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Your Thymus and Your Healthspan
Our thymus gland plays a central role in the development or our immune system, specifically for supporting T cell development (how these cells got their name, maturation and differentiation in the thymus) and discriminating between self and foreign, non-self antigen proteins with production of dendritic cells. As we age, our thymus gland shrinks—the process known as involution—with progressive change from spongy to fatty tissue, with loss of functionality. But this process, with respect to timeline and extent, markedly varies from one person to the next. And to make things even more complicated, our thymus gland anatomy and precise location in the chest also is highly variable. So the famous Frank Netter diagrams from the 1960s (such as at left below) don’t capture the remarkable heterogeneity that a random set of 12 chest CT scans (below at right). What I consider as 2 landmark papers in Nature this week (here and here) used AI to quantify health of the thymus in 2 large cohorts, and then correlate the metric to a broad array of health outcomes. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’m going to cover three questions: (1) How was thymus health determined by AI?; (2) How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? and (3) Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? Subscribe 1. How was thymus health determined by AI? This was accomplished by extensive work developing and validating an AI pipeline for 2 stages, the first for localization and segmentation of the thymus bed, and the second to quantify a digital marker, termed the thymic health score. There’s a lot to this algorithmic development, so I won’t go into all the details, but just provide a rudimentary outline of what was done. The 1st stage used supervised learning with 2 radiologists reviewing 2,461 chest CT scans. That work trained a 3D U-Net model to automatically identify the thymic bed’s 3D cropped region using center of mass coordinates, which reached 99.8% accuracy. The 2nd stage used a foundation model that was pre-trained with SwAV (which stands for Swapping Assignment between multiple Views), a self-supervised model, that generated a high-dimensional thymus representation of 4,096 features. That compares to the radiology reductionist and subjective scoring of 0 to 3 where 0 means the thymus is fully degenerated and fatty, and 3 is considered dense, intact glandular soft tissue. Notably, the self-supervised learning (SSL) performance was superior to supervised (AUC ~0.75 vs 0.55, respectively) reflecting the shallowness of the 0-3 classifier vs SSL’s holistic, self-taught AI. The thymic health score ranged from 0 to 100, with the highest number indexed to fully preserved thymic health. The algorithmic work extended to explainability with both Shapely value distribution, meaning the model was holistic not relying on any “magic” pixel, and occlusion sensitivity, demonstrating the model’s performance was not affected by ribs, sternum, lung tissue, but rather focused on the thymic bed directly. Below are a few saliency maps from the occlusion sensitivity that indicate the thymic bed focus, not affected by neighboring structures, using the jet color scale. Now the AI was ready for processing ~25,000 CT scans, each over 30 MB files, from the 2 large participant cohorts to provide a thymic health score, it did so in less than 14 hours, which is less than 2 seconds per scan! Share 2. How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? The two cohorts were the National Lung Screening Trial, NLST (N=25,031) and the Framingham Heart Study, FHS (N=2,581) each with baseline demographics and long term follow up of >12 years for health outcomes. From the NSLT, you can see below that increased age and body-mass index were correlated to reduced thymic health. And, overall, men had reduced thymic health scores compared with women. There are a lot of graphs in the paper for outcomes, for both the NLST and FHS cohorts. To simplify the major outcomes, below is a composite Figure with striking reduction of all-cause mortality and for the different causes of death. The results were consistent between the 2 cohorts. For example, the cardiovascular mortality hazard ratio average was 0.57 in NLST and 0.38 in FHS (weighted to be 0.53 for the aggregate). The reduction of mortality also extended to digestive diseases and pulmonary disease (data not shown below). Lung cancer incidence was reduced by 36% for high vs low thymic health (Figure below, with a panel -incidence and b panel-mortality, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, smoking status). Notably, there was a smoker’s paradox: lower incidence and improved survival for lung cancer in smokers who had a high thymus health score. Smoking was associated with lower thymic scores whereas alcohol was not. Higher thymic health was linked to higher HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower fasting blood glucose, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Inflammation biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, were elevated in the people with lower thymic health scores. In their second paper, the same team looked at the relationship between thymic score and outcomes for 3,476 patients receiving cancer immunotherapy. The non-small cell lung cancer progression-free survival was reduced in patients with low thymic health score. A parallel relationship for survival was seen for other types of cancer including melanoma, breast, and kidney with a 44% lower risk among high thymic scores (Figure). A similar pattern was seen with different immune checkpoint inhibitors. The thymus health score outperformed programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)and tumor mutation burden (TMB) assay of the tumor and was an independent prognostic marker of progression-free survival. In this dataset, a direct connect with thymus score and adaptive immune function was noted with a correlation before cancer treatment for both T-cell diversity and thymus T-cell production (a metric known as T cell receptor excision circles). Thymus Removal Study There is a highly relevant citation about thymus function before moving onto ways to rejuvenate it. In 2023, a very important study of thymus removal during cardiothoracic surgery was published, with 1146 patients undergoing thymus removal vs 1146 matched controls (mean age 55 years). The adverse outcomes for thymus removal were striking, with a 2.9 higher risk of all-cause mortality and doubling of cancer incidence, 1.5 fold increase in cancer mortality, and 1.5-fold increase in autoimmune diseases. The immune function showed marked compromise after thymus removal, as reflected by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Figure below) Share Ground Truths 3. Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? In recent months we’ve learned a lot about the process of thymus involution and the pathways by which this may be modulated. Thymus involution is primarily due to loss to thymus epithelial cells (TECs) and there are 2 subtypes with different functions: the cortical, responsible for positive selection of T cells, and the medullary, for negative selection. When adipose tissue infiltrates the thymus, thymic adipocytes are pro-inflammatory, knocking out T-cell output. Likewise, systemic inflammation, or “inflammaging,” from smoking, obesity, and chronic stress promote thymic adipocytes. Now, from preclinical studies, we know about key pathways that account for these processes. Historically, back in 2014, FOXN1 was recognized as a single master transcription factor essential for TEC function, with studies in mice with forced FOXN1 upregulation leading to thymus regeneration. That laid the foundation for potential regrowth of quiescent thymus cells. It took awhile to find pathways to accomplish this goal and to even refute its role as the master regulator. The Liver-Thymus Axis Feng Zhang and his team recently showed that injection of an mRNA vaccine to the liver encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination, factors known to support thymopoiesis (Figure), successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. However, the effect was transient. The FGF21 Story Two reports in 2025 addressed the thymus gland’s production of FGF21, a growth factor (fibroblast growth factor 21) and its control of thymus involution. This growth factor is also produced by the liver, but it doesn’t have impact on the thymus in aged rodent models. In contrast, The liver’s hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to reverse senescent TEC structural changes. Growth hormone stimulates production of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the liver and the thymus. Two small studies in human participants (TRIIM, for Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) of 6 and 50 people, respectively, treated with combined human growth hormone, metformin and DHEA, suggested the potential of slowing epigenetic aging and improving thymus mass and function. But the combination of drugs, small sample, and lack of controls make conclusions murky. Increased thymus FGF21 led to increased CD8 T cells in old mice and extended healthspan and improved physical performance. Building on the previous FOXN1 data, ablation of β-klotho, the obligatory co-receptor for FOXN1, accelerated thymic aging. The benefit to FGF21 was confirmed in a companion paper using an FGF21 knock-in mouse model showing thymus enlargement and increased TECs throughout the lifespan. (schematic Figure below). The accompanying editorial for these 2 papers speculated: “The proposed link between age-associated thymus involution and organismal aging is intriguing, and suggests we might seek to achieve systemic rejuvenation by counteracting thymic involution.” Other Factors Lessons from the Axolotl (Mexican Salamander) In an elegant set of experiments of the axolotl (Figure), known for its complete thymus regeneration after total surgical removal, mediators were identified. Surprisingly FOXN1 was dispensable. But midkine, a growth factor, appeared to be the driver, the initiator of thymus cell growth, survival, and repair. Other components that contributed were Postn+ (periostin-expressing mesenchymal niches) and Ccl19, a chemokine protein from the bloodstream. RANK and RANKL RANK (receptor activator of nuclear factor κB its ligand (RANKL) have been considered key regulators of medullary TECs. In a study of both aged mice and human thymus cell cultures, their key role was confirmed, with multiple benefits of resorting TEC function, recruitment of progenitor cells, and T cell development. Subscribe Summing Up This body of work strongly supports the health of the thymus gland as a critical regulator of human healthspan, not just a correlate or link. The new landmark studies are reinforced by the regenerative biology experimental models that have shown, via an array of mediators, that healthspan of aged mice is at least in part dependent on thymus gland function and its critical role for maintaining adaptive immunity. It sure seems that we’d be better off having an immune reservoir of naive T cells instead of a profile in older adults of exhausted, low quality, memory T cells, with a senescent phenotype. It is striking that we ignored the importance of the thymus gland for many decades. A wake-up call was the results of the thymectomy matched control study reviewed here, with the opposite of high thymic health score improved health outcomes. The convergence of AI and healthspan here is notable. The exceptional and laborious work for developing and validating (no less explaining) the AI to quantify thymus health set the foundation for probing the connect the major health outcomes in two cohorts with extensive follow-up. We’ve never had a way to meaningfully quantify the thymus gland before, so this represents important leverage of supervised, self-supervised, and transformer models. The study wouldn’t have been possible without AI. And it begs the question as to whether there are ways we can maintain our thymus at a high health score. But it’s not so simple to rejuvenate our thymus. There are multiple risks including the induction of autoimmunity, increasing the risk of cancer, and inducing a pro-inflammatory state. For example, factors that increase TEC proliferation could compromise the medulllary negative selection process and leak out auto-reactive (self-attacking) T cells. Thymic cells could be induced to proliferate, but we know, for example, that growth hormone and IGF-1 are associated with an increase risk of cancer. If thymus rejuvenation doesn’t clear out the accumulated senescent cells in older adults, then inflammation within the gland could block the production of TECs. Keeping these risks in mind, we now have identified many ways to keep our thymus healthy as we age that undoubtedly will be tested in clinical trials going forward. Ultimately, the benefit-to-risk tradeoffs will be defined. In the meantime, we have desperately needed an immunome. As I’ve stressed in multiple prior Ground Truths, we have no test in the clinic to assess a patient’s immune status! It was very encouraging for me to get an email from Hugo Aerts, the senior author of the landmark papers in the days after they were published: “I also wanted to say that your Substack on “Why We Need an Immunome” was inspiring for this work. We found it a very compelling perspective and greatly enjoyed reading it.” Just having an assessment of a person’s immune status via a chest CT scan, with millions of these performed per year, might help in guiding the right immunotherapy for cancer (e.g. more intensive, combinations for those with low thymic health scores) and help define people who are increased risk for age-related diseases of cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative. The main theme of Super Agers is that we now have many layers of data (genetics, proteins, biomarkers, organ clocks that can be integrated via multimodal AI) for us to define a person’s specific risk decades before one of these age-related diseases leads to symptoms, enabling prevention. From the new studies this week, we can add thymus health score as yet another way to understand a person’s risk, a window into their adaptive immune system and healthspan. And perhaps someday we will be able to safely rejuvenate the thymus, or maintain its health through one’s life, and use the thymus health score to monitor. NB: I wrote this post (No A.I.) A Quick Poll Loading... ********************************************************************* Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (now > 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Leave a comment Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.
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In This Issue: The Year in Bankruptcy: 2025 A brief chronicle of the year's notable developments in corporate bankruptcy and restructuring, including business bankruptcy filings, significant court rulings, and legislative developments. [read more …] U.S. Bankruptcy Court Denies Chapter 15 Recognition of Maltese Liquidation Absent Evidence of Meaningful Activities Supporting Finding of COMI or Establishment in Malta In In re Geden Holdings, Ltd., No. 25-90138, 2025 WL 2484883 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. Aug. 28, 2025), stay pending appeal denied, No. 25-90138, 2026 WL 97993 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. Jan. 13, 2026), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled that, for purposes of recognition under chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code, although a foreign debtor may have had its center of main interests ("COMI") or an establishment in Malta when a liquidation proceeding was commenced for it in a Maltese court in 2017, the absence of any meaningful activity by the debtor's liquidator from that time until the liquidator filed a chapter 15 petition in the United States more than five years later meant that the debtor had neither a COMI nor an establishment in Malta on the chapter 15 petition date. The court accordingly denied the petition for recognition. [read more …] The Ninth Circuit's Expansive Reading of "Financial Accommodations" that Cannot Be Assumed or Assigned in Bankruptcy It is generally well understood that agreements to extend credit or provide financing to a debtor cannot be assumed or assigned in bankruptcy. Even so, the provision of the Bankruptcy Code that precludes assumption or assignment—section 365(c)(2)—also extends to "financial accommodations," a term that is not defined in the Bankruptcy Code and has been the subject of relatively few bankruptcy and appellate court rulings. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit examined the meaning of the term in In re Svenhard's Swedish Bakery, 154 F.4th 1100 (9th Cir. 2025). The court of appeals ruled that a deeply discounted settlement of pension plan withdrawal liability is a "financial accommodation" that cannot be assumed or assigned, thereby extending the reach of section 365(c)(2) well beyond conventional lending arrangements. [read more …] Pennsylvania District Court Applies "Hypothetical Test" in Determining that Patent License Agreement Is Assignable in Bankruptcy In Crivella Holdings Ltd. v. Mesearch Media Technologies Ltd., No. 2:25-cv-333, 2025 WL 2443400 (W.D. Pa. Aug. 25, 2025), the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania affirmed a bankruptcy court ruling denying a software licensor's motion for relief from the automatic stay to terminate the license agreement. The court found the license was assumable in bankruptcy under the Third Circuit's hypothetical test as a result of language in the agreement stating that it could be assigned to a "successor in interest" of the debtor without the licensor's further consent, thereby overriding federal patent law's general prohibition against the assignment of patents. [read more …] New York Bankruptcy Court Denies Motion to Terminate Chapter 15 Recognition and Dismiss Chapter 15 Case In In re Oi S.A., No. 23-10193 (LGB), 2025 WL 2806591 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Oct. 1, 2025), the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York considered whether chapter 15 recognition of a debtor's Brazilian restructuring proceeding should be terminated and the case dismissed due to the debtors' financial deterioration and inability to satisfy its restructuring plan obligations after entry of the recognition order. The court denied the motion, concluding that recognition of the Brazilian proceeding and a court-approved restructuring plan for the debtors should not be terminated under section 1519(d) of the Bankruptcy Code—according to the court, the sole authority for revocation of chapter 15 recognition—because, among other things, the restructuring proceeding was still pending, the debtors might still need relief authorized under chapter 15, and the debtors' prospects for reorganizing under a hypothetical chapter 11 case were uncertain at best. It also found that no provision of the Bankruptcy Code authorizes the dismissal of a chapter 15 case. [read more …] Newsworthy Effective January 1, 2026, Jones Day welcomed Isel M. Perez (Miami), Andrew M. Butler (New York), Sid Pepels (Amsterdam), and Anna C. Bretting (Munich) to the partnership in the Business Restructuring & Reorganization Practice. Sid Pepels (Amsterdam) has been nominated for the Future Leader Award by the Global Restructuring Review, an organization that acknowledges and honors excellence within the global restructuring and insolvency sector. This award is designed to recognize exceptional contributions made by both individuals and firms in the field. The 2026 edition of Chambers UK recognized Ben Larkin (London) in the practice area Restructuring/Insolvency and Adam R. Brown (London) in the practice area Restructuring/Insolvency: Litigation. The 2026 edition of Chambers Asia-Pacific ranked Roger Dobson (Sydney) in the practice area Restructuring/Insolvency. An article written by Corinne Ball (New York) titled "Backstop Fees for Lenders in Chapter 11 Plans: Absent Market Test, Equality of Treatment Now Required in Fifth Circuit After 'ConvergeOne'" was published on November 12, 2025, in the New York Law Journal. An article written by Oliver S. Zeltner (Houston) titled "Delaware Bankruptcy Court: No Legal Authority for Chapter 11 Plan Gatekeeping Provision" was published on November 20, 2025, by Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Daniel J. Merrett (Atlanta) titled "First Impressions: Eleventh Circuit Rules that Annulment of Automatic Stay Does Not Violate U.S. Supreme Court's Prohibition of Nunc Pro Tunc Orders" was published on November 21, 2025, by Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Genna Ghaul (New York) titled "Iowa District Court: Avoidance Claims Cannot Be Encumbered by Pre-Bankruptcy Liens" was published on November 20, 2025, by Lexis Practical Guidance. An article written by Dan T. Moss (Washington/New York), Corinne Ball (New York), David S. Torborg (Washington), and Ben Rosenblum (New York) titled "New York Bankruptcy Court Rejects Challenge to Barnet Rule Permitting Foreign Debtors to Obtain Chapter 15 Recognition With Only Minimal U.S. Assets" was published on November 21, 2025, by Lexis Practical Guidance. The M&A Advisor has recognized the Silvergate Capital Corporation Bankruptcy case as the Chapter 11 Reorganization of the Year (over $5 billion) during its 20th Annual Turnaround Awards. Jones Day is listed among the professionals for the representation of Exploration Capital, which was led by Joshua M. Mester (Los Angeles). Lawyer Spotlight: Sid Pepels Sid Pepels, a partner in Jones Day's Amsterdam Office, litigates and advises clients on commercial and international insolvency matters, with a focus on complex restructurings and insolvencies. He has advised and litigated high-profile cases, including: the cross-border WHOA (Wet Homologatie Onderhands Akkoord) proceedings concerning Vroon Group and Diebold Nixdorf; proceedings on behalf of expropriated SNS Reaal bond holders against the Dutch State; the bankruptcy of Intertoys, the leading Dutch toys retailer; the restructuring of Oi, the Dutch finance vehicle of the Brazilian telecom giant; and Blokker, the leading Dutch home appliances retailer. Sid holds a Ph.D. in European insolvency law and regularly publishes in academic journals on topics of cross-border insolvency. He has been recognized in The Legal 500 Netherlands and was noted by his peers for being client-minded and a creative thinker with a "strong grasp of the law and strong interpersonal skills." Sid was also nominated for the "Future Leader" award at the Global Restructuring Review Awards 2025. He is a board member for the Netherlands Association for Comparative and International Insolvency Law and a NextGen member of the International Insolvency Institute.
What scientists have just discovered is worse than expected: coastal cities are on borrowed time! - Futura-Sciences
With each new report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change attempts to outline what lies ahead for people living by the sea. Now, fresh research published in Earth’s Future adds another layer to the picture by offering probabilistic forecasts rather than a single estimate. The rise in sea levels is...
Scientists discover recent tectonic activity on the moon
Scientists have produced the first global map and analysis of small mare ridges (SMRs) on the moon, a characteristic geological feature of tectonic activity. Published in The Planetary Science Journal ...
Cyberpunk 2077 is now runs on Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 phone via PC emulation
Cyberpunk 2077 PC emulation on Android shown on Red Magic 11 Pro, 720p results range from high 20s to 50 FPS ETA Prime published a new demo showing
Wine, Science, and Spectroscopy: Georgia Tech Outreach Produces Published Research
New work from Georgia Tech is showing how a simple glass of wine can serve as a powerful gateway for understanding advanced research and technologies.
Baystate Health will stop prescribing hormones to transgender youth
More than 40 hospitals have stopped offering some gender-affirming care to transgender youth about a year after Trump’s executive order, according to published reports.
Generative AI Revolutionizes the Life Sciences Industry Accelerating Drug Discovery, Cutting Costs, and Enhancing Innovation
According to data published by Precedence Research, Generative AI is transforming the life science sector, driving innovation in drug discovery, clinical trials, and manufacturing, while reducing costs and improving efficiency. With investments in AI, companies are reshaping R&D and achieving faster, smarter, and more personalized healthcare solutions.Ottawa, Feb. 16, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As Generative AI moves beyond pilot projects to become a foundational tool in the life sciences, it acce
On Writing a Queer Sports Romance
Professional women’s sports leagues aren’t perfect spaces, but players and fans have won enough battles and made enough strides that the sapphic WNBA romance novel I published last month, “Rooting Interest,” is more of a reflection than a fantasy.
.hack//Z.E.R.O. announced
CyberConnect2 has announced .hack//Z.E.R.O., a new action RPG in the .hack series “for home consoles” 10 years in the making—self-planned, developed, and published with permission…
Maternal and Newborn Health Services (RH) Annual Report 2025
Other in English on Yemen about Health; published on 16 Feb 2026 by Deem
Obama pushes back on White House rhetoric, ape video: Decorum has ‘been lost’
Former President Obama argued in an interview published Saturday that American politics has become a “clown show” under the second Trump administration, suggesting that many Americans dislike the r…
Science policy education should start on campus
UC Santa Barbara professor Alexandra Phillips published a guide to help universities support student engagement in ocean policy.
Colorado’s Behavioral Health Administration suffered from high turnover, low worker morale even before departing leader took over
Current and former BHA employees alleged in a report published by The Denver Post last week that Dannette Smith fostered an unsafe and chaotic work environment, leading many employees to leave for …
Entertainment Update Feb. 11-18
Entertainment Update is a listing of live events happening in our communities. Submit entries to seana@gorgenews.com. Entries are published as space permits. A full events listing is available at columbiagorgenews.com.
Congressional Researchers Analyze Whether Denying Marijuana Business Tax Deductions Under 280E Is Unconstitutional
As a federal marijuana rescheduling decision remains pending, congressional researchers have released an analysis of tax implications for cannabis businesses under current law—including a review of the idea that depriving the industry of the ability to take federal tax deductions amounts to a constitutional violation. In a report published on Friday, the Congressional Research Service […]
Los Angeles voters are moving ever leftward, shifting election politics in America’s second-largest city
By Jim Newton, CalMatters This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. How liberal is Los Angeles? That question is very much on the minds of political insiders and observers these days as the city turns to its municipal elections and makes important decisions about its
RealClimate: The Climate Science reference they don’t want Judges to read
RealClimate: For the first time, the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) commissioned a chapter on climate science for the manual they put out (with the NASEM) for judges, the Reference on Scientific Evidence (4th Edition). This week, a month after it was published, they pulled the chapter out after being pressured by 27 Republican Attorneys General. You
Jon Kudelka, much-loved Australian political cartoonist, dies aged 53
Award-winning Tasmanian artist’s work was published by The Australian, The Saturday Paper and The Hobart Mercury
Threadripper PRO 9995WX $12,000 mod turns heat spreader into a water block, stays under 50°C at 1,550W
Geekerwan machines custom IHS as a waterblock for Threadripper PRO 9995WX Geekerwan has published a new build video on AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper PRO
Engadget review recap: Shokz OpenFit Pro, Nex Playground, Sony A7 V and more
A roundup of recent reviews published by Engadget.
“Déjà vu”: what scientists have discovered is even stranger! - Futura-Sciences
Human memory still holds many mysteries. While déjà vu is a relatively well known experience, its lesser known counterpart, jamais vu, remains largely unfamiliar to the general public. Yet this intriguing cognitive phenomenon could teach us a great deal about how our brain works. A recent study, published in September...
Ninth Circuit Upholds Administrator’s Denial of Residential Mental Health Benefits Under ERISA
In an unpublished memorandum decision, the Ninth Circuit in R.R. v. California Physicians' Service d/b/a Blue Shield of California, affirmed the insurer
iFixIt tears down new AirTag, finds louder speaker easy to disable
As is tradition with any new Apple product, iFixit has published a teardown of the new AirTag, released last week. Here’s what they found.
Inside Your Health: Measles outbreak
A new map published by researchers at Major Academic Centers and ABC News identified specific zip codes in Minnesota that are at higher risk for a measles outbreak.
Groundbreaking study finds no evidence that trans athletes are ‘a threat’ to women’s sports
Trans and cis women show similar levels of physical fitness in competition, according to the first meta‑analysis of the published research
Samsung starts teasing Galaxy S26’s camera capabilities
Samsung has started teasing the camera capabilities of the Galaxy S26 series. It has now published three short videos as teasers.
Interventional cardiologists take on angiography-derived physiology in new expert opinion
ADP offers care teams multiple benefits not seen with traditional wire-based physiologic assessments. A roundtable of 17 expert clinicians discussed the topic at length, and their findings were used to develop a new manuscript published in JSCAI.
January Deep Freeze Impacts Small Business Foot Traffic, New Fiserv Data Shows
Fiserv Small Business Index declined 1 point to 143; year-over-year sales grew +0.7% MILWAUKEE, Feb. 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading global provider of payments and financial services technology, has published the Fiserv Small Business Index for January 2026,
Survey finds prior authorization viewed as greatest hurdle in navigating health care
A KFF survey published today found that people view prior authorization as the biggest challenge beyond costs when navigating the health care system. In terms of issues people viewed as a “major burden,” prior authorization was highest at 32%, followed by understanding their bill or what they owe at 23%.
Hong Kong business confidence rises despite US-China tensions, survey notes
Business confidence in Hong Kong has improved for 2026 despite continuing global uncertainty, according to a survey report published on Monday by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.
Media Recap: Rural Health Transformation Project Fund Distribution
The Detroit News published a story Jan. 29 on two recent House Appropriations Committee hearings on the distribution of Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) funds.
The Master’s University Grad Published in International Science Journal
Claire Burke
Jim Cramer Discuses Halliburton’s (HAL) Infrastructure Business
We recently published 11 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Radar. Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL) is one of the stocks on Jim Cramer’s radar. Oil and gas exploration equipment provider Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL)’s shares, like those of its peer SLB, have also performed well recently. They are up by 28.8% over the past year and by 13% year-to-date. […]
Health care costs top concern in new poll
Americans are more worried about affording health care than any other household necessity, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll published Thursday. The poll, conducted with 1,426 adul…
Health Rounds: Apple watches help patients monitor a common heart disorder
Apple watches are proving useful in screening for the common heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation, or AFib, according to two studies published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The Observatory and WHO Ukraine reflect on productive partnership and continued collaboration
Why have some health systems coped better than others during the COVID-19 pandemic? Some answers might become clear if we could assess how resilient health systems are in response to crises or shocks, such as the current pandemic and other emergencies, including financial ones, or how well health systems were prepared for such events in the first place. The European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies has just published a new policy brief, “Strengthening health systems resilience”, which includes a framework to help policy-makers understand health system resilience and how to strengthen it. This policy brief highlights the key features of resilience and provides examples of strategies which have been applied in different countries.
New radon story map explains how it enters the indoors, health risks and how to fix it
The latest story map published by EGLE provides a detailed look at radon.
Videos emerge of previous confrontation between Alex Pretti and federal officers 11 days before he was killed
On Wednesday The News Movement published a video from 13 January where officers appeared to grab Pretti
As the Trump administration targets NCAR, scientists rally to defend the ‘mothership’ of atmospheric research
A letter published by the National Science Foundation asks for ideas to dismantle the research hub. Scientists are responding en masse.
ZOTAC Korea warns of steep RTX 5090 and RTX 5060 price hikes, says some models may be unavailable for a while
ZOTAC Korea warns RTX 5090 and RTX 5060 prices are set to jump ZOTAC Korea has published a new notice on its official TagTag Mall account, warning that
Climate-risk scores shape billion-dollar decisions, and new study says science behind them needs to be more transparent
A new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that trustworthiness of climate-risk scores depends not just on the sophistication of the models used to produce the scores but also on whether the science behind them is open, reusable and transparent enough for others to examine, test and improve.
From war damage to heart repair: ERC grantees supported to turn their science into practice
The European Research Council (ERC) has published the outcomes of the last 2025 round of its Proof of Concept Grants. In this round, 136 grantees will each receive €150 000, supporting them in exploring how their scientific results can move towards practical application or early commercial use. With these awards, the total number of Proof of Concept Grants under the ERC 2025 Work Programme reached 300, representing an overall budget of €45 million. The scheme is funded under Horizon Europe, the EU’s framework programme for research and innovation.
Hundreds of Michigan districts and schools reject safety and mental health funding
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy. Hundreds of Michigan school districts rejected school safety and mental health funding from the state after agreeing to new conditions for receiving the money. In early December, 974 district […]
Project adds more than 1,000 new African genomes to global science
A newly published paper in Nature describes the complex process of launching a nine-country collaboration in Africa to significantly expand scientists' understanding of human genetic diversity. This can ...
‘Kicking the can down the road’: Science flags insect meta-analysis based on allegedly buggy database
An insect meta-analysis published in Science in 2020 has been hit with an EOC. (Photo credit: Aron Sousa) Science has issued a permanent expression of concern for a paper reporting a meta-analysis …