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Dolly Parton’s estate files lawsuit against terminated nephew, claims he made violent threats
Bryan Seaver is accused of “threatening” his late aunt’s estate and “those associated with Miss Parton’s legacy.”
Jaguar Health Receives Fee Waivers from FDA
Company remains sharply focused on its ongoing rare disease intestinal failure global development program for microvillus inclusion disease (MVID) and SBS for crofelemer powder for oral solution, targeting an NDA filing for MVID mid-2027SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESS Newswire / September 22, 2026 / (NASDAQ:JAGX) (Jaguar) family company Napo Pharmaceuticals (Napo) today announced that the U. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Napo's request for a waiver of the fee associated with the Pres
Eye on Small Business
Andi Schreiber, founder and owner of Eye Candy Boudoir in Scarsdale. Courtesy Alison Sheehy Photography. Once largely associated with bridal
Coffee doesn’t have to keep you awake to disrupt your sleep
Caffeine may make sleep less restorative even when you fall asleep normally and stay in bed for eight hours, with EEG recordings revealing fewer of the slow brain waves associated with deep sleep. Individual sensitivity varies dramatically, meaning even caffeine consumed earlier in the day could affect nighttime recovery for some people.
This emerging treatment could help people avoid knee replacement surgery
A minimally invasive procedure called genicular artery embolization could offer a new middle ground between conservative treatments and knee replacement for osteoarthritis. By blocking tiny blood vessels associated with inflammation, GAE can significantly reduce pain, with some patients reporting little or no pain afterward. Studies suggest the benefits may last two to four years in people who respond well.
How Local Politics Influence Housing Affordability
California needs at least 2.5 million new homes by 2030, but most cities are still falling short. A new study examines whether this shortfall is associated with the politics of who lives in these cities, and how those politics determine…
DOH urges health precautions after Hurricane Lala
In the wake of Hurricane Lala, the Hawaiʻi Department of Health urges the public to be vigilant about health risks associated with heavy rains, high winds and power outages. Major storms create environmental conditions that can be detrimental to public health.
Paramount reaches deal with states to settle their case challenging Warner buyout, AP source says
A person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that Skydance-owned Paramount has reached a settlement with a group of state attorneys general that had sued to challenge the company’s...
Parental gambling linked to poorer health and educational outcomes for Australian children
New Australian research has found that risky parental gambling is associated with poorer physical health, mental health and educational outcomes among children, highlighting the need to recognize gambling ...
Research: The True Cost of Corporate Scandals? Talent.
New research tracking millions of career moves shows that corporate misconduct carries a significant hidden cost: voluntary employee departures. An analysis of 735 large public companies found that regulatory violations equal to 5% of annual revenue were associated with a 3.9% increase in departures. Turnover rises sharply when violations are geographically widespread, occur in rapid succession, or expand into new categories of misconduct. Employees who leave also tend to join companies with cleaner regulatory records, giving responsible competitors a recruiting advantage. Companies should treat compliance as a talent issue, monitor patterns of misconduct alongside attrition, and respond to violations with credible accountability to protect their workforce and reputation.
Longtime AP Florida politics reporter Brendan Farrington dies at 60
Brendan Farrington has died at 60. The veteran news reporter was known for covering Florida politics and hurricanes for The Associated Press. Farrington died Friday at his home in Tallahassee
8 common food additives linked to high blood pressure and heart disease
Common preservatives hiding in processed foods may carry unexpected heart risks, with heavy consumption linked to substantially higher rates of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Researchers identified eight widely used preservatives associated with hypertension, although the observational study cannot prove they were directly responsible.
Longtime AP Florida politics reporter Brendan Farrington dies at 60
Brendan Farrington, a veteran news reporter who covered Florida politics, hurricanes and quirkiness for The Associated Press for more than 25 years, has died. He was 60.
Longtime AP Florida politics reporter Brendan Farrington dies at 60
Brendan Farrington has died at 60. The veteran news reporter was known for covering Florida politics and hurricanes for The Associated Press. Farrington died Friday at his home in Tallahassee
Longtime AP Florida politics reporter Brendan Farrington dies at 60
Brendan Farrington has died at 60. The veteran news reporter was known for covering Florida politics and hurricanes for The Associated Press. Farrington died Friday at his home in Tallahassee
Brendan Farrington, former Florida politics reporter for the AP, dies
Brendan Farrington has died at 60. The veteran news reporter was known for covering Florida politics and hurricanes for The Associated Press.
Longtime AP Florida politics reporter Brendan Farrington dies at 60
Brendan Farrington has died at 60. The veteran news reporter was known for covering Florida politics and hurricanes for The Associated Press. Farrington died Friday at his home in Tallahassee
PA Health Department prepares to withdraw request for CDC aid amid rise measles cases
Pennsylvania Secretary of Health calls on the CDC to publicly recognize four measles-associated deaths
The Big Holes in Wearable Heart Rate Variability And Readiness Scores
On September 9th, Apple announced it was revamping its Apple Watch Health Sensing System, rolling out a Readiness score (0 to 10), and increasing the frequency of heart rate variability (HRV) outputs 24-fold. This can be viewed as upping its competition with various other consumer wearable sensors. These “readiness scores” as a composite of multiple metrics, with heart rate variability (HRV) being front and center for most. The majority of Americans are now using wearable sensors, which equates to well over 100 million adults. HRV and Readiness scores are increasingly being marketed as a measurement of autonomic nervous system health, a digital marker for future disease, a clock for biological age, and a holistic metric to promote healthspan and even longevity. (Apple also introduced a new longevity tab and “Health Age”.) None of this has been proven. In this edition of Ground Truths I am going to review what we know about heart rate variability and readiness scores. Heart Rate Variability HRV is the variation in normal heart cycle timing. The variability of the heart rate, the barely perceptible millisecond changes in time between consecutive heart beats (see R-R intervals in the Figure below, left panel), is due to interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic (vagal nerve) inputs. Distinct from heart rate, individuals with the same heart rate can have very different HRVs. It is a rough reflection of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity, inadequate to say whether a person’s ANS function is abnormal. For more than three decades, heart rate variability (HRV) has been measured and several studies have found an association of low HRV and clinical outcomes, particularly a link with higher all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. There have also been less well established links of low HRV to risk of early cognitive impairment, dementia, mental illness, Type 2 diabetes and substance abuse. An important reminder is that HRV is a surrogate marker without any established cause-and-effect relationship. If you increase your HRV, that doesn’t mean it will improve health outcomes. In fact, there is no hard evidence for that. All that work linking to health outcomes was done with electrocardiogram (ECG) derived HRV. Now, in the era of consumer wearables, this is getting assessed differently, by optical pulse (yes, the lights you see) plethysmography (PPG) or what is called pulse rate variability (PRV). They are not the same, as shown below (right panel) and only concordant when the delay between the ECG and pulse is kept constant, which basically means at rest. I should mention there’s also what I will call MPV, a mattress mechanical movement sensor, a derived heart rate variability, that companies like Eight Sleep use, even further away from directly measuring HRV. HRV has not one uniform measurement but many different types of quantification, such as RMSSD, the magnitude of difference between successive R-R intervals of normal sinus beats (N-N) or SDNN, the standard deviation of NN intervals, both in milliseconds. SDNN is one of the so-called frequency domain HRVs (others are LF, HF, LF/HF). Different wearable sensors use different metics; Apple has relied on SDNN and nearly all of the others use RMSSD, which is generally considered the more accurate metric. There’s also the different length of time measured, such as for a matter of minutes, all day, or an overnight’s sleep. Short measurements are especially problematic since they don’t capture enough of respiratory modulation and other factors that influence HRV. Share Ground Truths How well does HRV correlate with PRV? There are very limited studies, especially independently done. One that is commonly cited was conducted by Air Force researchers in only 13 healthy adults assessing Oura ring 3 and 4, Whoop 4.0, and Garmin Fenix 6 and showed a correlation coefficient of 0.88 to 0.97 and a mean absolute percentage error from 6 to 10%. The correlation is not a perfect 1.0, but there’s at least a fairly high level of correlation. HRV is supposed to increase during the night due to takeover of the parasympathetic nervous system, and higher during deep sleep. A recent example of my 1 week, all day “HRV,” and one during sleep is shown below. As you can see, the N of 1 data are inconsistent for the same days from different sensors (Oura, AppleWatch, Fitbit Air, and Eight Sleep) by patterns, absolute numbers, and comparison with prior days and weeks. The largest study in over 8 million Fitbit users (the old version, not Google Fitbit Air, introduced in May 2026) gives you a sense of the effect of age, sex, and the 2 different main HRV (here PRV) metrics, with RMSSD on the left and SDRR (=SDNN) on the right below. That study, from data collected in 2018, is a major outlier, since all the more recent ones are tiny with respect to sample size. Many of the companies have not had independent evaluation of their HRV, such as Eight Sleep, but have published a low standard error on their website. There are some other published studies on the correlation between HRV and PRV, but they are all small and only in healthy adults. A scoping review emphasized the lack of study in underrepresented individuals, including the aged, people of color (which affects the PPG signal), and individuals who are underweight or obese. Add the typical adult age 60 plus with one or more chronic diseases. For example, one study in over 900 adults found poor correlation of HRV and PRV, non-uniformly underestimated across many chronic diseases (cardiovascular, endocrine, neurological, respiratory, and others), concluding PRV is “an invalid surrogate for HRV.” A recent systematic review of 43 studies comparing HRV and PRV found reasonable pooled absolute standardized error (HRV as gold standard) but only 10 of the studies provided quantitative synthesis in ideal conditions. Their main conclusion was similarly cautious: “PPG-derived HRV [PRV] should not be regarded as universally interchangeable with ECG-derived HRV across all devices, populations, and recording contexts.” Factors Affecting HRV and PRV That gets me to the long list of factors that affect HRV (and PRV) besides the device, the type of measurement (RMSSD, SDNN or others), the person’s signal, the sensor site, the duration of data capture, if weighting by sleep stage is used, how artifact is processed and corrected. And this list is not complete!: Oura puts out data from their community of users (who input data) on what affects their overnight HRV. The factors currently provided are: no alcohol (increase 8%), melatonin (increase 2%, float tank (increase 2%), wine (decrease 4%), and party (decrease 14%) in overnight HRV. Must be some big parties! Subscribe What is a PRV measurement good for? It has been falsely characterized as an index of “autonomic balance” and a specific indicator of stress. A 2018 review of the studies available for HRV and its relationship to stress, not using any of the current wearables, found that stress can lower HRV. But so can many other factors. The non-specificity of the signal, indexed to the table above, is striking. Evidence from a UK Biobank study of over 46,000 participants with actual HRV looked at genetically predicted HRV, a genetic risk score, that failed to show the expected HRV-mortality link, indicating that _HRV is likely not causa_l, but rather a reflection of person’s physiologic state. A review of consumer wearable HRV data from 5 longitudinal studies showed that nighttime PRV was not associated with perceived stress, and surprisingly higher HRV, in the largest cohort (N=717 participants), was correlated with higher stress. An Oura ring cohort of 525 first-year college students found a link between overnight PRV and perceived stress, but that was also seen with resting heart rate, sleep, and respiratory rate. Several very small studies have examined the relationship of HRV and athletic injuries or guiding training with mixed, and predominantly negative results. HRV biofeedback training with paced breathing had no significant effect on reducing stress or raising HRV, as demonstrated with sham controlled trials. When HRV for multiple days showed a decline in conjunction with body temperature, the Oura ring published data for prediction of Covid. The WHOOP company sponsored an observational study, published in 2026, of 30,000 users for 72 weeks, without a control group, that reported reduced alcohol intake (5.8 % points) by self-report. That doesn’t tell us much, and particularly about the merits of HRV for behavioral change. If you use the same device and conditions as longitudinal trends for multiple (at least 2-3) weeks that may be the one way to get something useful from the measurements. Data for overnight sleep with minimal motion and using RMSSD is the best proxy for real HRV. The reason to look at trends rather than any given night is that it more likely represents something, even though you won’t know with certainty what the “it” is. Keep in mind there are no data, no peer-reviewed evidence, to show that HRV fluctuation in-person has any correlation with health outcomes. Share Readiness Scores These are proprietary scores that integrate different metrics for each of the wearables: no algorithms have been disclosed. They are unvalidated against health outcomes. In a review of 14 composite health scores of readiness and recovery, HRV contributed 86% to the scores, followed by reading heart rate (79%), physical activity and sleep duration (both at 71%). That review noted the substantial variability in measurement protools and lack of standardization. Sleep staging is notoriously inconsistent and inaccurate by these sensors, which adds further to the HRV uncertainties for what the scores, which use sleep stage data, mean. Only resting heart rate has been shown consistently across devices to be extremely accurate. I’ve made a Table to summarize what we know about which metrics are included, the scores, any peer-reviewed studies that compared the readiness score with health outcomes, and the corresponding (if any, NA-not available) citation. You will note that some companies do not use the term “readiness," such as WHOOP for recovery, and Garmin, which has 2 different scores, one of which is Body Battery. Eight Sleep uses the term “Fitness Score.” They all include HRV; Apple includes a new metric they call “Recovery HRV” which among other components uses 7-days of sleep, but it is unclear what this means or how it is differentiated from other scores (there are clearly no data for outcomes). We have no knowledge of how the different components are weighted or whether any of these scores are better than resting heart rate, HRV alone, physical activity, or any other single metric. Since none of these are standardized, they are not interchangeable, so if you get a 90 for Oura that has no relationship to a 90 on a Google Fitbit Air. Notably, the company can update its algorithm for readiness score at any point without notification to device users. Without any useful evidence of actionability for these scores or established relationship with health outcomes, it is hard to make a case for their value. At the Apple recent announcement they showed their Readiness score (0-10) on the watch (Figure below) but there are no published data on this score, not even on their website. It’s available only on their new Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4 [of course, ;-)]. That exemplifies the problems with these scores, lack of data and evidence for being meaningful to promote health. Perhaps the best study (which isn’t saying much) is the WHOOP Recovery for golfer performance, because it did correlate with an objective outcome, even though there was no control group and the authors were all from the company. Among the 389 pro golfers, an absolute 10-per cent point increase in Recovery score was associated with about 0.5 fewer strokes per round. But that’s hardly a health outcome! WHOOP is also conducting a study in over 2,700 runners to see if their recovery score will be linked to less injuries and improved performance, but that is not yet published and has no control group or randomization. Putting This in Context For two decades I’ve been enthusiastic about the potential for digital health and particularly wearable biosensors. Over the years, we’ve seen some great progress for their ability to promote physical activity and accurately detect atrial fibrillation (the first FDA cleared deep learning AI for consumers). That work was the subject of rigorous research. But there are holes in the data and evidence for other metrics. One notable one is the “VO2 max” story that I wrote about earlier this year. At that time many subscribers asked me to cover heart rate variability, which I finally got to here. When I dived into the research and publication for HRV and readiness scores, I expected to find at least some that were of high quality and demonstrated their utility by linkage to health outcomes. To my surprise, I found none. The wearable sensor measurements for HRV (PRV) are, for the most part, accurate, but that validation work has only been done in small studies of healthy adults and does not take into account the long list of factors, from the device, software side, and the user side, that affect HRV measurements. Moreover, this metric chiefly relies on optical sensing and, as we have learned for heart rate PPG sensing, may be less accurate in people of color. Keep in mind that all of the health outcome association evidence comes from ECG-derived HRV; none are from wearable sensor data. I will repeat the key point: there's no peer-reviewed evidence to show that in-person HRV fluctuation—or efforts to raise your HRV— has any correlation with health outcomes. For those of you who look at your HRV on awakening, or even 2+ week trends of it being low, I hope this context helps to relieve any anxiety. Yes, low HRV (not PRV) has been shown to increase risk of some diseases as summarized above. But efforts to raise your HRV—a surrogate metric— has not been established for improving any health outcomes. HRV does not have any evidence of causality (the genetic evidence actually goes against this possibility). In this summary, I have not included data for other wearable sensors such as Polar, Samsung, Withings, Suunto, Amazfit, Coros, Ultrahuman, or additional mattress sensors. These are beyond my first-hand experience, and as far as I know from my in-depth review none have any peer-reviewed published data that differ from the 6 sensors I’ve reviewed here. From the points I’ve gone over above, we’re not ready for readiness scores. Besides being proprietary, they are predominantly based on metrics that have their own issues. It’s compounding the problem, like building a house without a solid foundation that has never undergone a rigorous inspection, and then selling it. Like I mentioned for PRV, you can look at trends over weeks rather than any single day, to get a handle, but even that may not be helpful. There’s simply no evidence that these scores meaningfully relate to health outcomes. I’d emphasize they might, but that requires doing prospective or randomized studies to prove it. None exist. There’s great promise for HRV/PRV utility_. For example**,**_ Prof Maiken Nedergaard, who discovered the brain glymphatics that are essential in eliminating metabolic waste products from the brain during sleep, has posited that HRV could be a non-invasive marker for neuromodulator oscillations, brain-body regulatory circuits, and brain clearance. That would be extremely useful, but like everything else on HRV and readiness scores it requires solid research and validation. The lay media isn’t helping much to get the story straight. Earlier this year The Economist published a piece entitled “The most useful indicator of your overall health” which ordained HRV as an “accumulated stress score.” That’s akin to the false assertion about VO2max: “V02 max is the singular most powerful marker for longevity.” As I’ve summarized here, that is not established. The fact is that so many things can lower HRV, including physical exercise (especially an intense workout), reduced sleep quality, stress, the list above, no less the device, signal, and software. Whatever fluctuations observed have not been correlated with any health outcome. Sadly, “datamaxxers” are widely using HRV and readiness scores that have never been validated to mean anything. We already know that for some people using the sensors for sleep metrics, it can induce “orthosomnia,” an obsession to get high sleep quality, with associated high levels of anxiety. In an experiment done by a company to promote sleep quality for its employees, “For those employees who did use the trackers, many reported feeling perfectly rested until their tracker told them they had had a terrible night. Others were told that they had slept like a baby when they had actually been lying awake worrying about the quality of their sleep. “ The same problem can result from preoccupation with HRV or readiness scores, with anxiety that would lead to further reduction in both. It you are using a wearable like >100 million American adults, it’s OK to look at these data, but contextualized with the major caveats reviewed here. If you are one to require evidence that HRV or readiness scores are linked to health outcomes, you may not even want to look. The companies make it hard to turn them off! Let me end with the companies that make and sell wearables. Apple’s doubling down on HRV (24-fold more reporting and heart rate very 5 seconds) and introduction of a Readiness score tells us that consumers have bought into these metrics and they are joining the club. However, all of this is occurring with a backdrop of tens millions of users, claims about the data that are not backed up by adequate evidence, marketing way out in front of whatever limited data exists, and not being transparent about their readiness score algorithms. The companies can well afford to do the research that is needed to connect these metrics with health outcomes show, once and for all, that increasing HRV or using readiness scores promotes our health. If they believed and invested in the products they are selling, we’d not be in this position of not knowing. That’s essentially where we are with HRV and readiness scores. Perhaps someday this will change and we’ll have good reason to embrace them. NB: I wrote this post. No AI. I have no conflicts of interest with any of its content. Loading... Ground Truths has 215,000 subscribers from every US state and 214 countries. There are over 300,000 followers of Ground Truths so more than 90,000 folks who can easily convert to be free subscribers. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. If you’re not a subscriber, please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths The proceeds from all voluntary paid subscriptions go to support our summer internship program. It enabled us to accept and support a record number of 62 summer interns that joined us in 2026! These are high school, college and medical students selected from thousands of applicants. We couldn’t do this expanded program without the funds coming in through Ground Truths. Thank you!
The escalating standoff between the CDC and Pennsylvania over measles deaths
Pennsylvania has reported fourth deaths associated with measles, but the CDC has not included them in its national total — a conflict rarely seen in public health.
Science Vs on the 49ers Substation: Anatomy of a Hatchet Job
In August, Pablo Torre Finds Out and Science Vs released an episode about my theory that electromagnetic fields from the electrical substation beside the 49ers facility may be contributing to the team’s run of soft-tissue injuries. As the originator of the theory, I was also a subject of the episode. I sat was interviewed by Wendy Zukerman and Rose Rimler of Sciene Vs. I sent them research, connected them with scientists, and spent hours digging through the City of Santa Clara’s and Silicon Valley Power’s records to help clarify critical details. Both Wendy and Rose came off as affable and professional, showing curiosity during the interviews, with Wendy going out of her way to question the “conspiracy theory” framing itself. Then they titled the episode We Solve the 49ers Viral Conspiracy Theory. I was familiar enough with their catalog that I never expected them to agree with my theory, but I did expect them to give it a fair hearing and to deliver their findings honestly. On both counts they came up short. They were not directly dishonest in anything they said, but rather in what they left out, in how what remained was cut, and in the picture painted by those two things in combination. They asked me to recorded the interview on my phone for better audio quality, and I held on to my copy for reference later. That turned out to be a fortuitous decision. Here is the raw audio of my first interview, unedited*. Only my side was recorded, so their questions aren’t on it, but you can generally infer them from the answers, and every claim I make below about what I said can be checked against my statements in this clip. (Note: Wendy had connection trouble at the beginning of the interview and was cutting in and out, which accounts for the false starts.) 0:00 -1:19:13 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Science Vs is a fun show. It is pitched at roughly a high-school understanding of science, for an audience that is skeptical, Snopes-oriented, and worried about misinformation. Take a claim circulating online, interview a supporter of the claim, interview consensus scientists, and then tell people which side of the line it lands on. I have listened to their episodes on raw milk, seed oils, 5G and other contested issues in the wellness space. I have problems with all of them, but each at least made an honest attempt to represent the actual range of scientific opinion by talking to credentialed scientists with differing perspectives. Dissenting researchers were heard from, answered, and often given a chance to respond. This episode did not do that. This article is not a relitigation of the science. I have written extensively about that already. This post is for the record. It is simply an accounting of what was wrong with their episode. Contents Is there a power plant next to the 49ers practice facility? — the clearest single example of getting something objectively wrong For the record — a high-level overview of all of the problems with their investigation Draw your own conclusions — why they had to make this episode at all What they left out about childhood leukemia — the exposure threshold, and playing games with statistics to minimize sick children What they left out about the mechanism — the body of literature they refused to cover, and evidence for the mechanism used against it The scientists Science Vs interviewed and did not air — four credential scientists who support myhe theory, recorded and cut, or not even called How they misrepresented me and my case — an answer severed from its question, and three telling edits How you would actually study the injuries — it doesn’t actually matter which team is the most injured, overall The theory: magnetic fields, oxidative stress, and collagen Since the episode never states my theory, here it is below. Those who are familiar with my work can skip this section. Electrical equipment produces magnetic fields, and those fields induce faint electrical currents in anything that passes through them, including people. My argument goes further than induced current. Mitochondria — the structures that generate a cell’s energy — run on continuous flows of electrons and protons, and those flows carry faint electromagnetic fields of their own. Maxwell’s principle of superposition shows that when two fields share the same space, they add together. An external field does not need to be strong to alter an internal field, it only needs to be present. The electron transport chain inside the mitochondria leaks a small fraction of its electrons by design, and those become reactive oxygen species — free radicals, which healthy cells use as signals. External magnetic fields cause the rate of leakage to change, increasing free radicals. When free radicals accumulate faster than the cell’s antioxidant systems can clear them, the result is oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is a recognized driver of chronic illness, including cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, diabetes and cancer, and it is in every medical school curriculum. One of its ordinary effects in connective tissue is that it switches on matrix metalloproteinases — MMPs, the enzymes that break collagen apart — while suppressing new collagen synthesis. Tendons are made of collagen. An athlete loading his soft tissue heavily six days a week is already creating oxidative stress in the tendons, so the addition of magnetic field exposure compounds the damage and inhibits repair, making him more susceptible to injury when enormous force lands on a tendon in a fraction of a second. That is the theory. We know that EMF causes oxidative stress, and we know that oxidative stress degrades collagen. The only thing missing is a study showing that direct connection. I have never claimed certainty that the substation is contributing to the elevated injury rate. I do believe it is likely, and I believe it warrants caution, and that a revenue machine like a major NFL team can easily afford to remove the exposure out of precaution. Is there a power plant next to the 49ers practice facility? Here is the clearest single instance of the problem with this episode. It requires no knowledge of electromagnetic fields at all. This story first came to me through Jon Feliciano, a former 49er, in an interview on Willard & Dibs on 95.7 The Game. Asked about why the 49ers are always injured, he said players used to joke that it was the power plant behind the practice fields. Wendy Zukerman corrects him on air. “It’s important to say that it’s not a power plant near the 49ers site.” Torre then asks her to explain the difference between a substation and a power plant. Her answer: a power plant generates electricity and transmits it to a substation, which converts the voltage into something your house can use and sends it on to your home or your business. There are two problems with that. The first is that there is a power plant on that site. The Gianera Generating Station is a natural-gas-fired peaker plant owned by Silicon Valley Power, and it has been there since 1986. I have published aerial photographs of the location from 1987 in which the gas plant is the only thing standing, before the practice facility was even there. I even mentioned the gas plant in my first interview. (Feliciano has since gone on record about this issue, and it is clear he had the substation in mind rather than the gas plant.) The second is that her definition describes a distribution substation, and the facility beside the 49ers is not that. It is the Northern Receiving Station, which takes in bulk power from outside the city’s grid and delivers it to distribution substations. Silicon Valley Power’s own map distinguishes receiving stations from substations, and Rose Rimler even reads the label out loud in the episode when she walks through that map on air. A few minutes before the map segment, Zukerman tells Torre: “like I said, we fact check everything.” Well, maybe not everything. I made a mistake On the morning of July 6th, at 10:20, I sent Rose and Wendy two studies. During the interview I had been asked which human studies show oxidative stress from electromagnetic fields, and I had not been able to name one on the spot. Rose emailed asking for the studies, I quickly searched for a couple, and I wrote that I thought these were the most relevant from that search. Unfortunately, I was busy and did not read either one closely at first. I picked them because they were topically relevant — one on substation workers, one on power plant workers. Neither were great studies, and their problems go past the ones raised in the episode. That was careless on my part. There is context that did not make the episode, though. Before that email I had been on a Zoom call with Rose talking about EMF and oxidative stress, and I pointed her to Dr. Henry Lai at the University of Washington, who has spent years aggregating the literature on this question. His tallies show that roughly 90% of studies since the late 1990s find oxidative effects from electromagnetic field exposure — hundreds of studies, systematically counted. Rose told me she was already aware of his work. So when she asked for studies, I understood her to have the aggregate view already and that she would report anything within that context. Not reading those two carefully was still a mistake, but the larger mistake was assuming the episode would be based on a thorough review of the actual body of literature, rather than on whatever I happened to send that morning. The second email At 1:49 that same afternoon — three hours and twenty-nine minutes after the first — I sent them a second email that I had been preparing for a while. It was a structured document in six numbered sections, written in response to a request they had made two weeks earlier, laying out my entire argument with citations attached to every link in the chain. The episode aired on August 13th, five weeks later, and not a single item from the second email is in it. Here is how it opens: The full email is included at the bottom of this post in Appendix B. Nearly 1,500 words in total. It contains two named mechanisms with the physics behind them. Occupational studies in humans. The literature on oxidative stress and collagen. A section addressing the strongest counter-evidence against my own theory, which I raised myself. And a closing section stating plainly what the theory cannot yet show. My entire argument, in writing, with detailed citations for every claim, provided to them five weeks before broadcast, and none of it made it into the episode. That is the single largest omission, but it is not an isolated one. The whole episode is riddled with similar problems, and the conclusion they came to is not merely a difference of opinion about the scientific evidence. Through omission and through strategic editing, Science Vs misinformed its audience — about what the evidence shows, about what I argued, and about who they spoke to. That is a notable outcome for a show whose stated purpose is correcting misinformation. For the record I am not going to tell you that Science Vs set out to discredit me, or that they had come to their conclusion before they reported the story, or that they used misleading editing to make me look like a man retreating from his own theory. I cannot know what was in anyone’s head, and I am not going to pretend otherwise, either. What I can tell you is what is on the record. They asked me for evidence and aired the weakest thing I sent. They interviewed three scientists who supported my theory and aired none of them. They discussed childhood leukemia without ever saying the exposure level at which it appears. And they took an answer I gave weeks before Ken Karipidis, the one EMF scientist who was put on air, was interviewed, and placed it directly after his critique, where it comes off as a major concession. A friend of mine who has worked as a journalist for thirty years read that last one and called it sleazy. I agree with her. Those are just the four issues that are impossible to defend as pure editorial decision, but they are not the only issues. The most glaring issues stem from what they left out: The exposure level at which the childhood leukemia association actually appears — three to four milligauss, a number the episode never states despite it being much lower than what I measured. The mechanism itself: The episode gets as far as “oxidative stress could weaken collagen,” which leaves it sounding like speculation, rather than a known pathway. The second email, and all the studies in it. Dr. Paul Héroux at McGill, whose work my proposed mechanism rests on, whose contact details I supplied, and who was never called. Dr. Beatrice Golomb at UC San Diego, who runs a research group on oxidative stress and mitochondrial function and has specific expdertice in collagen, interviewed and not aired. Dr. David Carpenter at Albany, the most prominent academic voice on the harm from magnetic field exposure, interviewed and not aired. Dr. Joel Moskowitz at Berkeley, interviewed and not even credited. The specific, testable condition I put in writing that would make me abandon the theory. My own unprompted statement of the theory’s evidentiary gap. My caveats about my own measurements. My ranking of EMF as one factor among several rather than the only one. The new equipment installed at those facilities between 2010 and 2014, and the sharp rise in system load from 2013 onward. But that is not all. What they kept, they selectively edited to serve a narrative that was not served by the raw transcripts of the interviews. A description of thousands of commercial routers in a workplace, reduced to the Wi-Fi in your house. My own acknowledgment, multiple times, that "I'm not a scientist" clipped in an episode that spends considerable energy pointing out that I am not a scientist. And a qualification I volunteered about my own measurements, cut from my answer and delivered later by their EMF expert as a correction. Together their edit produce a portrait of a wellness guy with Wi-Fi phobia and two bad studies, backing away from his theory the moment a “real” scientist looked at it. A practice facility where nothing changed because no new substation was built. Injuries written off as random because the 49ers were not quite the single most injured team in the league over the period in question. That portrait is false even though almost no individual statement made in the episode is. Draw your own conclusions At the top of the episode, Pablo Torre says his show had been flooded with requests to investigate the substation — that it was the thing they were asked to look into over and over again. Neither show went hunting for this story. It arrived from their own audience, in volume, and it could not be waved off. A thread I posted on X reached twenty-two million people. A guy with a gaussmeter and a brand-new Substack obligated a Pultizer prize winning program to spend an hour on a question about player health, that is considered fringe enough that most media operations won’t touch it. Pablo Torre Finds Out could not ignore it. So Science Vs came in and ran a “debunking” operation instead of an investigation. Everything below is what had to be left on the cutting room floor to deliver the “debunking”. They could not ignore it. So they tried debunked it instead. The demand was strong enough to force an episode, and since the episodes release the 49ers have sustained more injuries, including season ending ones, and interest has only grown. Demand from fans and playets is strong enough to force a better investigation from someone else. An omission is not a lie until you find out what was omitted. What follows is the detailed record so you can see the full picture. Draw your own conclusions. I have drawn mine. I am going to keep publishing. A note about Pablo Torre Finds Out After the episode aired I posted publicly, calling out Pablo Torre Finds Out for concerns I had about the integrity of their investigation, and about an interview directly with Pablo Torre which had been offered but never happened. I have since spoken with a producer at PTFO. The offer had rested on a misunderstanding about where things stood between us, and it fell away as the Science Vs part of the production widened past the science. He apologized for the miscommunication and I accepted. The producer also confirmed to me that they did essentially hand off the entire investigation to Science Vs for narrative purposes — so Pablo would be genuinely curious or potentially surprised by their findings — while still taking responsibility for what went out under their name. I appreciated the candor and the accountability, and I am comfortable with where we left things. So this post is not about PTFO. My disagreement is with Science Vs. What they left out about childhood leukemia Childhood leukemia appears at three milligauss. They gave no number at all. 1. They built an EMF ruler, then discussed childhood cancer without it. The sequence on air went like this: First I measured almost 9 mG, then I measured up to 50 milligauss. Torre reacts with concern — “that sounds high.” Cut to Karipidis: the public limit is 2,000 milligauss. Torre reacts again — “What happens at 2,000?” Karipidis explains that nothing happens at 2,000, that safety factors are built in. Then: at more than 50,000 milligauss you get flickers of light in the retina, and higher still, nerve stimulation. The listener now has a ruler (their ruler) to measure these numbers with. Fifty is nothing by their ruler. Then the episode turns to childhood leukemia and states, accurately, that there is a real association — but tellingly, they never give the exposure level at which that association appears. Childhood leukemia appears at three milligauss. They conveniently left that out. The pooled analyses that produced the World Health Organization’s carcinogen classification found roughly a doubling of childhood leukemia risk above three to four milligauss. That is the number that belongs in that segment, and it is more than ten times below the reading that had just been dismissed as trivial. I gave them that number myself, on tape, in the interview. Describing my own threshold, I said my comfort level for long-term chronic exposure is three to four milligauss, but preferably one. 2. Six children in thirteen million. The episode reports that these fields might explain one to four percent of childhood leukemias, then reframes it as a German estimate of perhaps six cases among thirteen million children. Torre, to his credit, is uncomfortable. What never gets explained is why that number is small. Almost no children lives above three milligauss in Europe. Fewer than two children in a hundred, in the Italian data. So even if the risk to those children doubles, the number of additional cases across an entire country stays small — not because the hazard is small, but because hardly anyone is exposed to it. Count the whole population and the few who are exposed disappear. And the reason hardly anyone is exposed is that siting rules keep housing away from transmission lines. In Europe, at least. The Dutch government has a standing precautionary policy against building new homes in any zone where the annual average magnetic field exceeds 4 milligauss — the same number the episode never mentioned. Denmark and Norway treat 4 milligauss as the level that triggers a look at mitigation. That is five hundred times below the ICNIRP figure quoted on air. The United States has no federal equivalent. That is evidence of infrastructure siting policy working. It is not evidence that there is no hazard. It is evidence that we already act as though there is one. If you listen to the raw audio you will hear that my proposed solution is EMF exposure is to build better infrastructure. What they left out about the mechanism 3. They accused me of cherry-picking, and then cherry-picked themselves. On air, Zukerman tells Torre that people who worry about electromagnetic fields dismiss the studies showing null results and collect the ones showing harm, and that this is why you have to be careful not to cherry-pick. They had two papers I had rattled off in a hurry, and a second email containing a carefully chosen set. They ran the two weakest, graded them on air, and presented the result as the state of the evidence for not only my theory, but the whole question of oxidative stress from magnetic fields. That is cherry-picking from my emails. The bigger picture is what they did with the literature as a whole. Zukerman acknowledges it exists, dismisses it, and disposes of it in a single stroke. You can go online right now, she tells Torre, and find scores of studies showing these fields increase oxidative stress. The issue, she says, is that they are not studies in people. Many of them are in people. The occupational studies in my second email are in people. That email had been in her inbox for five weeks. She waved off the literature on a factual claim that the documents in her possession contradict. (I have written separately about the evidentiary standard at work here). The effect was that they essentially baited me: ask the subject to supply the evidence, take the weakest thing he sends, and let that stand as a proxy for the whole argument. Wendy has been doing this show for ten years and clearly knows how to extract what she needs for her desired narrative. 4. They presented the collagen-improvement research as a gotcha, but I had already addressed it. The episode treats the existence of studies showing that EMF can improve collagen as a surprise that undercuts me, but I had pre-emptively addressed that five weeks earlier in the email they ignored. Those studies use measured, high-intensity pulsed dosing. The mechanism by which they work is oxidative signalling. The cell reads a controlled rise in reactive oxygen species as a warning, upregulates its antioxidant defenses, mounts a repair response, and the therapy stops before the system is overwhelmed. The key point is that it induces an oxidative response, which means those studies are actually evidence for my proposed mechanism, not against it. A field that produces a therapeutic effect cannot be biologically inert (which is the implication when they say “Nothing happens at 2,000 milligauss). Chronic ambient exposure is the same pathway with no off switch, and it is most consequential during the evening and while sleeping, when the body is in repair mode and the exposure does not stop. Section 5 of my email is titled What about the study showing improved collagen synthesis. I raised the counter-evidence myself, explained why I did not think it refuted the theory, and wrote that I was disappointed the question had not come up in the interview. That is worth holding against the cherry-picking charge in the item above: the studies they presented as inconvenient for me were studies I had gone out of my way to put in front of them. 5. Section 1 of my email stated a critical argument that was never put to the expert directly responsible for it. My email says the exposure limits exist to prevent acute effects and do not address chronic exposure at all, and that my dispute is with the entire framework. Zukerman gestures at this once. After Karipidis gives the 2,000 milligauss figure, she tells Torre that I would object because those levels do not capture “more subtle effects.” That is not my argument, and “subtle” is doing a lot of work here. My argument is that the limits are built to prevent acute effects — nerves firing, muscles twitching, etc — and were not designed to address chronic exposure at all. In fact, ICNIRP’s own documents state as much themselves. Mine is a structural objection to what the standard measures, reduced as a concern about subtlety, it becomes a matter of degree, rather than a categorical difference. They interviewed Ken Karipidis, vice chair of ICNIRP — the body that writes those limits. He was asked what the limit is, but he was never asked how it applies to chronic exposure. The scientists Science Vs interviewed and did not air 6. They interviewed four officials of the standards body. The episode credits roughly a dozen researchers. Four of them are associated with ICNIRP. Ken Karipidis is the vice chair. Rodney Croft chaired ICNIRP from 2020 to 2024 and led the development of its current guidelines. Dan Baaken is ICNIRP’s scientific secretary. Frank de Vocht sits on the Main Commission. One of them speaks in the episode. Their institution’s position is more than adequately represented — the 2,000 milligauss figure, the safety factors, the assurance that nothing happens below the line. 7. The four who were left out. Dr. Beatrice Golomb is Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego — a physics undergraduate degree, a PhD in biology, an MD. She directs a research group whose stated focus is the relationship between oxidative stress, mitochondrial function and health. That is the mechanism the episode spent its first half dismissing. Her published work includes the fluoroquinolone case series behind the FDA’s black box warning on an antibiotic class that ruptures tendons, where the accepted mechanism is oxidative stress and mitochondrial toxicity — the back half of my chain, already on a drug label. She is in the credits. She is not in the episode. She has told me she finds my theory biologically plausible, and that she has a recording of her interview. Dr. David Carpenter directed the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany for decades and is the most prominent academic voice arguing these fields cause harm. Childhood leukemia is the reason these fields carry a WHO classification at all, and Carpenter is the person you call if you want that case made by someone who has spent a career on it. He is in the credits. He is not in the episode. He has told me that when he was interviewed they could not have been less interested in what he had to say. Dr. Joel Moskowitz directs the Center for Family and Community Health at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. He told me directly that they interviewed him and that he thought it went well. He does not appear in the episode, and unlike Golomb and Carpenter, he does not even appear in the credits. Dr. Paul Héroux at McGill is the researcher whose work provides the foundation for the oxidative stress mechanism my theory rests on. I gave Rose his email address and phone number. He was never interviewed. They never even called him. 8. “He’s not a scientist.” The episode leans hard on the fact that I am not a credentialed scientist. Zukerman says it. Torre repeats it. “At all.” Having built a segment on that, they then left out the physicist-biologist-physician, the professor of public health, the director of a university environmental health institute, and the McGill researcher whose work the primary mechanism comes from. They spent the episode telling their audience I am not a scientist, and then kept four actual scientists who support the theory off because their argument does not survive otherwise. How they misrepresented me and my case 9. They played my words as a response to an interview I had never heard. Near the end of the hour, Zukerman says she went to me and told me the evidence was lacking. Then she plays me saying I am not wedded to it being an EMF, that I have staked my reputation on it needing more study, and that I am not certain of anything. That segment was placed immediately after Karipidis had finished taking the cherry-picked papers apart. It plays as a man folding under expert scrutiny. Commenters have used it against me since, but it is incorrect. Here is the sequence as it happened. I was interviewed. Karipidis was interviewed weeks later. I was never told what he said, or even who he was. I was never asked to respond to it. I did not know his name until the episode aired. That is not a simple editing decision. That is a quote from one interview, moved to follow a critique from a different interview it was not a response to, so that it would land as a concession. A friend of mine who has spent thirty years as a journalist read that sequence and called it sleazy. She is right. The full passage is reproduced in Appendix A, and it is worth reading. What airs is the preamble. Four paragraphs later I say “to directly answer your question” — and that answer, about what would change my mind if the team relocated, is not in the episode. Neither is the sentence two paragraphs on, where I say the EMF might turn out to be ten percent of the problem. I will say the underlying point again, though, because I meant it and I still do. I am not wedded to my theory that magnetic fields from the substation are contributing to the 49ers injuries. I could be wrong. What I am wedded to is the process of scientific inquiry, and the fact that we should be cautious around these exposures and we need more independently funded studies. 10. Three telling edits. They cut “I’m not a scientist” mid-sentence. What I said: “...and I am not certain of anything. I’m not a scientist. To me, I find the mechanisms compelling. I will go back to the fact that I got into this not because of the 49ers, but because of clients I was working with who suffer from EDS...” What aired: “...and that I am not certain of anything. I’m not.” The clip ends on the first two words of the sentence in which I say I am not a scientist, in an episode that spends considerable energy establishing that I am not a scientist. The full sequence is in Appendix A. They cut my own description of my work. Asked what I do, I said I run a wellness business, that I am focused on writing software to help people navigate environmental stressors, that environmental health is my focus, and that I also do independent journalism and research. What aired is the wellness business and the environmental health, with the software and the journalism removed from my own answer. The software engineering does come up later — narrated by them, as a hacker who grew up to write firmware — but my current work, in my own words, arrives as “wellness guy.” Thousands of commercial routers became home Wi-Fi. What I described: working at a wireless networking company surrounded by thousands of Wi-Fi routers, and a stress-induced health collapse afterward that working in that environment contributed to. What aired: Wi-Fi, the kind you have at home — reinforced by a clip of Christian McCaffrey talking about turning his router off at night. Three cuts, and every one of them makes me seem less credible. That is not a coincidence. 11. I gave them my own caveats and the test that would disprove me. In the first email I wrote that a well-designed chronic, ambient-level exposure study in tendon showing no collagen degradation, run over many months, would undercut my confidence in the theory. That is a specific, testable condition, stated in advance and in writing. There was a second interview, weeks later, which was not used in the episode, but in that I asked again for the falsification criterion to be included. What the episode presents instead is a man saying “we need more study,” which reads as a hedge, an open-ended request for the benefit of the doubt. It is the opposite of a hedge. Section 6 of my second email says, unprompted, that as far as I am aware there is not a single study showing EMF-driven oxidative stress degrading collagen in a human in vivo or in human tendon in a lab. I wrote that because it is true and because it is the first thing anyone should check. Under their standard it becomes the hinge of the entire first half, framed as something they had to surface without my cooperation. I had handed it to them five weeks earlier. And in the interview I said that my 25 to 50 milligauss readings were taken at knee level, and that these fields attenuate quickly, so by the time it reaches your head it is not that high anymore. That did not air either. The qualification arrives later, from Karipidis, as a correction. How you would actually study the injuries 12. They measured the wrong thing. The episode spends its final act on whether the 49ers are the most injured team in the NFL, finds no clean ranking, and lands on “injuries are random”. That is the wrong test. You would define the exposure — measured field levels at the facility — and the outcome narrowly: soft-tissue injuries, not a single MSK injury count that a broken finger and a ruptured Achilles both land in. Then you would compare the 49ers to themselves before and after the exposure changed, and compare that change against every other team over the same window. That controls for league-wide shifts in rules, turf and training load. It is a difference-in-differences design, and it is standard. I sent them that argument on July 28th, in writing, along with the fact that in eleven of the past twelve seasons the 49ers had finished top ten in Adjusted Games Lost. And by the episode’s own reporting, the 49ers are second in games lost to injury over the past decade, with FTN’s Aaron Schatz confirming that once you adjust for starters they come out second worst in the league — after having been one of the healthiest teams for years before that. A finding like that is where an investigation starts, not where it stops. 13. I did a lot of substation research for the episode that was never aired. I had reported that the substation next to the facility was expanded in 2014. That was wrong, and Rose Rimler and I sorted it out together. They gave me credit on air, which I appreciated, but framed it as a concession on my part to something they had found. In fact I had been investigating it myself, was uncertain before they asked, but was waiting for clarification from Silicon Valley Power. The uncertainty centered around a substation named “Esparanca” that was proposed right behind the facilities as part of the stadium construction, but now appears to never have been built. I spent days in Silicon Valley Power’s records, and did eventually reach Silicon Valley Power for confirmation and indentified the mistake myself. I also gave them highly detailed documents on what we do know about those facilities: new equipment installed between 2010 and 2014, and load growth across the system with an inflection around 2013–2014, with the Northern Receiving Station carrying the highest capacity in the system and sitting closest to the data center corridor. None of that is in the episode. I have a separate piece about it coming out soon. *I cut 2 seconds from the raw audio to remove personal information that had no connection to anything in the episode. Appendix A: the passage the clip was taken from This is the sequence from my first interview, in full. The episode uses one fragment of it. It’s tricky because my understanding is that there’s something like a 15-year half-life on collagen remodeling issues. They’re going to get a new crop of players. What I really need, though, is for the injuries to be broken down so we can see the soft tissue injuries. Right now, they’re categorized as MSK injuries, but let’s say we can actually identify them more specifically. Is that right? He was able to do that? Oh, cool. I wasn’t able to find that information. Interesting — I didn’t know that data existed. I tried so hard to get it, and I didn’t know it was available. Maybe you could connect me with that person. That would be amazing. I’m not wedded to it being an EMF, honestly. I’m not. I would say that, to a certain extent, I’ve staked my reputation on the fact that it needs more study. It’s important to look into it, and I am not certain of anything. I’m not a scientist. To me, I find the mechanisms compelling. I will go back to the fact that I got into this not because of the 49ers, but because of clients I was working with who suffer from EDS, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a tendon hypermobility issue. This condition is documented to be partially caused by oxidative stress. I’ve worked with them to mitigate their EMF exposure and have seen people improve. I think it’s a bigger story. In a way, the 49ers represent an occupational cluster with specific exposure risks. If someone would conduct a study on this, I believe we could learn a lot. Perhaps we would discover that it’s like, okay, maybe it’s 10% of the problem. I don’t know the exact number, but I think either way, conducting the study would provide valuable insights. To directly answer your question, it’s challenging for me because it’s part of a bigger story. If the 49ers move and stop having injuries, I might conclude that it was related to the substation. However, if they move and still experience injuries, I would want to analyze the nature of those injuries. Are they primarily soft tissue injuries? I don’t think it’s necessarily a case closed, but the story might lose traction at that point regardless. Three things are worth noting. The aired fragment stops immediately before the sentence in which I say I am not a scientist — the cut described in item 10. It also stops four paragraphs before the words “to directly answer your question.” What the episode plays is the throat-clearing. The actual answer, about what would change my mind, never airs. And two paragraphs in, I say the EMF might turn out to be ten percent of the problem. That is the ranking the episode says I never gave. Appendix B: the full email, July 6th, 1:39 PM Hi Rose, You asked me to send you some studies a couple of weeks ago. I apologize for the delay. I have been incredibly busy. I also wanted to give you a chance to dig in yourself, and get your own perspective before I influenced you too much with mine. That said, I do want to make sure that the actual argument is abundantly clear, so here it is! One note before I begin, there are really two separate questions here: Does the substation cause the soft-tissue injuries? That was my specific claim, and what the podcast is about. Is the theory biologically sound? Can 50/60 Hz fields at these levels do anything biological below the safety limits? Question two is why people have been calling me a conspiracy theorist. The regulatory and advisory bodies (ICNIRP, etc) maintain that anything below their exposure limits is biologically inert, and that position is broadly accepted within the mainstream, but the actual science paints a different picture. To defend my theory I’ve had to defend a much larger claim: that the advisory bodies have the biology wrong. I can’t honestly answer question 1 without first addressing that. Here’s is a simplified outline of my theory, with links to studies: 1. Advisory body thresholds for biological effects The ELF magnetic-field limits (ICNIRP’s ~2,000 mG public / 10,000 mG occupational) exist to prevent acute effects from exposure. If a magnetic field is strong enough, it makes nerves fire and muscles contract. Muscles twitch. You can see faint flashes of light in your vision. People can even feel tingling or even a shock. That happens due to Faraday’s law, which states that a time-varying magnetic field induces an electric field inside the body via the creation of Eddy currents.The standards assume that those currents do nothing below the twitch threshold. They do not consider chronic effects at all. My argument is that they are biologically active and do have chronic effects. 2. There are multipe ELF-EMF mechanisms for inducing oxidative stress. This is basic biophysics. Below are the two primary mechanisms. Simplest first. Dr. Paul Héroux of McGill has the most intuitive explanation, which rests on Maxwell’s principle of superposition: because Maxwell’s equations are linear, two sets of electromagnetic waves sharing the same space simply add together. In the interview I pictured a pebble dropped into a pond, sending out clean ripples. Then a boat motors past at distance, sending larger waves, and where they meet the ripples, the two add together and the original pattern gets distorted. In our cells, the mitochondria run on continuous currents of electrons and protons that carry their own faint electromagnetic fields. An external field from a substation, by the principle of superposition, adds to those internal currents and shifts the pattern. The electron transport chain in the mitochondria leaks a fraction of its electrons by design as reactive oxygen species (ROS), which act as signalling molecules in a healthy cell. Distorting that field increases that electron leakage, creating oxidative stress. A tiny electromagnetic interference results in a large downstream effect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844025006474 The more complex pathway is Dimitris Panagopoulos’s Ion Forced-Oscillation / Voltage-Gated Ion Channel (IFO-VGIC) mechanism. Weak, polarized, low-frequency fields force the ions (calcium, potassium, sodium) next to an ion channel’s voltage sensor to oscillate; because that force scales with the inverse cube of the distance involved, fields far below the stimulation threshold can still force the channel open, disrupting the cell’s ion balance and driving ROS overproduction (Nitric oxide and superoxide interact and produce peroxynitrite, a highly unstable cytotoxin that breaks down into free radicals). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366088934 https://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/59/5/92 https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/18/10041 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1585441/full https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3772193/ 3. Evidence of oxidative stress, in vivo, in humans from ELF-EMF There are many studies, and the strongest are occupational, which applies to the 49ers situation. 115 power-plant workers vs. 145 office controls. Serum malondialdehyde (MDA, the standard lipid-peroxidation marker), superoxide dismutase, and catalase were all significantly higher in the exposed group, and the markers rose with increasing field exposure. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3233/WOR-203244 A follow-up where they reversed the oxidative stress in power plant workers. A double-blind randomized controlled trial: 91 power-plant workers given vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or placebo for 90 days. The antioxidant groups showed reduced lipid peroxidation and raised antioxidant capacity versus controls. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32191586/ A spot-welder study: 46 welders occupationally exposed at 50 Hz, showed significantly altered red-blood-cell antioxidant enzyme activity and concluded ELF-MF “might act as an oxidative stressor… even at the recommended levels of exposure.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18504600/ A substation-specific study found oxidative stress and DNA damage https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24460415/ 4. Oxidative stress degrades collagen This half isn’t controversial at all. Oxidative stress activates the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) that break collagen down and suppresses its synthesis. Here are three example studies: Siwik et al. 2001: Oxidative stress raises MMPs and lowers collagen synthesis in cardiac fibroblasts. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11121376/ Fisher et al. 2009: Collagen fragmentation drives oxidative stress and elevates MMP-1 in aged human skin. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2631323/ Varani et al. 2006: Decreased collagen production in oxidatively aged skin. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16723701/ 5. What about the study showing improved collagen synthesis I’m glad you asked this question, and I’m bummed we didn’t get to it in the interview because it is a great question, and very important to understand. Superficially it may appear to be a refutation of my theory, but I would argue that it actually supports the underlying argument. That study used a short, high-intensity pulsed dose: therapeutic-PEMF, the same type of field used clinically to stimulate bone and tissue healing. The reason this works is because it triggers the very same biological pathways that can lead to oxidative stress. The exposure still stimulates ROS production, but done at a controlled dosage, for a limited duration it has a different effect. The cell reads the ROS as a warning signal and it upregulates its antioxidant defenses, and mounts a repair/proliferation response. The therapy is then stopped before the cell gets overwhelmed. That is essentially a hormetic response: a small dose of a stressor producing a beneficial adaptation. Two things follow: At the very least, this means the field is biologically active, which by itself undercuts the regulatory claim that these fields are inert below their thresholds. There is a wealth of literature on PEMF (pulsed EMF) bone regeneration and calcium channel signalling (which is the second mechanims in section one). Here is one. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep13856 At best, it leads us straight to my actual concern, which is that under chronic, chaotic and unregulated exposure, the cell’s antioxidant capacity gets overwhelmed, resulting in oxidative stress. There are plentiful examples of things that are beneficial at controlled doses, but harmful at uncontrolled doses. Excecise is one obvious, uncontroversial example. Botox is perhaps a more interesting example. 6. What about a study that shows EMF causing collagen degradation in humans? As far as I am aware there is not a single study showing EMF-driven oxidative stress degrading collagen in a human, in vivo, or in human tendon in a lab. There are studies involving isolated fibroblasts though, which secrete collagen. The most relevant one showed that human fetal scleral fibroblasts exposed to 50 Hz ELF-EMF showed a significant decrease in collagen synthesis and that MMP-2 expression was upregulated, which is the exact mechanism I described in section 2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3626379/ That’s it! Thanks again for the interview. Best, Peter Anthony Cowan Environmental Health · Wellness Tech · Researcher & Journalist Publisher & Editor, Living Energy Bio: petercowan.comSocial: X · Instagram · TikTokApp: sunlightis.lifePhone: [redacted]
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Carney also said that young people should be allowed to work, study and live where they want, on either side of the Atlantic. “Canadian membership of Erasmus+ would give your students and ours more opportunity to learn at some of the world’s top universities, to broaden their horizon and to build those lasting ties that will sustain our alliance,” he said.Limited exchanges with Canada are already possible, for example in the Erasmus Mundus strand of the scheme, which supports joint master’s programmes. This would be considerably increased if the country became a full associate member, a club currently limited to nations neighbouring the EU.Most favoured nation?As for the offer of associate membership of the EU, the aim would be to build “an alliance for the future to create a common prosperity and economic security base,” von der Leyen said during her state of the European Union address, also in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, on September 16.“We will work on intelligent manufacturing,” she went on. “We will create a tech alliance. We will integrate defence industrial bases. We will make the Arctic a flagship joint project. We will work on energy-critical minerals and batteries, on [artificial intelligence], quantum, cyber and economic security.”Mona Nemer, Canada’s chief science advisor, told Science|Business that the political speeches by Carney and Von der Leyen will open the door to even more scientific cooperation between Canada and the EU. She even attributed the broader political partnership to the scientific diplomacy of Horizon Europe association. “The science and research collaborations have predated this political rapprochement,” she said.While she is not part of the government decision-making process, Nemer thinks Carney’s speech in the European Parliament is more than “political posturing” and the Canadian government is likely to come up with more practical ideas for how to boost collaboration in the near future. “The prime minister mentioned Horizon [Europe] and Erasmus+, maybe there is something more concrete around this,” she said.She went on to suggest that Canada and Europe could also work more closely together on setting international standards for emerging technologies, AI safety, data sovereignty and joint research infrastructures, such as particle accelerators and marine research fleets.Nemer confirmed that science cooperation will be on the agenda at an upcoming EU-Canada summit in October. She met recently with EU ambassadors to Canada to "see where the possibilities are, to signal that there is interest."Room for expansionLike other countries outside Europe that are associated to Horizon Europe, such as South Korea, Australia or Japan, Canada is not allowed to host European Research Council (ERC) grantees. However, Canadian universities hint they would like re-open that discussion. “Canada’s participation in Horizon Europe, the world's largest research funding programme, has been a big success,” said Robert Asselin, the chief executive of U15 Canada, an umbrella body for some of the country’s biggest research universities, in a statement. “Ensuring swift re-association to the next research programme, will be vital to maintain this momentum. We would welcome efforts to explore further opportunities to collaborate with European partners, such as through the European Research Council,” he said. Related articlesHow a new multilateral defence bank could boost innovationEurope’s independence hinges on innovation, von der Leyen saysBut so far, there are no details from the Commission on how von der Leyen’s proposal would boost Canadian access to the ERC or other sensitive research calls in Horizon Europe. And it is unclear how other non-European associated countries, such as New Zealand or Australia, would react if Canada was given better access than them. The same questions may arise closer to home. “How would a new category of associate member of the EU differ from Norway’s participation in EU programmes through the European Economic Area?” asked Jan Palmowski, secretary general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities. “And how does this proposal for Canada change discussion for the UK, Norway and Switzerland for the next Multiannual Financial Framework?”Another area for discussion is how far Canadian organisations can participate in sensitive projects. “I would expect some of the most crucial issues at hand to be whether Canada can participate more closely and predictably in calls that are deemed sensitive on research security or EU preference grounds, on critical technologies, for instance,” Palmowski said. Canada’s participation in other parts of Horizon Europe, as well as the European Competitiveness Fund, might also be discussed, he added.Whatever the details, closer cooperation between the EU and Canada represents a “substantial” opportunity, according to Mattias Björnmalm, secretary general of the Cesaer university group. “Scientific excellence depends on talented people being able to work together, exchange knowledge and access complementary expertise and infrastructure,” he said. “A closer EU-Canada partnership would strengthen these conditions and provide greater certainty for long-term collaboration.”
Military blast exposure associated with long-term health conditions
Exposure to high-level blasts from incoming explosive devices or land mines among military veterans is associated with an increased risk of several conditions such as seizures, neuropathy and stroke years later, according to a study published September 16, 2026, in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Kennedy to give speech to anti-vaccine group he founded, after distancing himself for years
The health secretary’s keynote address will be the first time since 2023 that he has been publicly associated with Children’s Health Defense.
The one issue where Republicans and Democrats are unified before the midterms, according to this poll
Americans have grown more concerned about the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence over the last year, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
Is Volunteering Good for Your Health? New Research From The Cigna Group Finds a Strong Connection
/PRNewswire/ -- New research from The Cigna Group (NYSE: CI) finds that volunteering is associated with better health, stronger workplace engagement, and...
Is Volunteering Good for Your Health? New Research From The Cigna Group Finds a Strong Connection
New research from The Cigna Group (NYSE: CI) finds that volunteering is associated with better health, stronger workplace engagement, and greater connection to community. According to the company's fifth annual Vitality in America report, people who volunteer are nearly twice as likely to report high vitality, a measure of how healthy, connected, and capable a person feels. The research also found that employees who participate in employer-supported volunteer activities are significantly more li
Truth and Politics in the Age of Post-Truth
Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work. Subscribe This is an excerpt from Global Politics in a Post-Truth Era. You can download the book free of charge from E-International Relations. The term post-truth is by now so ubiquitous in describing the state of politics in the Western world and even beyond that the most pressing issue of the day appears to be about making democracy work in the era of post-truth rather than questioning the normalisation of the term itself in the first place. The critical turning point appeared to have occurred in 2016 when the term was chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘The Word of the Year.’ On its website, the Dictionary notes the transformation of post-truth from ‘being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary and connects ‘the spike in frequency’ directly with the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald J. Trump in the United States – both occurring in 2016. Paired with the noun ‘politics,’ post-truth is defined as an adjective ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the term to a 1992 essay in The Nation by the playwright Steve Tesich as he reflected on the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal and the 1990–91 Gulf War: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world (Tesich 1992, 13; emphasis added). He then continued, The Gulf War is over but the war at home goes on. The gulf between rich and destitute widens – between those of us who live in a modern post-industrial nation and those of us who live in the Third World countries of our inner cities. The present administration’s response to this internal crisis has shifted from benign to malignant neglect. The current levels of misery and decomposition of our cities and the economic gulags of our ghettos are acceptable. Since there is only so much hope to go around, there is a freeze on hope. The have-nots have now been reclassified as never-will-haves (Tesich 1992, 13). In the context of Tesich’s essay, truth includes both facts, as in what happens, and ‘moral absolutes,’ as in the ‘self-evident truths mentioned in our Constitution’ (Tesich 1992, 14). Together, these two notions of truth entail the obligation to both act and react. The two passages cited above show that even in the early post-Cold War years, Tesich was already deeply concerned that the American people are neither prepared to act on truth nor react to truth that is disconcerting, or what he calls ‘bad news’ (Tesich 1992, 12). Accordingly, Tesich’s insight as captured by the term post-truth is not that truth is irrelevant to what we know, but rather it is irrelevant to how we act. In contrast, ‘post-truth politics,’ as defined by Oxford as a term that pitches ‘objective facts’ against ‘emotion and personal belief’ such that the latter appears to have overtaken the former in shaping ‘public opinion’ and thereby, democratic politics. When Tesich’s post-truth politics and its current usage are juxtaposed, the two are in fact not identical in terms of what truth is and how it relates to politics. Against such consideration, this chapter provides a critical survey of selected historical events and theoretical considerations for the purpose of gaining a more nuanced understanding of the relation between truth and politics. Truth and Language One notable impact of post-truth politics is that language is being overtly deployed as a political weapon not only by politicians and those in power, but among the general population. It seems that once facts are irrelevant to the validity of what is being said, language becomes the platform for an all-out political contest in which what is said is no more than an act of will expressed as an assertion of power and/or an exercise in defiance. As early as in the writings of Thucydides (460–400 BCE), the vulnerability of logos – which is the human capacity for rational discourse in tumultuous times – was already noted. Thucydides belonged to a school of Greek thought which maintained that language is conventional and that the association between name and things is a result of ‘human use and habit’ rather than ‘nature or divine dispensation’ (Connor 1984, 99). The conventional nature of language means that it is incapable of providing its users with any independent criteria for judgement. In Thucydides’ study of the Peloponnesian War (431–405 BCE), the subversion of logos as seen in the manipulation of language was introduced through his account of the civil war in Corcyra (Thucydides 1972, 236-245). The war first broke out in 427 BCE between the pro-Athenian democratic faction and the pro-Spartan oligarchic faction before it spread to the rest of the Greek world. There was a general breakdown of law and order, resulting in extreme violence and death. Language underwent changes that were reflective of the events of the time. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) translated Thucydides’ description of the situation as follows: The received value of names imposed for signification of things, was changed into arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness, was counted true-hearted manliness: provident deliberation, a handsome fear: modesty, the cloak of cowardice: to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything... he that had been so provident as not to need to do the one or the other, was said to be a dissolver of society, and one that stood in fear of his adversary. In brief, he that could outstrip another in the doing of an evil act, or that could persuade another thereto that never meant it, was commended (Hobbes 1839–1845, 8: 348; Thucydides 1972, 242-243). What concerned Thucydides most was that the meanings of words are no more than linguistic conventions that require logos to support them. The Corcyrean civil war was a reminder that such capacity cannot be assumed. This is why history understood as an authentic account of what happens matters. Guided by logos, the historian’s task is ‘the search after truth’, which is established through ‘the absence of the fabulous,’ including ‘the rejection of myth and unverifiable stories’ (de Jonge 2017, 2). Thus, history plays an important role in facilitating the stability of language – without which distinctions and judgements cannot be rendered communicable. Just like Thucydides, Hobbes was a nominalist who subscribed to the view that there is no inherent meaning to words. Hobbes’ state of nature, where there is no common authority, is precisely one in which distinctions cannot be made. As Hobbes put it, there is ‘no Mine and Thine distinct’ nor is there distinction between ‘the notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice’ (1968, 188; emphasis in original). This is clearly an unsustainable condition for everyone. Behind Hobbes’ famous words that life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ is his uncompromising argument for the ‘Leviathan’, which is described by the late American political theorist, Sheldon Wolin (1922–2015), as the ‘sovereign definer’ (Hobbes 1968, 186; Wolin 2004, 238–243). Accordingly, the social contract is importantly a ‘linguistic contract’ that binds all parties to ‘general names agreed upon’ (Peters 1979, 125; Hobbes 1968, 111). Through Thucydides and Hobbes, we can identify a line of thinking that sees politics as a contestation over the use of language, which is based on shared conventions and norms. Thus understood, politics is not a collective quest for the true nature of our being or an epistemological exercise in pursuit of true knowledge. Rather, politics is about humans living with one another by finding a shared language to communicate with one another on matters that affect them all. Truth is in that sense contingent on what is being said as opposed to setting the standard for it. In other words, truth is the embodiment of shareability among us. While truth as such ensures the viability of a political entity, truth by no means represents a normative standard to adjudicate among contesting actors in what they say, let alone in what they do. During Thucydides’ times, ancient China was also experiencing a tumultuous time as the ruling Zhou dynasty deteriorated into the period of the Warring States (481–221 BCE). This was when the rulers of Zhou no longer presided over the territories brought under its control through conquest. Instead of professing allegiance to the Zhou royalty, the lords of these territories became kings themselves to rule over their own land. The period was one marked by endless military campaigns as each of the seven major states aimed to conquer the rest (Lewis 1999). Yet, the period was also known for its intellectual vibrancy as different thinkers challenged the restoring of order among these warring states – including offering ideas and advice to rulers on good governance. Among these thinkers was Confucius (551–479 BCE). His thought, which came to be known as Confucianism, went on to become the state ideology of China from the Han dynasty (206 BCE–222 CE) until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 when China became a republic. The founding text of Confucianism was the Analects, which is a collection of dialogues between Confucius and his students as recorded by them. One key concept Confucius advanced is the ‘rectification of names’. Though the term only appears in one exchange in the Analects, it is considered a major aspect of Confucius’ thought. Generations of Confucian scholars from past and present, including Western academics, have debated over its interpretation (Makeham 2003). The passage in question reads as follows: Zi Lu said: ‘The monarch of the state of Wei wants you to govern the country, what is the first thing you plan on doing?’ Confucius said: ‘First it is necessary to rectify the names.’Zi Lu said: ‘Is that really what has to be done? You are being too pedantic, aren’t you now? How will you rectify these names?’Confucius said: ‘Zhong You, you are too unrefined. A gentleman, faced with a matter that he does not understand, takes a skeptical attitude. If names are not correct, one cannot speak smoothly and reasonably, and if one cannot speak smoothly and reasonably, affairs cannot be managed successfully. If affairs cannot be managed successfully, rites and music will not be conducted. If rites and music are not conducted, punishments will not be suitable. And if punishments are not suitable, the common people will not know what to do. So, when the gentleman uses names, it is necessary to be able to speak so that people understand. If one can say it, one can definitely do it. A gentleman should not be careless with words’ (Analects 13:3 in Cao 2016, 148). This translation is offered by the contemporary philosopher Cao Feng. As Cao notes, the passage is what started the whole debate over ‘exactly what kind of names did Confucius... wish to rectify’ (Cao 2016, 148). Of the three major groups of interpretation examined by Cao, beginning with classical Confucian scholarship, one is arguably the most influential and certainly most pertinent to the issue of language and politics. This is the interpretation that was first associated with the Neo-Confucian master, Zhu Xi (1130–1200), who argued that the ‘rectification of names is simply the rectification of politics’ (Cao 2016, 149). Within this interpretive framework, rectification has the dual functions of correction and prescription by ensuring that predetermined hierarchical roles are strictly adhered to through following ‘the system of rites and propriety’ (Cao 2016, 151). In addition, the rectification of names entails ‘using names to rectify actuality’ (Cao 2016, 151). Yet Cao rejects this whole body of interpretive works by arguing that these were ideas developed later. Instead, Cao suggests the following: The original meaning of Confucius’ rectification of names may, then, be quite simple. Confucius did not mean to establish a concrete, normative system of “names”; rather, Confucius was simply the first person in history to realize or remark upon the importance of language in politics. As a politician, he noticed and foresaw the impact that the indeterminacy, ambiguity, and arbitrariness of names would have on politics. Confucius recognized the political consequences of language’s not accurately expressing meaning or not being accurately received by people. He realized the great role that names, as a means of distinguishing right and wrong and establishing norms, could play in society and politics (Cao 2016, 168). Scholarly debates aside, Cao’s view has the advantage of identifying an interpretation of this controversial exchange in the Analects that enables its readers to extrapolate from it the observation that the meaning of words depends as much on their users as on their interpreters; neither of which can be predetermined. Accordingly, a good ruler is someone who can speak without ambiguity to his subjects and make good his words through actions. Stated differently, Cao’s view on what concerned Confucius then, who was living through times of protracted political upheaval, is that language is an indispensable political tool for those in power and can be deployed by both good and bad rulers alike. To sum up, this historical survey shows that politics as a war of words is by no means a distinctive marker of contemporary politics nor the Western world. Be it ancient or current, east or west, language is subject to manipulation to serve political purposes and when there is an outright war of words that defies existing norms, it is indicative of a political situation in which people no longer share a language and truth becomes irrelevant. Accordingly, political order entails stability in language use. Truth and Politics As previously noted, current use of the term post-truth as an adjective to the term ‘politics’ suggests that once there was a time when politics aligned with truth. Indeed, if we start with Plato’s Republic as the key founding text of Western political thought, we see that the ideal polis (city-state of ancient Greece) is where truth and politics converge, and justice is achieved. Written around 380 BCE when Athens was still coping with its defeat by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, the Republic is a defence of the rule of the ‘philosopher king’, defined as someone who is ‘guided by the truth’ and is ‘always and in every way’ in pursuit of the truth (Plato 1974, 490a). For Plato, truth converges with virtues and hence, letting the philosopher take charge of politics is to let the wisest and the most virtuous lead the less wise and the less virtuous even if it requires compulsion (Plato 1974, 499b). In Plato’s words, ‘…until the philosophers attain power in a city there will be no respite from evil for either city or citizens…’ (Plato 1974, 501e). The uncompromising rule of philosopher-kings is made palatable by the claim that we are all ‘earth- born brothers’ with random mixtures of gold, silver, bronze and iron, but only the gold can rule (Plato 1974, 414–415). Understandably, academic debates over the interpretation of Plato’s Republic revolve around the question of whether truth as attained in philosophy can be realised in politics as action and whether such a connection is even desirable. Without getting into the details of these scholarly exchanges, I suggest that they all share the concern that truth acquired through the rigorous process of philosophical reasoning is not without problem when applied to the real world of living humans. This is because not all humans are philosophers – and indeed, in Plato’s view, not everyone is capable of becoming a philosopher given the protracted and arduous training that one needs to endure to become one. Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), a highly influential political philosopher of the twentieth century, notes that ‘Plato was the first to introduce the division between those who know and do not act and those who act and do not know’ and that such a separation has remained ‘at the root of all theories of domination’ (Arendt 1958, 223, 225). What Arendt points out in this remark is not the gap between theory and practice, but rather that Plato provides the normative ground for those who know the truth to tell those who do not know what to do. Arendt herself took on the challenge of understanding the relationship between truth and politics through her analysis of Nazism and Stalinism. Arendt’s insight, which was controversial when The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951, was to identify Nazism and Stalinism as representative of a new form of political rule – totalitarianism – making it distinct from ‘other forms of political oppression... such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship’ (Arendt 1973, 460). Arendt defines totalitarianism as a self- contained system of ideas driven by their ‘logic’ and marked by a mode of reasoning called ‘ideological thinking.’ Ideological thinking as such is a distinctive form of political reasoning defined by three characteristics. First, ideological thinking claims to provide a ‘total explanation’ of all historical happenings, encompassing the past, the present, and the future. Second, while ideological thinking is an attempt to account for ‘factual reality’ in its totality, this mode of thinking is paradoxically divorced from reality and experience. This is because experience, being rooted in specificity, is clearly limited in its claim to totality. It follows that as its third characteristic, ideological thinking aims to emancipate thought from the limitation imposed by experience through a ‘specific method of demonstration.’ The method involves arranging facts into an ‘absolutely logical procedure’ that starts from an ‘axiomatically accepted premise’. It is, in short, a ‘process of deduction from a premise’ – which is the only possible movement in the realm of logic that leads to one definitive conclusion. This is how the ‘logicality of ideological thinking’ provides the basis for total explanation and the ‘principle of action’ for totalitarian movement (Arendt 1973, 468–474). Stated differently, totalitarianism is a form of uncompromising idealism that exists in one’s head irrespective of shared reality as experienced. It is the perverse form of what Arendt later refers to as ‘rational truth’, which is the product of the ‘speculative mind’ that belongs to philosophy, mathematics and the sciences. The ‘speculative mind’ is the mind working on its way to generate axioms and theories by relying on the cognitive capacity of the human brain (Arendt 1977, 231). The presence of others has no bearing whatsoever on rational truth. In contrast, ‘factual truth’ is what happens when humans are ‘living and acting together’ (Arendt 1977, 231). Factual truth is therefore particular and temporal by definition. But more importantly, factual truth is ‘political by nature’ because it can only be validated in the context of the human community (Arendt 1977, 238). In other words, factual truth is about humans in their plurality rather than in their singularity. For factual truth to be sustainable, we need what Arendt calls ‘common sense’ – understood as ‘community sense’ (Arendt 1982, 72). There is also another distinction about truth that Arendt makes which is pertinent to understanding how totalitarianism works. The issue is whether the so-called totalitarian ideology is simply an unnecessarily cumbersome way of saying that it is an all-round and polished lie. Here, Arendt calls totalitarian ideology the ‘modern lie’ – in contrast to the ‘traditional lie’. The latter is restricted by two conditions: that it is a lie about the ‘particulars’ and that it deceives only the ‘enemy’ – which means that the liar is not engaged in self- deception. The modern lie, however, involves a ‘complete rearrangement of the whole factual texture’. It also intends to deceive everyone alike, to the extent that those who initiate the lie eventually ‘fall victims to their own falsehood’ (Arendt 1977, 249–254). This distinction between the traditional and modern lie is important. It indicates that not only is totalitarianism a lie, but the lie is in fact too big to fit into the standard meaning of the word. To tell a lie from truth, we need a common standard. In the case of a traditional lie, the common standard is precisely ‘the fabric of factuality’. As such, a lie always appears as a ‘tear’ to that fabric. Yet, modern lies require making a surrogate reality with a completely different context for facts to fit ‘without seam, crack, or fissure, exactly as the facts fitted into their original context’. Arendt notes that as long as those who concoct the surrogate reality are prepared to engage in self- deception to ‘create a semblance of truthfulness’, there is nothing to prevent ‘these new stories, images, and non-facts from becoming an adequate substitute for reality and factuality’ (Arendt 1977, 253–254). Totalitarianism therefore requires a person to stand outside of the system itself in order to make sense of it. Arendt points out that it is futile for us to argue with (for example) a Nazi or a Stalinist on race or class. To confront totalitarianism requires more than just a confrontation with specific facts. It is a more fundamental confrontation between reality as experienced and its total rejection. This means that Nazism and Stalinism are more than radical ways of conducting racial conflict or class struggle. Rather: Totalitarian politics – far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist – use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality, from which the ideologies originally derived their propaganda value– the value of struggle, for instance, or the interest conflicts between Jews and their neighbours – have all but disappeared (Arendt 1973, xv). Accordingly: The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist (Arendt 1973, 474). Who then is the ‘ideal subject’ of totalitarianism? Although there is a revival of interest in Arendt’s observation on truth and politics since the onset of post- truth politics, not enough has been said about her reply to the question (Hyvönen 2018; Klinkler 2018; Lee 2019; Zerilli 2020). Yet if we take a look at Arendt’s portrait of this ideal subject, her view is even more pertinent to our current challenge. As a self-contained system of ideas that is detached from experience, totalitarian thinking offers consistency in ways that reality cannot. Arendt notes that this kind of consistency is especially appealing to those who have lost a sense of bearing in the world (Arendt 1973, 353). They constitute what she calls the ‘masses’. The ‘mass man’ is thus a highly isolated and atomised individual, who is ‘obsessed by a desire to escape from reality’ (Arendt 1973, 318, 352). In his ‘essential homelessness’ the mass man can ‘no longer bear its accidental, incomprehensible aspects’ (Arendt 1973, 352). This longing for escape from reality is a ‘verdict against the world’ in which one is ‘forced to live’ but ‘cannot exist’ (Arendt 1973, 352). Such a situation is ripe for the ‘revolt of the masses’ against ‘common sense,’ which is ‘the result of their atomisation, of their loss of social status’ and with it, the ‘whole sector of communal relationships in whose framework common sense makes sense’ (Arendt 1973, 352). In short, the masses are people who are considered to be ‘superfluous or can be spared … [who] cannot be integrated into any organisation based on common interest’ (Arendt 1973, 311). Whether one agrees with Arendt’s analysis of the social conditions in the interwar years that led to the formation of the ‘masses’, her portrait of the ‘mass man’ is a powerful account of what can happen to an individual who has become disposable to the society that they used to belong to. Hand in hand with this phenomenon is indeed the collapse of ‘common sense’ that leaves the dislodged individual scrambling for reconnection. By offering the masses a substitute reality validated by the ‘logic of an idea’ rather than by experience, totalitarianism makes it possible for them to live in a world where there is no condition of plurality. Between ‘facing the anarchic growth and total arbitrariness of decay’ and ‘bowing down before the most rigid, fantastically fictitious consistency of an ideology’, the masses will likely ‘choose the latter’ (Arendt 1973, 352). A world created by ideology, then, is more attractive to the masses not because ‘they are stupid and wicked, but because in the general disaster this escape grants them a minimum of self- respect’ by conjuring up ‘a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself’ (Arendt 1973, 353). Moreover, it is precisely this ability to guarantee consistency that makes it possible for the leaders of totalitarian movements to demand ‘total, unrestricted, unconditional and unalterable loyalty of the individual member’ (Arendt 1973, 323). While this chapter is not a study of the social factors that led to specific contemporary developments such as the result of the Brexit referendum or the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Arendt’s ‘mass man’ seem to have found their counterparts among the supporters of Brexit and Trumpism. Studies of voters’ profiles in both events point to a disproportionate share of supporters from white male lower income backgrounds without university educations. These are individuals who have either already lost their jobs to globalisation or who are at high risk of losing their job with very little capacity to be retrained for the twenty-first century market economy of advanced industrialised states (BBC 2016; Pew Research Center 2018). In short, these displaced workers are part of the tapestry forming the modern equivalent of Arendt’s ‘mass man’ – ready to be the recruits of totalitarianism. Conclusion If we step back to take a more comprehensive approach to the relationship between truth and politics, both historically and theoretically, it is not so obvious that 2016 is a defining moment. From ancient China and ancient Greece to our so-called post-truth age, the indeterminacy of language appears to be a persistent political challenge. Language is always open to manipulation by its users to serve power. Nonetheless, the tendency these days is to single out the ubiquity of social media and the proliferation of Internet platforms as the incubator for the countless cyberwars of words that in turn fuel the real world of politics. In this context, language is no longer the conveyor of objective facts and accurate information, but rather the medium for expressing subjective opinions and feelings, as captured by the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the term ‘post-truth politics’. In contrast, the historical approach used in this chapter shows that it is in fact too easy to point the figure at the Internet and digital communication for the political challenge that we face today. What is being suggested here is that with or without the Internet, language, be it used to convey facts or emotions, is simply a tool for communication that humans have invented. While language per se cannot adjudicate what is true or not true, what is right or wrong, it embodies such capacity when language is a shared norm. That shared norm cannot be sustained without some semblance of cohesion in any given community. Any war of words, irrespective of its platform, is indicative of the breakdown of such cohesiveness. Returning to the original context in which the term post-truth politics was first used by Steve Tesich helps to identify the important distinction between truth as the standard for knowledge and truth as the standard for action. The two do not necessarily coincide. Placed in the context of the history of political thought, this distinction is in fact at the heart of Plato’s Republic. Yet when the philosopher as the quintessential bearer of truth becomes king, the polis that he rules over is far from the ideal of a just state that it purports to be. Instead, it is one that is held together by lies and coercion. What Arendt reveals through her study of Nazism and Stalinism is that it is dangerous for the kind of truth that philosophy generates – ‘rational truth’ – to become the guide to politics. Politics guided by rational truth can only be uncompromising and follows a logic of its own that cannot afford the ambiguity and indeterminacy of reality as lived experiences of humans. A world of post-truth politics can be an opportunity for a new kind of politics if it is indeed about dismantling the idea that truth is the ideal that politics should strive for. But as it stands, the post-truth politics of today is more about invoking a past that never exists to judge the presence as a crisis in naming when the real crisis is about rebuilding a shared space that has room for all – be they of the left, right or centre; cosmopolitan or parochial; civic-minded or self-centred; liberal-minded or bigoted. Politics is and always will be about striving for that space, without which no human can thrive. References Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Arendt, Hannah. 1977. “Truth and Politics.” In Between Past and Future, 227–264. New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. British Broadcasting Corporation. 2016. “Brexit vote: The breakdown.” BBC News, December 7, 2016. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38227674 Cao, Feng. 2016. “A New Examination of Confucius’ Rectification of Names.” Journal of Chinese Humanities 2: 147–171. https://doi-org.subzero.lib. uoguelph.ca/ doi/ 10.1163/23521341-12340032. Connor, W. Robert. 1984. Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press. de Jonge, Casper C. 2017. “Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Thucydides.” in The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides, edited by Sara Forsdyke, Edith Foster, and Ryan Balot. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780199340385.013.17 https://www-oxfordhandbooks-com.subzero. lib.uoguelph.ca/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199340385.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199340385 Hyvönen, Ari-Elmeri. 2018. “Careless Speech: Conceptualizing Post-Truth Politics.” New Perspectives 26 (3): 31–55. https://www.proquest.com/ scholarly-journals/careless-speech-conceptualizing-post-truth/ docview/2204515132/se-2?accountid=11233. Hobbes, Thomas. 1839–1845. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, edited by Sir William Molesworth. London: John Bohn. Vol. 8. Klinkner, Melanie. 2018. “Reasonable Truth.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 14 (3): 393–99. doi:10.1386/macp.14.3.393_7. Lee, Haiyan. 2019. “When Nothing Is True, Everything Is Possible: On Truth and Power by Way of Socialist Realism.” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 134 (5). Cambridge University Press: 1157–64. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2019.134.5.1157 Lewis, Mark E. 1999. “Warring States Political History.” In The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, edited by Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy, 587–650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Makeham, John. 2003. “Zheng ming (Rectification of names).” In RoutledgeCurzon Encyclopedia of Confucianism, edited by Xinzhong Yao. Vol. 2: 813-814. New York: Routledge. Oxford Languages, n. d. “Word of the Year 2016.” Accessed 19 August 2017. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2016/ Peters, Richard. 1979. Hobbes. Westport: Greenwood Press. Pew Research Center. 2018. “An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters.” Report, August 9, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/ politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on- validated-voters/ Plato. 1974. Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett. Tesich, Steve. 1992. “Watergate Syndrome: A Government of Lies.” The Nation: 12-14. January 6/13, 1992. Thucydides. 1972. The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. Wolin, Sheldon. 2004. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Westen Political Thought. Expanded Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zerilli, Linda M. G. 2020. ‘Fact-Checking and Truth-Telling in an Age of Alternative Facts.’ Le foucaldien 6, no. 1: 2, 1–22. Theresa Man Ling Lee is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Guelph (Canada). Lee is a political theorist who specializes in contemporary political thought. Her research and teaching areas include continental philosophy, Marxism and critical theory, feminism, postmodernism, philosophy of social science, psychoanalysis, multiculturalism, human rights, disability studies, modern Chinese political thought and comparative political theory. Lee has published on a wide range of subjects in these areas, including intercultural pedagogy and the challenges of teaching as a person with multiple minority designations in a Canadian university classroom.
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Germany’s Political Tailspin: Your Weekly SPIEGEL Recap
It might be tempting to dismiss the results of last Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt, in which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party raked in 43.8 percent of the vote, as a rather unimportant extremist blip in a state that hardly anyone can find on the map. And you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to do so. The state’s population – around 2.1 million – is a mere 2.5 percent of the German total. And while the state capital of Magdeburg was once the political heart of the Holy Roman Empire back when Otto the Great used to hang out there (more than a millenium … no … milennium … nope … millennium ago), it is today something of a backwater, albeit one with a ginormous cathedral in its center. We wanted to briefly interrupt this week’s newsletter to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of our subscribers, both new and old. And to remind you all that a free subscription gets you access to this newsletter every Saturday. A paid subscription, by contrast, gets you one DER SPIEGEL article every weekday, delivered to your inbox. We strive to select pieces that both demonstrate what Europe’s leading newsmagazine has to offer and provide an international audience – namely, you – with an insight into how Germany and Europe view the world. If you haven’t already signed up for a paid subscription, please consider doing so if you can. Our Substack channel relies entirely on reader support and we are excited to continue offering you the best of DER SPIEGEL. Subscribe But even beyond the fact that a huge percentage of the voters in the state decided to place an X next to a party with an ideological lineage that runs rather directly back to the right-wing extremist soup out of which the Nazi Party was born, the results are a perfect example of a phenomenon that has been plaguing German elections in recent years: the lack of an obvious path to a majority. Call it the Balkanization of German politics. There are a number of developments driving the phenomenon, but for the purposes of this newsletter, here are two of the most salient: Persistent voter frustration with the country’s two (former) big-tent parties – the Christian Democrats (CDU) on the center-right (17.2 percent in Saxony-Anhalt last Sunday) and the Social Democrats (SPD) on the center-left (9.3 percent). The presence of parties on the far left (Left Party), the populist left (the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – BSW) and the far right (AfD) with which mainstream parties are reluctant to form coalitions. So what happens now? Stories of the Week A Lack of Leadership The answer for many people in the country, and particularly within the CDU, is clear: pin (some of) the blame on Chancellor Friedrich Merz. According to a survey taken directly after the election in Saxony-Anhalt, 88 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that if the federal government in Berlin were doing a better job, the AfD wouldn’t be as strong. And it is true that the predominant impression of the federal government ever since Merz was sworn in on May 6, 2025, is one of ineffectiveness and bickering. His rather unique combination of bumbling-plus-bravado has also not exactly endeared him to the German public. Indeed, his standing in the country is so shaky that his popularity – according to recent polls – has now dropped even below the historic lows associated with his predecessor Olaf Scholz. The situation is such that the CDU even opted to keep him largely out of the campaign ahead of the Saxony-Anhalt vote. And since then, dissatisfied rumblings within the CDU have grown louder. DER SPIEGEL’s Swantje Karich notes that the problems with the CDU go much deeper than Merz. “The center-right has a trust problem. At a press appearance following the devastating election result in Saxony-Anhalt, Friedrich Merz said that the party wanted to ‘reach people more effectively’ through ‘emotional engagement.’ It sounded as though he were announcing a political program. On the basis of that statement, it is difficult to take his empathy seriously.” “The Chancellor’s chastened appearance did, at least, reveal where he stands: with his back to the wall. Elections will be held in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania next week, and the CDU could fare even worse there. The party is polling at between 8 and 10 percent in the state.” “What is at stake is the political tradition that has lent stability to the Federal Republic since 1945: a democratic conservatism that understands what must be preserved, but also how to embrace progress and openness to the world. If the Union continues along its current path, it risks becoming politically irrelevant after the 2029 federal election – and Germany could soon find itself with a government of the far right.” The Trumpification of Political Debate? It is often said in Germany that to understand the political and social trends that will soon be dominant in Europe, one need only look across the Atlantic to the United States. When it comes to political debate, that has certainly proven true. Donald Trump understood early on that triggering mouth-foaming outrage among Democrats is an ideal way to both generate headlines and to secure loyalty among supporters. And he realized that far more quickly than the left side of the political spectrum understood that simply ignoring the old man might be the best recipe. To be sure, there have been signs recently that the US president may be over-relying on the strategy. Earlier this week, in an apparent grandpa-discovers-AI moment, Trump sent out 60 posts in the space of 10 hours, many of them AI-assisted images portraying him as a hero – or showing Iceland as part of the US (outrageous!!!). It was also during that slew of schlock that he explicitly backed the AfD with an “MGGA” post. In Germany, though, the outrage cycle remains in full swing, with much of the focus on those who would dare to vote for the AfD. They are alternately portrayed as being dim-witted, ungrateful, backward, racist or all of the above. That, argues DER SPIEGEL columnist Sabine Rennefanz, is not particularly helpful. “Everywhere on election night, people spoke of a watershed moment, a rupture, a turning point. But what is that supposed to mean in concrete terms? A watershed would imply an interruption, a moment of pause – perhaps even a willingness to rethink and learn. At first, there was little sign of that in the main television panels. Instead, the familiar rituals that had already shaped the election campaign continued: outrage, lecturing and abuse.” “That’s just the tone, one might object. They’re only talk shows. Given that the party’s state branch has been classified by domestic intelligence officials as confirmed right-wing extremist, there are more important problems than hurt feelings on television. Yet although the condescending tone is not the cause of the AfD’s success, it is an expression of the broader mood within the so-called political center – a kind of institutional blindness that too often treats material concerns as a communications problem.” “People have a pretty good sense of whether you like them – whether you approach them with curiosity or merely study, lecture and manage them as a problem group. They notice whether you genuinely want to understand their fears and pain, or whether you are simply waiting for the chance to correct them. They can also tell whether someone still has the energy to change things, or whether they have barricaded themselves behind platitudes and empty phrases.” “Anyone who wants an egalitarian democratic society cannot promise equality only to those whose language, tastes and moral convictions they share. They must also acknowledge the wounds, resentments and fears of those whose political conclusions they consider wrong. Acknowledging them does not mean agreeing with them. But a democracy that communicates with almost half its citizens only through warnings and labels gives up on political debate before it has even begun. An atmosphere must be created in which people can express their opinions without fearing that they will be canceled. We are currently a long way from that.” East-West? One of the clear undercurrents in the election last Sunday was, of course, Germany’s ongoing east-west divide, particularly as it pertains to the success of the AfD. Historically, the party has been far stronger in the former East German states than in former West German states. The fact that this generalization no longer reliably holds is certainly one of the primary concerns that many have about the party’s growth. And yet, there is still a distinct flavor of “stupid easterners, they don’t understand democracy” to the coverage. In the weeks before the vote, there was even a rather interesting back-and-forth in Germany’s culture pages about how ungrateful eastern Germans allegedly are for being pulled out of their pre-reunification backwardness and into the light of the West. DER SPIEGEL’s Jochen-Martin Gutsch has had enough. “Ten years ago, in 2016, elections were also held in Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD won more than 20 percent, which at the time rightly provoked outrage and incomprehension in western Germany. Today, in 2026, the AfD is also polling at around 20 percent in western German states, but this no longer provokes outrage and incomprehension. Instead, it is now regarded as proof of democratic conviction and civilizational resistance. After all, in the east, it’s 40 percent!” “This allows people to continue feeling morally superior to the East, but the wiser course would be to admit: if something doesn’t happen soon, the West will turn AfD-blue too. Or bluish.” “But will anything happen? The truly depressing thing about election night was not so much the AfD leaders intoxicated by their own success. It was the representatives of the other parties, who once again said that they were utterly shocked, needed some time to digest the result and would, of course, not simply return to business as usual. The SPD, a former big-tent party, celebrated its ‘stable’ result of 9.3 percent. Congratulations!” “For 10 years, the AfD has gone from one electoral success to the next. And still, the established parties remain ‘shocked’ and scratch their heads in astonishment. How long can they keep being shocked? Friedrich Merz says he may need to communicate his reform ideas in a more ‘emotional’ way. So the CDU’s political professionals sit down together after the election, mull over a strategy, and in the end come up with this: Fritz, try to be a little more relaxed, charismatic and emotional – or something. Beyond that: no political plan, no defiance, no promise of a future. That is frightening.” What was good, what was bad for democracy? Good: Voter turnout in Saxony-Anhalt was 77.8 percent, the highest ever recorded in the state. Whatever one thinks of the result, that figure is encouraging. Democracy needs citizens to take an interest. Bad: Although a strong AfD result had been expected in Saxony-Anhalt, many politicians from the mainstream parties – including in Berlin – appeared confused, helpless and overwhelmed in their initial reactions. That is not how they will win back voters’ trust. Last Week’s Highlights: 🗳️ Meet the Germans Who Voted for the AfD: Why would voters in a country like Germany, with its Nazi past, vote for a right-wing party? It’s a question only an editor in Berlin could come up with. On the ground, the view is different. 🟦 How the AfD Wants to Expand Its Power Across Germany: The far-right AfD is planning to decimate public broadcasting in Saxony-Anhalt, revamp education and install extremists in positions of power. And it is eyeing victory on the national stage as well. 🕯️ The Continuing Reverberations of September 11: It was a generational shock, and the consequences can still be felt today - from massive surveillance and significant increases in presidential power to violent excesses at ICE. 🤝 “For Europe, Canada Is the Preferred Partner in Trans-Atlantic Relations”: In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne discusses his country’s failed trade deal with the US and why Canada is looking to Europe. 🏛️ The True Historical Roots of the AfD: During the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, there were numerous parties on the extreme right espousing “Germany first” nationalism. The Nazis may not be the best comparison for today’s AfD. 🌊 AfD in a Landslide: Merz Is the Wrong Leader for Germany: The right-wing Alternative for Germany won in a landslide in Saxony-Anhalt state elections on Sunday. What does that mean for the country at large? Thank you for your continued support and have a wonderful week! Subscribe Share Leave a comment Your SPIEGEL Substack Team Compiled and edited by Charles Hawley
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Viewpoint: Unlocking Europe’s wildfire data
Europe is already investing in the science, technology and infrastructure needed to understand, prevent and fight wildfires. Copernicus provides satellite-based Earth observation and environmental information, while the European Forest Fire Information System provides information on fire danger and forest fires across Europe. Weather and climate systems add forecasts of heat, drought, wind and humidity; historical fire databases show where fires have occurred; and researchers generate increasingly detailed knowledge about fuels, fire behaviour, forecasting, modelling and risk management. Meanwhile, new European research projects are adding digital twins and other tools to this growing ecosystem.However, these data do not necessarily sit together, nor are they necessarily described, structured or governed in ways that allow them to be used together. Much of the information is public, but some is commercially held. Some is sensitive. Some is subject to legal, security or operational restrictions. Even when data can be legally accessed, different systems may use different formats, terminology and rules.Europe therefore faces an unusual paradox: we have vast amounts of relevant information to respond to the wildfire challenge, but not the means to bring it together. For example, a wildfire researcher or emergency service might need to ask whether a particular combination of vegetation, drought, wind and topography has historically been associated with rapid fire spread. The relevant information may exist in several institutions, using different systems and subject to different conditions of access.The challenge is to conduct an authorised analysis that interacts with these sources, combines the results and respects the rules imposed by each data custodian.An important part of the answer can be found in the Fair principles, the idea that data should be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. Developed more than a decade ago, these principles have become a central reference point for modern data stewardship, making it easier for people and machines to find data, understand what it means and determine whether it can be reused.Readability by machines is essential, since AI systems will be key to meeting the data challenge. Bring analysis to the dataThe proposition is not to give an AI system unrestricted access to sensitive databases. Quite the opposite. The goal is to make it possible for approved algorithms to go to the data, rather than requiring sensitive data or large datasets to be copied to wherever the analysis happens.Imagine an analysis asking a series of questions of different data stations. At one station it might examine weather and climate data; at another, historical fire records; at another, experimental measurements of fire behaviour. The algorithm does not need to download everything. It can operate within the environment permitted by each data custodian and return only the results that the rules allow to leave.This is sometimes described as data visiting, and related approaches already exist in areas such as federated analysis and federated learning.Sensitive data should therefore not be treated as a free-for-all for machines. This requires appropriate governance at multiple levels. Access needs to be authenticated and authorised. The purpose of an analysis should be defined. The code or model being run should be controlled. Data custodians should be able to specify what can be queried and what results can leave their environment. Activities should be auditable and human oversight should remain where the consequences require it.In other words, the objective is not to trust AI with the data. It is to design systems in which AI never has more access than it needs.As open as possible, as closed as necessaryFair data should also not be confused with open data. Some wildfire data should be openly available. Other information may legitimately need to remain restricted because it concerns critical infrastructure, security, commercial interests, privacy or operational capabilities. The principle should be: as open as possible, as closed as necessary.The important point is that restricted data should not automatically become unusable data. If machines can discover what information exists, understand its meaning, establish where it came from and determine the conditions under which it can be used, authorised analyses can potentially be carried out without the underlying data ever leaving the environment in which it is protected.Restricted data can still be Fair and machine-actionable.This is also an important question of data sovereignty. European institutions should not have to surrender control of their data to a handful of technology platforms in order to benefit from AI. Nor does Europe need to start again by building one giant repository for every piece of wildfire information. The better approach is to connect what already exists.This is the principle behind emerging approaches such as Tryangle, developed through the Leiden Initiative for Fair and Equitable Science. Rather than creating another centralised data warehouse, the approach seeks to provide an interoperable layer through which approved algorithms can visit distributed data sources while respecting the rules of their custodians.In this way, a data station can remain where it is. Its custodians can retain control. Existing databases and applications do not have to be abandoned. What changes is their ability to communicate with other systems through common, machine-readable descriptions, access rules and interoperability mechanisms.But approaches like this need data that meets the Fair principles. Only then can an interoperable ecosystem safely begin to turn fragmented information into collective intelligence.Data infrastructure is wildfire infrastructureThe implications of this approach are entirely practical. Firefighters could gain better intelligence about local and evolving risks. Land managers could test prevention strategies using more comprehensive information about fuels, weather and past fires. Researchers could compare evidence across ecosystems without repeatedly moving huge datasets between institutions. Smaller regions and resource-constrained teams could access analytical capabilities without having to build large data infrastructures themselves.Europe is already investing heavily in satellites, databases, research programmes, forecasting systems and scientific expertise. The question is whether we will connect those investments well enough to turn them into actionable intelligence.That requires policymakers and funders to treat data infrastructure as seriously as physical infrastructure. Data generated or supported through European public funding should be Fair, verifiable and machine actionable by design, wherever legally and ethically possible.Related articlesData Corner: Europe’s burning need for wildfire mitigation researchClimate monitoring must remain a global enterprise, experts sayIn practice, that means funding not only the production of data, but also the infrastructure that makes data usable across systems: metadata, provenance, interoperability, access mechanisms and governance. Where data must remain restricted, we should ensure that it can still be securely discovered, verified and used for authorised analysis.Initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud offer an existing framework through which these principles can be put into practice. What is needed now is to accelerate implementation and make them a standard part of how Europe funds and builds research and innovation systems.We do not need another generation of disconnected databases. The data is already there. The opportunity is to make it work together, securely, responsibly and quickly enough to help prevent the next fire, rather than simply document the last one.Jean-Claude Burgelman is professor emeritus at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and editor-in-chief at Frontiers Policy Lab. For more than 20 years he held leading roles in research and innovation policy at the European Commission.
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In a nationally representative cross-sectional study of 16,973 Korean adults, researchers identified three distinct eating patterns based on the timing and distribution of daily energy intake. Eating later within a shorter daily window was associated with higher odds of metabolic syndrome, elevated blood pressure, triglycerides, and fasting glucose, while frequent grazing showed a mixed metabolic profile.
AZ's R&D chief Barr touts internal 'science success story' after IL-33 antibody's stellar showing in COPD
With a detailed data drop that AstraZeneca’s R&D chief described as an internal “science success story,” the British Big Pharma has secured an FDA priority review for what it believes could become a flagship biologic in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In detailed results from the late-stage Oberon and Titania trials—first teased in March and detailed in full at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Barcelona this week—the drugmaker laid out the extent of its IL-33 inhibitor’s potential to reduce moderate and severe exacerbations in a wide range of COPD patients still struggling with those “lung attacks,” as AstraZeneca’s Sharon Barr, Ph.D., called them, despite using standard-care inhaled therapy. In the headline results, a 300 mg dose of tozorakimab given once every four weeks curbed those moderate and severe exacerbations in the studies’ primary population of former smokers by 29% in the Oberon study and 34% in Titania. In the overall population of both current and former smokers, these reductions were 30% and 29%, respectively, versus placebo and inhaled standard of care. The benefits also extended to clinically meaningful exacerbation reductions in all prespecified patient subgroups and specifically turned up promising signals in patients across a range of blood eosinophil counts, with Barr telling Fierce that “it’s the details that make this even more exciting than the high-level results that we’ve already shared.” In fact, during AZ’s tozorakimab poster presentation at the ERS 2026 Congress this past weekend, attendees were so enamored by the data that event organizers had to encourage people to clear the room and look at the other presentations on offer, Barr said in an interview. “I think it really speaks to the fact that there is a lot of buzz around these data because the entire respiratory community has been so desperate for new therapies for these patients,” she explained. The respiratory disease continues to represent a “staggering unmet medical need,” Barr said, highlighting the COPD exacerbations that the Oberon and Titania studies homed in on, which she added carry a greater mortality risk than a heart attack. “When a patient has a severe exacerbation, only about half of them are still alive within three and a half years,” she pointed out. As for tozorakimab specifically, Barr christened the molecule “an AstraZeneca science success story,” harkening several years back to the point at which researchers began to explore IL-33 as a driver of respiratory disease, and COPD in particular. At the same time, “there was still so much that wasn’t understood,” she admitted, highlighting the insight that IL-33 signals through both ST2 and EGFR through the RAGE pathway, a discovery Barr attributed to AstraZeneca's own scientists. Understanding the need to tackle both pathways in COPD—and aware of competitor candidates in the hopper, including one that bound ST2—the company ultimately had to make some “courageous decisions,” Barr said. These included taking a prior COPD molecule offline and going back to the drawing board to reinvent its potential IL-33 label “to make sure that we had a molecule that could block signaling through both arms of the pathway, through both the reduced form and the oxidized form, knowing that we wouldn’t be first, but striving to be best.” “When we put [tozorakimab] into the clinic, we firmly believed that we had a differentiated molecule, and we saw the other molecules blocking just ST2 or partially blocking IL-33, unable to deliver two positive pivotal studies in COPD,” Barr explained. “We kept marching forward because we believed our molecule was differentiated, and now I think we have the clinical validation that supports that.” Ultimately, AstraZeneca finds itself on much better footing these days when it comes to potential biologic rivals to tozorakimab in COPD. Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupixent, for instance, is approved to treat COPD exacerbations in patients with high eosinophil counts, but not low ones. Meanwhile, the future has become cloudier for other next-gen IL-33 candidates from Sanofi and Regeneron, as well as Roche, which have suffered trial flops in recent years. One other potential ingredient for AstraZeneca’s success in its duo of studies was that the company was “ambitious in the trial design, willing to look at an all-comers population,” Barr said, “and willing to enroll the most severe patients.” Prior studies for would-be biologics rivals in COPD “avoided enrolling” those patients, she pointed out. She also highlighted the Big Pharma’s painstaking design of exacerbations in its trial, which “gave us a very rigorous readout,” and pointed to “the extra effort and investment” the company put in to understand the effect of mucus plugs in patients. Barr described mucus production as a “key feature in disease diversity,” noting that mucus plugs—obstructing clumps of mucus that block patients’ airways—are associated with worse outcomes in COPD. In its data announcement, AstraZeneca noted that an integrated analysis of Oberon and Titania found tozorakimab “demonstrated a reduction in patients’ mucus plug score,” with the pharma claiming its biologic is the first to deliver such results in a broad COPD population. “So being able to reduce those mucus plugs, we expect, is an important part of driving benefit for patients who are living with COPD,” Barr said. Again touching on the breadth of the study populations, Barr added that tozorakimab “worked across all eosinophil levels in both current and former smokers across all levels of lung function,” which she suggested “really simplifies decision-making for clinicians, and it allows them to offer therapy to the broadest possible patient population.” In the highest patient eosinophil count group, tozorakimab helped chart a 43% reduction in exacerbation risk, which Barr stressed were “unprecedented data.” In the mid-level group, AZ’s drug delivered a 23% reduction and, in the lowest group, a 34% reduction in eosinophils, which Barr said suggests efficacy “in all patient subgroups.” As for AZ’s recent guidance upgrade on the medicine’s sales opportunity, the lift from a $3 billion to $5 billion range to $5 billion plus was informed by multiple factors, Barr said, including the fact that “in 2024, there were multiple competitors, and there aren’t anymore.” Additionally, “we know that this is a massive unmet medical need, and this is a really incredible set of data that we think will be very convincing to the clinical community,” Barr said. Looking ahead to a potential evolution of the COPD treatment landscape, Barr noted that most patients start treatment in the community with an option like a triple therapy, and for them, having an option like AstraZeneca’s inhaler Breztri will remain a “really important part” of that journey. But of the patients uncontrolled on triple therapy, which Barr described as “about half of them today,” just a “small fraction” are currently eligible for biologic therapy, which she emphasized AstraZeneca is working to change. Understanding that COPD is not a “one-size-fits-all” disease, AstraZeneca is also looking at its antibody drug Tezspire for patients with T2-driven disease, and the company continues to think about new mechanisms for tackling COPD through both systemic and inhaled drugs, Barr said.
Israel's Problems of Governance: Perennial Causes and Political Context
Essays – The State of Israel is not often associated with the persistent problems of governance that have beset many of its neighbors over the years. With a
Cyclospora outbreak followed years of declining FDA foreign inspections
FDA inspections of foreign food sites are down nearly 35% since 2019, according to agency records reviewed by The Associated Press
Patriots make Christian Gonzalez the NFL's highest-paid cornerback, AP sources say
Christian Gonzalez has agreed to a four-year, $135 million contract with the New England Patriots that makes him the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history, two people with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press on Tuesday. One of the people said Gonzalez is getting $102 million guaranteed. Gonzalez surpassed Devon Witherspoon's new contract from the Seattle Seahawks.
Six decades of politics (but little government)
The first aired episode of “Star Trek,” entitled “The Man Trap,” premiered on September 8, 1966 — 60 years ago today. I’m actually editing a political science fiction issue of The Forum right now, and it’s prompted to me think a lot about the ways that Trek deals with politics and government and what it’s offered us as commentary. The @smotus report is a reader-supported publication. To support this work, please become a paid subscriber. Subscribe The original TV series ran from 1966 to 1969. It had a loyal but modest following, but the audience grew substantially with the series in syndication for years after that. The franchise developed its first motion picture in 1979, followed by five sequels, and then a whole other series of films built around the “Next Generation” series that first aired in 1987. In recent decades, several more TV series have built up around it, including the current “Strange New Worlds,” now in its fourth season. Throughout the past six decades, the franchise has offered us a good many insights into US politics and international relations, although often disguised as science fiction yarns. The original series was largely a Cold War fable, with the United Federation of Planets (a stand-in for the US) perpetually at odds with the Klingon Empire (a stand-in for the USSR). The “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” episode (1969) posited a planet divided into two races, largely indistinguishable to outsiders, but nonetheless constituting a brutal racial hierarchy. “Patterns of Force” (1968) showed a struggling planet where the leader had attempted to construct a benevolent dictatorship — literally Nazism without bigotry — and found that authoritarianism could not exist apart from hierarchy and oppression. (Relatedly, I’d put “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” high on a list of dad films about the end of the Cold War, near “The Hunt for Red October.”) Get 20% off for 1 year Indeed, the original series itself was something of a political statement, with a multi-racial crew running the Enterprise, a diverse and largely peaceful Federation mostly free from want and oppression, and protected by Starfleet, an armed force whose scientific mission was at least as important as its military one. Famously, when Nichelle Nichols wanted to walk away from the role of Uhura on the original series, none other than Martin Luther King, Jr. met with her and urged her to remain on the show, discussing the importance of viewers seeing an intelligent Black woman as part of the command team three centuries hence. Later series in the Trek franchise offered a good deal of political commentary on their own, but probably none as explicitly and incisively as “Deep Space Nine,” which ran from 1993 to 1999. The episodes surrounding the Dominion War, especially the “In The Pale Moonlight” (1998), showed the compromises, sacrifices, and moral rot associated with winning even a just war — probably better than any series would until “Andor” (2022-25). In “Far Beyond The Stars” (1998), Captain Benjamin Sisko is somehow transplanted to the role of a science fiction writer in 1950s New York. The writer is frequently sidelined and his ideas stolen because publishers don’t want to credit a Black writer. Several series have depicted the secretive Section 31 — an unacknowledged black ops security force operating within Starfleet. These episodes often end up using Section 31 as a foil to show the dangers of a lawless group within a lawful society, even (especially) when that group posits itself as essential for everyone else’s freedom to continue. The current “Strange New Worlds” has played with a few political themes. I found the first two seasons of this show among the best that the Trek franchise has produced in decades, but this season and the last have really been struggling for ideas. Yet one interesting thread is the idea that the diplomatic and enlightened leadership style of Captain Christopher Pike will not work in all situations. “A Quality of Mercy” (2022), which I wrote about here, puts Pike in the middle of a battle with a Romulan vessel in an alternate timeline, and finds that Pike’s conciliatory style would actually make a lengthy and deadly war more likely, while a quick and more violent approach might have prevented the war. This season’s opener, “Valles Marineris,” shows a pre-lightspeed civilization locked in a war to the death with a neighboring planet. The idea of an alliance or a federation hasn’t even occurred to them — their ship’s commander is curious but doesn’t see it as an option. For a franchise as political as “Star Trek,” one thing we almost never see is the government. We get occasional glimpses of Starfleet’s council — mostly uniformed people at a rectangular table — but almost no sense of how the Federation is governed. Are there elections? Who is in the legislature? How much power does the president have? What kind of factional divisions do they wrestle with and how? The shows and films are pretty silent on this. We’ve seen a few military tribunals within Starfleet, but little about how civilians deal with crime and injustice. With recent years seeing some of the franchise’s more interesting plot lines and casts, it seems clear that Star Trek is still full of energy and ideas. Given the erosion of American democracy and the reshuffling of the international order, there’s no shortage of material for future shows to comment on. I’m not sure we should toast to 60 more years, but cheers to a show that continues to teach us about ourselves. Share
Your personality may be more genetic than scientists realized
More than 1,200 genetic variants have been linked to the Big Five personality traits, and many of the same variants are also associated with health, longevity, careers, income, and everyday habits. The findings reveal a surprisingly wide genetic connection between personality and life outcomes while showing that environment still plays a powerful role.
Aaron Donald pleased with how return to field is going, mum on status for Rams' season opener
After two seasons out of football, Aaron Donald has been pleasantly surprised by how his body has reacted since rejoining the Los Angeles Rams last month. Whether it means the three-time Associated Press Defensive Player of the Year will be ready to play in the Rams’ season opener against the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia, on Friday morning local time is still unclear. “We going day by day,” Donald said.
Higher Share of Breast Milk for Babies Protects New Mothers’ Hearts
A breast milk diet for infants is associated with a dose-response relationship to lower triglyceride levels in mothers.
Commission to present long-awaited Innovation Act proposal
The European Commission will present its proposal for an EU Innovation Act on September 9, with a focus on strengthening public procurement as a driver of innovation and facilitating the use of intellectual property (IP) to secure financing.The proposal was initially meant to be published in March. No explanation has been given for the delay, but it may be linked to issues with the associated impact assessment.The Commission’s Regulatory Scrutiny Board issued a negative opinion on the draft impact assessment following its meeting on January 28, and again on February 27, according to a draft of the Innovation Act published by Agence Europe.In it, the Commission lays out the steps it has taken to address the board’s concerns, including avoiding overlap with the upcoming revision of the EU Public Procurement Directives and removing a mandatory target for EU member states to increase overall innovation procurement spending.The Innovation Act, which was included in last year’s start-up and scale-up strategy, is meant to reduce barriers to bringing innovative solutions to the market and speed up the path from research to commercialisation.Central to the initiative, according to the draft proposal, is the introduction of a harmonised EU framework for the procurement of R&D services by public buyers, including pre-commercial procurement. The plans would also introduce an EU preference in public R&D procurement.“Other leading economies in the world are investing five to eight times more in public procurement of R&D than the EU,” it notes. In Europe, the lack of harmonised rules has led to divergent practices across the bloc, legal uncertainty and limited use of joint, cross-border R&D procurement, it says.Related articlesCommission postpones European Innovation ActParliament draft report adds EU Inc safeguards to prevent fraud and regime shoppingThe text highlights a lack of clarity around the valuation and monetisation of IP as another barrier to the commercialisation of research results. Currently in the EU, IP is rarely used as collateral in financing, which restricts the growth potential of innovative firms. A key reason for this, according to the Commission, is the absence of a harmonised methodology for valuing IP.To address this issue, it plans to introduce an EU-wide IP valuation framework, a digital marketplace for commercialising IP, and a competence centre to help innovators access IP-backed finance.The issue was highlighted by a recent report by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, which referred to developing a “functional market for IP-backed finance” as a “core competitiveness imperative for the next decade,” and key to ensuring capital unlocked by other EU initiatives reaches innovative firms.The Innovation Act is one of several ways the Commission hopes to reduce fragmentation in the single market and help innovative companies to scale in Europe, complementing other initiatives such as the EU-wide corporate regime, dubbed EU Inc.The leaked draft is not the final version that will be published on September 9, according to a Commission official.
What to Stream: ‘The Paper,’ Bloc Party, ‘Call My Agent!’ and a ‘Halloween’ game
The second season of “The Paper” and a new album from Bloc Party are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you. Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: a new “Call My Agent!” movie, a new
How Mental Health Influences Bladder Function and Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms
Lower urinary tract symptoms are closely associated with anxiety, depression, chronic stress, and broader psychosocial burden, with evidence suggesting complex interactions between psychological state, sensory processing, stress pathways, and bladder function. Although some relationships may be bidirectional, current evidence does not establish a universal causal pathway, reinforcing the importance of integrated assessment and management.
Cuba: US Embassy issues health alert due to GI pathogens like norovirus, Shigella
The US Embassy in Havana issued a health alert last week after seeing a significant increase in diarrheal illness across Cuba, associated with the continuing degradation of the water and energy infrastructure. This degradation affects water supply, and food storage and temperature control. Recent cases have included E. coli, norovirus, Shigella, and other gastrointestinal pathogens. This comes after a health alert dated August 28 which noted that Cuba’s water delivery infrastructure is increasingly unstable. The Embassy is aware of reports of residential neighborhoods that have gone for long periods without receiving water from municipal or public sources. Dengue cases surge in the Tampa Bay area Prolonged and worsening water issues and power outages caused by the regime’s mismanagement of public infrastructure impact the entire island. Water often only flows to residences when city power is on for a sufficient amount of time. Media reports indicate wells are running dry across the country due to drought, aggravating the ability to supplement water delivery. The lack of water, coupled with power shortages that have disrupted cold chain networks, can present significant health and safety challenges. We remind U.S. citizens to be aware of the risks when traveling to Cuba and take precautions. Embassy officials offer the following precautions to prevent illnesses: Avoiding Foodborne Illness: Be cautious of meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy, and other perishable foods that may have been inadequately stored. Avoid foods that appear to have been sitting at room temperature for extended periods. Avoid raw or improperly washed vegetables. Be cautious of food cooked and then cooled, stored, or reheated, as improper temperature control can allow pathogens or toxins to develop. Wash hands thoroughly with soap and water before eating and after using the restroom. Hand sanitizer may be less effective against certain gastrointestinal pathogens, including norovirus. Outbreak News Today is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Water Safety: Use only water known to be safe for drinking, brushing teeth, making ice, and cooking. Use bottled or appropriately treated water; check that bottle seals are intact before opening. Avoid ice unless the water source is known to be safe. Do not use untreated tap water to prepare beverages or food. Be aware that contamination can occur when food, utensils, and surfaces are washed with contaminated water. If You Become Ill: Stay hydrated, especially with frequent diarrhea or vomiting. Most illnesses are self-limited and improve within several days. Seek medical attention for persistent or severe diarrhea, bloody stools, high fever, significant abdominal pain, repeated vomiting, signs of dehydration, or symptoms not improving. Common medications (e.g., acetaminophen, ibuprofen, antibiotics) are frequently unavailable in Cuba; consider bringing your own supply. If you like the reporting on Outbreak News Today, please consider a paid subscription for $5/month or $30 a year. Help support the cause of this niche journalism. It is appreciated.
Bacteria found in classroom dust may affect children’s respiratory health
Common bacteria found in classroom dust are associated with reduced lung function in children according to research presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
What four pregnancy eating patterns revealed about mothers and newborns
Researchers analyzing 1,404 pregnant women in Germany identified four distinct dietary patterns that differed substantially in maternal BMI, socioeconomic status, age, and gestational weight gain. A vegetable-rich pattern was also associated with selected neonatal measures, including greater birth length, but most newborn associations were modest or nonsignificant, and the observational study cannot establish causality.
What to stream: 'The Paper,' Bloc Party, 'Call My Agent!' and a 'Halloween' game
The second season of “The Paper” and a new album from Bloc Party are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you. Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: a new “Call…
Brandon McGinley: How the measles got political
In 1982, C. Everett Koop became Surgeon General of the United States. His unusual appearance — bright bowties and a mustache-less face framed by...
Trump’s first major midterm money move: A $10M Texas Senate ad blitz
BRIDGEWATER, New Jersey — The political group associated with President Donald Trump is spending $10 million on television and digital advertisements...
Trump’s First Major Midterm Money Move: A $10M Texas Senate Ad Blitz
BRIDGEWATER, New Jersey (AP) — The political group associated with President Donald Trump is spending $10 million on television and digital advertisements in the Texas Senate race, according to a Saturday filing with the Federal Election Commission. This is the first significant spending in a ...
DPH Confirms Additional Measles Cases in Georgia
The Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) has confirmed three additional measles cases associated with the measles case confirmed August 18, for a total of 8 cases associated with the current outbreak.
New measles cases associated with metro Atlanta day care outbreak confirmed, health officials say
Health officials have confirmed three new measles cases connected with an outbreak of the virus at a metro Atlanta day care.
Vin Cherwoo, longtime AP sports desk editor and union leader, dies at 56
Vin Cherwoo, a trusted editor and writer for The Associated Press sports desk for more than three decades and the president of the News Media Guild, has died. Cherwoo died early Friday in Tampa, Florida, following a long illness, said his wife, Stacy. Known affectionately as “Woo” by many colleagues and friends, Cherwoo was a reliable mainstay of the sports department’s night editing crew.
PDS Health and United Concordia Launch Saliva Screening Pilot
United Concordia Dental and PDS Health®, leaders in oral health and dental-medical integration, respectively, launched a saliva screening pilot in Southern California earlier this week that aims to improve oral health and overall health by investigating the screening’s impact on periodontal (gum) disease management. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 40% of U.S. adults over the age of 30 have some form of gum disease. Left untreated, this condition can lead to tooth loss and infections and is associated with systemic conditions such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes. “Gum disease is not just an oral health issue. It’s closely connected to a person’s well-being,” said Ed Shellard, DMD, president and CEO of United Concordia. “This partnership with PDS Health underscores our shared commitment to dental-medical integration and allows us to empower patients with on-the-spot data about the current status of their gum health.”…
AP Was There: In 1970, Gloria Steinem was a journalist, a feminist and a member of the glitterati
In April 1970, Gloria Steinem invited Lynn Sherr, who was then an Associated Press feature writer, into her Manhattan home.
Gloria Steinem in Her Own Words on Women's Rights, Abortion Politics and Being Called the B-Word
In interviews and emails, Gloria Steinem shared with Associated Press reporters over the years her thoughts on social changes she had witnessed as a leading voice for women, the importance of abortion rights and the correct way to respond when being called the B-word. The author and feminist icon ...
More frequent cannabis use linked to poorer mental health
More frequent cannabis use is associated with fewer days of good mental health among adults, particularly men, according to a study co-authored by a University of Miami Business School professor.
South African scientists could face year in prison unless ...
Researchers warn that registration offers little benefit and that the associated costs will disadvantage early-career researchers
Trumps' new CDC director ordered delay in counting 2 measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania
In a highly unusual move, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not counting two measles-associated deaths reported by the state of Pennsylvania.
Alzheimer’s may leave a mark on the brain long before plaques appear
Brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s may begin at least seven years before amyloid plaques become detectable with current PET scans. Researchers uncovered the signal by tracking healthy older adults with repeated brain imaging over nearly 20 years. The discovery could help scientists identify Alzheimer’s earlier and suggests that important disease processes may start before visible plaque buildup.
Too much coffee may weaken bones, study finds
Following nearly 10,000 older women for 10 years, researchers found that tea drinking was associated with slightly higher hip bone density. Moderate coffee consumption did not appear harmful, but drinking more than five cups a day was linked to lower bone density. The findings suggest tea may offer a small bone-health boost, while excessive coffee could carry some drawbacks.
Kroenke Sports and Entertainment says it has reached an agreement to buy the Los Angeles Angels from Arte Moreno
CHI St. Vincent & CommonSpirit Health opt out of AR Blue Cross Blue Shield networks
CHI St. Vincent has opted out of the healthcare provider networks of Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield and its associated health plans (Arkansas Blue Medicare
The IDA Health Window Is Gaining Traction: Four Responses to the Proposal
I recently proposed an IDA Health Window as the future of multilateral global health financing. The proposal is beginning to gain traction. It has received interest (mostly positive, but always with good, constructive challenges) from colleagues associated with the Accra Reset; Africa CDC and the African High-Level Ministerial Committee on Global Health Architecture Reform; low- and middle-income country health and finance officials; key high-income donors including the UK, France, Germany, and Norway; the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank; the World Health Organization, Wellcome Trust, and civil society.
Officials press Pennsylvania health department on ‘measles-associated’ deaths
Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons wrote over the weekend. “If the governor disputes [the coroner’s] finding, he has a responsibility to say why in a clear, transparent way, rather than dismiss it. Nothing prevents him…