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Scotland's papers: Health boards facing cuts and FM rules out Farage deal
A review of the front page stories from the daily newspapers in Scotland.
Analyst explains why 2026 season will be Sean McVay's toughest
The Rams have the best team in the NFL on paper, but a great roster comes with higher expectations and a bigger spotlight for Sean McVay.
Run NVIDIA BioNeMo NIM Microservices for Protein Structure Prediction in Claude Science
Agentic AI is changing how research is done. AI scientists can read papers, propose hypotheses, call models, and determine which experiments to prioritize next. First proving their value in software…
How digital health can strengthen breastfeeding support
Discover how Philips Avent and the Human Milk Institute are exploring how connected digital ecosystems can strengthen breastfeeding support. Download the white paper.
Microsoft Admits Windows 11 KB5120998 Update Breaks Mouse Cursors, With Wallpapers Turning Black Until You Uninstall It
Microsoft is investigating issues with Windows 11 KB5120998 update causing mouse cursor and wallpaper bugs, prompting users to uninstall the update.
For Houston restaurant operators, crayons and papers are serious business
Crayons are serious business.
A fifth-grader in Kansas City clicked ball-and-stick atoms together in science class and asked her teacher if she'd made a real molecule — he photographed it, sent it to a chemistry professor, and at ten years old she became co-author of a published paper on a structure nobody had ever described
A ten-year-old's casual question about her chemistry model kit led to a published paper describing a molecular structure that had eluded professional scientists for decades.
David Trinko: Golden age for entertainment in Lima
Someone walking by the newspaper’s booth at the Allen County Fair last week complained loudly, “There’s nothing to do in Lima.”
Judge rules Trump unlawfully targeted foreign students who criticized Israel
The ruling was a win for Stanford’s student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, and it followed another court victory for students targeted by the Trump administration last year.
PaperCut releases second emergency patch for exploited flaws
PaperCut has released a second emergency security update for two actively exploited vulnerabilities in its PaperCut NG and MF print management software after researchers discovered multiple ways to bypass the initial fixes.
High School Football Week 1: Watch Elkhorn South at Papillion La Vista South on Golden Spike Sports
Friday Night Fever is back! And this year, you can watch high school football games on our brand-new Golden Spike Sports and Entertainment network.
Business Buzz
The Business Buzz features news about the economic scene, promotions, acquisitions and expansions. Contact Pat Hill at pat.hill@pikespeaknewspapers.com or (719) 636-0358. Mike Perini and Perini & Associates donated $500 recently to Faithful Hearts Equine Learning Center in Woodland Park. The donation was in honor of the organization’s work with Teller County veterans, said Perini, a […]
Pappas Announces 43 New Cosponsors of His Bill to End Corrupting Influence of Dark Money in American Elections, Bringing Total to 181
Today Congressman Chris Pappas (NH-01) announced that his DISCLOSE Act has gained 43 additional cosponsors since its introduction, bringing the total number of cosponsors to 181 in the H
PaperCut Zero-Day Exploited in Attacks, Affecting All NG and MF Versions
PaperCut says a zero-day affecting all NG and MF versions is actively exploited; emergency patches are available for v25 and v26.
Florence Harding Photographed Taught Me About Women Partaking in Politics
What would Florence Kling Harding think now? A week or so ago when I cast my ballot at my designated polling place this thought crossed my mind. I imagine the former first lady would be pleased about how routine voting has become for women in the United States. But perhaps she would not be satisfied. Today, a published essay I wrote for In Pursuit spotlights a lesson in leadership demonstrated by First Lady Florence Harding. In my research, I discovered there’s a lot to be said about this strong female historic figure. But it was the blurry photograph capturing Mrs. Harding voting for her husband Warren G. Harding, one of two presidential candidates from Ohio, on Nov. 2, 1920—Election Day—that drew my attention. It was the first presidential election held in the United States after the ratification and certification of the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. Its 106th anniversary was marked on Wednesday. I remember thinking what a shame it was that her presence in the image was imperfect while the mostly men surrounding her were in sharp focus. Perhaps cynically I thought, “No surprise!” On further examination, though, the clear reaction of the people surrounding Mrs. Harding was equally important. In that snapshot of time, many of their expressions were serious. One man stood elevated above the rest with a slight smile as he caught a glimpse of history. Mr. Harding hovered over his wife’s shoulder closely observing the last seconds of her vote being cast. Their gazes were locked in on who would hours later become first lady. Subscribe The attention she drew is worth noting, mostly because, as I learned, Mrs. Harding understood the power her image could have on women across the country. She and I share in common a career in newspapers—hers the business side and mine on the editorial side. Nevertheless, it became clear to me as I write in the essay that she understood if she was seen voting, other women would follow suit. That wouldn’t necessarily be the case in that 1920 election, though, Karen Kedrowski, the director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, explained to me. Florence Harding was a suffrage advocate. But, suffrage was a contentious issue and women were far from united at the time of the election. In fact, a substantial number of women and active anti-suffrage organizations thought women participating in elections was a “bad idea and antithetical to their roles in the private sphere as mothers and homemakers,” Kedrowski said, adding that women were also viewed as the moral compass for their husbands and sons. If women got involved in politics they would become contaminated by it. Suffragists, on the other hand, wanted to bring that moral presence into politics to help clean things up. Only about 30% of women voted in that 1920 presidential election. That was a start. More than 100 years later in the 2024 presidential election, 66.9% of eligible women voted (91.3 million), compared to 63.7% of men who voted (82.6 million), according to the League of Women Voters. Yes, Florence Harding would be pleased. Subscribe That imperfect Election Day image was important symbolism about women’s potential during what was known as the “Modern Woman” era and the growing public role women were taking in the 1920s. I imagine Florence Harding might agree with other succeeding first ladies when it comes to gender equality and the importance of the vote. Like Michelle Obama when she said in her memoir Becoming, “We all play a role in this democracy. We need to remember the power of every vote.” Or Hillary Clinton during her unsuccessful run for president in 2016 when she remarked on International Women’s Day: “We celebrate the progress we’ve made to advance the full participation of women in economies and societies. And most importantly, we recommit to finishing the unfinished work that remains …” I hope if you are reading this, you will also read my essay on Florence Harding’s leadership lesson for In Pursuit. And perhaps that will move you to dig deeper and read more about Florence Harding’s life circumstances in biographies like First Lady Florence Harding: Behind the Tragedy and Controversy by Katherine A. S. Sibley. No, I do not think Florence Harding would be satisfied despite how far women have come from that day she first entered her polling place. She once wrote to the Camp Fire Girls, “The part that women play in the world has been greatly changed … It has been broadened and enlarged …” It has. And as women continue to engage in civics it continues to be. I imagine Florence Harding would want women to keep meeting the moment. Read the In Pursuit essay Watch on C-SPAN Share East Wing Magazine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Google’s AI note-taking app now allows you to interact with books
Coming soon to scholarly articles, newspapers, and more.
PaperCut warns of NG, MF flaw exploited in zero-day attacks
PaperCut is warning that hackers are actively exploiting a vulnerability in all versions of its PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF print management software in zero-day attacks.
Sunderland’s European Adventure Is Finally About to Become Reality
When that piece of paper with ‘Sunderland AFC - England’ is revealed on Friday, there will be so much pride on Wearside.
Monaco have enquired about Tottenham Hotspur target Pape Matar Sarr
AS Monaco have made an enquiry about Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Pape Matar Sarr (23), as per a report from Fabrizio Romano. Monaco are preparing potentially for a departure in midfield before the en...
Food industry’s next challenge: Building a future-ready science workforce
The future of the food system may depend on more than scientific breakthroughs and technological innovation. According to a new white paper from the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), the industry must also address a growing workforce challenge: ensuring food professionals have the skills needed to apply those innovations effectively.
A final conversation with a Kansas political icon: In praise of local newspapers and community ties
Nancy Kassebaum, you see, was a fervent booster of local newspapers, and the reporting and commentary they contained.
Journalism Can Help Expose Bad Science And Trigger Real-World Change, New Study Shows
Thanks for reading.
Options: Half-day vs. all-day dove hunting preference more than science
If I had to describe myself as one type of hunter or fisherman it would start with bird hunter, and more specifically dove hunter. It is what I grew up […]
Stars and Stripes editor says he has been fired for insubordination
The military newspaper is partly funded by the Pentagon but has a long legacy of editorial independence
Prince Harry, Elton John, others ordered to pay $13M after losing privacy case
Prince Harry and six others have been ordered to pay an initial 9.5 million pounds ($13 million) to the publisher of Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper following their failed invasion of privacy case.
Former Seattle Times sports columnist resigns, says pieces weren't published over politics
A former Seattle Times sports columnist announced his resignation from the paper after more than a decade.
Seattle Times Columnist Resigns After Paper Scrapped Trans Sports Column
Matt Calkins, a longtime sports columnist, said editors had refused to publish a column about transgender athletes in women’s competitions.
Arsenal transfer news: Gabriel Jesus of interest to Everton and Ipswich as Gunners consider Eli Junior Kroupi move
Latest transfer news and headlines with Arsenal reportedly lining up a potential January swoop for Bournemouth star Eli Junior Kroupi; Adam Wharton is set to stay at Crystal Palace this season amid interest from Man City; Rangers have held talks with Besiktas over a move for Vaclav Cerny
Sports columnist resigns after story of protesters defending Sophie Cunningham ‘spiked’ by newspaper
Matt Calkins has resigned as sports columnist for the Seattle Times after 11 years. He says the paper refused to run a piece he wrote ahead of the Storm clash with Indiana.
First person-centered measure of dementia caregiving styles improves partner, patient outcomes
First person-centered measure of dementia caregiving styles improves partner and patient outcomes.
The ReTerminal Sticky Is An E-Paper Display Begging You To Hack It
While companies like Xteink have found an unlikely audience with hackers and tinkerers, Seeed Studio is actively cultivating one.
Sea Aggie Researchers Make Evening Fun with Science on the Beach
“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it’s the one thing all of us share.” – Lady Bird JohnsonOn Galveston Island, beaches rank among the favorite environments to share and study, and, as Texas A&M University at Galveston faculty emphasized last week, are “More Than Just Sand.”A program subtitled “The Secret Life & Value of Sandy Beaches” drew more than 40 people to the Aug. 13 meeting of Surfrider Foundation Galveston, a local chapter of a nonprofit focused on the protection and enjoyment of oceans and beaches.The evening began barefoot with ecology lessons on the sand before moving across Seawall Boulevard for beverages, bites, and more beach talk at an area establishment. Drs. Guilherme Corte and Yasmina Shah Esmaeili show how a mesh bag is used as a sieve to separate organisms from samples of the sand. Credit: TAMUG Divisions of Marketing and CommunicationsNot far from where others were enjoying the attractions at Pleasure Pier, Drs. Guilherme Corte and Yasmina Shah Esmaeili introduced the ecologically curious to species living within the sediments.“When people hear ‘coral reefs,’ they immediately think of fish, live ecosystems, but when they think of sandy beaches, they think party, recreation, vacations – not coastal ecosystems,” said Corte, an assistant professor of marine biology in the College of Marine Sciences and Maritime Studies at TAMUG.Shah Esmaeili co-founded the Gulf eDNA Network and works with Corte in TAMUG’s Benthic Ecology Lab.“Sandy beaches are indeed great places for leisure and recreation,” Corte said. “Let’s keep enjoying them, because they are awesome. But they are also full of life that we most of the time don’t realize is there.”The married couple soon had the beachcombers measuring the slope with PVC poles, searching for ghost shrimp with a stainless-steel pump, sifting for marine worms and sand fleas, and guessing which species would burrow fastest back into the sand once released.Away from the sand, the focus turned to research from Drs. Ashley Ross ’03, ’10, and Virgie Greb, ’25 and those words from Lady Bird Johnson reminding people that the environment isn’t separate from their daily lives.“It’s about things that we value, mostly our communities, strong local economies, outdoor recreation, cultural connections, and our overall quality of life,” said Greb, a proud BOI – born on the island – Galvestonian, who now works in Austin as a project manager for the Texas General Land Office. “Along our coast, these benefits are deeply interconnected.”Greb and Ross, an associate professor in marine and coastal environmental science with the College of Marine Sciences & Maritime Studies, have studied a variety of ways beaches and the sea are important to Galveston and those who live there. Drs. Ashley Ross (left) and Virgie Greb (standing at right) field questions after their presentation. Credit: TAMUG Division of Marketing and CommunicationsIn 2023, using three survey methods – online for Galveston County residents, in-person at beaches, and paper distributed via city water bills – they collected 732 complete responses, 53 percent from residents and 47 percent from visitors.Most were frequent beachgoers who gave the recreation value of Galveston beaches a “B” and rated amenities such as restaurants, lodging, shopping, and beach access highly. Lower rated were water clarity and restroom facilities.“It’s noticeable that primary residents actually rate water quality higher; they’re more tolerant of hard, turbid water,” Ross said, crediting them with better understanding the natural conditions with the Trinity and San Jacinto Rivers bringing sediments and rich nutrients to the area around Galveston.Island residents also were more likely to understand that “clear” isn’t the same as clean beach water and to know that water quality is regularly tested. Clean means absent of disease-causing pathogens.“We need more education and outreach focused on water quality and the benefits of Galveston beaches and shores and water,” Greb said. “And it’s not just for tourism. There are a lot of people who are very lucky to live on an island with beaches and the bay.”
Man Utd transfer news: Barcelona midfielder Gavi rejects chance to join Old Trafford
Latest transfer news and headlines as Crystal Palace star Adam Wharton emerges as a Man City midfield target; Saudi side Al Hilal have submitted a £38.5m bid for Aston Villa striker Ollie Watkins; Harry Kane is ready to snub Saudi millions and commit his future to Bayern Munich
Science Night Live returning to Orlando Science Center
Science Night Live offers adults the chance to let their curiosity shine at the Science Center, without the kids. (COURTESY OF THE ORLANDO SCIENCE CENTER) They say you never stop learning no matter how old you get. Well get ready to take that endless curiosity to the Orlando Science Center this Saturday, August 22, for
Researcher-artist paves the way for science communication
Lulu Perez ‘26 is a behavioral neurosciences alumna. She is a researcher in an FIU lab that investigates how complex sugars can regulate immune and cancer cell function and slow cancer progression. She is also an artist. Perez attended an arts-focused school, where she learned to paint in traditional mediums like acrylic, oil and watercolors,
2026 APSA Theme Panel: The Politics of Opposition to Democratic Backsliding -
The Politics of Opposition to Democratic Backsliding Sunday, September 6, 10:00 am to 11:30 am 2026 APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition — Boston, MA | Register here In-person | Full Paper Panel Participants: (Chair) Daniel L. Tavana, [...]
AI Helps Researchers Win NIH Grants. Will Science Suffer?
A new analysis of thousands of NSF and NIH grant applications—including some confidential rejected submissions—illuminates new patterns in generative AI’s relationship with federally funded research.
Chelsea co-owners Todd Boehly and Mark Walter open to selling stakes to majority owners Clearlake Capital
Latest transfer news and headlines as Galatasaray are prepared to double Bruno Fernandes Manchester United wages; Man City are hoping to sign Lille midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi in the next few days; Man City face having to pay Chelsea more than £120m to land midfielder Enzo Fernandez
macOS 27 Golden Gate beta 6 features redesigned traffic light window controls
macOS 27 Golden Gate beta 6 introduces redesigned traffic light window controls. The new look resembles older Mac OS X...
The Sinking City 2 review – Ukrainian cosmic horror, come hell or high water
Frogwares’ Lovecraftian action-horror is full of grim tenacity and pulp paperback charm, despite a few frayed edges
Making computer science more accessible beyond English
When Siddhartha Jayanti sat down to write the first computer science paper in Telugu, an Indian language with approximately 100 million speakers, he realized he first had to solve a problem that had little ...
Poop-maxxing: Bowel movement tracking on the rise as young people chase gut health
The Bristol Stool Chart is praised by gastroenterologists, who also caution that the visual guide for healthy bowel movements has limitations.
The Scientists Who Want to Steer Hurricanes
Over the weekend, Hawaii was lashed by Hurricane Lala, which has washed away homes, left more than 125,000 people without power, shut down two of the state’s busiest airports, threatened dangerous flash flooding and, at time of writing, has killed one person. What if we could’ve steered the storm away from Hawaii, into the vast expanse of the empty Pacific Ocean that lies all around the islands—where no one could get hurt? This scenario might sound like the stuff of science fiction. But earlier this year, a peer-reviewed study published by the Public Library of Science found that it might be possible, and sooner than we think. The study was titled: “Weather Jiu-Jitsu: Prospects for atmospheric nudging to defuse the impact of catastrophic weather extremes.” According to the paper, the controversial practice of cloud seeding could enable human beings to make hurricanes change direction. The potential results could be astounding: The authors suggested that Hurricane Sandy, which in New York City alone killed 44 people and caused $19 billion of damage in 2012, could’ve been diverted by 200 miles, missing the metropolis entirely. Cloud seeding, which first succeeded in the U.S. in 1946, is a practice whereby small particles—for example, dry ice, silver iodide, or salt—are dropped into clouds, causing moisture to condense into precipitation. In the 1960s, the U.S. government launched Project Stormfury, an experiment that saw Navy pilots flying into the heart of a hurricane, dodging winds over a hundred miles per hour, to cloud-seed inside it, in the hope of reducing the storm’s power. “The seeding,” the theory went, “would stimulate the formation of a new eyewall that would surround the existing eyewall. The new eyewall would contract, strangling the old eyewall and reducing the intensity of the hurricane.”
Why there are no morning newspapers on August 16
Following the celebration of Ferragosto in Italy on Saturday (August 15), there will be no morning newspapers published on Sunday morning.Why there are no Italian newspapers on August 16Football Itali...
Halo Studios Reportedly Outsourced Campaign Evolved to 15 Studios, as Microsoft Weighs Involving Activision’s Sledgehammer Games in the Process
Halo Studios reportedly outsourced Campaign Evolved, as Microsoft weighs having Activision's Sledgehammer Games help build future Halo games.
Davies: Board must go
>Continued from front board fit for purpose. The economy and the game in Wales is suffering. It is time now for people to voice their opinions, ex-players, regions, and the clubs and the fans most importantly and say change is needed. “It is up to us to force the changes otherwise this is not going […] The post Davies: Board must go appeared first on The Rugby Paper.
Science or fiction? Shadowy ‘paper mills’ let you pay to be a published author
Paper mill activity has exploded in recent years, polluting the scientific ecosystem with falsified data and compromising medical research
Early-universe plasma may have stopped dark photons from heating cosmos
A new paper published in Physical Review Letters reveals that a leading dark matter candidate—the hypothetical "dark photon"—would not have heated the early universe as previously thought. The finding ...
Scientists who narrowly missed out on an NIH grant were 6.1% more likely to produce a top-5%-cited paper over the following decade than equally promising scientists who just got funded — a Kellogg-led study suggesting that an early setback can have surprisingly long-lasting effects.
A natural experiment around an NIH funding cutoff found higher-impact work among near-miss scientists who stayed active, alongside substantial attrition from the system.
Mesirow Fiduciary Solutions Acquires flexPATH’s 3(38) Business
The transaction will deepen the company’s custom portfolio and investment lineup service capabilities.
2026 APSA Theme Panel: Multinational Firms and National Politics -
Multinational Firms and National Politics Sunday, September 6, 10:00 am to 11:30 am 2026 APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition — Boston, MA | Register here In-person | Full Paper Panel Participants: (Chair) Calvin Thrall, Columbia University (Discussant) [...]
Journalism is key to combating bad practices in science
Watchdog science journalism has become a fundamental tool to counter scientific malpractice, such as publication fraud, abuse and political and corporate manipulation of science. A study by the Universitat ...
Music, magicians & more: 2026 Pierce County Fair entertainment
Northern Lights Drone Show Northern Lights Drone Show, scheduled for 9 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 23, promises an “unparalleled nighttime spectacle with synchronized drones precisely choreographed to …
AI needs science’s search history
“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.
Asia-Pacific parliamentarians urge bolder action for universal health coverage, climate resilience and responsible AI
Parliamentarians representing 16 countries from across the Asia-Pacific region concluded the Ninth Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health (APPFGH) today, reaffirming their key role in advancing universal health coverage (UHC) amid the risks and opportunities posed by AI and climate change. In adopting the Phnom Penh Communiqué, parliamentarians urged fellow legislators regionwide to strengthen sustainable financing for UHC to widen access to health for all, including the most vulnerable populations; promote responsible governance of AI amid ethical concerns over this fast-evolving technology; and build climate-resilient health systems to anticipate and respond to mounting pressures ranging from rising sea levels in coastal areas to air pollution and other environmental degradation.The National Assembly of Cambodia, with support from Cambodia’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), hosted the Forum in Phnom Penh from 11 to 13 August 2026 – the first time the Forum has convened in a Mekong country.Parliamentarians urge action to close gaps in accessIn the Communiqué, parliamentarians recognized that at-risk and marginalized groups are the ones most severely affected by gaps in access to health services. These groups include people living in poverty, women and children, persons with disabilities, older people, migrants, refugees, and those in rural, remote or island communities. The Communiqué urges fellow parliamentarians and policy-makers to advocate for laws and policies that support sustainable financing to protect people from financial hardship, with a focus on primary health care, prevention and equity. "The Communiqué is a call to action. It sets out ambitious, concrete measures that deliver meaningful impact on the ground. We are all accountable for advancing universal health coverage and translating our commitments into tangible results. Cambodia is fully committed to advancing UHC, including the promotion of ‘healthy people, prosperous country’ campaign,” said Samdech Maha Rathsapheathika Thipadei Khuon Sudary, President of the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia.His Excellency Professor Chheang Ra, Minister of Health of the Kingdom of Cambodia, highlighted the need for collaboration beyond the health sector. “Universal health coverage cannot be achieved by the Ministry of Health alone. It requires support, particularly from parliamentarians, across political, legislative, financial, social protection, education, infrastructure, and environmental domains. While each country follows its own path, one factor is universally critical for success: strong governance and leadership. We all believe in this principle, and in our respective political roles, we remain committed to strengthening these key success factors to ensure that no one is left behind.”Promoting responsible AI adoption Parliamentarians acknowledged that, while AI has already demonstrated its ability to improve access to health services and support delivery, careful and ethical governance is necessary to safeguard quality, safety, privacy and public trust. This underscores the importance of parliamentarians in promoting legal and regulatory frameworks addressing liability, records ownership and data governance, while embracing innovation that protects ethical practice.“Without strong governance, safeguards for privacy and data security, sustainable financing, and attention to those most at risk of exclusion, new technologies may widen existing gaps instead of closing them. This is why parliamentarians matter. We pass laws. We approve budgets. We scrutinize government action. We represent communities. We can ask whether health services are reaching rural, remote, ageing, poor, and marginalized populations. We can ask whether innovation is being guided by equity, evidence, and ethics,” said Hon. Man Hee Lee, President of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health.Building climate-resilient health systemsParliamentarians also reiterated that the climate crisis is a direct threat to people’s health and to achieving UHC more broadly, deepening the same gaps in access already faced by at-risk and marginalized communities. They recognized the need for WHO Member States to ensure sufficient national appropriations and oversight, and for parliamentarians to raise awareness in their constituencies and mobilize local action in building climate-resilient and sustainable health systems.“Universal health coverage, climate change and AI cannot be addressed in isolation. The same communities struggling to access health services today are often the ones most exposed to climate shocks, and most in need of the opportunities AI can offer if this technology is governed responsibly,” said Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific. “Having served previously in this Forum myself as a parliamentarian from Tonga, I recognize how the Phnom Penh Communiqué reflects the shared resolve of legislators across the Asia-Pacific region: the laws parliamentarians pass and the budgets they approve help ensure this progress reaches the people who need it most.”As the Forum drew to a close, delegates reflected on what they would carry back to their own parliaments and constituencies.“I wish to share three points here worth carrying home from Phnom Penh: we need to invest in primary health care as the foundation of coverage; we need to remove the barriers that keep people from care, whether financial, geographic or social; and we need to build systems that are inclusive by design, protecting those most at risk of being left behind,” added Hon. Ouch Borith, First Vice-President of the Senate of the Kingdom of Cambodia.###Notes for editors:The Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health (APPFGH) is a platform for parliamentarians to exchange ideas, build political will, strengthen capacity and foster collaboration towards sustainable health action. This was the ninth meeting of the APPFGH, with the theme “Universal Health Coverage in the era of Climate Change and Artificial Intelligence”. Target 3.8 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls on countries to achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health services, and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all. In the Western Pacific, UHC service coverage index (SDG 3.8.1) rose from 63 in 2000 to 81 in 2023 (figures include Indonesia), and roughly one in four people in the Western Pacific have experienced financial hardship (SDG 3.8.2). Progress towards UHC in the Asia-Pacific region remains uneven, with hundreds of millions of people still lacking access to essential health services or facing financial hardship due to health-related expenses. Strengthening the role of parliaments – through legislation, financing and oversight – is central to closing this gap and accelerating progress towards UHC across the region.Parliamentarians participating in APPFGH in Cambodia this week include: Hon. Pehin Dato Adanan YUSOF, Brunei Darussalam; Hon. Rosmawatty ABDUL MUMIN, Brunei Darussalam; Hon. LORK Kheng, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. YOS Phanita, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. KHOUN Khundy, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. HENG Halim, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. KHOENG Noupheap, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. SENG Nhak, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. LY Sukry, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. NHOEURN Raden, Kingdom of Cambodia; Hon. Dr Ratu Atonio LALABALAVU, Republic of Fiji; Hon. Vijay NATH, Republic of Fiji; Hon. Man Hee LEE, Republic of Korea; Hon. Dr Jiho CHA, Republic of Korea; Hon. Jonghun BAEK, Republic of Korea; Hon. Youngsuk SEO, Republic of Korea; Hon. Dr Phayvanh KEOPASEUTH, Lao People’s Democratic Republic; Hon. Suhaizan Bin KAIAT, Malaysia; Hon. Dr Perpetua KONMAN, Federated States of Micronesia; Hon. Ganmaa DAVAASAMBUU, Mongolia; Hon. Charmaine SCOTTY, Republic of Naoero; Hon. Vincent Ambance KUMURA, Papua New Guinea; Hon. Dr Edwin CRUZADO, Republic of the Philippines; Hon. AUUAPAAU Mulipola Aloitafua Mulipola, Samoa; Hon. ASIATA TAVUI Tafu Salevao, Samoa; Hon. Dr Alani Petelo TANGITAU, Tonga; Hon. Paul PAOLO, Republic of Vanuatu; Hon. Franklyn Ezra WILLIAM, Republic of Vanuatu.For more information, contact: WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific: wprocom@who.int National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia (International Relations Department): ir.nacambodia@gmail.com
INOVIO Reports Second Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Recent Business Highlights
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Maybe scientific progress isn’t slowing, after all
A new paper takes aim at the claim that science has become less disruptive
Research showing scientific progress slowing could be flawed
A new paper takes aim at the claim that science has become less disruptive
Miami DDA awards 15 new business incentive grants
The Miami Downtown Development Authority (Miami DDA) has approved a new round of business incentive grants, supporting the launch or expansion of 15 businesses across the Arts & Entertainment District, Brickell, and the Central Business District. The program has proven a driver of economic activity, helping 40 businesses open their doors in the urban core
Small business owner and veteran Sam Jimenez joins East Palo Alto council race
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The Department of Energy looks to create science-specific AI models
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AI science evaluation tools should be scrutinized through ‘critically engaged pragmatism’
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Scientists Release Biggest 2D Map of the Universe
Key Takeaways The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys combined more than 263,000 telescope exposures to make the largest 2D map of the universe in visible and near-infrared light. Astronomers can pair the Legacy Surveys map with their own observations to explore our universe and search for rare phenomena. The 2D map serves as the foundation for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey to measure the universe in 3D and investigate dark energy. Hold on to your telescopes: the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. The data is available for all to use and publicly viewable through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer. Astronomers and citizen scientists can explore the map or combine it with their own observations to better understand our universe. Researchers can search for rare phenomena like gravitational lenses, observe fleeting events like supernovae, and investigate two of physics’ biggest mysteries: dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for most of the mass in our universe, and dark energy, the force driving our universe’s accelerating expansion. The new map builds on earlier versions from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys that have already proved invaluable. To date, more than 1,800 science papers that reference the Legacy Surveys data have been published. “It’s part of the fabric of astronomy research now,” said David Schlegel, a co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and scientist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “When you’re working with astronomical objects today, you often start by pulling up the Legacy Imaging Viewer to see what you’re looking at.” Covering roughly 75% of the sky in visible and near-infrared light, the updated map provides a deep view of the extragalactic universe not blocked by the dust and stars of our own Milky Way. Researchers expect it will remain the most comprehensive 2D map of our universe for years to come. More than 160 scientists contributed to data collection for the project, and a team of 20 produced the final dataset released today. It was built by combining 263,407 telescope exposures from three ground-based sky surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) at NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS) at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory, and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. That was supplemented by years of data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite mission and additional public data. “For our team, these data are fundamental to our investigation of the expansion history of the universe and the formation of our galaxy,” said Arjun Dey, co-lead of the Legacy Surveys and an astronomer at NSF NOIRLab. “But the skies belong to everyone, and this survey gives everyone the chance to explore the sky and marvel at its wonders.” Here be galaxies The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys were originally conducted to prepare for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. The Legacy Surveys’ 2D map is essentially a deep photograph of the sky; it records where galaxies and stars appear and how bright they appear. This crucial step enables DESI to select objects and measure their light in different wavelengths to determine their distances, building the largest high-resolution 3D map ever made. Scientists study the way galaxies have clustered at different ages of the universe to track dark energy over time. In April 2026, DESI completed its original five-year survey ahead of schedule and with vastly more objects than expected. The early results have shown surprising hints that dark energy’s impact may be weakening over time — a paradigm shift that could potentially shape the predicted fate of our universe. DESI expects to publish improved results using their first five years of data in 2027 and is continuing observations into 2028. DESI was so efficient at observing galaxies, the Legacy Surveys map needed to expand. Early on, “it became clear we might run out of galaxies to look at and run out of sky, and we better start doing something about that,” said Schlegel, who also works on DESI. The new Legacy Surveys map has been used to select DESI targets since June 2026 and will guide the telescope’s operations over the coming years. Computing the cosmos Merging hundreds of thousands of images taken on 2,285 nights, each with unique atmospheric and telescope conditions, was a massive computational effort. It took about a year to develop the computer code and eight weeks to process all the images at the Perlmutter supercomputer at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab. Beyond supporting DESI, the Legacy Surveys will be a foundational reference for the next generation of telescopes. As new observatories like the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (jointly funded by NSF and DOE’s Office of Science) and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope come online, researchers can compare their observations with one of the deepest and most comprehensive views of the sky ever assembled. The Legacy Surveys data will also help scientists train artificial intelligence tools to analyze petabytes of astronomical data and accelerate new discoveries. It will be among the datasets used in an astrophysics pilot project within the American Science Cloud, part of the DOE’s Genesis Mission. The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of High Energy Physics; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science user facility; the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences; and the partner institutions. DESI is supported by the DOE Office of Science and NERSC. Additional support for DESI is provided by the NSF; the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (SECIHTI) of Mexico; the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain; and by the DESI member institutions. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
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How should states reach out to Medicaid enrollees affected by changes? Our research gives a hint
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Discussing the 6th Annual Black Business Expo with AFRO News
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How one Louisiana woman found joy in low-stakes, creative self-portrait fun
Jan Risher says she's never been able to draw well. Lately, though, she's been putting paper over her face and drawing self-portraits blind. It’s weird, it’s fun and she believes she's learning something with every attempt. This week’s column is about the unexpected joy of making something without worrying about whether it’s good.
How one Louisiana woman found joy in low-stakes, creative self-portrait fun
Jan Risher says she's never been able to draw well. Lately, though, she's been putting paper over her face and drawing self-portraits blind. It’s weird, it’s fun and she believes she's learning something with every attempt. This week’s column is about the unexpected joy of making something without worrying about whether it’s good.
A Maine Town, Once Dependent on a Paper Mill, Tries to Move On
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New uncertainties as owner of stricken Longview mill posts quarterly loss
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Dilworth business owner helps police identify suspect in random assault on woman
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In 1934, scientists heard reports of mushrooms causing visions of tiny people; in 2026, DNA linked the phenomenon to one species in China and the Philippines
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iOS 27's New Compact Clock Gives Your Wallpaper Room to Breathe
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Jacobs Wellington Foundation And Cox Science Center Celebrate STEM Partnership - Town-Crier Newspaper
The Jacobs Wellington Foundation and the Cox Science Center & Aquarium are celebrating six years of partnership dedicated to expanding STEM education opportunities for Wellington students. Through the foundation’s continued support of the Cox Science Center’s STEM Passport program, approximately 500 Wellington-area elementary and middle school students will participate in hands-on science, technology, engineering and […]
Kids Empire Brings High-Energy Family Entertainment To Wellington Green - Town-Crier Newspaper
The Mall at Wellington Green recently announced the grand opening of Kids Empire, a vibrant indoor attraction designed to entertain children of all ages through active, imaginative and social play. “Kids Empire is an exciting addition to the Mall at Wellington Green, where families can spend meaningful time together,” said Carmen Spinoso, president and CEO […]
High school sports tryouts and practices kick off Aug. 17
Our high school fall sports season will kick off on Monday, Aug. 17, with tryouts and practices beginning for high school football. Tryouts and practices for all other high school sports, including cheerleading, boys' soccer, girls' soccer, boys' cross country, girls' cross country, girls' tennis, girls' swimming and diving and volleyball, will begin on Monday, Aug. 24. Tryouts and practice schedules Tryout and practice schedules are available via the practice schedules button located on the fall sports page of our website. Please note that practice schedules are subject to change due to inclement weather or unanticipated circumstances. Registration information As a reminder, students and parents must fill out all required paperwork on Final Forms to participate in tryouts and practices. A physical conducted within the last 12 months is mandatory for any student interested in trying out for an athletic team and must be uploaded into Final Forms platform. Families are encouraged to get a completed physical from their child's physician. If you are unable to get a physical from your child's physician, you can schedule a free physical with Whitney Young's school-based health center by calling (518) 573-2556. Additionally, the district physician will also be available to facilitate sports physicals at Albany High in room 4253 on the following dates: Monday, Aug. 17 from 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 20 from 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Sports physicals on Aug. 17 and 20 are free and no appointment is necessary. Academic Eligibility As a reminder, students must be in good academic standing to participate in athletics. Academic eligibility will start at the beginning of each academic year. Eligibility is determined based on quarterly grades, and interim progress reports will serve as an important academic checkpoint for all student‑athletes. For additional details about academic eligibility, please see our Athletic Code of Conduct. Falcons, we can't wait to see you soar this fall season!
Legendary sports broadcaster laid off following battle with cancer
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The Beauty Of Settled Science
Commenters convinced me I made a subtle mis-step in my framing of Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine. My framing emphasized that social priming studies had failed to replicate, but that many other subfields of psychology hadn’t. This naturally led commenters to point to failed replications in other subfields. Although none of these were as bad as social priming, few or none were entirely problem-free. Instead of emphasizing the difference between social priming and other subfields, I should have emphasized the difference between settled science and novel research. Here are some of my favorite psychology findings: The brain is sculpted by reinforcement learning, and a key driver of this learning is a prediction-error-based algorithm located in the nucleus accumbens and implemented through dopamine. Psychedelic drugs exert their effects through 5-HT2A receptors, pointing to a role for these receptors in some sort of construct like the balance between priors and new evidence. Certain cognitive functions are localized to certain brain areas (for example, impulse control to the frontal lobes; linguistic structure to Broca’s area, linguistic meaning to Wernicke’s area. But injure one of these areas, or render a certain function useless (eg a blind person having no more use for their visual cortex), and these mappings can gradually shift - suggesting that neurons are general-purpose compute whose specialization is a contingent fact about convenience and efficiency rather than a necessity. Most personality traits and general capabilities are about 50% genetic and 50% random, with little role for family environment or childhood history, with a few notable exceptions like partisan preference. Recent research complicates this story, but the further you go from this basic picture, the gnarlier the chains of indirect causation you require. Neurons fire together in “brain waves”, whose exact frequency corresponds with the character of consciousness; These divide neurons into natural subpopulations and linked graphs. The gamma rhythm corresponds surprisingly well to items in conscious awareness. GABA receptors seem to be involved in something like relaxation. By hitting different GABA receptors in different ways, you can modulate the exact type of relaxation you produce. Hitting GABA-A directly is too powerful and can cause dangerous levels of sedation, but allosteric modulation of GABA is an incredibly fruitful strategy that underlies drugs from benzos to barbituates to alcohol. If you know your GABA-A subunits, you can target specific subtypes of relaxation; for example, Ambien hits GABA-A1 and induces sleep. Memory divides somewhat fuzzily into bins of immediate-sensory, short-term, and long-term, with separate retrieval and storage functions, and separate systems for declarative vs. procedural learning. These can be harmed selectively, usually by hippocampal injury, so that some patients can remember their life stories but not form new long-term memories, or learn new skills like bike-riding but not new facts. The exact substrate of memory is unclear but seems to involve new synaptic connections between neurons in at least some way. The ability of modern psychology and psychiatry to treat mental illness is real but limited. SSRIs work for half or slightly fewer than half of patients; antipsychotics work with extreme side effects; benzodiazpines work but produce addiction and tolerance in many (not all) people. Most supplements are stuck in Poor Quality Study Replication Crisis Hell, but melatonin and l-theanine stand out as especially promising. Psychotherapy works with moderate effect size, but (with a few exceptions) seems to be more about the relationship with the provider than the details of the therapy itself. Mental hospitalization can sometimes defuse immediate crises but work less well than mental hospitals would like, with some studies showing overall negative effects. Schizophrenia is mostly genetic, but risk also increases with prenatal infection (especially rubella) and obstetric complications; there is suggestive evidence for roles of social stress and drug use (with psychedelics and marijuana making things worse, and nicotine if anything making things better). Bipolar and schizophrenia are so closely linked on a pathophysiological level that it seems like they might be the same disease; on the clinical level, they do seem to follow two separate courses/prognoses but can sometimes surprise clinicians by eg someone who seemed condemned to permanent schizophrenia unexpectedly recovering. The brain’s native reinforcement learning algorithms cash out in the phenomena of classical and operant conditioning; different reinforcement schedules reinforce at different levels, which can be exploited by bad actors to make especially compelling products (eg slot machines). None of these are immune to doubt. A few are speculative; one or two are genuinely unorthodox. But they’re all a step above one p = 0.049 paper that might not replicate. If they get overturned, they’ll be overturned by the same sort of genuine scientific shift that replaced Ptolemy with Copernicus or Lamarck with Darwin, not some sort of sordid discovery about someone entering random numbers into a spreadsheet. In 2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about The Beauty Of Settled Science: If you only care about scientific issues that are controversial, you will end up with a head stuffed full of garbage. The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science is worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like “General Relativity still governing planetary orbits” or “Phlogiston theory remains false”? So, by the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline. “Newsworthy” science is often based on the thinnest of evidence and wrong half the time—if it were not on the uttermost fringes of the scientific frontier, it would not be breaking news. Scientific controversies are problems so difficult that even people who’ve spent years mastering the field can still fool themselves. That’s what makes for the heated arguments that attract all the media attention. Worse, if you aren’t in the field and part of the game, controversies aren’t even fun. Don’t be embarrassed to read elementary science textbooks, either. If you want to pretend to be sophisticated, go find a play to sneer at. If you just want to have fun, remember that simplicity is at the core of scientific beauty [...] A steady diet of science news is bad for you: You are what you eat, and if you eat only science reporting on fluid situations, without a solid textbook now and then, your brain will turn to liquid. Psychology isn’t centrally the new paper in Annals Of Recently-Breaking News saying that an n=5 study showing that large portion sizes increase support for terrorism. Psychology is centrally ideas like brain waves, GABA receptors, reinforcement learning, twin studies, and connectionism. People who think differently are worrying too much about BREAKING NEWS!!!, and should stop. The key distinction isn’t “recent research in social psychology” vs. “recent research in cognitive/bio/behavioral psychology”, as my essay last week unfortunately implied. It’s recent research in general vs. the deposit of settled science, battle-tested hypotheses, and carefully-earmarked speculation. And part of the reason social priming in particular was such a disaster was that it defied that heuristic, building itself up over hundreds of studies until it approached or even entered the pantheon of settled science - before collapsing (5-HTTLPR was also sort of like this). This isn’t a claim that settled science is always right - Freud was “settled science” for a long time - just that there’s an intuitive distinction between the level of credence you should have in the existence of power posing vs. the existence of Broca’s Area. (I compounded this error by calling the last post “Psychology Research Is Mostly Fine”, which suggested I was talking about the new research rather than the settled science. I actually meant to distinguish between research-psychology-the-field vs. clinical-psychology-aka-therapy, but this framing unintentionally pushed against the point I wanted to make) Some commenters on the previous article understood this point, but challenged its weight. It’s very cool, they said, to know how many neurons are in which brain lobe, but the main way that Psychology affected their lives was through bad clickbait studies used to buttress dumb policies; some p = 0.049 study says that exposure to microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel into raisins, and now their company has to implement punitive DEI or be sued for hazardous work conditions. I won’t dispute this as an accurate description of how the sausage gets made, but it’s worth examining the trains of thought that connect this observation to a campaign against psychology in general: The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad, and I don’t have good heuristics for distinguishing dumb woke psychology from other psychology, so I’m going to assume it’s all wrong and bad. The dumb woke psychology was wrong and bad; it seems useful to punish/discredit psychology as a whole to assist my campaign against it, so for propaganda purposes I will try to discredit psychology as a whole. To people in the first camp, my response is: come on, your heuristics aren’t that bad. “Microaggressions makes minorities’ brains shrivel up like raisins” is in the woke category; “the hippocampal theta rhythm seems to be associated with both memory and pathfinding, suggesting an unexpected yet surprisingly compelling relationship between the two” is in the not-woke category, don’t play dumb here. To people in the second camp, my response is: deliberately exaggerated propaganda campaigns are bad and this is a confession, not an excuse. Inability to view science through anything but a political lens was what got us into this problem; doubling down on it is a temporary solution but a recipe for permanent disaster. If you pronounce entire fields of science to be acceptable collateral damage in your campaign against bad political actors, you will alienate not just scientists but patients, clinicians, and general lovers of truth. Instead, you can say the thing you mean - that woke partisans shouldn’t try to occupy and exploit the otherwise-noble science of psychology for their own political gain - and wage the same campaign with a halo rather than a comic-book-villain goatee. From the font of oracular wisdom that is Weird Sun Twitter: [ Vessel Of Spirit@VesselOfSpirit i love you all conditionally but i love the good part of you unconditionally. even if it becomes a very small part 2:11 AM · Jan 22, 2015 1 Reply · 5 Reposts · 29 Likes ](https://x.com/VesselOfSpirit/status/558084551772471298) This is how I feel about psychology1, too, but with a touch more optimism. The good part of psychology is enormous, a hoard of endless treasures. You just have to look past the headlines! 1 To play devil’s advocate - should one always be so magnamious? Astrology? Phrenology? These seem different in that their entire orientation was flawed from the start; they didn’t simply fail to find the correct constellation-personality connections, the whole project of searching for connections between constellations and personality was doomed from the start. More difficult might be asking the same question about education research, which is notoriously bad. I don’t know enough about education research to know if there’s some settled science of correct and enlightening results lurking in the background beyond the day-to-day froth of poorly-conducted and politically-motivated studies. I think if it’s 90% bad, 10% good, it’s correct to call it bad as a compact way of communicating a useful truth; I think psychology is better than that, but admit it’s a tough judgment call.
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Governor’s Award of Excellence Recognizes State Employees’ Rapid Response to Bristol Explosion
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