Fig. 1: Timeline of foundational discoveries in T cell biology and milestones in CAR T cell engineering.
Thursday, July 23, 2026
US deploys B-1 bomber to strike Iran for first time since war resumed
President Trump is getting serious again! See also my recent, cautionary blog post here.
It appears the UK is finally supporting the US in this war against Iran.
"... The first strike using the bomber was conducted on Tuesday.
An Axios report published earlier on Thursday noted that the deployed B-1 began its mission from a base in the UK. ... This comes shortly after Bloomberg News reported that newly sworn-in British Prime Minister Andy Burnham approved the use of British bases for attacks by the United States against Iran. ...
The US conducted several B-1 missions between February and April during Operation Epic Fury, hitting missile bases, command centers, weapons storage facilities, and air defense systems. ..."
Greece approves $4b Israel air defense procurement
Good news! Osman Sultan Erdogan is probably not very happy about that (hint: e.g. Cyprus)!
"Greece’s National Security Council (KYSEA) today approved an historic deal to procure a multi-layered air defense system from Israel for €3.5 billion ($4 billion). "Reuters" reports that the deal will also include unmanned aerial vehicles.
The Israeli air defense systems that Greece is procuring includes Rafael's David's Sling in the long range tier, Israel Aerospace Industries Barak MX in the medium range tier, and Rafael's Spyder in the short range tier. ..."
Analysis: Strikes on several Wildberries (Russia's Amazon) warehouses: What Is Ukraine Trying to Achieve and Why Is It So Painful for Russia?
Recommendable!
Caveat: I did not read the entire article!
"Ukraine has destroyed two more large warehouses belonging to Russia’s biggest marketplace retailer, Wildberries.
This time, warehouses in southern Russia – near Krasnodar and in Stavropol Krai – were set ablaze.
Previously, the company’s largest warehouses, located near Moscow (in Elektrostal) and in Tambov Region, had already been destroyed. ...
Not quite a civilian marketplace
Russian business leaders and government officials portray Wildberries as an exclusively civilian retailer.
However, this is not the case. The marketplace offers a large number of dual-use goods, including drones.
For example, a search for the word “drone” returns a large selection of DJI Mavic 3 and Mavic 4 drones, which are widely used on the battlefield.
More than that, the platform openly sells quadcopters explicitly labeled as first-person view (FPV). They have become the primary strike weapon for both sides in the war. ...
Moreover, much of the military-related merchandise is hidden within seemingly civilian categories such as “Auto Parts” or “Electronics.”
For example, one can openly purchase drone bomb-release mechanisms or payload retention systems – equipment designed to carry and release explosives from drones. Wildberries sells them without restriction, complete with technical specifications. ..."
Just dismissed Ukrainian Defense Minister Fedorov Turns Down Zelensky’s Offer to Become ‘Deputy PM for Military Innovations’
If Mykhailo Fedorov (age 35, Minister of Defence of Ukraine from January 2026 to July 2026) was the right man for the job, Zelensky ought to bring him back as defense minister.
"... Fedorov became the defense minister in January after his previous role as digital transformation minister, with his brief, six-month tenure at the defense ministry coinciding with the removal of Starlink for Russian troops and Kyiv’s intensified drone campaign against Russian oil and logistics.
In early July, Ukraine’s General Staff estimated that 43% of Russian oil refining capacity was crippled by Ukrainian strikes. ..."
Ukraine's Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov reacts during a joint press conference with Germany's Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (unseen) in Kyiv on May 11, 2026
Chemical recycling plants closing in EU and US
Bad news! More research is certainly needed to find better and cheaper ways to recycle plastics or find better substitutes for plastics!
Is this article possibly spreading alarmism and hysteria?
"The nascent chemical recycling industry – in which plastics are broken down into oils or constituent monomers to be remade into new materials – is contracting across Europe and the US as recyclers call for policy stability to make the industry investable.
Recent closures, postponements or project cancellations ‘reflect the broader structural crisis facing the whole of Europe’s plastics recycling industry (both mechanical and chemical),’ says Maria Vera Duran, policy director at industry body Recycling Europe. ..."
What the United Kingdom can learn from the United Arab Emirates in terms of business environment and free markets
Very recommendable! An interesting country comparison that may well apply to other European countries as well (e.g. France, Germany)!
Arab merchants, businessmen/-women and traders make it possible!
A very well timed article to greet and inspire the new PM Andy Burnham!
"When British policymakers look to the Gulf, they often assume Dubai’s rise was built on limitless oil wealth. That misses the more interesting lesson. Dubai’s free-trade instincts go back to 1901, when its rulers scrapped import and export taxes to attract merchants from more restrictive neighbouring ports.
Today, oil accounts for less than 1 per cent of Dubai’s GDP. The emirate has prospered by becoming what might be called a ‘platform city’: a stable, business-friendly hub that provides the infrastructure, light-touch rules, and predictability private enterprise needs to grow. ...
Dubai treats residents and businesses less as subjects to be managed and more as customers to be served. Government performance is regularly judged by the quality and speed of delivery. There is a local saying that the government “works at the speed of business”, and that mindset matters.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, this agility helped Dubai reopen safely and quickly, attracting global talent from countries with more rigid restrictions. For the UK, a similar customer-service culture in Whitehall would be a serious shift: a state that sees its role as enabling enterprise, rather than slowing it down through bureaucracy.
Free markets depend on trust. Dubai has turned social order into a real competitive advantage. Its low crime rates and strong culture of civic responsibility create a sense of security that is hard to measure but easy to value. Residents routinely leave valuables unattended with little fear of theft. [This used to common in the UK decades ago, if I am not mistaken.]
For a global financial centre, this matters. Trust reduces friction, lowers costs, and makes a city more attractive to investors, entrepreneurs and families looking for stability. ...
One of Dubai’s most effective tools has been its network of free zones, which historically offered 100 per cent foreign ownership and zero taxes. Just as importantly, these zones have acted as testing grounds for more liberal rules before they are applied more widely.
The Dubai International Financial Centre is the clearest example. It operates under its own English common law framework, with independent courts and a regulatory system designed for international finance.
Dubai actively competes for skilled people. Its Golden Visas, remote working schemes and Green Visas give professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors clear routes to live and work there without being tied to traditional employer sponsorship. ..."
Arizona Among Six States Facing RNC Lawsuits Over Never-Resident Voting
Unfortunately, these lawsuits appear to be too narrowly focused, e.g. "through a parent’s former or current residency"
What about e.g. the many snowbirds in Arizona?
Remember/reminder: Trump lost in Arizona 2020 by only about 10,457 votes!
"The Republican National Committee (RNC) is pursuing lawsuits in Arizona and five other states challenging laws that allow some United States citizens who have never lived in those states to register and vote through a parent’s former or current residency.
The RNC has active cases in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia, and Nebraska, according to a report from the Daily Signal. The legal campaign follows a June ruling in North Carolina that invalidated a similar provision under that state’s constitution.
“If you’ve never lived in a state, you shouldn’t be voting in its elections,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters told the outlet. ..."
Immer mehr immigrantische Straftäter schuldunfähig?
Mal wieder eine typische Schlagzeile aus der Bananenrepublik D!
Leider hat auch Tichy's Einblick diese neumodische und verkehrte Wortschöpfung "migrantisch" angenommen. Es sind Immigranten/Einwanderer nicht Pendler/Migranten! Siehe dazu auch meinen blog post hier!
How Open Models Are Driving AI Research: Nvidia as An example
Impressive! This is only the beginning of an exciting revolution in science and medicine!
"Every year, the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) reveals where thousands of AI researchers have decided to put their work.
This year’s accepted papers reveal a clear direction: open frontier models and open AI infrastructure have become foundational to how modern AI science gets done.
NVIDIA had 74 papers accepted at ICML 2026. Approximately 2,000 accepted papers cite NVIDIA GPUs, and 145 cite NVIDIA Nemotron — a family of open models, including open datasets — as the foundation for new research.
Hundreds more draw on NVIDIA Cosmos, NVIDIA Isaac GR00T, BioNeMo and other NVIDIA open model families, spanning physical AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and biomedical research.
The Themes Defining This Year’s Research
Areas including vision and video generation, reinforcement learning for large language models (LLMs) and agent training as well as AI inference remained prominent themes across this year’s papers, reflecting sustained investment these fields command — while several new areas also broke through.
Robot world models drew significant attention, with papers like DreamDojo pushing the boundary of how AI systems learn to reason about and act in physical environments. DreamDojo, for example, learns how the physical world behaves from human video and builds on NVIDIA Cosmos open frontier models to predict how a robot would handle objects and operate in environments it was never trained on. It lets researchers evaluate policies, plan actions and teleoperate a virtual robot, accelerating development without the costs and risks of physical deployment.
AI for life sciences was fueled by NVIDIA BioNeMo open models and research contributions that help researchers understand protein function, molecular behavior and genetic code. Papers like FLIP2 introduce public benchmarks for testing how well AI predicts the effects of protein mutations. KERMT is a new BioNeMo open model for predicting molecular properties important to drug discovery.
Synthetic data generation (SDG) drew particular interest at ICML this year with several Nemotron and physical AI open datasets, reflecting a broader shift in how researchers are thinking about training at scale without relying solely on human-labeled data. ..."
Days after the 46th President inauguration, FBI shielded Wuhan lab collaborator from investigation after China trip
Will the truth about the dual use Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the US conducted euphemistically called gain of function research finally come out?
Unfortunately, so far way too slow and drip by drip!
"46th 's presidency began and ended with the shielding of individuals linked to decades' worth of dangerous gain-of-function experiments.
[The 46th President] concluded his presidency by issuing former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci a blanket pardon, going back all the way to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for gain-of-function research that makes pathogens more deadly and/or more transmissible. ..."
Fields Medal win: Wang Hong, Deng Yu are first Chinese nationals to score top maths honour
Congratulations! China, a science superpower! Competition is good, more competition is better! This could be a milestone!
"For the first time, China has produced Fields Medal winners educated on its own soil – and two at once."
"Yu Deng
For his work in partial differential equations, including the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics for rarefied gases, the derivation of wave kinetic equations from nonlinear dispersive systems, and probabilistic approaches to nonlinear Schrodinger dynamics."
Hong Wang
For her work in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, including applications of multiscale and decoupling techniques to the local smoothing conjecture for the planar wave equation, and major advances in Fourier restriction, Falconer distance sets, Furstenberg sets in the plane, and the Kakeya problem in three dimensions."
Living Fully in the Math World Means Threading the Needle "Focus, commitment, and insight resulted in a “once in a century” proof. Hong Wang is now just the third woman to win a Fields Medal" (Caveat: I did not read the article)
Amid Life’s Chaos, a Meticulous Mathematician Finds Stability "Before he won a Fields Medal for his pioneering work balancing randomness and order, Yu Deng had to achieve equilibrium in his own life." (Caveat: I did not read the article)
Yu Deng & Hong Wang
Fields Medal
Cooler Earth core could solve Earth’s magnetic mystery
Amazing stuff! In the age of so called "climate change" and global warming hoax when cooler heads will hopefully prevail!
"New experiments suggest Earth’s iron core could be more than 1000°C cooler than longstanding estimates, potentially resolving a puzzle that has vexed geophysicists for decades.
By squeezing iron to nearly 2 million atmospheres between diamond anvils and heating it with rapid electrical pulses, researchers measured iron’s melting point at corelike conditions and found it melts at much lower temperatures than previous studies suggested. The result could help explain the so-called “new core paradox.”
Earth’s magnetic field has existed for at least 4 billion years. But many thermal models indicate the solid inner core—which as it slowly freezes today helps power the magnetic dynamo in the molten outer core—formed only about 500 million years ago.
The new measurements suggest the core lost heat more slowly than previous models assumed, allowing heat-driven convection alone to power the magnetic dynamo for most of Earth’s history, without requiring an ancient inner core. ..."
"... Today, that dynamo is sustained mainly by the slow freezing of the inner core, which releases heat and buoyant light elements into the liquid metal above. But some models of Earth’s cooling history suggest the inner core began to form just over half a billion years ago, raising the so-called “new core paradox”: What kept the dynamo running for the 3.5 billion years before the arrival of the inner core? ..."
From the abstract of the oral presentation:
"The melting temperatures and electrical resistivity of iron at high pressure are essential for understanding the thermal history and dynamics of Earth’s core, but significant differences in experimental results have led to divergent Earth models. We developed a pulsed Joule heating system to investigate the melting temperature and electrical resistivity of iron under the high pressure of Earth’s core. The system heats metal samples to temperatures exceeding 4000 K at pressures exceeding 2 Mbar. Precise sample fabrication, combined with a novel 5-color multianode spectroradiometer, enables high-precision heating control and temperature measurement (~ ±30 K) with sub-microsecond time resolution. Plateaus in temperature-time traces due to the latent heat of melting show outstanding reproducibility.
Our findings on the high-pressure melting curve of iron, based on more than 200 melting measurements extending to over 2 Mbar, reveal lower melting temperatures and a shallower Clapeyron slope relative to previous studies.
By extrapolating these to inner-core pressure and combining them with our measured resistivity of liquid iron (~75 μΩ cm), we propose that a relatively low adiabatic outer-core heat flow of < 10 TW and relatively low core-mantle boundary temperatures.
Our results indicate that thermal convection alone may have powered the geodynamo before the formation of the inner core, and that today’s lowermost mantle is likely to be fully solid."
Earth’s core may be far cooler than scientists thought (partial public access)
UK government scraps plans for digital ID cards after millions of Brits opposed
Good news! Some lovely British traditions and customs die hard!
Are we dealing with Luddites or do we need better personal privacy protections in the digital age?
Waw this digital ID scheme another one of those failures/blunders of previous PM Keir Starmer?
"The U.K.’s incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has confirmed the U.K. government is scrapping a controversial digital ID card scheme announced last year by the country’s previous leader. ...
The plan to roll out digital identity cards was introduced by the former prime minister Keir Starmer, who argued that state-issued IDs would crack down on migrants working illegally and would modernize access to government services. ...
Millions of Brits had opposed the plan for mandatory digital ID cards, leading to the second-largest public parliamentary petition on record, gathering close to 3 million signatures rejecting the plan. Critics said that the introduction of ID cards would enable surveillance. ..."
A step towards psychedelics with none of the undesirable side effects/symptoms
Good news! Amazing stuff!
"Psychedelic drugs hold great promise for treating mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. But beyond their otherworldly hallucinogenic manifestations, many of these drugs also come with all-too-familiar side effects like nausea, vomiting, and gastrointestinal discomfort.
This occurs because the psychedelic compounds activate several off-target pathways as well as the intended serotonin receptors in the brain.
Reducing these unwanted interactions and the unpleasant symptoms that come with them is an important step for demonstrating the safety of psychedelics.
In a new study ... researchers pushed closer to this reality by re-engineering the synthetic psychedelic drug quipazine to activate only the desired receptors .
The pharmacologists began by examining quipazine atom-by-atom to identify how the drug could bind to both the target 5-HT2AR receptor and the 5-HT3R receptor that causes nausea and other gastrointestinal symptoms.
After singling out the nitrogen atom responsible, they replaced it and rearranged the whole molecule. The resultant drug could still bind to the desired 5-HT2AR receptor, but it bounced off 5-HT3R receptors.
To test the new psychedelic’s effectiveness, the researchers gave the drug to mice with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Once the hallucinogenic effects subsided, the mice exhibited fewer symptoms and showed no apparent discomfort. When they examined the animals’ brains, the researchers found an increased density of neuron structures called dendritic spines, a telltale sign that the psychedelic had restored some of the brain activity lost to depression. ..."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
The clinical use of serotonergic psychedelics is limited by their side effects. Younkin et al. generated a derivative (called VCU-1012) of the psychedelic quipazine with greater activity at the serotonin receptor subtype that mediates the clinically desirable effects (5-HT2AR) than at the serotonin receptor subtype responsible for the undesirable ones.
Similar to quipazine, VCU-1012 exerted antidepressant and antianxiolytic effects in mice but without the gastrointestinal side effects of quipazine. Moreover, like other psychedelics, VCU-1012 increased dendritic spine density in the frontal cortex in a 5-HT2AR–dependent manner.
Thus, VCU-1012 shows promise as a 5-HT2AR agonist with a more favorable side effect profile than those of typical psychedelics. ...
Abstract
Psychedelics that target serotonin 2A receptors (5-HT2ARs) hold therapeutic promise for neuropsychiatric disorders but are often hindered by off-target actions. The 5-HT2AR agonist quipazine also activates 5-HT3R, which contributes to undesirable side effects.
Here, we developed VCU-1012, a quipazine-based, structurally distinct 5-HT2AR agonist devoid of 5-HT3R activity.
VCU-1012 was developed by applying a strategic chemical design that combined deconstruction to pinpoint the nitrogen atom critical for 5-HT2AR activation with structure-activity relationship studies to minimize 5-HT3R agonism.
We showed that VCU-1012 modulated dendritic spine structural plasticity in the frontal cortex and produced antidepressant-like effects in mice through 5-HT2AR without activating 5-HT3R, thereby avoiding the gastrointestinal side effects of quipazine.
In addition, our molecular modeling and mutant analysis suggested that VCU-1012 interacted in the canonical orthosteric binding pocket of 5-HT2AR.
Together, these findings establish VCU-1012 as a potential therapeutic agent with reduced gastrointestinal impact, emphasize how differences in ligand-receptor interactions influence ligand positioning in the receptor binding pocket, and provide guidance for designing psychedelics with targeted therapeutic benefits."
Design of a new psychedelic quipazine analog with therapeutic efficacy and potentially fewer side effects (no public access)
Design and Synthesis of Quipazine Analogs for Programmable Control of Psychedelic Effects (A PhD thesis covering a similar topic. The author was not part of the team authoring the above research article.)
VCU-1012 (Wikipedia page indicating this psychedelic drug was already developed in 2024)
VCU-1012 2D chemical structure
Globally, people are living longer, but spending more years in poor health
Food for thought! That sounds about right? This is a serious quality of life issue!
How much are individuals to be blamed e.g. for knowingly living significantly unhealthy lives?
What are the extra/additional healthcare costs associated with this?
"People around the world are living longer than ever before but spending more of those additional years in poor health, according to a new Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study published in The Lancet Public Health. ...
Researchers found that the global morbidity gap widened in almost all countries and territories analyzed between 1990 and 2023. Globally, while the share of life spent in poor health increased, trends varied by country, and a smaller number of countries saw this share decline.
Within a generation, the global morbidity gap widened by nearly two years, increasing from 8.8 years in 1990 to 10.7 years in 2023.
Globally, people spent an average of 14.5% of their lives in poor health in 2023, up from 13.6% in 1990.
Instead of occurring only in the final years of life, the widening morbidity gap was observed across the adult lifespan, suggesting that people are spending more years living with disease and disability throughout adulthood. ..."
From the abstract:
"Summary
Background
As survival improves globally, the central public health challenge increasingly shifts from extending life to extending healthy lifespan. The compression of morbidity hypothesis proposes that effective prevention and care will delay disability more than death, reducing the morbidity gap—ie, the duration or proportion of life spent in poor health.
We aimed to comprehensively estimate changes in the morbidity gap globally, regionally, and nationally from 1990 to 2023, by sociodemographic development levels and sex, and analysed leading diseases and injuries and their underlying risk factors contributing to years lived in poor health.
Methods
Using Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2023 estimates of life expectancy and healthy life expectancy (HALE) at birth for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2023, we calculated the morbidity gap as life expectancy minus HALE, and the proportional morbidity gap as this difference divided by life expectancy.
Results are presented globally, by GBD super-region and country, Socio-demographic Index (SDI) quintile, and sex.
We decomposed the morbidity gap into cause-specific and risk-specific contributions, assigning to each cause group its proportional share of years lived with disability (YLD), adjusted for comorbidity to avoid double counting disability for co-occurring conditions. We report mean estimates and 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs) derived from 250 or more draws from posterior distributions.
Findings
From 1990 to 2023, the global morbidity gap increased from 8·8 years (95% UI 6·7–11·2) to 10·7 (8·2–13·7), an increase of 1·9 years (1·3–2·6), or 21·9% (16·0–27·9), with point estimates suggesting widening morbidity gaps in 203 of 204 countries and territories.
Globally in 2023, an average of 14·5% of life was spent in poor health, compared to 13·6% in 1990. From 1990 to 2023, across locations, age-specific morbidity gaps widened across the adult life course, rather than concentrating in the final years of life.
In 2023, morbidity gaps were largest in the high SDI quintile and smallest in the low SDI quintile.
Countries with longer life expectancies had larger morbidity gaps and both had a positive relationship with SDI; however, the relationship between life expectancy and the proportional morbidity gap was less clear.
A small number of chronic, largely non-fatal causes were the primary contributors to the morbidity gap, with musculoskeletal disorders (especially low back pain), mental disorders (depressive and anxiety disorders), sense organ diseases (age-related hearing loss), unintentional injuries (falls), and other non-communicable diseases together accounting for 57·4% of unhealthy years in 2023, globally.
High fasting plasma glucose, high body-mass index, and child and maternal malnutrition were the leading risk factors contributing to the global morbidity gap.
Interpretation
The expansion of the morbidity gap across nearly all locations indicates that improvements in survival have consistently outpaced reductions in non-fatal health loss across geographies, SDI levels, and sexes, with most populations now spending a decade or more of life in poor health across the lifespan.
Progress towards healthy ageing should therefore be assessed not only by reduced mortality, but also by declines in years lived in poor health, with emphasis placed on extending healthspan. ..."
Figure 1 Morbidity gap by GBD super-region (A) and SDI quintile (B), 1990–2023
Figure 2 Comparison of the morbidity gap (A, B) and proportional morbidity gap (C, D) versus life expectancy across countries and territories, 1990 (A, C) and 2023 (B, D)
Unfazed by Iran’s threats, Bulgaria moves to aid U.S. military operations
Good news! Bravo!
While the major European powers like UK, France, and Germany act like cowards refusing to support the US in its war against Iran (e.g. no navy minesweepers, no escorts for commercial ships etc.)! Shame on them!
"The Bulgarian parliament’s Defence Committee has voted to approve a draft decision enabling U.S. tanker aircraft to support military operations against Iran from an air base on the Balkan country’s territory. The decision comes despite thinly veiled threats from Iranian officials who warned Sofia against aiding Washington.
The committee’s July 21 vote follows a U.S. diplomatic note submitted to the Bulgarian government. In the note, Washington requested Sofia’s approval for the deployment of up to eight Boeing KC-135 tanker aircraft and up to 250 U.S. troops with related gear at Bezmer Air Base in eastern Bulgaria between July 24 and Oct. 1, state-owned news agency BTA reported. ..."
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
How do quantum computers work?e
Recommendable, but very basic! Plus very outdated graphics!
From Andhra Chilli To Rajasthani Thali: Is India's Love for Spice A Health Hack?
Recommendable! The hotter the food, the later the death!
Adam Smith—The Father of Economics | PragerU
Redo! Too dumbed down! An insult to Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment!
I usually like the short PragerU videos, but not this one!
Women more likely to marry, land jobs after taking GLP-1s | Harvard University
Is Harvard University here not stating the obvious? 😊
What about men? Gender discrimination by an elite university?
"Key takeaways
- New economics research reveals that losing weight by taking GLP-1 drugs can have big impacts on women’s relationship and employment status.
After 1.5 years on the drugs, single women increased their likelihood of marrying or moving in with a partner by as much as 28.6 percentage points. - For unemployed women, their chances of landing a job increased by 26.9 percentage points after 1.5 years on the drug.
- Rebecca Diamond, Martin Feldstein Professor of Economics, noted that these outcomes occur in areas where women may be subject to other people's first impressions.
..."
A federal appeals court approves release of the 46th President's recordings/transcripts with his ghost writer
Good news! The senile, demented and lifelong, pathological liar 46th President was totally reckless and irresponsible not to resign early on for health reasons!
"A federal appeals court has rejected former President Biden’s bid to block release of audio recordings and transcripts from his interviews with memoir ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.
The D.C. Circuit’s 2-1 ruling found the public interest in disclosing the redacted material outweighs Biden’s privacy claims. The court suspended its decision until Aug. 3, giving Biden time to consider a further appeal.
Zwonitzer’s interviews with Biden were later obtained by special counsel Robert Hur, who described Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” fueling Republican demands for the raw audio that could reveal signs of early cognitive decline. ..."
Federal government Freezes $1B in State Medicaid Payments to California and Minnesota
Good news! Bravo! That is only two states!
"Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that the federal government is freezing more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota over suspected fraud.
California’s share tops $867 million, including $646 million tied to in-home care, where spending grew at twice the national rate.
Minnesota’s $200 million spans 14 high-risk programs.
Kennedy said the payments will return once both states document that the claims are legitimate."
Lately, Victor Davis Hanson is getting old and produces too much
My observation in recent times tells me that VDH (age 72) produces too many articles, which affects quality.
It also seems he has become a lot more polarizing and politicized in his daily output! His current preoccupation with daily petty political skirmishes tarnishes his previous stellar reputation as a historian!
I basically do not follow him anymore!
C'est très dommage! I used to like his articles in the past!
Headbutting gives goats brain damage. Really!
Why should it be different from human beings? Will these animals become a model to study human neurodegenerative disorders?
From the abstract:
"Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a characteristic feature of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Small animal models have been used to establish clinically relevant biomarkers of neuropathology, however, they show significant anatomical differences from humans and are affected by artificial experimental manipulations, making them often unsuitable for longitudinal study of repetitive mild TBI. There is a need for more diverse and translationally relevant animal models to better understand disease onset and development.
Building on a previous study of neuropathology in headbutting bovids in the wild, this pilot study investigated whether freely headbutting domestic goats, which naturally engage in low-intensity, high-frequency head impacts, accumulate measurable biomarkers of neurodegeneration in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and brain tissue. Over a six-month period, three male goats (Capra hircus) were allowed to freely headbutt under continuous video surveillance.
Monthly CSF samples were collected, and concentrations of key neurodegeneration biomarkers were measured via multiplex immunoassays, including amyloid-β peptides (Aβ40, Aβ42), total and phosphorylated tau (tTau and pTau), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), S100 calcium-binding protein B (S100B), and neurofilament M (NF-M). Imaging studies were completed for non-invasive assessment of glucose metabolism ([18F]-FDG) and neuroinflammation via translocator protein (TSPO, [18F]DPA-714).
Postmortem immunohistochemistry was conducted on prefrontal cortical tissues using antibodies targeting pTau, GFAP, and S100B. Head impact kinematics were quantified using horn-mounted accelerometer and inclinometer sensors that recorded linear acceleration, rotational velocity, and head orientation during naturally occurring headbutting events.
Several notable trends were observed. Phosphorylated tau as well as reactive astrocytes were detected in the brain tissue, mirrored by elevated GFAP detected in the CSF. PET TSPO did not illustrate a significant signal, however, PET FDG revealed frontal-dominant activity in all goats, and one with asymmetrical activation.
Overall, the goats sustained 5,000-7,000 head impacts each over six months. Accelerometer measurements recorded forces up to 388 N and peak acceleration up to 16.5 g.
This multi-modal observational study is the first to characterize neurodegeneration biomarkers and kinematics in headbutting goats.
Even at one year old, the combination of pTau and gliosis in both the brain tissue and CSF indicates that the goat’s repetitive head impacts begin to show neurodegenerative consequences early in life.
Likely, the severity of these consequences increases with headbutts and age, eventually resulting in chronic neurodegeneration. This system shows promise as a large-animal model for the longitudinal study of the onset and progression of neurodegenerative disease."
Shrinking squid brains due to climate change. Really!
Caution: Again junk science disseminated by the AAAS!
Reminder: Climate models are largely junk! We can not even forecast local weather accurately for more than 48 hours!
"... Squid are some of the ocean’s most intelligent inhabitants. Capable of clever problem solving, advanced communication, and learning from past experiences, these squishy swimmers’ brains contain a similar number of neurons as dogs. But now, thanks to climate change [???], those impressive brains may be doomed to downsizing.
At the Society of Experimental Biology conference held this month in Florence, Italy, scientists presented early data from a study of bigfin reef squid. They raised the animals for 90 days in one of two water tanks: one with a pH of 8.2, similar to modern oceans, and one with a pH of 7.8, which is the value oceans could reach by the year 2100 [???] under continued climate change. As carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere, nearly one-third gets absorbed into the ocean, causing the water to become more acidic.
After analyzing the squids’ heads with magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers made a shocking discovery: The brain volume of squid raised in more acidic tanks was half as large as their counterparts.
Further analysis revealed that the squids’ brain volume had shrunk the most in regions responsible for visual processing. Since bigfin reef squid rely on their eyes to hunt, the findings help explain a previous observation that this species, when exposed to high carbon dioxide levels for 90 days, showed a 42% reduction in hunting behaviors. ..."
US threatens sanctions against Chinese AI models over IP theft
Good news!
I blogged here about a recent claim of a Chinese cloning attack or was it distillation.
"On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. would examine open source models from China for signs of intellectual property theft, threatening sanctions against Chinese AI companies if IP theft is established.
“We’ve seen a lot of talk about open source models coming and threatening the large language models in the U.S.,” Bessent said on Fox Business Tuesday. “This administration supports open source models, but what we do not support is IP theft. If we see, especially, that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft.” ..."
Greenland deep-sea shark, the longest living vertebrate on the planet, can live for around 400 years
Amazing stuff!
"... But in April 2026, a group of researchers and volunteers stood on the cloudy shoreline of County Sligo, Ireland, and marvelled at the sight of a species that had never been stranded here before – a dead Greenland shark.
Judging by its size – around 3m (10ft) long – the grey-beige animal lying on the tidal flats was over 150 years old. ...
The Greenland shark, the longest living vertebrate on the planet, can live for around 400 years. ..."
"... The [recovered dead] shark is now undergoing detailed scientific postmortem examination, contributing valuable data to the understanding of this elusive deep-water species. Tissue samples and selected anatomical components are being preserved as part of the National Museum’s scientific collections, ensuring a permanent record of this exceptional specimen. ..."
Remains of a rare Greenland shark recovered (original news release) "The remains of a rare 3-metre-long Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) has been successfully recovered from the shoreline in County Sligo, marking the first recorded stranding of this species on the Irish coast."
Recovery of the remains of the dead shark
Azerbaijan Confirms Secret German-Russian high level Talks Were Held in Baku
Disturbing news! Possibly a political bombshell revelation! Incredible, if confirmed!
Again how clueless and naive is the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz?
"... According to flight records cited by media reports, the clandestine meeting took place in the Azerbaijani capital from July 12 to 14. Aliyev’s remarks marked Azerbaijan’s first public acknowledgment of the reported visits, though he emphasized that Baku did not organize, host or participate in the talks.
Similar quiet channels of dialogue reportedly also took place in Baku last year. ...
Unofficial diplomatic channels
The confirmation follows a joint investigation by German media outlets Die Zeit and ARD, which reported that former senior German politicians have been holding back-channel discussions with Russian representatives in Baku since 2024.
Among those reportedly involved on the German side were former Chancellery chief Ronald Pofalla and former Brandenburg Minister-President Matthias Platzeck.
The Russian delegation reportedly included senior figures close to 4Vladimir Putin, including Gazprom chairman Viktor Zubkov and Valery Fadeyev, head of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. ..."
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (R) and Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliev sign the Joint Declaration of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Azebaijan on Bilateral Cooperation at the Chancellery in Berlin on July 21, 2026.
Ripples of activity in the hippocampus prepare the brain for surprising visual events
Amazing stuff! However, it took almost 3 years for this research from preprint to be published as a journal article!
Ethical questions: The study apparently involved 17 patients with epilepsy, but that was not mentioned in the abstract.
"... Researchers ... recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding how the brain prepares for unexpected visual experiences. Their paper, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggests that fast, large-amplitude, brief bursts of oscillatory activity in the hippocampus (i.e., hippocampal ripples) influence how the visual cortex, the part of the brain responsible for processing visual information, responds to surprising stimuli after they appear. ...
This experiment involved 17 patients with epilepsy who had electrodes implanted in their brains as part of their treatment. ...
When participants were less certain about what image would next appear on screen, the team observed a greater frequency of specific patterns of activity in the hippocampus, called hippocampal ripples. Interestingly, these ripples of activity occurred more often and lasted longer before an unexpected stimulus appeared than before a familiar one. ..."
From the abstract:
"To encode information efficiently, our perceptual system should detect when situations are unpredictable (that is, informative) and modulate brain dynamics to prepare for encoding. Under uncertainty, there is an increased need to generate predictions about upcoming information, a process that has been proposed to require coordinated activity between the hippocampus and neocortex.
Here we show, with direct recordings from the human hippocampus and visual cortex, that after exposure to unpredictable visual stimulus streams, hippocampal ripple activity increases in frequency and duration before stimulus presentation.
Prestimulus hippocampal ripples suppress changes in visual cortex gamma activity associated with uncertainty and modulate poststimulus prediction error gamma responses in higher-level visual cortex to surprising stimuli.
We reveal a function of hippocampal ripples in facilitating the propagation of visual stimuli based on the expected information gain.
These results, therefore, link hippocampal ripples with predictive coding accounts of neuronal message passing and precision-weighted prediction errors, revealing a mechanism relevant for perceptual synthesis and subsequent memory encoding."
Fig. 2: The frequency and duration of hippocampal ripples increase with uncertainty or expected information gain.
Fig. 5: Surprise-driven responses.
Customer Loyalty Data Is Now AI’s Favorite Currency in the US retail business
Good news! What does AI know about loyalty? 😊
"Sephora, CVS use AI, loyalty data for personalized shopping
Sephora, Ulta Beauty and other brands are leveraging loyalty data to enhance AI-driven personalization, transforming loyalty programs from rewarding past purchases to influencing future consumer decisions. This shift is facilitated by partnerships with tech giants like Google and the integration of AI platforms such as ChatGPT. Companies like CVS are also using first-party data to drive retail media and personalized offers, highlighting the strategic importance of loyalty data in the AI economy."
These are the 14 countries moving to ban social media for children. Really!
Banning is no solution or a stupid/naive/clueless one! Reeks of government paternalism!
What about e.g. social media with child appropriate content etc. What if the content is beneficial for and supportive in the development of children etc.?
What about parental controls? Are parents not foremost responsible?
Truly shocking that so many Western countries (incl. UK, Germany) are listed/involved as well!
Software vendor disputes NJ governor's ‘glitch’ claim, says state approves foreigners on voter roll
Good news! This software glitch excuse sounded phony from the beginning!
Kudos to this software company to come out and risking their business with the government of NJ!
"Just hours after New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherril blamed a software glitch for thousands of non-citizens being registered to vote, the software company involved issued a statement disputing the claim.
IDEMIA, the software vendor for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, issued a statement saying it was the responsibility of the state government, which is completely controlled by Democrats, to verify eligibility to vote.
“IDEMIA works with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and has for more than 40 years, to support the process through which eligible individuals may indicate their interest in registering to vote when applying for or renewing a driver’s license or state-issued identification card. IDEMIA’s role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” IDEMIA said in a statement to Just the News. ..."
Ritz-Carlton's Nepal entry signals possible oversupply of high-end hotels
Headline of the day! From the Roof of the World!
Pamir mountains (Source)
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Anthony Fauci: The Public Servant from Hell?
Recommendable! Unfortunately, Fauci is now 85 years old! Can he still stand trial or will he? I have serious doubts!
His last name reminds of Faustus! What a coincidence!
Not mentioned was the very clever timing of his retirement.
The lab leak hypothesis of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (involved dual research) was also omitted.
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