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House Republicans Step Up Scrutiny of ActBlue Over Foreign Donations
Three Republican-led committees, responding to a New York Times report this month, accused the Democratic fund-raising organization of withholding documents from a subpoena request.
New York Yankees respond after Aaron Judge called out team
The MLB regular season is in full swing, and teams are already battling early in the year. Some clubs have jumped out to hot starts. Others, however, have stumbled out of the gate. The New York Yankees entered Monday on…
Why NBC Sports' Connor Rodgers Thinks Indiana CB D’Angelo Ponds Is the ‘Perfect Fit’ for the Jets
Rogers Compares Corner’s Playstyle to Aaron Glenn
Shades of Ferguson but Carrick needs a response
Michael Carrick seemed to be taking a chapter out of Sir Alex Ferguson's play book with his ferocious attack on the decisions that went against Manchester United last night. The big question is how will they respond?
Vance Says Pope Leo Should Stay Out of U.S. Affairs
The vice president, a Catholic, defended President Trump, who had accused the pope of being too liberal and “weak on crime.”The pontiff responded that he had “no fear of the Trump administration.”
Towards better vision: WHO South-East Asia regional meeting on eye health
The WHO South-East Asia Regional Meeting on Eye Health was convened to address the substantial and persistent burden of avoidable vision impairment in the Region. South-East Asia accountsfor nearly one third of the world’s blind and visually impaired population, with cataract, uncorrected refractive error, and diabetic retinopathy contributing to more than 90 percent of cases. The meeting responded to the need for coordinated action to achieve the 2030 global targets for effective cataract surgical coverage and effective refractive error coverage, and to advance implementation of the Regional Action Plan for Integrated People Centred Eye Care. It provided a platform for reviewing progress, identifying system gaps, and strengthening country pathways to accelerate universal access to quality eye care.
Donalds says FL should counter Democrats by redistricting. That’s illegal here
Byron Donalds said “Florida needs to respond” to Virginia by redrawing Congressional districts, but partisan gerrymandering is barred here.
About His Business
Elder Kearon teaches that callings from the Lord are tailor-made for our growth and that when we respond to a call, we don’t merely fill an assignment but join the Saviour in His redeeming work.
Santee business owner arrested for allegedly threatening deputies
A Santee business owner was arrested this weekend after allegedly threatening to shoot sheriff's deputies who had responded to reports of gunshots, officials said.
Santee business owner arrested for allegedly threatening deputies
A Santee business owner was arrested this weekend after allegedly threatening to shoot sheriff's deputies who had responded to reports of gunshots, officials said.
Why Ozempic doesn’t work for everyone: Scientists just found a hidden reason
A new study reveals that popular diabetes and weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy may not work as effectively for about 10% of people due to specific genetic variants. These individuals appear to have a puzzling condition called “GLP-1 resistance,” where their bodies produce higher levels of the hormone targeted by these drugs—but don’t respond to it properly.
Childers never doubted Victory Lane return: 'Not a chance in hell'
Rodney Childers, crew chief for Zilisch and JRM's No. 1 Chevrolet, responds when asked if he ever doubted he'd make it to Victory Lane again.
Rockstar Games has confirmed it was hit by third-party data breach
The ShinyHunters hacking group is giving Rockstar Games until April 14 to respond to its threats.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Atlético Madrid ‘astounded’ by Barcelona’s refereeing complaints
The fallout from Barcelona’s defeat to Atletico Madrid continues to intensify, with the Madrid-based club now responding to the actions taken by Barcelona following the controversial encounter.After...
PS6 Pricing: 41% of Digital Foundry Viewers Would Pay $699 or More for a Next-Gen PlayStation
Over 50,000 people respond to our poll.
13 years ago, a young Rostraver mom prepared to die; the ‘super responder’ now shows no signs of cancer
In 2013, 28-year-old Kate Crawford threw herself into preparing for her death. She had a fresh diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, an estimated 18 to...
Pro-Palestinian activist refuses to condemn political violence after threat against her is foiled
After a Molotov cocktail plot against a pro-Palestinian activist was foiled, Nerdeen Kiswani refused to condemn political violence, blasting Zionist aggression.
Federal judge releases man after 2 immigration judges disobey order
A federal judge released a man from immigration detention on Thursday after two different immigration judges disobeyed his order in the same case. “At this point, the Court has granted Respondents two bites at the apple to prove detention of Petitioner was warranted,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Gordon P. Gallagher. “It will not allow […]
Police: Employee seriously injured in fight at Danville business
DANVILLE, Ind. — Danville police responded to a fight at a business Friday that left an employee with “significant” head injuries. Officers with the Danville Metropolitan Police D…
How Trump’s ‘wall of noise’ is changing Australian politics – Back to Back Barries podcast
Tony Barry and Barrie Cassidy discuss the fragile ceasefire in Iran and the pressure building on Australian politicians to respond to Donald Trump’s escalating rhetoric.
Blaise Ingoglia distributes $1.4M in grants to Gulf Coast emergency workers
The latest round of check distribution for first responders amounts to more than $28M combined granted in the past year.
Need to fill your pool? New business comes to Austintown
The family-owned business delivers water, not just for pools, but for hot tubs and ponds as well.
What will bring visitors back to the Science Museum of Minnesota?
The Science Museum of Minnesota is drawing half the number of visitors it did compared to before the COVID 19 pandemic. Coming up at 9 a.m. on Thursday, MPR News host Angela Davis talks about how the museum is responding to the plunge in attendance and revenue.
Chicken coop-making business in Norwalk hopes to relocate
“You have families with younger kids that really want to have chickens and show their kids where their food comes from,” said Tori Pond.
Poll: Colorado Gov. Jared Polis loses support among Democrats
Gov. Jared Polis is losing steam among members of his party, particularly progressive Democrats, according to a recent poll. Other statewide Democrats also saw their favorability ratings drop, though relatively stable compared to the governor’s numbers, the poll conducted by the Colorado Polling Institute in late March said. Forty-four percent of respondents said they view […]
Responding to impeachment calls, Rick Scott likens Donald Trump to Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Harry Truman
'Democrats are insane.'
If you aren’t losing weight with GLP-1 drugs, this may be one reason why
Two genes involved in gut hormones that influence appetite and digestion may be a factor in how people respond to GLP-1 drugs, according to a new study.
Revealed – Insurance Business America’s 5-Star Wholesale Brokers and MGAs 2026
Respondents evaluated each partner against 10 criteria
Access, AI and an aging population: ‘Business Report’ examines the state of Capital Region health care
Louisiana’s health care industry is contending with a convergence of pressures—an aging population, workforce shortages, access gaps and rapid technological change—and Business Report’s annual Trends in Health Care edition examines how Capital Region providers are responding. Here’s what you’ll find: AI is reshaping how care is delivered across the Capital Region. Area health care organizations […]
Sacramento crews respond to fire at pallet yard business
The Sacramento Fire Department responded to a fire at a pallet yard on Tuesday night.
‘Best Medicine’s Abigail Spencer Ponders Louisa’s Major Decision After ‘Beautiful Offer’
Plus, her hopes for Season 2.
DA identifies man killed by Boston Police after alleged sword attack, mental health crisis
A 29-year-old Boston man has been identified as the person shot and killed by police over the weekend after he allegedly stabbed first responders with a sword during a mental health crisis.
Doctors warn that Israel is targeting Lebanon’s health care system, as it did Gaza’s
Israel has increasingly targeted Lebanese first responders and medical centers, forcing several hospitals to evacuate.
New poll reveals Spanberger's popularity is plummeting amid backlash over gerrymandering
Gov. Abigail Spanberger battles record unpopularity in Virginia with 46% disapproval, the lowest rating for a governor since 1994, a new poll shows.
Sackets Harbor: Village & chamber respond to business owner’s Tom Homan decision
The village of Sackets Harbor and its chamber of commerce are speaking out about a business owner’s decision to refuse service to U.S. border czar Tom Homan.
Hospital in Montebello evacuated after reports of fire
Authorities responded to a fire Monday morning at a hospital in Montebello, prompting evacuations.
Protein is personal. Here's how to calculate your optimal intake
Protein is having a moment. Coffee chains are adding it into lattes. Many snack companies are labeling their products as high-protein. But how much protein do you really need? Host Marielle Segarra talks with NPR health correspondent Allison Aubrey about the different factors to consider when planning your protein intake.Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekitSign up for our newsletter here.Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at lifekit@npr.orgSupport the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekit
A Look At Sphere Entertainment (SPHR) Valuation After Guggenheim’s Bullish Update And Las Vegas Event Momentum
What triggered Sphere Entertainment’s latest move? Sphere Entertainment (SPHR) drew fresh attention after Guggenheim responded to strong quarterly results and the Sphere Experience’s Wizard of Oz performance, alongside a packed Las Vegas event schedule, with more optimistic revenue and operating income assumptions. See our latest analysis for Sphere Entertainment. Sphere Entertainment’s recent 6.18% 1 day share price return and 19.15% 7 day share price return, taking the stock to US$127.22,...
‘Unhinged madman’: US politicians react to Trump’s expletive-laden threat to Iran
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Bernie Sanders among those responding with alarm to Trump writing ‘open the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards’
Close Up: Highlighting women in history and Iowa politics
The contributions of female pioneers in Iowa's political history and their ongoing impact, and a candid conversation with CBS News Correspondent Norah O'Donnell
How Investors May Respond To Melco Resorts & Entertainment (MLCO) Liquidity Jitters Amid Premium Macau Push
In recent weeks, Melco Resorts & Entertainment reported mixed fourth-quarter 2025 results, while major banks including BofA Securities, UBS, and Morgan Stanley updated their research views on the company amid concerns over liquidity, margins, and Macau market conditions. At the same time, Melco underscored its premium positioning by highlighting eight MICHELIN Stars across five Macau restaurants, reinforcing how high-end non-gaming offerings are becoming a central part of its hospitality and...
North Shore businesses suffer in aftermath of Kona-low storms
Spring break is typically busy at Sharlyn Foo’s budget accommodations in Haleiwa. But last month, instead of welcoming surfers and families, Foo spent her days canceling reservations, refunding payments and responding to repeated calls from travelers asking whether Oahu’s North Shore was even open.
Multiple departments respond to fire at Boardman business
Multiple departments responded to a fire at a business in the Presidential Square Shopping Center Saturday morning.
Henry Winkler responds to William Shatner's offer to try to get him on 'DWTS' next season
Henry Winkler, who cut a serious rug as Fonzie on 'Happy Days,' has responded to William Shatner's offer to help him get on 'Dancing With the Stars.'
LMPD to release video Friday from officers who responded to mental health crisis call
Louisville Metro Police will release body camera video Friday from the deadly shooting of Katelyn Hall.
Advocates push for more mental health resources for first responders
Illinois leaders brainstormed ways to get more mental health resources into the hands of first responders who need them.
Scientists say BMI gets it wrong for over one third of adults
A new study suggests that one of the most widely used health metrics, BMI, may be getting it wrong for a large portion of the population. By comparing BMI classifications with precise body fat measurements using advanced DXA scans, researchers found that more than one-third of adults were placed in incorrect weight categories. Many people labeled as overweight or obese did not actually have the corresponding body fat levels, while others were missed entirely.
Flutter Entertainment NYSE FLUT Valuation Check After FanDuel Predicts Optimism And Favorable Sportsbook Results
Board change and what it might mean for Flutter Entertainment (NYSE:FLUT) Flutter Entertainment (NYSE:FLUT) has drawn fresh attention after two separate developments: a boardroom change in its compensation leadership and renewed focus on how its US-facing operations respond to recent betting trends. See our latest analysis for Flutter Entertainment. Despite fresh interest around FanDuel Predicts and sportsbook profitability when favorites lose, Flutter Entertainment’s share price has faced...
Harrisburg Police investigating shooting, robbery at local business
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM)– Harrisburg Police are investigating after someone was shot during a robbery at a local establishment. The Harrisburg Bureau of Police said officers responded to the ar…
'A considerable gamble' at 'a fragile moment'
Only Tottenham would respond to the current bin fire at the club by turning to a famously incendiary manager to put out the flames. After tens of thousands of supporters lined the streets in an act of unity, the Tottenham board split the fanbase by appointing Roberto de Zerbi. The Italian, known for his high-pressing, attacking football, arrives with a reputation that has already prompted concern from supporter groups and the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust.
Iran fires missiles at Israel and Gulf neighbors as Trump talks of winding down Mideast war
Iran responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s address to Americans on the war with new missile attacks targeting Israel and the Gulf Arab states
Group homes licensed by the Health Department drive growth — and problems
Group homes can be licensed by the Department of Human Services or, more recently, by the Department of Health. in Brooklyn Park, which has more group homes than any other city in Minnesota, those Health Department-licensed facilities appear to be responsible for an outsize number of the police calls that the city says are overwhelming its first responders.
Apple CEO Tim Cook Explains His Relationship With Trump
Apple's CEO Tim Cook has maintained a working relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, and he touched on that in a recent interview. Cook sat down with Esquire's Ryan D'Agostino to discuss Apple's 50th anniversary, but he was also asked about how he navigates the Trump administration. Cook responded by saying that "the Trump administration is very accessible". "So you can talk with them about your point of view on things," said Cook.
Faulkingham responds to alleged labor violations
Faulkingham is an outspoken critic of Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, and many of the state agencies under her control.
Will California elect a GOP governor? Democrats are panicked
Odds of the GOP grabbing both slots in the June primary aren't high, but aren't zero. Nervous Democrats ponder options like a write-in or independent candidate.
UAH Earth System Science Center scientist selected as U.S. Drought Monitor author
A University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) scientist is stepping onto the national stage to help shape how the country understands and responds to drought. Jonathan Case, a principal research scientist for the Earth System Science Center at UAH, a part of The University of Alabama System, has been selected as one of two new NASA-affiliated authors for the U.
Pete Golding responds to Dabo Swinney's tampering claims tied to transfer LB Luke Ferrelli's recruitment
Golding offered his most direct response yet to Swinney's tampering allegations
We need a credible plan for science funding in the UK
Letters: Prof Ruben Saakyan and Prof Sheila Rowan respond to Prof Charlotte Deane of UK Research and Innovation
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney apologises and seemingly rectifies life insurance situation of laid off worker with terminal brain cancer
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, has responded online to messages about an ex-employee with terminal brain cancer that was laid off last week.
How May Türkiye Respond to Israel If Provoked?
it is plausible to argue that Türkiye may eventually be subjected to direct Israeli targeting which increasingly perceives it as a threat.
Naked man breaks into Bend business, faces multiple charges
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- A 43-year-old man was arrested Saturday night after police say he broke into a business and smeared feces in two areas of the building. Jajay Allen Findley was identified as the suspect and was taken into custody. Officers responded to the location after a caller reported a naked man had forced
LMPD releases names of 2 officers who shot woman during mental health crisis call
Louisville Metro Police Department released the names of two officers who, while responding to a mental health crisis, fired shots, and a woman died.
Most say Trump administration has not done enough to ‘Make America Healthy Again’: Survey
Most Americans say the Trump administration has not done enough to “Make America Healthy Again, (MAHA),” according to a Monday poll. In the Politico poll, 52 percent of respondents said the a…
Can the CDC respond to public health threats without a director?
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with former CDC official Demetre Daskalakis about the absence of a CDC director and the government's ability to respond to public health threats.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.
Bluesky Users Respond With Overwhelming Disgust to Platform’s New AI
Bluesky's latest foray into AI isn't exactly sitting well with what appears to be the vast majority of the platform's user base.
How Target lost its nerve — and then lost its business
Under pressure, Target was beginning to respond to instability by amplifying it rather than by reinforcing its own identity.
Starmer to say Iran war means Labour’s values needed more than ever at local elections campaign launch
UK PM to chair meeting in Downing Street on how government responds to economic consequences of Iran war later on Monday
Londonderry planning officials ponder an orchard eatery plan
There are still questions needing answers as Londonderry Planning Board members continue to ponder a proposed farm to table restaurant plan that could operate at Mack’s Apples on Mammoth Road.
LMPD officers fatally shoot woman experiencing 'mental health' crisis
Two LMPD officers shot a woman while responding to a call about someone experiencing a \
At CPAC, the ‘America First’ crowd ponders giving war a chance
The Conservative Political Action Conference has been an America First gathering for years, but with President Trump pursuing war in Iran, organizers have tried to make a shift, with mixed results.
At CPAC, the ‘America First’ Crowd Ponders Giving War a Chance
The Conservative Political Action Conference has been an America First gathering for years, but with President Trump pursuing war in Iran, organizers have tried to make a shift, with mixed results.
Exclusive: Former Mets Ace Ponders Overhauled Roster
Al Leiter knows a few things about New York Mets overhauls. Leiter, who pitched for the club from 1998 through 2004 and ranks sixth in team history with 95 wins, was amongst the holdovers during a Mets overhaul following the 1998 season, which resulted in a trip to the National League Championship ...
Planned Parenthood, groups launch campaign against transgender ballot measures in Colorado
Planned Parenthood and other groups have launched a coalition to oppose two ballot measures that would ban transgender surgeries among children and require student athletes to only join sports teams that correspond to their biological sex. The two measures will appear in this year’s November ballot, setting the stage for a statewide debate over sports, […]
Why did Microsoft end 'This is an Xbox' marketing? Microsoft responds — "It didn't feel like Xbox."
Microsoft's controversial Xbox marketing campaign "This is an Xbox" was almost immediately ended after new CEO Asha Sharma came on board. Here's why.
Social workers accompanying Hemet police officers for mental health calls
Hemet police partnered with the Riverside University Health Systems to have licensed social workers and detectives respond to mental health calls.
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Your Thymus and Your Healthspan
Our thymus gland plays a central role in the development or our immune system, specifically for supporting T cell development (how these cells got their name, maturation and differentiation in the thymus) and discriminating between self and foreign, non-self antigen proteins with production of dendritic cells. As we age, our thymus gland shrinks—the process known as involution—with progressive change from spongy to fatty tissue, with loss of functionality. But this process, with respect to timeline and extent, markedly varies from one person to the next. And to make things even more complicated, our thymus gland anatomy and precise location in the chest also is highly variable. So the famous Frank Netter diagrams from the 1960s (such as at left below) don’t capture the remarkable heterogeneity that a random set of 12 chest CT scans (below at right). What I consider as 2 landmark papers in Nature this week (here and here) used AI to quantify health of the thymus in 2 large cohorts, and then correlate the metric to a broad array of health outcomes. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’m going to cover three questions: (1) How was thymus health determined by AI?; (2) How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? and (3) Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? Subscribe 1. How was thymus health determined by AI? This was accomplished by extensive work developing and validating an AI pipeline for 2 stages, the first for localization and segmentation of the thymus bed, and the second to quantify a digital marker, termed the thymic health score. There’s a lot to this algorithmic development, so I won’t go into all the details, but just provide a rudimentary outline of what was done. The 1st stage used supervised learning with 2 radiologists reviewing 2,461 chest CT scans. That work trained a 3D U-Net model to automatically identify the thymic bed’s 3D cropped region using center of mass coordinates, which reached 99.8% accuracy. The 2nd stage used a foundation model that was pre-trained with SwAV (which stands for Swapping Assignment between multiple Views), a self-supervised model, that generated a high-dimensional thymus representation of 4,096 features. That compares to the radiology reductionist and subjective scoring of 0 to 3 where 0 means the thymus is fully degenerated and fatty, and 3 is considered dense, intact glandular soft tissue. Notably, the self-supervised learning (SSL) performance was superior to supervised (AUC ~0.75 vs 0.55, respectively) reflecting the shallowness of the 0-3 classifier vs SSL’s holistic, self-taught AI. The thymic health score ranged from 0 to 100, with the highest number indexed to fully preserved thymic health. The algorithmic work extended to explainability with both Shapely value distribution, meaning the model was holistic not relying on any “magic” pixel, and occlusion sensitivity, demonstrating the model’s performance was not affected by ribs, sternum, lung tissue, but rather focused on the thymic bed directly. Below are a few saliency maps from the occlusion sensitivity that indicate the thymic bed focus, not affected by neighboring structures, using the jet color scale. Now the AI was ready for processing ~25,000 CT scans, each over 30 MB files, from the 2 large participant cohorts to provide a thymic health score, it did so in less than 14 hours, which is less than 2 seconds per scan! Share 2. How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? The two cohorts were the National Lung Screening Trial, NLST (N=25,031) and the Framingham Heart Study, FHS (N=2,581) each with baseline demographics and long term follow up of >12 years for health outcomes. From the NSLT, you can see below that increased age and body-mass index were correlated to reduced thymic health. And, overall, men had reduced thymic health scores compared with women. There are a lot of graphs in the paper for outcomes, for both the NLST and FHS cohorts. To simplify the major outcomes, below is a composite Figure with striking reduction of all-cause mortality and for the different causes of death. The results were consistent between the 2 cohorts. For example, the cardiovascular mortality hazard ratio average was 0.57 in NLST and 0.38 in FHS (weighted to be 0.53 for the aggregate). The reduction of mortality also extended to digestive diseases and pulmonary disease (data not shown below). Lung cancer incidence was reduced by 36% for high vs low thymic health (Figure below, with a panel -incidence and b panel-mortality, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, smoking status). Notably, there was a smoker’s paradox: lower incidence and improved survival for lung cancer in smokers who had a high thymus health score. Smoking was associated with lower thymic scores whereas alcohol was not. Higher thymic health was linked to higher HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower fasting blood glucose, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Inflammation biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, were elevated in the people with lower thymic health scores. In their second paper, the same team looked at the relationship between thymic score and outcomes for 3,476 patients receiving cancer immunotherapy. The non-small cell lung cancer progression-free survival was reduced in patients with low thymic health score. A parallel relationship for survival was seen for other types of cancer including melanoma, breast, and kidney with a 44% lower risk among high thymic scores (Figure). A similar pattern was seen with different immune checkpoint inhibitors. The thymus health score outperformed programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)and tumor mutation burden (TMB) assay of the tumor and was an independent prognostic marker of progression-free survival. In this dataset, a direct connect with thymus score and adaptive immune function was noted with a correlation before cancer treatment for both T-cell diversity and thymus T-cell production (a metric known as T cell receptor excision circles). Thymus Removal Study There is a highly relevant citation about thymus function before moving onto ways to rejuvenate it. In 2023, a very important study of thymus removal during cardiothoracic surgery was published, with 1146 patients undergoing thymus removal vs 1146 matched controls (mean age 55 years). The adverse outcomes for thymus removal were striking, with a 2.9 higher risk of all-cause mortality and doubling of cancer incidence, 1.5 fold increase in cancer mortality, and 1.5-fold increase in autoimmune diseases. The immune function showed marked compromise after thymus removal, as reflected by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Figure below) Share Ground Truths 3. Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? In recent months we’ve learned a lot about the process of thymus involution and the pathways by which this may be modulated. Thymus involution is primarily due to loss to thymus epithelial cells (TECs) and there are 2 subtypes with different functions: the cortical, responsible for positive selection of T cells, and the medullary, for negative selection. When adipose tissue infiltrates the thymus, thymic adipocytes are pro-inflammatory, knocking out T-cell output. Likewise, systemic inflammation, or “inflammaging,” from smoking, obesity, and chronic stress promote thymic adipocytes. Now, from preclinical studies, we know about key pathways that account for these processes. Historically, back in 2014, FOXN1 was recognized as a single master transcription factor essential for TEC function, with studies in mice with forced FOXN1 upregulation leading to thymus regeneration. That laid the foundation for potential regrowth of quiescent thymus cells. It took awhile to find pathways to accomplish this goal and to even refute its role as the master regulator. The Liver-Thymus Axis Feng Zhang and his team recently showed that injection of an mRNA vaccine to the liver encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination, factors known to support thymopoiesis (Figure), successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. However, the effect was transient. The FGF21 Story Two reports in 2025 addressed the thymus gland’s production of FGF21, a growth factor (fibroblast growth factor 21) and its control of thymus involution. This growth factor is also produced by the liver, but it doesn’t have impact on the thymus in aged rodent models. In contrast, The liver’s hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to reverse senescent TEC structural changes. Growth hormone stimulates production of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the liver and the thymus. Two small studies in human participants (TRIIM, for Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) of 6 and 50 people, respectively, treated with combined human growth hormone, metformin and DHEA, suggested the potential of slowing epigenetic aging and improving thymus mass and function. But the combination of drugs, small sample, and lack of controls make conclusions murky. Increased thymus FGF21 led to increased CD8 T cells in old mice and extended healthspan and improved physical performance. Building on the previous FOXN1 data, ablation of β-klotho, the obligatory co-receptor for FOXN1, accelerated thymic aging. The benefit to FGF21 was confirmed in a companion paper using an FGF21 knock-in mouse model showing thymus enlargement and increased TECs throughout the lifespan. (schematic Figure below). The accompanying editorial for these 2 papers speculated: “The proposed link between age-associated thymus involution and organismal aging is intriguing, and suggests we might seek to achieve systemic rejuvenation by counteracting thymic involution.” Other Factors Lessons from the Axolotl (Mexican Salamander) In an elegant set of experiments of the axolotl (Figure), known for its complete thymus regeneration after total surgical removal, mediators were identified. Surprisingly FOXN1 was dispensable. But midkine, a growth factor, appeared to be the driver, the initiator of thymus cell growth, survival, and repair. Other components that contributed were Postn+ (periostin-expressing mesenchymal niches) and Ccl19, a chemokine protein from the bloodstream. RANK and RANKL RANK (receptor activator of nuclear factor κB its ligand (RANKL) have been considered key regulators of medullary TECs. In a study of both aged mice and human thymus cell cultures, their key role was confirmed, with multiple benefits of resorting TEC function, recruitment of progenitor cells, and T cell development. Subscribe Summing Up This body of work strongly supports the health of the thymus gland as a critical regulator of human healthspan, not just a correlate or link. The new landmark studies are reinforced by the regenerative biology experimental models that have shown, via an array of mediators, that healthspan of aged mice is at least in part dependent on thymus gland function and its critical role for maintaining adaptive immunity. It sure seems that we’d be better off having an immune reservoir of naive T cells instead of a profile in older adults of exhausted, low quality, memory T cells, with a senescent phenotype. It is striking that we ignored the importance of the thymus gland for many decades. A wake-up call was the results of the thymectomy matched control study reviewed here, with the opposite of high thymic health score improved health outcomes. The convergence of AI and healthspan here is notable. The exceptional and laborious work for developing and validating (no less explaining) the AI to quantify thymus health set the foundation for probing the connect the major health outcomes in two cohorts with extensive follow-up. We’ve never had a way to meaningfully quantify the thymus gland before, so this represents important leverage of supervised, self-supervised, and transformer models. The study wouldn’t have been possible without AI. And it begs the question as to whether there are ways we can maintain our thymus at a high health score. But it’s not so simple to rejuvenate our thymus. There are multiple risks including the induction of autoimmunity, increasing the risk of cancer, and inducing a pro-inflammatory state. For example, factors that increase TEC proliferation could compromise the medulllary negative selection process and leak out auto-reactive (self-attacking) T cells. Thymic cells could be induced to proliferate, but we know, for example, that growth hormone and IGF-1 are associated with an increase risk of cancer. If thymus rejuvenation doesn’t clear out the accumulated senescent cells in older adults, then inflammation within the gland could block the production of TECs. Keeping these risks in mind, we now have identified many ways to keep our thymus healthy as we age that undoubtedly will be tested in clinical trials going forward. Ultimately, the benefit-to-risk tradeoffs will be defined. In the meantime, we have desperately needed an immunome. As I’ve stressed in multiple prior Ground Truths, we have no test in the clinic to assess a patient’s immune status! It was very encouraging for me to get an email from Hugo Aerts, the senior author of the landmark papers in the days after they were published: “I also wanted to say that your Substack on “Why We Need an Immunome” was inspiring for this work. We found it a very compelling perspective and greatly enjoyed reading it.” Just having an assessment of a person’s immune status via a chest CT scan, with millions of these performed per year, might help in guiding the right immunotherapy for cancer (e.g. more intensive, combinations for those with low thymic health scores) and help define people who are increased risk for age-related diseases of cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative. The main theme of Super Agers is that we now have many layers of data (genetics, proteins, biomarkers, organ clocks that can be integrated via multimodal AI) for us to define a person’s specific risk decades before one of these age-related diseases leads to symptoms, enabling prevention. From the new studies this week, we can add thymus health score as yet another way to understand a person’s risk, a window into their adaptive immune system and healthspan. And perhaps someday we will be able to safely rejuvenate the thymus, or maintain its health through one’s life, and use the thymus health score to monitor. NB: I wrote this post (No A.I.) A Quick Poll Loading... ********************************************************************* Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (now > 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Leave a comment Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.