Nice headline! Sounds so delicious! Just kidding!
Protein meal made from black soldier fly larvae is inspected during quality control ...
Saturday, July 11, 2026
Lords of the flies: Thailand's edible insect innovators
Logic and language is separated in the brain
Amazing stuff!
"... In research ... researchers ... have shown that people can perform well on tasks that require logical reasoning even if their language abilities are severely impaired. What’s more, brain imaging shows that language-processing parts of the brain are not called on for logical reasoning. ..."
From the significance and abstract:
"Significance
Which cognitive mechanisms allow humans to reason logically, to understand whether a conclusion follows from the premises? Are they the same ones that allow the assembly of words into structured representations?
Scholars have debated for millennia whether logical reasoning is inextricably tied to natural language, or instead relies on a distinct “language of thought” (LOT).
Using fMRI in healthy adults and evaluating logical ability in individuals with severe aphasia, we find that distinct neural systems support language processing vs. logical (inductive and deductive) reasoning. These results suggest that, at least in mature brains, language processing does not underpin logical inference, perhaps due to the distinct representational format of the logical LOT.
Abstract
Humans are endowed with a powerful capacity for inductive and deductive logical thought: we easily form generalizations based on a few examples and draw conclusions from known premises.
Humans also arguably have the most sophisticated communication system in the animal kingdom: natural language allows us to express complex and structured meanings.
Some have therefore argued for a tight relationship between complex thought and language, postulating that reasoning, including logical reasoning, relies on linguistic representations.
We systematically investigated the relationship between logical reasoning and language using two complementary approaches.
First, we used noninvasive brain imaging (fMRI) to examine neural activity as healthy adults engaged in logical reasoning tasks.
And second, we behaviorally evaluated logical abilities in individuals with extensive lesions to the language brain areas and consequent severe linguistic impairment.
Our findings reveal that the language brain network is not engaged during logical reasoning, and patients with severe aphasia exhibit intact performance on logic tasks.
Instead, inductive reasoning recruits the domain-general multiple demand network implicated broadly in goal-directed behaviors,
whereas deductive reasoning draws on brain regions that are distinct from both the language and the multiple demand networks.
Together, these results indicate that linguistic representations are neither utilized nor required for inductive or deductive logical reasoning."
Evidence from formal logical reasoning reveals that the language of thought is not natural language (no public access)
Evidence from Formal Logical Reasoning Reveals that the Language of Thought is not Natural Language (preprint, open access)
A functional brain scan of a neurotypical participant in a new study shows a distinct separation between logic (green) and language (red/yellow) activations.
From Musk to Truth Social: Critics say the 46th President's SEC targeted Trump's allies
The 46th President was a lousy one! May he rest in hell and may the Dimocratic Party be damned for a long time for allowing this to happen!
"On January 14, 2025, just six days before President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second, non-consecutive term, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk, who was entering the administration with Trump as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). ...
After the purchase [of Twitter in 2022], Musk’s other companies, SpaceX and Tesla, were also investigated by the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. Musk himself warned this would happen after he announced he would no longer vote Democrat. ...
Trump himself has faced the SEC recently – also under the [46th President] administration – when his Truth Social media platform began a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC). When the merger was announced, the SEC began investigating, and a federal grand jury in New York issued subpoenas for DWAC’s board of directors, arguably causing the company’s stock price to drop. The merger was slow-walked, alleges Truth Social. ..."
Venezuela reforms its socialist oil policies, and production soars with Trump’s help
Good news!
"The South American country appeared to take another big step in that effort this week when acting President Delcy Rodriguez signed regulations reforming Venezuela's main oil law.
Under the new regulations, the country’s national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), effectively loses control of Venezuela’s vast oil resources.
Under the former communist regime, the country’s oil industry floundered. In May 2021, Venezuela was producing less than 600,000 barrels of oil a day, despite having the world’s largest oil reserves. This past May, it was producing nearly 1.2 million barrels of oil per day.
Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in the 1970s. Then in 2007, former President Hugo Chávez forced foreign oil companies to surrender majority stakes to the state, which resulted in the departure of ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. Of the big players, only Chevron acquiesced to the communist leader’s demands. ..."
Researcher proposes a way to detect nuclear weapons in space
Good news! However, this proposed detection system seems to be very slow and works only in close proximity of a satellite containing a nuclear weapon.
"In 2024, a U.S. government official warned that Russia could be developing a new satellite designed to carry nuclear weapons into space. The statement followed the launch of a suspicious Russian satellite into low-Earth orbit in 2022, just a few weeks before the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A nuclear detonation in low-Earth orbit — the region about 100 miles to 1,200 miles above Earth’s surface — would release trillions of highly energetic electrons that would destroy many of the satellites in space, disrupting telecommunications networks, GPS, space-based internet, and more.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans the placement of nuclear weapons in space, but there’s currently no way to verify satellites don’t contain nuclear weapons. In fact, no verification methods have even been proposed in unclassified, peer-reviewed literature. ...
In the paper, Danagoulian calculates that a sensor system the size of a large encyclopedia could detect a nuclear weapon with 99 percent accuracy if it orbited within 4,000 meters of the suspect satellite for about a week. He also estimates that the detection time could be cut to a matter of hours if multiple satellite sensors were used or the sensor satellite was able to get within 1,000 meters of the suspect satellite. ..."
From the abstract:
"The Outer Space Treaty (OST) was opened to signatures in 1967 and, since then, 117 countries, including China, the USA and Russia, have become part of it. Among other stipulations, the treaty bans the placement of nuclear weapons in outer space.
Recently, the US government has raised worries that Russia is testing nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) components, with the possibility that it will place a nuclear weapon in space.
Such a device, if detonated, would destroy most of the satellites in the low Earth orbit. This danger is compounded by the lack of a verification mechanism for the OST.
No methodologies of verification have been proposed in the open peer-reviewed literature.
Here a concept and feasibility study is presented for verifying a satellite’s compliance to the OST by observing the neutrons induced by spallation from the approximately GeV protons in the inner Van Allen radiation belts.
The calculations show that a 9U-CubeSat-sized detection platform can identify a thermonuclear weapon from a distance of 4 km in approximately one week of observation. This conceptual study will stimulate and inform future research and development of verification platforms for the OST."
Verification of the Outer Space Treaty with cosmic protons (no public access)
Verification of the Outer Space Treaty with Cosmic Protons (preprint, open access)
Studying grass grow
Amazing stuff!
"Watching grass grow gets a bad name—studying how grass grows is anything but boring. Grasses include many of our most critical food sources including wheat, rice, and corn. And until recently, nobody was quite sure what factors caused these plants to grow tall.
In a new study, a team of researchers revealed that temperature, not light, determines when grass stems harden, allowing for vertical growth.
To monitor growth, the scientists merged a gene important for the development of the secondary cell wall—the structure that causes grass stems to become rigid—with the gene that makes fireflies glow.
Then, they exposed the plant to a variety of light and temperature conditions and watched how they responded with a time-lapse camera. ...
Neither daylight nor any sort of internal clock had an impact on grass growth. But when the biologists varied the temperature, their grasses responded. In cooler conditions, plants started slowly before rapidly growing; in the heat, grass growth initially spiked but soon dropped to a slower pace.
In addition, pulses of warmth in cool temperatures prompted the greatest growth rates, while cold blasts in the heat ground growth to nearly a halt.
What the study might mean for crop growth, including in the context of climate change, remains unknown. Nevertheless, the findings present new insights into the unexpectedly fascinating process of how grass grows. ..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
• Thermocycles, not light or the circadian clock, drive CESA8 rhythms
• CESA8 expression increases during cool nights and declines during warm days
• Secondary-wall gene expression is coordinated with stem elongation
• Warm and cold pulses trigger opposing responses, explained by an incoherent feedforward loop model
Summary
Secondary cell wall thickening is essential for plant structural development, providing the mechanical strength and rigidity required for upright growth. However, direct observation of this process in its endogenous developmental context within living plants has remained limited.
Cellulose, the predominant component of secondary walls and the most abundant biopolymer on Earth, is synthesized at the plasma membrane by complexes containing CELLULOSE SYNTHASE A (CESA) proteins.
Despite its central role, the precise timing and regulation of cellulose deposition during plant development remain unclear.
To address this gap, we developed a real-time bioluminescence imaging system in the model grass Brachypodium distachyon using a luciferase transcriptional reporter driven by the CESA8 cis-regulatory region.
Bioluminescence imaging revealed a consistent spatial pattern of CESA8 expression within elongating internodes, coinciding with regions undergoing secondary wall deposition and progressive increases in cellulose crystallinity. Time-lapse imaging showed that expression follows a robust daily rhythm driven by temperature cycles, independent of light or endogenous circadian signals. Temperature-pulse experiments uncovered rapid, transient inverse responses that were accurately predicted by a mathematical model based on an incoherent feedforward loop.
CESA8 expression correlated strongly with stem elongation, linking structural reinforcement with temperature-driven shoot growth in grasses."
Grasses Provide Most of the World’s Calories—But We’re Only Now Starting to Learn How They Grow (original news release) "UMass Amherst researchers devise technique to show grasses don’t grow like most other plants"
Temperature signals drive grass secondary cell wall thickening (partial public access)
Graphical abstract
Trump admin says it returned Endangered Species Act to original intent by changing 'harm' definition
Good news! Bravo! What took so long! Should have happened on day one in office!
"... This reform is based on the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which requires agencies to follow the single best meaning of a statute rather than contorting laws to fit political agendas. Using the legally justifiable standard, the Services determined that the prior definition of “harm” was an unlawful regulatory intrusion that interfered with private property rights. ..."
"... The Commerce and Interior Departments said they are rescinding the "outdated" regulatory definition of "harm," stating it will no longer interpret “harm” of a protected species to include modifications to a plant or animal’s habitat that could be detrimental to its survival.
The departments argued that previous administrations "weaponized" the word to block energy production, logging, infrastructure projects and private citizens' land use. ..."
Department of the Interior Restores Clear ESA Enforcement by Rescinding Misguided “Harm” Definition "ESA protections remain in place while reducing burdens for landowners and communities"
Brain glutamate changes could link cannabis use to a higher risk of psychosis
More bad news for e.g. recreational cannabis use! Got to be careful using such drugs!
"... Researchers ... recently carried out a study exploring the possibility that brain glutamate levels could partly explain the relationship between cannabis use and psychotic symptoms. Their paper, published in Molecular Psychiatry, suggests that differences in glutamate levels could be one of the biological pathways linking cannabis use to psychosis. ...
As part of their study, ... examined 79 people with varying levels of psychosis vulnerability. Some of these participants had no known psychiatric conditions and were not experiencing any mental health-related symptoms. Others were considered at a high risk of experiencing psychosis. Finally, a portion of participants were diagnosed with psychosis.
All the participants completed clinical assessments to determine whether they were experiencing positive psychosis symptoms (i.e., hallucinations and delusions), negative psychosis symptoms (i.e., low motivation, a reduced ability to feel pleasure, social withdrawal and a lack of emotional expression), or mood-related symptoms. The researchers also collected information about the patients' cannabis use and analyzed their urine to detect any recent use of the substance.
Finally, the researchers examined the participants' brains using a technique called ultra-high-field 7 Tesla magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1HMRS). This technique allowed them to measure the concentration of specific chemicals in the brain, particularly in a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). ..."
From the abstract:
"Cannabis use is linked to elevated psychosis risk, yet the neurobiological mechanisms that couple use to symptom expression remain unclear. Because glutamatergic dysregulation has been implicated in both cannabis effects and psychosis vulnerability, we examined whether brain glutamate relates to dimensional psychosis symptoms as a function of cannabis use across the psychosis spectrum.
Seventy-nine participants—typically developing controls, clinical high-risk individuals, and patients with psychosis—completed dimensional clinical assessments, detailed cannabis use surveys, urine toxicology, and ultra-high-field 7T magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1HMRS) of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).
Linear models assessed the main and interactive effects of ACC glutamate and cannabis use on psychopathology symptoms.
Self-reported cannabis use showed good concordance with urine toxicology, with strongest agreement among frequent users.
Both lower ACC glutamate and higher cannabis use were independently associated with positive and negative psychosis symptoms.
Notably, lower glutamate levels were associated with higher positive symptoms in cannabis users but not cannabis non-users.
Exploratory analyses suggested interactions for depressive and manic symptoms, indicating that glutamatergic abnormalities may amplify the overall severity of cannabis-related symptoms.
Sensitivity analyses revealed lower ACC glutamate in psychosis patients—especially cannabis users—highlighting diagnostic group differences and reinforcing the link between cannabis exposure and glutamatergic dysfunction. These findings implicate ACC glutamatergic dysfunction as a transdiagnostic correlate of symptom burden, particularly in those with psychosis who are cannabis users. Glutamate-targeted interventions and longitudinal designs will be needed to examine causal pathways linking cannabis exposure to psychosis-relevant outcomes."
Cannabis use and glutamate across the psychosis spectrum: in vivo evidence from 7T proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (open access)
Fig. 1: Individual metabolite quantification and voxel overlap in single-voxel spectroscopy (SVS) ¹HMRS.
Fig. 4: Glutamate × cannabis interactions predicting dimensional psychosis symptoms.
A Unified Framework for Statistical Testing of Invariance
This could be an interesting paper by Stefanie Jegelka!
From the abstract:
"While invariances naturally arise in almost any type of real-world data, no efficient and robust test exists for detecting them in observational data under arbitrarily given group actions.
We tackle this problem by studying discrepancy-based measures of invariance that can capture even subtle distributional asymmetries.
Our first contribution is to show that, while detecting worst-case asymmetries can be computationally intractable, a randomized method can estimate closeness measures to invariance within universal constant factors.
This provides a general framework for statistical testing of invariance under compact group actions.
Despite the extensive and well-established literature on group-based testing, our methodology, to the best of our knowledge, is the first to provide statistical tests for general group invariances with finite-sample guarantees on Type II errors against worst-case alternatives.
We instantiate the framework for common probability discrepancies, including total variation, Wasserstein distances, integral probability metrics, energy distance, and maximum mean discrepancy, obtaining explicit sample-complexity guarantees from empirical convergence rates."
Secretary of State Rubio to host major counterterrorism summit with 60 countries next week in DC
Good news! It has become fairly quiet about Rubio in recent months!
"The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to host a large-scale counterterrorism summit in Washington, D.C., next week that will include representatives from over 60 countries.
The summit will focus on the United States' new counterterrorism strategy, which elevates threats from leftist extremist groups such as Antifa by adding anti-propaganda tools and follow-the-money penalties that are designed to neuter political violence inspired by overseas leftists. ..."
President Trump and family: The most corrupt presidency in American history, by the numbers
Possibly serious stuff! This is a long article with a lot of claims purportedly backed up by facts! I did not have time to double check the many claims etc.
Among other things, the article claims that President Trump pardoned numerous convicted criminal individuals who donated substantial amounts to his campaigns.
It seems his comparison only with President Clinton and his pardoning of March Rich, in the beginning of the article as an introduction, is very selective and possibly flawed.
The author also uses the Watergate Scandal for comparison.
The article failed to provide any tables or lists to summarize the claims.
The immigrant to migrant switch in public discourse
In recent years news media and other sources have avoided the term immigrant and substituted it with migrant. Immigrants and migrants are not the same!
According to Google search: "Migration is the broad, overarching term for any movement of people (or animals) from one location to another, whether across international borders or within a single country.
Immigration is a more specific type of migration that refers exclusively to the act of permanently moving to and settling in a foreign country."
A nice switch in terminology most likely triggered by some ideology!
Are not e.g. gypsies or cross border commuter workers considered to be migrants?
SK Hynix raises $26.5B in the biggest foreign IPO in US history, is urged to build new US fabs
Good news!
Calvin Coolidge 1926: "After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world."
"... This deal, the largest-ever U.S. debut by a non-American company, topped Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO in 2014. ...
The company begins trading on the Nasdaq today, Friday, July 10, under the temporary ticker SKHYV. Regular trading opens Monday, July 13, when the ticker officially becomes SKHY. So far, U.S. investors are lapping it up. The stock opened at 14% over its IPO price, and the price was still rising in early trading on Friday. ..."
Friday, July 10, 2026
Evolution of a core ribosomal innovation in octopus leading to less error prone proteins
Amazing stuff!
"Octopuses are among the strangest creatures on Earth—right down to their molecules. New research has found that octopuses of a certain lineage have a mutation not seen in any other organism that makes their cellular machinery extremely accurate at creating proteins. As a result, their proteins are less likely to form toxic clumps. ...
The team serendipitously discovered a change in the octopus gene encoding ribosomal RNA (rRNA), which is part of the cellular machinery that translates mRNA messages into proteins. This region of the rRNA sequence is identical in every other known organism, from humans to bacteria. But in octopuses, the mutation causes the rRNA to break into two fragments and occurs right at a crucial spot where the rRNA matches the right amino acid to the right genetic instruction. Ribosomes with this break made about 50% fewer errors than other species’ ribosomes when incorporating amino acids into a protein. ..."
From the abstract:
"Much of biology focuses on how genetic changes mediate new functions, but less attention is given to adaptations in other steps of the central dogma.
Octopuses exhibit complex nervous systems and sophisticated behaviors that rival vertebrates, but via an entirely divergent evolutionary history.
Here, we serendipitously discovered that octopus ribosomes contain a structural break in the core ribosomal RNA that is unique among all animals.
This break site enhances translation fidelity to reduce miscoding and subsequent protein aggregation, even when engineered into evolutionarily distant bacterial ribosomes.
Furthermore, high fidelity translation by octopus ribosomes supports proteomic stability during extensive RNA editing observed in cephalopods, suggesting synergy between distinct non-canonical modes of gene regulation.
This adaptation emerged in recently derived octopuses with expanded nervous systems, thereby revealing a mechanism that could broadly support the evolution of novel organismal traits."
Adaptive Innovation in the Octopus Ribosome (PhD dissertation by one of the involved researchers, 2025)
Evolution of a core ribosomal innovation in octopus (preprint, open access)
Figure 1. The octopus has a unique structural adaptation in the conserved ribosomal core
You Don't Need Strong Assumptions: Visual Representation Learning via Temporal Differences
This could be an interesting new paper by Yann LeCun and his team!
From the abstract:
"Progress in AI has largely been driven by methods that assume less. As compute and data increase, approaches with weaker inductive biases generally outperform those with stronger assumptions.
This is particularly characteristic of the field of Visual Representation Learning, where approaches have gone from being dominated by Supervised Learning, to Weakly Supervised Learning, to the now widespread success of Self-Supervised Learning without human labels.
Yet, even modern Self-Supervised Learning approaches still depend on strong inductive biases such as augmentations, masking, or cropping. If this trend holds, even these remaining biases should become bottlenecks at scale -- and our experiments confirm this: the optimal strength of inductive biases decreases as data grows.
This motivates the search for approaches that rely on fewer assumptions. To this end, we introduce Temporal Difference in Vision (TDV), a new paradigm for self-supervised learning from video that avoids existing inductive biases, relying instead on a causal assumption that the past causes the future.
TDV functions by jointly training an image encoder and a motion encoder so that the current frame's representation plus the encoded motion equals the next frame's representation. Despite not leveraging any strong inductive biases, TDV matches state-of-the-art recipes on dense spatial tasks, laying the foundation for representation learning without strong assumptions."
‘Testing is now underway’ in the US of Ukrainian drones: Zelenskyy confirms progress on major US defense deals
Good news!
"he United States is already testing Ukrainian-made aerial and maritime drones and has given Kyiv “very positive feedback,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday, the clearest sign yet that a long-stalled drone-production deal with Washington worth billions is moving ahead.
The confirmation came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump at the NATO summit in Ankara pledged the U.S. would give Ukraine a license to build its own Patriot interceptors, a long-sought goal for Kyiv as a global shortage of the missiles and intensifying Russian strikes leave its cities exposed. ..."
U.S. President Donald Trump holds a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026.
Theories and Predictions on Ozone Depletion and Climate Change
This might be an interesting video!
"In our latest webinar we talk with Qing-Bin Lu, Professor of Physics at the University of Waterloo and author of the recent book Theories and Predictions on Ozone Depletion and Climate Change, about his theory, and testable predictions, challenging the notion of CO2 as the main driver of modern global warming."
Israel's Rafael reportedly to begin producing Iron Dome interceptors in India
Good news! India & Israel is a great team! India, a rising superpower!
"Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is in talks with Indian defense companies to set up a production line in the country for Iron Dome interceptors, according to recent reports in India.
Rafael currently produces the system’s interceptors at one of its plants in northern Israel, and last year a missile production line also began operating in the US in partnership with Raytheon. The American plant will supply interceptors for the Marines’ new air defense system and, if necessary, can reinforce production in Israel.
India bought the Israel Aerospace Industries Barak 8 air defense system for its air force, navy and army for billions of dollars. The system was developed jointly by the two countries, but India has equipped itself with a domestic air defense system for shorter ranges. ..."
A neurotransmitter called GABA enhances the growth of glioblastoma in female mice. Really!
Since when is GABA a female only neurotransmitter! Junk journalism and junk science!
Google search: "GABA is not a sex-specific neurotransmitter, as it is found and operates as the primary inhibitory system in both male and female brains."
May I guess that the sex differences were poorly tested or exaggerated by these researchers.
"A neurotransmitter called GABA enhances the growth of glioblastoma in female mice by activating monocyte-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), which then suppress the activity of T cells. A similar pathway exists in women with glioblastoma [???], suggesting that blocking GABA signalling could be a treatment option."
"Glioblastoma is a deadly primary brain tumor with a complex immunosuppressive microenvironment that poses a therapeutic challenge. A study now demonstrates that GABAB signaling enhances immunosuppressive programs of myeloid-derived suppressor cells in female models [???] of preclinical glioblastoma."
From the abstract:
"Sex differences in immune responses impact cancer outcomes and treatment response, including in glioblastoma (GBM). However, host factors underlying distinct immune-cancer interactions are poorly understood. Here we identify γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) as a female-specific driver [???] of GBM-promoting immune response.
We demonstrated that GABA receptor B (GABBR) signaling enhances the T cell suppressive function of granulocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells (gMDSCs) from female mice by upregulating the cationic amino acid transporter 2–L-arginine–nitric oxide synthase 2 (NOS2) pathway.
GABBR agonism promotes GBM growth in female preclinical models through gMDSCs, while GABBR antagonism extends survival and reduces NOS2 in tumor-infiltrating gMDSCs only in female mice.
Immune cells from female participants with GBM have enriched GABA transcriptional signatures and a higher GABA concentration compared to male counterparts.
Collectively, these results highlight the sex-specific immunomodulatory role of GABA in tumorigenesis, supporting future assessment of GABA pathway inhibitors for cancer immunotherapy."
GABA shapes GBM immune responses in a sex-dependent manner (no public access)
GABA signaling activation drives glioblastoma progression in female mice through myeloid-derived suppressor cells (open access)
NYC Mayor Mamdani Erases/omits Little Italy, Irish, and Jewish from the map of ethnic enclaves
When was the last time NYC had a great mayor? Since Rudy Giuliani (mayor from 1994-2001)? Was Rudy not an Italian-American?
"Not having Little Italy on a map of ethnic enclaves in New York is like leaving the Golden Gate Bridge off a list of bridges in San Francisco. And yet that is precisely what the Ugandan-born socialist mayor of New York has done. ..."
Chinese submarine launched ballistic missile test is said to undermine nuclear weapons-free zone in South Pacific
Concerning stuff! More sable rattling by the Communist Party of China? Was this necessary?
"China’s test this week of a submarine-launched ballistic missile follows a growing trend of nuclear powers hollowing out the integrity of nuclear weapons-free zones such as the South Pacific, analysts say.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy launched a ballistic missile from a submarine off its coast on Monday, which subsequently flew southeast over the Pacific for about 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles), according to a map released by the Taiwan National Security Council, before splashing down near the island nations of Nauru and Tuvalu. ..."
"China’s rare launch of a ballistic missile from a nuclear-powered submarine into the deep Pacific sent a strategic signal to the United States and regional neighbours, particularly Japan, amid concerns about Beijing’s military expansion. ..."
What does China’s submarine missile test mean for its nuclear triad expansion? "More than a technical milestone, undersea launch sends strategic signal to the US and Beijing’s neighbours in Asia-Pacific, analysts say"
Flight pass of the SLBM (The X post did not allow to copy the image so I took a screenshot of it! Grrr!)
A test missile is fired from a Chinese nuclear-powered submarine towards the Pacific Ocean on Monday.
Donald J. Trump International Airport Miami
President Trump does not miss an opportunity for self promotion! 😊 The Art of the Deal!
Did DJT learn this from Donald King, the greatest boxing promoter ever famous for e.g. "The Rumble in the Jungle"? Just kidding!
"Palm Beach International Airport officially became Donald J. Trump International Airport yesterday, with the FAA switching its code from PBI to DJT. Travelers should keep booking with PBI until Aug. 18."
FAA begins DJT transition as Trump airport rename takes effect "Palm Beach International Airport has entered the first phase of its transition to Donald J. Trump International Airport"
English for trippers: Threats and treads
Step in! Step up! Made of concrete!
Treadmill!
Since we are celebrating 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence
SpaceX launched the first nuclear-powered commercial satellite
Good news!
"SpaceX launched the first nuclear-powered commercial satellite, built by Florida-based City Labs, aboard a Falcon 9 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California."
"City Labs today announced that its BOHR (Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability) satellite, the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite and first nuclear CubeSat, has been officially manifested aboard SpaceX Transporter-17, a rideshare mission launched today.
The BOHR mission demonstrates City Labs’ proprietary NanoTritium™ betavoltaic technology in orbit as a dedicated payload power source, providing continuous, long-duration electrical power independent of solar energy. This milestone establishes a new class of spacecraft capabilities, enabling persistent operation of critical subsystems where traditional power systems fall short. This includes deep space, permanently shadowed lunar regions, and long-duration autonomous sensor networks.
The BOHR spacecraft utilizes conventional solar power for satellite bus operations, while the NanoTritium™ system is used to power and validate the payload demonstration. ..."
SpaceX just launched the 1st-ever nuclear-powered commercial satellite "Who needs solar power anyway?" [???]
Airbus wants to build world’s first hydrogen fuel jet engine by 2035
Ambitious! This is quite a commitment given it's 10 years into the future plan!
"Airbus and Germany’s MTU Aero Engines have partnered to develop the world’s first fully electric hydrogen fuel cell aircraft engine by 2035."
"Electric hydrogen-powered aircraft were once considered a costly pipe dream, but recent advancements show it’s possible. One of the industry’s biggest aeronautics companies is pushing forward with plans to develop its own next-generation plane engine. On July 7, Airbus confirmed a partnership with Germany’s MTU Aero Engines to design and construct the world’s first aircraft engine powered entirely by electric hydrogen fuel cells.
A newly formed joint company aims to begin in 2027, depending on regulatory approvals from the European Union. Both sides previously entered into a memorandum of understanding at last year’s Paris Air Show ..."
Airbus and MTU Aero Engines to create a joint venture to develop a fully electric hydrogen fuel cell engine (original news release)
Gas Prices Rise like a Rocket & Fall like a Feather. Really!
Nice headline! But a false narrative and possibly junk journalism!
Of course, spot/future markets react immediately to bad news etc., while the reverse can not be said about good news. This is usually referred to as risk aversion! This has been well known for decades in economics and finance etc.!
NFL players are 4X more likely to die of neurodegenerative diseases
Maybe the NFL should try unprotected again like British rugby!
Have British rugby players ever been compared to NFL players in this respect?
At least many former NFL players can afford the best doctors and treatments available! Pardon my facetious comment!
"NFL players are 4X more likely to die of neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, dementia, and Parkinson’s than the general population, finds a study of ~20,000 NFL players; the study, which was published in the Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine, is the largest of its kind to date to examine mortality in pro football players."
From the abstract:
"Background
Empirical research demonstrates elevated neurodegenerative mortality among individuals with repetitive head impact (RHI) exposure, including National Football League (NFL) players. This investigation addressed prior methodological limitations, including selection bias, subjective diagnoses, and retrospective reporting, by analyzing the relationship between RHI exposure and neurodegenerative mortality in a fully enumerated, 5.8-fold larger cohort of NFL players.
Methods
A population-based retrospective cohort study was conducted comprising all current and former NFL athletes who debuted between 1960 and 2019 and played at least one regular or postseason NFL game, with National Death Index records (1979–2023) matched to Sports Reference, LLC data. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were calculated from National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health data compared to an age-, sex-, race-, and calendar-year-standardized general population. Sensitivity analysis assessed whether the observed excess neurodegenerative mortality could be attributed to competing risks using a cause-specific hazard simulation.
Findings
A total of 19,824 athletes had a cumulative 518,833 person-years (mean = 26.2 years, SD = 16.2), with 1994 decedents.
NFL players exhibited lower all-cause mortality (SMR = 0.70; 95% CI: 0.67–0.74) but higher neurodegenerative mortality (SMR = 3.94; 95% CI: 3.38–4.56), including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (SMR = 4.55; 95% CI = 3.13–6.38),
all-cause dementia (SMR = 3.80; 95% CI = 3.11–4.60), and
Parkinson's disease (SMR = 3.88; 95% CI: 2.76–5.30).
Cause-specific hazard simulation indicated that competing risks alone would inflate the expected NDD SMR by a factor of 1.30, yielding a residual neurodegenerative SMR of 3.04 (95% CI: 2.63–3.50).
Interpretation
Neurodegenerative mortality was nearly four times higher in NFL players compared to the general population and remained threefold higher after accounting for competing risks. Together, these findings strengthen the evidence for RHI exposure-related neurodegenerative mortality in NFL players that cannot be explained by differential survivorship."
NFL Players Four Times More Likely to Die of Diseases Like ALS, Dementia, and Parkinson’s, BU Study Finds (original news release) "Analysis of nearly 20,000 current and former pro football players connects longer careers to increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases"
Der Asphalt schwitzt: Deutschlands Straßen sind nicht für 40 Grad gebaut
Deutsche Ingenieure können gerne mal die Phoenix Metro in Arizona besuchen!
Dem deutschen Ingenieur ist nichts zu schwör (oder zu heiß)! 😊
British ‘First Fleet’ brought smallpox to Australia—and may have killed millions and new estimates of Australia's population at the time. Really!
Possibly, two more junk science studies trying to malign Western colonialism?
One of the two studies seems to have relied heavily on computer modelling! This is not evidence!
The abstract of both studies are loaded with dubious ideological language indicating a bias on the part of researchers.
Why did the indigenous people of Australia not protect themselves? Did these people not know anything about contagious diseases?
What if the smallpox did not only arrive from the northern coast by other seafaring populations?
"On a hot summer day in January 1788, 11 ships filled with British convicts and sailors landed in Australia’s Sydney Harbor. There, naval Captain Arthur Phillip raised the Union Jack and claimed the continent for the British crown.
The arrival of this so-called First Fleet preceded a catastrophe that befell the continent’s Indigenous people. More than a year after the first landing, “there are a significant number of Aboriginal people perishing in horrible, ghastly circumstances [???] from what sounds like smallpox,” says Lynette Russell, a historian at Monash University. “By 1789, a horrendous depopulation has occurred.” ...
Some historians put forward an alternative hypothesis: that the disease entered the continent from the north through contact with seafaring populations in Indonesia, where smallpox had been circulating for centuries. ...
The team used computer models to test both hypotheses, incorporating mortality rates, potential travel pathways based on the availability of water, data on Aboriginal language groups, and estimates of population densities between Sydney and Australia’s northern coast. The modeling showed that any smallpox epidemic originating on Australia’s northern coast would have petered out before making it thousands of kilometers over land to Sydney Harbor.
“No matter how bad we assume the disease to be, it couldn’t have made it from the north to Sydney at the right time,” says Flinders University ecologist Corey Bradshaw, a co-author of both papers. “It’s beyond a shadow of a doubt” that it came with the fleet. ...
The study sidesteps the question of whether members of the First Fleet knowingly exposed Indigenous people to smallpox. Although there’s no record of any such plans from Australia, British colonists are known to have deliberately infected Indigenous groups in North America, where smallpox also took a catastrophic toll. ...
In the other preprint, members of the same research team calculated how large of a population was exposed to those impacts. Based on ethnographic reports gathered in the late 1800s, previous researchers had suggested there were between 200,000 and 800,000 people in precolonial Australia, mostly living in tiny, isolated bands of hunter-gatherers. “There’s been an assumption that Aboriginal populations were quite low and their activities were ephemeral and transient,” says archaeologist Alan Williams, a consultant who co-authored both papers.
Analyzing thousands of radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites across Australia, Williams tracked when people first reached different parts of the continent, beginning more than 50,000 years ago. He then extrapolated population growth over time, based on fertility and survival rates in other parts of the world and the rate at which artifacts proliferated across the landscape as a proxy for population growth. “If you start with a population of 1000, and it goes up even 1% a year, you end up with a population of millions,” Williams says. ..."
From the abstract (2):
"The impact of smallpox (variola) on Aboriginal communities in Australia beginning in 1789 was catastrophic and continues to cause intergenerational trauma. [???]
Historically biased perspectives [???] and contemporary misinformation of the disease’s introduction and spread impede modern-day truth-telling [???] and efforts towards reconciliation and national healing.
Understanding whether the disease entered and spread from pre-colonial Makassan (Indonesian) trade along the northern coast, or from the British First Fleet’s arrival in southeastern Australia in 1788, is necessary to estimate the demographic impact.
Here we developed stochastic, multipatch epidemiological models supported by systematic evaluation of historical observations to test hypotheses regarding possible disease entry points, spread rate and demographic impacts.
Our models support the hypothesis that entry of the disease was in southeastern Australia. Even under ideal conditions and with higher-than-probable infection rates, simulations show that smallpox was unlikely to reach Sydney from a northern entry.
We found no evidence that the 1789 epidemic was Australia-wide. Assuming 60% lethality based on global data, the loss of approximately 220,000 people would have occurred in these regions. While catastrophic to traditional Indigenous lifeways in the southeast, the disease also provided the catalyst for population decline and marginalization of Indigenous people in the face of expanding European populations. Our models indicate that it is unlikely that other parts of Australia were affected by the initial epidemic. We warn readers that the content of this study might be distressing."
From the abstract (4):
"Estimating the size of Indigenous populations in Australia prior to European colonial invasion [???] is essential to truth-telling [???] and reconciliation.
Robust estimates of the population dynamics of pre-colonial Indigenous Australians are poor due to lethal diseases, frontier violence, and no systematic censuses.
We review ethnographic observations, archaeological and genetic reconstructions, and modelled carrying capacity, to infer Indigenous population size prior to colonial invasion. This allows an estimate of the number of excess deaths in post-colonial times.
Congruency of the modelled (not historical accounts) estimates suggests a bootstrapped pre-colonial median of 2.51 million, or 0.33 people km -2 . For a median pre-colonial population of 2.51 million, ~ 32,500 excess deaths year -1 (2.39 million deaths in total) would have had to occur over the late 18 th and early 19 th Centuries from colonial invasion-related mortality.
These findings highlight the major impacts of invasion experienced by Indigenous Australians, and demonstrate their survival, resilience, and recovery over the past 235 years."
(1) Stochastic models indicate rapid smallpox spread and mass mortality of Indigenous Australians after colonial exposure (preprint, open access)
(2) Stochastic models indicate rapid smallpox spread and mass mortality of Indigenous Australians after colonial exposure (no public access)
Fig. 1 The 49 ethnographic entries from the Binford29 hunter-gatherer database (red dots — darker red indicates relatively higher densities) overlaid on the HadCM330 net primary production-derived estimates of human carrying capacities (expressed in people km-2). States and territories indicated. Legend indicates relative densities (greyscale). Also shown are several place names mentioned in the text.
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