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2026 World Cup Odds: Books Hoping For Spain-England Title Match
One thing sportsbooks don't want? A rematch of the 2022 World Cup final. Patrick Everson breaks down the semifinal betting action.
2026 Open Championship odds, picks, date: Surprising predictions from golf model that's nailed 17 majors
Mike McClure's model has simulated the British Open 2026 10,000 times and revealed PGA best bets for Royal Birkdale
Waze adds new AI-powered features and customization updates
Some of the new features are powered by Google's Gemini AI assistant, which reflects the the tech giant's broader push to integrate Gemini across its products while also better positioning Waze to compete with rival services such as Apple Maps.
Octopath Traveler 0 update announced, adds new Monster Arena foe and resident
Square Enix will release a free update for Octopath Traveler 0 later in 2026, the company announced.
Stealth PlayStation 5 Feature Update Adds a Handy New Widget
Sony Interactive Entertainment has quietly dropped a new PS5 feature update that adds a handy new widget to the Welcome Hub.
Waze is rolling out new and improved features right now for its iOS and Android apps
Waze adds some new and improved features that might make driving less of a chore.
\'Spring Awakening\': Ephrata theater adds show to season; Jonathan Groff on new cast recording
The Ephrata Performing Arts Center announced July 7 that it is adding “Spring Awakening” to its 2026 season of shows.
Super Bomberman Collection update to add Super Bomberman: Panic Bomber W on August 20
Konami will release a free update for Super Bomberman Collection on August 20 that adds Super Bomberman: Panic Bomber W as a playable title, the company annonuced (2).
$10 Kalshi referral code “OREGONLIVE1” extended to politics odds
Kalshi referral code OREGONLIVE1 unlocks a Spend $10, Get $10 bonus, now valid on politics. See live Kalshi All-Star Game and 2028 Democratic nominee odds.
$50 Polymarket referral code “OREGON” extends invite bonus to politics
Polymarket invite code OREGON unlocks a $50 bonus on $20, now extended to politics. See live Polymarket All-Star Game and 2028 Republican nominee odds.
McConnell Says a Fall Led to His Hospitalization, Breaking Weeks of Silence About Health Condition
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about his condition after weeks of mounting speculation about the Kentucky Republican’s health. The statement comes following his hospitalization on June 14.
MSI Afterburner adds V/F hit maps to show how NVIDIA GPU Boost follows the curve
MSI Afterburner’s next beta will record the last 256 voltage and frequency states. A heat map shows which GPU Boost points were used most often.
2026 FIFA World Cup - Watch and Stream Live Matches
Stream live Men's FIFA World Cup 2026 matches and view the latest news, analysis, schedule, groups, odds, predictions, where to watch and more at FOX Sports.
City adds Memorial Behavioral Health responders to some fire emergency calls
Crews were already a part of a number of police calls.
iOS 27: What's New With the Mail App
Apple's Mail app is getting some useful updates in iOS 27, with Apple making big improvements to search and introducing new AI features. Search iOS 27 has an overhauled search system that extends to the Mail app. Instead of surfacing results based on keywords and recency, Mail app search ranks results by relevance and intent. Search results that come up in Mail are more relevant than before, so you find exactly what you're looking for.
Pixel 11 Pro Fold FCC listing adds support for a big Tensor G6 shake-up
Today's Pixel 11 Pro Fold FCC document dump appears to support rumors of Google moving to a MediaTek modem.
Palworld Exits Early Access With 72 New Pals and Pages of Update Notes
As promised previously, Palworld 1.0 has officially launched on Steam, bringing with it an absolutely gargantuan list of updates, features, and fixes. The update officially launches the game out of Early Access and adds 72 new pals to the game, bringing the total to 287—over 50 more than in the...
New Mitch McConnell Ambulance Video Adds to Health Mystery
The footage appears to show McConnell being loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher after EMS was called for a cardiac arrest.
NC budget raises sports-betting tax, adds prediction markets
New NC budget raises sports-betting taxes, redirects revenue to public universities, and creates a new tax on prediction markets.
All Five HUNGER GAMES Films Return to Theaters from Lionsgate and Fathom Entertainment in Anticipation of THE HUNGER GAMES: SUNRISE ON THE REAPING
The odds will be in audiences’ favor as fans of the The Hunger Games saga—new and returning—experience all the magic of the franchise once again, with all five Hunger Games films returning to theaters September 3- 7, 2026. Back in theaters from Lionsgate and Fathom Entertainment each of the entries in The Hunger Games: All Five Films will […]
Palworld's 1.0 launch adds 18 new Xbox achievements to hunt down on Game Pass
The Palworld 1.0 Update Xbox achievements have been revealed, giving you 18 new DLC achievements to hunt down across most Xbox Game Pass tiers.
Why NYC council speaker and Health Department are at odds over Legionnaires outbreak
New York City health officials say it’s a bit like a crime investigation. But instead of persons of interest, they are looking into buildings of interest in their investigation into the Legionnaires’ outbreak on the Upper East Side.
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Version 1.1.0 adds an option to turn off support character voice
The update is out now and also adjusts tutorial behavior, fixes FPS drops, and more.
Google Messages is trying out a common-sense sharing menu change
Google Messages appears to be testing a smarter sharing flow that finally adds a proper group option for multiple recipients.
Kilgore College adds competitive cheerleading as new sports program
The college announced it had officially added cheerleading to its intercollegiate athletic programs as a National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) sport beginning in the 2026-27 academic year.
Google Messages Adds Sweet New Sharing Feature
With Samsung shutting down Samsung Messages this week and a massive new group of users moving over to Google Messages, folks are starting to notice changes as Google works to improve its messaging...
AMD Expands Hawk Point Lineup With Numerous New SKUs Under Ryzen 200 And 100 Series
AMD adds 11 new processors to Ryzen 200 and 100 series, featuring Zen 4 architecture with up to 8 cores and RDNA 3 graphics.
Google Chrome finally brings an iOS-only feature to Android with new update
A new update for Google Chrome is rolling out to Android devices. It adds a dedicated back button and a new site controls option to Chrome.
What if a 911 had eight cylinders? Ruf's jaw-dropping new supercar is the answer
Legendary Porsche fettler adds a pair of cylinders to 911's flat six for monstrous power – and noise
Sony Settles With Fired Marathon Game Director Who Sued PlayStation and Bungie for More Than $200 Million, Adds Name to Credits
Sony has reached a settlement with former developer Christopher Barrett, who it had accused of sexual misconduct. As a result of the settlement, Barrett will be added to the credits of recently released extraction shooter Marathon.
Google Chrome 150 for Android adds dedicated back button
The latest version of Google Chrome is widely rolling out today with a dedicated back button and other small interface tweaks.
Sony Settles With Fired Bungie Dev, Adds Him To Marathon Credits
Christopher Barratt had accused the PS5 maker of trying to avoid paying him vested bonuses from the studio's sale
Google Photos adds a new AI 'Video Remix' tool
The feature can do things like apply cinematic relighting to brighten up a dark clip, swap out a plain background for something fun, or add artistic styles to videos.
Subanutica 2 major update adds the ability to shoot fish
To kill fish or not to kill fish, that is the question
iPhone 18 Pro And iPhone 18 Pro Max Release Date: A New September Timeline Emerges
Apple’s next iPhones are just a couple of months away. However, a report from an industry heavyweight adds nuance to the expected release schedule.
LINK adds role to support existing business
The Golden Triangle Development LINK on Tuesday announced a new hire and two internal promotions aimed at strengthening the organization’s efforts in economic development as well as business retention and expansion.
The Lexington Problem: Beating the Literacy Odds Without the Science of Reading
Aldeman: As Massachusetts implements a new literacy mandate, officials must not lose sight of the ultimate goal: helping more students learn to read
Opinion: The Lexington Problem: Beating the Literacy Odds Without the Science of Reading
The science of reading has largely won the policy debate. Over the last decade, state after state has embraced evidence-based reading instruction. Legislatures have passed literacy laws, and teacher p...
Political survivor Le Pen makes her boldest gamble yet for France's presidency
In launching her fourth bid for the French presidency, just hours after judges cleared her to run, Marine Le Pen portrayed herself as a fighter who had defied the odds to overcome a months-long legal battle that threatened to end her political ambitions.
Graham Platner's ruined campaign in Maine adds pressures for Democrats
Platner had entered the race as an outsider and was seen as riding a progressive, anti-establishment wave of support.
Flighty update adds powerful new Connection Assistant feature
A big update to Flighty, the popular flight-tracking app, is available on the App Store today. The latest version of...
Titan OS adds 30 Radial Entertainment FAST channels in Europe
Titan OS is adding and expanding reach of 30 free ad-supported streaming TV channels from Radial Entertainment’s FilmRise to its smart TV OS-powered device footprint across Europe. | Expansion of FilmRise channels internationally is currently a top priority for Radial, the company said.
The Politics of Provocation: The ECtHR’s Ruling in Miladze v Georgia
A recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights concerning a TikTok video published by a Georgian self-defined civil activist adds another layer to the Court’s increasingly messy Article 10 case law. The applicant repeatedly insulted public officials in crude and sexually explicit terms while broadcasting to a large online audience. Domestic courts imposed only a modest administrative fine, later reduced on appeal. The ECtHR did not find a violation of the applicant’s right to freedom of expression – raising several questions about the limits of legitimate political speech online.
2026 World Cup Odds: Books In 'Strong Position' Following USA Elimination
The fairy tale is over for the USA, putting books in a strong position when it comes to World Cup futures. Patrick Everson breaks it down.
ECSU adds data science, online history, social work degrees
Elizabeth City State University, one of four North Carolina Promise institutions providing affordable access to higher education, is expanding its curriculum and adding flexibility for students.
The Green Bay Packers Have a Tremendous History of Fighting Spirit and Resilience
From humble beginnings in a meatpacking town to thirteen NFL titles, discover how the community-owned Green Bay Packers defied the odds to become an enduring icon of American sports.
Everything New in iOS 27 Beta 3
Apple is continuing to refine iOS 27 ahead of its planned September launch, and the third beta includes several new features. Siri is more customizable, there's a fun new wallpaper action, and some useful improvements to Photos and Shortcuts. Siri Voice Beta 3 adds support for Siri voice customization on compatible devices. The customization option existed in prior betas, but it was not active.
iPhone 18 Pro Release Date: A New September Timeline Emerges
Apple’s next iPhones are just a couple of months away. However, a report from an industry heavyweight adds nuance to the expected release schedule.
watchOS 27 adds three new Health upgrades for Apple Watch
watchOS 27 packs a variety of Health-related improvements for Apple Watch users that span three main areas, here’s what’s new.
Apple adds new popup for AI features that send data to Google Cloud
Apple now uses Google servers to power some of its new and upcoming AI features, and the company is using...
Personnel note: Chesapeake Utilities adds Lance Pierce to Florida team
Pierce will oversee external affairs in Jackson, Liberty, Gadsden, Calhoun, Holmes, Washington, Bay and Escambia counties
Sony clarifies re-order support for existing PlayStation discs
Platform holder adds the process for ordering discs will change as it shifts to an all-digital future
‘Game of the Tournament’ — Shannon Sharpe, Sports World React to England’s Stunning World Cup Win vs. Mexico
On paper, there should have been no contest. England has a star-studded team, and while Mexico were playing at the legendary Estadio Azteca in front of about 80,000 fans, the odds were stacked against them.
No to Taylor Ham, Bruce ticket. NJ adds 'inspiration' to time capsule
Every state, U.S. territories and the District of Columbia submitted mementos for a memory trove to be opened in 2276
Cancer Health: HIV raises hepatitis C liver disease risk in women more than men
Women with HIV and HCV face higher odds of cirrhosis and liver decompensation but not liver cancer.
2026 World Cup Odds: Folarin Balogun's Return Leaves Books Scrambling
The betting on USA-Belgium changed in an instant once it was announced Folarin Balogun was eligible to play. Patrick Everson has the scoop.
Brazil vs. Norway - Live Score
Live coverage of Brazil vs. Norway game on FOX Sports including live score, highlights, updated stats, odds and more - played on July 05, 2026.
World Cup 2026: How Folarin Balogun being available changes USMNT odds against Belgium in Round of 16
The United States is favored against Belgium in Monday's Round of 16 match.
Shore Regional Health Cancer Center adds community outreach coordinator
EASTON — The Cancer Center at University of Maryland Shore Regional Health recently welcomed Catalina Billings as coordinator of community outreach, a new position designed to provide up-to-date cancer information
iPhone 18 Pro Release Date: A New September Timeline Emerges
Apple’s next iPhones are just a couple of months away. However, a report from an industry heavyweight adds nuance to the expected release schedule.
Diamondbacks 4, Milwaukee 3: A Win for AMERICA!
Against the odds, Merrill Kelly and Adrian Del Castillo led us to an unlikely 4th of July victory!
Ukrainian drones target more Russian oil infrastructure as fuel crisis adds political pressure on Putin, who shrugs off attacks as ‘not critical’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as part of Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions” against Russia.
Smoke from fireworks adds a July Fourth health challenge for these groups
Where there are fireworks, there’s smoke — and a greater risk of breathing difficulties for people with asthma, emphysema and other lung diseases.
UFC Abu Dhabi adds former welterweight contender to lineup
Santiago Ponzinibbio is back at UFC Abu Dhabi
2026 NFL Odds: Josh Allen, Buffalo Best Bet To Win AFC East
Find out why Will Hill believes that Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills will win the AFC East next season.
2026 NASCAR Odds: Denny Hamlin Favored As Cup Returns To Chicagoland Speedway
The NASCAR Cup Series is heading back to Chicagoland Speedeway for the first time since 2019. Here are the latest odds for the eero 400.
Virginia Tech athletic director Brian White makes first key hire
Brian White makes first big hire at Virginia Tech.
Canes football remains on a recruiting surge. And basketball team adds a center
UM football, basketball teams keep up momentum in recruiting.
DOOM: The Dark Ages Goes Supersonic With New DLC Chain Spear
DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations is its first major DLC, showcasing a versatile new Chain Spear. Read more inside to learn about the deep movement tech it adds to the game:
Meta adds $20 subscription to the Ray-Ban Meta's best accessibility feature
Pay up to hear more
Mario Kart World version 1.7.0 update now available
Nintendo has released the version 1.7.0 update for Mario Kart World, which adds two new routes to Knockout tour, plus a new feature that lets you place stickers in Photo Mode.
5 things to know about an emerging drug-resistant fungus now putting hospitals at risk of outbreaks
Memo to health execs: If your hospital hasn’t had a C. auris scare yet, odds are quite high that it soon will.
3 Reasons Why I'm Loading Up on Penn Entertainment in the Second Half of 2026
Penn Entertainment stock is soaring and it has the potential to build on those gains in the second half of 2026.
2026 College Football Odds: Will Oregon, Miami Both Make Playoff?
Geoff Schwartz has his eye on one team's win total and two teams' CFP chances. See where he's putting his money.
VA Primary Care adds virtual reality to Veterans’ Mental Health Toolkit
Virtual reality devices help Veterans by offering additional ways to manage issues affecting their physical and mental health.
PlayStation Plus Adds Massive 2025 PS5 Adventure RPG
PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium catalog has dropped the final three PS5 games for June 2026, including a 2025 open-world adventure RPG.
Trafalgar Entertainment Announces Acquisition Of The London Theatre Company
Trafalgar Entertainment is delighted to announce its acquisition of the London Theatre Company (LTC). | The deal includes The Bridge Theatre and a King’s Cross venue which hosts immersive entertainment business, Lightroom.
PS5 Pro Adds Extra Shine to Your Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Remake
PS5 Pro supported detailed by Ubisoft
France, Argentina top World Cup odds; U.S. puts sportsbooks at risk
Star-powered France and Argentina top the odds board to win the World Cup as the tournament moves into the knockout stage, while the United States' positive momentum will have sportsbooks sweating more with each game it wins.
Teenage Engineering adds lo-fi mode, USB audio, and more to its KO II sampler
Another free update for the surprisingly capable sampler.
Flyers hope to hit on another fifth-rounder from Minnesota high school level
The Flyers have had some success with fifth-rounders from the Minnesota high school level. They’ll hope Kent Sauer adds to it.
Phillies vs Mets Prediction, Picks & Odds for Today's MLB Game
The Phillies have been hot, and our expert MLB predictions expect their winning ways to continue against the lowly Mets.
NWSL team fuels push for more women’s sports
NWSL team adds momentum to women’s sports push
NWSL team fuels push for more women’s sports
NWSL team adds momentum to women’s sports push
Fleet Science Center unveils two new exhibition spaces after renovation
The $5.6 million renovation expands exhibit space and adds new interactive visitor experiences.
Making Our Own Luck
We are cross-posting a piece that former NIH official Kris Willis wrote for Macroscience. Kris is now the President and Founder of the Woodley Park Institute, for which I’m a board member. Picking winners or hedging bets? Federal science agencies have long wrestled with the question of how to ensure their billions of dollars of grants and contracts result in maximum benefits for Americans. On the surface, it might seem that a goal-oriented, interventionist style of management would be the best policy: prioritize our most pressing problems and distribute funding accordingly.This top-down strategy creates a unique hazard, though: bad choices can send resources in the wrong direction, resulting in slow progress that impedes the delivery of tangible benefits to citizens. Moreover, if decision makers pursue an applied advance when the underlying scientific principles remain poorly understood, they risk costly failures and a loss of support for the research enterprise at large. Examples include Nixon’s 1971 War on Cancer, undertaken on the premise that a cure could be achieved in less than a decade, the drive to build an operational commercial fusion plant by the mid-1990s, and the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, which failed to produce the effective treatments and prevention strategies promised by 2025. The contrasting laissez-faire approach is to hedge your bets. If the path to an advance is impossible to predict, then the wisest choice might be to distribute funding to as widely as possible. The main risk of this strategy is that spreading funding thinly may limit the resources available to the most promising research, resulting in the same negative outcomes as the interventionist approach: limited support for the most promising topics, slow progress, and delayed returns. In reality, at science agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, program managers navigate between these two extremes, setting some funds aside to target high-priority areas and using the rest to cover the widest possible range of meritorious proposals. This middle path seems like the most rational way to proceed, but it still requires making choices. How much should be set aside for high priority topics? What should those topics be? How should we define merit? Expert opinion can provide a helpful guide, but leading experts can have remarkably different opinions about what matters and what should be prioritized. Moreover, experts and administrators alike can be risk averse, giving an edge to high-profile, well-established concepts. What’s really needed is a data-driven framework to help guide decision-making, one that doesn’t simply repackage prestige or incumbency. Recognizing breakthroughs years in advance Many breakthroughs fail to attract funding or recognition at the earliest stages of development. Katalin Karikó, for example, spent years struggling to win grants for work on mRNA that would eventually win her and Drew Weissman a Nobel Prize. Similar stories can be told about Jim Allison’s groundbreaking studies leading to the development of cancer immunotherapy, Stan Pruisner’s demonstration that prions can self-replicate without DNA, or Robin Warren and Barry Marshall’s proof that Helicobacter pylori, not stress, causes ulcers. Yet at some point, the scientific community recognizes and responds to transformative breakthroughs like these. How does that change happen? And what if science funders could identify the areas that are on the cusp of a breakthrough? Those questions led my collaborators and me to study how scientists responded to past breakthroughs. Based on patterns in that data, we developed a means of predicting future breakthroughs, using biomedicine as a proof of concept. It’s worth taking a moment to describe how our approach works. Briefly, our prediction process begins by grouping the 18 million or so peer-reviewed papers in PubMed, the authoritative database of biomedical research, into roughly 50,000 unique topics. A small subset of these topics are so widely acclaimed as breakthroughs that they have been recognized with a major prize like a Nobel or a Lasker Award. We theorized that studying the development of these outliers over time, especially before they gained acclaim, was the key to identifying future instances of them. After defining topics, we chose 21 representative breakthroughs and asked what they looked like before they won prestigious prizes. To answer that question, we re-ran our topic-mapping algorithm repeatedly, winding back the clock one year each time, stringing together the years to follow the progress of each field as it grew and advanced. We found that in each case, the years leading up to a discovery followed a pattern: a burst of papers on a new, rapidly evolving topic, many of which quickly became influential. These characteristics—the percent of papers that are new, the percentage of papers that are brought in from other topics, and the influence of each individual paper—can all be measured separately for any given topic. Together, they act as a predictive signal that is detectable an average of five years before a transformative discovery is made, and up to thirty years before the discovery receives a major prize. Scanning the current research landscape for topics that display this signal allows us to predict what work will likely produce a future breakthrough. Each year we analyzed includes four or five signals, a number that appears to have remained constant across a twenty year time frame. In their classic work on the sociology of science, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar established that the desire to participate in a major discovery is an important motivator for scientists as they consider whether they should take up (or abandon) a research problem. Although further work is needed, the simplest explanation for our results is that this behavior is widespread enough to detect at scale. A foundational advance, or something like it, draws the attention of scientists and causes them to change the direction of their research. They vote with their feet, staking their own reputation and careers by publishing on and citing the new idea. That upswell of interest is the foundation of our breakthrough signal. What kind of research does our model identify as a breakthrough? After building a model based on the patterns in our 21 preselected breakthroughs, we tested it by identifying all early signals of discovery from 1994 through 1997. Of the 18 signals we found in that time period, 17 can be traced forward in time to a breakthrough. Examples include super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (see the image above), the directed evolution of proteins and enzymes (Chemistry Nobel, 2018), and sequencing the human genome (National Medal of Science, 2008). The discovery of the role of leptin signaling in obesity is a particularly interesting case study. Around 1950, scientists noticed the existence of a type of lab mouse that suffered from a unique inherited form of obesity. When given the freedom to choose their own diet, these mice ate more than normal and preferred food that was high in fat. Researchers had few clues as to why the animals overate; early experiments pointed to the existence of a soluble ob factor found circulating in the bloodstream that regulated appetite, but its identity was unknown. In 1994, Jeffrey Friedman and colleagues identified and sequenced the ob gene, noting that the protein it encoded appeared to fit the profile of a circulating factor. A year later, a trio of high-profile publications demonstrated that ob was a hormone that regulated body weight and fat deposition by regulating appetite. One of these was co-authored by Friedman, who christened it leptin from the ancient Greek word for thin. Using our model, the data from 1996 make it clear this advance would become a breakthrough. Scientists had flocked to study the biology of the new hormone, generating the flurry of new papers and citations required to produce a signal. One of these demonstrated that serum leptin concentrations reflected the amount of adipose tissue in the human body, providing clinical validation of the earlier mouse studies. Before the identification of leptin, scientists were unable to point to a specific molecule that controlled appetite and adiposity, so that it was impossible to rule out non-physiological causes of obesity; its characterization fundamentally changed our concept of weight gain. In 2010, Friedman and fellow pioneer Douglas Coleman were awarded a Lasker for the discovery. Our work also identifies breakthroughs in clinical practice and behavioral and social sciences, even though these areas are less likely to draw the attention of major prize committees. One example that falls into this category is the introduction of endovascular aneurysm repair, a minimally invasive surgical procedure for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysm, a leading cause of death among Americans over the age of 65. Relative to the previous standard of care, it reduces in-hospital mortality by almost four-fold. In 2017, Timothy Chuter received the American College of Surgeons’ prestigious Jacobsen Innovation award for his multiple refinements to the technique. Another under-recognized breakthrough identified by our model is the development of standardized survey instruments to assess the quality of life for HIV+ patients. The antiretroviral cocktails introduced in the mid-1990s reduced AIDS mortality, but treatment came with serious side effects. The new evaluations showed that patients whose disease progressed had worse physical functioning than Americans with other chronic diseases, while those who were asymptomatic maintained a health-related quality of life on par with the overall US population. This evidence made it possible for patients and activists to argue that even in the absence of a total cure, and in spite of the side effects, alleviation of symptoms was a worthwhile priority for clinicians. My colleagues and I have failed to identify any significant recognition for the physicians and health policy experts who pioneered this advance, although in 2016, researchers called for the World Health Organization to set targets for good health-related quality of life as part of its framework to end the AIDS pandemic. From forecasting to funding How should science funders use our predictions? Any serious discussion of what we should do with this new capability needs to begin with an understanding of its limitations. We can’t (and shouldn’t) invest all of our resources in the small number of topics predicted to produce breakthroughs. Innovative new fields are born from existing ones; they rarely arise de novo. If funders don’t maintain a diverse portfolio, the breakthroughs of tomorrow will have no antecedents. Think of this as eating the seed corn, or killing the goose that lays the golden egg. There are also multiple goals of funding beyond basic scientific discovery, including translating discoveries into clinical practice, developing new technologies, supporting economic development, and training new scientists. The investments needed to accomplish these goals are likely different from those required to support emerging breakthroughs. Finally, we must be aware that we may not capture every instance of a breakthrough. The concept is fuzzy, and not every significant discovery is recognized with a major award. Further, breakthroughs are rare, meaning that our dataset is, by necessity, small. This makes formal estimates of accuracy challenging. Although our overall success rate appears to be high, any one signal may turn out to be a false positive. We found one apparent example: the development of the third generation COX-2 inhibitors, Vioxx and Celebrex, which were much celebrated in the early 2000s as effective but non-addictive pain relievers, meets all the algorithmic criteria of a breakthrough. Five years after it received FDA approval, researchers demonstrated that Vioxx was associated with serious cardiovascular complications, and the manufacturer voluntarily pulled the drug from the market. Celebrex remains available, although like other NSAIDs, it carries an FDA warning for increased cardiovascular risk. Decision makers who were overly focused on the breakthrough potential of this research might have wasted substantial resources nurturing an area that ultimately proved to be a failure—but so would those who relied on expert opinion at the time. That said, the potential benefits of funding the next mRNA vaccine or cancer immunotherapy years earlier than we might have are large. When we can’t assume the outcome of an action, it’s worth conducting an experiment. Can targeted support for areas that are poised to produce a breakthrough increase the return on scientific investment without cannibalizing future advances? With the necessary administrative infrastructure in place, conducting this experiment would be straightforward. First, identify all the breakthrough signals between 2018 and 2023, select half at random, and commit to a decade of investment. For biomedicine, a six year window should yield about 30 topics with the potential to produce a breakthrough. Providing strong support to half of these might be accomplished for $300 million a year. That’s roughly half of the recent annual budget of the NIH Common Fund or around 20% of the fiscal year 2025 budget for ARPA-H. After five years, then again at ten, compare to see which group — the one that was actively managed, or the control — produced more breakthroughs, and on what timescale. Although we used biomedicine as an example, the same experiment could just as well be run for physics, materials science, or any other discipline. Any attempt to undertake such an experiment should keep three points top of mind. First, we can predict the topic of future breakthroughs, but the people and vision for how to move the work forward are still important. In practice, this means success requires active program managers with the expertise to develop the science and the authority to do so, including by recruiting investigators. Second, we would be wise to learn from the failures of past attempts to fund transformative research. High among these are funding modestly repackaged work, confusing the genuinely novel with the merely unfamiliar, and relying too much on incumbent investigators. All of these risks can be mitigated by thoroughly and intelligently integrating high quality data into portfolio management. Finally, we need to have patience. Even with strong funding support, producing a breakthrough takes time. If supporting breakthroughs is the best way to nurture the birth of new fields, we also need to accurately describe and properly manage the other two stages, so that we invest wisely throughout the productive lifetime of ideas and divest once they reach the point of diminishing returns. We would benefit from more study of all of these phases, especially the transition from one to another. More research could answer questions like: When does a breakthrough become an established field? How do the availability of funding, the size and characteristics of the available workforce, and the accumulation of evidence that disagrees with prevailing models affect a field’s decline? Exactly how do old ideas give birth to new ones, and can we speed up the process? The more we understand about the dynamics of scientific progress, the better we can maximize the odds that our curiosity leads to results. I’d call that finding a way to make our own luck.
Microsoft adds another year to Windows 10 extended update program
About a quarter of PCs are still running Microsoft's previous operating system.
Fox Sports renews Gold Cup rights, adds Nations League
Fox Sports is going to remain a player in the international soccer game for several more years to come. Although the rights for the 2030 World Cup are up for grabs, Fox made the announcement on Wednesday night that the Gold Cup, the CONCACAF championship tournament, will remain with the company. In addition, Fox is…
How did Austin Reaves beat odds, land $185M deal with Lakers? Tiny town knows
A teacher, a coach and friend from Austin Reaves' hometown of Newark, Arkansas share insight into his success on way to a $185M deal with the Lakers.
Gemini in Chrome adds ‘Select from screen’ tool as Gemini 3.5 Flash gains computer use
Gemini in Chrome now lets you focus a prompt with a new "Select from screen" tool, while developers can tap into 3.5 Flash computer use...