure that the trial, if it happens, will be adequately communicated to the population.” Lurie said Cepi had provided information from a survey of research teams and companies working on drugs that might be effective against the Bundibugyo virus behind the outbreak. The organisation hoped soon to announce partners in the quest for a jab, she added, although she declined to give a timescale for when one might be developed. Cepi’s Nicole Laurie said global health bodies were ‘getting some live-fire drills’ with hantavirus and the latest Ebola outbreak. The hunt for a vaccine should be helped by scientific advances including the use of artificial intelligence to find drugs active against viruses, Lurie said. Existing jabs against the Zaire Ebola virus responsible for many previous outbreaks might provide a basis for tackling the Bundibugyo species, she added. “We’ll see how far and how fast we can get,” Lurie said, adding that Cepi had done preliminary work recently on a possible jab for the rat-borne hantavirus responsible for a recent fatal outbreak on a cruise ship. “Both with hantavirus and now with Ebola, [we] are getting some live-fire drills.” Source: Michael Peel in the Financial Times Dad-chat is coming for dad-books. (By Pamela Paul and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the WSJ) They were the go-to gifts for Father’s Day: a book about some little-known chapter of World War II, the sweeping narrative of a shipwreck, perhaps the latest presidential biography. These days, dad books are a dying breed. Nonfiction book sales have been in decline for the past four years, and are now the most challenged segment of the print book market. Publishers say certain types of books still fare well—including celebrity memoirs and religious titles. But in recent years, print sales in such categories as biography, current affairs and business and economics—what publishers refer to as “serious nonfiction” and which tend to resonate especially with men—have fallen considerably. Sales of nonfiction print titles were down nearly 8% through May 9 this year, and sales of books about politics and current affairs were down 19%, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. Publishing has long been subject to cyclical changes, with trends in format and genre taking over bookshelves in grand sweeps. (Remember the adult coloring-book craze? Or the stratospheric rise of romantasy?) But many in publishing believe the decline in serious nonfiction is more existential. “The trend couldn’t be clearer,” said Jonathan Karp, the former chief executive of Simon & Schuster and publisher of the new Simon Six imprint. “This is a sea change and people should wake up and realize we’re living in a new world.” One culprit for the shift: a new media diet for fans of more serious nonfiction. … Sixty-two percent of men and 54% of women consumed a podcast in the prior month, according to a recent survey by Edison Research at SSRS, up from 46% and 39%, respectively, in 2023. “When we have internal meetings to talk about this problem, it always comes around to podcasts,” said Jonathan Burnham, president and publisher of the Harper Group at HarperCollins Publishers. “The man who wants to read American history is now tuning into one of the many good podcasts about history that lends the quiet attention to a serious subject he’s looking for. It makes the idea of sitting down with a 700-page Ron Chernow book less appealing. You’ve scratched that itch.” Source: Wall Street Journal Remarkable report by Novara from the nationalist rally in London in mid May. Anna Airy, Leopard Moth and Plums, 1915 If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe
42 scientists warn Ireland over accounting trick that could add 9 million tons of pollution
"What worries us as scientists is that other countries are now seriously weighing these targets."
Former cop charged with soliciting a minor was mental health associate at special needs school
Lawrence Lofzewski was charged with three counts of soliciting a minor, and previously served with the Metropolitan Police Department and the Arlington County Police Department.
Original Chromecast lives: Devices back on after mysteriously breaking this week
Google tells Ars it fixed the first-gen Chromecast bug.
Governor Evers urges Wisconsin small business owners to apply for disaster assistance
Governor Tony Evers is encouraging small businesses and nonprofit organizations still recovering from severe storms last summer to apply for federal disaster assistance through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).
We're 'green chemists'—why we think this emerging science can transform the way the world uses its resources
Society depends on chemistry far more than we consciously realize, from medicines to energy to electronics. However, chemistry is viewed with as much apprehension as gratitude, because of the pollution ...
Google appeals search monopoly ruling, says it won business ‘fair and square’
The judge “egregiously exceeded” his discretion, according to Google.
'The Breakfast Club' leans into Netflix daily live format. Fans react
The move is the first of its kind for Netflix. "The Breakfast Club" will air on the radio and stream live on the platform simultaneously each weekday.
Congressional committee advances bill to reform radiologist reimbursement in Medicare
The House Ways & Means Committee on May 21 unanimously advanced the Provider Reimbursement Stability Act of 2026, which is endorsed by multiple radiology societies.
Fresno City Council advances downtown entertainment zone ordinance
The Fresno City Council unanimously approved the first passage of a proposed ordinance to create three entertainment zones in downtown, allowing attendees at permitted events to consume alcohol outside.
Azure Striker Gunvolt Trilogy Enhanced - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition announced, includes new story mode
Azure Striker Gunvolt Trilogy Enhanced – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is on the way, Inti Creates has announced. The package will be out later in 2026. Azure Striker Gunvolt Trilogy Enhanced previously came to Nintendo Switch. For this version, however, there’ll be support for higher frame rate and enhanced resolution as well as a new story mode called “Azure Striker...
Scientists Identify Atomic Trick That Keeps Gold Shiny
Gold’s characteristic glow famously doesn’t fade for thousands of years—and scientists have finally found the molecular trick that makes it so.
What Customer Workarounds Can Reveal About Your Business Model
Customer workarounds (such as customers sharing accounts, or teams stitching together third-party tools) are not merely signs of product friction but early evidence that a company’s business model no longer matches how customers want to access, use, and pay for value. If firms fail to respond to customer workarounds, they leave themselves open to new competitors or to customers simply leaving. Companies should detect workaround patterns early, map them to distinct customer needs, build a portfolio of complementary business models, and monitor these signals continuously to capture demand before competitors do.
Why F1 Is Taking Latest Christian Horner Rumors Seriously
Former Red Bull team boss Christian Horner is seemingly lining up a move to return to the F1 grid with a new team entering the series.
Planning Commission approves Orange Apartments, Entertainment Zones
The Vacaville Planning Commission voted unanimously Tuesday evening to approve the Orange Apartments and Retail Development Project. Senior Planner Albert Enault provided the presentation. He said the project would subdivide the site in the…
Loma looks to live dangerously in return to the ring
Former Ukrainian pound-for-pound king Vasiliy Lomachenko hasn't officially announced his return to the ring, but the rumors about who will be his comeback fight opponent are already swirling. Gervonta "Tank" Davis was the first name mentioned. That makes sense, since fans of both fighters have ...
Toward power-generating displays: a single device that harvests and emits light
A newly developed organic semiconductor device can both generate electricity from light and emit bright visible light, as reported by researchers from Science Tokyo. By carefully designing a material where energy losses are suppressed, the team achieved efficient power conversion and electroluminescence simultaneously, demonstrating a multifunctional platform with potential applications in displays, sensors, and energy-harvesting technologies.
Complex animals evolved up to 10 million years earlier than previously thought, fossil discovery shows
Trove of fossils discovered in Canada sheds light on "when life first became large, complex and unmistakenly animal."
This Scholar Takes Oregon’s Universal Health Care Dreams Seriously. Should We?
Chunhuei Chi is working on a plan that in much of the developed world sounds essentially banal, but to many Americans sounds so audacious as to be absurd.
Xbox expands leadership team with major hires
Xbox has added two big names to its leadership team: Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet. The new recruits are part of an on-going drive from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to move faster, build better products, and make more focused business decisions. The Game Business can reveal that Ball is joining as Chief Strategy Officer. He is a popular industry analyst who is responsible for the annual The State of Video Gaming report, which is widely read across the business. His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which is facing significant pressures, not least from the rising costs of memory and storage. In an interview with The Game Business earlier in the year, he admitted he was “pretty frightened” by the situation for the console sector. Ball had previously worked as head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios, and wrote the 2022 international best-seller The Metaverse. He is currently CEO of Epyllion, a venture partner at investment group Makers Fund and senior advisor at KKR & Co. Meanwhile, Scott Van Vliet joins as Chief Technology Officer. He was previously in charge of Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, and he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams during the COVID 19 pandemic. But he has a games background. He previously worked across games for Amazon, including Alexa, Amazon Game Studios and the Amazon App Store. He directly worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition. Prior to that, he was VP of Digital Play at Mattel, and worked across brands such as Batman, Barbie, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut The Rope. His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results. For more breaking stories, sign-up to The Game Business today Subscribe In addition to these new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He was previously VP of partnerships and business development, and joined from Activision Blizzard, where he spent 12 years in various strategy, business development and partner relations role. His focus is on third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox. The news follows a number of new hires and promotions earlier in the month, including Jason Ronald taking leadership over Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console. “These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to staff. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.” Matthew Ball is speaking with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. More details on the event can be found here.
Xbox expands leadership team with major hires
Xbox has added two big names to its leadership team: Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet. The new recruits are part of an on-going drive from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to move faster, build better products, and make more focused business decisions. The Game Business can reveal that Ball is joining as Chief Strategy Officer. He is a popular industry analyst who is responsible for the annual The State of Video Gaming report, which is widely read across the business. His first job will be to strengthen the console side of Xbox, which is facing significant pressures, not least from the rising costs of memory and storage. In an interview with The Game Business earlier in the year, he admitted he was “pretty frightened” by the situation for the console sector. Ball had previously worked as head of strategy and planning for Amazon Studios, and wrote the 2022 international best-seller The Metaverse. He is currently CEO of Epyllion, a venture partner at investment group Makers Fund and senior advisor at KKR & Co. Meanwhile, Scott Van Vliet joins as Chief Technology Officer. He was previously in charge of Azure OpenAI and AI Core infrastructure at Microsoft, and he also led engineering for Microsoft Teams during the COVID 19 pandemic. But he has a games background. He previously worked across games for Amazon, including Alexa, Amazon Game Studios and the Amazon App Store. He directly worked on the Minecraft: Fire TV Edition. Prior to that, he was VP of Digital Play at Mattel, and worked across brands such as Batman, Barbie, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut The Rope. His job will be to improve how Xbox builds products so teams can move faster and deliver stronger results. For more breaking stories, sign-up to The Game Business today Subscribe In addition to these new hires, Xbox has promoted Chris Schnakenberg to Corporate Vice President, Partnerships & Business Development. He was previously VP of partnerships and business development, and joined from Activision Blizzard, where he spent 12 years in various strategy, business development and partner relations role. His focus is on third-party games, publishers and developers working with Xbox. The news follows a number of new hires and promotions earlier in the month, including Jason Ronald taking leadership over Xbox’s upcoming Project Helix console. “These changes are about strengthening our foundation by creating more clarity and improving execution,” Sharma said in an email to staff. “As we head toward Showcase and beyond, we’ll continue making the changes needed to position XBOX for the future.” Matthew Ball is speaking with Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on Monday, June 8. More details on the event can be found here.
Scientists discover massive natural hydrogen source beneath Canada
Scientists in Canada have discovered that ancient underground rocks are naturally producing hydrogen gas — and lots of it. Measurements from mine boreholes in Ontario show the gas can flow continuously for years, offering a potential new source of clean energy called “white hydrogen.” Researchers say this hidden resource could help power industries and remote communities while cutting carbon emissions and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
Scientists found a fat-burning switch that affects bone strength
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown mechanism that helps burn fat and could strengthen bones through new treatments.
With Gemini 3.5 Flash, Google bets its next AI wave on agents, not chatbots
Google launched Gemini 3.5 Flash, its most powerful coding and agentic AI model yet, at the company's annual developer conference. It is capable of autonomously executing complex tasks and building software from scratch.
Data center politics and Kirk Bangstad’s attention-seeking run for governor (with Emily Mills!)
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle […]
From ‘ghost sharks’ to ‘death ball’ sponges: Scientists find more than 1,100 wild and unusual ocean species
The Ocean Census project says scientists have discovered 1,121 previously unknown species in a single year. The rush is on to save them as risks to the world’s oceans multiply
Premature abandonment of protocol
In real-life rescue situations, it is well documented that the most dangerous moment comes right before safety. Emotional exhaustion takes over and, most dangerously of all, protocol begins to disappear.
New MatterChat Model Helps AI to ‘See’ the Language of Science
From writing emails to generating computer code, much of the artificial intelligence prevalent in our daily lives has succeeded by mastering one domain: text. However, this leaves a major blind spot in the physical sciences, where models depend on the high-resolution, three-dimensional data of the physical world, like the intricate lattice of atoms in a crystal. Delivering on the promise of using AI for science requires teaching these data-driven text models to seamlessly “talk to” physics-based models. Now, a new AI framework from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), called MatterChat, solves this problem by creating a specialized “bridge.” It connects the conversational power of a Large Language Model (LLM) with a physics-based AI that models “interatomic potentials”: the complex physical forces between atoms. The resulting system already significantly outperforms general-purpose AI tools like GPT-4 at predicting material properties, and the team hopes it can accelerate scientific discovery by serving as a robust research partner that provides grounded insights and generates step-by-step instructions for synthesizing novel materials. A paper describing this work was recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence. “Traditional simulations can provide the physical rigor required for materials science, yet their computational cost remains prohibitive for high-throughput screening. Conversely, while LLMs excel at rapid knowledge synthesis, they inherently lack the ‘structural vision’ to interpret materials directly from their underlying atomic coordinates,” said Yingheng Tang, a postdoctoral researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Applied Math and Computational Research Division (AMCR) and lead author on the paper. “MatterChat was built to solve this dilemma, empowering LLMs with a structural ‘vision’ that allows researchers to leverage their full potential for solving complex, real-world materials challenges.” Empowering language models to solve complex challenges in materials science To build MatterChat, the Berkeley Lab team drew inspiration from technologies like Vision Question Answering (VQA) and Text-to-Image (T2I) generation. In these tasks, AI must translate high-level text concepts into visual images, or vice versa. Doing so requires developers to build tools that “bridge” two fundamentally different forms of data. The researchers adapted this concept to the physical sciences. With MatterChat, they created a “bridge model” that successfully connects an LLM’s general knowledge with the deep understanding of the atomic-scale world encoded in scientific interatomic potentials. Until now, researchers using LLMs to solve materials problems usually had to feed them raw data files as if they were just strings of text. It’s like asking an AI to understand a complex 3D engine based only on a parts list: the LLM can read the names, but it can’t “see” how the atoms fit together in space. MatterChat solves this by training a specialized AI bridge model, pre-trained on millions of crystal structures and an LLM, to align the LLM’s representation of the world with the interatomic potential’s representation of the world. The bridge model can translate physical insights into a format the LLM can actually understand. By giving the LLM these “scientific eyes”— a scientific “inductive bias” in the terminology of AI — the Berkeley Lab team has transformed it into a robust research tool capable of providing grounded scientific insights into complex materials challenges, such as predicting thermal stability or analyzing electronic band gaps. “We think of atoms as living in a physical space, but from a machine learning perspective, they are just vectors living in some very non-trivially structured manifold in a high-dimensional Euclidean space; and, of course, the same is true for the sentences and paragraphs that we use to express our ideas about those atoms,” said co-author Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Lab’s Scientific Data Division (SDD) AI Initiative Research Lead. “The bridge model basically gets those two structures to ‘talk with’ each other.” As a proof-of-concept of this general approach, the team trained their bridge model on a dataset curated by pairing nearly 143,000 stable atomic structures from the Materials Project with their corresponding physical properties. This training data was automatically assembled using the Materials Project’s API and deliberately enriched with properties fundamental to microelectronics design — like formation energy and bandgap — allowing MatterChat to learn the complex patterns connecting a material’s atomic blueprint to its functional performance. To validate their model, the researchers benchmarked MatterChat against a suite of other AI systems, from general-purpose LLMs to other specialized scientific AI methods. The results show that MatterChat consistently outperformed its competitors across a range of tasks. The model was more accurate in classifying material types and demonstrated superior precision in predicting numerical properties. For example, it excelled at predicting a material’s bandgap, a property critical for designing new electronics from high-capacity energy storage to next-generation computer chips. “Our design is significantly more efficient because we don’t have to build a massive AI model from the ground up,” said co-author Zhi (Jackie) Yao, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s AMCR. “Instead, we take two powerful, pre-trained models — a structural encoder for materials physics and an open-source LLM — and use them off-the-shelf. The only component we actually train is the lightweight ‘bridge model’ that translates between them. It’s the difference between building an entire car factory and simply designing a smart adapter that connects a world-class engine to a world-class navigation system. This approach is not only computationally efficient, but also makes the system modular, so we can easily upgrade components or adapt the bridge for other scientific domains in the future.” Crucially, this modular design highlights exactly how institutions like Berkeley Lab and the Department of Energy are carving out a highly valuable niche in the booming AI landscape. Rather than competing with Silicon Valley tech giants to build ever-larger language models from scratch, the lab is focusing on the specialized connective tissue that makes commercial AI useful for hardcore science. Because the bridge model approach underlying MatterChat is forward-compatible, it is perfectly positioned to leverage these parallel tracks of innovation. As Mahoney pointed out, “We expect that industry will continue to develop improved LLMs, and we expect domain scientists and facilities will continue to generate new data. An important part of scientific machine learning is not simply to solve problems on today’s data, but instead to develop general methods that will be forward-compatible with orders of magnitude more data, whether from scientific domains or from LLMs.” According to Yao, the MatterChat project, which was initially developed and enhanced with funding from a Berkeley Lab Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) Program, will now expand its capabilities. In a collaboration with Fermilab, MatterChat is already contributing to a U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission project — called Accelerating eXtreme Environment Specs-to-Silicon (AXESS) — that aims to speed up the development of next-generation, high-speed, radiation-hardened detectors for challenging particle physics experiments by using advanced 3D integrated circuits (chiplets) and AI-driven data analysis. In addition to the LDRD support, the team also credits supercomputing resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), located at Berkeley Lab, with MatterChat’s success. “We are incredibly grateful to NERSC; this research simply would not have happened without access to the Perlmutter supercomputer through their AI for Science program,” said Tang. Wenbin Xu, a NERSC postdoctoral fellow at the time, was also a major co-author of the work, as was Benjamin Erichson, a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s SDD, highlighting the benefits of AMCR-SDD collaboration on AI for science. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Into The Unwell delayed to 2027, no longer Early Access
Coffee Stain Publishing and developer She Was Such A Good Horse have delayed “whack ‘n’ slash” cooperative roguelite action game Into The Unwell from its previously planned …
“Obviously a disappointing series right here. Fell …
“Obviously a disappointing series right here. Fell …
Scientists Discover Bizarre 100-Million-Year-Old Insect With Giant Claws
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown species of true bug that has claws.
Livingston 1-4 Kilmarnock: What Arfield said
Get ready for pre-season and the Cup competitions and hit the ground running to get the calibre of player through these doors to get the club back to the top division. If it is here, then obviously I'll do my best to get the club back up.
SpaceX Dragon Approaching Station Packed with Science and Supplies
At approximately 9:50 a.m. EDT, Dragon will dock autonomously to the forward port of the space station’s Harmony module.
What Your Brain Is Actually Doing While You Doomscroll, According to Science
If you find yourself endlessly scrolling as you maneuver through the various landmines intent on detonating your attention span, it could mean that you have some kind of digital addiction problem. But it could also mean your mental focus is so strong that you’ve quietly figured out how to treat social media like an external […]
Stunning 150-million-year-old stegosaur skull rewrites dinosaur evolution
A spectacular dinosaur discovery in Spain is giving scientists a rare new look inside the world of stegosaurs. Paleontologists uncovered the best-preserved stegosaur skull ever found in Europe, belonging to the iconic plated dinosaur Dacentrurus armatus, which roamed Earth around 150 million years ago. Because stegosaur skulls are extremely fragile and almost never survive intact, the fossil is helping researchers uncover previously unknown details about how these armored giants evolved.
Young Dolph Shooter Pleads Guilty, Concluding Rapper’s Murder Case
Cornelius Smith Jr., who previously admitted to shooting the rapper at a co-defendant's trial, sentenced to 20 years in prison
Stunning fossil discovery in Ethiopia rewrites human origins
A stunning fossil discovery in Ethiopia shows that early Homo and a previously unknown Australopithecus species lived together around 2.6 to 2.8 million years ago. The find overturns the classic “ape-to-human” progression and paints human evolution as a crowded, branching tree with multiple species coexisting. Scientists dated the fossils using volcanic ash deposits and are now investigating what these ancient relatives ate and whether they competed for resources.
Security Researchers, Aided By Anthropic's Mythos, Claim To Have Breached macOS
Apple is taking the claims seriously.
Chartbook 449: Voldemort on Threadneedle street. The Bank of England and the "haunted house" of English politics.
Imagine the scene: In some Harry Potter version of 21st-century London, a group of deathless UK Treasury officials gathered from across the last century huddle over warm pints and glasses of Chardonnay. Around the table there are officials from the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1970s, 2022 and today. Inevitably, in May 2026, the subject of conversation is the disintegration of the current Labour government. Despite its huge majority in parliament, it has been reduced to tatters by catastrophic local election result. These exposed the fact that rather than having a government with a clear popular majority, the UK is like most other modern societies divided into 5 segments each of which commands between 26 and 16 percent of the vote. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the leadership at Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street - where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (Treasury Secretary) work - seem paralyzed. They are caught between mounting discontent over unfairness and the cost of living, and tough fiscal strictures that push them into making unpopular spending decisions. In the London pub, the Treasury officials from across the ages, can barely hide their satisfaction at the latest display of democratic politics caught in the vice-grip of financial logic. “Remember the mur d’argent and the banker’s ramp?” “Just like yesterday!” There are smirks around the table. Then the representative of 2026 pipes up: “One thing you have to say about the current lot (referring to the latest hapless Labour government), you don’t have to teach them about the bond market!” There is a murmur of ascent from the Treasury Mandarins. The trauma of the fiscal crisis of September-October 2022 sits deep. Back then, in the final stages of Tory decay, a ‘mini budget’ that challenged fiscal orthodoxy led to a brief but fierce panic in one of the oldest government bond markets in the world (aka gilt market). Now all you have to do is to mention the “bond market” to hush debate. [ Paul Mason@paulmasonnews In the name of public service, and as ex-economics editor of BBC Newsnight, I offer to do a zoom call, tonight, with any Labour MP who wants to understand why bond markets do not "fall into line" with governments. 1/ 3:57 PM · May 12, 2026 · 466K Views 224 Replies · 674 Reposts · 3.93K Likes ](https://x.com/paulmasonnews/status/2054229532404519082?s=20) “And the funny thing is”, the young man in the huddle continues, “they don’t even want to talk about … ”. There is a sudden hush. Significant looks are exchanged around the table. About? One of the senior figures puts down his glass with a decisive “clink”. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has entered their thoughts. Meanwhile, a few miles away in a grubby pub in Bloomsbury, two conspirators from the camp of Critical Macrofinance huddle over cans of low-alcohol IPA. They look at each other and blurt out loud: “The Bank!” “Everyone in the bloody Labour party is talking about the bond market. But why aren’t they even mentioning … the Bank of England!?” “Why is no one talking about Voldemort?” In Paul Mason’s blogpost, after much chest-thumping about basic fiscal logic, the basic point about the Bank of England is buried in the fine print at #3 in his list of suggestions as to what a radical Labour government might actually be able to do! [ Conflict & Democracy Down with the bond market! Down with gravity! It may seem unfair to focus on Labour MP Paula Barker for her off-the-cuff assertion that the bond market would have to “fall in line” with Andy Burnham, should he replace Keir Starmer as prime minister. But Burnham himself told the New Statesman that Labour had to “get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets… Read more 2 days ago · 100 likes · 3 comments · Paul Mason ](https://htsf.substack.com/p/down-with-the-bond-market-down-with?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) Back in Bloomsbury they shake their heads and ask: “Didn’t we learn anything from the Eurozone crisis?” Meanwhile, as if summoned to the conversation by some higher force, the “pink pages” announce: “The days of ultra-cheap government borrowing have come to an end” and Martin “Whizzard” Wolf publishes the graph of the season Look at the UK in 2026, perilously positioned on the upper edge of the pack. No wonder no one in London needs any lessons about the “bond market”. But, look again. Imagine how they feel in Rome. What is London’s nightmare in 2026? The nightmare is that you end up like Italy in the early 2010s during the Eurozone crisis. Once comfortably situated in the middle of the pack, watching with horror as your ten-year yields explode to 7 percent and “spreads” become a national nightmare. One of the largest economies in Europe, a founding member of the euro, stigmatized. But the message of the Italian experience is ambiguous. After all, the stigma didn’t last. In 2026, Italy borrows at rates lower not only than the UK but the US. The US, which, as everyone knows, enjoys the “exorbitant privilege” of being the issuer of reserve, safe asets. What kind of magic is this? How did Italy, in the space of fifteen years, go from being good, to bad and back again? Which brings us back to our dissident friends in their Bloombury boozer and their memories of the Eurozone crisis. Italy never was Britain - with its ongoing fiscal deficits. Without interest payments, on primary balance, from 2000 to 2020 Italy ran a tight fiscal ship. Even in 2008 it barely went into deficit and when it was being put on the rack in the early 20210s its primary surplus matched that of austere Germany. So, what happened? How did it end up stigmatized? Of course Italian politics didn’t help. Berlusconi was at the helm and he had legal issues. But amongst friends in the Bloomsbury pub, Berlusconi is a sideshow, the name we whisper to each other is “Trichet”. From 2004 to 2011 the ECB was headed by Jean-Claude Trichet, ex of the French Treasury, more German than the Germans. After 2009 as the news of the Greek fiscal disaster broke, the European bond markets wento into panic mode and Trichet began a brutal game of cat and mouse. Between 2009 and 2011, Trichet intervened in the bond market to help, only when he thought he had compliance with austerity. When he thought they were uncooperative, he withdrew. In the summer of 2011, he even made direct suggestions to his Italian counterparts in Rome, as to how Italy should be governed. It was this cat and mouse game that drove the bond markets crazy and exposed Italy to a violent squeeze. When Mario Draghi took over the ECB at the end of 2011 and declared “whatever it takes”, the pressure on Italy, gradually eased. It is that starring role that has made Draghi into the towering figure in European politics that he remains today. So now you see why voices in London hush when it comes to the Bank of England. “The bond market” isn’t an irresistible objective force like the weather or an avalanche. It can appear like that. But that depends on the way it is being handled, or not handled by the central bank. Which is why the silence about the Bank of England in London right now is so significant. If you think this all sounds a bit fishy, coming from a left-liberal Keynesian like myself, well, let me introduce you to Robin Brooks, who, to put it mildly, plays on a different quidditch team to me. Here, from the position of a fiscal hawk is Robin’s celebratory account of the Bank of England’s role since 2022; In October 2022, at the height of the bond market blow-up in the UK, something incredible happened. Governor Andrew Bailey told British pension funds the Bank of England would end its support program for the country’s fragile gilt market, drawing a line under how much help the central bank was willing to give to exposed pension funds and - implicitly - the government. By the end of that week, Kwasi Kwarteng - the finance minister - had resigned. Prime Minister Liz Truss would soon follow. This episode is so incredible because it contrasts with what happened in the Euro zone earlier that year. Bond markets in Spain and Italy were under pressure amid high inflation and rising interest rates. In the middle of this, Mario Draghi - Italy’s Prime Minister - resigned, compounding pressure on bond markets of high-debt countries on the Euro periphery. Unlike the Bank of England, the ECB caved. It bought Italian and Spanish government bonds in an effort to cap yields and introduced a new tool that signaled to markets it might do such caps more frequently going forward. Faced with pressure on bond markets, the ECB capitulated to political pressure from high-debt countries like Italy and Spain. The Bank of England stood its ground and toppled the Truss government. This kind of thing has long-lasting consequences. It means markets price a higher probability of yield caps in the Euro zone, which keeps Italian and Spanish yields artificially low, while markets feel free to push up UK yields without fear of central bank intervention. As I flagged in yesterday’s post, this means you really can’t compare UK yields to those of other high-debt countries. The UK looks worse, but only because its central bank isn’t interfering with markets. There’s more to this than just that 2022 episode. The Bank of England has also been much more aggressive in its quantitative tightening (QT) than other central banks. If one motivation for quantitative easing (QE) is to lower bond yields - especially longer-dated ones - then it stands to reason QT pushes yields up. The left chart above shows a four-quarter moving average of UK government debt issuance (black line) in percent of GDP and which sectors absorb this issuance, including the Bank of England (blue bars). The right chart above compares the Bank of England’s accumulation or run-off of government bonds (blue line) with that of other central banks, where this blue line is the same as the blue bars in the left chart. The Bank of England was quicker and more aggressive than other central banks in downsizing its bond holdings, so UK yields will have risen more than elsewhere also for this reason, not just because of Governor Andrew Bailey’s remarks in October 2022. Back in October 2025, after a conversation in New York with friends in British politics, my sense of dysphoria was such that I raised the issue of the Bank of England openly in the FT Since 2008, the UK has slid into a deep economic and political predicament. Growth has stagnated to a degree far worse even than in the 1970s. The Tory leadership’s wager on the Brexit referendum spectacularly backfired, leaving the UK isolated from Europe and at the mercy of its special relationship with the US, many of whose political class regard the UK as a basket case. After years of austerity, the Labour party lurched to the left and then back to the centre. The Tory party has been eclipsed by the populist nationalism of Reform. Any British government should be worrying first and foremost about how to restart growth. Instead, Keir Starmer is beset by shades of the gilt market panic triggered by the Liz Truss government in 2022. The debt level is higher than in recent years, but there is no cause for panic. UK debt is at far from critical levels and of long duration. Whether you want to “take back control” or launch progressive economic policy, a democracy dogged by fear of bond market vigilantes is unhealthy. In a country that is a monetary sovereign, this climate points to one thing: a disconnect between the government and the central bank. Since 1997, the independence of the Bank of England has become a sacred cow. But independence is what you make of it. And in the wake of the gilt market crisis of September 2022, relations between the Bank of England and the UK government need a reset. In normal times, there is no doubt that an inflation-targeting independent central bank can serve a country well. But since 2008, the UK and other advanced economies have not had the luxury of such simple problems. To their credit, central bankers around the world have not stood on orthodoxy. After 2008, the US Federal Reserve rescued the global banking system and, through quantitative easing, it stabilised the Treasury market in the face of huge deficits. In Europe, things were trickier. Both the Bank of England under Mervyn King and Jean-Claude Trichet’s European Central Bank played cat and mouse with national governments. This was a high stakes wager that between 2010 and 2012 escalated bond market tension and triggered a disastrous turn to austerity. Shaken by the impact of those shocks, their successors, Mark Carney and Mario Draghi adopted a more protective stance (assuming you were not the government of Greece). Recall that Draghi’s legendary slogan, “Whatever it takes”, was uttered to face down the City of London’s bond vigilantes. In 2015, Draghi launched QE — financial repression by another name. In 2016, Carney used the authority of the Bank of England to stabilise markets following the vote for Brexit, an exemplary demonstration of how central banks can underpin democratic choice, even when those choices are wrong headed. All these were independent central bankers steeped in the best practice of the 1990s, who recognised that historic crises demanded radical action. It was the price surge of 2021-2023 that poisoned the atmosphere. Though the shock came mainly from the supply side, central banks ended up in the dock. Nowhere more so than in the UK. The Bank of England reacted with aggressive normalisation. Faced with a cost of living crisis, the governor called for workers to accept real wage cuts. In early 2022, as gas prices were at record levels and Russia’s army was poised to invade Ukraine, the Bank adopted a stringent programme of quantitative tightening, elevating interest rates. When the Truss government got itself in trouble, the Bank took almost a week to come to the rescue. Rather than enacting a charade of normality, it is time to recognise that in 2025 the UK faces a period of historic transition. To meet this challenge, what is needed is a new concordat with the Bank. This should not ignore inflationary pressures or the long-run trajectory of debt, but should affirm the priority of reviving investment-led growth. One could follow Donald Trump in demanding interest rate cuts. The Bank could shadow the ECB in its commitment to capping Eurozone yields. But the top priority should be to lay the ghost of September 2022. The Bank’s slowing of QT last month was a concession. An immediate and complete end would send the right signal. Such a concordat will not by itself restore sanity to politics, solve the housing problem or rebuild the NHS. But it would help to lift the fear of bond market crisis, which is paralysing the effort by democratic politicians to answer the fundamental questions facing the nation. Now, that call for a new concordat between government and Bank of Englands seems more urgent than ever. The problem is that in October 2025, Starmer still had some authority. Today the government is in tatters. And when you are the “under the harrow” - to echo a phrase of Montagu Norman’s from the 1920s - it is the worst possible time to consider institutional change. To make general arguments at a time of crisis can only seem like special pleading rather than a general argument for long-term change. The same, unfortunately, is also true for the other basic institutional reform that Britain urgently needs i.e. the abolition of the out-dated first past the post electoral system and its replacement by a moderated form of proportional representation. And thirdly - whilst we are saying the quiet parts out loud - Britain needs to reopen the question of EU membership. What the local election results of 2026 show is that this remains a key issue. And what they also show is that there is a clear majority that would favor a return. Until these basic features of Britain’s political economy are addressed the country will carry on its politics as though in a haunted house, governed by governments that lack actual majorities, conjuring up false constraints whilst ignoring the real ones. This one is for DG and MI. I love writing the newsletter. If you enjoy it too and fancy buying me a coffee once a month, you know what to do. Click below! Subscribe
Colorado legislators pass bill to strengthen sex crime victim protections
A Colorado bill that supporters say would strengthen victim protections and mandate law enforcement training on how trauma can affect survivors of sex crimes and domestic violence is on its way to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk for signing. Senate Bill 26-095 recently passed unanimously in the Senate and was mostly unopposed in the House, where […]
Vice President Vance slams MaineCare program
Gov. Janet Mills has previously characterized the Trump administration’s allegations of fraud as targeting Democratic states and as an attempt to “distract from his failing agenda.”
Senators agree to go without pay during shutdowns after historic closures left workers unpaid
Senators unanimously voted to withhold their own pay during future government shutdowns after federal workers went unpaid in two historic closures.
Who are the Japanese? Huge DNA discovery rewrites history
Scientists analyzing the genomes of thousands of people across Japan discovered evidence for a previously overlooked third ancestral group, challenging the long-accepted “dual origins” theory. The newly identified ancestry appears linked to the ancient Emishi people of northeastern Japan. Researchers also uncovered inherited Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA connected to conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Ford stock surges 13% on investor optimism for new energy storage business
Investor support for Ford Motor's energy storage business sent its stock soaring 13% Wednesday, the biggest single-day increase in about six years, following a note from Morgan Stanley highlighting details released by the company on Monday. Ford announced its wholly-owned energy subsidiary late last year, and it is being directed by Lisa Drake, who has been a key leader in the company's efforts around electric vehicles. • After a $19.5 billion writedown on its EV programs in December, Ford announced it would launch an energy storage business, utilizing plant space in Kentucky that was previously meant to produce batteries for electric vehicles.
A pro-Ala Stanford super PAC has pulled its ads from TV in the final stretch of the Philly congressional race
Sources said that 314’s move to pull its TV advertising came after the organization commissioned a poll that showed Stanford’s voter support declined precipitously in recent weeks.
Taiwan anxiously eyes Trump’s summit in China, with $14 billion in US arms sales up in the air
As President Donald Trump meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week, Taiwan will be nervously monitoring from afar to ascertain whether its political status and critical arms purchases come up in discussions between the two leaders.
Opinion | Unfortunately, We Have to Take Spencer Pratt Seriously as a Politician
Reality stars and influencers in government are here to stay.
Gilts Become ‘Half-Hour Trade’ on Politics, HSBC’s Kettner Says
(Bloomberg) -- The UK’s fractious politics is making investors wary of long-term wagers in the country’s gilt markets, according to HSBC Holdings Plc’s Max Kettner.Most Read from BloombergAmbani’s Cola War With Coke, Pepsi Spurs Fridge Bonanza in IndiaNvidia’s CEO Joins Trump in China With AI in the SpotlightInside a Year of Chaos and Conflict at Kevin Hart’s Media CompanyMamdani Scraps Property Tax Hike, Counts Second-Home Revenue“I’d love to buy them because obviously long-end yields are so en
Indian capital opposes Pernod's liquor plea, firm says business 'hopelessly fettered'
Regulators in India's capital are seeking to strike down French giant Pernod Ricard's fresh court challenge against rejection of its city liquor licence, which the company says has left its business "hopelessly fettered" for three years, documents show.
Your Business Has a 'Strait of Hormuz' Problem—You Just Don't Know It Yet
The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis highlights how the lean operations that built your business might be making it dangerously brittle.
WATCH: Murray calls Pentagon's Iran war cost estimate 'suspiciously low,' presses for damage price tag
MNG Brands Supports Science-Based Kratom Regulation and Consumer Safety Standards
MNG Brands, parent company of CBD Kratom and Korthals' Collection, including DER- a low-dose kratom beverage line developed in collaboration with actor and artist Nico Tortorella, is encouraged by the support shown for natural leaf kratom by President Donald J Trump. In an Oval Office appearance on May 10, the President stated that he was in favor of his Administration taking steps to approve some forms of kratom. "We're looking very seriously at natural 7-OH and getting that approved" was the m
Quick Share is coming to more phones, and expanding into apps
Google previously brought AirDrop support to some Android phones, but it's now announced that Quick Share is coming to WhatsApp.
Stop Chrome Browser From Downloading a Hidden 4GB AI File
If your Mac's storage has been mysteriously shrinking recently and you use Google Chrome, you may have already identified the culprit. The browser has been downloading a 4GB AI model file onto computers without explicit user consent. Here's how to reclaim the space.
Garland business owners say they may have to paint over previously approved religious mural
North Texas business says says a previously approved religious mural may need to be painted over
Colorado ethics panel finds probable cause in complaint against Democrat caucus leader
The colleagues of a Democrat unanimously concluded they have probable cause to believe she committed an ethical violation by mismanaging her party caucus’s funds as its co-chair. The House Ethics Committee was charged with examining a complaint from Rep. Marshall, D-Highlands Ranch, alleging that Rep. Mandy Lindsay, D-Aurora, mishandled and improperly used caucus funds for […]
Roundup: Home resales sluggish / Restaurants squeezed / Beef imports
Barely budging: Sales of previously owned U.S. homes barely rose in April from a nine-month low, underscoring a sluggish housing market at the start of the spring selling season. Contract closings edged up 0.2% to a 4.02 million annualized rate, according to National Association of Realtors data out Monday. That was slightly slower than the […]
Google says it likely thwarted effort by hacker group to use AI for 'mass exploitation event'
Hackers are rapidly adopting AI to find previously unknown software flaws even without the help of Anthropic's powerful Mythos model.
‘Battle on the Beach’ Sets HGTV Return After Reported Cancellation: Details
Find out which stars will compete on the previously canceled show's new season.
The Claude Delusion
If you asked philosophers what the most mysterious thing about the mind is, most of them would say: consciousness. It’s just a really weird thing. An exhaustive physical description of a brain state doesn’t obviously tell us anything about why that state would be associated with the experience of tasting strawberry rather than the experience…
NBC Cancels Beloved Show & Fans Are Seriously Outraged
A recent NBC cancellation is sparking major backlash online, with fans calling the decision a huge mistake. See what show has fans so upset here.
Jim Henson biographer details the artist and genius behind 'The Muppets'
Author Brian Jay Jones discusses writing Jim Henson’s biography, from the Muppets to filmmaking, TV innovation and Henson's endlessly curious mind.
Figure1_YukiNagao_20260511
Figure 1: A visual comparison showing how interfacial proton transport, previously merged in conventional measurements, can now be separated and measured at each interface.
'The Boys' showrunner reacts to show again predicting the future, as Trump unveils gold statue of himself
'The Boys' showrunner Eric Kripke reacted to the superhero show again predicting the future, after President Donald Trump unveiled a 22-foot gold statue of himself that's been dubbed 'Don Colossus': 'Seriously what the f---?'
Owner revives business in downtown IM with Revival
IRON MOUNTAIN — Holly DeGroot has returned as a local business owner, officially turning her pop-up women’s clothing boutique, Revival, into a permanent location May 1. DeGroot previously operated Bijou Lovely from 2017 to the beginning of 2024 in the same building at 310 S. Stephenson Ave. in downtown Iron Mountain. At the time she […]
Tamil Nadu: How Vijay's TVK used social media for election success
Though Vijay campaigned only briefly, his fan club-turned-digital “warriors” amplified him online tirelessly.
Lessons From America’s Oldest Distillery
The Laird family has owned its distillery operation almost continuously for over three centuries. Its longevity offers valuable lessons.
Can Mamdani make street food cheap again? We asked NYC street vendors
Mayor Zohran Mamdani famously promised to "make halal $8 again." Street vendors say licensing issues and rising food prices make that difficult.
Big mysteries to be solved in draft lottery
Those balls will create a four-digit combination that will match one previously assigned to the lottery teams, and with that, somebody wins the No. 1 pick in next month’s draft.
Scientists successfully transfer longevity gene and extend lifespan
Scientists at the University of Rochester pulled off a remarkable experiment: they transferred a longevity-related gene from the famously long-lived naked mole rat into mice, and the mice ended up healthier and lived longer. The special gene boosts production of a substance called high molecular weight hyaluronic acid, which appears to protect against cancer, reduce inflammation, and support healthier aging. The modified mice showed stronger resistance to tumors, healthier guts, and lower levels of age-related inflammation.
Nottingham Forest v Newcastle United: Key stats and talking points
Having had their dreams of European glory ruthlessly dashed by Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest must now pick themselves up and secure the points they need to secure their Premier League status for next season. Six points clear of West Ham with three games to go, four points would definitely see them stay up, but a win should also prove to be enough given their vastly superior goal difference over the Hammers. The improvement by Vitor Pereira's side in front of goal in recent weeks has been astonishing.
This discovery shatters everything we thought we knew about Leonardo da Vinci - Futura-Sciences
Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance genius and his lasting legacy Leonardo da Vinci, one of the brightest minds of the Renaissance, left an indelible mark on both art and science. His famously meticulous observations of nature were long considered unshakeable truths; his notebooks brim with observations that have inspired generations. Among...
Confirmed 2. Bundesliga lineups: Holstein Kiel vs. 1. FC Magdeburg
Tim Walter makes two changes from the victory over Braunschweig as Ivan Nekic and Umut Tohumcu replace Ikem Ugoh and Frederik Roslyng.Petrik Sander makes one change from the win against Hertha as Dari...
Council Action Review / Budget Public Hearing / Business Meeting
The Mayor has called a special meeting of the Charlotte City Council for Monday, May 11, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. The purpose of this meeting is to consider and take action on any agenda items for the regular Charlotte City Council Business meeting portions previously scheduled to begin at 5:00 p.m. in room 267.
Council Action Review / Budget Public Hearing / Business Review
The Mayor has called a special meeting of the Charlotte City Council for Monday, May 11, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. The purpose of this meeting is to consider and take action on any agenda items for the regular Charlotte City Council Business meeting portions previously scheduled to begin at 5:00 p.m. in room 267.
Donald Trump again attacks ABC's Rachel Scott: 'Such a stupid question'
Donald Trump lambasted ABC's Rachel Scott over what he said was a 'stupid question' from 'one of the worst reporters,' after previously criticizing her at an event for Black journalists.
Health officials warn of potential measles exposure at Roslyn Heights restaurant
A laboratory verified a measles case in a New York City resident, who potentially exposed the highly contagious disease to patrons who visited the 388 Italian Restaurant in Roslyn Heights on May 3.
Funding crisis in Argentina sparks new wave of protests
Two years after the country’s research funding collapsed, scientists are demonstrating against the government’s failure to restore previously cut scholarships and increase salaries as required by a 2025 law.
Posthumous degree to be awarded to former animal science student
Alison Ciancio, a former animal science student, will posthumously be awarded her degree in recognition of her academic dedication, service to others and lasting impact on the Iowa State University community.
Grok AI Voice Mode Arrives on Apple CarPlay
SpaceXAI has released Grok Voice mode for Apple CarPlay, allowing CarPlay users to ask the chatbot questions and make requests directly from their vehicle dashboard, handsfree. Previously, Grok for iPhone displayed a placeholder app in CarPlay saying the handsfree support would be coming soon. Grok comes built-in on Tesla vehicles, but now almost any other car can access it.
Public health fears over Consett steelworks homes plan
Project Genesis is seeking permission for a 71-home development previously rejected by the council.
WWE’s Chelsea Green Reveals New Health Update After Heart Procedure
Chelsea Green has shared another health update after recently undergoing a heart procedure. While she says progress has been made, she still deals with some physical discomfort as she continues her recovery. The WWE star recently had surgery for SVT (supraventricular tachycardia). Green previously revealed that her heart rate shot up to 228 beats per […] The post WWE’s Chelsea Green Reveals New Health Update After Heart Procedure appeared first on Wrestlezone.
High temperatures prompt health warnings for Central California families
Experts are warning that dangerously high temperatures are headed to California over the weekend, prompting local health officials to urge families to take extra precautions.
How Disneyland Remade American Politics
America is turning 250, and The Free Press is marking the occasion with a yearlong series of events, conversations, and stories celebrating our country’s history. Today, we’re taking a journey with historian Beverly Gage to Southern California. Beverly traded the archives for the open road for her new book, This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History. We’re proud to publish an excerpt, on the theme park that shaped American politics—and the presidents who loved it. —The Editors On July 17, 1955, Ronald Reagan stood near a mocked-up wood-plank town in Anaheim, California, where a 13-star flag flew incongruously over an “Old West” landscape, and introduced the world to Disneyland. He had been invited by Walt Disney himself to co-host the park’s live ABC broadcast, alongside Art Linkletter and Bob Cummings—three Hollywood actors who seemed to embody a wholesome, all-American ethos. From the imagined past of Frontierland, the show leaped ahead to Tomorrowland, set in the far-off year of 1986, emphasizing the technical marvels yet to come: nuclear energy harnessed for civilian purposes, human beings riding rocket ships into space. Disney foretold great things for a 1980s in which the United States would serve as “a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.” But even he could not predict the most important political fact of the age: that his genial co-host would become president. Southern California was a strange place to build a park about the past, because the region at the time was all about newness and abundance and growth. For a lot of its history, Orange County had been Southern California’s version of flyover country: a vast agricultural expanse between two desirable places, Los Angeles and San Diego. But Disneyland was changing that. Before long, 50 miles south of deep-blue Hollywood, Orange County would become a region famed for its right-wing politics—but also for its mythmaking skills. Those two things, it turned out, went naturally together. ADVERTISEMENT The two presidents Southern California gave America both understood this instinctively. Richard Nixon and Reagan each built a national career on invoking a version of the American past in which the specificities of historical context mattered less than the big picture. For Nixon, progress meant proclaiming a “New American Revolution” on the eve of America’s bicentennial while dismantling the federal programs that had built the postwar middle class. For Reagan, it meant recapturing a lost optimism and an old-fashioned faith in America as an exceptional nation. Both men were less interested in history as it actually happened than in history as it felt—and Orange County, a place that had built itself almost entirely from scratch, turned out to be exactly where the myth of America’s future was getting made. I’m a historian—and historians tend to be myth-busters. With the country’s 250th birthday on the horizon, I figured it was a good time to step out of the ivory tower and check in with the past as it exists here and now, at the museums and monuments and roadside attractions where Americans go to learn about their history. After all my travels—to Davy Crockett’s Tennessee and Texas, to the real Erie Canal, to the birthplace of the American automobile and the actual Old West—I couldn’t miss out on Disneyland, the single most influential historic attraction in U.S. history.
New Research Shows Vitamin B12 May Hold the Key to Healthy Aging
Vitamin B12 may shape metabolism and aging more than previously understood.
Rare Pink Katydid Slowly Transforms Green and Upends Camouflage Science
Camouflage is a widely studied antipredator technique that we thought we understood. A rainforest insect, however, is rewriting the textbooks on the subject as it reveals previously unseen behavior. O...
Science diplomacy lessons from a North Korean volcano
Mount Paektu, a mythic, active volcano on the border between North Korea and China, is almost the epitome of a scientific challenge that crosses political lines. In 946 CE, it erupted in one of the five biggest volcanic events of the past 10,000 years, kicking up huge quantities of ash and sending destructive mud flows down river channels for hundreds of kilometres. Should this happen again, the entire region, including easternmost Russia, South Korea and even Japan could be hit. “It’s definitely got the potential to be big,” said James Hammond, a professor of geophysics at Birkbeck, University of London. An eruption on the scale of 946 would have “huge regional impact.” For the past 15 years, Hammond has helped lead a groundbreaking collaboration with North Korean scientists to study the volcano, navigating scientific sanctions, tough export controls on scientific equipment and a long, pandemic-enforced exodus from the country. Although he seems more at home on far-flung research expeditions – before speaking to Science|Business, Hammond was camping out on a Greenland ice sheet – he has also advised the European Commission on its changing science diplomacy strategy. His long experience with North Korea has made Hammond sceptical of blanket bans on science collaboration, no matter the country.This is a live question in Europe, where in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, institutional ties with Russian universities were almost entirely severed, although some scientists fear this could undermine our understanding of climate change’s impact on the Arctic. Here, Hammond tells the story of the Mount Paektu mission and the policy lessons he takes from it. Ominous rumblingsThe genesis of Hammond’s collaboration came in 2002, when Mount Paektu began to rumble ominously. Earthquake activity picked up and the volcano began to emit unusual gases. North Korean scientists took notice. “People felt we need to know more about this volcano,” said Hammond. In 2011, North Korean vulcanologists put out a request for international expertise to help them learn more. At the time, Hammond and his collaborator, Clive Oppenheimer, were working on a vulcanology project in another sanctioned country, Eritrea, and so decided to answer the call. Within a month, they had flown into Pyongyang. “It was pretty incredible,” recalls Hammond (left). “We were made to feel like honoured guests, and invited to official celebrations.” The scientific opportunity was huge. Paektu is unusually positioned, a thousand kilometres from where tectonic plates rub against each other in the Pacific. “It was an incredibly interesting volcano, but not much research had been done, at least not in the international community,” he said. “There was so much we felt we could do. And we had these partners that were super keen to engage.”The mission received an unusual visitor in the form of volcano-obsessed filmmaker Werner Herzog, who accompanied Hammond and Oppenheimer while directing his 2016 film Into the Inferno about volcanos across the world. Four days into the trip, the German director delivered a long speech about reunification to his North Korean hosts, recalls Hammond. “He got to the heart of the Koreans and how they felt, and how they thought, in a way that I'm not sure I ever will,” he said. UN sanctionsHowever, Hammond realised he’d been “naïve” about how difficult it would be to collaborate with North Korea, which was sanctioned far more heavily than Eritrea. “We didn’t fully appreciate the all-encompassing nature of restrictions,” he said. In 2016, as tensions escalated over Pyongyang’s nuclear tests, a United Nations resolution banned all joint scientific work with North Korea. However, the UN sanctions did allow countries to request carve outs, and the UK successfully requested an exemption for Hammond’s work. Related articlesEU pushes for joint science diplomacy, but care needed to avoid gridlock, experts sayRussia severs its last ties with German scienceAnchor Greenlanders in Arctic climate research, experts tell EU ahead of policy updateExport controls have also delayed Hammond’s work. In one case, it took 18 months to get approval from the UK government to take seismometers, which measure earthquakes, to North Korea. “It was frustrating,” he said. “But they didn’t just say no.” However, one instrument, called an induction coil, used to measure how the earth conducts electricity, was blocked entirely because it can in theory be used to detect submarines. Karaoke bondingSince the collaboration started in 2011, Hammond has visited the country around 15 times, although the pandemic closed off North Korea for more than five years. A trip last November was Hammond’s first since the outbreak. Despite this lengthy interlude, Hammond has deep bonds in the country. The North Korean scientists Hammond works with are somewhat isolated, as they struggle to access the latest research papers and travel to international conferences. That said, they are “excellent geophysicists” and are “very well trained in the field,” he said. Over karaoke and chats about their families, “we’ve made friendships, for sure,” he said. The authorities have to sign-off things like the placement of seismometers, for example, but Hammond said these requests have been approved. “Everything that we've asked for within a scientific context has been delivered.”Scientific backchannels? These kind of personal links between scientists across political lines are one purported benefit of science diplomacy. During the Cold War, some historians argue, scientific contact between the US and Soviet Union laid a groundwork of trust for other cooperation, such as on arms control. Hammond agrees that backchannel contacts to North Korean geophysicists are hardly likely to defuse a military crisis on the Korean peninsula, but the simple fact of the scientific collaboration makes contacts between diplomats that little bit easier. “It creates opportunities to understand each other a little bit better,” he said. “When maybe you have those more difficult discussions as diplomats, it's coming from a slightly better place.” Cutting tiesDrawing lessons from the Mount Paektu mission for today’s links with Russian science isn’t simple. The analogy is far from exact, Hammond said, “because one is essentially a Cold War, versus a pretty hot war in the case of Russia.” But Hammond’s broader argument is that the challenges we face, such as climate change, pandemics, biodiversity loss, pollution and so on, have globalised in an unprecedented way, making blanket shutdowns in collaboration with any country unwise.He’s somewhat critical of the UN scientific sanctions imposed on North Korea in 2016, even though they did allow for exceptions. “I think a blanket halt to some of these things, when we face big global challenges [. . .] that’s quite a risky thing to do,” he said.Institutional endorsement?European academics are still by and large free to work individually with Russian counterparts. However, official, institutional partnerships have largely ended. Shortly following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian university rectors wrote a public letter endorsing the war, meaning European universities fear official collaboration could also be seen as a kind of endorsement. Hammond acknowledges there is a risk of legitimising regimes, and state-controlled universities, through scientific cooperation. “That’s the trade off you have to make,” he said. Strategic projectsWith Russia, instead of giving a green light to restart all Arctic science, a middle ground might be firing up a few carefully selected “strategic” projects, said Hammond. After all, European countries are still collaborating with Russia on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, an experimental nuclear fusion plant in the south of France. However, even if Europe did try to revive Arctic science with Russia, there’s no guarantee Russian scientists would play ball. A series of high-profile arrests of physicists in Russia accused of sharing their findings with the outside world has made collaboration fraught. Even before the invasion of 2022, “the Russian regime made it increasingly difficult, and this sort of discouraged people,” Dag Rune Olsen, rector of the Arctic University of Norway, told Science|Business last year.
Is the FDA Really Suppressing Science? Plus. . .
It’s Thursday, May 7. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Aaron MacLean says Trump is poised to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the Iran war. Joe Klein on the life of CNN founder Ted Turner. Jillian Lederman on why cruise ships are here to stay. And much more. But first: Is the FDA suppressing science? On Tuesday, The New York Times published a story with an alarming takeaway. “FDA Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe,” read the headline. It is the latest in a string of stories that all have the same message: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other agencies, are engaged in a cover-up—and silencing scientists trying to get the word out about the Covid vaccine. What all these stories suggest—some more subtly than others—is that the outsiders now running the public health establishment, officials such as Marty Makary at the FDA and Jay Bhattacharya at the National Institutes of Health, are on a revenge tour. That they are doing harm to the country to get back at the scientists and bureaucrats who ostracized them for deviating from the public-health consensus during the pandemic. It’s a seductive narrative. But is it true? That’s the question we address in our latest editorial. —The Editors Read [ Marty Makary's FDA Has All the Right Enemies ](https://www.thefp.com/p/marty-makary-vaccine-study-fda) [ Trump Blinks First ](https://www.thefp.com/p/iran-peace-deal-pakistan-trump-strait-of-hormuz) Aaron MacLean In return for no detectable concessions, President Trump this week gave up on forcing open the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the Trump administration looks desperate for a deal to end the war with Iran. It’s easy to understand the desire to end the war, but are they blowing the chance at victory? Aaron MacLean makes sense of the administration’s latest moves—and Iran’s response—in his column today. Read full story Aaron MacLean and Niall Ferguson: Live in New York City Join Aaron MacLean and Niall Ferguson on May 19 for a live recording of School of War at the iconic New York Historical. In a conversation as timely as it is wide-ranging, Aaron and Niall will explore the strategic stakes of the moment, including the Middle East, China, and the future of American leadership on the global stage. Get Tickets Now [ Ted Turner, the Optimist Who Built CNN ](https://www.thefp.com/p/ted-turner-cnn-tribute) Joe Klein The man who gave us CNN and the 24-hour news cycle, Ted Turner, died Wednesday at the age of 87. Today, political writer Joe Klein—who almost ghostwrote Turner’s autobiography—remembers his friend, the American media mogul who stood out for his idealism and lack of a filter—something that got Turner in trouble more than once. “His was not a traditional intelligence, but one of horizon: Ted saw things before other people did,” Joe writes. Read full story [ Nothing Can Sink the Cruise Ship ](https://www.thefp.com/p/cruise-ship-hantavirus) Jillian Lederman A viral outbreak on a cruise ship that left three passengers dead has left some people wondering: Are cruise ships on the way out? Not so fast, says Jillian Lederman, who has been on many a cruise herself. Read her piece on why 38 million people a year take a cruise—and aren’t about to stop. Read full story [ The Great Writers Who Were Terrible People ](https://www.thefp.com/p/the-great-writers-who-were-terrible) Shilo Brooks Throughout history, some of the greatest literary geniuses have also been immoral bigots. In the latest episode of Old School, Shilo Brooks is joined by Eli Lake for a conversation about those geniuses, from Voltaire to Norman Mailer and Roald Dahl—and why we should read their work despite their odious prejudices. Listen on MORE FROM THE FREE PRESS [ Inside the Digital Intifada ](https://www.thefp.com/p/digital-intifada-social-media-hamas-terror) Warren Kinsella Read full story [ This Week in American History: Trump’s Over-Arching Problem ](https://www.thefp.com/p/this-week-in-american-history-trumps-over-arching-problem) Jonathan Horn Read full story [ Humanity Is Still Evolving—and Fast ](https://www.thefp.com/p/humanity-is-still-evolvingand-fast) Razib Khan Read full story THE NEWS Thirteen D.C. Metropolitan Police officers have been placed on administrative leave and could face termination after an internal investigation found evidence that crime statistics were manipulated to make the city look safer. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee previously alleged that former D.C. police chief Pamela Smith pressured officers to skew data. Tennessee Republicans unveiled a redrawn U.S. House map yesterday that would split up Memphis’s black-majority Democratic district, the latest move in a nationwide push to redraw congressional boundaries ahead of the midterms. The effort follows a Supreme Court ruling last week on Louisiana’s districts, which Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton said gave states the green light to redraw maps along partisan lines. Israel struck Beirut for the first time since a ceasefire with Hezbollah took effect last month, saying it targeted a commander of the militant group’s elite Radwan force in the city’s southern suburbs. The strikes risk destabilizing that truce at a delicate moment, as Iran and the U.S. report progress toward a deal to resolve their own standoff. The U.S. Air Force is aiming for a Fourth of July delivery of a Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar, hoping to add it to the Air Force One fleet in time for the U.S.’s 250th anniversary, Reuters reported. (For more on the controversy surrounding the aircraft, read Jed Rubenfeld’s piece “It’s a Terrible Idea, but Trump Probably Can Accept a Free Jet from Qatar.”) Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick testified privately before Congress that he has no memory of why he and his family dined on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island in 2012, according to Reuters. The admission contradicts Lutnick’s earlier claim that he had cut ties with the convicted sex offender well before that visit. Weeks before a former JPMorgan investment banker filed a lawsuit packed with explosive allegations, the bank reportedly offered him $1 million to settle his sexual assault and harassment claims, according to The Wall Street Journal. The suit, filed by Chirayu Rana, alleges he was sexually assaulted by a female colleague, subjected to racial discrimination, and forced into a degrading dynamic at work. JPMorgan says the claims lack merit, and the female colleague’s lawyers call the accusations fabricated. A new report from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research shows that, for the first time in roughly 20 years, church attendance is trending upward, with more people volunteering and clergy expressing renewed optimism. The study’s authors described the findings, based on a survey of more than 7,400 congregations, as showing signs of widespread recovery from low attendance numbers.
Milwaukee doula program goes to contract model to improve availability
Doulas were previously on staff at the health department, where typical work hours conflicted with times they were needed by pregnant clients, according to the program manager.
Bullying and Politics Fuel Suicide Risk for LGBTQ+ Teens and Young Adults, Survey Finds
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, May 7, 2026 (HealthDay News) — More than a third of LGBTQ+ young people have seriously considered suicide in the past year, driven by bullying from both peers and politicians, a new survey has found. About 36% of LGBTQ+ teens and young adults seriously ...
5 Takeaways From the Last Televised California Governor Debate
Candidates debated housing and insurance policy in the first half, then furiously attacked one another at the end.
Magic mushrooms make mean fish lazier and more chill
Psilocybin may selectively lower aggressive behavior in the the notoriously nasty mangrove rivulus.
Digital archive reveals how NIH built the field of genomics
Study details how taxpayer-funded agencies choose what science to support, previously a ‘black box’
The night sky could get three times brighter as new satellites launch — all but ruining the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's survey of the universe
Extremely bright satellites and megaconstellations could make the night sky up to three times brighter than it is now, a new study warns. This would seriously hinder astronomical imaging devices, like the enormous camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Dolly Parton Shares Good and ‘a Little Bad News’ About Her Health
In a new video posted to Instagram, the country music legend shared a candid update about her health and why she has canceled her previously postponed concerts in Las Vegas.
US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says
The United States and Iran are moving closer to an agreement on a short memorandum to end the Iran war, a regional source familiar with the negotiations said, although Trump administration officials cautioned that talks had previously fallen apart at the last minute.
Scientists just discovered Africa is closer to breaking apart than we thought - Futura-Sciences
The Turkana Rift in East Africa is well-known for its wealth of early human fossils and its intense volcanic activity, caused by tectonic plate movements. Now, scientists report that the crust beneath this region has thinned far more than we previously understood, signaling the long-term breakup of the African continent...
reMarkable's Paper Pure Is Its New Entry-Level Slate
It’s consciously designed to appeal more to corporate buyers.