SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " Gift " 734 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
$2M gift aims to address Nevada’s shortage of rheumatologists
Nevada faces a severe shortage of rheumatologists, with just one for every 125,000 residents, according to UNLV Health.
Des Moines Public Library Foundation seeks new executive director
The Des Moines Public Library Foundation has launched a search for a new executive director and chief advancement officer. The position will be responsible for fundraising, including developing donor relationships, securing major gifts and increasing financial support for the foundation. The executive director will also oversee the organization’s finances, operations and staff and work with…
Wale and EQT Announce the Third Annual Gifted Week
This year's theme is named after his second studio album, 'Ambition,' and will spotlight the DMV's culture, creativity, and community across sports, art, and service
Agriculture, small business shine in debut Ohio Proud holiday gift box
A new gift box is bringing products from Ohio small businesses together for the holiday season.
Community Health Foundation addresses ‘largest gift’ in 230-acre Matlock Park for county
The Community Health Foundation executive director addressed the Montgomery County Commission Monday on the 230-acre donation.
Boeing Invests $300,000 In Free 2 Teach STEM Initiative
Aerospace and defense manufacturing giant Boeing announced on Monday a $300,000 gift to Free 2 Teach, the Huntsville-based nonprofit that provides free
After Cancelling Zelda Switch 2 Pre-Orders, Walmart Is Now Supposedly Sending Out $519 Gift Cards
Some customers also claim they've been able to "reorder" the system
Holiday gifts for movie lovers, from Robert Pattinson nesting dolls to a podcast's perfume
There are plenty of gifts for movie lovers this holiday season. Highlights include a 30-disc Stanley Kubrick collection with 4K restorations of all of his 13 features, “Killer's Kiss” to “Eyes...
Paddington's New Global Partnerships for the Holidays
Kurt Geiger, Petit Bateau, Crocs and Moleskine bring fresh fashion, footwear and gifting collections worldwide.
From Cozy Board Books to Spooky Manors, These Kids’ Titles Top the 2026 Holiday Gift List
It's the holiday season, and when you get tired of endless clothes racks, toy displays and internet discount codes, you can find refuge in a bookstore. Books are a wholesome gift choice and, when picked carefully, provide hours of entertainment and a lifetime of benefits; after all, knowledge is ...
Stanford Digital Brain Project to model the human brain
Foundational support from Mark and Mary Stevens and an additional gift from Clara Wu Tsai launch a university-wide project to predict brain dynamics and accelerate treatments for brain disorders.
La Crosse business offers gift cards for leftover Halloween candy
A downtown La Crosse business is giving families an opportunity to exchange leftover Halloween candy for gift cards while supporting local homeless and food shelters.
Japan sticker craze meets politics as PM Takaichi-themed sets prove hit
Japan's political world has found itself no exception to a recent craze for tactile "bumpy" stickers, with sets depicting the Cabinet of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi proving a hit at National Diet gift shops.
Curt Cignetti reacts to Indiana football overtime win vs Minnesota: 'This is entertainment'
On Halloween, IU coach Curt Cignetti received a gift, which will taste sweeter after his Hoosiers pulled out a comeback win.
Carbondale businesses collaborate for a Halloween Costume Bar Crawl
Twelve Carbondale businesses across downtown are setting aside competition to collaborate on a costume contest and bar crawl on Halloween to “revive the vibe” and bring activity back to the city’s downtown entertainment scene. The individual winner will receive a $10 gift card from each participating business, while the winning team will receive a $15...
2026 unique gifts for sports fans: Covering NFL, NBA, hockey, golf and more
Score big with gifts for sports fans, from the NFL and NBA to hockey, golf and more.
2026 unique gifts for sports fans: Covering NFL, NBA, hockey, golf and more
Score big with gifts for sports fans, from the NFL and NBA to hockey, golf and more.
2026 unique gifts for sports fans: Covering NFL, NBA, hockey, golf and more
Score big with gifts for sports fans, from the NFL and NBA to hockey, golf and more.
Science Begins With Wonder and Sometimes With a Salamander.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Don & Beth Straus Center at Birch Bay Village. BAR HARBOR—The children had come to see the axolotls, those odd little salamanders with pink frills around their heads and the remarkable ability to grow back what they lose. But also there were stickers. There were crafts. There was the kind of excitement that makes a roomful of kindergarteners forget, for a little while, that sitting still is ever a requirement. And then there were the animals themselves, alive in their clear cases at the MDI Biological Laboratory, where 12 children from Pemetic Elementary School got to meet the creatures they had been learning about in class. “Do you love them?” their teacher, Carol Null, asked. The answer came back in a chorus. “I do!” “I do!” “I do too,” Null said, smiling. “I love them even more now.” That was the thing about a day at the lab. Science was no longer a picture in a book, or a word on a classroom wall. It had a face, a tail, and a set of extraordinary powers. And for a child, sometimes that is where wonder begins. Sometimes learning about science is about stickers. Sometimes it’s about bright pink feathers and getting super excited about that glow in the dark. Sometimes learning about science is joy—pure and simple joy. That’s how it was October 28 at the MDI Bio Lab as Miss Hannah (known in the lab as Dr. Hannah Lust, director of STEM, undergraduate and graduate Training), other scientists, graduate students, and MDI Bio Lab staff, hosted 12 students from Carol Null’s Pemetic Elementary School’s kindergarten class. The 2.5-hour program created by Dr. Lust focused on axolotls, a species of mole salamanders, a superhero in the animal world: a superhero with some scientific-study worthy superpowers. One of those superpowers come from the axolotls’ ability to regenerate body parts, including entire limbs. But also, they’re cute. This fall, before coming to the internationally renowned lab nestled in Salsbury Cove, Null has been integrating axolotls into her class. They’ve been part of the kids’ vocabulary and their storytelling. They’ve been part of science. They’ve been part of the children’s learning about facts vs opinions. The Pemetic Elementary kindergarten students learn about invasive species and the impact on the ecology and one student related it to their dad, who lobsters, and his worries about green craps, an invasive species in Maine. “Are they bigger or smaller than you thought they’d be?” the children are asked after the scientists show them multiple see-through cases of axolotls, lined up on a table that they’re told not to jiggle. “Bigger!” “I think they’re bigger.” “Smaller!” The bio lab opening its doors to the collaborations and to students and families is a norm, but this is the first program of this kind. It’s meant to encourage kindergarten students about axolotls. But when the students come to the bio lab something else happens too—something beyond Null’s child-focused teaching—the students see science—and the regenerating creatures in real life. They do crafts. They speak with them. They meet people who know all about them: scientists and educators who talk to the kids like they’re equals. That’s a superhero power, too. Null speaks about meeting the kids where they’re at in her classroom, letting their interest and hearts lead her in their learning. That requires recognition of interests, of individuality, of empathy. Some would argue that’s a super power, too, but it’s also in those 12 students as they listen to the storybook, encounter those live axolotls, and hear about how axolotls might help advance society’s understanding of human health. As Eddie Seckeler (comparative animal models, CORE facility manager), carefully puts the axolotls on a cart and rolls them away, some of the children stop what they’re doing to watch. “Bye axolotls.” “Bye!” “Bye!” The axolotls are not just images in a book, Hello, I’m an axolotl by Hayley and John Rocco; they are real and cool. MDI Biological Laboratory scientists Dr. Prayag Murawala and Dr. James Godwin who both feature in the Roccos’ book. The kindergarteners get to meet them in real life, off the page, in the world, doing science. They learn from them, laugh with them. “The visit is about more than meeting an unusual animal. By introducing children to scientists working in their own community, the experience helps make science tangible and accessible. Students can see that science is not just something they read about in books or learn about at school. It is something real people do every day by asking questions, making observations and working to understand how the world works,” explains MDI Biological Laboratory Director of Communications Rebecca Woods. While the students make axolotl-related crafts around tables, graduate students and staff help out. Ryan holds up his construction paper setting and axolotl to show Omar Maged, a graduate student. “Do you like it?” Ryan asks, eyes wide, turning from his axolotl to look up at Omar. Omar studies the construction paper for a moment, smiles and says definitively, each word important. “It is beautiful.” Null says that she’s so thankful for all the “amazing” community partners that her school and her students get to interact with as they learn and grow and live, but emphasized how the MDI Bio Lab goes out of its way to create something meaningful, something that allows her young students to build their own agency, to know that they can be impactful in their community, to show them how how things they learn about in text is connected to themselves and their community. Woods explains, “Axolotls have an extraordinary ability to regenerate, or regrow, certain body parts, including limbs. Scientists study these animals to understand how regeneration works and what their biology might teach us about tissue repair and healing in humans.” The children enter the space for “a memorable introduction to a big scientific question,” Woods said. “How can some animals regrow body parts? The encounter encourages children to look closely, wonder about what they see and begin to understand how scientists use observations and experiments to investigate questions.” “For the students, the visit is an opportunity to explore a fascinating animal and meet scientists in their own community,” Woods explains. “For MDI Biological Laboratory, it is a chance to share the excitement of research, nurture curiosity, and help young learners discover that science begins with asking questions.“ At the beginning of the school year, Pemetic kindergarteners didn’t know what the axolotl was—at least not exactly—now they know all about the axolotl’s life cycle. “It’s different than a butterfly,” one student told Mrs. Null. It is. The change and knowledge might seem small**,** but it offers a glimpse of what happens when a subject moves beyond the pages of a book and into a child’s world. The children have been learning about butterflies at the Charlotte Rhoades Park and Butterfly Garden. At both the garden and the MDI Bio Lab, the children see the animals, meet the scientists who study them and at the lab encounter a question that researchers are still working to answer: how can some creatures regenerate body parts, and what might that teach us about healing in humans? They leave with gift bags, paper-plate salamanders, new things to wonder about and a connection between the science they learn in school and the work happening in their own community. The axolotls may be remarkable for their ability to grow back what they have lost. For these young students, the day offers something different: a chance to discover how much there is to ask, observe, and imagine. When Null’s students had time to use chalk and draw whatever they want, in the beginning of the year, they drew rainbows. Now? They’re using that chalk and choosing to draw axolotls instead. About MDI Bio Laboratory For more than 125 years, MDI Bio Lab has been a center for training and research in comparative biology. In the last two decades its biomedical research has focused on aging, regeneration, and environmental toxins. The Laboratory houses 11 research groups staffed by an international team of world-class scientists and graduate students. It also leads a statewide network of colleges, universities and research institutions that collaborate to provide training, research experiences and financial support to help young Mainers play a bigger role in today’s biomedical revolution. Located on Maine’s rugged coast, the Laboratory’s 100+ acre campus houses research facilities, cottages and dorms that house visiting scientists and students. It is also home to MDI Bioscience, a subsidiary working to design innovative techniques to speed the drug discovery process. The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art. LINKS TO LEARN MORE NIH INBRE MDI BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY Pemetic Elementary School Hello, I’m an Axolotl Photos: Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story HELP SUPPORT THE BAR HARBOR STORY When we started The Bar Harbor Story, we didn’t know if anyone would read it. But you showed up. You shared. You sent tips. Now—over 400,000 views every month later—it’s clear: people here care about their community and each other. We’ve kept everything free because news should never be out of reach, but every one of our stories takes time to write, and your support keeps The Bar Harbor Story going. If you value our work, please consider a paid subscription, a founding membership, or a sponsorship. It truly helps us cover one more meeting, tell one more story, shine one more light. Even $5 a month makes a difference. Click here to become a one-time supporter now. Thank you so much for being here. Founding member information can be found here. Have questions about sponsorships? Just send Shaun an email at sfarrar86@gmail.com, he’d love to hear from you. Subscribe Share Bar Harbor Story Share Leave a comment
LeBron James gives Caitlin Clark valuable gift after 76ers game
LeBron took advantage of a game in Indy to meet up with Clark.
The Gear Patrol Holiday Gift Edit: 125+ Ideas for 2026
The 2026 Gear Patrol Holiday Gift Edit collects fresh finds, proven standbys and worthy splurges across tech, whiskey, watches and more.
Former NYC mayor tours new Boston museum wing he helped fund with $155M gift
The new 10,000-square-foot space offers immersive exhibits, live performances and views overlooking the Charles River.
Combine Art Collective's annual holiday exhibition opens Nov. 5
The gallery’s member artists will be joined by a number of talented local artists to present a wide variety of unique gifts for the holiday season.
A golden age of science is coming
It’s almost hard to remember, but just a few years ago, a lot of very smart people thought that science was in terminal decline. Respected researchers were writing papers with titles like “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?”, “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time”, and “Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science”. In 1996, science writer John Horgan even published a book called The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. The fundamental idea was that the Universe only has so many insights to discover, and that we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit. It was the idea that Joseph-Louis Lagrange expressed when he said that “we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.” As the big ideas and the simple ideas get mined out, we’re forced to throw ever more brains at the mysteries of nature just to keep scientific progress going at a fraction of its old pace: It looked like science was hitting a wall. Then along came AI. It’s far too early to tell how much AI will eventually speed up the growth of total factor productivity. But already we can see signs of a speedup in science. Anthropic Founder Jack Clark assembled some of the hopeful data points in a recent lecture: [ Dror Poleg@drorpoleg "If you pick different parts of science, you see the same pattern show up: Progress is accelerating, and it has started to accelerate in the last two years." Jack Clark @jackclarkSF I’m speaking at the IMF in an hour about the singularity and why I believe it has begun and the choices we'll need to make. Watch live here: https://t.co/Hj9HzcXx5h 6:08 PM · Oct 18, 2026 · 21.2K Views 2 Replies · 10 Reposts · 123 Likes ](https://x.com/drorpoleg/status/2111882070376980529) Anthropic is accelerating its investment into drug discovery, and is already announcing some impressive preliminary results: [ BioTender@Junioryu136689 BREAKING: Anthropic unveils early results from six Claude-powered drug development collaborations. • 70% shorter CAR-T signaling domain • ~35,000 antibody designs • >10× tighter antibody binding • 89% less batch-record review time Still largely preclinical. Anthropic @AnthropicAI Over the past few months, Anthropic scientists have engaged in deep research partnerships with six organizations developing new medicines. We've also begun drug discovery efforts of our own. In doing so, we’ve learned much more about how Claude can support the many stages of 9:43 PM · Oct 27, 2026 · 11.2K Views 3 Replies · 24 Reposts · 205 Likes ](https://x.com/Junioryu136689/status/2115197821150495150) Claude also appears to be enabling rapid progress toward a treatment for food allergies. OpenAI, meanwhile, announced a possible breakthrough treatment for neurodegenerative disease. Meanwhile, Google Cloud Chief Scientist Pushmeet Kohli has a list of recent scientific advances that have been enabled by its new Gemini model, including breakthroughs in nuclear fusion reactor design, rare disease research, and quantum computing: [ Pushmeet Kohli@pushmeet Gemini 4 Argon is a step change in model performance. In recent weeks, it has had a transformative impact on the Science projects in our team at @GoogleDeepMind and our external collaborators, and helped make a number of remarkable advances across scientific disciplines. 🧵👇 4:47 PM · Oct 13, 2026 · 36.5K Views 8 Replies · 41 Reposts · 497 Likes ](https://x.com/pushmeet/status/2110049807385702623) But as cool as these stories sound, they’re just very minor, preliminary efforts. There are a number of reasons to think that AI is going to propel us into a golden age of scientific discovery. That age might not last forever — AI might still run into diminishing returns eventually. But the next few decades are probably going to be an absolutely amazing time for human science. The number of “effective researchers” is no longer limited The most important input into science is scientists themselves. Until this year, that meant human brains — talented, highly trained human brains. The number of trained human brains could be increased by sending more people to grad school, but only to a point — the smartest people tend to be sent into the hardest research fields first, and if you 10x the number of researchers, the average quality will go down. This constraint was already starting to bite, as Ekerdt and Wu argued in 2024: We argue that a substantial portion of the downward historical trend in U.S. research productivity is a composition effect resulting from self-selection in researcher ability and the dramatic expansion of the research sector…[W]e find that this composition effect has lowered average researcher ability by between 37% and 53%[.] And of course, low fertility was making the problem worse, because fewer children meant fewer people who were able to become future scientists. AI just blows up this constraint completely. If an AI agent can function as an autonomous researcher, there’s no constraint on the number of researchers in the world — you can just build more of them, by building more computer chips and data centers that enable the running of more AI agents. Whether or not massive hordes of agents can collaborate to solve individual problems much faster, increasing the number of agents allows them to tackle many different research questions in parallel. What’s more, these AI “researchers” can be trained incredibly quickly compared to human beings. A human scientist takes decades to train, and more years to reach the frontier of their research field by diligent reading and conversation. This is the “burden of knowledge”, and it’s commonly believed to be one reason ideas have been getting harder to find — by the time human scientists can get up to speed, they’re often so old that their ideas are no longer novel. AI just annihilates this constraint — it can assimilate the entire literature and reach the frontier of research extremely quickly, and it can also tell human scientists where the frontier lies without forcing them to discover that for themselves. It can also pivot to new research directions more easily than humans can. And there’s also a self-reinforcing economic cycle here. Because scientific advances enable higher GDP, they enable more resources to be invested into the creation of yet more electronic “scientists”. Now that doesn’t mean the amount of scientific research goes to infinity — there may still be some essential bottleneck task that human researchers are still needed to perform. There are some indications that AI’s progress on open-ended conceptual research tasks is slower than in other dimensions, and it may be that humans are still needed to provide some of this long-term conceptual thinking. I’d bet against this being true for much longer, but it might be true for a long time. Even in this most “pessimistic” case, though, the amount of effective capital that scientists can use to leverage their work just went up by a lot. AI eliminates the theory bottleneck Science proceeds by an iterative process of theory and experiment. The theory part of that cycle is typically short, but non-trivial — it took a couple of years after the blackbody radiation spectrum was observed for Max Planck to come up with the quantum hypothesis to explain it, and decades longer before quantum theory as we now know it was created. It took about a year for Watson and Crick to figure out the shape of DNA after the requisite data was gathered. AI will basically eliminate the theory bottleneck entirely — or at least shorten the turnaround time between experiment and theory by an order of magnitude. AI is an absolute beast at math. Recently, an OpenAI model solved some of the most important open problems in computer science, math, and theoretical physics, and no one even batted an eyebrow because that sort of triumph is becoming increasingly commonplace. One of those solutions was a proof that the Standard Model of Particle Physics could be mathematically well-defined — a problem that human theorists had so far been unable to tackle. Not all research relies equally on theory, but understanding novel experimental results almost always involves some important component of either mathematical or spatial reasoning. That part of the task has now been made much, much faster. And on top of that, science is now open to a greater number of humans who aren’t naturally good at theorizing. AI can read the whole literature Much of the work of human scientists involves reading and understanding endless amounts of papers and going to endless conferences and seminars. The purpose of that work is to understand the existing scientific literature. Understanding the literature allows scientists to do the following things: Come up with new ideas for hypotheses to test Avoid doing research that someone else has already done Synthesize approaches from different areas or fields AI can reduce this effort to almost zero. Consider this excerpt from OpenAI’s blog post about their new research into neurodegenerative disease: The team divided the analysis among thousands of AI agents powered by GPT‑Rosalind, an approach we call distributed biological reasoning. The agents examined a whole-brain CRISPR atlas…a dataset showing how gene disruptions affect different types of cells across the mouse brain. Each agent investigated a gene disruption, analyzed cellular responses, searched scientific literature, and proposed explanations for the results. Their reports were combined into a reasoning atlas linking genes, cellular effects, relevant publications, and possible biological mechanisms. The research team estimated that comparable human analysis and literature review, conducted one perturbation at a time, would take months to a year. The agents reproduced findings from human analyses while uncovering additional leads. Their assessments of novelty and scientific value also aligned with judgments from blinded human experts. These findings help prioritize further experiments needed to test the proposed biological mechanisms. Some of these insights point to new leads for understanding brain disease. [emphasis mine] This is one case in which parallel work by a large number of agents really does make a huge difference: [ Haider.@haider1 this is actually insane openai deployed thousands of GPT-Rosalind agents to analyze millions of mouse brain cells in 32 minutes, work that could take human researchers months to a year also the agents uncovered new leads for brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's OpenAI @OpenAI GPT-Rosalind surfaced a new lead for drug discovery: could restoring cholesterol transport protect neurons from degeneration? DCTN1 is a gene linked to Perry syndrome, a rare neurodegenerative disorder. In mouse-brain data, disrupting it increased expression of genes involved in 2:41 PM · Oct 21, 2026 · 51.5K Views 26 Replies · 95 Reposts · 1.26K Likes ](https://x.com/haider1/status/2112917197903540516) Not only does instantaneous literature review vastly speed up the research process, but it allows AI to make novel conceptual leaps from combining approaches from wildly different fields of research. AI regularly does this in math research, combining results, approaches, and theorems from far-flung places that no human mathematician would have thought to combine. It can do it in science, too. Much of scientific innovation, historically, has been “recombinant” innovation — scientists applying insights from one field to another. With AI, essentially all research is now cross-disciplinary — AI can read not just the literature on a particular subject, but the literature on a million other subjects that might have produced useful techniques or insights for the problem at hand. Superscience So far, all of the factors I’ve listed are ways that AI can speed up science as it’s already done. I’ve basically described how AI can send gigantic hordes of superhumanly fast, superhumanly well-read, superhumanly mathematically gifted researchers to re-accelerate scientific discovery. But it’s also possible that AI will enable types of discovery — and ways of understanding the natural world — that no network of humans, no matter how large or how brilliant it was or how long it had to work, would ever be able to discover. In a post back in July, I wrote about how that might work: What if there are lots of…aspects of the Universe that [are] too complex to understand in terms of simple laws, but not so complex that they just dissolve into unknowable chaos? It’s possible that we can reliably control these complex phenomena with AI, even if we never reduce them to the kind of principles that we can teach a grad student in a textbook… Another way of saying this is that there may be laws of the universe that humans can’t understand but AI can. I call these “cloud laws” — causal regularities that can be exploited by technology, but which are too diffuse and complex for an individual human being to either intuit or communicate… Perhaps social sciences like economics, sociology, and political science obey similarly complex regularities, and AI can help us find them. Perhaps there are physical processes — plasma, or topological materials, or aerial turbulence, etc. — that obey cloud laws instead of chaos?… [H]uman collaboration is bottlenecked — it’s limited by our ability to intuit patterns at an individual level, and to communicate these patterns from one individual to another. AI, being a computer, just doesn’t have this sort of limitation; it can work with vast, diffuse patterns without having to break them into pieces or simplify them in order to compress them into the tiny pipelines of person-to-person explanation… If much of the Universe turns out to be ruled by cloud laws, we could be on the precipice of a scientific renaissance. In order to discover cloud laws, AI will need huge amounts of data about the natural world. AI figured out human speech by assimilating essentially all of the text humans have ever written. If it’s going to figure out hidden patterns in biology, neuroscience, materials science, etc., it’s going to need similarly massive amounts of data from physical instruments. That data will be far, far more than humans — individually or collectively — would be able to parse, label, characterize, or model. But AI was built to do this. If scientists simply build huge arrays of sensors to measure complex phenomena like the brain, the cell, the economy, etc., they may be able to feed this flood of data to AI directly and bypass human cognitive intermediation entirely. AI would then learn about the world directly, and it might learn things that humans never could. This “superscience”, if you want to call it that, would actually go beyond the kind of science humans have done heretofore. Many of the technologies it yielded would be beyond human comprehension — indistinguishable from magic. But to the AIs, they would make perfect scientific sense. In any case, it seems clear that the scientific slowdown that threatened human progress will now be delayed — at least for a while. Unless humans have somehow found most of the actual exploitable regularities in our Universe, we’re about to enter a new golden age of science. Subscribe Share
Helpers needed for annual 'Santa's Shoppe' event
17 years ago, Trinity Church in Nevada City hosted an event for young children that let them come shop for gifts for their family members. The event quickly outgrew that
Receive a Spewpa That Can Evolve into a Random Vivillon Pattern in Pokémon Legends: Z‑A
Celebrate the release of Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Mega Dimension with this Mystery Gift.
George Mason nursing school gets $15M naming gift
George Mason University will rename its School of Nursing after Arlene Evans and Barry Dewberry following their $15 million gift.
How a gift of earrings created opportunities in Latin America
A gift of earrings from Peru led Northeastern graduate Nouf Alawadhi to start Coya, which sells handmade jewelry and gives back to artisans.
Use This Trick to Get GTA 6 Ultimate Edition on PS5 for Just $85 (Today Only)
Today only, you can get a $100 PlayStation Store gift card for just $85 – and then use it to buy the Ultimate Edition of Grand Theft Auto 6 for PS5.
2026 Gifts of the Year: Perfect presents for anyone on your list
No matter who you're shopping for, these editor-approved products will make you a gift-giving legend this year.
These Are Lifehacker's 2026 'Gift of the Year' Award Winners
The Lifehacker staff of tech experts and reviewers have selected their choices for the best Gifts of the Year for 2026 in 15 categories ranging from the best smartphone and e-reader to the best gaming equipment and fitness tracker.
CNET's Gifts of the Year: Add These Must-Haves to Your Holiday Wish List
CNET's holiday gift roundup has something for everyone — whether you're looking for a stocking stuffer or want to splurge on an eco-friendly coffee maker.
Best Health and Wellness Gifts of 2026, from Supplements to Saunas
Here are 10 of the best health and wellness gifts to give in 2026, including trendy supplements and fancy saunas for loved ones.
Illinois man charged with mailing white powder to members of Congress
Court records show a 37-year-old Illinois man is charged with sending threatening letters to members of Congress containing a white powder, including one with a note reading “HAH enjoy the gift.”.
14-year-old Ngozi Wright makes feature film début
At just 14 years old, Ngozi Muzik Wright adds another milestone to an impressive performing arts journey that began when she was barely old enough to speak. The gifted young Jamaican, whose commanding dub poetry performances have captivated audiences at home and throughout the diaspora, has stepped on to the big screen in her first full-length feature film, From A Yardie To A Yankee.
Pocatello business owner helps families impacted by Extreme Rush closure still get their night of fun
POCATELLO — When Extreme Rush suddenly closed and families were left holding gift cards meant for birthdays and special nights out, it didn’t sit right with Sloan Dalley.
How whimsical Hands Gallery became a fixture in downtown SLO for 35 years
The popular shop offers a curated mix of local art, crafts, gifts and more on Higuera Street.
That Ramaswamy ad is repugnant. And it will eventually be seen as a gift to Trump
If Ramaswamy goes down, Trump will spin it that Democrats and the corrupt media misrepresented the ad and lied about Ramaswamy.
Forget shopping for gifts — receiving them is stressing us out
Experts offer tips on how to manage the feelings of disappointment, guilt or anxiety when you get a bad or inappropriate present.
Verizon Apologizes for iPhone Duo Pre-Order Delays, Giving Customers $100 Gift Card
Verizon has apologized to customers who pre-ordered the iPhone Duo through the carrier but have since been informed that their delivery is delayed. In an email sent to affected customers, Verizon said an "unexpected shipping delay" means that iPhone Duo deliveries to some customers will "take a little longer". To make up for the inconvenience, Verizon is offering affected customers a $100 Verizon gift card that can be used online or in-store toward bill payments or merchandise.
Pittenger gifts $75,000 to establish new psychology scholarships
HUNTINGTON — The Marshall University Foundation has announced a $75,000 gift to establish the David J. Pittenger Scholarship. The scholarship is endowed by Dr. David J. Pittenger, professor emeritus of
Gabriel Minutillo's Dream Comes True at Just 16
After nearly a decade in the academy, the gifted playmaker secured his first senior call-up, edging closer to a dream partnership with his idol, Ibrahim Maza.
Intermountain Health Receives One of the Nation’s Largest Gifts in Pediatric Care
LAS VEGAS — Intermountain Foundation announced today that Nevada’s first stand-alone children’s hospital will be named Intermountain Health Felicia and Ben Horowitz Children’s Hospital in honor of a historic $150 million commitment. Felicia Horowitz, president of the Horowitz Family Foundation and co-founder and president of The Paid ...
Milligan Unveils New Ballad Health Simulation Lab on Campus
MILLIGAN, Tenn. (Oct. 23, 2026) — Today, Milligan University unveiled the campus’s new Ballad Health Simulation Lab to kick off Homecoming Weekend. Thanks to a generous $1 million gift from Ballad […]
McLeod Health Supports USC Sumter Nursing Education Program
McLeod Health is continuing its commitment to strengthening the region’s healthcare workforce through a $25,000 contribution to USC Sumter. The gift will support
What a Health Care Crisis Looks Like on the Ground
In South Los Angeles, ER patients are cared for in a gift shop, in tents, and even outdoors. And that’s before the crushing Medicaid cuts.
LEGO Ideas Build, Paint and Play! (40889) Officially Announced
LEGO has officially revealed a new gift with purchase set that will be coming out next week with the LEGO Ideas Build, Paint and Play! (40889). Releasing on October 28, the set has 158 pieces and will require a $130 general purchase on the LEGO Shop or in stores. The set was the winning build from t
Get Kyogre, Groudon, and Giratina Pokémon TCG Promo Cards at Participating Retailers
Visit these stores to celebrate the release of Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution—Delta Reign and get a gift with purchase.
Nebraska Health Care Foundation gives Omaha caregiver a car, ending her transit struggle
A surprise gift gives an Omaha caregiver her first car in two years, ending her transit struggle.
Handcrafted art helps fight hunger
Buy a soup bowl to help combat local hunger, visit a new spot to make pottery, and stock up on some holiday gifts when Rainbow Springs Art in Dunnellon opens
How well have past GOTY winners sold?
We’re less than two months away from 2026’s The Game Awards, and what a year it’s been for fantastic games, including Resident Evil Requiem, Forza Horizon 6, Slay the Spire II, the Blood of Dawnwalker, and Control Resonant – just to name a few. So as we approach the end of the year, we thought we’d look back on our estimates for the GOTY winners of the past four years. In terms of revenue, Elden Ring (2022 winner), Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), Astro Bot (2024), and Expedition 33 (2025) have generated a combined $3.8B via 73M copies sold: Let’s have a look, then. Elden Ring has generated $2B in revenue Elden Ring is a phenomenon in every sense. It’s sold a whopping 36.4M copies across Steam (50%), PS5 (35%), and Xbox (15% across console and PC). Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Elden Ring also just passed an astronomical milestone: $2B in revenue. While PlayStation and Xbox account for half of Elden Ring’s copies sold across these three platforms, they account for 57.5% of revenue. This – as ever – is due to regional pricing and the higher relative share of PC gamers in lower-priced markets. For example, around 17.4% of Elden Ring’s Steam copies sold were in China, where the game costs about 26% less than the price in the States. There’s an … interesting narrative going around these days that console gamers are only interested in ball-and-gun games and have the patience for little else. Well, Elden Ring’s impressive sales prove that is simply not true, and across all platforms. What’s more, over 9.8M people have played Elden Ring for over 100 hours, with nearly 3.5M people getting all of the achievements and trophies. For reference, 10.9% of Elden Ring’s PlayStation players have the platinum trophy, while 10.5% of players on Steam and 3.9% of Xbox players unlocked all the achievements. Git gud, Xbox players! Of the 1.5M people who played Elden Ring on PlayStation last month, 4% also played Dark Souls 3 last month, 4% played Bloodborne, and 3% played Sekiro. There’s those Soulsborne diehards for you. By many accounts, including my own, Elden Ring is one of the best games of all time. It’s an evergreen seller that will continue to be a cash cow for Bandai and FromSoftware for years to come. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Elden Ring has sold another 2M copies across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox this year, generating almost $110M. This means it’s outperforming many of this year’s high-profile releases. Even Elden Ring’s standalone run-based PvE spinoff, 2025’s Nightreign, has sold 7.8M copies and generated $282M in revenue. Baldur’s Gate 3 is another billion-dollar-plus banger Another cross-platform phenomenon is Baldur’s Gate 3, which has sold 23.2M copies and generated over $1.2B in revenue. About 18.7M of these copies (80.6%) are via Steam, 2.9M via PS5 (12.7%), and 1.6M (6.8%) via Xbox. Around 1.3M folks on Steam bought BG3 before it hit 1.0. The PlayStation version launched about a month after the PC 1.0 release, while the Xbox version came four months later due to technical issues around developing local co-op on the Series S. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Across platforms, Baldur’s Gate 3’s monthly active users have never dropped below 2M, including 2.2M MAUs last month (68.5% on Steam, 21.9% on PS5, and 9.6% on Xbox). And it still regularly brings in 280K to 400K players every day: About 1% of BG3’s Steam player base has played for over 500 hours! That’s a little under 200K people. Astro Bot is also an evergreen seller, albeit a more niche, family one Astro Bot, 2024’s winner, has now sold 4.7M copies and generated $291M in revenue. The budget, including marketing, is almost certainly under $100M, given the small Japan-based core team and three-year dev timeline. You can really see why the tides are changing toward less expensive hubs. Astro Bot is the only first-party winner on this list, but follows other first-party winners of The Last of Us Part II (2020’s winner), God of War (2018), and Breath of the Wild (2017). Around 46.6% of Astro Bot’s copies sold have been physical, which is far higher than the typical game. This makes sense for a couple of reasons: There’s a large family audience for this one, and physical boxes are an item to wrap when giving Astro as a gift. Astro has collector value for the PlayStation core (this is nostalgia-fueled platformer celebrating PlayStation’s history) Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Astro is another one of those games that continues selling over time, regularly selling more than 100K a month. It’s sold around 1M more copies this year ($60M in revenue) and is a popular title with families. We can see this using the Alinea platform’s MAU crossover tool: Astro Bot’s top #2, #3, and #4 games by crossover in any given month this year are Minecraft, Fortnite, and Roblox – without fail. The #1 title every month, though, is Astro’s Playroom, a pack-in with all PS5 consoles. For every month this year, between 20% and 30% of Astro Bot players also played Astro’s Playroom that month. So the free pack-in is a noice funnel for converting players to a full paid product. Expedition 33 sells 8.7M despite Game Pass cannibalisation Finally, we have last year’s winner – Expedition 33. The turn-based-RPG banger has generated $366M via 8.7M copies sold, with 58.8% on Steam, 35.7% on PS5, and 5.5% on Xbox. Xbox’s share of copies sold is this low due to Expedition 33 launching on Game Pass, where 4.3M people across console and PC accessed the game. A little under 700K Xbox players used their subscription to play Expedition 33 this year. That said, the game’s 1.5-year Game Pass deal ended last week on October 16, and we’re already beginning to see a positive trend on Expedition 33’s copies sold via Xbox (but the jury’s still out!). There’s understandably a lot of French pride behind this one, as France is the game’s #3 market on both Steam and PlayStation. Vive la France! One thing that stood out to me is that the GOTY winners aren’t $300M Hollywood productions made in the US. They’re mostly mid-budget studios outside the traditional AAA cost centres. Lots to think about there. Also, good games sell well; who’d have thunk it!? And there’s a whole load of them this year, with GTA 6 still to come, too. GTA just made the cutoff point for the VGAs this year. What a coincidence! Loading... Cool links and other stuff Our physical games newsletter from Tuesday was picked up by GameSpot, Eurogamer, TweakTown, and a bunch of others. We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply right here on Substack/email, and we’ll set you up. Next week, we’ve got some exciting news regarding the future of our newsletter, so stay tuned! 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. Want to see why these companies (and many others) are subscribed to Alinea? Get a free platform trial! [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!]
Larry Gies pledges $100M matching gift to Gies College of Business
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WICS/WRSP) - Larry Gies has announced a new pledge of $100 million to Gies College of Business in Champaign.
Huntington startup creates landmark-inspired pajamas and gifts
Huntington-based Oyster and Arrow creates hand-illustrated pajamas and gifts inspired by Long Island landmarks. Founded by Emily Greany, the company emphasizes local coastal motifs and has grown to 25 retail partners, with wholesale driving most of its revenue. The brand aims to expand along the East Coast while maintaining personal connections.
Alumnus honors his father, a longtime Marquette professor, with $2 million gift to advance research in biological sciences
President Kimo Ah Yun announced today that a $2 million gift from alumnus Nanda Alapati will advance undergraduate and graduate research in biological sciences.
Target Unwraps the Science of Gift Giving in Holiday Campaign
Created by Mythology and directed by ‘Hacks’ co-creator Lucia Aniello via hungryman, the retailer gives tenure to actor D’Arcy Carden as leader of its ‘Academy of Giftology’, a digital destination beyond its nine bilingual films
Chicago Bears spotlight ‘That’s Caring’ in Small Business All-Pros campaign
The Chicago Bears are highlighting MVPs in the community with their small business all-pros and this year, the campaign features 'That's Caring' which creates curated gift boxes for companies looking to recognize its workers and clients.
Rebecca Skloot, Author of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", Receives the 2026 NYU/Axinn Foundation Prize
Prize coincides with $5.2 million foundation gift to endow the prize and to support creative writing students at NYU
The big business of personal shopping
From sourcing rare Hermès bags to organising last-minute gifts, independent personal shoppers will go to extraordinary lengths to keep wealthy clients happy
Great Lakes Science Center’s Robotics Initiative receives $1 million gift
A $1 million endowment from the Thomas F. Peterson Jr. Charitable Trust will fund robotics education and 3-D printed prosthetics for those in need.
A note to readers: Science, accountability and elections
Dear readers, As early voting begins, I wanted to share some news — and why it connects to the decisions we make at the ballot box. I’ve been selected for the inaugural cohort of the South Atlantic Climate Journalism Hub mentorship program, hosted by Covering Climate Now. I’m excited to join this group, learn from scientists and fellow journalists, and expand my science reporting. Science directly ties to governance. Local officials make decisions about where development goes, how infrastructure is maintained, what emergency preparations receive funding, and how communities rebuild after disasters. Understanding the evidence behind those decisions helps us evaluate whether our government is serving us well. Here in western North Carolina, those connections are all around us, in Lake Lure and beyond. Flood maps inform decisions about property and development. Engineering assessments help identify risks at dams and bridges. Rainfall forecasts guide emergency preparations. Geological information helps explain landslide hazards. Water testing gives communities information they need to assess conditions. Meteorologists’ knowledge and public perception of weather events shape public safety. Each involves scientific or technical knowledge. Each also raises questions about public responsibility: What did officials know? How did they use that information? What did they tell the public? What did taxpayers receive for their money? A study can identify a problem. Elected officials still have to decide what to do about it, how to pay for it, and how to explain their choices. Reporting should examine both the evidence and the response. That is where I want to strengthen my work. My reporting on Helene recovery, infrastructure, flooding, public safety, and public spending has repeatedly brought me to questions that require scientific expertise alongside public records. This mentorship may help me better understand the research, ask more precise questions, and explain the answers clearly. I also bring the perspective of someone living with these concerns. I live downstream of Lake Lure Dam, and landslides affected my property during Helene. Those experiences bring urgency to my questions. Careful reporting helps establish the answers. Readers deserve to know what the evidence shows, where uncertainty remains, and whether officials accurately describe the information guiding their decisions. You also deserve scrutiny of proposed solutions: what they cost, what they are expected to accomplish, and what risks remain. Access to that information matters. As a mostly deaf journalist who relies on written communication, I will continue pressing for written public warnings, records, and explanations that people can read and use in real time. As you consider the candidates seeking your vote, consider how they approach evidence, preparedness, and transparency. Do they support local journalism, even when it’s not parroting a press release? Do they explain weather events clearly in plain English and explain their decisions after them? Make supporting records available? Acknowledge uncertainty? Follow through when a report identifies a risk? Those are practical questions about governing. Thank you for supporting Cops & Congress and the work that makes these questions part of the public conversation. I’m grateful to David Dickson and the CC Now team for this opportunity, and I look forward to bringing what I learn back to you. Annie DanceEditor & Publisher, Cops & Congress — Learn more about this newsletter, ethics policy, how you can help shape this work, and support it. Follow on X and Facebook. Send constructive criticism, fan mail, and tips with public documents for future stories: CopsandCongress@gmail.com ICYMI: View the Cops & Congress archive — Annie Dance is the publisher of Cops & Congress, a newsletter that analyzes what happens when crime, courts, disaster, democracy, and small-town policies collide. Views expressed here are covered by the First Amendment. Dance has a Bachelor of Arts from Manhattan University in Communication with a focus in Journalism and Government. She has been a journalist for over 20 years. Share Upgrade now or give a gift subscription
$42 million Purdue donor wants support for Black and Hispanic students
McDonald's millionaire and Purdue alum Roland Parrish says, \
$55 million gift to fund Marietta College housing, health sciences facility
MARIETTA — Marietta College plans to renovate three first-year residence halls, remove several campus buildings and open a graduate health sciences facility on Fourth Street with support from a $55 million gift commitment from Joe and Linda Chlapaty. President Kathleen Poorman Dougherty announced the commitment Friday during her State of the College address, held during […]
Tincher Foundation gift brings record donation to Med Center Health
The Tincher Foundation donated more than $4 million to Med Center Health last month before dissolving in September, part of a gift supporting a program that provides medical and dental care to children regardless of a family's ability to pay.
Supreme Court may strike down school policies that limit Asian students
The court agreed to hear an appeal from parents in Montgomery County, Md., who were upset by a sharp drop in Asian students at its four magnet schools for gifted students.
Panama City Beach Senior Center Announces Upcoming Craft Fair and Community Health Fair
Senior crafters are getting a head start on the holidays, with tables full of handmade Christmas gifts, decor, and more up for grabs.
Sam's Club Will Offer 10% Off Disney Gift Cards for Limited Time, Likely to Sell Out Quickly
Ahead of Black Friday, Sam's Club will offer their biannual 10% discount off Disney Gift Cards.
Facing health challenges, Clay County farmer gets $5,200 gift, harvest help
Multiple organizations rallied behind a Clay County family facing health challenges in October
Whiskey rebellion over 1868 law on home distilleries heads to the Supreme Court
When John Ream got into brewing beer at home nearly two decades ago, starting out was as easy as opening the kit his wife bought for him as a gift.
Medical College of Wisconsin gets $50M gift to advance precision medicine
Precision medicine takes into account a person's genes and lifestyle, as well as the environment they live in, to treat their health care needs.
How a Massive Chinese Crime Ring Hacked Staples to Steal Millions
A sophisticated organized crime gang hacked into Staples, issued millions of dollars worth of gift cards, and went on a spending spree across the U.S.
Dartmouth Health launches innovative home care initiative with help of $20M gift
With the help of a generous $20 million donation from an alumnus, Dartmouth Health has launched an innovative new program designed to meet the needs of home-bound seniors and their families, particularly those living in rural areas. The program hopes to serve as a national model for other home care programs across the United States.
Elon Musk says he'll give a SpaceX share to every American child
Elon Musk's plan to gift SpaceX shares to U.S. children in 2027 would be worth equivalent to roughly $10.5 billion at current market prices.
How real estate decisions offer keys to business success
What better gift for a business owner than a few lessons learned, without having to make all the mistakes yourself?
WKU celebrates CAYA Advancing Research and Community Health Institute
The Institute was made possible through a $1.375 million gift from CAYA Collaborative Care Inc., formerly LifeSkills
UI receives grant for business student wellness
A multimillion-dollar donation to the University of Iowa’s business college, alongside a matching gift challenge to generate even more funds, will help support a student mental health and success initiative
The best Amazon deals this weekend: Score big brands like Yeti, Lego, Apple and more for up to 70% off
We found fabulous fall discounts on everything from kitchenware and vacuums to holiday gifts, headphones, skin care and more.
Monte Ahuja gives CSU another $10 million
The Cleveland entrepreneur's latest gift will overhaul business education with a focus on entrepreneurship and emerging tech.
Cleveland State University receives $10M gift to reshape business education
The gift will fund a comprehensive overhaul of all undergraduate and graduate business programs to reflect new developments and emerging technologies in the field.
‘Godly leadership’: Lisa Demuth’s Pentecostal faith is a driving force behind her politics
Lisa Demuth asked God whether she should run for Minnesota House minority leader. On the morning Minnesota House Republicans were electing a new leader after a bitterly disappointing 2022 election, Demuth read the Bible verse 1 Peter 4:10: “God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them […]
Lakeland receives $1 million to boost science, health care learning
A $1 million estate gift to Lakeland University will fund science scholarships and expand science and health care programs.
Cleveland State, Gov. DeWine tout business school gift to fuel AI focus
The announcement of the gift came during President Laura Bloomberg's 2026 State of the University address.
Cleveland State, Gov. DeWine tout business school gift to fuel AI focus
The announcement of the gift came during President Laura Bloomberg's 2026 State of the University address.
UA receives $600,000 for scholarship campaign
The University of Arkansas recently received about $600,000 in gifts for its Land of Opportunity Scholarship. The UA aims to raise $200 million in the campaign, and the scholarships will...
Immerse Arkansas receives $4.5 million for new campus
Little Rock-based nonprofit Immerse Arkansas recently received a $4.5 million anonymous gift and a 99-year land lease from New Heights Church to establish short-term housing and a campus in Fayetteville...
DeWolf Foundation gives $3.5 million to support UI business students
The DeWolf Family Foundation of Cedar Rapids is giving $3.5 million to support University of Iowa business students’ well-being and career preparation.The gift
Song4U Launches Custom Song Creation Service For Personalized Gifts
Miami, FL - October 14, 2026 - [ KOREWIRE ] - Song4U, a digital music technology platform, today announced the launch of its updated personalized song gift service. The platform
PROFILE: Ben Sio
New President of CenterState CEO Brings Nearly Two Decades of Experience to Drive CNY Growth By Stefan Yablonski Ben Sio serves as president of the CenterState Corporation for Economic Opportunity — or CenterState CEO. The independent Syracuse-based nonprofit is committed to creating inclusive, equitable and sustainable economic growth in Central New York. “I started in this position in March, so it has been six months. I’m in my 19th year with CenterState,” he said in August. As president, he is responsible for overseeing the organization’s administration and governance, while leading and executing its vision to be an effective advocate, exceptional employer and a force for positive outcomes for the community. He previously served as chief of staff and senior vice president of strategy, policy and planning, overseeing the organization’s long-term strategic planning, consulting, corporate governance, fundraising and development, land-use planning and government relations. In his years with the organization, Sio has led or supported many high-profile strategic initiatives including the creation of the CNY Rising Plan, the launch of the NUAIR Alliance and the region’s UAS strategy, the creation of the Micron-enabled Community Priorities Document and the recently awarded NY Smart I Corridor Tech Hub. “When we decided to split Rob’s [Simpson] role into two positions, he has the CEO title and I got the president title. Rob remains focused on forward looking vision strategy for the organization and I’m more focused on the day-to-day operations,” he explained. “I’m also responsible for building consensus around strategic needs and priorities and managing the change necessary to drive execution. It’s an eventful job. “The experiment that we call CenterState is always evolving and shifting and addressing where we see market demand and market failure. “If we see something in our economy that isn’t going the way we think it should go, then whether it is housing development or workforce development or something else, we are always figuring out how to step into these situations and address those challenges.” “We are the largest ever in terms of staff that we have ever been. We are no longer the 20-person organization we were when we started out many, many years ago,” he said. “There are more day-to-day things to take care of. But also there is just so much happening in the community right now that is pulling CenterState and our expertise in so many directions. I tell people if we were bored and not busy, then I’d be really concerned about what we are doing. But we are not bored. We’ve certainly got our hands full — and that is a good thing.” CenterState has now approximately 63 employees on its staff, according to recent nonprofit database records. It’s involved in myriad programs, ranging from Genius NY, a business accelerator competition for uncrewed systems, IoT and robotics startups, to CenterState Up Start, a collaborative business development program that connects local, service-based businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs to the tools and networks that help them thrive. CNY Guy Through and Through A Central New York guy through and through, Sio was born and raised in Skaneateles. “My mom was a teacher, an art teacher. My father worked for many, many years with National Grid. He was there through the transition from Niagara Mohawk to National Grid,” he said. “Neither of my parents were touched by cutbacks and job loss. But I grew up going through that transition and being concerned that there were rounds of layoffs. My childhood connection to the economy here in Central New York … years ago it was on the decline. There were people that lived here that were concerned about losing their job. They were thinking they lived in a place that didn’t show much promise.” That narrative translated to his generation, he added. “The kids that grew up in the ‘90s in Central New York were very much told, directly or indirectly, by their parents, that they had to go somewhere else to find economic opportunity. That is what I grew up thinking,” he said. “I only went a few miles down Route 20 for college — in Geneva, New York; I graduated from Hobart and William Smith College with a bachelor’s degree in public policy and political science. “I got real interested in regional economies; because what makes regional economy is what makes the economy successful. And when I graduated, I had an opportunity to move to Washington, DC and work down there at a nonprofit doing this work.” However, he decided to stay in Central New York. “I got hired two weeks after I graduated. I got hired by the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce. At the time it was one of two entities doing economic development in Central New York — [the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce and the Metropolitan Development Association] — and it eventually became CenterState CEO,” he said, referring to 2010 merger between the two organizations. During his time at CenterState, Sio has also split time at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where he supported communities developing export and foreign direct investment (FDI), a long-term cross-border investment where an individual or company from one country buys a lasting stake or control in a business located in another country. The program — known as Global Cities Initiative — was designed to help leaders in major U.S. and international metropolitan areas reorient their local economies toward global markets. “Early on in my tenure at CenterState, we had done a lot of work with the Brookings Institution, just regional planning stuff. We worked with them on developing a regional export plan, to export more products out of Central New York and a larger business plan for the region. They hired me on to help replicate those plans in different parts of the country,”Sio explained. “So, I worked there for three or four years. I worked for CenterState, but I was technically loaned to Brookings for a period of time to help them do this work elsewhere.” Family ties “My wife is Carly. We have been married 14 years. We have two kids, a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old. “With a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old, fun is a relative term these days. We do a lot of hiking. The kids this summer got very interested in waterfalls. We’ve hit every waterfall we could in a short hike — we’ve done Skaneateles and some others.” “I do woodworking and wood turning — it’s a branch of woodworking; you use a wood lathe. My big thing there is making wood bowls. I do that in most of my free time, which is not much,” he quipped. “I like to get into my woodshop and make a bowl and decompress and turn off the rest of the world for a little bit. I usually do it late at night when the house is quiet. It is definitely my escape from the day to day. I make a lot of bowls; all different sizes, all different species of wood. It’s a fun thing to do for me.” He gives away many of his creations. “They are mostly gifts — I don’t really sell them. I really don’t have time to go set up a booth at a fair or craft show. I usually give them away. I donate them to different things. If you are in my periphery, you’ve likely received a salad bowl from me as a gift. I just need to find something to do with all the stuff that I create,” he said. Lifelines Name: Benjamin Sio Position: President, CenterState CEO Birth Date: Not provided Birth place: Syracuse Residence: Westvale Education: Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes Affiliations: Member of the boards of Skaneateles Festival, Greccio Foundation, Interfaith Works, CNY Community Foundation Personal/family: Married with two kids Hobbies: Woodworking and woodturning
Scheele Legacy Lives On as $1 Million “Transformational Gift” to Lakeland U Science Programs
Ronald Scheele, a 1966 Lakeland University graduate and native of Sheboygan, has given back to his alma mater ...
APSU alumna Sharon A. Dunn endows scholarship for Tri-County business students
Austin Peay State University has received a gift from Sharon A. Dunn, a 1973 graduate of the College of Business.
CWRU receives record $15M gift for special needs dental care
The $15 million gift from Bill and Chloe Cornell will establish a health center for patients with special needs at Case Western Reserve.
Palm Beach donor gives $1M to Cox Science Center education programs
Led by a Palm Beach resident, the William H. Pitt Foundation’s $1 million gift will support education programs at the Cox Science Center and Aquarium.
$20 million gift kickstarts Dartmouth Health’s home healthcare program
Richard Levy ’60 will donate $20 million in installments at his discretion and tied to expansion milestones over the multi-year rollout of Dartmouth Health at Home.
Palm Health Foundation Doubles Gifts to Grow the Next Generation of Mental and Behavioral Health Professionals - Florida Hospital News and Healthcare Report
Final Weeks to Double Impact: $50,000 Scholarship Match Ends October 31 October 12 2026 – West Palm Beach, Fla. – Community members have just weeks left to double their investment in […]
AP source: Trump, Rubio weigh firing U.S. envoy to Greece over conduct reports
In a series of stories, The Wall Street Journal has reported questionable conduct by Guilfoyle, including accepting improper gifts and services
Dad's pink tractor honors daughter's cancer journey
Ready to tell her breast cancer story, Kelli Aberson is using a pink tractor, a gift from her dad, to create awareness.
$11 Million Gift Will Transform Undergraduate Science at Warren Wilson College
/PRNewswire/ -- Warren Wilson College has received an $11 million gift from anonymous donors—the largest gift in the College's history—to transform its science...
12 USB-C Gadgets That Make Great Gifts
Whether you're shopping for a gamer, DIY enthusiast, or music lover, these USB-C gadgets make great gifts, including power banks, portable fans, and headphones.