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She Studied Ways to Make People Smarter. Then Her Grant Was Cut.
Jessica Cantlon had a grant with the U.S. Navy to explore whether people could improve spatial problem-solving skills through training. Then the program was cut.
New sodium metal battery design charges in just 4 minutes and retains its capacity for years
Chinese researchers say they have overcome one of the trickiest problems of battery chemistry by developing a special gel.
What chronic inflammation is and how it could affect your health
There is a difference between inflammation from an injury and chronic inflammation. Learn what it is, when it’s helpful and when it can become a long-term health problem.
TN Politics: Final MSCS forensic audit raises political concerns
The complete report points to more than $100 million in "waste, fraud and abuse." Who fixes the problem is still being debated.
Why we don’t know what food is spreading the parasite sickening thousands
There’s a lag between when people consume the parasite and when symptoms appear, making it tough for those infected to remember what they ate to pinpoint the problem.
Opinion: Conor McGregor's return exposes the UFC's biggest failure
Conor McGregor's long-awaited return to the UFC has reignited excitement around one of mixed martial arts' biggest stars, but it also highlights a lingering problem for the promotion, writes Dayne Fox.
Will Germie Bernard or Roman Wilson Be Steelers’ WR3?
The Steelers have not had great wide receiver cores over the last few seasons, but in 2026 they finally have some depth in the pass-catching room. The Steelers have a good problem on their hands: a battle for the No. 3 wide receiver spot. Roman Wilson and Germie Bernard are seemingly the third and fourth […] The post Will Germie Bernard or Roman Wilson Be Steelers’ WR3? appeared first on The Lead.
Mitch McConnell's health absence a mystery with US Senate poised to return
The U.S. Senate returns on Monday for a four-week work period expected to include votes on defense and other national security legislation, with one of the most influential voices on those issues – Republican Senator Mitch McConnell – still absent with undisclosed health problems.
Summit living isn’t a problem for this tiny mouse
A boost to heat production and drawing in more oxygen may help Andean leaf-eared mice thrive at altitude.
Trump's voter ID bill catches unlikely break as McConnell remains sidelined
Mitch McConnell's weeks-long absence removes one key "no" vote on the SAVE America Act, but Senate Republicans still face a filibuster problem.
Kern County Science Fair Leads Students to International Stage
The Kern County Science Fair equips students with the curiosity, critical thinking, perseverance, and problem-solving skills to tackle real-world challenges, empowering young innovators like Simar Singh and Eric Nahama to achieve international STEM...
How to Bring More Data Science to YouTube and Creator Media
I am constantly writing about the challenge facing agencies and brands when in comes to YouTube. Is it TV? Social video? Search? Commerce? Do you fund it from all of those respective budgets, and measure it using all their respective metrics? Sean Odlum, Chief Product Officer at Tinuiti, says it may not make sense to try and “bucket'“ YouTube. “You kinda gotta treat it as its own thing,” he said. “Years ago, we had debates [along the lines of] ‘what is this?’ Ultimately we decided, it’s YouTube. It is hard to categorize because it is so protean.” Which ultimately means that almost every part of a media department or marketing group will likely touch YouTube in some fashion. And that it probably needs its own sets of metrics and measurement tools. At Tinuiti, that need has led the agency to develop the YouTube Intelligence Suite, which aims to help brands optimize YouTube campaigns while using all the traditional marketing tools they are used to, such as MMMs. “I wouldn’t say there is a YouTube playbook,” Odlum said. “[For media planners] there is this vast bubbling ocean, so where do you start?’ A lot of brands and agencies struggle.” “You don’t want to just brute-force it—spray dollars everywhere and eventually learn. You want to start intelligently and then learn iteratively.” The problem, Odlum and his team have found, is that “brands have largely defaulted into demand generation campaigns because they’re easier to measure.” However, “you can really build your own content ecosystem around these trusted experts.” Check out the full interview here: Thanks for reading Next in Media! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe
AI hallucinations are causing headaches in Louisiana courtrooms. 'It shocked me.'
More than a dozen attorneys have been fined or sanctioned in Louisiana for using fabricated quotes or cites in their pleadings -- called hallucinations -- generated by AI tools. It's a growing problem.
Space images have found a 5,000-mile seaweed belt across the Atlantic: Scientists say it can clog beaches and create public health problems
Seaweed is no longer just an aquatic flora, it has now transformed into a nuisance, especially for scientists. Sargassum, a genus of brown macroalgae that was once largely confined to the Sargasso Sea has evolved into the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt that stretches across 5,000 miles.
Wilmington business owner feels impact as NC governor vetoes homeless encampment bill
For business owners along Market Street, like Mark Hicks, keeping up with homeless encampments near their business has become a part of his daily routine. House Bill 437 would have added further restrictions for homelessness statewide, but Gov. Josh Stein said Wednesday the bill creates more problems for people instead of solutions to homelessness.
Platner leave Democrats with egg on their faces
Democrats have a number of Graham Platner-related problems as they await his decision on whether to drop out of the Maine Senate race amid a rape allegation he denies.
How Did We Get Graham Platner, Anyway? The Answer Is the Problem.
Democrats need to learn this lesson.
Trump reopens the Iran war — and a political problem he can’t shake
Republicans face fall elections tied to a conflict most voters oppose, unable to end it and mostly unwilling to break with the man who started it.
There Was Only One Solution to My Problem … Down There. It’s Opened Up Pandora’s Box.
I'm trying everything.
Secretive Chinese probe snaps first photo of Earth's mysterious 'quasi-moon' — and it may pose a big problem
China's Tianwen-2 spacecraft has captured the first close-up photo of one of Earth's "quasi-moons," Kamo'oalewa. However, the image and the timing of its release suggest that it may be harder for the probe to collect samples from the space rock than originally planned.
AI tools meant to vet science are surprisingly easy to fool
The gold standard of scientific review, peer review by researchers’ colleagues, is in crisis. AI might offer a solution but has problems of its own.
The Lexington Problem: Beating the Literacy Odds Without the Science of Reading
Aldeman: As Massachusetts implements a new literacy mandate, officials must not lose sight of the ultimate goal: helping more students learn to read
Opinion: The Lexington Problem: Beating the Literacy Odds Without the Science of Reading
The science of reading has largely won the policy debate. Over the last decade, state after state has embraced evidence-based reading instruction. Legislatures have passed literacy laws, and teacher p...
Shohei Ohtani hits No. 300 as Dodgers' bullpen struggles
LOS ANGELES — Justin Wrobleski deserved better.
Dodgers’ chances at another walk-off thwarted by Rockies
Justin Wrobleski strikes out nine over seven innings, bullpen lets lead slip in 4-3 loss to Rockies.
A Cup of Tea: The Zen of Science Communication
Science communication often fails not because people lack information, but because they enter the conversation already certain. A moment of Zen explains the problem and offers a possible solution.
Researchers in Colorado get a better idea of health problems caused by wildfire smoke
Colorado researchers get a better idea of the possible health problems caused by wildfire smoke
Researchers are getting a better idea of the ills caused by wildfire smoke as the West becomes the location of larger and more severe fires.
Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden and the growing epidemic of politicians hiding health problems
Politicians are increasingly hiding their health problems, despite a national reckoning over the problem during the presidency of Joe Biden.
Yankees' Austin Wells problem needs immediate fix at trade deadline
The Yankees need to make a move at the catcher's position.
The Most Influential California Political Dynasty You’ve Never Heard Of
They’re Nerdy. They’re Local. They Love a Complex Problem. And They Summer in Santa Cruz. Meet the Lemperts
Star Trek Murder Mystery Drove The Science Advisor Crazy
A holodeck mystery forced a rare scientific rewrite, inspiring clever new sci-fi tech and solving an impossible storytelling problem.
‘It had no impact’: USMNT insist Balogun political circus did not affect World Cup exit
The US had big problems in their last-16 defeat, but Mauricio Pochettino and his team said that the discourse around the red-card ban reversal wasn’t one of them
New Iowa Medicaid fraud task force draws questions from retired health administrator
A retired health care administrator is questioning Gov. Kim Reynolds’ decision to form a new task force aimed at fighting Medicaid fraud, saying the state’s focus overlooks what she sees as a larger problem: health care becoming less affordable.
Crypto, red cards and Trump’s corruption problem
Last week, President Donald Trump’s financial disclosures showed he earned more than $2 billion in 2025 — including an astonishing more than $1 billion from his family’s entry into the largely unregulated world of cryptocurrency.
MLB Power Rankings: Yankees slump looking like a real problem -- and Aaron Judge isn't coming to save them
Meanwhile, the Dodgers, Brewers and Rays remain in the top three spots
Is testosterone therapy a fix for aging? The Trump administration proposes easing prescription rules
Boosting low levels of the hormone is seen as a possible fix for men’s chronic health problems.
Small-Dollar Campaign Donors Are Hurting the Political System
The problem with donation mobs
Could Santos help solve Man Utd's midfield malaise?
Chelsea's Andrey Santos is the latest player Manchester United have taken an interest in as they look to address their problem midfield position. With Casemiro leaving after his contract expired on 30 June and Manuel Ugarte expected to be sold, United went into the summer with England's Kobbie Mainoo as their only recognised central midfielder and with the stated aim of addressing the situation as a matter of priority. In the transfer market, United have encountered more issues.
A’s Late Rally Falls Short as Marlins Complete the Sweep
A’s Pitching Continues to be Problematic
Mets franchise legend tabbed as favorite to be new manager amid Alex Cora problem
The favorite to be the Mets' new manager is a familiar face.
Real Madrid forward Rodrygo delivers hopeful recovery update
Physical issues and injuries suffered by their players has been one of the most significant problems that Real Madrid have faced in the last few years, and this problem has undoubtedly played a role i...
Hear me out, GTA 6's graphics might be too good
Rockstar's next open world looks staggering. But sometimes in gaming, realism can create its own problems.
The 7 Biggest Mistakes People Make In Their Wills, According To Estate Lawyers
These attorneys have seen it all, and they want you to avoid these costly legal and financial problems for your family's sake.
England boss Thomas Tuchel has created World Cup right-back problem ahead of Mexico last-16 game, says Jamie Carragher
What your feet are trying to tell you about your health
These strange or unsuspecting foot and toe symptoms can signal problems elsewhere in the body.
China says man who flew plane into Beijing skyscraper had mental health problems
Official statement offers the most detailed official account yet of the highly unusual and fatal incident in Beijing
Health forum gives East Texans steps to prevent heart disease death
Nearly 700,000 people in the U.S. died of heart disease in 2023, but experts say many cardiovascular problems are preventable.
Current Political Problems for Science Call for More than a Political Response
“In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security and they wanted a comfortable life. And they lost it all – security, comfort and freedom. The Athenians finally wanted not to give to…
The Guardian view on xenophobic violence in South Africa: anti-migrant politics can’t fix domestic problems
Editorial: Foreigners are not to blame for unemployment, crime and the state of public services. Leaders should have the courage to say so more clearly
USC Computer Science Chair Nenad Medvidović Inducted as ACM Fellow - USC Viterbi
Recognized for foundational contributions to software architecture and large-scale systems design, Medvidović reflects on research, mentorship and solving problems that matter.
Croatia criticised for ‘unambitious’ changes to 2022 science law
Croatia’s science ministry has been accused of a lack of ambition, and even incompetence, over proposed changes to the country’s 2022 science law. Critics say an opportunity has been missed to fix wider shortcomings in the research and universities system.“This law, like all the previous ones, will not significantly change the current state of science in Croatia,” Vlatko Silobrčić, a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences, told Science Business. “A small shift here and there will not have a significant impact.”The 2022 law introduced multi-year block grant financing of research, based on results, and changes intended to boost employment and career progression for researchers and lecturers. But implementation of the law has been uneven. “It became apparent that certain of its provisions were subject to different interpretations by higher education institutions and scientific institutes,” the science ministry said in its proposal for change. “This caused legal uncertainty in the system, administrative difficulties in implementation and, in certain cases, unequal treatment of teachers, scientists and students.”Most of the proposed amendments deal with technicalities in hiring and promoting staff, such as extending the committee deadlines from 60 to 90 days, or allowing applicants to cite all of their achievements and not only those since their last appointment.Both the ministry and Croatian media highlighted changes that would raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 years and allow part-time students 15 year rather than 10 years to finish their studies.The change to retirement age has been criticised for reinforcing a weakness in the system. According to Matko Marušić, professor emeritus at the University of Split, this will “allow unproductive teachers to advance and work longer, while hindering and discouraging productive ones.”A longtime campaigner for excellence-based meritocracy, he sees little hope in the new legislation. “I am not optimistic that things will improve,” he told Science Business. “As recent changes to the law in Croatia show, the legal framework is becoming increasingly hypocritical and harmful.”For Marušić, who analyses Croatia's university system in a recently published book, the situation is “unfavourable and constantly deteriorating” due to the criteria used for academic advancement.“The key criterion for advancement should be scientific productivity,” he said. “In Croatia [. . .] scientific criteria are increasingly lowered, and ineffective and absurd criteria such as waiting times for promotion and age limits for remaining in a job are promoted.” He would also like to see better criteria for the quality of teaching at universities. “In practice, teaching is not monitored or evaluated,” he said, estimating that up to a third of teaching simply does not take place. “Under the guise of university autonomy and bad laws, universities and faculties are allowed to earn additional money by increasing enrolment quotas that have nothing to do with the needs of the labour market.” Lack of ambitionDora Kršul, a reporter at Telegram.hr who covers science policy in Croatia, finds the rationale for changes “bizarre.” “The ministry responsible for supervising the uniform application of the law is changing the law because it is being implemented unevenly,” she said. “This primarily speaks to the power relationship in the sphere of science and higher education in Croatia, that is, the question arises as to who actually manages this system.”Rather than raising quality, she continued, the changes appear to be designed to help vocational and applied universities who have not been complying with the law.The Independent Union of Research and Higher Education Employees of Croatia said that the changes were “unambitious” and represent a missed opportunity for more important changes. “We think some of the changes are even negative,” it said in its statement on June 25. One of these is introduction of an “assistant” job title that allows people to be hired only for the duration of a project. Related articles: Elections to top science bodies test Croatia’s gender equality in researchSlovakia revises R&D approach to increase focus on competitivenessLatvia pilots citizen engagement in research grant evaluationsThe union’s president, Tvrtko Smital, who was part of the 15-member working group tasked with drafting the changes, told the local media there was a “worrying lack of ambition” in the process, and “lack of competence” in terms of research experience and understanding the problems in the system.“There is no clear will to deal with the problems,” said Smital, an assistant professor of marine and environmental sciences at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. “It’s a combination of unambitiousness and incompetence,” he went on, expressing his “deep frustration” with the situation. “There is no strategy, no clear thinking, and money is not being spent optimally.”Croatia’s science ministry has not responded to requests for comment.
There’s one big reason socialist voters may not get what they want
The left’s new vision is running into an old problem.
Priced out: The growing cost of live entertainment
Summer tours are trying to fill seats while keeping up with growing ticket prices. Tickets for the Ed Sheeran concert at U.S. Bank stadium are BOGO through the 4th of July, and the Mystic Lake Amphitheater is doing an offer of four tickets for $99 for select concerts. Meanwhile shows like Noah Kahan are having no problem selling tickets with high ticket prices. Music critic for the Star Tribune Chris Riemenschneider joins All Day to talk about the drama around concert tickets.
World Of Warcraft Is Finally Fixing Its Stupidest Settings Problem
I do not have time to pick up all of these Rust-Covered Blunderbusses
Severe starting pitching injuries cap the Cubs' midpoint grade
The Cubs are rolling despite massive starting rotation problems.
ASU scientists unveil new methods to extract reliable truth from imperfect data
Scientists at Arizona State University are advancing how they interpret complex, imperfect data — challenging long-standing assumptions in fields ranging from imaging to cellular biology. In two papers published in Nature Communications and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team introduces fundamentally new approaches to solving “inverse problems,” where researchers work backward from noisy observations to uncover the underlying reality.
WATCH: Obama, Harris advisor warns ‘betrayed’ Black voters could be Texas Senate candidate's kryptonite
Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is facing a problem of Black voter enthusiasm in Texas after defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett, according to party insiders.
The moment Anthropic convinced me it’s serious about science
AI Prognosis: The release of Claude Science suggests big model makers are getting serious about real science, and not just flashy problems.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore: How to improve young men’s mental health
“We need to stop treating our young men and boys as problems to be solved, and start treating them as people to be invested in,” writes Gov. Wes Moore.
Small Businesses Inherit Big Business Money Problems
Large corporations and small businesses aren’t the same. The most obvious difference is sheer scale, but the knock-on effects of that scale have
AI Should Focus on Fixing Business Problems
Automation should not replace accountability.
'Shrek 5' trailer sparks backlash over Fiona's 'problematic' transformation
Fans aren't happy about Fiona's "problematic" transformation in the latest "Shrek 5" trailer. Here's what experts say about the observations.
England maternity commissioner role would be ‘fundamentally dangerous’, says campaigner
Founder of Maternity Safety Alliance says recommendation in Amos report will not solve wider cultural problems
Netflix and Superheroes Are Having a Rough Stretch on Streaming....
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) I have a quick prediction before we start today’s article: You might see this data in future news articles. Not my specific charts or analysis, but the core trend I’ve been monitoring—Netflix is having a lackluster Q2—will become inescapable. Often, folks want to know “What does the data say?” Well, that’s what it says. I haven’t seen this analysis hit the trades really yet, but I have a feeling some other outlets are going to start making this case soon. Remember, you read it here first. You probably have read about the problems facing superhero films at the box office this weekend. Well, this week, I explore whether superheroes are dying on TV as well! And the data says: definitely maybe! We have a lot to cover in today’s Streaming Ratings Report, which covers the two weeks of 18-May and 25-May. Today, I’m just looking at TV, like Netflix’s disappointing Q2, superhero shows underwhelming, a few TV shows dropping off the charts, The Pitt finally ending its epic run on the viewership charts (and whether “view counts” change its status as one of the biggest shows of all time), all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Tomorrow, I’ve got a great rundown of the film side of things. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, Showlabs, TV Time trend data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of May 18th to May 31st, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Television - Netflix’s Q2 Slump Continues Having analyzed streaming ratings for going on half a decade, I have learned to trust my gut, but I’m always relieved when I can find actual data to back it up. For example, after a string of very popular shows like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, The Lincoln Lawyer and The Night Agent came out, week after week, in January and February, my gut wondered if Netflix had enough new and returning TV shows to sustain them throughout the year. Since then, Netflix’s post-March slate of shows has not impressed me. This week seemed to feature a potential new hit, but then, like a classic Duffer Bros. TV show, there was a twist. I speak of The Boroughs, Netflix’s latest (and last) Duffer Bros. produced show. The pitch is “Stranger Things with older actors”. And it topped the Nielsen charts: With just two weeks of viewership, The Boroughs would have been a top 25 debut show last year: But here’s the twist: Netflix has already cancelled The Boroughs! What happened? Likely a few things. First, the show didn’t do as well globally as it did in the US. As What’s on Netflix showed, it lagged behind several other shows that got cancelled. Second, its completion rate was likely low; after an initial burst of interest, it quickly dropped off on the Samba TV and Luminate charts. Third, the Duffer Bros. left Netflix for Paramount, and that may have factored into Netflix’s decision here. (Though I tend to believe that if a show is doing well, Netflix would have kept greenlighting seasons.) Still, just because I can explain why Netflix may have cancelled this show doesn’t mean I’m justifying it. In particular, as I’ve noted before, Netflix is losing a lot of their bigger shows as they reach their natural ends, and they need to replace those shows. This show had the hallmarks of a big new genre show, and it’s their biggest hit of the last few months (in the US at least), but now it’s done. Netflix’s other show this week—The Four Seasons, the second season of the “hit” show from last year—definitely disappointed. Its sophomore season had about half the viewership of the first, only 12.7 million hours. It also only had a two week run on Samba TV, and its numbers were all down on Luminate too. In other words, even with two successes, the Q2 slump for Netflix looks real: I could add to the list of disappointments: Both Lord of the Files and Man on Fire had short runs on the Nielsen charts. Running Point’s sophomore season also opened to about half its viewership, similar to The Four Seasons. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’s second season—see below—didn’t even make any of the three viewership charts I track, unlike the first season. Netflix is absolutely having a dismal second three months of 2026. If this Nielsen data is any indication, and I think it is, I think this will show up in Netflix’s engagement report, and maybe even their financial outcomes. And the rest of June doesn’t look much better. We have two hit shows coming back—Sweet Magnolias, one of their quietest big shows, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, a big hit for them in 2024—but the other big swings are limited series crime thrillers i.e. no future season potential. Like I said above, sometimes when I uncover a juicy nugget like this, other outlets end up writing very similar articles mimicking the data without credit. We’ll see if that happens this time! Share Television - The State of Superhero Shows on Streaming When I first heard the pitch for Spider-Noir—a Sony TV show on Prime Video that binge-released eight episodes first on MGM+ then on Prime Video two days later—I had my doubts. It’s a live-action Spider-Man show set in the 1930s, starring Nicholas Cage, based on a cameo of a character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. No, seriously, that’s the pitch. That could either go terrifically well or horribly wrong. Great because, Spider-Man. He’s the biggest superhero we have. I’ve seen tracking numbers that put the new _Spider-Man: Brand New Da_y as the blockbuster of the year and initial pre-sales back that up. And yet this Spider-Noir pitch feels very esoteric. (Also, the eight-episode binge release feels very “Amazon copying Netflix” again.) So what’s the data say? And what does this say about the future of superhero shows?
Cornell Yang Center for Wildlife Health awards seed funding to five conservation efforts around the globe
The CCF provides catalytic seed funding to spark pioneering applied research to advance wildlife conservation solutions. The fund prioritizes initiatives that improve the health of free-ranging wildlife and/or solve environmental problems via a One Health lens.
OpenAI sets up 'warroom' to fix Codex limit issues
OpenAI investigates Codex's usage limit depletion that's impacting some users. The company has reset user caps to address the problem.
How the Mass Shooting at Bondi Beach Shattered Australia’s Political Consensus
After the country’s most deadly act of gun violence in nearly thirty years, some politicians asked whether the real problem wasn’t gun control but antisemitism. Were they right?
Is parking a problem in downtown Marion? Business owners say no
Business owners and city leaders in Marion say there is plenty of parking downtown despite a common misconception.
Prevalence and severity of mental health problems in early-career researchers: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Nature Human Behaviour - Mental health concerns among early-career researchers are increasingly gaining attention. This preregistered systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis quantifies...
Why Rock Ya-Sin Is Poised to Replace Terrion Arnold
No matter what happens in court, the Lions have a major problem to solve—and Rock Ya-Sin may be the biggest beneficiary.
Paso Robles unveils entertainment lineup for July 4th celebration at Barney Schwartz Park
The evening's entertainment will begin at 5:30 p.m. with a performance by Garden Party, a local group playing music from the 1960s and 1970s.
Assessing the claim that the U.S. government is abandoning science
The people who do not trust science today would probably like to be able to. And the people who do trust it may simply be unaware of the problems.
RF Hacking A Ceiling Fan Via The Remote
[Sam Wilkinson] recently installed a Dreo CLF513S ceiling fan in his place — it’s cheap, well-sized, and blows air around as you’d expect it to. The only problem is that it only w…
GM hires talent from rivals to solve self-driving car problem
GM has made several key executive hires since 2025 and brought back Cruise alums to ramp up its self-driving tech development in personal cars.
City of Palms new downtown parking program: How local business react to the change
The Fort Myers City Council recently approved a change impacting parking rates at all three of downtown Fort Myers' parking garages. As it stood, visitors would receive one hour of free parking followed by a hourly rate. Now, the change has made it so visitors are entitled to two free hours followed by a hourly rate. Local business owners and managers said it's a good idea giving visitors more time to bask under the royal palms and indulge in some shopping. But one general manager points out a problem that did not start yesterday, but years prior.
Israel’s Vance problem is bigger than JD Vance
Vice President JD Vance has become the face of a Washington that no longer treats Israel as the exception to "America First."
‘We don’t see anything that was a problem.’ GOP candidate Steve Hilton reacts to Trump’s claims of election fraud in CA
Epic's Tim Sweeney Keeps Inventing Solutions To Problems That Are Already Solved
Quick, someone tell him what Discord is
Master Inventor Hoffman Turns Chemistry Into Capability | Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Christopher Hoffman has been recognized as a Johns Hopkins APL Master Inventor, a distinction earned through a career spent asking a simple question: What can chemistry can do to solve a real-world problem?
How to Keep Your Skin Healthy and Hydrated in Summer Months
From sunburns to heat rashes, board-certified Dr. Angela Lamb joins TODAY with solutions for common summer skin problems.
Real Madrid’s summer spending spree creates unexpected Champions League problem
Real Madrid have been one of the busiest clubs in the transfer market, but their impressive recruitment spree may have created a technical issue.Notably, Jose Mourinho has already welcomed four new si...
The Padres have problems behind the plate
Freddie Fermin’s concussion and struggles at the plate may force the Friars to seek to acquire another catcher.
County Invites Youth, Camps To Register For ‘Mind Your Business’ July 7 - Town-Crier Newspaper
Palm Beach County’s Mind Your Business Youth Entrepreneurship Forum returns on July 7, offering a full day of hands-on learning and innovation for young people across the county. Now in its seventh year, the forum is designed to inspire the next generation of creators, problem-solvers and emerging business leaders. Open to youth ages 10 to […]
Caitlin Clark made the WNBA bigger. It’s still playing small
The league’s paltry one-game suspension of Alyssa Thomas after her fist to Caitlin Clark's throat barely begins to address the problem.
Serious statin side effects on muscles are extremely rare, new research confirms
Scientists created a new tool to help doctors predict a patient’s risk of severe muscle problems from taking a statin.
Injury-hit Warrington dig deep to beat Catalans
Warrington overcome injury problems to move level on points with Leeds at the top of Super League with a gutsy win over Catalans.
Making Our Own Luck
We are cross-posting a piece that former NIH official Kris Willis wrote for Macroscience. Kris is now the President and Founder of the Woodley Park Institute, for which I’m a board member. Picking winners or hedging bets? Federal science agencies have long wrestled with the question of how to ensure their billions of dollars of grants and contracts result in maximum benefits for Americans. On the surface, it might seem that a goal-oriented, interventionist style of management would be the best policy: prioritize our most pressing problems and distribute funding accordingly.This top-down strategy creates a unique hazard, though: bad choices can send resources in the wrong direction, resulting in slow progress that impedes the delivery of tangible benefits to citizens. Moreover, if decision makers pursue an applied advance when the underlying scientific principles remain poorly understood, they risk costly failures and a loss of support for the research enterprise at large. Examples include Nixon’s 1971 War on Cancer, undertaken on the premise that a cure could be achieved in less than a decade, the drive to build an operational commercial fusion plant by the mid-1990s, and the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, which failed to produce the effective treatments and prevention strategies promised by 2025. The contrasting laissez-faire approach is to hedge your bets. If the path to an advance is impossible to predict, then the wisest choice might be to distribute funding to as widely as possible. The main risk of this strategy is that spreading funding thinly may limit the resources available to the most promising research, resulting in the same negative outcomes as the interventionist approach: limited support for the most promising topics, slow progress, and delayed returns. In reality, at science agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, program managers navigate between these two extremes, setting some funds aside to target high-priority areas and using the rest to cover the widest possible range of meritorious proposals. This middle path seems like the most rational way to proceed, but it still requires making choices. How much should be set aside for high priority topics? What should those topics be? How should we define merit? Expert opinion can provide a helpful guide, but leading experts can have remarkably different opinions about what matters and what should be prioritized. Moreover, experts and administrators alike can be risk averse, giving an edge to high-profile, well-established concepts. What’s really needed is a data-driven framework to help guide decision-making, one that doesn’t simply repackage prestige or incumbency. Recognizing breakthroughs years in advance Many breakthroughs fail to attract funding or recognition at the earliest stages of development. Katalin Karikó, for example, spent years struggling to win grants for work on mRNA that would eventually win her and Drew Weissman a Nobel Prize. Similar stories can be told about Jim Allison’s groundbreaking studies leading to the development of cancer immunotherapy, Stan Pruisner’s demonstration that prions can self-replicate without DNA, or Robin Warren and Barry Marshall’s proof that Helicobacter pylori, not stress, causes ulcers. Yet at some point, the scientific community recognizes and responds to transformative breakthroughs like these. How does that change happen? And what if science funders could identify the areas that are on the cusp of a breakthrough? Those questions led my collaborators and me to study how scientists responded to past breakthroughs. Based on patterns in that data, we developed a means of predicting future breakthroughs, using biomedicine as a proof of concept. It’s worth taking a moment to describe how our approach works. Briefly, our prediction process begins by grouping the 18 million or so peer-reviewed papers in PubMed, the authoritative database of biomedical research, into roughly 50,000 unique topics. A small subset of these topics are so widely acclaimed as breakthroughs that they have been recognized with a major prize like a Nobel or a Lasker Award. We theorized that studying the development of these outliers over time, especially before they gained acclaim, was the key to identifying future instances of them. After defining topics, we chose 21 representative breakthroughs and asked what they looked like before they won prestigious prizes. To answer that question, we re-ran our topic-mapping algorithm repeatedly, winding back the clock one year each time, stringing together the years to follow the progress of each field as it grew and advanced. We found that in each case, the years leading up to a discovery followed a pattern: a burst of papers on a new, rapidly evolving topic, many of which quickly became influential. These characteristics—the percent of papers that are new, the percentage of papers that are brought in from other topics, and the influence of each individual paper—can all be measured separately for any given topic. Together, they act as a predictive signal that is detectable an average of five years before a transformative discovery is made, and up to thirty years before the discovery receives a major prize. Scanning the current research landscape for topics that display this signal allows us to predict what work will likely produce a future breakthrough. Each year we analyzed includes four or five signals, a number that appears to have remained constant across a twenty year time frame. In their classic work on the sociology of science, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar established that the desire to participate in a major discovery is an important motivator for scientists as they consider whether they should take up (or abandon) a research problem. Although further work is needed, the simplest explanation for our results is that this behavior is widespread enough to detect at scale. A foundational advance, or something like it, draws the attention of scientists and causes them to change the direction of their research. They vote with their feet, staking their own reputation and careers by publishing on and citing the new idea. That upswell of interest is the foundation of our breakthrough signal. What kind of research does our model identify as a breakthrough? After building a model based on the patterns in our 21 preselected breakthroughs, we tested it by identifying all early signals of discovery from 1994 through 1997. Of the 18 signals we found in that time period, 17 can be traced forward in time to a breakthrough. Examples include super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (see the image above), the directed evolution of proteins and enzymes (Chemistry Nobel, 2018), and sequencing the human genome (National Medal of Science, 2008). The discovery of the role of leptin signaling in obesity is a particularly interesting case study. Around 1950, scientists noticed the existence of a type of lab mouse that suffered from a unique inherited form of obesity. When given the freedom to choose their own diet, these mice ate more than normal and preferred food that was high in fat. Researchers had few clues as to why the animals overate; early experiments pointed to the existence of a soluble ob factor found circulating in the bloodstream that regulated appetite, but its identity was unknown. In 1994, Jeffrey Friedman and colleagues identified and sequenced the ob gene, noting that the protein it encoded appeared to fit the profile of a circulating factor. A year later, a trio of high-profile publications demonstrated that ob was a hormone that regulated body weight and fat deposition by regulating appetite. One of these was co-authored by Friedman, who christened it leptin from the ancient Greek word for thin. Using our model, the data from 1996 make it clear this advance would become a breakthrough. Scientists had flocked to study the biology of the new hormone, generating the flurry of new papers and citations required to produce a signal. One of these demonstrated that serum leptin concentrations reflected the amount of adipose tissue in the human body, providing clinical validation of the earlier mouse studies. Before the identification of leptin, scientists were unable to point to a specific molecule that controlled appetite and adiposity, so that it was impossible to rule out non-physiological causes of obesity; its characterization fundamentally changed our concept of weight gain. In 2010, Friedman and fellow pioneer Douglas Coleman were awarded a Lasker for the discovery. Our work also identifies breakthroughs in clinical practice and behavioral and social sciences, even though these areas are less likely to draw the attention of major prize committees. One example that falls into this category is the introduction of endovascular aneurysm repair, a minimally invasive surgical procedure for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm, a leading cause of death among Americans over the age of 65. Relative to the previous standard of care, it reduces in-hospital mortality by almost four-fold. In 2017, Timothy Chuter received the American College of Surgeons’ prestigious Jacobsen Innovation award for his multiple refinements to the technique. Another under-recognized breakthrough identified by our model is the development of standardized survey instruments to assess the quality of life for HIV+ patients. The antiretroviral cocktails introduced in the mid-1990s reduced AIDS mortality, but treatment came with serious side effects. The new evaluations showed that patients whose disease progressed had worse physical functioning than Americans with other chronic diseases, while those who were asymptomatic maintained a health-related quality of life on par with the overall US population. This evidence made it possible for patients and activists to argue that even in the absence of a total cure, and in spite of the side effects, alleviation of symptoms was a worthwhile priority for clinicians. My colleagues and I have failed to identify any significant recognition for the physicians and health policy experts who pioneered this advance, although in 2016, researchers called for the World Health Organization to set targets for good health-related quality of life as part of its framework to end the AIDS pandemic. From forecasting to funding How should science funders use our predictions? Any serious discussion of what we should do with this new capability needs to begin with an understanding of its limitations. We can’t (and shouldn’t) invest all of our resources in the small number of topics predicted to produce breakthroughs. Innovative new fields are born from existing ones; they rarely arise de novo. If funders don’t maintain a diverse portfolio, the breakthroughs of tomorrow will have no antecedents. Think of this as eating the seed corn, or killing the goose that lays the golden egg. There are also multiple goals of funding beyond basic scientific discovery, including translating discoveries into clinical practice, developing new technologies, supporting economic development, and training new scientists. The investments needed to accomplish these goals are likely different from those required to support emerging breakthroughs. Finally, we must be aware that we may not capture every instance of a breakthrough. The concept is fuzzy, and not every significant discovery is recognized with a major award. Further, breakthroughs are rare, meaning that our dataset is, by necessity, small. This makes formal estimates of accuracy challenging. Although our overall success rate appears to be high, any one signal may turn out to be a false positive. We found one apparent example: the development of the third generation COX-2 inhibitors, Vioxx and Celebrex, which were much celebrated in the early 2000s as effective but non-addictive pain relievers, meets all the algorithmic criteria of a breakthrough. Five years after it received FDA approval, researchers demonstrated that Vioxx was associated with serious cardiovascular complications, and the manufacturer voluntarily pulled the drug from the market. Celebrex remains available, although like other NSAIDs, it carries an FDA warning for increased cardiovascular risk. Decision makers who were overly focused on the breakthrough potential of this research might have wasted substantial resources nurturing an area that ultimately proved to be a failure—but so would those who relied on expert opinion at the time. That said, the potential benefits of funding the next mRNA vaccine or cancer immunotherapy years earlier than we might have are large. When we can’t assume the outcome of an action, it’s worth conducting an experiment. Can targeted support for areas that are poised to produce a breakthrough increase the return on scientific investment without cannibalizing future advances? With the necessary administrative infrastructure in place, conducting this experiment would be straightforward. First, identify all the breakthrough signals between 2018 and 2023, select half at random, and commit to a decade of investment. For biomedicine, a six year window should yield about 30 topics with the potential to produce a breakthrough. Providing strong support to half of these might be accomplished for $300 million a year. That’s roughly half of the recent annual budget of the NIH Common Fund or around 20% of the fiscal year 2025 budget for ARPA-H. After five years, then again at ten, compare to see which group — the one that was actively managed, or the control — produced more breakthroughs, and on what timescale. Although we used biomedicine as an example, the same experiment could just as well be run for physics, materials science, or any other discipline. Any attempt to undertake such an experiment should keep three points top of mind. First, we can predict the topic of future breakthroughs, but the people and vision for how to move the work forward are still important. In practice, this means success requires active program managers with the expertise to develop the science and the authority to do so, including by recruiting investigators. Second, we would be wise to learn from the failures of past attempts to fund transformative research. High among these are funding modestly repackaged work, confusing the genuinely novel with the merely unfamiliar, and relying too much on incumbent investigators. All of these risks can be mitigated by thoroughly and intelligently integrating high quality data into portfolio management. Finally, we need to have patience. Even with strong funding support, producing a breakthrough takes time. If supporting breakthroughs is the best way to nurture the birth of new fields, we also need to accurately describe and properly manage the other two stages, so that we invest wisely throughout the productive lifetime of ideas and divest once they reach the point of diminishing returns. We would benefit from more study of all of these phases, especially the transition from one to another. More research could answer questions like: When does a breakthrough become an established field? How do the availability of funding, the size and characteristics of the available workforce, and the accumulation of evidence that disagrees with prevailing models affect a field’s decline? Exactly how do old ideas give birth to new ones, and can we speed up the process? The more we understand about the dynamics of scientific progress, the better we can maximize the odds that our curiosity leads to results. I’d call that finding a way to make our own luck.
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How should European scientists respond to the US AI kill switch?
Earlier in June, Europe’s worst fears of technological dependence were confirmed when the White House ordered the AI firm Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using its leading models. This kill-switch moment crystalised anxieties in Brussels that the continent, lagging the US on the creation of leading-edge AI models, is now a technological of vassal of Washington. The shock has specific implications for European scientists and universities. Some governments are now worried that with AI being integrated into labs, Donald Trump now has his finger hovering over an off switch for European science. “Having restrictions on this tool, it can have an impact on our own research,” said France’s research minister, Philippe Baptiste, at the VivaTech conference in Paris on June 18.Baptiste, himself a former academic, said that colleagues in mathematics had recently warned him they were now cut off from leading-edge US models, risking their work. “This model is not available anymore now because of the US restriction, and for the first time this had an impact on mathematics,” a field where large language models (LLMs) are making a significant contribution, said Baptiste. So, should European scientists avoid relying on US models in the future? Or would this be a self-harming overreaction? And how is AI being used in science, anyway? What happened?On June 12, it emerged that Washington, citing cybersecurity concerns, had ordered Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using two models: Claude Mythos 5, and Claude Fable 5, a version of Mythos but with guardrails to prevent abuse. Anthropic said Washington’s concerns were overblown. But forced to follow the order, yet with no way to check who was using the models, the company suddenly shut down access for everyone, US citizens included. There’s still no agreement on how to restore broad access. But last week, Bloomberg reported that select US companies, and the US government, still had access to Mythos despite the ban, but the EU’s cybersecurity agency Enisa had been shut out. Class division of researchersIn the longer term, access outside the US should be restored, said Marcel Salathé, co-director of the AI centre at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), because a permanent restriction would be financially ruinous to US AI firms. “Even Trump will eventually budge to economic pressure,” he said.However, US AI firms might end up operating rather like banks, doing due diligence on users of their leading-edge AI models, he went on.European scientists are unlikely to fall foul of such checks, he said. But having a Chinese postgraduate in their lab, or doing a type of research the US disapproved of, could potentially result in access being denied. “It will create a sort of class division of researchers,” he said. More than frontier modelsHowever, successfully deploying AI in science is about far more than just having access to leading LLMs such as Mythos.Instead, many science-specific tools, most famously Alphafold, which predicts protein folding structures, require “far less” computing power to train than frontier models, well within the capabilities of European supercomputers, according to a recent analysis by the Arq Foundation, a Brussel-based AI think tank. Instead, tools such as Alphafold are possible because certain fields, like protein folding, weather prediction or astronomy, have large, clean, standardised datasets that can be used to train predictive models. Rather than compute, “data is the central constraint for AI for science,” the report says. For example, a less powerful physics model trained on CERN’s data “will be more valuable than the best model without certain data,” said Bengüsu Özcan, author of the report. European advantage?Europe could therefore steal a march by using its scientific data and infrastructure to create models US digital giants cannot. “They might actually match or go even beyond what these big [US] companies are doing,” said Özcan.Indeed, some European start-ups hope to create automated testing labs to create the kind of standardised data that could speed up the discovery of new materials. Materials scientists say there’s currently too little data to train models. AI scientistsHowever, even if the bottleneck for AI in science is often data, rather than compute, being at the mercy of the US for LLM access could still become a problem for European scientists. A new class of “AI scientists” based on leading LLMs is also emerging, Özcan’s report says.Unlike domain-specific tools like Alphafold, these try to automate day-to-day scientific work, by providing an overarching tool that coordinates specific models to synthesise existing literature, generate hypotheses or run analysis of data. The problem for Europe, however, is that these tools are sometimes based on US leading models. Google Deepmind’s AI Co-Scientist, for example, is built on Google’s Gemini LLM. Systematic failureThese scientific automation tools are still in their early stages, and still exhibit “systematic failures on scientific tasks,” Özcan’s report says. One of the problems is that the messy, day-to-day process of scientific discovery is largely not documented, meaning LLMs don’t have a good source of data to learn how scientists actually work. Meanwhile, some tasks, such as literature synthesis, don’t typically require access to leading edge models.However, the performance of AI scientific assistants could improve as companies such as Google pour resources into developing them. Rely on US“Unfortunately, for scientific assistants, there is not much we can do right now except rely on US frontier AI,” said Antoine Bosselut, a natural language processing expert based at EPFL. Chinese-built open models, which can run on local computers, lessening the risk of a shutdown, are touted as one alternative to US dependence. There’s also Mistral, once seen as Europe’s main AI hope, but the Paris-based company has seen its recent models fall behind in performance. But the Chinese alternatives are generally not as capable as US frontier AI models, said Bosselut, unless paired with fiddly, custom tools that allows them to act as independent agents. “Most scientists do not have the time,” he said. Don’t jump ship yetAlthough the kill switch moment is seen a warning shot for European scientists, it doesn’t mean labs should abandon US AI tools immediately. “I do not think the right response is simply to abandon US-based models and systems under the banner of sovereignty or independence,” said Mattias Björnmalm, secretary general of the Cesaer university association. “That would be an overreaction.”Related articlesEuropean sovereignty in AI requires ‘ugly trade-offs,’ say experts Robotic lab start-up makes case for €500M EU-funded materials testing facilityAI in science: is it useful? Instead, European researchers need to ask themselves whether they’re becoming dependent on technology that could be turned off in Washington, said Özcan. “They might not see this today, but they should really start asking this question,” she said. European researchers need a plan B, said Salathé. “I would recommend to every researcher, very proactively explore alternatives.”Own toolsIn addition, Björnmalm and others want European research institutions to develop their own scientific AI tools.Instead of signing AI deals with US digital giants, European universities should be using this money to create their own models, which may end up being superior for research, said Sabine Leonelli, an expert on the use of AI in science at the Technical University of Munich. “Universities in Europe seem to be happy to sign commercial contracts with US companies on the assumption [their AI tools] are better,” she said. But US frontier LLMs are typically opaque, and have been developed without independent scientific input, she said. “This is not good enough for science.”Last year, Swiss researchers released Apertus, an LLM designed to be completely transparent, from its development methods to its training data. The idea is that this makes scientific tools built on top of the model far more reproducible than with closed, commercial alternatives.“Europe needs more of this: serious capacity-building that gives researchers, universities and companies credible options,” said Björnmalm.
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