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Two NAU environmental science and policy master’s students receive national conservation scholarships

Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability and the Wyss Foundation have named environmental science and policy graduate students Taylor Hartness and Tia Hatton as 2026-2027 Wyss Conservation Scholars. The prestigious program supports innovative graduate-level education to advance a new generation of leaders in U.S. land conservation. Scholars are chosen for their commitment to conservation and their leadership qualities. They are pursuing interdisciplinary graduate studies to develop effective new approaches to today’s most…

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Jun 8 • 1:22 PM EDT • Science • news.nau.edu
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What It Takes To Be A Top Tier Entertainment Lawyer in 2026

Share I’ve recently run several popular posts breaking down data related to sought after legal jobs. General Counsel Big Law Appellate Attorney Here is another in this series. Two Lawyers, One Elite Market Entertainment law can sound like a single professional category. In practice, the lawyers who reach the top of the Hollywood market often look quite different from one another. Consider two attorneys from the 2025 top-entertainment-law universe. Lesley Freeman represents one route: the company-side entertainment lawyer. She is chief legal officer of AGBO, where she oversees company-wide business and legal affairs across film, television, video game and interactive experiences, and technological innovation, after senior legal roles at MGM, Amazon MGM Studios, HBO, and O’Melveny. Daniel Petrocelli represents another route: the outside-counsel trial lawyer. He is chair of O’Melveny’s trial practice and a vice chair of the firm, with a national litigation practice that includes entertainment, sports, and media disputes. Their careers differ by platform, role, practice area, and professional identity. One sits inside an entertainment company; the other practices from a major law firm. One is associated with corporate and governance work; the other with litigation. Yet both fall within the same publicly recognized top tier of Hollywood lawyers. That contrast points to the article’s central question. If there is no single mold for a top entertainment lawyer, are the paths simply idiosyncratic, or do they follow recurring patterns? The data suggest the latter. The attorneys recognized on The Hollywood Reporter and Variety’s 2025 top-attorney lists do not follow one career template, but their paths are not random. They cluster around several defined routes: entertainment-focused private practice, company-side or operator experience, corporate and finance conversion, litigation conversion, public-service-to-litigation pathways, and smaller specialized lanes in labor, employment, and celebrity family law. Across those routes, the recurring ingredients are platform strength, educational capital or Los Angeles market proximity, long career tenure, specialized practice identity, and entertainment-industry fluency. The article examines five dimensions of the top-attorney sample: route into entertainment law, firm or organizational platform, education pipeline, seniority, and practice specialization. Data and Methodology The dataset includes 103 attorneys drawn from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety’s 2025 lists of top entertainment or Hollywood attorneys. For each attorney, the dataset tracks current organization, law school, J.D. year where available, first-known bar admission year, practice area, prior roles, platform type, and route into entertainment law. The sample is best understood as a recognized-attorney dataset, not a census of all entertainment lawyers. It captures lawyers who reached public top-tier recognition in 2025, rather than every lawyer practicing in the entertainment sector. Multiple but Defined Routes Into Entertainment Law The first question is how these lawyers entered the entertainment-law market. Because every attorney in the dataset is entertainment-related by definition, the key distinction is not whether they practice entertainment law. It is how they got there. The largest group followed what might be called the entertainment private-practice route. These attorneys appear to have built their practices around entertainment, media, talent, music, rights, production, intellectual property, or adjacent industry work relatively early. That route accounts for 40 of the 103 attorneys in the sample, or 38.8%.

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Jun 8 • 12:46 PM EDT • Entertainment • legalytics.substack.com
U.S. teens are getting their least amount of sleep in decades—lowering their chances to 'lead fulfilling lives as adults,' health experts say

Teens are getting less sleep each year, which can impact their mood, physical well-being and school performance, experts say. Here are solutions they recommend.

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Jun 8 • 12:38 PM EDT • Health • cnbc.com
WATCH: Broncos and Science of Sport host Science of Football field day

Watch as the Broncos partnered with Xcel Energy and Campos to host a STEM-themed field day for students at Cowell Elementary School on Thursday, May 21.

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Jun 8 • 12:32 PM EDT • Science • denverbroncos.com
How a Student Health Bill Got Tangled in Kansas Politics

Jones: The governor’s veto is a reminder of just how politically complicated school legislation can be, even when the ideas enjoy bipartisan support.

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Jun 8 • 12:30 PM EDT • Politics • the74million.org
GENESIS, U.S. SOCCER FOUNDATION, AND MLS PLAYERS ASSOCIATION SUPPORT YOUTH SPORTS WITH NEW MINI-PITCH IN ILLINOIS

/PRNewswire/ -- Genesis, U.S. Soccer Foundation, and the Major League Soccer Players Association (MLSPA) opened a new mini-pitch at Drexel Elementary School in...

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Jun 8 • 11:12 AM EDT • Sports • prnewswire.com
$1.5M Gift Establishes the Chase-Bear-Dyer Advanced Triage Unit at UConn Health and the Chase-Bear-Dyer Family Classroom at the UConn School of Law

The gift will expand the emergency care department at UConn Health and enhance learning spaces for School of Law students

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Jun 8 • 7:15 AM EDT • Health • today.uconn.edu
Weatherhead Women in Business empowers local high school students through leadership symposium | CWRU Newsroom

Members of Weatherhead Women in Business partnered with Saint Joseph Academy in March to help inspire and mentor the next generation of women leaders ...

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Jun 8 • 6:14 AM EDT • Business • case.edu
A San Antonio middle school is banking on the sports medicine industry

The sports medicine field is expected to grow in Texas. One San Antonio middle schools hopes to boost interest in the industry.

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Jun 8 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • sanantonioreport.org
Why this Savannah music store has thrived for 90 years

From electric guitars to school rentals see how Savannah staple Portman's Music Superstore has thrived for 90 years.

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Jun 8 • 5:08 AM EDT • Entertainment • savannahnow.com
Summer may ease pressures on youth, but it's a good time to address mental health concerns

Getting teens treatment during the break can set them up for success when school returns and anxiety spikes.

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Jun 8 • 5:01 AM EDT • Health • phillyvoice.com
Philly’s COVID-era resource hubs are closing as services move to new centers. Some residents are fighting to keep them

COVID-19 supplies and other public health services at four resource hubs will move to new community action centers at different city locations.

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Jun 8 • 5:00 AM EDT • Health • whyy.org
A look at the top high school sports performers of the week for June 2-6

Who were the star performers in the playoff this week? Check out the top performers of the week.

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Jun 8 • 4:03 AM EDT • Sports • hollandsentinel.com
Nebraska Actuarial Science Research Ranked No. 1 in North America

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln ranked No. 1 in North America and No. 12 in the world for business school actuarial science research productivity in the latest UNL Global Research Ranking of A

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Jun 8 • 2:20 AM EDT • Science • newswise.com
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Nursing Global Health Pathway expands to include opportunities in Armenia and Ghana

The Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing’s Global Health Pathway has expanded from a singular program in the Dominican Republic to include Ghana and Armenia.

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Jun 8 • 12:13 AM EDT • Health • umassmed.edu
What challenges face learners starting secondary science?

For learners moving from primary to new routines and labs in secondary school can be daunting, but a smooth move is possible

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Jun 7 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • edu.rsc.org
Sunday Sports: Red & Black, Rapids, and high school state tournaments

Here’s a recap of your North Country sports this Sunday.

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Jun 7 • 6:18 PM EDT • Sports • wwnytv.com
The Probiotic Breakthrough for Natural Anxiety Relief and Better Mental Health

A surprising gut-brain discovery suggests that anxiety could one day be treated with specially designed probiotics. Could anxiety be shaped, at least in part, by tiny organisms living in the gut? Research from Duke-NUS Medical School and the National Neuroscience Institute of Singapore points to

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Jun 7 • 5:35 PM EDT • Health • scitechdaily.com
Offense can't find clutch hit as Pirates get swept by Braves

ATLANTA — Pitching only more than an hour from where he attended high school at North Oconee, Bubba Chandler was cruising. He retired 13...

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Jun 7 • 4:17 PM EDT • Sports • post-gazette.com
High school sports results for Saturday, June 6, in Appleton and Green Bay

High school tennis and soccer teams were in action.

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Jun 7 • 10:45 AM EDT • Sports • postcrescent.com
Recent High School Graduate Turns Summer Hustle Into College Savings

Recent High School Graduate Turns Summer Hustle Into College Savings

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Jun 7 • 10:30 AM EDT • Business • walb.com
Lori Lightfoot: Who's Who in Chicago Business 2023

Age: 60Undergrad: University of MichiganGraduate: University of Chicago Law School

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Jun 7 • 8:40 AM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com
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Minneapolis finally confronts school closures amid new political opposition

An organized parents group and a powerful teachers union backing new school board candidates fiercely oppose any closures to schools in the urban district.

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Jun 7 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • startribune.com
Winner and Loser of the Week in Florida politics

The Governor's race gets shaken up, Senate leaders protect schools, and Anthony Sabatini gets clowned.

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Jun 7 • 5:30 AM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
The New Leadership Skill Nobody Taught In Business School

Business schools taught leaders how to manage certainty. Today’s workplace demands a very different kind of thinking during AI disruption and constant change.

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Jun 7 • 3:00 AM EDT • Business • forbes.com
Alan S King

Scope of work: King chairs the firm’s national labor and employment practice, advising Fortune 500 companies, municipalities and minority-owned businesses in employment litigation. He also serves as first deputy general counsel and is a certified mediator and arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association.Significant case: He secured victories for employers, including United Airlines and Michigan TV station WZZM, winning summary judgment in discrimination and retaliation claims.Other contributions: King is president of the board of Children First Fund, supporting Chicago Public Schools, and is a producer of the Chosen Few Picnic & Festival.

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Jun 6 • 11:57 PM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com
Conrad Schools of Science graduation of Class of 2026

Graduates, joined by family, faculty, administrators, and guests, celebrated the Conrad Schools of Science on June 6, 2026

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Jun 6 • 11:11 PM EDT • Science • delawareonline.com
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Recruiting update (May 30-June 6)

From Saturday, May 30, to Saturday, June 6, the recruiting for class of 2027 has increased in size from seven to 14. Drew Aagesen Hailing from Goodrich, Michigan, Drew Aagesen pledged his commitment to the Cyclones on May 30. Though he was a versatile standout on both sides of the ball in high school, Iowa […]

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Jun 6 • 10:57 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Edgewood's Eva Akpandja wins second straight shotput State Title

LA CROSSE, Wis. --- Edgewood High School junior Eva Akpandja saved her best for last. The Crusader star won the D2 Girls shotput state championship on her final launch, landing

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Jun 6 • 10:55 PM EDT • Sports • channel3000.com
Jets defensive lineman hosts sports camp for individuals with developmental differences

Harrison Phillips, a Millard West alum and Jets defensive lineman, returned to his high school to host his Inclusion Revolution Sports Camp, supporting individuals with developmental differences and special needs.

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Jun 6 • 7:32 PM EDT • Sports • ketv.com
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High School Science Teacher Dies Suddenly from Aggressive Form of Leukemia: ‘Her Illness Came Without Warning’

Ohio science teacher Michelle Eynon is being remembered after her sudden death from acute leukemia at the age of 48. She is survived by her husband and two children.

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Jun 6 • 6:30 PM EDT • Science • people.com
High School Science Teacher Dies Suddenly from Aggressive Form of Leukemia: ‘Her Illness Came Without Warning’

Michelle Eynon is being remembered by colleagues and loved ones as a devoted teacher, wife and mother of two

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Jun 6 • 6:30 PM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
From Bystanders to Heart Savers: MedStar Health CPR Training Event Puts Power to Save Lives in Community's Hands

/PRNewswire/ -- MedStar Health marked CPR & AED Awareness Week with its third annual training event held at Montgomery Blair High School. Nearly 100 attendees...

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Jun 6 • 6:13 PM EDT • Health • prnewswire.com
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From Bystanders to Heart Savers: MedStar Health CPR Training Event Puts Power to Save Lives in Community's Hands

MedStar Health marked CPR & AED Awareness Week with its third annual training event held at Montgomery Blair High School. Nearly 100 attendees learned bystander CPR and automated external defibrillator (AED) skills from a team of CPR-certified instructors at no cost.

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Jun 6 • 6:13 PM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com
LocaL student wins first place at Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair for her nature, bird-inspired research project

Captivated by a small lemon-lime songbird perched outside The Rhoades Middle School, sixth-grader Adhara Sethee was eager to focus on the species for an upcoming research project, seeking research data from the Encinitas-based Nature…

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Jun 6 • 5:12 PM EDT • Science • sandiegouniontribune.com
4 for 4: Maria Carrillo student is school’s first to compete in 4 varsity sports in same year

It’s never been done before in the 30-year history of the school, Carrillo officials noted.

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Jun 6 • 1:12 PM EDT • Sports • pressdemocrat.com
UPS CEO’s $20M Gift Expands Full-Ride Scholars Program To University Of Wyoming Business School

UW alumni Carol and Ramon Tomé’s new gift will fund full-ride scholarships, expand applied learning, and launch a business-focused scholars program in 2027.

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Jun 6 • 12:11 PM EDT • Business • poetsandquantsforundergrads.com
4-star WR Demare Dezeurn decommits from Oklahoma

Four-star Westlake (Calif.) wide receiver Demare Dezeurn has decommitted from Oklahoma, he tells Rivals. Dezeurn had been pledged to the Sooners since September, when he chose them over offers from USC, Nebraska, Michigan, Texas Tech and a host of other programs. However, other schools have remained in contact with him since that initial commitment, pushing […]

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Jun 6 • 11:34 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
2026 High School of Science and Technology Prom

The event was hosted by the Marriott in Downtown Springfield.

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Jun 6 • 11:18 AM EDT • Science • masslive.com
Hagerty softball wins first state title behind freshman ace

Freshman Bella Ortiz led Hagerty High School to its first softball state title with two complete games in the 7A state tournament.

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Jun 6 • 10:50 AM EDT • Sports • mynews13.com
Student donates $50,000 Google tech package to Seattle high school

Kameirah Johnson, a Lakeside School student and winner of the Doodle for Google contest, will give the $50,000 technology package she won to Rainier Beach High School instead.

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Jun 6 • 9:00 AM EDT • Entertainment • seattletimes.com
Health System Board hears presentations on Ehlers-Danlos center, at-home patient care

HSB is a Board committee composed of seven Board members that oversee the operations of the University’s Medical Center and provide strategic oversight for the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing and U.Va. Community Health.

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Jun 6 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • cavalierdaily.com
Science news this week: Ötzi the Iceman used to make sourdough, Italian teenagers discover Roman villa under school, Google plans to release 64 million mosquitos, and RIP to NASA's Maven probe

June 6, 2026: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend

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Jun 6 • 7:00 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com
Can alkaline water actually improve your health? Experts separate fact from fiction

Is alkaline water actually better for you? Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School experts weigh in on the claims, benefits and potential dangers.

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Jun 6 • 1:47 AM EDT • Health • foxnews.com
Alvey named OPS instructional coordinator for math and science

Owensboro Public Schools has selected Lindsey Alvey as its next instructional coordinator for math and science, filling a district leadership role that oversees curriculum and instruction across grade levels.

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Jun 6 • 1:13 AM EDT • Science • owensborotimes.com
Good Sports: Sanger High boys volleyball wins first state championship in school history

This year's Sanger Apaches Boys Volleyball team rose above the net to deliver something the school has never accomplished.

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Jun 5 • 8:15 PM EDT • Sports • abc30.com
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Trinity School of Medical Laboratory Science achieves maximum accreditation

STEUBENVILLE — Trinity Health System’s School of Medical Laboratory Science Program has been awarded the maximum 10-year accreditation by the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences. As the premier agency for ensuring the highest standards of education in clinical laboratory sciences, NAACLS grants this prestigious 10-year status only to programs that demonstrate exceptional educational […]

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Jun 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • weirtondailytimes.com
School of Medical Laboratory Science achieves maximum accreditation

STEUBENVILLE — Trinity Health System’s School of Medical Laboratory Science Program has been awarded the maximum 10-year accreditation by the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences. As the premier agency for ensuring the highest standards of education in clinical laboratory sciences, NAACLS grants this prestigious 10-year status only to programs that demonstrate exceptional educational […]

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Jun 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • heraldstaronline.com
Comedian, actor Nick Cannon visits two LI high schools
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Jun 5 • 6:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • newsday.com
University of Miami launches Master of Science in Marketing

The University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School is making its mark on graduate marketing education with the launch of a STEM-designated Master of Science in Marketing, designed to prepare students for a rapidly evolving field shaped by analytics, digital innovations, and emerging technology.

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Jun 5 • 6:10 PM EDT • Science • newswise.com
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Business card found near school leads to Bridgeport brothel investigation

What started with a business card left on a parent's vehicle during school pickup has led to an investigation into an alleged brothel operating out of a home in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood.

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Jun 5 • 5:58 PM EDT • Business • fox32chicago.com
Surveillance, immigration and greyfields: CT politics news

Plus: Qualifying candidates, Hartford schools funding, Connecticut's AI legislation and a roundup of other bill signings.

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Jun 5 • 5:30 PM EDT • Politics • ctmirror.org
Haslam College Of Business To Receive Bulk Of The Largest Gift In U Of Tennessee History

Cleveland Browns owners give back to Knoxville in a big way, with $100M going directly to the B-school that bears their name.

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Jun 5 • 4:59 PM EDT • Business • poetsandquants.com
Looking back: O’Donnell School of Public Health commencement: Center Times Plus, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX

The Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health (OSPH) celebrated its second commencement ceremony on May 13 in the Tom and Lula Gooch Auditorium, marking an exciting milestone for the school and its newest graduates from the Master of Public Health (M.P.H.), Master of Science in Health Informatics (M.S.H.I.), and Master of Science in Clinical Investigation (M.S.C.I.) programs.

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Jun 5 • 4:48 PM EDT • Health • utsouthwestern.edu
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UW School of Medicine receives major donation for new scholarship

A gift from the Franke family will help cover half of tuition for about 30 UW medical students.

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Jun 5 • 1:00 PM EDT • Health • seattletimes.com
Miller School of Medicine Faculty Elected to Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida

University of Miami Miller School faculty are recognized for their impact in research, innovation and leadership.

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Jun 5 • 12:22 PM EDT • Science • news.med.miami.edu
Florida 4-star OT commit transferring to Roanoke Catholic (Va.)

The Roanoke Catholic School (Va.) Celtics have seen a number of high school football transfers come through this off-season, but none might bigger than the one they received earlier this week. [ $19.99 gets you a FULL year of On3 | Rivals national coverage ] Class of 2027 4-star offensive tackle Elijah Hutcheson has confirmed with […]

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Jun 5 • 11:37 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Surgical technologist apprenticeship helps stay at home mom rejoin workforce

A stay-at-home mom of three home-schooled children, Rebecca Johnson was looking to rejoin the workforce, preferably in the medical field.

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Jun 5 • 11:22 AM EDT • Health • essentiahealth.org
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E-bike safety; lung cancer treatment and prevention; keeping CMA Festival attendees safe; plus other stories with Vanderbilt Health sources

WKRN News 2 interviewed Jeffrey Upperman, MD, FACS, Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatric Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief of Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, about e-bike related injuries following the recent death of a Brentwood High student and a proposal to require safety training before students could ride a bike on a school campus in Williamson County. Fabien Maldonado, MD, MSc,Professor of Medicine and Thoracic Surgery, was on WTVF News Channel 5‘s live studio show, “Openline,” with host Ben Hall, to discuss lung cancer, treatment and prevention. WSMV’s “Today In Nashville” program hosted Vanderbilt LifeFlight paramedic/flight nurse practitioner Tony Smith to talk about safety for the CMA Festival. The New York Times reporter Carl Zimmer interviewed James Crowe, MD, Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics, for a story about the race to find vaccines and treatments as Ebola spreads. The Vanderbilt Health News release about the pilot clinical trial conducted by Vanderbilt Health and Cumberland Pharmaceuticals Inc., that confirms the safety of ifetroban and supports the further development of the drug to prevent cancer metastasis, was picked up by Reuters, Stock Titan,and others. Women We Admire has named Lee Ann Liska, President and Chief Operating Officer, to its list of top women leaders of Nashville for 2026. Radiology Business, Aunt Minnie, Bioengineer, and Imaging Technology News covered the study from Consuelo Wilkins, MD, MSCI, the Mildred Thornton Stahlman Professor in Rural Health and professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, that found Black and Hispanic people, while known to be far more apt to have dementia, are significantly less apt than other racial and ethnic groups to show Alzheimer’s pathology on brain scans. STAT News interviewed Deva Sharma, MD, Transfusion Medicine & Hematology-Oncology, for a story about more patients requesting unvaccinated blood and what it means for the medical system at large. Yahoo! Health reporter Korin Miller interviewed Gitanjali Srivastava, MD, Director of Obesity Medicine, for a story about how semaglutide and tirzepatide compare. William Schaffner, MD, Professor of Preventive Medicine, was quoted by several news outlets about public health issues, including: NBC News (new COVID vaccinations); Medscape (pneumonia and sepsis); and CNN (protection from contagious viruses). Shelbyville Times-Gazette is repurposing Jessica Pasley’s July 2025 Vanderbilt Health News story on tick-borne illnesses as a front-page story.

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Jun 5 • 10:54 AM EDT • Health • news.vumc.org
Morning Preview: A Jobs Report Surprise, Immigration Showdown and Rising Heat Risks

Today, economists and consumers are reacting to a better-than-expected job report and regulators are rethinking how schools spend billions on internet access and classroom technology. At the same time, the first major heat waves of the season are putting pressure on public health systems as summer ...

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Jun 5 • 10:02 AM EDT • Health • usnews.com
Collier gift funds new Columbia business reporting program

Nathan S. Collier’s $2.4M gift will fund a new Columbia Journalism School program to train journalists in business reporting through a weeklong seminar.

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Jun 5 • 10:01 AM EDT • Business • gainesville.com
How Business Schools & Industry Can Collaborate To Support Societal Impact Leadership

The most effective partnerships are not defined only by program structure but built through shared values and a common sense of purpose.

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Jun 5 • 8:14 AM EDT • Business • poetsandquants.com
The Business School At The Intersection Of AI & China

P&Q's exclusive interview with HKUST Business School's new dean, a Belgian psychologist who has led schools on 3 continents.

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Jun 5 • 8:04 AM EDT • Business • poetsandquants.com
State health officials investigate possible cancer cluster at Uxbridge High School

Massachusetts health officials are investigating a possible cancer cluster at Uxbridge High School after several teachers were diagnosed with breast cancer.

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Jun 4 • 9:49 PM EDT • Health • turnto10.com
What’s new in EA Sports’ College Football 27: A new level of NIL in Dynasty Mode and more

In Dynasty Mode, players will need to manage differing school budgets and how much to pay both players and coaches.

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Jun 4 • 7:59 PM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
Weakened public health powers raise outbreak risks

Some jurisdictions have weakened their public health authorities in response to criticism of lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, vaccine requirements and other COVID-era restrictions.

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Jun 4 • 4:36 PM EDT • Health • npr.org
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Wild card for SpaceX is the AI business, says NYU finance professor Damodaran

Aswath Damodaran, NYU School of Business, joins 'Closing Bell' to talk SpaceX IPO valuation.

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Jun 4 • 4:16 PM EDT • Business • cnbc.com
Three Materials Science PhD Students Selected for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program - USC Viterbi

The prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) supports emerging researchers who demonstrate exceptional potential to advance science and engineering

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Jun 4 • 4:03 PM EDT • Science • viterbischool.usc.edu
Italian teenagers discover 1,800-year-old Roman luxury house underneath their high school gym

After being notified by mischievous high school students, archaeologists uncovered a large and luxurious second-century Roman house near the Colosseum.

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Jun 4 • 3:08 PM EDT • Science • livescience.com
UNT Health Fort Worth’s new pharmaceutical sciences program comes at ‘critical time’ for region

Starting this fall, UNT Health Fort Worth will offer a new pharmaceutical sciences PhD program — the first of its kind in North Texas. The school said the new program could help address workforce needs as the life sciences and research and development industries continue to grow in the region.

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Jun 4 • 2:11 PM EDT • Health • fortworthreport.org
2026 Fox Impact Summit examines academics’ role in supporting responsible business

At the Fox School of Business’ eighth annual Impact Summit, programming analyzed B Corporations, particularly the role academics play in supporting them.

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Jun 4 • 1:51 PM EDT • Business • now.temple.edu
Training TikTok creators in mental health communication improves audiences’ mental health knowledge, competencies | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Providing training in mental health communication to social media content creators can help improve their audiences’ abilities to gather and understand mental health knowledge as well as boost their emotional support skills, according to a new study.

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Jun 4 • 12:34 PM EDT • Health • hsph.harvard.edu
Brandin Podziemski sends powerful message in graduation speech at his alma mater

Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski returned to Wisconsin in late May to deliver the graduation speech at St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy.

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Jun 4 • 12:18 PM EDT • Sports • nbcsportsbayarea.com
Arts and Entertainment

Chicago Teen Edition June 5-14 Curtain 440 and director Angela Miloro-Hansen will present “Chicago Teen Edition” with a group of talented singers and dancers from several area high schools. Performances will be Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. at the historic Geauga Theater on 101 Water St. in Chardon. Tickets

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Jun 4 • 12:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • geaugamapleleaf.com
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Tracking malaria in Central America | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Paulo Manrique, PhD ’26, is making novel discoveries about the transmission of malaria in Central America, helping the region’s health ministries develop molecular surveillance capacity to monitor and combat the disease.

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Jun 4 • 10:45 AM EDT • Health • hsph.harvard.edu
SGMC Health Welcomes Students to 2026 Volunteen Summer Program

SGMC Health has welcomed 71 high school students to its 2026 Volunteen Summer Program, continuing its commitment to fostering student engagement and community service while introducing participants to careers in healthcare.

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Jun 4 • 10:17 AM EDT • Health • sgmc.org
Harvard Business School announces 2026 Rock Venture Catalyst cohort

HBS and the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship announced the 2026 cohort of the Rock Venture Catalyst.

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Jun 4 • 9:08 AM EDT • Business • news.harvard.edu
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Rice Business’ Rodriguez celebrates 10 years at university and new role

Deans, faculty, staff and board members gathered June 2 to celebrate Rice Business Dean Peter Rodriguez’s 10 years transforming the business school at Rice University and bid farewell as he steps into a new role as the 15th president of Wake Forest University.

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Jun 4 • 8:00 AM EDT • Business • news.rice.edu
State health officials investigating possible cancer cluster at Uxbridge High School

State medical investigators are conducting an air quality assessment at Uxbridge High School on Thursday following concerns about cancer cases among staff.

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Jun 4 • 7:17 AM EDT • Health • wcvb.com
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Bob Jones grad/Vandy AD Candice Storey Lee named Sports Business Journal Athletic Director of the Year

From the halls of Bob Jones High School in Madison, Dr. Candice Storey Lee has become one of the most influential and successful women in college sports. Now, she is one of the most successful people in college athletics. Lee, Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor for Athletics and University Affairs and athletic director, was recently honored as […]

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Jun 4 • 7:00 AM EDT • Business • huntsvillebusinessjournal.com
UNT Health Fort Worth’s new pharmaceutical sciences program comes at ‘critical time’ for region

Starting this fall, UNT Health Fort Worth will offer a new pharmaceutical sciences PhD program — the first of its kind in North Texas. The school said the new program could help address workforce needs as the life sciences and research and development industries continue to grow in the region.

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Jun 4 • 6:02 AM EDT • Science • keranews.org
UNT Health Fort Worth’s new pharmaceutical sciences program comes at ‘critical time’ for region

Starting this fall, UNT Health Fort Worth will offer a new pharmaceutical sciences PhD program — the first of its kind in North Texas. The school said the new program could help address workforce needs as the life sciences and research and development industries continue to grow in the region.

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Jun 4 • 6:02 AM EDT • Health • keranews.org
In a stormy session, workforce training wins were a bipartisan bright spot, business groups say

Bills that would restructure the state's workforce training programs — and redirect more federal money to the state, expand career programs beginning as early as middle school, and creating programs to connect college students to career opportunities passed with support from both sides of the aisle.

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Jun 4 • 5:00 AM EDT • Business • nola.com
ACT Entertainment’s DisplayStations support CMU School of Drama

Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama utilised several MA Lighting grandMA3 consoles for lighting control and DisplayStations for designer stations on its latest production, Stephen Sondheim’s iconic musical Company, staged in the Philip Chosky Theater. The CMU School of Drama produces a dozen or more shows annually, at least one of them a musical,

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Jun 4 • 4:55 AM EDT • Entertainment • tpimagazine.com
Old school cool

Pitching, defense, and just enough offense.

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Jun 3 • 11:50 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
NCAA president Charlie Baker reacts to Protect College Sports Act, says revisions are ‘essential’

In a letter to member schools Wednesday, NCAA president Charlie Baker shared his reaction to the Protect College Sports Act. But he also cited “several” provisions he said need to be revised. Baker pointed out the importance of the bipartisan Senate bill, filed last week by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) in […]

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Jun 3 • 11:29 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
15-year-old girl burned during school science experiment released from hospital

The accident happened at Greeneview High School when a science experiment caught on fire in May.

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Jun 3 • 9:29 PM EDT • Science • whio.com
Michigan high school sophomore uses journalism skills to promote mental health for student athletes
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Jun 3 • 6:56 PM EDT • Health • cbsnews.com
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Viral, controversial North Carolina high school track and field DQ overturned
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Jun 3 • 5:51 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Health department investigates tuberculosis case at Lloyd Memorial High School

The Northern Kentucky Health Department is investigating a case of active tuberculosis linked to a student at Lloyd Memorial High School, with contact tracing underway for those who had prolonged exposure.

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Jun 3 • 5:28 PM EDT • Health • wlwt.com
Meet the Graduates: School of Health Sciences Majors Are Going Places

College of Charleston School of Health Sciences graduates are turning passion into purpose. Here are a few who graduated this spring.

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Jun 3 • 5:02 PM EDT • Science • today.charleston.edu
Meet the Graduates: School of Health Sciences Majors Are Going Places

College of Charleston School of Health Sciences graduates are turning passion into purpose. Here are a few who graduated this spring.

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Jun 3 • 5:02 PM EDT • Health • today.charleston.edu
College Professors Say Incoming Students No Longer Understand Middle School Math and Science

Professors at the University of California want to reinstate entrance exams, claiming many students don't have a basic understanding of STEM subjects.

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Jun 3 • 3:01 PM EDT • Science • futurism.com
Trump admin cracks down on Colorado school district that allegedly put up to 61 males on girls' sports teams

The U.S. Department of Education warns Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado over allegedly placing up to 61 male students on girls' sports teams.

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Jun 3 • 2:30 PM EDT • Sports • foxnews.com
Families push CES to expand science curriculum

A group of 13 families has expressed concerns over the quality of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education at Conners Emerson Elementary School, claiming that the current structure of

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Jun 3 • 12:00 PM EDT • Science • mdislander.com
Several female teachers at Uxbridge High School diagnosed with breast cancer in recent years

Specialists are also reviewing the cases to “assess the statistical likelihood of common causes,” officials said.

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Jun 3 • 11:22 AM EDT • Health • bostonglobe.com
What nearly 80,000 earnings calls reveal about executive leadership

Leaders who ‘pass the mic’ to their colleagues and show cooperation during meetings are more likely to be promoted to CEO on average, according to new Columbia Business School research.

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Jun 3 • 9:19 AM EDT • Business • business.columbia.edu
Elections to top science bodies test Croatia’s gender equality in research

Croatia’s track-record on gender equality in science has been both questioned and lauded in recent months, following both bad and good news on the topic. On the one hand, a senior awards committee was announced without a single woman researcher included. On the other, the national science academy welcomed its first cohort of fellows with more women than men.Members of the committee, which gives national awards recognising scientific achievement, are proposed by the ministry of science and endorsed by the parliament. The current line-up does include a woman, but she is culture minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek rather than a researcher. Even then, she didn’t make it into the photograph released to announce the appointments on April 16. “The image speaks a thousand words,” says Tanja Rudež, a science journalist for Jutarnji List newspaper. “I am surprised that none of these men, all well-known scientists, saw a problem with the fact that there was not a single successful female scientist on the committee,” she told Science|Business.Ivan Đikić, a prominent Croatian biochemist based at Goethe University Medical School, commented on LinkedIn that the news illustrated a “sad truth” about the state of science in Croatia.“It [. . .] reveals a system where women, despite contributing a substantial share of high-quality, internationally competitive science, are systematically excluded from the very processes that determine recognition and influence,” he wrote. Some 60% of researchers in Croatia are women, according to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, and they perform well in international competitions. For example, of the 12 European Research Council (ERC) grants awarded to Croatian researchers, seven went to women.“So how is it possible that decision-making bodies are still dominated by men over 60, while not a single female ERC laureate is involved in the selection process?” asked Đikić. “This is not a marginal oversight; it is a structural failure.” The ministry of science did not reply to a request for comment. The awards committee is not unusual. For example, a scientific advisory body announced by the ministry of demographics in April comprises 35 men and five women. The board of the Croatian Science Foundation, newly appointed by the parliament, is a little better, with five men and two women, but still unequal. “This is especially significant because such bodies do not merely distribute prestige. They shape research priorities, funding allocation and long-term scientific development,” Marija Lugarić, chair of the parliament’s committee on gender equality, told Science|Business. “Representation here matters not only symbolically, but materially.”Referring to the awards committee and the board of the science foundation, Lugarić says that while both bodies were appointed by parliament, neither met the minimum 40% gender balance threshold that Croatian law and EU guidelines expressly recommend for public bodies.Đikić wants to see EU institutions put pressure on the government to ensure basic standards of fairness, transparency and democratic governance in science policy are met. “Meaningful change will not come without pressure,” he wrote. “It must intensify both within Croatia and at the level of European institutions. Anything less undermines the credibility of Europe’s commitment to excellence and inclusion in science.”Rudež also underlined the importance of talking and writing about this topic, “because public opinion in Croatia does influence changes in the status and visibility of women in science.”The European Commission has not yet responded to a request for comment.Good news from the academyA more positive story came from the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts on 21 May, with the announcement of seven new women fellows and five men. This is the first time in the academy’s 165-year history that women have outnumbered men in a new intake.One of the new fellows, two-time ERC grantee Iva Tolić, credits the academy leadership with trying to be more modern and inclusive, representing the whole community better. “The academy is really aware that so far, before this election, there were very few women,” she told Science|Business. “So, they are actively trying to make this more equal.”Related articlesExplained: How the MSCA is close to achieving gender balanceCall for EU to leverage academic freedom in global talent raceRudež is more cautious, noting that despite the academy’s “breakthrough this year [. . .] it is still a predominantly male institution, with only 18% women.”This reflects a wider imbalance in Croatia’s research landscape. “The key levers of power in science are still in the hands of men,” she went on. “For example, all 14 rectors of private and public universities are men.”Similarly, Lugarić says a structural glass ceiling still exists in Croatian science, which is “most visible precisely where power is exercised.”She cites data from the Commission’s She Figures 2024 report, which shows that Croatia ranks second in the EU for gender equality in research and innovation overall, with an equality index of 79.6 out of 100. It is in the top five for women’s career advancement, participation in research; representation across all research sectors and for scientific publications.In stark contrast, it ranks second to last when it comes to women in decision-making positions in science. “This is not a coincidence,” Lugarić says. “It is a structural pattern.”Informal barriersThe persistent under-representation of women in the highest structures of Croatia’s academies, boards, award committees and leadership positions is not down to formal barriers, Lugarić says, but arises from more subtle obstacles such as “informal networks, persistent expectations regarding traditional gender roles and the unequal distribution of care responsibilities.”Tolić would like to see more support for young women in terms of affordable housing and child support, and higher salaries. Currently, she says, salaries in science stay low for the first 10-15 years, while housing and spaces in kindergarten are limited and expensive. “You have to work a lot, you get very little money, so it’s not great to have a family in this situation,” she says.But despite the challenges, Tolić is optimistic, saying that gender equality in research in Croatia is “definitely improving and going in the right direction.” The situation is particularly promising in biology, she adds, where most full professors, heads of department and deans of faculties are women. Lugarić, too, see the glass ceiling “very slowly, cracking,” and cites the academy election as an example that structural change is possible. Yet the situation in the national awards committee is a “stark reminder that without a conscious, systemic commitment to gender balance, progress will remain slow and uneven.”

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencebusiness.net
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science

With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!

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Jun 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • iai.tv
Wake schools hire a company to make sports sponsorship deals. Can it get much?

The Wake County school system will be guaranteed at least $100,000 a year from the agreement with National Amateur Sports.

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Jun 3 • 7:36 AM EDT • Sports • newsobserver.com