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Connie Cepko: A Life in Science Mapping the Retina — and Working to Save It
Over a five-decade career, HHMI Investigator Connie Cepko has reshaped our understanding of how the retina develops and forged new paths toward treating blindness and inherited retinal disease. This story is part of a series exploring the careers of HHMI scientists.
Supreme Court won't revive Alan Dershowitz's $300 million suit against CNN
Dershowitz had urged the court to reconsider New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. The landmark First Amendment case that made it harder for public figures to win libel lawsuits because it requires proof that an outlet knowingly published something false, or showed a reckless disregard for the truth.
Alleged Modern Warfare 4 ad uses ‘not on Xbox Game Pass’ as a selling point
This year’s Call of Duty will be the first to skip Game Pass since 2023…
TEFCA hits 1 billion as HHS invests $1.28M in network oversight
While marking TEFCA's milestone, ONC announces a new contract to enforce network compliance. Amid ongoing legal battles over alleged network misuses, Health Gorilla CEO Bob Watson emphasizes why federalizing governance is critical to trust.
Malik Beasley indicted on illegal sports gambling charges along with fellow ex-NBA player Ed Davis
Beasley allegedly coordinated his performance during the 2023-34 season with bettors
Bill Maher upstaged by Trump impersonator at Mark Twain Prize ceremony
Bill Maher might be getting a taste of his comedic karma.
Comcast cuts NBCUniversal loose. Netflix and Apple may want a look.
Comcast spent 25 years arguing that media and broadband belonged together. Now it's breaking them apart.
50 Cent mocks Jussie Smollett's return to stage at Pride vent
50 Cent mocks 'Empire' actor Jussie Smollett's return to the stage at a Pride event years after an alleged hate crime hoax led to controversy for the star.
Naughty Dog Chose The Last of Us Remake Over Uncharted Remake, It's Claimed
Naughty Dog is no stranger to a remake, and evidence suggests an Uncharted 1 Remake was on the cards, with datamined files proving it.
Ad Performance And Politics Steered Brand Dollars Away From LGBTQ+ Communities – But The Pendulum Will Swing Back
The current administration discouraged many brands and organizations from supporting and marketing to the LGBTQ+ community, including in June
MLB Power Rankings: Are the Phillies ready to make a declaration on the NL East?
The Phillies have surged into the top five at the same time the Braves are struggling
Careers That Shaped Biology
Every great scientific career begins with a question no one has been able to answer — and a scientist stubborn enough to keep asking it. This series looks back at the careers of some of HHMI’s most distinguished scientists — people whose contributions have changed what we know about life itself, and whose stories reflect the best of what science, and scientists, can be.
Leaked A20 Pro Image Hints at iPhone 18 Pro Performance Gains
An alleged image of the iPhone 18 Pro motherboard has leaked online, showing the A20 Pro chip will use a new packaging technology that should offer notable performance gains over the previous model. The leaked image, which has been shared by the accounts "WHYLAB" and "Ice Universe" on Weibo, appears to show the A20 Pro chip integrated into TSMC's new packaging architecture, known as Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module (WMCM) technology.
FIFA Let Politics Win Over Football, Iran Paid The Price For Political Hypocrisy
Football's governing body has long sold itself as apolitical - like the IOC - an organisation above borders, above diplomacy, above conflict. But this World Cup has challenged that idea and changed perceptions about FIFA.
Jodie Sweetin praises “Better Call Saul ”actor cast as dad in “Full House ”pilot, but Bob Saget was always 'first choice'
Saget was engaged to cohost CBS' "The Morning Program" when he got the call for "Full House," which led to his absence in the original pilot.
Lagos school emerges winner of 10th Edition of Tolaram Science Challenge
By Efe Onodjae Iwerekun Community Senior High School, Ibeju-Lekki, has emerged the winner of the 10th edition of Tolaram Science Challenge (TSC), marking their third consecutive win. The school triumphed over Magbon-Alade Senior Grammar School in a keenly contested grand finale of the competition. The Tolaram Science Challenge, sponsored by Lagos Free Zone, is an annual […]
These fat-filled brain cells may be making multiple sclerosis worse
Scientists have uncovered a surprising clue that may help explain why multiple sclerosis (MS) progresses rapidly in some people but not others. In brain tissue from patients with severe MS, researchers found large numbers of “foamy” immune cells packed with fat droplets after absorbing damaged myelin. These overloaded cells appear to switch from helping repair the brain to fueling ongoing damage and inflammation.
Wife and 2 children of Argentine soccer star discovered dead after earthquakes in Venezuela
Argentine soccer star Lucas Trejo lost his wife, Yanina Maranella, and their two children, Aarón and Ainhoa, in the powerful pair of earthquakes that ravaged Venezuela on June 24.
Serena Williams 'Hates' The New Rules Surrounding Tennis
A lot has changed in tennis over the course of Serena Williams' career. Williams, now 44 years old, will make her return this week. She'll play in Wimbledon, which starts on Monday. Williams' first round match is set for Centre Court at 11:20 a.m. E.T. on Tuesday. But as Williams is set to return ...
49ers Insider Delivers Commanders Blunt Reality on Brandon Aiyuk
The Washington Commanders are a side character in the rift between Brandon Aiyuk and the San Francisco 49ers. In recent days, Aiyuk has made it clear that he wants to play for the Commanders.Before the remarks from Aiyuk, there was only reporting of Washington’s interest in the 49ers’ wideout. Nonetheless, that’s slightly changed with the […] The post 49ers Insider Delivers Commanders Blunt Reality on Brandon Aiyuk appeared first on HEAVY.
Vallejo: Armed Suspect Arrested After Allegedly Making Death Threats At Business
Police have arrested a man after he allegedly brandished a gun and made death threats to customers at a business in Vallejo, police said Sunday.
Efzimfotase alfa demonstrated improvements in bone health in treatment-naïve pediatric patients with hypophosphatasia achieving median difference of 1.67 vs placebo in RGI-C Score at week 25 in MULBERRY Phase III trial
Positive results from the MULBERRY Phase III trial showed that efzimfotase alfa (ALXN1850), an investigational enzyme replacement therapy, demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in bone health in children (2 to
WATCH: Biden appears confused about where to exit stage after Democratic gala remarks
Joe Biden, 83, appeared to seek directions before exiting the stage at a Maryland Democratic gala where he urged Democrats to fight back against Trump.
After trying a Google TV projector, I may never buy another TV ever again
After spending a few weeks with a Google TV projector, I think I may be done buying actual TVs for good. Here's what changed.
Spent 6 hours in Amtrak coach and business class, how they compare
I splurged for business class on an Amtrak ride from New York to Vermont. Here's what my $80 upgrade got me.
Black Canyon City business defrauded by GM
A woman was arrested Tuesday for allegedly stealing $40,000 from the Black Canyon City business for which she was the general manager.
MacBook Retail Sales Challenged By Apple Silicon Legacy
The extended lifespan of first-generation M1 MacBooks is impacting retail sales of the newer AI-focused MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops.
Shelby County Health Dept. offers free HIV testing
In honor of National HIV Testing Day, the Shelby County Health Department hosted free testing on Saturday, and they urged anyone thinking about getting tested to do it now.
New York Knicks Champion Mitchell Robinson Makes Heartfelt Post
Mitchell Robinson is coming off his eighth season in the NBA.The 28-year-old has become an extremely valuable player for the New York Knicks in that span.He is coming off a season where he averaged 5.7 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per contest while shooting 72.3% from the field in 60 games.Knicks Champion Robinson Makes […] The post New York Knicks Champion Mitchell Robinson Makes Heartfelt Post appeared first on HEAVY.
A CHAOTIC FINISH TO GROUP G 🤯
A CHAOTIC FINISH TO GROUP G 🤯 See how much the standings changed on Friday night!
Tony Goldwyn recalls Hollywood 'people that were mean' changing their attitude toward him after this hit film
Tony Goldwyn said that Hollywood colleagues treated him as if he 'had the plague' when he was an unemployed actor, and those same 'mean' people changed their tune after this hit movie.
Health Department releases food inspection reports for week of June 14
Scores for the recent Health Department food inspection ranged from 74-100.
'Super puffy': Scientists ponder extreme low density of two planets
International researchers are engaged in a complex study of two planets in deep space that appear to have an average density lower than that of candy floss. The planets orbiting star TOI-791, located ...
Sky Sports: Everton are in the race to sign Serie A midfielder
Everton Transfer News: Mandela Keita Emerges as Midfield TargetEverton continue to search for midfield reinforcements this summer, with Sky Sports reporting that Parma’s Mandela Keita has emerged as...
Dear Abby | Mom's rekindling with abusive father feels like a betrayal
Dear Abby: I am estranged from my father and have been since I was 12. (I'm currently 26.) He was emotionally, psychologically and physically abusive to me, and cutting ties
Mountain lions changed everything in this tiny California preserve
A surprising ecological makeover unfolded when mountain lions began frequenting a small preserve south of San Francisco. Deer activity dropped, plants recovered, and shifts among predators like coyotes, bobcats, and foxes followed. The study shows that powerful “trophic cascades” aren’t limited to remote wilderness—they can happen in small, suburban preserves too.
Politics Unplugged Podcast: Headlines with Stacy Pearson and Marcus Dell’Artino
The Politics Unplugged panel breaks down a possible Arizona special session tied to ESA vouchers, union protections and ballot measures. The discussion centers on whether lawmakers could unwind late-night legislation that angered teachers, police and firefighters. They also examine Gov. Katie Hobbs’ political leverage and why both parties may have reasons to cut a deal. Later, the podcast turns to Trump tax cuts, Democratic Socialists, the White House reflecting pool controversy and the World Cup.
National Science Foundation finds no violations in Texas A&M research security contract
U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House of Representatives' select committee on China, had urged the NSF to pause funding for a project known as SECURE.
Testing gives science-based data for Fairmont lakes
FAIRMONT— A partnership between the city of Fairmont and Minnesota State University-Mankato will result in comprehensive scientific data on the Fairmont Chain of Lakes. The $25,000 contract started on April 1 and will go through Dec. 31 of this year. Fairmont’s Water Resources Coordinator, Hannah Neusch, acknowledged that while the water treatment plant in Fairmont […]
I Took My 12-Year-Old Dog to See 'Supergirl' and It Completely Changed the Movie for Me
Like many dog owners, I'm fully aware that my dog is the best dog. So when the chance to see the buzzy new 'Supergirl' with my 12-year-old Chihuahua-mix arose, I jumped at the opportunity.I was not prepared for how his presence would affect my review of the film.
Dell shareholders approve legal move from Delaware to Texas
Michael Dell says Texas is where the company has always belonged as shareholders overwhelmingly approve the reincorporation move from Delaware.
NM health officials report fox in McKinley County tests positive for rabies
The New Mexico Department of Health on June 25, 2026, reported a rabid fox in McKinley County and urged residents to vaccinate their pets.
Newsom urges a national 'billionaires' tax' while fighting one in California
The governor announced his agenda a day after an influential health care union in California pledged to go forward with a ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of billionaires living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. Newsom opposes that measure.
I took my kids to the pub to watch the World Cup
Soccer fan Jonathan Stone took his kids to watch the World Cup on a big-screen TV in a pub. He shrugged off criticism.
Moncks Corner woman, 35, charged after running business without retail license
A Berkely County woman was charged after South Carolina Department of Revenue officals found that she was with operating a business without a Retail LicenseFrid
HHS Expands Secure Access to Health Records Through the TEFCA® Network, Announces Milestone of One Billion Health Records Exchanged
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT at HHS announced new steps to strengthen the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement™ TEFCA®
Jackson business owner charged with murder after 21-year-old man shot
A suspected vehicle break-in ended in gunfire in Jackson. Police say the business owner now faces murder charges after the 21-year-old victim died during surgery.
How PENN’s US$360 Million Aurora Resort Shift At PENN Entertainment (PENN) Has Changed Its Investment Story
PENN Entertainment has opened the US$360 million Hollywood Casino and Hotel Aurora, replacing its former Fox River riverboat with a 388,500-square-foot, 24/7 land-based resort featuring over 1,000 slots, 50 table games, a sportsbook, 226-room hotel, spa, event center, and extensive dining options. The Aurora project, which created around 700 permanent roles and mirrors PENN’s broader shift into higher-amenity land-based properties, highlights how the company is reinvesting heavily to refresh...
Medical miracles that changed how we treat disease
We've come a long way since \
Boniakowski: Electrical supply business buys Princeton commercial buildings for $1.9 million
An electrical supply company has acquired two adjacent buildings in Princeton for a combined $1.9 million, in a set of deals arranged by The Boniakowski Commercial Real Estate Group.
Bayer wins in US court, but at what cost to public health?
A landmark US Supreme Court ruling protects Bayer from thousands of lawsuits linked to its Roundup weedkiller. Plaintiffs alleged the German agrochemical giant failed to warn users about potential cancer risks.
I own a Turkish restaurant in SF. The World Cup changed my business.
Turkey playing in San Francisco as part of the FIFA World Cup 2026 has brought new customers to one restaurant, Turquaz's owner told Business Insider.
Remembering Victory Stadium: How Roanoke’s lost landmark changed sports and civil rights
It’s been 20 years since Victory Stadium was demolished, but the memories and legacy remain alive in Roanoke.
Mark Cuban urged AI firms to spend billions on cities hit by job losses
He said this is the "cost of doing business" for the companies that are losing a PR battle with the masses.
What we learned as Bryce Harper caps Phillies' shocking comeback trilogy
The Phillies erased another five-run deficit, rallied late again and reached the season’s halfway point with another reminder of how much has changed.
The Big Summer Preview – New Starter Sets and ready painted terrain
Dive into Warhammer 40,000, and fight on the battlefields of Armageddon with new terrain kits.
Monkey Business: Wild rhesus macaque spotted at Mount Dora hotel
A wild rhesus macaque was spotted at the historic Lakeside Inn in Mount Dora, Florida, spending about 45 minutes roaming the property and attracting attention from guests and staff. The hotel and local businesses responded with humorous, monkey-themed social media content, engaging the community. Wildlife officials cautioned the public not to approach or feed wild monkeys due to potential health risks and encouraged reporting sightings to authorities. The monkey has not returned to the hotel but has been seen elsewhere in downtown Mount Dora.
Stonepeak reveals $2.53B offer for Chicago parking meter lease
Stonepeak disclosed its $2.53 billion bid for Chicago's parking meter lease as it urged skeptical aldermen to approve the transfer and criticized the Johnson administration.
Granger family pledges largest gift in history of UM-Health Sparrow
The Granger family has pledged the largest gift in University of Michigan Health-Sparrow history for a new behavioral health hospital.
Valve Quietly Walks Back Steam Machine 4K 60 FPS Performance Claims
Valve's Steam Machine has earned more than its fair share of skeptics, thanks to performance claims and more recently its unfortunate pricing. More recently, though, Valve has seemingly taken some of this criticism to heart and silently changed some of those performance claims on the Steam Machine p...
Illinois financial adviser charged with operating Ponzi scheme
Prosecutors allege Paaris Kopsaftis of Des Plaines-based Blackwater Assets took more than $150,000 from clients in a Ponzi-like scheme.
Making Our Own Luck
We are cross-posting a piece that former NIH official Kris Willis wrote for Macroscience. Kris is now the President and Founder of the Woodley Park Institute, for which I’m a board member. Picking winners or hedging bets? Federal science agencies have long wrestled with the question of how to ensure their billions of dollars of grants and contracts result in maximum benefits for Americans. On the surface, it might seem that a goal-oriented, interventionist style of management would be the best policy: prioritize our most pressing problems and distribute funding accordingly.This top-down strategy creates a unique hazard, though: bad choices can send resources in the wrong direction, resulting in slow progress that impedes the delivery of tangible benefits to citizens. Moreover, if decision makers pursue an applied advance when the underlying scientific principles remain poorly understood, they risk costly failures and a loss of support for the research enterprise at large. Examples include Nixon’s 1971 War on Cancer, undertaken on the premise that a cure could be achieved in less than a decade, the drive to build an operational commercial fusion plant by the mid-1990s, and the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, which failed to produce the effective treatments and prevention strategies promised by 2025. The contrasting laissez-faire approach is to hedge your bets. If the path to an advance is impossible to predict, then the wisest choice might be to distribute funding to as widely as possible. The main risk of this strategy is that spreading funding thinly may limit the resources available to the most promising research, resulting in the same negative outcomes as the interventionist approach: limited support for the most promising topics, slow progress, and delayed returns. In reality, at science agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, program managers navigate between these two extremes, setting some funds aside to target high-priority areas and using the rest to cover the widest possible range of meritorious proposals. This middle path seems like the most rational way to proceed, but it still requires making choices. How much should be set aside for high priority topics? What should those topics be? How should we define merit? Expert opinion can provide a helpful guide, but leading experts can have remarkably different opinions about what matters and what should be prioritized. Moreover, experts and administrators alike can be risk averse, giving an edge to high-profile, well-established concepts. What’s really needed is a data-driven framework to help guide decision-making, one that doesn’t simply repackage prestige or incumbency. Recognizing breakthroughs years in advance Many breakthroughs fail to attract funding or recognition at the earliest stages of development. Katalin Karikó, for example, spent years struggling to win grants for work on mRNA that would eventually win her and Drew Weissman a Nobel Prize. Similar stories can be told about Jim Allison’s groundbreaking studies leading to the development of cancer immunotherapy, Stan Pruisner’s demonstration that prions can self-replicate without DNA, or Robin Warren and Barry Marshall’s proof that Helicobacter pylori, not stress, causes ulcers. Yet at some point, the scientific community recognizes and responds to transformative breakthroughs like these. How does that change happen? And what if science funders could identify the areas that are on the cusp of a breakthrough? Those questions led my collaborators and me to study how scientists responded to past breakthroughs. Based on patterns in that data, we developed a means of predicting future breakthroughs, using biomedicine as a proof of concept. It’s worth taking a moment to describe how our approach works. Briefly, our prediction process begins by grouping the 18 million or so peer-reviewed papers in PubMed, the authoritative database of biomedical research, into roughly 50,000 unique topics. A small subset of these topics are so widely acclaimed as breakthroughs that they have been recognized with a major prize like a Nobel or a Lasker Award. We theorized that studying the development of these outliers over time, especially before they gained acclaim, was the key to identifying future instances of them. After defining topics, we chose 21 representative breakthroughs and asked what they looked like before they won prestigious prizes. To answer that question, we re-ran our topic-mapping algorithm repeatedly, winding back the clock one year each time, stringing together the years to follow the progress of each field as it grew and advanced. We found that in each case, the years leading up to a discovery followed a pattern: a burst of papers on a new, rapidly evolving topic, many of which quickly became influential. These characteristics—the percent of papers that are new, the percentage of papers that are brought in from other topics, and the influence of each individual paper—can all be measured separately for any given topic. Together, they act as a predictive signal that is detectable an average of five years before a transformative discovery is made, and up to thirty years before the discovery receives a major prize. Scanning the current research landscape for topics that display this signal allows us to predict what work will likely produce a future breakthrough. Each year we analyzed includes four or five signals, a number that appears to have remained constant across a twenty year time frame. In their classic work on the sociology of science, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar established that the desire to participate in a major discovery is an important motivator for scientists as they consider whether they should take up (or abandon) a research problem. Although further work is needed, the simplest explanation for our results is that this behavior is widespread enough to detect at scale. A foundational advance, or something like it, draws the attention of scientists and causes them to change the direction of their research. They vote with their feet, staking their own reputation and careers by publishing on and citing the new idea. That upswell of interest is the foundation of our breakthrough signal. What kind of research does our model identify as a breakthrough? After building a model based on the patterns in our 21 preselected breakthroughs, we tested it by identifying all early signals of discovery from 1994 through 1997. Of the 18 signals we found in that time period, 17 can be traced forward in time to a breakthrough. Examples include super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (see the image above), the directed evolution of proteins and enzymes (Chemistry Nobel, 2018), and sequencing the human genome (National Medal of Science, 2008). The discovery of the role of leptin signaling in obesity is a particularly interesting case study. Around 1950, scientists noticed the existence of a type of lab mouse that suffered from a unique inherited form of obesity. When given the freedom to choose their own diet, these mice ate more than normal and preferred food that was high in fat. Researchers had few clues as to why the animals overate; early experiments pointed to the existence of a soluble ob factor found circulating in the bloodstream that regulated appetite, but its identity was unknown. In 1994, Jeffrey Friedman and colleagues identified and sequenced the ob gene, noting that the protein it encoded appeared to fit the profile of a circulating factor. A year later, a trio of high-profile publications demonstrated that ob was a hormone that regulated body weight and fat deposition by regulating appetite. One of these was co-authored by Friedman, who christened it leptin from the ancient Greek word for thin. Using our model, the data from 1996 make it clear this advance would become a breakthrough. Scientists had flocked to study the biology of the new hormone, generating the flurry of new papers and citations required to produce a signal. One of these demonstrated that serum leptin concentrations reflected the amount of adipose tissue in the human body, providing clinical validation of the earlier mouse studies. Before the identification of leptin, scientists were unable to point to a specific molecule that controlled appetite and adiposity, so that it was impossible to rule out non-physiological causes of obesity; its characterization fundamentally changed our concept of weight gain. In 2010, Friedman and fellow pioneer Douglas Coleman were awarded a Lasker for the discovery. Our work also identifies breakthroughs in clinical practice and behavioral and social sciences, even though these areas are less likely to draw the attention of major prize committees. One example that falls into this category is the introduction of endovascular aneurysm repair, a minimally invasive surgical procedure for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm, a leading cause of death among Americans over the age of 65. Relative to the previous standard of care, it reduces in-hospital mortality by almost four-fold. In 2017, Timothy Chuter received the American College of Surgeons’ prestigious Jacobsen Innovation award for his multiple refinements to the technique. Another under-recognized breakthrough identified by our model is the development of standardized survey instruments to assess the quality of life for HIV+ patients. The antiretroviral cocktails introduced in the mid-1990s reduced AIDS mortality, but treatment came with serious side effects. The new evaluations showed that patients whose disease progressed had worse physical functioning than Americans with other chronic diseases, while those who were asymptomatic maintained a health-related quality of life on par with the overall US population. This evidence made it possible for patients and activists to argue that even in the absence of a total cure, and in spite of the side effects, alleviation of symptoms was a worthwhile priority for clinicians. My colleagues and I have failed to identify any significant recognition for the physicians and health policy experts who pioneered this advance, although in 2016, researchers called for the World Health Organization to set targets for good health-related quality of life as part of its framework to end the AIDS pandemic. From forecasting to funding How should science funders use our predictions? Any serious discussion of what we should do with this new capability needs to begin with an understanding of its limitations. We can’t (and shouldn’t) invest all of our resources in the small number of topics predicted to produce breakthroughs. Innovative new fields are born from existing ones; they rarely arise de novo. If funders don’t maintain a diverse portfolio, the breakthroughs of tomorrow will have no antecedents. Think of this as eating the seed corn, or killing the goose that lays the golden egg. There are also multiple goals of funding beyond basic scientific discovery, including translating discoveries into clinical practice, developing new technologies, supporting economic development, and training new scientists. The investments needed to accomplish these goals are likely different from those required to support emerging breakthroughs. Finally, we must be aware that we may not capture every instance of a breakthrough. The concept is fuzzy, and not every significant discovery is recognized with a major award. Further, breakthroughs are rare, meaning that our dataset is, by necessity, small. This makes formal estimates of accuracy challenging. Although our overall success rate appears to be high, any one signal may turn out to be a false positive. We found one apparent example: the development of the third generation COX-2 inhibitors, Vioxx and Celebrex, which were much celebrated in the early 2000s as effective but non-addictive pain relievers, meets all the algorithmic criteria of a breakthrough. Five years after it received FDA approval, researchers demonstrated that Vioxx was associated with serious cardiovascular complications, and the manufacturer voluntarily pulled the drug from the market. Celebrex remains available, although like other NSAIDs, it carries an FDA warning for increased cardiovascular risk. Decision makers who were overly focused on the breakthrough potential of this research might have wasted substantial resources nurturing an area that ultimately proved to be a failure—but so would those who relied on expert opinion at the time. That said, the potential benefits of funding the next mRNA vaccine or cancer immunotherapy years earlier than we might have are large. When we can’t assume the outcome of an action, it’s worth conducting an experiment. Can targeted support for areas that are poised to produce a breakthrough increase the return on scientific investment without cannibalizing future advances? With the necessary administrative infrastructure in place, conducting this experiment would be straightforward. First, identify all the breakthrough signals between 2018 and 2023, select half at random, and commit to a decade of investment. For biomedicine, a six year window should yield about 30 topics with the potential to produce a breakthrough. Providing strong support to half of these might be accomplished for $300 million a year. That’s roughly half of the recent annual budget of the NIH Common Fund or around 20% of the fiscal year 2025 budget for ARPA-H. After five years, then again at ten, compare to see which group — the one that was actively managed, or the control — produced more breakthroughs, and on what timescale. Although we used biomedicine as an example, the same experiment could just as well be run for physics, materials science, or any other discipline. Any attempt to undertake such an experiment should keep three points top of mind. First, we can predict the topic of future breakthroughs, but the people and vision for how to move the work forward are still important. In practice, this means success requires active program managers with the expertise to develop the science and the authority to do so, including by recruiting investigators. Second, we would be wise to learn from the failures of past attempts to fund transformative research. High among these are funding modestly repackaged work, confusing the genuinely novel with the merely unfamiliar, and relying too much on incumbent investigators. All of these risks can be mitigated by thoroughly and intelligently integrating high quality data into portfolio management. Finally, we need to have patience. Even with strong funding support, producing a breakthrough takes time. If supporting breakthroughs is the best way to nurture the birth of new fields, we also need to accurately describe and properly manage the other two stages, so that we invest wisely throughout the productive lifetime of ideas and divest once they reach the point of diminishing returns. We would benefit from more study of all of these phases, especially the transition from one to another. More research could answer questions like: When does a breakthrough become an established field? How do the availability of funding, the size and characteristics of the available workforce, and the accumulation of evidence that disagrees with prevailing models affect a field’s decline? Exactly how do old ideas give birth to new ones, and can we speed up the process? The more we understand about the dynamics of scientific progress, the better we can maximize the odds that our curiosity leads to results. I’d call that finding a way to make our own luck.
Valve quietly changes Steam Machine 4K claim: 4K 60 FPS becomes “up to 4K”
Valve has changed the Steam Machine 4K claim. The page now says “up to 4K” with FSR 4.1 instead of 4K 60 FPS with FSR.
If I were traveling, Anker is the only company I would trust with my life to keep my tech fully charged at all times — and 11 of its best items are on sale right now
Get these Anker products to keep your gear always charged!
5 states targeting Medicaid behavioral health enrollment amid fraud concerns
At least five states have taken steps in 2026 to restrict new Medicaid behavioral health provider enrollments as stakeholders seek to curb fraud, waste and abuse while strengthening oversight of high-risk services. The developments come as the Trump administration aims to crack down on healthcare fraud. On June 25, the Justice Department charged 455 people, […]
That's 'Entertainment!': Q and A with Jon King of Gang of Four
Gang of Four stormed out of Leeds, England in 1976, rewiring punk rock with a Molotov cocktail of jagged guitar, danceable rhythms, and intellectual political critique. The group remains one
RFK Jr. urged Iowa candidate to make deal to help GOP win House seat, per audio recording
The health secretary urged Iowa Libertarian candidates to drop out of key races to help Republicans keep control of Congress, according to interviews and a recording obtained by The Post. The effort highlights mounting GOP anxiety over the battle for the House.
Supreme Court protects pesticides from some health claims in key Roundup case
The Supreme Court on Thursday restricted Americans’ ability to sue pesticide makers over alleged health harms stemming from their products. In a 7-2 ruling, the court held that some claims that pes…
Myles Garrett's Rise Could Fuel T.J. Watt's Next Steelers Surge
For years, T.J. Watt and Myles Garrett have been linked in one of the NFL's defining player rivalries. Now, with Garrett pulling ahead in recent seasons and Patrick Graham arriving in Pittsburgh, Watt has fresh reasons to respond. For much of their careers, Watt's production far outpaced Garrett's. That changed in 2023 when the Cleveland Browns hired Jim Schwartz as defensive coordinator and Garrett elevated his game to another level.
How should European scientists respond to the US AI kill switch?
Earlier in June, Europe’s worst fears of technological dependence were confirmed when the White House ordered the AI firm Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using its leading models. This kill-switch moment crystalised anxieties in Brussels that the continent, lagging the US on the creation of leading-edge AI models, is now a technological of vassal of Washington. The shock has specific implications for European scientists and universities. Some governments are now worried that with AI being integrated into labs, Donald Trump now has his finger hovering over an off switch for European science. “Having restrictions on this tool, it can have an impact on our own research,” said France’s research minister, Philippe Baptiste, at the VivaTech conference in Paris on June 18.Baptiste, himself a former academic, said that colleagues in mathematics had recently warned him they were now cut off from leading-edge US models, risking their work. “This model is not available anymore now because of the US restriction, and for the first time this had an impact on mathematics,” a field where large language models (LLMs) are making a significant contribution, said Baptiste. So, should European scientists avoid relying on US models in the future? Or would this be a self-harming overreaction? And how is AI being used in science, anyway? What happened?On June 12, it emerged that Washington, citing cybersecurity concerns, had ordered Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using two models: Claude Mythos 5, and Claude Fable 5, a version of Mythos but with guardrails to prevent abuse. Anthropic said Washington’s concerns were overblown. But forced to follow the order, yet with no way to check who was using the models, the company suddenly shut down access for everyone, US citizens included. There’s still no agreement on how to restore broad access. But last week, Bloomberg reported that select US companies, and the US government, still had access to Mythos despite the ban, but the EU’s cybersecurity agency Enisa had been shut out. Class division of researchersIn the longer term, access outside the US should be restored, said Marcel Salathé, co-director of the AI centre at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), because a permanent restriction would be financially ruinous to US AI firms. “Even Trump will eventually budge to economic pressure,” he said.However, US AI firms might end up operating rather like banks, doing due diligence on users of their leading-edge AI models, he went on.European scientists are unlikely to fall foul of such checks, he said. But having a Chinese postgraduate in their lab, or doing a type of research the US disapproved of, could potentially result in access being denied. “It will create a sort of class division of researchers,” he said. More than frontier modelsHowever, successfully deploying AI in science is about far more than just having access to leading LLMs such as Mythos.Instead, many science-specific tools, most famously Alphafold, which predicts protein folding structures, require “far less” computing power to train than frontier models, well within the capabilities of European supercomputers, according to a recent analysis by the Arq Foundation, a Brussel-based AI think tank. Instead, tools such as Alphafold are possible because certain fields, like protein folding, weather prediction or astronomy, have large, clean, standardised datasets that can be used to train predictive models. Rather than compute, “data is the central constraint for AI for science,” the report says. For example, a less powerful physics model trained on CERN’s data “will be more valuable than the best model without certain data,” said Bengüsu Özcan, author of the report. European advantage?Europe could therefore steal a march by using its scientific data and infrastructure to create models US digital giants cannot. “They might actually match or go even beyond what these big [US] companies are doing,” said Özcan.Indeed, some European start-ups hope to create automated testing labs to create the kind of standardised data that could speed up the discovery of new materials. Materials scientists say there’s currently too little data to train models. AI scientistsHowever, even if the bottleneck for AI in science is often data, rather than compute, being at the mercy of the US for LLM access could still become a problem for European scientists. A new class of “AI scientists” based on leading LLMs is also emerging, Özcan’s report says.Unlike domain-specific tools like Alphafold, these try to automate day-to-day scientific work, by providing an overarching tool that coordinates specific models to synthesise existing literature, generate hypotheses or run analysis of data. The problem for Europe, however, is that these tools are sometimes based on US leading models. Google Deepmind’s AI Co-Scientist, for example, is built on Google’s Gemini LLM. Systematic failureThese scientific automation tools are still in their early stages, and still exhibit “systematic failures on scientific tasks,” Özcan’s report says. One of the problems is that the messy, day-to-day process of scientific discovery is largely not documented, meaning LLMs don’t have a good source of data to learn how scientists actually work. Meanwhile, some tasks, such as literature synthesis, don’t typically require access to leading edge models.However, the performance of AI scientific assistants could improve as companies such as Google pour resources into developing them. Rely on US“Unfortunately, for scientific assistants, there is not much we can do right now except rely on US frontier AI,” said Antoine Bosselut, a natural language processing expert based at EPFL. Chinese-built open models, which can run on local computers, lessening the risk of a shutdown, are touted as one alternative to US dependence. There’s also Mistral, once seen as Europe’s main AI hope, but the Paris-based company has seen its recent models fall behind in performance. But the Chinese alternatives are generally not as capable as US frontier AI models, said Bosselut, unless paired with fiddly, custom tools that allows them to act as independent agents. “Most scientists do not have the time,” he said. Don’t jump ship yetAlthough the kill switch moment is seen a warning shot for European scientists, it doesn’t mean labs should abandon US AI tools immediately. “I do not think the right response is simply to abandon US-based models and systems under the banner of sovereignty or independence,” said Mattias Björnmalm, secretary general of the Cesaer university association. “That would be an overreaction.”Related articlesEuropean sovereignty in AI requires ‘ugly trade-offs,’ say experts Robotic lab start-up makes case for €500M EU-funded materials testing facilityAI in science: is it useful? Instead, European researchers need to ask themselves whether they’re becoming dependent on technology that could be turned off in Washington, said Özcan. “They might not see this today, but they should really start asking this question,” she said. European researchers need a plan B, said Salathé. “I would recommend to every researcher, very proactively explore alternatives.”Own toolsIn addition, Björnmalm and others want European research institutions to develop their own scientific AI tools.Instead of signing AI deals with US digital giants, European universities should be using this money to create their own models, which may end up being superior for research, said Sabine Leonelli, an expert on the use of AI in science at the Technical University of Munich. “Universities in Europe seem to be happy to sign commercial contracts with US companies on the assumption [their AI tools] are better,” she said. But US frontier LLMs are typically opaque, and have been developed without independent scientific input, she said. “This is not good enough for science.”Last year, Swiss researchers released Apertus, an LLM designed to be completely transparent, from its development methods to its training data. The idea is that this makes scientific tools built on top of the model far more reproducible than with closed, commercial alternatives.“Europe needs more of this: serious capacity-building that gives researchers, universities and companies credible options,” said Björnmalm.
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