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ND Sports Scores for the week of April 6
Sports scores for the ND high school and college teams for the week of 4/6/2026
High school sports results for Tuesday, April 7, 2026
TUESDAY’S RESULTS Baseball WPIAL CLASS 6A Section 1 Central Catholic 14, North Hills 0 (5) Section 2 Hempfield 5, Mt. Lebanon 2 WPIAL CLASS 5A Section...
Sporting CP 0-1 Arsenal: Kai Havertz nets late winner
Arsenal claimed a narrow 1-0 victory over Sporting CP in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League quarter-final clash at the Estadio Jose Alvalade on Tuesday.The hosts carved out the first opening...
Former Migos rapper Offset is stable after being shot outside a Florida casino, spokesperson says
a e n law-enforcement celebrity crime music hip-hop-and-rap shootings entertainment u-s-news general-news | WWL
African frogs haven’t forgotten the ice ages. Scientists can tell by where they live.
Why are frogs diverse in some parts of Africa’s rainforests and less so in others? The patterns of cooling and glaciation during the last ice age would probably not have been your first answer or even your last-ditch guess, but it is, nonetheless, correct. “When the glaciers were at their maximum
'An incredible league' - inside WSL 2 promotion race
With less than a month of the season remaining, BBC Sport assesses the key contenders battling for promotion from Women's Super League 2.
Woman, 70, Gets Intense Facelift After Life-Threatening Health Scare. Now She Looks 30 Years Younger (Exclusive)
A 70-year-old woman nearly died from a bilateral pulmonary embolism, which sparked her weight loss journey. She then underwent a dramatic plastic surgery transformation that "took off 30 years" from her appearance.
Trump, 79, Cornered on Mental Health After Crazed Threats
Rumors about the president’s health have been swirling for days.
Dollhouse maker for Taylor Swift and 'The Gilded Age' finds new home in Fall River
Flip This Dollhouse founder Nathaniel Ellis built miniatures for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour and Hollywood. Now, he and his collection are settling into a new home of their own.
Bruce Springsteen ‘heartbroken’ by ex-bandmate’s death: ‘May she rest with angels’
He shared his thoughts on social media.
Whole of Syria Health Sector 2023 Annual Highlights
in English on Syrian Arab Republic; published on 5 Apr 2026 by Health Cluster
Braiding knowledge: how Indigenous expertise and western science are converging
Researchers are weaving Native practices with western methods to revive ecosystems and reclaim food sovereignty
Bucks under investigation as Giannis speaks out, but the messaging doesn't add up
Giannis Antetokounmpo says he wants to play, but the situation and messaging around Milwaukee suggest a more complicated reality.
Skunk near Fellows Lake is 2nd rabies case for 2026: Health department
With a second case of rabies identified this week, Springfield-Greene County Health Department advises community to be careful around wildlife.
Downed fighter jet punctures Trump’s and Hegseth’s claims of air invulnerability
An Iran war that was already proving quite unpopular with the American people has entered a new, more problematic phase for President Donald Trump.
Gemma 4 and what makes an open model succeed
Having written a lot of model release blog posts, there’s something much harder about reviewing open models when they drop relative to closed models, especially in 2026. In recent years, there were so few open models, so when Llama 3 was released most people were still doing research on Llama 2 and super happy to get an update. When Qwen 3 was released, the Llama 4 fiasco had just gone down, and a whole research community was emerging to study RL on Qwen 2.5 — it was a no brainer to upgrade. Today, when an open model releases, it’s competing with Qwen 3.5, Kimi K2.5, GLM 5, MiniMax M2.5, GPT-OSS, Arcee Large, Nemotron 3, Olmo 3, and others. The space is populated, but still feels full of hidden opportunity. The potential of open models feels like a dark matter, a potential we know is huge, but few clear recipes and examples for how to unlock it are out there. Agentic AI, OpenClaw, and everything brewing in that space is going to spur mass experimentation in open models to complement the likes of Claude and Codex, not replace them. Especially with open models, the benchmarks at release are an extremely incomplete story. In some ways this is exciting, as new open models have a much higher variance and ability to surprise, but it also points at some structural reasons that make building businesses and great AI experiences around open models harder than the closed alternatives. When a new Claude Opus or GPT drops, spending a few hours with them in my agentic workflows is genuinely a good vibe test. For open models, putting them through this test is a category error. Something else to be said about open models in the era of agents is that they get out of the debate of integration, harnesses, and tools and let us see close to the ground on what exactly is the ability of just a model. Of course, we can’t test some things like search abilities without some tool, but being able to measure exactly the pace of progress of the model alone is a welcome simplification to a systematically opaque AI space. Share The list of factors I’d use to assess a new open-weight model I’m considering investing in includes: Model performance (and size) — how this model performs on benchmarks I care about and how it compares to other models of a similar size. Country of origin — some businesses care deeply about provenance, and if a model was built in China or not. Model license — if a model needs legal approval for use, uptake will be slower at mid-sized and large companies. Tooling at release — many models release with half-broken, or at least substantially slower, implementations in popular software like vLLM, Transformers, SGLANG, etc due to pushing the envelope of architectures or tools. Model fine-tunability — how easy or hard it is to modify the given model to your use-case when you actually try and use it. The core problem is that some of these are immediately available at release, e.g. general performance, license, origin, etc. but others such as tooling take day(s) to week(s) to stabilize, and others are open research questions — with no group systematically monitoring fine-tunability. In the early era of open models, the days of Llama 2 or 3 and Qwen pre v3.5, the architectures were fairly simple and the models tended to work out of the box. Some of this was due to the extremely hard work of the Llama, Qwen, Mistral, etc. developer teams. Some is due to the new models being genuinely harder to work with. When it comes to something like Qwen 3.5 or Nemotron 3, with hybrid models (either gated delta net or mamba layers), the tooling is very rough at release. Things you would expect to “just work” often don’t. I’ve been following this area closely since we released Olmo Hybrid with a similar architecture, and Qwen 3.5 is just starting to work well in the various open-source tools that need to all play nice together for RL research. That’s 1.5 months after the release date! This is just to start really investing more into understanding the behavior of the models. Of course, others started working on these models sooner by investing more engineering resources or relying on partially closed software. The fully open and distributed ecosystem takes a long time to get going on some new models. All of this is lead-in for the most important question for open models — how easy is it to adapt to specific use-cases? This is a different problem for different model sizes. Large MoE open-weight models may be used by entities like Cursor who need complex capabilities in their domain, e.g. Composer 2 trained on Kimi K2.5. Other applications can be built on much smaller models, such as Chroma’s Context-1 model for agentic search, built on GPT-OSS 20B. The question of “which models are fine-tunable” is largely background knowledge known by engineers across the industry. There should be a thriving research area here to support the open ecosystem model. The first step is to understand characteristics of different base and post-trained models to understand what they look like. The second step is to tune pretraining recipes for open models so they’re more flexible. Interconnects AI is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe For The ATOM Project and other Interconnects endeavors, we’ve put in substantial effort to measuring adoption trends in the open ecosystem. Everything takes a long time to unfold after a model is first publicly available — and adaptability is why. What we know for sure now, when Qwen has been going from strength to strength with its releases, is that technical staff across the industry has gotten comfortable working with Qwen models. Countless research methods and datasets were made to work with Qwen. It’ll take patience for any other model family to get to this point — a patience I’m not sure many open model builders have. This takes us to Gemma 4, Google’s latest open models. Gemma 3 was released more than a year ago, in March of 2025, and is a bit underrated. Gemma 4 comes in 4 sizes for now, with a bigger, MoE model of over 100B total parameters rumored but not released yet. The models we have today come in sizes of ~5B dense, 8B dense, 26B total 4B active MoE, and 31B dense. I’m most excited that they’re finally adopting a standard Apache 2.0 open source license. This’ll massively boost adoption. The standard of better licenses for strong open-weight LLMs was set by mostly Chinese open model labs in the last 1-2 years, and now U.S. companies are following suit. I will personally be so happy if the horrible Llama licenses and Gemma terms of service were an ~18-month transient dynamic of the industry being nervous about releasing strong open models. The Gemma 4 scores look very solid, the small models have incredible benchmark scores (especially in general domains like LMArena) and the 31B model rivals the recent Qwen 3.5 27B, which is the leading member of that class. The ~30B size range is an important one, as it’s accessible both to researchers and to enterprises looking to deploy the model in real use-cases. Where the 7B model scale is the default for tinkering and research, a 30B model is the default for seeing if an open model can unlock substantial value in your specific workflow — a good mix of intelligence, low price, tractability for downstream training, etc. This takes us back to the above adoption criteria I mentioned for open models and the bigger question — do I think Gemma 4 will be an overwhelming success? Previous Gemma models have been plagued by tooling issues and poorer performance when being finetuned. Gemma 4’s success is going to be entirely determined by ease of use, to a point where a 5-10% swing on benchmarks wouldn’t matter at all. It’s strong enough, small enough, with the right license, and from the U.S., so many companies are going to slot it in. I’m cautiously optimistic that Gemma 4 is going to work better here. Winds are shifting for open models built in America. We saw GPT-OSS go through a bumpy launch to become an overwhelming success. There’s a collective energy around the likes of Reflection, Arcee, Nemotron, Gemma, Olmo, and peers that show substantial demand for building new stacks around open models. There’s capital to be spent on AI stacks across the economy by those who want more ownership of everything, including the model. After launching The ATOM Project 240 days ago, the conversation is shifting into the next stage. Summer of 2025 was a crisis moment where the U.S. AI scene realized it can’t wait and figure out open models after building AGI. The two markets will capture different areas and proceed in parallel. Now that more companies in the U.S. are releasing strong models, we need to improve the ecosystem so that these models are easy to use, understand, and build value around. It’s the hard work to build another inflection point in these adoption plots I’ve been updating consistently, but that’s the work to be done. Join me in it. More data coming soon! Here’s a sneak peek:
Politics Chat, April 2, 2026
A newsletter about the history behind today's politics.
Doctors blamed her symptoms on motherhood. She actually had mold illness.
Kate Ames spent years battling chronic symptoms like fatigue and joint pain. She later learned there was mold in her home that was making her sick.
F1 driver ratings: Find out where Sky Sports ranks Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen after opening stages of 2026 season
Austin greenlights front yard businesses to boost local entrepreneurship
7 best eye massagers to boost relaxation and relieve tension, according to health care experts
Looking for the best eye massager for headaches, eye strain and relaxation? I spoke with experts to get their recommendations and advice.
Seattle playwright returns with compelling, wild new show
“Wife of Headless Man” is a compelling swerve from one of the city’s finest playwrights, pushing his gift for meticulously structured drama into weirder, wilder places.
Scene One Entertainment completes purchase of Spectrum 8 Theatres, renovations coming soon
It's official: Scene One is the new owner of the Spectrum 8. CEO Joe Masher plans upgrades to parking and seating, as well as lobby renovations for Albany theater.
Go Local Business Expo returns May 7, 2026
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — The Tahoe Chamber announces the return of the highly anticipated Go Local Business Expo, taking place on Thursday, May 7, 2026, from 5-8 p.m. at the Tahoe Blue Event Center. As Tahoe’s...
High school sports results for Tuesday, March 31, 2026
TUESDAY’S RESULTS Baseball WPIAL CLASS 6A Section 1 Butler 4, North Hills 0 Central Catholic 6, Seneca Valley 0 Section 2 Canon-McMillan 10, Woodland...
Trump signs order asserting federal control of mail-in ballots
Trump has suggested for months that the federal government could nationalize the voting process, generating bipartisan pushback.
Cook County Department of Public Health warns of possible measles exposure at O'Hare, 2 stores in Niles
According to the CCDPH, measles is a dangerous and potentially deadly, highly contagious respiratory disease that spreads easily through the air when an infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes.
King County order targets housing, shelters and behavioral health
King County Executive Girmay Zahilay announced a new Executive Order on Tuesday aimed at boosting affordable housing and shelter options throughout the region.
Walkable Neighborhoods Can Boost Physical Activity, Population Health
New research from Washington State University shows that small increases in neighborhood walkability could lead to substantial gains for a sedentary population, boosting individuals’ physical activity and ultimately improving their health.
White House pushes Senate to move quickly on Casey Means nomination
There is still no indication on when the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will vote on Means' nomination for surgeon general.
This, of Trump's 252 executive orders, makes some sense
As the DHS shutdown enters day 47 on Tuesday, voters should remember this debacle, the hardships it caused and how we got here.
Samsung’s Blood Pressure Monitoring Feature Now Available to U.S. Users in Samsung Health
Select Galaxy Watch users in the U.S. can now measure and track blood pressure using Samsung Health
Samsung’s Blood Pressure Monitoring Feature Now Available to U.S. Users in Samsung Health
Select Galaxy Watch users in the U.S. can now measure and track blood pressure using Samsung Health
UD leads nation with five Goldwater Scholars
Students recognized for excellence in science, engineering and mathematics research
Scott Pemberton O Theory added to VanWood entertainment line up
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – VanWood Tahoe, hosted by the Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe in partnership with Kirkwood Mountain Resort and EpicPromise, announced a featured live music experience as part of its inaugural...
New Discovery Challenges Long-Standing Theory On The Formation Of The Earth – Its Building Blocks Came From Right Here
New analysis suggests that Earth’s material originates exclusively from the inner Solar System.
CCTV appeal after £20k in cash stolen from Northfield business
West Midlands Police says it believes the man in CCTV footage has links to Bromsgrove.
Mystery Of Odd Flashes In Pre-Satellite Sky Gets Odder, With Similar Puzzle Found At Separate Observatory In Hamburg
Looking at images of the sky taken before the first satellite was launched, one team believes they may have found objects floating above the Earth. Another study, based on a separate observatory in Hamburg, has now found a similar phenomenon.
What Happens If You Drill Into Magma Beneath an Active Volcano? Scientists Accidentally Found Out In 2009
The drill cuttings contained fresh volcanic glass that “act like time capsules”.
SF Supervisor Jackie Fielder on leave due to mental health condition; her staff set to take over
San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder's office revealed she has been navigating a mental health condition.
Connections: Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for March 31, 2026, puzzle No. 554
Welcome to Connections: Sports Edition Coach — a spot to gather clues and discuss (and share) scores.
Military investigating after Kid Rock brags about U.S. Army helicopters flying over his home, will take ‘appropriate action’ if in violation
The military is investigating after Kid Rock bragged about U.S. Army helicopters flying over his Nashville mansion, and say they will take ‘appropriate action’ if in violation.
Donation-based Pound Fitness class in Moundsville raises awareness of women’s heart health
The beat of drumsticks and music filled Miller Chiropractic and Wellness Center in Moundsville on Monday evening as women took part in a donation-based “Pound F
WA now can bet on college teams, but with conditions
Gov. Bob Ferguson expanded tribal sports betting to include college teams.
Complicated politics of license plate readers
Senior columnist Caris Gray argues that while license plate readers can be beneficial to public safety, they should not be used by the APD for fear of ICE compliance.
How to Watch Messi and Argentina vs Zambia Live on beIN SPORTS
The Argentina National Team heads into its second match of this FIFA international window with a clear objective: fine-tune details and continue building its foundation ahead of the 2026 World Cup. After facing Mauritania, the team led by Lionel Scaloni now takes on Zambia in what serves as a final test before key decisions are made.
There may be 10 times as many citizen scientists in Australia as we thought – and that’s great news for science
Citizens have contributed to science in Australia for many decades – and the field is now undergoing rapid growth
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are 'heartbroken' following son Joseph's arrest
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have spoken out following their son Joseph's arrest in March.
‘I think that MAGA is dying’: Inside the youth movement at CPAC
Last year’s meeting struck a triumphant tone, as Elon Musk cranked a chrome chain saw onstage. But for the past several years a younger crowd has declared the event passé.
Why I (Almost) Regretted My Lower Blepharoplasty
After I experienced some debilitating complications, I started reflecting on why I felt the need to get plastic surgery in the first place.
Automated Ball-Strike challenge system making an impact, Tony Vitello gets a reality check and Blue Jays start hot
San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder to take leave over "mental health condition," staff says
‘Race for the future’: Which countries — and what values — will prevail in science?
In a Yale visit, Harvey Fineberg, a renowned health policy researcher, discussed how the U.S. can keep pace in the global science “race” — and why it will benefit all of humankind.
Foundation Gaming & Entertainment Announces Sponsorship of New MPB Original Series “Southern Dish”
Foundation Gaming & Entertainment, a Mississippi-based hospitality and gaming company, is pleased to announce its sponsorship of Mississippi Public Broadcast...
May elections come at time of war on two fronts, Starmer says
At campaign launch, PM acknowledges concern over events in Ukraine and Iran as well as over rising cost of living
Where to watch Cleveland Guardians vs. Los Angeles Dodgers: Live stream, start time, TV Channel, odds for Monday, March 30
The Dodgers and Guardians begin their series on Monday night at Dodger Stadium.
Iran says its expelled ambassador won’t leave Lebanon as political tensions soar
BEIRUT (AP) — Iran on Monday defied Lebanon’s expulsion order for its ambassador by saying he would stay, further increasing tensions in a country in the crosshairs of the latest fighting bet…
Fourth Texas Area Planetary Science Meeting Returns in August 2026
The 4th Texas Area Planetary Science Meeting (TAPS) will be held on August 20–21, 2026, at the Commons Conference Center at The University of Texas at Austin.
Who could get Northern Ireland chance in Wales?
After their World Cup dreams came to an end in Italy, who could get a chance for Northern Ireland in Wales on Tuesday?
Connections: Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for March 30, 2026, puzzle No. 553
Welcome to Connections: Sports Edition Coach — a spot to gather clues and discuss (and share) scores.
Georgia State Senate candidate to resume campaigning after life-threatening health event
Georgia Senate candidate Lanny Thomas shared an update on his condition and plans to continue campaigning on Sunday.
NH's Business: The potential of data centers in NH
Fred Kocher sits down with Radim Bartos with the University of New Hampshire's Department of Computer Science to talk about the potential of new data centers in New Hampshire.
Apple CEO Says Get Off Your Phone (And Science Agrees With Him)
Smartphone dependence can have significant negative effects on both mental and physical health, which is why it's good to limit screen time to just a few hours.
McDonald’s breaking ground soon, city officials say
A McDonald’s restaurant will soon be breaking ground in Herculaneum and is expected to be opening in December 2025
Phil Weiser wins top spot in Colorado’s Democratic gubernatorial primary at party’s state assembly
Reds 3B Eugenio Suarez uses ABS challenge to counter back-to-back blown calls from umpire C.B. Bucknor
Louisville police shoots, kills woman in mental health crisis
A woman was shot and killed by two officers in Louisville after she allegedly charged at them with a large, sharp object while experiencing a mental health crisis.
Saturday Sports: Lacrosse season has returned to the North Country
Here’s a recap of your North Country sports this Saturday.
How The Rollout Of Nine MLB Regional Sports Networks Came Down To The Wire
Fans of Major League Baseball were left to scramble on where to find nine teams on television on Opening Day. Here's how it happened.
📸 This week's kit news 👕
Official releases, leaks and great finds: OneFootball rounds up all the kit news of the week.Arsenal (leak) 🔴The cloth of an English champion? The Gunners’ new home shirt should look like this (F...
Bayern Munich officially renews two injured talents
The duo will continue to focus on their recoveries.
Trey Hendrickson was "looking forward" to playing with Maxx Crosby
Less than 24 hours after the Ravens' trade for Maxx Crosby fell through, the team agreed to terms with Trey Hendrickson.
BravesVision is officially on DIRECTV
The Atlanta Braves announced another major carriage agreement hours before Opening Day.
CPAC draws conservatives to Texas amid Iran war, Republican battle for U.S. Senate nomination
The influential Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, is underway in Grapevine, Texas. While the annual event draws attendees and speakers from all over, a host of Texans — including Gov. Greg Abbott, U.S. Senate hopeful Ken Paxton and state Sen. Bryan Hughes — are scheduled to speak on Friday.
A Bremerton bakery closed by a 'particularly scary' crime
A Bremerton business launch was cut short by stalking, a 'particularly scary' crime one resident is speaking out about.
Trump says he wants to send federalized troops to L.A., San Francisco
Trump called on the mayors and governors of several blue cities and states to allow troops to 'come in and stop the crime,' and specifically called out Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Movie Review: 'Two Prosecutors' is a perfect nightmare of state corruption
Sergei Loznitsa’s “Two Prosecutors” is a nightmare of government corruption so perfectly composed that, by the time it reaches its chilling conclusion, you feel nearly as entrapped as its young
What to know about the "wild, wild West" of viral peptide health claims
ND Sports Scores for the week of March 23
Sports scores for the ND high school and college teams for the week of 3/23/2026
Giants' 2026 MLB Opening Night starting lineup snaps historic left field streak
Heliot Ramos is the first San Francisco Giants player since Barry Bonds to open consecutive MLB seasons in left field.
Trump names Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg to 13-member science and tech council
Trump has made securing U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence a central priority of his second term.
Trump Retained Classified Documents Because Of His ‘Business Interests,’ Jack Smith Alleged
Trump allegedly showed a classified map to people aboard his private plane, Smith found during his investigation.
Long lines persist at some U.S. airports despite ICE arrival
The Trump administration’s deployment of ICE officers to more than a dozen U.S. airports appeared to have a limited effect on reducing security lines.
Fact check: The lies Trump is using to sell his latest attack on mail-in voting
CNN debunks four of Trump’s most frequently repeated false claims about mail‑in voting.
WATCH LIVE: Senate meets as lawmakers consider deal to fund Homeland Security
These Creatures Have One Cell and No Brain. Scientists Just Discovered They Can Learn.
In 1897 Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov proved that animals can be trained using associative learning. A new study finds that even single-celled organisms can behave like “Pavlov's dog.”
Blount: Online sports betting proposal has little support in Senate, would cost casino industry
Sen. David Blount, chairman of the Gaming Committee in the Senate, says a proposal to legalize online sports betting lacks support in the Senate, and could harm the state's casino tourism industry, which provides thousands of jobs and millions in state revenue. Blount also discusses proposed, and recently enacted, changes to the Public Employee Retirement System, and proposals to increase tax credits for private schools.
How COVID turned America against science — and what it will take to win it back
Tony Fauci was not just jerking the country around.
"Patriotic Kenny" facing health problems, according to his social media
Fire destroys 30,000 square feet of Aledo plating business, no injuries reported
Your Thymus and Your Healthspan
Our thymus gland plays a central role in the development or our immune system, specifically for supporting T cell development (how these cells got their name, maturation and differentiation in the thymus) and discriminating between self and foreign, non-self antigen proteins with production of dendritic cells. As we age, our thymus gland shrinks—the process known as involution—with progressive change from spongy to fatty tissue, with loss of functionality. But this process, with respect to timeline and extent, markedly varies from one person to the next. And to make things even more complicated, our thymus gland anatomy and precise location in the chest also is highly variable. So the famous Frank Netter diagrams from the 1960s (such as at left below) don’t capture the remarkable heterogeneity that a random set of 12 chest CT scans (below at right). What I consider as 2 landmark papers in Nature this week (here and here) used AI to quantify health of the thymus in 2 large cohorts, and then correlate the metric to a broad array of health outcomes. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’m going to cover three questions: (1) How was thymus health determined by AI?; (2) How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? and (3) Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? Subscribe 1. How was thymus health determined by AI? This was accomplished by extensive work developing and validating an AI pipeline for 2 stages, the first for localization and segmentation of the thymus bed, and the second to quantify a digital marker, termed the thymic health score. There’s a lot to this algorithmic development, so I won’t go into all the details, but just provide a rudimentary outline of what was done. The 1st stage used supervised learning with 2 radiologists reviewing 2,461 chest CT scans. That work trained a 3D U-Net model to automatically identify the thymic bed’s 3D cropped region using center of mass coordinates, which reached 99.8% accuracy. The 2nd stage used a foundation model that was pre-trained with SwAV (which stands for Swapping Assignment between multiple Views), a self-supervised model, that generated a high-dimensional thymus representation of 4,096 features. That compares to the radiology reductionist and subjective scoring of 0 to 3 where 0 means the thymus is fully degenerated and fatty, and 3 is considered dense, intact glandular soft tissue. Notably, the self-supervised learning (SSL) performance was superior to supervised (AUC ~0.75 vs 0.55, respectively) reflecting the shallowness of the 0-3 classifier vs SSL’s holistic, self-taught AI. The thymic health score ranged from 0 to 100, with the highest number indexed to fully preserved thymic health. The algorithmic work extended to explainability with both Shapely value distribution, meaning the model was holistic not relying on any “magic” pixel, and occlusion sensitivity, demonstrating the model’s performance was not affected by ribs, sternum, lung tissue, but rather focused on the thymic bed directly. Below are a few saliency maps from the occlusion sensitivity that indicate the thymic bed focus, not affected by neighboring structures, using the jet color scale. Now the AI was ready for processing ~25,000 CT scans, each over 30 MB files, from the 2 large participant cohorts to provide a thymic health score, it did so in less than 14 hours, which is less than 2 seconds per scan! Share 2. How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? The two cohorts were the National Lung Screening Trial, NLST (N=25,031) and the Framingham Heart Study, FHS (N=2,581) each with baseline demographics and long term follow up of >12 years for health outcomes. From the NSLT, you can see below that increased age and body-mass index were correlated to reduced thymic health. And, overall, men had reduced thymic health scores compared with women. There are a lot of graphs in the paper for outcomes, for both the NLST and FHS cohorts. To simplify the major outcomes, below is a composite Figure with striking reduction of all-cause mortality and for the different causes of death. The results were consistent between the 2 cohorts. For example, the cardiovascular mortality hazard ratio average was 0.57 in NLST and 0.38 in FHS (weighted to be 0.53 for the aggregate). The reduction of mortality also extended to digestive diseases and pulmonary disease (data not shown below). Lung cancer incidence was reduced by 36% for high vs low thymic health (Figure below, with a panel -incidence and b panel-mortality, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, smoking status). Notably, there was a smoker’s paradox: lower incidence and improved survival for lung cancer in smokers who had a high thymus health score. Smoking was associated with lower thymic scores whereas alcohol was not. Higher thymic health was linked to higher HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower fasting blood glucose, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Inflammation biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, were elevated in the people with lower thymic health scores. In their second paper, the same team looked at the relationship between thymic score and outcomes for 3,476 patients receiving cancer immunotherapy. The non-small cell lung cancer progression-free survival was reduced in patients with low thymic health score. A parallel relationship for survival was seen for other types of cancer including melanoma, breast, and kidney with a 44% lower risk among high thymic scores (Figure). A similar pattern was seen with different immune checkpoint inhibitors. The thymus health score outperformed programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)and tumor mutation burden (TMB) assay of the tumor and was an independent prognostic marker of progression-free survival. In this dataset, a direct connect with thymus score and adaptive immune function was noted with a correlation before cancer treatment for both T-cell diversity and thymus T-cell production (a metric known as T cell receptor excision circles). Thymus Removal Study There is a highly relevant citation about thymus function before moving onto ways to rejuvenate it. In 2023, a very important study of thymus removal during cardiothoracic surgery was published, with 1146 patients undergoing thymus removal vs 1146 matched controls (mean age 55 years). The adverse outcomes for thymus removal were striking, with a 2.9 higher risk of all-cause mortality and doubling of cancer incidence, 1.5 fold increase in cancer mortality, and 1.5-fold increase in autoimmune diseases. The immune function showed marked compromise after thymus removal, as reflected by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Figure below) Share Ground Truths 3. Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? In recent months we’ve learned a lot about the process of thymus involution and the pathways by which this may be modulated. Thymus involution is primarily due to loss to thymus epithelial cells (TECs) and there are 2 subtypes with different functions: the cortical, responsible for positive selection of T cells, and the medullary, for negative selection. When adipose tissue infiltrates the thymus, thymic adipocytes are pro-inflammatory, knocking out T-cell output. Likewise, systemic inflammation, or “inflammaging,” from smoking, obesity, and chronic stress promote thymic adipocytes. Now, from preclinical studies, we know about key pathways that account for these processes. Historically, back in 2014, FOXN1 was recognized as a single master transcription factor essential for TEC function, with studies in mice with forced FOXN1 upregulation leading to thymus regeneration. That laid the foundation for potential regrowth of quiescent thymus cells. It took awhile to find pathways to accomplish this goal and to even refute its role as the master regulator. The Liver-Thymus Axis Feng Zhang and his team recently showed that injection of an mRNA vaccine to the liver encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination, factors known to support thymopoiesis (Figure), successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. However, the effect was transient. The FGF21 Story Two reports in 2025 addressed the thymus gland’s production of FGF21, a growth factor (fibroblast growth factor 21) and its control of thymus involution. This growth factor is also produced by the liver, but it doesn’t have impact on the thymus in aged rodent models. In contrast, The liver’s hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to reverse senescent TEC structural changes. Growth hormone stimulates production of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the liver and the thymus. Two small studies in human participants (TRIIM, for Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) of 6 and 50 people, respectively, treated with combined human growth hormone, metformin and DHEA, suggested the potential of slowing epigenetic aging and improving thymus mass and function. But the combination of drugs, small sample, and lack of controls make conclusions murky. Increased thymus FGF21 led to increased CD8 T cells in old mice and extended healthspan and improved physical performance. Building on the previous FOXN1 data, ablation of β-klotho, the obligatory co-receptor for FOXN1, accelerated thymic aging. The benefit to FGF21 was confirmed in a companion paper using an FGF21 knock-in mouse model showing thymus enlargement and increased TECs throughout the lifespan. (schematic Figure below). The accompanying editorial for these 2 papers speculated: “The proposed link between age-associated thymus involution and organismal aging is intriguing, and suggests we might seek to achieve systemic rejuvenation by counteracting thymic involution.” Other Factors Lessons from the Axolotl (Mexican Salamander) In an elegant set of experiments of the axolotl (Figure), known for its complete thymus regeneration after total surgical removal, mediators were identified. Surprisingly FOXN1 was dispensable. But midkine, a growth factor, appeared to be the driver, the initiator of thymus cell growth, survival, and repair. Other components that contributed were Postn+ (periostin-expressing mesenchymal niches) and Ccl19, a chemokine protein from the bloodstream. RANK and RANKL RANK (receptor activator of nuclear factor κB its ligand (RANKL) have been considered key regulators of medullary TECs. In a study of both aged mice and human thymus cell cultures, their key role was confirmed, with multiple benefits of resorting TEC function, recruitment of progenitor cells, and T cell development. Subscribe Summing Up This body of work strongly supports the health of the thymus gland as a critical regulator of human healthspan, not just a correlate or link. The new landmark studies are reinforced by the regenerative biology experimental models that have shown, via an array of mediators, that healthspan of aged mice is at least in part dependent on thymus gland function and its critical role for maintaining adaptive immunity. It sure seems that we’d be better off having an immune reservoir of naive T cells instead of a profile in older adults of exhausted, low quality, memory T cells, with a senescent phenotype. It is striking that we ignored the importance of the thymus gland for many decades. A wake-up call was the results of the thymectomy matched control study reviewed here, with the opposite of high thymic health score improved health outcomes. The convergence of AI and healthspan here is notable. The exceptional and laborious work for developing and validating (no less explaining) the AI to quantify thymus health set the foundation for probing the connect the major health outcomes in two cohorts with extensive follow-up. We’ve never had a way to meaningfully quantify the thymus gland before, so this represents important leverage of supervised, self-supervised, and transformer models. The study wouldn’t have been possible without AI. And it begs the question as to whether there are ways we can maintain our thymus at a high health score. But it’s not so simple to rejuvenate our thymus. There are multiple risks including the induction of autoimmunity, increasing the risk of cancer, and inducing a pro-inflammatory state. For example, factors that increase TEC proliferation could compromise the medulllary negative selection process and leak out auto-reactive (self-attacking) T cells. Thymic cells could be induced to proliferate, but we know, for example, that growth hormone and IGF-1 are associated with an increase risk of cancer. If thymus rejuvenation doesn’t clear out the accumulated senescent cells in older adults, then inflammation within the gland could block the production of TECs. Keeping these risks in mind, we now have identified many ways to keep our thymus healthy as we age that undoubtedly will be tested in clinical trials going forward. Ultimately, the benefit-to-risk tradeoffs will be defined. In the meantime, we have desperately needed an immunome. As I’ve stressed in multiple prior Ground Truths, we have no test in the clinic to assess a patient’s immune status! It was very encouraging for me to get an email from Hugo Aerts, the senior author of the landmark papers in the days after they were published: “I also wanted to say that your Substack on “Why We Need an Immunome” was inspiring for this work. We found it a very compelling perspective and greatly enjoyed reading it.” Just having an assessment of a person’s immune status via a chest CT scan, with millions of these performed per year, might help in guiding the right immunotherapy for cancer (e.g. more intensive, combinations for those with low thymic health scores) and help define people who are increased risk for age-related diseases of cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative. The main theme of Super Agers is that we now have many layers of data (genetics, proteins, biomarkers, organ clocks that can be integrated via multimodal AI) for us to define a person’s specific risk decades before one of these age-related diseases leads to symptoms, enabling prevention. From the new studies this week, we can add thymus health score as yet another way to understand a person’s risk, a window into their adaptive immune system and healthspan. And perhaps someday we will be able to safely rejuvenate the thymus, or maintain its health through one’s life, and use the thymus health score to monitor. NB: I wrote this post (No A.I.) A Quick Poll Loading... ********************************************************************* Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (now > 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Leave a comment Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.
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