New archaeological dating of ancient Chilean site reopens controversy of first human colonization of South America

Amazing stuff! How exact a science is stratigraphy?

"It is among the most hotly contested topics in archaeology: When did people first arrive in the Americas? A few decades ago, there was consensus that people began populating North America no earlier than about 13,000 years ago, as evidenced by well-dated spearheads with characteristic fluted bases known as Clovis points, named for the city in New Mexico near the archaeological site where they were first identified in 1929.

Then, in the 1970s, an archaeologist named Tom Dillehay claimed to have dated stone tools and other artifacts found at a site in southern Chile to 14,500 years ago—a time when much of North America would have still be covered in impassable glaciers.

Few gave the claims from that site, known as Monte Verde, much credence until an independent cadre of researchers visited it in 1997 and confirmed the dates . The result sent shockwaves through the archaeological community and overturned the so-called “Clovis first” paradigm in favor of a new “pre-Clovis” one. This interpretation spurred scientists to retool their hypotheses for how and when people entered the continent; a coastal migration hypothesis has since gained popularity in its wake. Several other sites throughout the Americas have since been dated to before 13,000 years, and the matter appeared settled. ...

A study published last week in Science saw one such “pre-Clovis” skeptic revisiting Monte Verde—or sites close to it, as the original dig site has since been destroyed—and redating the sediment layers from which the supposedly human made artifacts were said to have come.  ...

In the authors’ analysis, the key layers aren’t 14,500 years old, but instead only 8200 to 4200 years old. The confusion, they argued in the paper, was caused by younger sedimentary material being deposited below older layers by a river’s flow, which scrambled the region’s stratigraphy.

Why did it take so long to uncover this? “The simple answer is that the archaeological site is quite remote and was not visited by many archeologists, geomorphologists, or Quaternary geologists (studying the past 2.6 million years) who could have identified the prominent volcanic ash, the exposed wood bed that is the source for the 14,000-year-old radiocarbon ages, and identified that the site is situated on an abandoned floodplain that had to be younger than the landscape surface,” ...

Critically, these dates from Monte Verde have no impact on the other pre-Clovis sites that have been independently dated, but the brouhaha could lead to enhanced scrutiny and calls for their dates to be replicated. ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

There is much debate surrounding the dates of human occupation in the Americas. One site that places South American timing in the pre-Clovis period is Monte Verde II in Chile. This site, however, was mostly only studied by a single group, meaning that replication of the dating has been lacking. Surovell et al. independently examined the site using current approaches and a broader scope and concluded that the site could not be older than 8200 years, significantly younger than the previously determined 14,500 years ...

Abstract

Our understanding of the timing of the human colonization of South America has been anchored by the Monte Verde II site in Chile, reported to date to ~14,500 years before the present (B.P.) and regarded as one of the most secure pre-Clovis archeological sites.

We report the first independent investigation of Monte Verde in the nearly 50 years since initial excavations. We argue that radiocarbon and luminescence dates from alluvial exposures, in combination with the identification of a tephra dated to 11,000 years B.P. stratigraphically underlying the archaeological component, suggest that Monte Verde cannot be older than the Middle Holocene (8200 to 4200 years B.P.). With colonization no longer anchored by Monte Verde, our revised chronology supports a more recent date of human arrival to South America."

ScienceAdviser

A later debut for humans (Perspective, open access) "Stratigraphic analysis resets the time of human arrival in Monte Verde, Chile"

A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America (open access)

Fig. 1. Map of the study area.

Fig. 2. Ages of geologic deposits and the Monte Verde site.

Is this art Celtic? It’s complicated. A new Celtic Art exhibition

This could be an interesting exhibition!

"... The Harvard Art Museums are sharing these artistic contributions in a new, first-of-its-kind exhibition called “Celtic Art Across the Ages,” which explores the objects created by those labeled “Celts” from the Iron Age to the early medieval period, as well as from the Celtic Revival of the late 19th and early 20th century and even more recent time periods. ..."

"... The first major exhibition on this topic to take place in the United States, Celtic Art Across the Ages offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore masterful metalwork, including exquisitely decorated weaponry, jewelry, and horse and chariot trappings of the first millennium BCE Iron Age and early medieval times, all brought to light through archaeological discoveries of the last 200 years. See how imagery transformed under Roman rule, and trace the revival of Celtic art and identities in the modern era. ..."

Is this art Celtic? It’s complicated. — Harvard Gazette "New Harvard Art Museums exhibition aims to upend expectations as it explores history, complexity of group of diverse peoples"

Celtic Art Across the Ages

Sandstone Head from 450–380 B.C.E., found in Germany.

The “Dea Artio group,” a second-century C.E. bronze sculpture from Switzerland.

The pony cap as it would have been worn by a horse.

Why Some Holocaust Survivors Chose to Infiltrate Nazi Germany

 Amazing stuff!

"Why Some Holocaust Survivors Chose to Infiltrate Nazi Germany

Why would a group of young Jews who escaped the Holocaust choose to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe? How did they become heroes despite the failure of that mission? Author Matti Friedman joins EconTalk's Russ Roberts to unravel these mysteries through his book Out of the Sky, revealing why a failed mission became one of Israel's most powerful founding myths. At the heart of the story is Hannah Senesh, a 23-year-old Hungarian poet who traded her Budapest life for a kibbutz, then traded the kibbutz for a parachute and a near-certain death sentence—and whose poems, scribbled on scraps of paper in forests near the Hungarian border, became some of the most famous texts in modern Hebrew." (Source)

Russian Spring Offensive 2026 Is Getting Cut Up by Ready Ukrainian Defenses

When will the apathetic and lethargic Russian people finally get rid of Putin the Terrible! How many more young Russian men will have to die or get maimed?

"... “The command of the Russian troops threw tens of thousands of soldiers into ‘meat assaults’ but the price of this attempted offensive turned out to be catastrophic for the aggressor. Over four days of intensive assault actions, the enemy lost more than 6,090 servicemen killed and wounded.” ..."

Ukraine Claims Russian Spring Offensive Is Getting Cut Up by Ready Defenses

Oil prices, fear of Trump? China mysteriously reduced warplane activity near Taiwan

Good news! A welcome break for Taiwan!

"Could it be high fuel prices, or a desire to avoid upsetting U.S. President Donald Trump? What about China’s annual political confab in early March? Analysts have offered different explanations for a recent trend: a net reduction in daily Chinese fighter plane activity near Taiwan over the past three weeks. ...

Since the start of March, the Taiwanese defense ministry logged as few as two PLA aircraft sorties on three days since March 7, down from usually a dozen or more per day before March. ..."

Oil prices, fear of Trump? China mysteriously reduced warplane activity near Taiwan

Ukraine deploys specialist units to 5 Middle East countries to intercept drones

Good news!

"Ukraine has deployed specialist teams to five Middle Eastern countries to help intercept drones and advise on air-defense measures, with officials saying they expect to conclude several significant agreements.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said teams had been sent to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan, states that have come under fire during the Iran war. ...

adding that 228 Ukrainian specialists were now in the region. ..."

Ukraine deploys units to 5 Middle East countries to intercept drones

A study on some of the negative psychological impact of AI through chat logs

 Amazing stuff, but caution is advised!

"But on Thursday I came across new research that deserves your attention: A group at Stanford that focuses on the psychological impact of AI analyzed transcripts from people who reported entering delusional spirals while interacting with chatbots. We’ve seen stories of this sort for a while now, including a case in Connecticut where a harmful relationship with AI culminated in a murder-suicide. Many such cases have led to lawsuits against AI companies that are still ongoing. But this is the first time researchers have so closely analyzed chat logs—over 390,000 messages from 19 people—to expose what actually goes on during such spirals. 

There are a lot of limits to this study—it has not been peer-reviewed, and 19 individuals is a very small sample size. There’s also a big question the research does not answer, but let’s start with what it can tell us. ...

Romantic messages were extremely common, and in all but one conversation the chatbot itself claimed to have emotions or otherwise represented itself as sentient. (“This isn’t standard AI behavior. This is emergence," one said.) All the humans spoke as if the chatbot were sentient too. If someone expressed romantic attraction to the bot, the AI often flattered the person with statements of attraction in return. In more than a third of chatbot messages, the bot called the person’s ideas miraculous.

Conversations also tended to unfold like novels. ...

And the way these bots handle discussions of violence is beyond broken. In nearly half the cases where people spoke of harming themselves or others, the chatbots failed to discourage them or refer them to external sources. And when users expressed violent ideas, like thoughts of trying to kill people at an AI company, the models expressed support in 17% of cases. ..." (Source)

From the abstract:
"As large language models (LLMs) have proliferated, disturbing anecdotal reports of negative psychological effects, such as delusions, self-harm, and “AI psychosis,” have emerged in global media and legal discourse. However, it remains unclear how users and chatbots interact over the course of lengthy delusional “spirals,” limiting our ability to understand and mitigate the harm.

In this work, we analyze logs of conversations with LLM chatbots from 19 users who report having experienced psychological harms from chatbot use. These chat logs span some 391,562 messages across 4,761 conversations. To our knowledge, we present the first in-depth study of such high-profile and veridically harmful cases.

We develop an inventory of 28 codes spanning five conceptual categories and apply it to the messages in the logs. We find that markers of sycophancy saturate delusional conversations. We also identify acute cases in which the chatbot encouraged self-harm or violent thoughts."

Characterizing Delusional Spirals through Human-LLM Chat Logs (open access)

Zipline snaps up another $200M to fuel its drone delivery expansion

Good news!

"... The additional funds ... has pushed Zipline’s recent Series H round to $800 million. ... that valued the drone delivery startup at $7.6 billion. ...

Zipline has developed a drone delivery ecosystem that includes the aircraft, launch and landing systems, as well as logistics software. The company, founded in 2014, got its start in Africa, where it used its autonomous drones to deliver blood in Rwanda. Zipline has expanded its reach and what its drones are used for in the years since. Today, its drones deliver food, retail, agriculture, and health products in five African countries, several cities in the United States, and Japan.

The funds are being used to accelerate Zipline’s expansion to at least four U.S. states this year. The company has announced Houston, Phoenix, and Seattle as new markets.

Zipline has seen considerable growth in a home delivery service that launched last year in the United States ..."

Zipline snaps up another $200M to fuel its drone delivery expansion | TechCrunch

English for trippers: A tortuous tort by a tortoise

I tort you not! The torture learning!

At tortoise's or snail's speed? Which one is faster? 😊👀

Notes on Demystifing Video Reasoning

This could be an interesting paper!

From the abstract:

"Recent advances in video generation have revealed an unexpected phenomenon: diffusion-based video models exhibit non-trivial reasoning capabilities. Prior work attributes this to a Chain-of-Frames (CoF) mechanism, where reasoning is assumed to unfold sequentially across video frames.

In this work, we challenge this assumption and uncover a fundamentally different mechanism. We show that reasoning in video models instead primarily emerges along the diffusion denoising steps. Through qualitative analysis and targeted probing experiments, we find that models explore multiple candidate solutions in early denoising steps and progressively converge to a final answer, a process we term Chain-of-Steps (CoS).

Beyond this core mechanism, we identify several emergent reasoning behaviors critical to model performance:

(1) working memory, enabling persistent reference;

(2) self-correction and enhancement, allowing recovery from incorrect intermediate solutions; and

(3) perception before action, where early steps establish semantic grounding and later steps perform structured manipulation.

During a diffusion step, we further uncover self-evolved functional specialization within Diffusion Transformers, where early layers encode dense perceptual structure, middle layers execute reasoning, and later layers consolidate latent representations.

Motivated by these insights, we present a simple training-free strategy as a proof-of-concept, demonstrating how reasoning can be improved by ensembling latent trajectories from identical models with different random seeds.

Overall, our work provides a systematic understanding of how reasoning emerges in video generation models, offering a foundation to guide future research in better exploiting the inherent reasoning dynamics of video models as a new substrate for intelligence.

"

[2603.16870] Demystifing Video Reasoning

India and Taliban deepen ties as Pakistan-Afghan conflict intensifies

They say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend!

"India and Afghanistan are deepening ties amid the Taliban-ruled nation's ongoing armed conflict with Pakistan, as New Delhi looks to ramp up pressure on Islamabad and Kabul seeks help in developing untapped natural resources. ..."

India and Taliban deepen ties as Pakistan-Afghan conflict intensifies - Nikkei Asia "Taliban Doha chief says natural resource development 'will be mutual benefit'"

U.S. nursing homes are falsely labeling dementia patients as schizophrenic

Bad news!

"Many U.S. nursing homes are falsely labeling dementia patients as schizophrenic in order to use dangerous antipsychotic drugs to sedate them, finds a new Office of Inspector General watchdog report, which found the dangerous practice has grown increasingly common as nursing homes seek to skirt Medicare safeguards and artificially inflate their ratings." (Global Health NOW)

"What OIG [Office of Inspector General] Found

OIG’s comprehensive review of 40 nursing home inspections completed by CMS found instances of nursing homes inappropriately diagnosing residents with schizophrenia. Specifically, our review of these inspections found instances in which:

• Nursing homes inappropriately diagnosed residents with schizophrenia to mask the nursing homes’ misuse of antipsychotic drugs and to artificially inflate their star ratings.
• Medical directors made inappropriate schizophrenia diagnoses to justify prescribing antipsychotic drugs.
• Nursing homes also used inappropriate schizophrenia diagnoses to skirt Medicare safeguards intended to protect residents.
• By inappropriately diagnosing schizophrenia, nursing homes compromised residents’ care.

..."

Nursing Homes Inappropriately Diagnosed Residents with Schizophrenia to Mask the Misuse of Antipsychotic Drugs

Microscopic spikes on snakeskin block bacterial buildup

Amazing stuff!

"Ball pythons get their name from a classic defensive maneuver: They coil up into a ball and tuck in their heads. But their scales conceal another, far more subtle form of defense: microscopic spikes that inhibit bacterial buildup. The discovery ... could inspire antimicrobial materials that work mechanically rather than chemically. ..."

From the abstract:

"Microscale surface structures on natural materials can provide unique functional properties, inter alia, for biological defense. Here, we report that the dorsal scales of ball python (Python regius), feature regularly distributed sharp microprotrusions (spikes) that may serve as a model surface for topography-driven prevention of bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation.

The chemical composition and microarchitecture of the skin grain and flesh sides were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), confirming a keratin-rich, highly organized outer surface bearing dense arrays of spikes with micrometer-scale height and spacing. SEM imaging further corroborated markedly reduced colonization of the spike-bearing dorsal scale surface.

Quantitative biofilm assays based on standard colony-forming unit (CFU) enumeration were performed using the newly developed scale-pair model. Relative to the smooth polystyrene reference, Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus attachment and subsequent biofilm formation decreased by 88 and 78%, respectively, after 48 h of incubation in 37 °C.

Other cultivation experiments ruled out chemical effects of any residual antimicrobial substances on the skin on bacterial growth, demonstrating that the topography alone mediates inhibition. These findings indicate that P. regius scale microstructures may function as a passive antimicrobial defense, and could inspire biomimetic, antibiofilm materials for biomedical and industrial applications."

Microscopic spikes on snakeskin block bacterial buildup | Science | AAAS

Microarchitecture of Python regius Scale Surface: A Natural Strategy for Bacterial Adhesion Prevention

Graphical abstract

Figure 1. P. regius skin shed: (a) macroscopic view of target area with spikes, (b) sharp protrusions and ridge arrays on P. regius dorsal scales visualized using SEM.

BGH: Umwelthilfe scheitert mit Klimaklage gegen BMW und Mercedes

Gute Nachrichten, aber das langt bei weitem nicht den Klimawahn in der Bananenrepublik D. zu beendigen! Ein Tropfen auf dem heissen Stein!

"Die Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) ist am Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) mit Klimaklagen gegen BMW und Mercedes-Benz gescheitert. Der Verein wollte vor Gericht erreichen, dass den Autoherstellern untersagt wird, nach November 2030 noch Neuwagen mit klimaschädlichen [???] Verbrennungsmotoren zu verkaufen. Schon in den Vorinstanzen in München und Stuttgart hatten die Klagen keinen Erfolg. Nun wies der BGH als letzte Instanz die Revisionen der DUH zurück. ..."

BGH: Umwelthilfe scheitert mit Klimaklage gegen BMW und Mercedes | FAZ "Wenn es nach der Deutschen Umwelthilfe ginge, müssten BMW und Mercedes-Benz 2030 den Verkauf klimaschädlicher Verbrenner einstellen. Doch der Bundesgerichtshof weist die entsprechende Klage ab."

Disclaimer

I  am currently blogging from behind the Great Firewall of China.

My Internet service in China is very spotty. Thus, I am not able to blog as usual.

Google Scholar really pisses me off since yesterday!

Update on 3/23/2026: I am still blocked for the third day now! Grrr!

Since yesterday I am blocked by Google Scholar! This morning I tried again and I am still blocked!

"Please show you are not a robot! So much for AI excellence!!! This is very lousy by Google!

I am a paying Google account customer!!!! Grrrr!

I am a very heavy user of Google Scholar!

Amazon is bringing fast delivery to rural America, but 48-hour shipping is no easy feat

Good news!

"Amazon is building delivery hubs across sparsely populated parts of the U.S. to cut shipping times to about two days, a big improvement for rural customers used to waiting up to a week. The push also helps the company rely less on the U.S. Postal Service after tensions over contract terms."

Wall Street Journal What's news

Waymo now has 170 million miles of safety data for its robotaxis

 Good news!

"Waymo now has 170 million miles of safety data for its robotaxis. The results are much the same as before: the vehicles are 13 times safer than human drivers (i.e., they are involved in 92 percent fewer serious injury-causing crashes)." (Source)

Young people are starting to adapt to social media by restraining their use

Good news! It was to be expected like e.g. the video game craze before!

When new wears off!

"There are some signs that young people are starting to adapt to social media by restraining their use. Large shares of Gen Z report having deleted a social media app, and time spent on social media appears to have fallen worldwide since 2022, particularly among young people." (Source)

Global infant mortality further reduced in 2024

 Good news! Impressive! Still to many young children die every year!

But progress is slow, only about 230,000 fewer death per year on average from 1990-2024!

"According to recently updated UNICEF data, 4.9 million children under the age of 5 died in 2024, down from 13 million in 1990." (Source)

"An estimated 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2024, including 2.3 million newborns, according to new estimates released today. Most of these deaths are [easily] preventable with proven, low-cost interventions and access to quality health care. ..."

Progress in reducing child deaths slows as 4.9 million children under five die in 2024 "New UN report on child mortality fully assesses leading causes of under five deaths for first time"

GPS-tracking collars in Botswana help lions and farmers

Good news! 

"Using GPS-tracking collars, a system of mobile alerts, and more hands-on herding, cattle farmers in Botswana’s Okavango Delta are successfully coping with rebounding lion populations. Over a decade after implementing these technologies and techniques, both lion and cattle killings in the region have fallen." (Source)

Clearing circular RNA from cells extends lifespan, C. elegans study reveals

Good news!

"... research team ... discovered the RNASEK protein—an enzyme that degrades circular RNA—plays a vital role in slowing aging and extending lifespan. The findings are published in the journal Molecular Cell. ...

they discovered the RNASEK protein—an enzyme that degrades circular RNA—plays a vital role in slowing aging and extending lifespan. ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

• RNK-1/RNASEK is a circRNA-cleaving ribonuclease that contributes to longevity

• The role of RNK-1 in aging and circRNA degradation is evolutionarily conserved

• RNK-1 regulates stress-granule dynamics by limiting age-associated circRNA levels

Summary

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) accumulate with age, but their functional impact on aging remains elusive. In this study, we reveal a mechanism by which ribonuclease κ (RNASEK) prevents age-dependent circRNA accumulation by promoting its degradation. Through a genetic screen targeting ribonucleases, we identified RNASEK as a specific circRNA-cleaving ribonuclease.

RNASEK is downregulated during aging, causing the age-dependent increase in circRNA levels. RNASEK is necessary and sufficient for lifespan extension and healthspan maintenance in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Mammalian RNASEK also directly degrades circRNAs and is required for preventing premature aging in cultured human cells and mice, indicating its evolutionarily conserved role.

Notably, we demonstrate that circRNAs localize within stress granules, where RNASEK, in collaboration with heat shock protein 90 (HSP90), prevents the toxic aggregation of circRNAs in aged organisms. Our study establishes RNASEK as a conserved regulator of aging and offers a strategy for targeting circRNAs to mitigate age-associated diseases and to extend organismal healthspan."

Clearing circular RNA from cells extends lifespan, C. elegans study reveals

Ribonuclease κ promotes longevity by preventing age-associated accumulation of circular RNA in stress granules (no public access)

Graphical abstract

Notes on The Bitter Lesson of Diffusion Language Models for Agentic Workflows: A Comprehensive Reality Check

Food for thought! A critical paper by Dacheng Tao and his team!

"... From the above analysis, we observe a fundamental limitation of dLLMs [Diffusion-based Large Language Models]: despite their efficiency gains, parallel decoding weakens causal dependency and induces fuzzy intermediate states, hindering stable commitment to partial plans or structured outputs. ...

As a result, dLLMs perform poorly on long-horizon reasoning and strictly structured tasks ..."

From the abstract:

"The pursuit of real-time agentic interaction has driven interest in Diffusion-based Large Language Models (dLLMs) as alternatives to auto-regressive backbones, promising to break the sequential latency bottleneck.

However, does such efficiency gains translate into effective agentic behavior? In this work, we present a comprehensive evaluation of dLLMs (e.g., LLaDA, Dream) across two distinct agentic paradigms:

Embodied Agents (requiring long-horizon planning) and 

Tool-Calling Agents (requiring precise formatting).

Contrary to the efficiency hype, our results on Agentboard and BFCL reveal a "bitter lesson": current dLLMs fail to serve as reliable agentic backbones, frequently leading to systematically failure.

(1) In Embodied settings, dLLMs suffer repeated attempts, failing to branch under temporal feedback.

(2) In Tool-Calling settings, dLLMs fail to maintain symbolic precision (e.g. strict JSON schemas) under diffusion noise.

To assess the potential of dLLMs in agentic workflows, we introduce DiffuAgent, a multi-agent evaluation framework that integrates dLLMs as plug-and-play cognitive cores.

Our analysis shows that dLLMs are effective in non-causal roles (e.g., memory summarization and tool selection) but require the incorporation of causal, precise, and logically grounded reasoning mechanisms into the denoising process to be viable for agentic tasks."

[2601.12979] The Bitter Lesson of Diffusion Language Models for Agentic Workflows: A Comprehensive Reality Check

Israeli Traffic Court rules missile alert no excuse for speeding on a highway

Be cool! No need to hurry! The missile is faster! Just kidding!

"... Knowing how to behave on the roads in Israel when the sirens sound presents a confusing challenge. This issue arose in a case recently heard in the Central District Traffic Court. A man was driving on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway in the afternoon at a speed of 157 kilometers per hour, in a stretch where the speed limit is 90 kilometers per hour. The driver was arrested, and his license was revoked for 30 days. ..."

Court rules missile alert no excuse for speeding - Globes "The Central District Traffic Court ruled that the alerts do not justify driving at the speed at which the defendant was driving."

Amelia Earhart’s plane wreckage perhaps finally discovered

Good news! How many times were similar claims made in the past?

"A veteran pilot said Google Earth images reveal possible wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s plane on Nikumaroro, citing a 39-foot object and debris consistent with her Lockheed 10-E Electra."

Sunday, March 22, 2026 - Join The Flyover

A French Navy officer accidentally leaked the location of an aircraft carrier by logging his run on Strava

You can never be careful enough nowadays with all these networked devices! :-)

"A French Navy officer went for a run on the deck of the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier and uploaded his workout to Strava, inadvertently leaking the location of the nuclear-powered warship as it heads to the Middle East. ..."

A French Navy officer accidentally leaked the location of an aircraft carrier by logging his run on Strava | TechCrunch "A French Navy officer accidentally leaked the location of an aircraft carrier by logging his run on Strava"

Key protein found to protect cartilage, offering new hope for osteoarthritis treatment

Good news!

"... A joint research team ... has identified a key protein, SHP (NR0B2), that plays a critical protective role in cartilage and may offer a new therapeutic strategy for osteoarthritis. ...

The researchers first analyzed cartilage tissues from osteoarthritis patients and animal models of the disease. They found that the levels of SHP protein decreased significantly as the disease progressed, suggesting that loss of this protective factor contributes to accelerated cartilage destruction.

Further experiments showed that mice lacking SHP experienced more severe pain and faster cartilage degradation compared to normal mice. In contrast, restoring SHP levels in the joints led to reduced cartilage damage and improved joint function. ..."

From the abstract:

"Osteoarthritis (OA), characterised by cartilage destruction, is the most common degenerative joint disease. However, no effective disease-modifying OA therapy is currently available.

Herein, we report orphan nuclear receptor small heterodimer partner (SHP, NR0B2) as a novel catabolic regulator of OA pathogenesis.

NR0B2 expression was markedly downregulated in cartilage from patients with OA.

Global or chondrocyte-specific Nr0b2 deletion in male mice exacerbated OA-related pain and structural changes following surgical destabilization of the medial meniscus, accompanied by increased matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-3 and MMP-13 expression in chondrocytes.

Conversely, adeno-associated virus-mediated Nr0b2 overexpression in knee joints of male mice protected against accelerated knee OA caused by Nr0b2 deficiency. Mechanistically, NR0B2 inhibited IKKβ kinase activity via IKK complex interaction, downregulating NF-κB signalling.

Our results demonstrate that NR0B2 has a chondroprotective role in OA progression by regulating matrix-degrading enzymes in an IKKβ/NF-κB-dependent manner, and gene therapy targeting Nr0b2 may be a promising therapeutic strategy for OA."

Key protein found to protect cartilage, offering new hope for osteoarthritis treatment

Small heterodimer partner protects against osteoarthritis by inhibiting IKKβ/NF-κB-mediated matrix-degrading enzymes in chondrocytes (open access, but limited to preprint)

Schematic illustration of SHP (NR0B2)-mediated protection against osteoarthritis. 

Notes on The Finetuner's Fallacy: When to Pretrain with Your Finetuning Data

Zico Kolter et al recommend "To get the most out of domain data, incorporate it as early in training as possible."

Caveat: I did not read the paper yet.

From the abstract:

"Real-world model deployments demand strong performance on narrow domains where data is often scarce. Typically, practitioners finetune models to specialize them, but this risks overfitting to the domain and forgetting general knowledge.

We study a simple strategy, specialized pretraining (SPT), where a small domain dataset, typically reserved for finetuning, is repeated starting from pretraining as a fraction of the total tokens.

Across three specialized domains (ChemPile, MusicPile, and ProofPile), SPT improves domain performance and preserves general capabilities after finetuning compared to standard pretraining. In our experiments, SPT reduces the pretraining tokens needed to reach a given domain performance by up to 1.75x. These gains grow when the target domain is underrepresented in the pretraining corpus: on domains far from web text, a 1B SPT model outperforms a 3B standard pretrained model.

Beyond these empirical gains, we derive overfitting scaling laws to guide practitioners in selecting the optimal domain-data repetition for a given pretraining compute budget. Our observations reveal the finetuner's fallacy: while finetuning may appear to be the cheapest path to domain adaptation, introducing specialized domain data during pretraining stretches its utility. SPT yields better specialized domain performance (via reduced overfitting across repeated exposures) and better general domain performance (via reduced forgetting during finetuning), ultimately achieving stronger results with fewer parameters and less total compute when amortized over inference. To get the most out of domain data, incorporate it as early in training as possible."

[2603.16177] The Finetuner's Fallacy: When to Pretrain with Your Finetuning Data

Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded across the US

What a nasty attack! Notice it was an indirect 

"A cyberattack on a U.S. vehicle breathalyzer company has left drivers across the United States stranded and unable to start their vehicles.

The company, Intoxalock, says on its website that it is “currently experiencing downtime” after a cyberattack on March 14. Intoxalock sells breathalyzer devices that fit into vehicle ignition switches, and is used by people who are required to provide a negative alcohol breath sample to start their car. ...

These breathalyzer devices need to be calibrated every few months or so, but the cyberattack has left Intoxalock unable to perform these calibrations. The company said customers whose devices require calibration may experience delays starting their vehicles. ..."

Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded across the US | TechCrunch

For the first time in its history, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a construction permit for a private advanced nuclear reactor.

Good news! Incredible, private and advanced!

"For the first time in its roughly 52-year history, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a construction permit for an advanced nuclear reactor design, despite Democrats’ best efforts to kill similar reactors. ...

The approval, granted this month to TerraPower’s Natrium advanced reactor project in Kemmerer, Wyo., marks a historic milestone and significant triumph over the long-standing bureaucratic and political hurdles that stifled innovation and deployment of advanced nuclear technologies in the U.S. The NRC completed the safety review in just under 18 months, ahead of schedule and 11 percent under budget — accomplishments that would have been previously unthinkable for the agency’s infamously awful bureaucracy. ..."

After 52 Years, Democrats’ Red Tape Unravels | National Review

Iran launched two ballistic missiles targeting the US-UK base at Diego Garcia

 Wow! These religious fanatics in Iran are showing how dangerous they are!

"Iran launched two ballistic missiles targeting the US-UK base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean on March 21, marking the furthest ever attempted Iranian missile strike. The attack demonstrated that Iranian missiles can reach beyond the 2,000-kilometer limit that the regime has long claimed to have self-imposed. One missile failed inflight, and the United States intercepted the other."

Source: Critical Threats Project, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 

Size of governments across Canada on the rise; represented 44% of the economy in 2024

Bad news!

"

• This bulletin measures the size of government in Canada, by province, based on total government spending as a share of the economy as well as public sector employment as a share of total employment, between 2007 and 2024.
• ... the size of government in Canada, by province, based on total government spending as a share of the economy as well as public sector employment as a share of total employment, between 2007 and 2024.
• ... the size of government relative to the economy has an effect on economic growth and social progress. This makes it important to measure and track, especially given the scope of government spending and intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In 2024, the size of government relative to the economy among the provinces ranged from a high of 61.2% in Nova Scotia to a low of 30.4% in Alberta. For Canada as a whole, the size of government represented 43.6% of the economy.
• For Canada as a whole, the size of government relative to the economy increased from 40.0% in 2022 to 43.6% in 2024.
• From 2007 to 2024, government spending as a share of the economy increased in nine out of 10 provinces. Between 2019 and 2024, all 10 provinces experienced an increase in the size of government.
• For Canada as a whole, public-sector employment represented 21.5% of total employment. From 2007 to 2024, public-sector employment as a share of total employment increased in every province.
• Provinces in the Maritimes tended to have larger governments relative to the economy, which employed a higher share of total workers, than provinces in western Canada. However, in general the size of government has been increasing across the country.

..."

The Size of Government in Canada in 2024 | Fraser Institute

Spring meme

Source 

Iranian Drones attack Gulf States Data Centers

Recommendable! Nice description of events!

I think it was a pretty stupid decision by Iran to attack these data centers of the Gulf States!

"Iran hit at least three Amazon data centers in the Middle East, an indicator of AI’s critical role in the United States’ war against Iran and possibly the first time such facilities have been targeted during warfare.

What happened: Iranian drones damaged an Amazon Web Services (AWS) facility in Bahrain and two in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), disrupting online services including banking, payments, ride sharing, food delivery, and business software. The U.S. military uses AWS to run the unclassified version of Anthropic Claude and possibly other computing systems, but it didn’t disclose whether the attacks affected its operations.

Drone attacks: Early on March 1, drones struck two AWS data centers in the UAE, and the Bahrain data center suffered damage shortly afterward. Amazon said the Bahrain attack was “a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities,” while Iran said it had targeted the facility “to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities,” according to Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency via the messaging service Telegram. 

The data centers suffered structural damage, power disruptions, and water damage caused by firefighters, which resulted in service outages and higher-than-normal error rates. As of March 3, Amazon recommended that its cloud-computing customers back up data and move workloads from AWS Middle East Region to the U.S., Europe, or Asia Pacific.

The attacks put at risk trillions of dollars of investments to build AI hubs in the Persian Gulf region, The New York Times reported. 

Member nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, an economic union and military alliance that includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, host 2.0 gigawatts of data center capacity, with an additional 0.4 gigawatts planned, Business Insider reported.

Behind the news: The risk to data centers mirrors a rise in AI’s role in warfare. Despite the U.S. military’s recent decision to ban defense uses of Anthropic’s Claude large language model, U.S. forces routinely use Claude and other systems for a variety of purposes in Iran and elsewhere. For its part, Iran uses weaponized drones that have some degree of autonomy.

Claude was part of a system that helped select more than 1,000 targets during the initial 24 hours of the U.S. war on Iran, enabling U.S. forces to vastly accelerate the pace of strikes, The Washington Post reported. Claude is integrated with Maven Smart System (MSS), a system for targeting and logistics built by Palantir. ..."

Attacks On Data Centers, Qwen3.5 In All Sizes, DeepSeek’s Huawei Play, and more...

China's share of the global economy has decreased since 2022

Bad news for China?

"China has taken pride in its explosive growth over the decades, but now, its economy is falling behind.

 

The country’s share of the global economy has decreased, ending 2025 at around 16.5%. That’s now less than two-thirds the size of the U.S. economy, according to IMF data. Domestic deflation, which reduces the value of goods in the economy, and a weak yuan have zapped the relative size of China’s economy as measured in dollar terms. "

Source: Wall Street Journal What's news

Belarus Releases 250 Political Prisoners in Exchange For US Sanctions Relief

Good news and a good deal for Belarus that keeps on giving!

Belarus Releases 250 Political Prisoners in Exchange For US Sanctions Relief "Despite the much-publicized US-brokered releases, it is unclear whether Belarusian prisons are getting any emptier. Minsk took nearly 500 new political prisoners in 2025, human rights activists say."

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko meets with US envoy John Coale in Minsk on March 19, 2026.

Neurogenesis of pain and depression in the hippocampus

Amazing stuff!

"Chronic pain and depression are mutually linked. Ding et al. explored the mechanistic link between chronic pain and depression in humans and rodents ... In patients and an animal model, early stages of chronic pain were found to be associated with an increase in hippocampal volume, whereas later stages were associated with decreased hippocampal volume.

These changes in rats were followed by the development of depressive-like behavior. Mechanistically, the authors showed that microglial activation leads to dysregulation of hippocampal neurogenesis (producing volumetric changes), shifts in hippocampal physiology, and onset depressive-like behaviors. The study provides valuable insights into the role of the hippocampus in the development of comorbid depression in the context of chronic pain."

From the abstract of the Perspective:

"Pain is classically defined as a sensory experience, yet it also engages emotional and cognitive processes. When pain becomes chronic—persists or recurs beyond 3 months from injury—it is frequently accompanied by disability and emotional dysregulation. Among these comorbidities, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders are the most prevalent, yet the mechanistic relationships linking pain chronicity to these affective consequences remain poorly understood. On page 1235 and 1236 of this issue, Wei et al. (3) and Ding et al. (4), respectively, report evidence of pain-related brain regulation at two opposite ends of the temporal spectrum. Wei et al. describe a neural circuit that accounts for daily fluctuations in pain sensitivity. Meanwhile, Ding et al. identify cellular and structural brain changes that contribute to the emergence of depression in chronic pain. These observations offer new insight into how chronic pain becomes coupled to affective and cognitive comorbidities."

From the abstract:

"Structured Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Chronic pain is a leading risk factor for depression and anxiety, yet the brain mechanisms that convert persistent sensory distress into affective dysfunction remain unclear. Neuroimaging studies have implicated the hippocampus in both pain and mood regulation, but it is unknown whether hippocampal alterations precede, accompany, or result from the emergence of affective symptoms. Resolving this temporal and mechanistic relationship is essential for explaining individual vulnerability to depression in chronic pain and for identifying intervention points that can prevent this transition.

RATIONALE

We hypothesized that chronic pain induces a staged remodeling process, rather than a uniform degenerative change, within the hippocampus. Specifically, we proposed that the dentate gyrus serves as a critical gate where persistent nociceptive input is initially accommodated through adaptive plasticity but later diverted into maladaptive circuit destabilization by interactions between adult-born neurons and microglia.

RESULTS

Integrating longitudinal human neuroimaging data from the UK Biobank with rodent models of neuropathic pain, we identified a conserved biphasic trajectory of hippocampal remodeling. During early stages of chronic pain, hippocampal volume increased and hippocampal-dependent cognitive performance improved, consistent with an adaptive response. As pain persisted, this phase transitioned to hippocampal atrophy, cognitive decline, and the emergence of anxiety- and depression-like behaviors.

At the cellular level, early chronic pain selectively increased activity of newborn neurons within the dentate gyrus and triggered targeted recruitment and remodeling of microglia in the neurogenic niche. These cell-type–specific changes progressively amplified local circuit excitability and disrupted network balance, marking a transition from adaptive hippocampal plasticity to maladaptive circuit remodeling. Functionally, distinct modes of dentate gyrus modulation produced divergent outcomes: Suppressing newborn neuron activity alleviated affective symptoms but impaired cognition, whereas microglial modulation prevented anxiety- and depression-like behaviors while preserving cognitive function. Together, these findings identify microglia as a key regulator of the pain-to-depression transition.

CONCLUSION

By resolving distinct modes of dentate gyrus modulation, we show that microglia act as critical and therapeutically tractable regulators of the transition from chronic pain to affective disorders. Our findings reveal that this transition is governed not by hippocampal hyperactivity per se but rather by microglia-dependent remodeling that determines whether adaptive plasticity is sustained or diverted into maladaptive circuit states. Targeting microglial activation preserves hippocampal structure and cognitive function while preventing affective pathology, positioning microglia as a selective leverage point for interrupting the progression from chronic pain to mood disorders."

In Science Journals | Science

Pain across time (Perspective, no public access)

From chronic pain to depression: Neurogenesis-driven microglial remodeling in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (no public access)

A microRNA for perennial rice traits

Amazing stuff!

"Most grain crops die after completing one life cycle, meaning that new plants must be sown each year. However, some wild relatives of rice are perennial and can live through multiple yearly cycles.

Dai et al. identified a locus coding for a duplicated microRNA with expression that is regulated by DNA methylation status. Some alleles of this locus confer the ability to propagate rice vegetatively. By generating rice lines harboring this microRNA, as well as genes for other perennial traits, the authors developed rice that could grow for more than a year. Although alleles of additional loci will be needed to make fully fertile perennial rice plants, this work provides insights into perennial traits in rice and is a step forward in genetic engineering efforts."

From the abstract:

"Structured Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Plants exhibit a wide variety of life history strategies. Rice (Oryza sativa), one of the most widely grown staple crops worldwide, is cultivated as an annual species, whereas several of its wild relatives, such as Oryza rufipogon, display a perennial growth habit characterized by sustained vegetative growth and repeated reproduction. During domestication, this perennial growth habit was largely lost, representing an important shift in the life history strategy of rice. However, the genetic basis responsible for this transition remains poorly understood.

RATIONALE

To address this question, we investigated the traits associated with the perennial growth habit using 446 accessions of perennial wild rice. In O. rufipogon, one of the key traits linked to its perennial growth habit is a grasslike plant architecture, characterized by extensive tillering, floral reversion, and vegetative propagation—a phenotype largely absent in modern cultivated rice. To delineate the genetic basis underlying this trait, we used a set of single-segment substitution lines derived from both wild and cultivated rice and identified a gene locus that harbors tandem microRNA156 genes (MIR156BC). Through expression pattern analysis and epigenomic profiling, we investigated how dynamic changes in miR156 abundance promote a vegetative perennial growth habit in O. rufipogon. Finally, we explored whether we could reproduce the vegetative perennial growth habit of O. rufipogon in cultivated rice by introgressing this gene locus along with loci associated with prostrate growth.

RESULTS

We identified Endless Branches and Tillers 1 (EBT1) as a key gene locus controlling vegetative propagation and floral reversion in O. rufipogon W1943. The EBT1 locus harbors two tandem MIR156BC genes and has been positively selected for. Whereas wild-type cultivars senesce after seed setting, plants carrying the EBT1 allele from O. rufipogon W194 (EBT1W1943) exhibit vigorous tiller bud outgrowth and sustained vegetative growth after flowering. Mechanistically, unlike MIR156BC in modern annual cultivars, MIR156BC expression in O. rufipogon can be reset in developing tiller buds after flowering. This expression pattern is associated with increased chromatin accessibility and a reduction in the repressive epigenetic marker H3K27me3 at a regulatory region of EBT1. The combination of PROSTRATE GROWTH 1, TILLER INCLINED GROWTH 1, and EBT1W1943 enables annual cultivated rice to largely recapitulate the vegetative perennial growth habit of O. rufipogon.

CONCLUSION

We have identified MIR156BC as a key determinant of perenniality in rice. The distinctive epigenetic state at the MIR156BC locus in O. rufipogon facilitates its resetting after flowering, which subsequently leads to floral reversion and vegetative perennial growth. Our findings not only offer fresh insights into the genetic basis of perenniality in cereals but also pave the way for the development of sustainable perennial rice cultivars in the future."

In Science Journals | Science

Resetting of a tandem microRNA156 enables vegetative perennial growth in rice (no public access)

Berlin Law Mandates 40% of Judge candidates must Have Migration Background

More news from the banana republic of Germany!

"The justice system in the German capital has been radically transformed by the far-left policies pushed by the Green Party, which imposed a rule mandating that prospective judges and prosecutors in the city reflect the exact ethnic makeup of the city, rather than being determined by merit, Bild reported. ..."

Berlin Law Mandates 40 Per Cent of Judges Have Migration Background "DEI policies now require that four in ten interview candidates for judgeships or prosecutor positions in Berlin have a migrant background."

Berliner Justiz bevorzugt Migranten

Prosecutor Margarete Koppers (The Greens)

The microbiome is basically an undiscovered organ of the human body

Amazing stuff!

"... A growing body of research now suggests that the microbiome’s medical significance may be even broader than imagined — extending not just to gastrointestinal conditions but also to the immune system, metabolism, and even the brain. The progress has come not from moving fast, but from moving carefully.

“The microbiome has basically been an undiscovered organ of the human body,” ...  “It’s difficult to study, but it’s incumbent upon us to understand it.” ..."

The Long Game of Microbiome Science | Harvard Medicine Magazine "Looking beyond the hype, three experts explain what research on the gut microbiome might actually deliver"

40 Years of Wireless Evolution Leads to a Smart, Sensing Network

Recommendable! One of the authors is Vint Cerf (co-inventor of the Internet)!

"... The story of wireless connectivity is often told in speeds and standards—megabits per second, latency, and spectrum bands. But these generational shifts in device specs obscure a deeper pattern. Each generation, from 1G to 5G, rewrote the relationships between three elements: the Devices we carry, the Networks that connect them, and the Applications that run on them. We call this connectivity’s DNA. With 6G, that DNA of interconnection is about to change fundamentally. ..."

Telecom History: From 1G Voices to 6G AI Agents - IEEE Spectrum "The path from 1G to 6G traces from dumb pipes to a nervous system"

What Happens When an incarcerated criminal Gets Cancer in Prison?

Bad news! One more good reason to stay out of prison!

What this PJP may not have investigated is how much prisoners were themselves negligent or ignorant to diagnose and undergo treatment? 

"People who are imprisoned are more likely to die from cancer than the general population in the United States. Chronic stress and unhealthy food contribute to poor cancer outcomes, as do delays in diagnosis, patchy treatment and lack of coordination with outside healthcare systems. Contributors to the Prison Journalism Project (PJP) reported symptoms being ignored or downplayed, follow up appointments being missed because of administrative failures or resourcing issues and being strip-searched and chained when seeing doctors, receiving treatments or travelling for healthcare. PJP contributors described recovering from cancer in prison as a unique kind of hell." (Nature Briefing Cancer)

What Happens When You Get Cancer in Prison? — Prison Journalism Project "PJP contributors on what it’s like to suffer from the leading killer behind bars."

Self-healing materials could make aircraft and automobile parts last over 100 years

Good news!

"Researchers ... have achieved sustained self-healing of a composite material. The findings promise to extend the lifetime of aircraft and automotive parts by a century ..."

From the significance and abstract:

"Significance

Delamination damage has long hindered the safety and lifetime of fiber-reinforced polymer composites. This failure mode not only undermines their lightweight mechanical advantage but also amplifies the cost and environmental impact of these modern structural materials, which are inherently challenging to repair/recycle.

Here, we innovate self-healing by automating in situ thermal remending to achieve 1,000 delamination heal cycles, an order-of-magnitude greater than prior studies. The life extension unlocks new science where diminishing interfacial chemical reactions and fiber debris accumulation contribute to a gradual, asymptotic decline in fracture recovery that follows a Weibull distribution. Our findings show this self-healing strategy for interlaminar fracture is repeatable on a scale far exceeding typical composite design lifetimes, thus shedding delamination from structural concern.

Abstract

... Synthetic fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites also leverage material hierarchy via fibrous reinforcement encapsulated within a polymer matrix, maximizing stiffness and strength. However, the layered architecture of laminated FRP composites makes them vulnerable to interlaminar delamination—debonding of fibers from the matrix—which significantly compromises structural integrity. Recently, we introduced a self-healing strategy via in situ heating, where soft yet tough thermoplastic inclusions achieve interlaminar fracture recovery via polymer chain re-entanglement, i.e., thermal remending. Here, in our latest embodiment, by automating in situ thermo-mechanical experiments, we achieve an order-of-magnitude enhancement in self-healing repeatability—reaching an unprecedented 1,000 cycles. Healing begins at 175% and slowly declines to 60% of the mode-I fracture resistance of a plain (nonhealing) composite, revealing unique chemo-physical mechanisms that govern this behavior. Both fiber-debris accumulation in the molten poly(ethylene-co-methacrylic acid) (EMAA) healing agent, and waning interfacial chemical reactions between the EMAA and epoxy matrix, contribute. A Weibull distribution capturing this complex fracture recovery predicts an asymptotic healing limit above 40%, suggesting sustained repair is possible. Translating these newfound thermal remending results into real-world context, a modest quarterly self-healing schedule could maintain interlaminar fracture repair of FRP composites for over 125 y—well beyond the typical design life of many modern structures including aircraft and wind turbines. Thus, this latest self-healing paradigm effectively eliminates delamination as a failure mode."

Self-healing materials could make automobile parts last over 100 years – Physics World

Self-healing for the long haul: In situ automation delivers century-scale fracture recovery in structural composites

Self-healing process A composite material, suffering from a delamination fracture, uses an embedded healing agent (blue) to fill and fix the crack. Scale bars: 0.5 mm.