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High Growth Tech Stocks In Asia Featuring Damai Entertainment Holdings And 2 Others
In recent weeks, Asian markets have been navigating a complex landscape influenced by global geopolitical developments and economic indicators. As investor sentiment remains buoyant with optimism surrounding AI and technology advancements, this article explores high-growth tech stocks in Asia, featuring companies like Damai Entertainment Holdings that are poised to capitalize on these trends. A good stock in this environment is one that demonstrates resilience through innovation and has the...
Report details allegations of unsettling behavior toward women by Graham Platner
Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is facing allegations of unsettling and in least one case physically threatening behavior toward women he dated, according to a report published Thursday by The New York Times.
2026 Science of Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) for Social Scientists Program - June 4, 2026
The Science of Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) for Social Scientists Program is a unique two-day series of - 2026 Science of Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) for Social Scientists Program June 4, 2026
‘He hated women’: Explosive abuse, new Nazi tattoo allegations from exes rock Platner's campaign
Graham Platner's ex-girlfriends allege rape fantasies, violent episodes and heavy drinking in new report as Maine Democrat faces mounting scandals.
Hunter Biden could mount a successful White House bid given recent Democrat picks: Trump
Trump says Hunter Biden could mount a successful 2028 presidential bid, comparing his chances to controversial Democratic candidates from Maine and Texas.
Trump’s Fraud Claims in California Could Undermine Confidence in November Result
The president is claiming without evidence that the lengthy counting process in California, which could help determine control of Congress, means Democrats are stealing the election.
Cracks emerge in GOP support for Trump’s agenda: From the Politics Desk
Plus, Florida redistricting fuels a Democratic clash.
Eastern Kentucky addiction, behavior health center owner indicted on federal charges in fraud scheme
Timmy G. Robinson Jr. faces one count of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering in a scheme to allegedly defraud two potential buyers of a multi-million dollar Employee Retention Credit offered to certain employers by the Internal Revenue Service, who paid workers qualified wages during and were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eastern Kentucky addiction, behavior health center owner indicted on federal charges in fraud scheme
Timmy G. Robinson Jr. faces one count of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering in a scheme to allegedly defraud two potential buyers of a multi-million dollar Employee Retention Credit offered to certain employers by the Internal Revenue Service, who paid workers qualified wages during and were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior
The Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine could be charming, women said in interviews, but some found his actions intimidating and disturbing.
Three Materials Science PhD Students Selected for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program - USC Viterbi
The prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) supports emerging researchers who demonstrate exceptional potential to advance science and engineering
Senate Republicans reject first effort to fully kill 'anti-weaponization' fund
Senate Democrats wanted to attach a measure to fully kill what critics are calling a \
‘It is unsustainable’: Reform’s billionaire donors inspire panic in Westminster
While huge donations are nothing new in UK politics, some fear electoral finance is distorting democracy itself
2026 Fox Impact Summit examines academics’ role in supporting responsible business
At the Fox School of Business’ eighth annual Impact Summit, programming analyzed B Corporations, particularly the role academics play in supporting them.
AOC-backed Dem connected to Twin Towers bombing terrorist faces congressional pressure after primary win
Rep. Michael Lawler says he will seek a full investigation of Democratic primary winner Adam Hamawy over his ties to Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.
Why the National Science Foundation is ripping monitoring instruments out of the ocean
A spokesperson for the National Science Foundation pointed to a National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics report as justification for the 'descoping,' but a co-chair of that group said they never wanted to see the program disbanded.
Brandin Podziemski sends powerful message in graduation speech at his alma mater
Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski returned to Wisconsin in late May to deliver the graduation speech at St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy.
ID@XBOX Indie Selects Demo Fest Is Here!
The latest ID@XBOX Indie Selects Demo Fest is live today, with 18 newly announced games included. See them all inside.
GOP immigration bill runs into turbulence amid backlash to Trump’s $1.8 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund
The push to pass a $70 billion GOP immigration enforcement bill has temporarily stalled, with Senate GOP leaders stuck in talks with a trio of Republican holdouts who are so far refusing to vote down a Democratic attempt to kill the Trump administration’s controversial “anti-weaponization” fund.
Senate Voting on Motion to Bar Trump From Creating Compensation Fund
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, introduced the motion. A handful of Republicans have indicated that they would support such a measure, which needs just 50 votes to pass.
Xbox Demo Fest Now Live, 40+ Games Available To Play For Free
The 2026 version of this event has begun!
Xbox Demo Fest Now Live, 30+ Games Available To Play For Free
The 2026 version of this event has begun!
UCare paid CEO $1.28M during collapse, including a bonus
Hilary Marden-Resnik and a dozen top executives received incentive compensation last year as the nonprofit health insurer staggered toward its demise.
What will it take to get a vaccine for the Ebola strain driving the current outbreak?
There is an effective vaccine for Ebola — but not for the variety spreading rapidly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trials are going on for several candidates. How long will it take?
Baron SMID Cap ETF Sold Flutter Entertainment plc (FLUT) in Q1
Baron Capital, an investment management company, released its first quarter 2026 investor letter for its “Baron SMID Cap EFT”. This is the first full quarter of results for Baron SMID Cap ETF® (BCSM). A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Baron SMID Cap ETF® focuses on investing in small, fast-growing businesses that demonstrate significant […]
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Dems face major defeat after party ‘missed the cue’ in top targeted district: candidate
Republican Eric Flores says Democrats have missed the cue with Hispanic voters in Texas District 34, citing faith, family values, and cost of living.
Armed clashes erupt in Somalia’s capital ahead of a planned anti-government demonstration
Opposition figures say the rally planned for Thursday was intended to protest what they call constitutional violations and efforts by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to extend his tenure. The government has rejected those allegations.
Bale Dalton named to DCCC's Red to Blue program as he aims to unseat Cory Mills
The Democrat is the first Florida candidate named to the program for 2026 and the 20th nationwide.
Max Verstappen Demands a “New Back” As Red Bull’s Brutal RB22 Suspension Setup Threatens Monaco Disaster
Max Verstappen isn’t mincing words about the brutal physical and mechanical toll the 2026 Red Bull RB22 is taking on his body. As Formula 1 heads into the tight, unforgiving streets of the Monaco Grand Prix, the world champion’s frustrations…
NC House Democrats propose 3 judicial constitutional amendments
Subscribe to Under the Dome to get North Carolina politics news in your inbox daily.
Lindsay Cross won’t seek re-election to HD 60, expects ‘strong Democratic nominee’ to run in her stead
'I look forward to being more engaged locally year-round and empowering a new generation of leaders who can represent us.'
We Interrupt This Knicks Victory for a Political Ad Starring Mamdani
Mayor Zohran Mamdani lent his political star power to an unusual TV ad promoting three Democrats running for House seats in New York City.
Rubio torches Democrat after bizarre hearing questions about his shoes: 'Is this a circus?'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing "a circus" after Democratic California Rep. Sara Jacobs questioned him about shoes gifted by Trump.
Congressional candidates spar in NY-7 debate
Antonio Reynoso, Claire Valdez and Julie Won are running in the Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Nydia Velázquez.
Democrats and Republicans slam arrest of Ohio's 'The Rooster' blogger
Even politicians who dislike The Rooster are denouncing the arrest of blogger D.J. Byrnes, with some calling the move censorship.
Cal Thomas: Politics and failure
Politics is the only profession of which I am aware in which competence doesn’t seem to matter. One can fail miserably; one can be corrupt and one can get away with crimes that if committed by someone outside of elective office, arrest, prosecution and a stint in jail would be the result. Yet politicians, Democrats […]
Full Debate: Three Democratic candidates challenge each other in NY-7 debate
The district includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens.
‘I can’t keep this up’: Sebastopol BBQ owner looks for path forward amid enforcement, complaints
A&M BBQ pitmaster Kris Austin is driving 30 miles a day in his diesel truck to shuttle food from his commercial smokers to his restaurant in order to comply with Sebastopol’s zoning code.
Demand for second mental health review for man accused of killing Cleveland officer
The FOX 8 I-Team has uncovered a new legal battle over the mental health of the suspect in the murder of Cleveland Police Officer Jamieson Ritter.
House passes resolution for first time to halt military action against Iran in rebuke of Trump
The House approved a war powers resolution that would halt the U.S. military action against Iran, defying the president as a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to end the three-month-long war that has reordered politics at home and abroad.
Ohio Medicaid fraud discussed in House hearing
During the hearing, Republicans repeatedly blamed Medicaid fraud in Ohio on immigrants, specifically from Somalia and Bhutan, while Democrats accused Republicans of trying to score political points on immigration to distract from greater corruption in the Trump administration.
Ohio Medicaid fraud discussed in House hearing
During the hearing, Republicans repeatedly blamed Medicaid fraud in Ohio on immigrants, specifically from Somalia and Bhutan, while Democrats accused Republicans of trying to score political points on immigration to distract from greater corruption in the Trump administration.
How loneliness became major public health issue
U.K., U.S. experts trace rise in awareness through research, political involvement, pandemic
Phil Ehr vows lawsuit as Broward SOE throws water on Hector Mujica's party switch explanation
Democratic organizations are taking a hands-off approach to a party eligibility dispute that could knock Mujica off the CD 28 Primary ballot.
Wingstop deal signals surge in dining, entertainment in Somerset
Wingstop and others are expanding dining and entertainment options at Rutgers Plaza in Somerset, reflecting strong demand at the busy shopping center.
MAHA candidate beats Trump's choice in Republican primary for Iowa governor
The narrow upset Tuesday revealed cracks in President Donald Trump's coalition in the deep-red state, encouraging Democrats who are hopeful they can flip control of the governor's office this year.
U.S. Congressman tells Endeavor Health to stop retaliating against unionizing nurses
Democratic Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is calling on Endeavor to reinstate two nurses who were allegedly fired from Evanston Hospital and to respect workers rights to organize.
U.S. Congressman tells Endeavor Health to stop retaliating against unionizing nurses
Democratic Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia is calling on Endeavor to reinstate two nurses who were allegedly fired from Evanston Hospital and to respect workers rights to organize.
New Jersey Democrats pick Navy veteran Rebecca Bennett to face absent GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr.
Bennett’s victory over three other Democrats on Tuesday sets up the state’s premier contest in November, when the party hopes it can flip the onetime Republican stronghold that has proven competitive in recent years.
Republicans defy Johnson to advance Democrat-backed Ukraine aid
House Democrats scored a rare win as lawmakers voted to advance a bipartisan Ukraine aid package with new military assistance and Russia sanctions.
North Hempstead town board rejects bid to strip politics from social media posts, mailers
Democrats and Republicans have sparred over including national political discourse on the town level.
Satellite science: FSU research increases accuracy of high-resolution ocean surface measurements
Florida State University research published today in Science Advances demonstrates a new framework for predicting the motion of kilometer-scale underwater
Alabama ruling demolishes John Roberts’ claim that justices aren’t ‘political actors’
Democratic appointees said the majority “corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders.”
Six Questions Out of Tuesday’s Big Primaries in California, Iowa and Elsewhere
Who will run California? Can Democrats win Iowa? Here’s what happened, and what might be next.
Former Smoke Jumper Wins Democratic House Primary in Montana
Sam Forstag’s candidacy will test a liberal theory that left-leaning politicians running in Republican strongholds can do better in general elections than moderates have done historically.
Live entertainment boom fuels growth for MSG and Las Vegas Sphere
‘The Big Money Show’ highlights the booming live entertainment industry as Madison Square Garden benefits from the Knicks’ Finals run and Sphere reports strong growth amid rising demand for in-person experiences.
Trump suffers rare House defeat as bipartisan vote moves to withdraw troops from Iran conflict
The House voted to curb Trump's war powers in Iran after Democrats and several Republicans bucked the president in a rare bipartisan rebuke of his policy.
From Belfast to America: Learning to Prevent Political Violence and Heal Division
U.S. faith and civic leaders travel to Belfast with The Carter Center and Rethinking Conflict to learn how to prevent political violence, heal division, and strengthen democracy.
Johnson: Democrats ‘playing politics’ with FISA over Pulte appointment
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lambasted Democrats for suggesting that President Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte to be acting director of national intelligence could imperil reauthorization of the …
Judge with intimate ties to Dem Party's key Russia Hoax players behind latest anti-Trump decision
Trump accuses Obama-appointed Judge Cooper of conflict of interest over Kennedy Center ruling, citing wife Amy Jeffress' work for Biden and Democrats.
Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra lead California governor primary vote count
Another Democrat, billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, is in third place as the tally continues.
Reps. Mejia, Cleaver Demand Trump Administration Automatically Refund Illegal Tariffs Collected from U.S. Small Businesses and Provide Refunds to American Consumers
Reps. Mejia, Cleaver Demand Trump Administration Automatically Refund Illegal Tariffs Collected from U.S. Small Businesses and Provide Refunds to American Consumers Washington D.C. – Today, U.S. Representatives Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) and Emanuel Cleaver, II (D-MO) led dozens of lawmakers in demanding the Trump administration make consumers eligible for tariff refunds and implement an automatic refund[...]
‘Destiny 2’ Fans Drown PlayStation’s State Of Play In ‘Destiny 3’ Demands
Destiny 2 players are pulling out all the stops to try to get Sony to listen to them that they want Destiny 3 made.
May's top PlayStation games by copies sold
Yesterday’s State of Play gave us an idea of where PlayStation’s heading next. But we’ve had our May estimates for a couple of days now (we always update our data daily for clients), so it’s time to look at what performed best on PlayStation last month. We’ve got a new IP at the top, two evergreens doing their evergreen thing, FC26 smashing it ahead of the World Cup Plus pivot, and a quiet but promising result for Lego Batman. Let’s have a look at the state of Play…Station’s top games for May. 007 takes #001 007 First Light sold 1M copies on PS5 in May, easily making it the month’s top PS5 game by copies sold. Over 80% of those May copies were digital, which is broadly in line with where PlayStation’s digital share has settled for new releases this year. To date, 007 First Light has sold through 2.2M copies across platforms (so no unsold retail copies in that figure). The platform split is 55.1% PS5, 33.1% Steam, and 11.8% Xbox (console, Windows, and cloud combined). In gross revenue terms, 007 First Light has generated $150M. Owing to regional pricing and audience composition differences, the consoles make up a higher share of revenue than they do copies. Of the $150M, 60.5% came via PlayStation, 27.6% via Steam, and 12.9% via Xbox. Part of this is because over two-thirds of 007 First Light‘s PlayStation audience is in North America (43.4%) or Western Europe (23.2%), where local currency means the game generates more revenue per player. On Steam, under half of First Light‘s audience is from those same regions (31.8% North America, 15.1% Western Europe). As we covered in last week’s 007 Steam piece, the Steam version is pulling in higher-than-expected numbers in China, which now accounts for 17.3% of First Light‘s Steam audience. 007 is the equivalent of $44 USD in China, which is roughly 37% cheaper than the US price and about 44% cheaper than Western Europe. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe The crossover data backs up what we’ve seen all year about launch-window cohorts. 11% of PS5 players who played 007 First Light in May also played Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which launched just a few days before. Last month was a great month for Denmark! IO Interactive is Copenhagen-based, and Lego Group is headquartered in Billund (TT Games is UK-based but produces work under Lego Group licence and direction). Speaking of which… A very blocky #2 and #3 Minecraft sold another 788K copies on PlayStation consoles last month. Business as usual, since Minecraft hasn’t sold fewer than 760K copies in a single month all year. With over 350M copies sold across all platforms, Minecraft is the best-selling game in history and one of the strongest brands in the world. Every month, a new cohort of children reaches Minecraft age, which guarantees a constant volume of new sales regardless of what the broader market is up to. The demographic refresh rate is truly impressive, with the audience renewing itself faster than it’s churning. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight shifted 757K copies on PS5 last month, bringing its lifetime total on the platform to over 800K. Across all platforms, Legacy of the Dark Knight has now passed 1.5M sold through, so PlayStation accounts for over half of the game’s players. The May crossover data for Legacy of the Dark Knight on PS5 is also useful. 27% of those players also played Fortnite, 16% Roblox, 16% FC 26, and 14% NBA 2K. That’s the household-and-family cohort showing up, plus the launch-window cohort of core gamers who buy practically everything. FC 26 gets players through the door ahead of the World Cup FC 26 sold 411K copies on PlayStation last month (90% via PS5), the fewest copies FC 26 has sold all year and down heavily from April’s 700K. Part of this dropoff is because FC 26 has been available as a PlayStation Plus monthly game since 6 May, cannibalising premium sales. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe The strategic logic is straightforward for EA, which is sacrificing premium unit sales in May to build up the player base ahead of the FIFA World Cup, which kicks off on 11 June. Obviously, a bigger player pool going into the tournament means a bigger pool of potential Ultimate Team spenders during the period when football attention is at its peak. The early returns are around what you’d expect, with 4.4M new players accessing FC 26 via PS Plus last month – a substantial new spender pool. Anecdotally, a few of my mates who were ‘’skipping FIFA and Ultimate Team this year’’, were drawn back in via PS Plus. Lo and behold, one of them is buying packs like it’s going out of fashion. Whether this is all a smart trade for EA depends entirely on the Ultimate Team conversion rate over the next six weeks. Either way, the short-term engagement impact on the game as a whole is evident. FC 26‘s MAUs hit a record 24M on PlayStation in May, up 30% from the previous record set in April. GTA V does what GTA V always does Rounding out the top five is another evergreen title. Grand Theft Auto V shifted another 387K copies on PlayStation last month. No matter what else is happening in the industry, GTA V keeps pulling players in. It’s sold another 1.8M copies on PS5 in the first half of this year alone, helping the franchise pass the 230M-sold milestone across all platforms. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe I have a theory that Minecraft and GTA V are doing the same thing at different demographic levels. Both are functioning as generational gateway games that the audience ages into faster than it ages out of. Minecraft captures kids around age 6-10, GTA V captures much of the same audience around age 12-15 (unofficially, of course). The crossover data suggests this: 40% of GTA V‘s monthly PlayStation players typically play Fortnite in any given month, while 30% play Roblox. Household accounts aside, that’s not the original GTA V audience from 2013. Of course, the under-12 audience would love to get their hands on GTA, too. It’s always been the way of things, and some parents are happy to oblige. Mine did too back in the day, and I turned out just fine. Right? Right!? Want to get your hands on our data for yourself – for free? We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply to this email, and we’ll set you up. The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
"Nobody's making games for the retired people" – The growing yet underserved market for grey gamers
Games are overwhelmingly made by and marketed to younger generations, argue analysts, while the older demographic is being ignored
AI Is Integrating With Science, Lim Meng Hoong Attends Science x AI Summit 2026
SAN FRANCISCO, June 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On May 12, Lim Meng Hoong, Founder of MengHoong Intelligent Investment Academy, was invited to ...
5 things to know about California’s election, from Congress to the governor’s race
You won't see a Republican vs. Republican matchup in the California governor's race as Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton hold the top two spots.
Riverhead Votes to Proceed with Science Center Condemnation
In a 3-1 vote Tuesday afternoon (Councilman Bob Kern abstained), the Riverhead Town Board voted to proceed with condemnation proceedings against a building owned by the Long Island Science Center adjacent to the planned Town Square on East Main Street. Town Supervisor Jerry Halpin cast the sole vote in opposition. Pictured Above: Cindy Clifford, Joan
Iowa Senate race shifts toward Democrats after Turek win: Cook Political Report
The Cook Political Report late Tuesday shifted its rating of the Iowa Senate race toward Democrats, moving the needle from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” The shift comes after Democrats’…
The Rabbit Hole of Everyday Questions with Emily Zhang
Emily Zhang has created dozens of YouTube videos, receiving over 300 million views on subjects from the physics of bowling to the invention of blue LED. This year she started Rabbit Hole, a channel that offers “extraordinary answers to everyday questions.” We spoke with Zhang — a 2025 winner of the National Academies’ Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications — about Rabbit Hole and her experiences with YouTube as a medium for science communication.
Health and Safety Impacts of Aircraft Cabin Temperatures
Excessively hot or cold temperatures in commercial aircraft may affect the health and safety of passengers and flight attendants. A new National Academies report surveys the evidence on the influence of cabin temperature and humidity on safety and recommends strategies to improve monitoring and risk management.
Elections to top science bodies test Croatia’s gender equality in research
Croatia’s track-record on gender equality in science has been both questioned and lauded in recent months, following both bad and good news on the topic. On the one hand, a senior awards committee was announced without a single woman researcher included. On the other, the national science academy welcomed its first cohort of fellows with more women than men.Members of the committee, which gives national awards recognising scientific achievement, are proposed by the ministry of science and endorsed by the parliament. The current line-up does include a woman, but she is culture minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek rather than a researcher. Even then, she didn’t make it into the photograph released to announce the appointments on April 16. “The image speaks a thousand words,” says Tanja Rudež, a science journalist for Jutarnji List newspaper. “I am surprised that none of these men, all well-known scientists, saw a problem with the fact that there was not a single successful female scientist on the committee,” she told Science|Business.Ivan Đikić, a prominent Croatian biochemist based at Goethe University Medical School, commented on LinkedIn that the news illustrated a “sad truth” about the state of science in Croatia.“It [. . .] reveals a system where women, despite contributing a substantial share of high-quality, internationally competitive science, are systematically excluded from the very processes that determine recognition and influence,” he wrote. Some 60% of researchers in Croatia are women, according to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, and they perform well in international competitions. For example, of the 12 European Research Council (ERC) grants awarded to Croatian researchers, seven went to women.“So how is it possible that decision-making bodies are still dominated by men over 60, while not a single female ERC laureate is involved in the selection process?” asked Đikić. “This is not a marginal oversight; it is a structural failure.” The ministry of science did not reply to a request for comment. The awards committee is not unusual. For example, a scientific advisory body announced by the ministry of demographics in April comprises 35 men and five women. The board of the Croatian Science Foundation, newly appointed by the parliament, is a little better, with five men and two women, but still unequal. “This is especially significant because such bodies do not merely distribute prestige. They shape research priorities, funding allocation and long-term scientific development,” Marija Lugarić, chair of the parliament’s committee on gender equality, told Science|Business. “Representation here matters not only symbolically, but materially.”Referring to the awards committee and the board of the science foundation, Lugarić says that while both bodies were appointed by parliament, neither met the minimum 40% gender balance threshold that Croatian law and EU guidelines expressly recommend for public bodies.Đikić wants to see EU institutions put pressure on the government to ensure basic standards of fairness, transparency and democratic governance in science policy are met. “Meaningful change will not come without pressure,” he wrote. “It must intensify both within Croatia and at the level of European institutions. Anything less undermines the credibility of Europe’s commitment to excellence and inclusion in science.”Rudež also underlined the importance of talking and writing about this topic, “because public opinion in Croatia does influence changes in the status and visibility of women in science.”The European Commission has not yet responded to a request for comment.Good news from the academyA more positive story came from the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts on 21 May, with the announcement of seven new women fellows and five men. This is the first time in the academy’s 165-year history that women have outnumbered men in a new intake.One of the new fellows, two-time ERC grantee Iva Tolić, credits the academy leadership with trying to be more modern and inclusive, representing the whole community better. “The academy is really aware that so far, before this election, there were very few women,” she told Science|Business. “So, they are actively trying to make this more equal.”Related articlesExplained: How the MSCA is close to achieving gender balanceCall for EU to leverage academic freedom in global talent raceRudež is more cautious, noting that despite the academy’s “breakthrough this year [. . .] it is still a predominantly male institution, with only 18% women.”This reflects a wider imbalance in Croatia’s research landscape. “The key levers of power in science are still in the hands of men,” she went on. “For example, all 14 rectors of private and public universities are men.”Similarly, Lugarić says a structural glass ceiling still exists in Croatian science, which is “most visible precisely where power is exercised.”She cites data from the Commission’s She Figures 2024 report, which shows that Croatia ranks second in the EU for gender equality in research and innovation overall, with an equality index of 79.6 out of 100. It is in the top five for women’s career advancement, participation in research; representation across all research sectors and for scientific publications.In stark contrast, it ranks second to last when it comes to women in decision-making positions in science. “This is not a coincidence,” Lugarić says. “It is a structural pattern.”Informal barriersThe persistent under-representation of women in the highest structures of Croatia’s academies, boards, award committees and leadership positions is not down to formal barriers, Lugarić says, but arises from more subtle obstacles such as “informal networks, persistent expectations regarding traditional gender roles and the unequal distribution of care responsibilities.”Tolić would like to see more support for young women in terms of affordable housing and child support, and higher salaries. Currently, she says, salaries in science stay low for the first 10-15 years, while housing and spaces in kindergarten are limited and expensive. “You have to work a lot, you get very little money, so it’s not great to have a family in this situation,” she says.But despite the challenges, Tolić is optimistic, saying that gender equality in research in Croatia is “definitely improving and going in the right direction.” The situation is particularly promising in biology, she adds, where most full professors, heads of department and deans of faculties are women. Lugarić, too, see the glass ceiling “very slowly, cracking,” and cites the academy election as an example that structural change is possible. Yet the situation in the national awards committee is a “stark reminder that without a conscious, systemic commitment to gender balance, progress will remain slow and uneven.”
From spider silk to science: a new way to access hidden fungal diversity
A new study from Thailand demonstrates that the debris-heavy webs of orb-weaving spiders can serve as natural, non-destructive tools for collecting and culturing viable environmental fungi. Through the isolation of living organisms, this innovative approach has already uncovered potentially new, undocumented fungal diversity within tropical rice fields.
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science
With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!
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