Good news! Bravo!
Saturday, October 31, 2026
India's Poverty Revolution: How Did 496 Million People Rise Above The Poverty Line in about 12 years?
Friday, October 30, 2026
Whitney Houston - Saving All My Love for You (The Concert for a New South Africa (Durban) - LIVE)
Enjoy (the many improvisations)!
Unfortunately, it is audio only!
Retired school custodian STUNNED as district reveals incredible honor to name an elementary school after her
What a wonderful story!
Apparently, she was more than a mere custodian. She also helped students and so on. Unfortunately, this news video does not mention this.
It appears, she does not have a family of her own and that the school children were her family.
"After 39 years of serving students, retired school custodian Marilyn Hampton receives the surprise of a lifetime when an elementary school is named in her honor."
"Marilyn Hampton spent 39 years as a custodian in the Aubrey Independent School District in Texas. She didn’t just clean. She bought school supplies for students who needed them, helped kids study for tests, and set an example of kindness and perseverance.
Even after retiring as a custodian, she still works at the district’s Early Bird Learning Center, where she sits in a rocking chair and helps with the little ones.
At Wednesday’s board meeting, Superintendent Shannon Saylor asked the 76-year-old to handle a familiar task: roll out a small red carpet in front of the podium. When Hampton looked down, she saw the words Marilyn Hampton Elementary School. The district’s newest campus, previously known as Elementary School Number Five, would carry her name when it opens next August. ..."
Xi Jinping Welcomes German President Steinmeier With Grand Military Ceremony in Beijing. Really!
What is the ceremonial German president doing in China other than wasting German taxpayers' money. Not to mention that he is a dumbo!
Pope Leo Votes by Mail in U.S. Midterms, maybe the first pope in modern times to cast a vote in a political elections
This seems to be highly unusual!
Why was this not done in secret?
Pope Leo XIV votes in US midterm elections via mail-in ballot (Vatican News) "Pope Leo XIV has voted in the midterm elections of the United States, expressing his “belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes.”"
Canada unveils first national security strategy in more than 20 years
Effects of the Donroe doctrine?
On Claudia Sheinbaum
I have wondered for some time about her last name.
It is sometimes fascinating to find out who emigrated to Mexico (besides Leon Trotsky). Is Mexico a melting pot?
She is the daughter of Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, whose mother and father were Emma Yoselevitz and Chone Juan Sheinbaum. Their parents were Ashkenazi Jews originally from Lithuania.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, April 2024 (Source)
Before you laugh at leeches (a history of medicine)
Recommendable! A brief history of medicine (with particular focus on Johns Hopkins University)!
Caution: This article seems to be favoring socialized/government run medicine!
"... Medicine is as old as mankind itself. Older, actually, as scientists and archaeologists now theorize that Neanderthals practiced some form of the healing arts.
Analysis of DNA traces found in their dental remains show non-food herbs and botanicals, including poplar tree bark, a traditional painkiller chemically similar to aspirin.
Their skeletal remains include individuals who appear to have overcome severe injury, suggesting that caregiving was a component of the social lives of these archaic humans. ...
The Johns Hopkins History of Medicine department is the oldest academic unit of medical history in the English-speaking world and a leader in looking backward over millennia of global medical practice. Founded in 1929 ...
Henry Sigerist ... An early proponent of government-run universal healthcare ..."
Researchers find proof of a new magnetic phase called altermagentism
Amazing stuff!
I have blogged here about the discovery of altermagentism two years ago.
"In brief
- The scientific case for a third type of magnetism – termed “altermagnetism” – has been building over recent years.
- Now, a SLAC-led team has experimentally proven that a material exhibits characteristics that are theoretically impossible to explain without altermagnetism.
- Altermagnetic materials could be used to design advanced electronics, with applications including quantum technologies, memory devices, and data centers
...
Building on previous studies, this research confirmed that manganese telluride (MnTe) is an altermagnet – a new class of magnet that exhibits properties of both ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. Their results showed direct experimental evidence of chirality – an asymmetric magnetic structure, akin to a spiral staircase or a screw – in the spins of an altermagnetic candidate material. ..."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
Altermagnets, a recently identified category of magnetic materials, have been predicted to host spin waves (“magnons”) that have distinct energies depending on their handedness.
Using different techniques, two groups are now reporting evidence of these chiral magnons.
Jost et al. used left- and right-handed circularly polarized light to create magnetic excitations in the material MnTe, a well-established altermagnet candidate ... The resulting magnon intensity was dependent on the sense of light polarization, indicating chirality.
Faure et al. used polarized neutron scattering to investigate the material MnF2. The difference in the scattering intensity of oppositely polarized neutrons likewise indicated magnon chirality, helping build a case for altermagnetism in this material. ...
Abstract
Altermagnetism has been recognized as a magnetic phase that bridges the properties of ferro- and antiferromagnetism.
The momentum-dependent spin splitting observed in these materials reflects their distinctive symmetry characteristics, which also establish the conditions for chiral magnons to emerge.
Here we provide direct experimental evidence for a chiral magnon in the altermagnetic candidate manganese telluride (MnTe) revealed by circular-dichroism resonant inelastic x-ray scattering.
This mode, which we term chiral altermagnon, exhibits a distinct momentum dependence of its spin polarization consistent with the altermagnetic g-wave symmetry of MnTe.
Our polarization-resolved data corroborate the existence of a discrete class of magnetic excitations, demonstrating how altermagnetic order shapes spin dynamics and paving the way for advances in spintronic and quantum technologies."
Chiral altermagnon in MnTe (no public access)
Chiral Altermagnon in MnTe (preprint, open access)
A census of satellite galaxies of the Milky Way
Amazing stuff!
"Preview data from the recently completed ... Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile point to a wave of discoveries that may complete the census of the Milky Way’s neighboring galaxies — including its faintest companions.
Using newly available data from the observatory ... researchers identified two previously unknown companions of the Milky Way, an early indicator that the observatory’s advanced technology could reveal the hundreds of faint companions thought to be hiding around Earth’s home galaxy.
Large galaxies are often orbited by satellites — small galaxies or star clusters — but many are extremely faint and difficult to find. There are about 65 known satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, yet there is speculation that hundreds more Milky Way satellites remain undetected. ..."
From the abstract:
"We present the discovery of Aquarius IV (Rubin J2201−0234)—the first ultra-faint Milky Way (MW) satellite to be identified using data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
This system was detected at ∼8σ significance using Rubin Early Data Preview 2 (EDP2) photometry and independently confirmed at ∼6σ significance in archival Dark Energy Camera imaging.
Jointly fitting its morphology and distance, we find that Aquarius IV is a low-luminosity (), compact ( pc; arcmin) stellar system in the outer Galactic halo (D⊙ = ). Its stellar population is consistent with an ancient, metal-poor stellar isochrone (τ = 13 Gyr, Z = 0.0001).
These properties closely resemble those of the smallest and faintest confirmed ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs), though a globular cluster classification is not ruled out. Given the small number of detected member stars in Rubin EDP2, deeper imaging and spectroscopy will be critical for determining the properties and classification of Aquarius IV at higher confidence."
Discovery of the Distant, Ultra-faint Milky Way Satellite Aquarius IV with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Early Data Preview 2 (open access)
Figure 1.
Top
Left: Smoothed spatial distribution of isochrone-filtered stars in a small region surrounding Aquarius IV.
Center: EDP2 color coadd image of a much smaller region centered on Aquarius IV.
Right: CMD of stars located within of Aquarius IV ...
Bottom
Left: Radial density profile of isochrone-filtered stars. The best-fit Plummer model is shown in blue.
Center: Spatial distribution of stars in a region centered on Aquarius IV, colored by ugali membership probability; stars with probabilities pi < 0.05 are shown in gray.
Right: CMD of the same stars shown in the bottom-center panel. The brightest red giant branch star candidate (g0 ≈ 18; × symbol) is rule
English for trippers: Head on
Heads up! Deer in the headlights.
Heading in the wrong direction? Wrong headed!
Any headroom left?
This is headline-grabbing!
Need a headrest?
GRAIL: Generating Humanoid Loco-Manipulation from World Models
This could be an interesting, new research paper by Sanja Fidler and Jan Kautz and their team!
From the abstract:
"Scaling humanoid loco-manipulation requires robot-compatible demonstrations across diverse objects, whole-body motions, and scene geometries, but teleoperation and motion capture are difficult to scale because each collection depends on physical setups, instrumented actors, and robot operation.
We present GRAIL, a digital generation pipeline that remains fully virtual until deployment: it composes 3D assets, simulator-ready scenes, and priors from video foundation models (VFMs) to synthesize interactions without rebuilding physical environments or teleoperating the robot.
Rather than reconstructing unconstrained in-the-wild videos, GRAIL starts from fully specified 3D configurations in which object geometry, camera parameters, metric scale, environment depth, and a robot-proportioned character are known before video generation and reused during reconstruction.
This privileged setup better conditions 4D recovery, allowing model-based object tracking, human motion estimation, and interaction-aware optimization to reconstruct metric 4D human-object interaction (HOI) trajectories with reduced depth ambiguity and morphology mismatch.
We retarget the recovered motions to a humanoid robot and train complementary task-general trackers: an object-aware latent adaptor for manipulation and a scene-aware tracker for terrain traversal.
GRAIL produces over 20,000 sequences spanning pick-up, object manipulation, sitting, and terrain traversal.
Using only GRAIL-generated data, we train egocentric visual policies through a sim-to-real pipeline and deploy them on a Unitree G1 humanoid, achieving 84% real-world success on diverse object pick-up and 90% success on stair-climbing. Code and data will be publicly released."
GM reaches $220M settlement with 36 states over selling drivers' private data
Who else is selling private data to whom for what purpose? What about permission from the data providing individual?
Did your insurance premium recently go up unexpectedly?
"General Motors will pay $220 million to 36 states to settle allegations that it illegally sold private driving behavior and location information to data brokers. ...
The agreement announced Thursday settles a lawsuit brought by a coalition of attorneys general from 36 states that alleged GM had sold the information to data brokers, which in turn then sold it to insurance providers. ...
The settlement comes more than two years after a New York Times report showed how GM and OnStar collected, used, and sold drivers’ precise geolocation data and driving behavior to third parties, including data brokers LexisNexis and Verisk. The data was collected through GM’s Smart Driver program, a free feature contained within its connected car apps that tracked and rated driving behaviors and seat belt use. Data brokers sold this information to insurance providers, which could affect customers’ rates, the NYT reported at the time. ..."
Can AI data centers be mass-produced like cars? One pod at a time
Why not? Sure, this should be possible!
"AI infrastructure company Runware is making news again, just months after unveiling the Sonic Inference Pod, a modular data center built in a factory and shipped to customers ready to install. Now the company has bigger plans. ... it wants to build a factory that assembles these pods on a production line, as if they were cars.
The idea isn’t entirely new. Companies like Crusoe and Schneider Electric also sell prefabricated pods, but Runware says it can ship its pods faster. ..."
Weniger Züge für mehr Pünktlichkeit: Auf dem Weg in die sozialistische Mangelwirtschaft. Wirklich!
Schlagzeilen aus der Bananenrepublik D! Wie unpünktlich ist die DB inzwischen?
Ein Halbstundentakt zwischen Berlin und Hamburg erscheint mir reichlich übertrieben oder viel zu oft! Da wird eine langstrecken Eisenbahn zur innerstädtischen kurzstrecken U-Bahn umgewandelt. Ist ein Halbstundentakt wirklich notwendig? Wie war die Auslastung mit Passagieren?
"Die Deutsche Bahn will ihre katastrophale Pünktlichkeitsbilanz verbessern und lässt dazu prüfen, ob künftig weniger Züge auf dem deutschen Schienennetz verkehren sollen. Eine unabhängige Expertenkommission mit dem Namen „Robuster Fahrplan“ soll ermitteln, wie viel Zugverkehr die marode Infrastruktur überhaupt noch zuverlässig bewältigen kann. Die Kommission nimmt am 3. November ihre Arbeit auf. Eines der bereits diskutierten Szenarien betrifft die wichtige Fernverkehrsverbindung zwischen Berlin und Hamburg. Dort könnte der bisherige Halbstundentakt auf einen Stundentakt reduziert werden. ..."
A unifying mechanism for cancer-driving mutations
Amazing stuff! Cancer is history (soon)!
"A family of mutations seen in about 20% of human cancers drives malignancy by changing the accessibility of genes to a particular regulatory protein, according to a study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The findings suggest new therapeutic strategies for a variety of cancer types.
The study ... focused on a protein complex called the BAF complex, which regulates gene activity in the nucleus. Mutations in genes that encode subunits of this complex are found in tumors as different as lymphoma, breast cancer, ovarian cancer and liver cancer, but the common mechanism underlying this broad connection to cancers has been elusive.
In the study, the scientists showed that these BAF mutations effectively allow the three-dimensional architecture of DNA to be reshaped extensively by a protein called CTCF. This shifts gene activity in a direction that promotes malignancy, but deleting CTCF in an animal model reverses the effect. ...
When the BAF complex is lost, CTCF binding increases at thousands of sites across the genome and leads to a widespread reshaping of the three-dimensional loops and folds of DNA. These changes disrupt the normal contacts between genes and elements that regulate them and alter gene activity in a way that leads to faster cell division. ...
In mouse models and human patient data, the team found confirmatory evidence of CTCF’s role in BAF-mutant cancers, including evidence that disruptions of CTCF are associated with better patient outcomes. ..."
From the abstract:
"The BAF (also known as mammalian SWI/SNF) chromatin remodelling complexes are essential regulators of nucleosome positioning and transcription factor binding.
Loss-of-function (LOF) mutations in genes encoding components of the BAF complexes are among the most frequent across cancer types.
However, a unifying mechanism that explains their widespread disruption remains unclear.
Here we disrupted BAF function through pharmacological inhibition and ARID1A deletion across various mammalian cell types and tissues and observed a conserved chromatin response: increased accessibility at CTCF-binding sites. ARID1A LOF alone was sufficient to drive these changes, which demonstrates that canonical BAF (cBAF) disruption is the key driver of CTCF gain.
Genomic profiling showed increased CTCF and SMC3 occupancy, which reveals an antagonistic relationship between cBAF and CTCF–cohesin complexes. Furthermore, cBAF loss restructured 3D genome organization, which led to a strengthening of topologically associating domain boundaries and subdivision of large domains into smaller insulated structures. Long-range enhancer–promoter loops were replaced by shorter, promoter-proximal loops anchored at CTCF-enriched sites. To determine how CTCF function is enabled following cBAF loss, we profiled CTCF-interacting cofactors and found that CTCF binds directly to fully assembled PBAF. After cBAF depletion, PBAF was recruited to sites of increased CTCF occupancy, which demonstrates that there is an antagonistic switch between SWI/SNF subcomplexes.
In vivo, conditional Arid1a deletion in primary mouse cells resulted in the expansion of a highly proliferative population marked by elevated accessibility at CTCF sites.
This phenotype was fully reversed by either Ctcf or Pbrm1 deletion, which establishes that cBAF and the activity of CTCF and PBAF have contrasting roles."
Fig. 1: BAF LOF preferentially opens chromatin at CTCF sites across diverse cell types.
Just how dangerous is American football? ~75% or more of recent, former NFL players most likely had CTE
Why not go back playing football without all that padding and helmets?
Apparently, the case number could be significantly higher. The researchers made a huge adjustment to correct for donor bias, but the size of this correction seems to be dubious. In addition, the researchers included also athletes who played only one or a few games.
Before the critical adjustment, 93% of donors had CTE.
"... in the last couple of decades, medical science has shined a light on one particularly risky aspect of the game: traumatic head injuries from the constant helmet clashes that increase the risk of a neurodegenerative condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
Currently, a CTE diagnosis can only be made after death. That’s because the condition’s characteristic lesions can only be revealed in thin slices of brain tissue. Imaging techniques developed for other kinds of neurodegenerative diseases fail to spot CTE, and blood tests cannot separate it from diseases like Alzheimer’s. ..."
Key points and abstract:
"Key Points
Question
After adjusting for selection bias, what is the prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in deceased National Football League (NFL) players?
Findings
In this cross-sectional study of 2362 former NFL players who died between 2008 and 2023, 93.5% of players who were brain donors with neuropathologic evaluation had CTE. After adjustment for differential brain donation, the estimated prevalence of CTE neuropathology among all 2362 decedents was 74.5%.
Meaning
These findings suggest that selection bias materially inflates donor-based estimates but is unlikely to fully explain the high burden of CTE neuropathology among deceased former NFL players.
Abstract
Importance The majority of knowledge regarding chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in National Football League (NFL) players is derived from autopsy-based studies on voluntarily donated brains. Because these cohorts are highly vulnerable to selection bias (specifically registry bias), population-level prevalence of CTE among former NFL players is unknown, limiting understanding of the impact of this disease.
Objective
To estimate the selection-bias adjusted prevalence of CTE neuropathology in deceased NFL players.
To estimate the selection-bias adjusted prevalence of CTE neuropathology in deceased NFL players.
Design, Setting, and Participants
This population-based cross-sectional study used Understanding Neurologic Injury and Traumatic Encephalopathy (UNITE) brain bank data combined with National Death Index records on former NFL players. Both brain donor and nondonor NFL players who died between January 2008 and December 2023 were included. Data were analyzed from November 2025 to April 2026.
This population-based cross-sectional study used Understanding Neurologic Injury and Traumatic Encephalopathy (UNITE) brain bank data combined with National Death Index records on former NFL players. Both brain donor and nondonor NFL players who died between January 2008 and December 2023 were included. Data were analyzed from November 2025 to April 2026.
Exposure
Playing in at least 1 regular or postseason NFL game.
Playing in at least 1 regular or postseason NFL game.
Main Outcomes and Measures
The main outcomes of this study were bias-adjusted prevalence of CTE neuropathology and all-cause dementia among the target population, both of which were measured in donors prior to this study. A cognitive symptom–related brain donation selection ratio (probability of donation given CTE divided by the probability of donation given no CTE) was estimated using Poisson regression and was applied to adjust donor-observed prevalence of CTE neuropathology at death and all-cause dementia during life. The prevalence estimates were adjusted for bias using the estimated selection ratio.
Results
The cohort consisted of 2362 deceased former NFL players (mean [SD] years played, 5.1 [3.9]; 971 [41.1%] aged ≥80 years at death), of whom 396 were brain donors and 1966 were nondonors.
Of 387 donors, 362 (93.5%) had CTE. The median selection ratio was 4.97 (95% CI, 4.72-5.26).
Bias-adjusted population prevalence of CTE at death was 74.5% (95% CI, 69.6%-78.3%), with a conservative lower-bound analysis estimating 63.7% (57.2%-68.9%).
Bias-adjusted population prevalence of all-cause dementia history during life was 27.2% (95% CI, 22.6%-31.6%).
Conclusions and Relevance
The findings of this cross-sectional study suggest that selection bias materially inflates donor-based prevalence estimates but is unlikely to fully explain the high burden of CTE neuropathology among this population. Further research is required to understand the clinical impact of this disease."
The findings of this cross-sectional study suggest that selection bias materially inflates donor-based prevalence estimates but is unlikely to fully explain the high burden of CTE neuropathology among this population. Further research is required to understand the clinical impact of this disease."
How Did the people of Serbia Remove President Vučić Without a Single Smashed Window?
I did not follow the events in Serbia closely, but it appears this was a momentous event!
"Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which had ruled Serbia for fourteen years, lost parliamentary elections on October 25 to the Student List movement. Student List succeeded in uniting both liberals and nationalists behind demands for good governance—and did not enjoy the backing of oligarchs, elite defectors, or the West. Indeed, these elections have provided one of the first examples of street protesters peacefully entering a state’s existing institutional framework instead of destroying it. Now Student List will need to show that a strong protest movement can govern effectively. ..."
Is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Bed with the Chinese Government? Really!
What a headline! Nvidia denied any such relationship.
"The CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, had a ‘close relationship’ with a Chinese intelligence asset. ...
A top executive at a Singapore-based data center company was under scrutiny for possibly steering advanced Nvidia A.I. chips to China. And now American officials had concluded that she was a Chinese intelligence asset, funneling information to Beijing.
But what came next was even more alarming. Surveillance of the executive, Alice Huang or Huang Le, a Chinese citizen, revealed that she had developed a close relationship with Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive. ..."
Nvidia Chief Seen as Target of Chinese Spy Plot (behind paywall)
Jensen Huang with Alice Huang (right) in Taiwan. The pair have been described as 'very close'
Thursday, October 29, 2026
China’s Purges Are Breaking Records
What is Xi Jinping doing late in his career?
China Communist Party Central Committee
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde steps down. Finally!
This woman (age 70) should never have become the ECB President 8 years ago!
What has she achieved during her tenure? She was a French fashion show in person!
Putin Woos Africa With an Anti-West Pitch with Palki Sharma
Serious stuff! Putin the Terrible is all over Africa!
Chart of the day
Alpha's share price dropped about $60 from roughly $340 to $280 or roughly 1/5 of its value within 10 days!
A startup that wants to sell sunlight at night from mirror satellites as Sunlight-as-a-Service
Amazing stuff! I think, the concerns of astronomers or the news media reports about it are overblown! Some of the best telescopes on Earth are e.g. on the tops of Andean mountains.
"A startup that wants to sell sunlight at night from mirror satellites lit up a California mountainside brighter than a full moon this month without warning anyone, and astronomers are furious."
"... Earlier this year, the US Federal Communications Commission approved the construction and launch of a prototype mirror satellite designed to reflect the Sun’s rays onto patches Earth during nighttime, despite widespread protests by the astronomy community. ..."
A Satellite Company Tests “Sunlight As A Service” — Without Astronomers’ Knowledge "The California demonstration by Reflect Orbital used spotlights to imitate sunlight-reflecting satellites."
Company graphic
"A promotional photo shared by the company shows a bright orb in the distance, casting long shadows of low brush near Lone Pine, California, a level of brightness exceeding a full Moon.
On October 10th, Reflect Orbital set up powerful spotlights near Lone Pine, Calif., to simulate the illumination its proposed satellites could provide. The sudden light came as a surprise to local residents."
President Trump announced to end exaggerated 46th President-era methane rule setting limits on oil and gas emissions
Good news! Bravo!
The senile, demented and long-time pathological liar, the 46th President, had probably no clue what was going on in his administration!
"... He said the rollback will save $45 billion and unlock 210 million barrels of oil."
"... "Tonight, I'm officially terminating Biden's expensive and unnecessary methane regulations to save consumers and energy producers $45 billion in costs, unlock vast quantities of Texas natural gas and produce 210 million barrels of oil," Trump said. ..."
Trump announces end of Biden-era methane rule, citing $45B in savings "The rollback comes as president pushes to boost domestic energy production amid high fuel prices"
New Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro pushes laptop pricing to a new extreme
Almost $15,000 for a single laptop? This seems almost insane!
Prostate cancer drug shrinks or disappears tumours in 70% of participants with advanced prostate cancer in a small trial
Good news! Cancer is history (soon)!
"An oral drug for advanced prostate cancer called JNJ-6143 caused tumours to shrink or disappear in around 70% of participants in a small clinical trial.
The drug, which interferes with a protein that prostate cancer cells need to survive, was acquired by pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson following a US$3.05-billion deal to buy Halda Therapeutics last year. The drug also triggered a drop in prostate-specific antigen levels in blood tests for 77% of the 31 participants."
"...
- The company was testing JNJ-6143 in patients with advanced prostate cancer who had received multiple treatments
- Its novel approach selectively kills cancer cells by interfering with a protein they need to survive
- In the trial, 77% of 31 evaluable patients receiving the 50-milligram dose saw their PSA levels, a blood marker used to monitor prostate cancer, fall by at least 50%; in 48% of patients, PSA levels fell by at least 90%
- Among patients whose tumors could be measured using imaging, 75% had a confirmed complete or partial response
..."
Johnson & Johnson reports 75% tumor response rate in advanced prostate cancer with JNJ-6143, a first-in-class RIPTAC™ molecule (original news release) "JNJ-6143 is an investigational, once-daily, novel, small molecule designed to trigger cancer cell death through a targeted dual-protein lock between BRD4 and androgen receptor, a highly expressed tumor-selective protein in prostate cancer cells"
Would you rather vote for Dan J. Sullivan or Dan S. Sullivan for US Senate in Alaska?
I did not follow this weird story. Seems to be the latest Dimocratic Party escapade? Maybe too clever by half!
"BREAKING: ALASKA GOVERNOR ORDERS PROBE OF DEMOCRAT NOMINEE OVER ALLEGED SENATE RACE TRICKERY
The announcement came after The New York Times reported Mary Peltola’s campaign helped recruit a retiree named Dan J. Sullivan to run against U.S. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan." (Just the news)
Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Ballot (paid access)
Arizona election candidate makes too many golf courses in Arizona a campaign subject
What about all the ice skating rinks in Arizona? Does the candidate play golf herself? I am not sure this was a smart move, could be self defeating.
Caution: This is a satire.
According to Google: "There is no public information or record indicating that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes plays golf."
On a personal note: There is a large golf course next door where I live in the Phoenix metro area. I like to go walking there.
"Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes drew criticism after saying in a Politico interview that Arizona probably has too many golf courses, part of a broader discussion about water conservation.
Her opponent in Tuesday’s election, state Senate President Warren Petersen, accused Mayes of targeting a multibillion-dollar industry.
The Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry cited golf’s $6 billion economic impact and 66,000 jobs. The chamber said courses use 2% or less of the state’s water, figures that track a 2023 industry study by the Arizona Alliance for Golf. ..."
Attorney General Kris Mayes (official photo)
Why is the human brain three times larger than the chimpanzee's brain?
Amazing stuff! A long time ago, a viral infection made our brain grow!
"We humans share nearly 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees—yet our brains are three times larger. To figure out where our brains diverged from those of our closest living kin, researchers looked for clues in our genes.
They found that, sometime between 5 and 7 million years ago, an African ape got a viral infection. Occasionally, as in this ape’s case, a virus inserts some of its own DNA into its host’s genome to tell it to produce more virus. That DNA can stick around long after the infection, get replicated across the genome, and be passed down to future generations—and that’s exactly what appears to have happened. The researchers found that, while the ancient viral DNA showed up in 158 locations across the chimpanzee genome, it’s absent in the human genome .
So, the researchers removed the viral DNA from chimp stem cells using the gene editing platform CRISPR. The removals caused a gene called LINC00662 to turn on; it is normally activated in humans but not chimpanzees. The activation amped up the activity of genes involved in neuron development. Similarly, when the researchers turned off LINC0062 in human cells, the neuron development genes got no boost. ..."
From the abstract:
"Over the past 5 to 7 million years, humans and chimpanzees have diverged in brain size, structure, and cognition despite high conservation of protein-coding genes.
However, retroviral infections within host genomes have introduced numerous species-specific regulatory elements. Chimpanzees harbor lineage-specific PTERV1 endogenous retroviruses that are absent in humans, but their role in brain evolution has remained unclear.
We performed an epigenomic analysis of PTERV1 insertions in chimpanzee neural organoids and found they are heavily DNA methylated, forming over 150 species-specific heterochromatin domains with the potential to influence gene regulation.
We identified a chimpanzee-specific insertion on chromosome 19 that silences the long noncoding RNA LINC00662 through DNA methylation spreading. CRISPR-mediated deletion of this PTERV1 restored LINC00662 expression in chimpanzee induced pluripotent stem cells.
We show that LINC00662, a human-specific transcript expressed during brain development, plays a role in neuronal maturation, axon outgrowth, and neural organoid development.
These findings reveal a mechanism by which endogenous retroviral insertions contributed to human-chimpanzee brain divergence."
An ancient virus in chimpanzee DNA switches off a gene that is active in humans (original news release) "Humans and chimpanzees share almost all their genes. Despite this, our brains have developed in different ways. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have now shown that a viral pandemic dating back several million years is likely to be part of the explanation."
Fig. 1. PTERV1 insertions form chimpanzee-specific methylated heterochromatin domains in neural organoids.
Fig. 3. LINC00662 is a cytoplasmic human lncRNA expressed during brain development and associated with neurite-related proteins.
Fig. 4. Loss of LINC00662 impairs neurite-associated maturation in human neural organoids.
When Google search provides two different, contradictory responses to two very similar search requests
It appears, Google's current approach to query various news sources to answer a question occasionally fails terribly! Here is such a case.
Wrong answer
Correct answer
US military's drug boat strikes have now killed at least 240 people since September 2025
Using the military for law enforcement operations is often controversial!
How much effort is being made to try to capture/arrest these alleged drug smugglers before killing them?
Why are drug smugglers still using this dangerous route?
"The U.S. military killed five people Tuesday aboard what Southern Command described as a “go-fast vessel” associated with “narco-terrorists” in the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the death toll from its campaign against suspected drug traffickers to at least 240 since September 2025. ...
Over the previous months, these strikes have gained mounting legal scrutiny, domestically and internationally. In September, the United Nations found reasonable grounds to believe the killings constituted murder under international law and warned that the broader campaign could amount to crimes against humanity. ...
The families of two men killed in an October 2025 strike have also sued the U.S. government, alleging wrongful death and extrajudicial killing. The lawsuit, filed with assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Constitutional Rights, concerns Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, both from Trinidad and Tobago. ..."
Credits: Defense News
50 US Marines put on undersea cable and pipeline duty in the Baltic Sea alongside Finnish and other NATO soldiers
Bad news, if you have to protect undersea cables like this! Nothing is safe from Putin the Terrible!
"A team of close to 50 reconnaissance and intelligence-focused Marines are being sent to join a NATO mission that oversees the network of undersea internet cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
The Marines are being sent to join the NATO-led operation due, at least in part, to their expertise with unmanned reconnaissance drones and other tactical intelligence-gathering skills. In a Marine Corps press release, the senior officer in the Finnish Navy said the Marines would work alongside Finns and other NATO forces to monitor waters in the Baltic, which are crisscrossed with data cables and natural gas pipelines. ..."
Credits: Defense News
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