Headline of the day!
Monday, May 25, 2026
Inside Huawei's chip comeback: The woman taking on US sanctions
Michelin Guide to discontinue green star
Good news! It is never too late to end fads and follies!
"... The green star, launched in 2020, was created to recognise restaurants leading the way in sustainable gastronomy. It will be replaced by Mindful Voices, a new platform that will be rolled out globally from Monday, June 1, 2026. ..."
A dwarf artist on the Beijing subway
Amazing! He is a scissor paper cut artist working out of his vehicle taking a ride on the Beijing subway!
China: Train attendants wear active body cams
Train passenger smile and be on your best behavior, you are on camera!
No wonder these train attendants are so attentive and busy doing their job all the time.
Usually, there is also at least one train security officer in uniform (unarmed) on many trains. Often you see this officer walking through the train cars.
Neither Google nor Bing produced any good photos on this subject when queried! Disappointing!
On Gated DeltaNet-2: Decoupling Erase and Write in Linear Attention
This could be an interesting paper by Nvidia researchers Yejin Choi and Jan Kautz!
"Linear attention replaces the unbounded cache of softmax attention with a fixed-size recurrent state, reducing sequence mixing to linear time and decoding to constant memory.
The hard part is not just what to forget, but how to edit this compressed memory without scrambling existing associations.
Delta-rule models subtract the current read before writing a new value, and Kimi Delta Attention (KDA) sharpens forgetting with channel-wise decay. But the active edit still uses a single scalar gate to control two different things: how much old content to erase on the key side and how much new content to commit on the value side.
Delta-rule models subtract the current read before writing a new value, and Kimi Delta Attention (KDA) sharpens forgetting with channel-wise decay. But the active edit still uses a single scalar gate to control two different things: how much old content to erase on the key side and how much new content to commit on the value side.
We introduce Gated DeltaNet-2, which generalizes both Gated DeltaNet and KDA by inheriting adaptive forgetting and channel-wise decay while addressing their shared limitation, the scalar tie between erasing and writing.
Gated Delta Rule-2 separates these roles with a channel-wise erase gate b_t and a channel-wise write gate w_t, reducing to KDA when both gates collapse to the same scalar and to Gated DeltaNet when the decay also collapses.
We derive a fast-weight update view, a chunkwise WY algorithm with channel-wise decay absorbed into asymmetric erase factors, and a gate-aware backward pass that preserves efficient parallel training.
At 1.3B parameters trained on 100B FineWeb-Edu tokens, Gated DeltaNet-2 achieves the strongest overall results among Mamba-2, Gated DeltaNet, KDA, and Mamba-3 variants across language modeling, commonsense reasoning, and retrieval.
Its advantage is most pronounced on long-context RULER needle-in-a-haystack benchmarks, where it improves the evaluated multi-key retrieval setting and remains strong in both recurrent and hybrid settings. ..."
OpenAI model finds proof resolving famous mathematics problem dating from 1946
Amazing stuff! More to come! This is only the beginning!
"OpenAI model finds proof resolving famous mathematics problem
An OpenAI reasoning model has resolved the planar unit distance problem, a central question in discrete geometry posed by legendary mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946.
The conjecture held that square grid constructions were essentially optimal for maximizing unit-distance pairs among points in a plane, a belief that stood unchallenged for nearly 80 years.
The model instead found an infinite family of configurations yielding polynomial improvements over the grid approach, disproving the assumption.
What makes the breakthrough unusual is not just the result itself, but how it was found: a general-purpose reasoning model, not a system specialized for mathematics, produced a proof that external mathematicians have verified. The proof brings sophisticated tools from algebraic number theory to bear on an elementary geometric question, revealing unexpected connections between distant mathematical domains. Fields medalist Tim Gowers called it “a milestone in AI mathematics,” while number theorist Arul Shankar argued the result shows AI models “are capable of having original ingenious ideas, and then carrying them out to fruition.”" (Source)
Paul Erdos (Source)
Previously known construction of many unit distances from a rescaled square grid.
Immune cell mix predicts chemotherapy response to agressive breast cancer
Good news! Cancer is history (soon)!
The ideologues at the former prestigious Nature journal again resorted to calling women "people". Very appalling!
"Immune cells called macrophages might determine whether people with an aggressive form of breast cancer respond to chemotherapy or not. After examining tissue samples from more than 100 people [???] with triple-negative breast cancer, researchers identified eight distinct cellular communities, or ecotypes, in tumours. “Some macrophage subtypes are associated with good response to chemotherapy, while others are associated with poor response — they play a dual role,” .... “This is important in triple-negative breast cancer where most of the focus on immune cells has previously been on the T-cell populations.”"
- "Triple-negative breast cancer is treated with chemotherapy, but outcomes vary significantly among patients
- Tumors have unique characteristics at the genetic and cellular level that impact the immune system and the way it responds to treatment
- Researchers found that certain subtypes of immune cells, called macrophages, are associated with response to chemotherapy before treatment
- A panel of 13 genes can help predict which patients have tumors that are more likely to respond to chemotherapy
..."
From the abstract:
"Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype that is frequently treated with chemotherapy, but only half of the patients respond well and have good clinical outcome.
Here we leveraged pretreatment tissue samples from treatment-naive patients with TNBC who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy and performed single-cell transcriptomic analysis of 427,857 cells from 101 patients and spatial transcriptomic analysis of 44 patients.
We classified TNBC tumours into 4 patient-level subtypes (archetypes) using the cancer-cell gene expression and identified 13 metaprograms that reflect intra-tumoural heterogeneity at the single-cell level.
The TNBC tumour microenvironment consisted of 49 immune and stromal cell states, many of which were reprogrammed relative to normal breast tissues. Furthermore, we identified eight distinct cellular communities (ecotypes) on the basis of the co-occurrences of cancer cells and tumour microenvironment cell types, and their spatial organization in tissues.
In contrast to previous studies on T cells, our data show the importance of macrophage subtypes and cancer-cell metaprograms for interferon signalling, human leukocyte antigen expression and cell cycle activity that are associated with a good response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
Collectively, this study provides new insights into the biology of untreated TNBC tumours and their association with chemotherapy response."
Study may help predict response to chemotherapy in triple-negative breast cancer (original news release)
Fig. 1: Study design and main cell types in TNBC.
Fig. 2: Patient-level archetypes of patients with TNBC identified from cancer cells.
Extended Data Fig. 10: Classifiers for predicting NAC response and graphical summary.
The United States and Iran continue to hold fundamentally different positions on most major issues within the US-Iran “agreement.”
The world is still waiting for the Iranian people to finally get rid of their theocratic dictatorship!
What are the coward and lethargic Europeans waiting for! Their lack of support for the US and Israel in this matter is a shame!
"The United States and Iran continue to hold fundamentally different positions on most major issues within the US-Iran “agreement.” Iran has not publicly committed to removing its highly enriched uranium (HEU) stockpiles or to halting uranium enrichment in Iran, reinforcing broader uncertainty around the negotiations. ...
Iran has continued to claim that it and Oman control the Strait of Hormuz as territorial waters. Iranian officials are attempting to reframe transit tolls as “protection fees” to give Iran’s protection racket the veneer of legality. ..."
100% renewable energy by 2050? A global model maps the way forward. Really!
No wonder, this study came out of communist China (elite Tsinghua University)! Massive socialist central planning and dictatorship are needed!
And the once prestigious Nature journal published this nonsense! Just the abstract of this paper contains ideological terms!
"... This goal is referred to as net-zero emissions [???], as it would entail that emissions and removed gases would balance each other out, resulting in zero total greenhouse gas emissions. ..."
From the abstract:
"Achieving global net-zero power systems by mid-century demands integrated frameworks addressing climate mitigation and energy access equity [???].
Here we present a spatio-temporally resolved global power system model (0.25° × 0.25°, 8,760 hours) co-optimizing capacity expansion and operational strategies. Findings show that net-zero global power systems meeting universal electricity needs for decent living standards are technically feasible, requiring 15–20 TW of variable renewable energy (VRE). Abundant VRE resources offer cost-effective electricity access in low-income regions, such as Africa, promoting climate justice [???].
Land use is critical, with solar photovoltaics alone requiring over 9 million hectares. Over 80% of VRE is within 200 km of load centres.
Demand-side management could reduce system costs by 6.5% (∼US$182 billion yr−1).
Expanding international transmission and removing renewable technology trade barriers could cut costs by 5.6% (∼US$157 billion yr−1) and 12.2% (∼US$345 billion yr−1), underscoring the pivotal role of international collaboration in building inclusive net-zero power systems."
Integrated planning of net-zero power systems for all (no public access)
A short biography of mathematician Georg Cantor
Recommendable!
Georg Cantor
President Trump fights crime
Good news!
"Violent Crime Plummeted at the Fastest Rate in Nearly 90 Years according to a new FBI report, with officials confirming that the Trump administration's tough-on-crime policies are working. Communities across America are safer, and the results speak for themselves — this is what happens when law enforcement is fully backed by the President of the United States.
The Administration's Anti-Fraud Momentum is Accelerating as President Trump's task force continues its work targeting an estimated $250 billion in government fraud — and officials say it is just getting started.
Simultaneously, HHS deployed artificial intelligence to detect Medicaid fraud and waste, bringing cutting-edge technology to bear in the fight to protect taxpayer dollars." White House newsletter
Google wants to Accelerate scientific discovery with Co-Scientist
Good news! We can use some more research assistants! 😊
It appears, the Google Co-Scientist was already announced in Spring of 2025 (see also my blog post here and the Google blog post).
"... The Co-Scientist AI system is made of a collaborative coalition of specialized agents based on the Gemini model, which we can group into three different phases:
Generate ideas:
Generation agent - Proposes initial focus areas and novel hypotheses grounded in scientific literature and data.
Proximity agent - Maps and clusters generated hypotheses to help ensure a diverse, comprehensive exploration of the research space.
Debate ideas:
Reflection agent - Acts as a "virtual peer reviewer," critically evaluating hypotheses for correctness, quality, and novelty.
Ranking agent - Orchestrates an “idea tournament”, using pairwise comparisons and simulated scientific debates to prioritize the most promising paths and hypotheses.
Evolve ideas:
Evolution agent - Continuously refines, combines, and builds upon the top-ranked hypotheses in the tournament to help iteratively improve their quality.
Meta-review agent - Synthesizes insights from the debates and idea tournament to continuously optimize the system and generates the final research proposal for the scientist to review.
Orchestrating the agent coalition is a supervisor agent acting as an adaptive planner. Unlike AI models that think linearly, this freeform planner breaks down high-level research goals into executable steps, coordinating agents to run in parallel and explore multiple avenues simultaneously.
..."
From the abstract:
"Scientific discovery is driven by scientists generating novel hypotheses for complex problems that undergo rigorous experimental validation. To augment this process, we introduce Co-Scientist, a multi-agent AI system built on Gemini for structured scientific thinking and hypothesis generation. Co-Scientist aims to help scientists discover new original knowledge. Conditioned on their research objectives and prior scientific evidence, it formulates demonstrably novel research hypotheses for experimental verification. The system’s design involves agents continuously generating, critiquing and refining hypotheses accelerated by scaling test-time compute.
Key contributions include:
(1) a multi-agent architecture with an asynchronous task execution framework for flexible compute scaling;
(2) a tournament evolution process for self-improving hypotheses generation.
Automated evaluations show continued benefits of test-time compute scaling, improving hypothesis quality over time. While general purpose, we focus the validation in three biomedical applications: drug repurposing, novel target discovery, and explaining mechanisms of anti-microbial resistance.
Specifically, Co-Scientist helped identify new drug repurposing candidates and synergistic combination therapies for acute myeloid leukemia, which were validated through in vitro experiments. These real-world validations demonstrate the potential of Co-Scientist to accelerate scientific discovery and usher in an era of AI empowered scientists."
Co-Scientist: A multi-agent AI partner to accelerate research (original news release) "Introducing a collaborative AI partner for researchers to develop new hypotheses in life sciences and beyond."
Generated ideas are iteratively refined, critiqued and evolved into new hypotheses, forming a virtuous cycle of scientific reasoning and hypothesis generation.
Europe physicists plan to build the next large, 91-kilometer particle collider
Good news!
"Particle physicists in Europe intend to build a 91-kilometer-long circular collider—the largest accelerator ever—to smash electrons into positrons, officials at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, announced today in an online press conference. The Future Circular Collider (FCC) would be completed by the mid-2040s, after CERN’s current atom smasher, the 27-kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), winds down. It would cost 15 billion Swiss francs, or about $19 billion—and it might pave the way for a much more powerful, and expensive, successor. ...
The new machine, officially the FCC-ee, would actually be the first of two new accelerators. It would occupy a huge new tunnel at CERN and smash electrons into positrons at energies up to 0.365 tera-electron volts (TeV), generating, among other things, large numbers of Higgs bosons. The Higgs, discovered in 2012 by the LHC, anchors physicists’ explanation of how fundamental particles get their mass. Although the FCC-ee’s collision energy would be lower than the LHC’s 13.6 TeV, its electron-positron collisions would be cleaner than the LHC’s proton-proton collisions, enabling physicists to study the Higgs in unprecedented detail. ..."
The size of the reward matters too for learning speed
Amazing stuff!
"Scientists have long believed that training an animal, even to perform simple tasks, is a painstaking process requiring hundreds of repetitions. Under standard protocols, animals receive only a small reward after each attempt, maximizing the number of reinforcements per training session. Accumulated experience, at least according to conventional wisdom, is more important than the size of the incentive. New experiments in mice, however, may upend this long-held assumption.
“I mean this quite literally, no one ever checked,” neuroscientist Josh Dudman said in a statement. For the new study, his lab trained mice to complete a range of navigation, motor skill, and decision-making tasks. Thirsty mice that received a few large gulps of water as a reward, the team reported, became experts much faster than animals that got many tiny sips . ..."
"KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The Dudman Lab examined what happens when animals are given bigger-than-normal rewards as they learned to perform a task. They found that larger rewards speed up learning and reduce individual differences, even though animals had much less experience performing the task.
- The larger payout causes a sustained increase in dopamine — a chemical messenger in the brain that helps regulate learning and motivation. This allows the brain to gain more from each experience and be more engaged in the task at hand, both of which contribute to faster learning.
- The findings could change how scientists think about how brains learn, the role of dopamine in learning, and how they study learning.
..."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
Training an animal on a complex task is often a painstaking, incremental process. This is because conventional behavioral learning protocols focus on minimizing reward to maximize trials. Gong et al. tested how reward size shapes learning in mice. Very large rewards markedly accelerated learning across tasks and led to increased dopamine release in the striatum.
Animals learned faster, became more efficient in reward collection, remained engaged in the tasks, and showed across-session improvements compared with smaller reward magnitudes.
Striatal dopamine responses scaled with reward size and extending dopamine activity using optogenetics reproduced many of the learning benefits. These results provide an important contribution to our understanding of the role of large rewards in learning and motivation. ...
Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Across different disciplines that share an interest in learning, from artificial intelligence (AI) to experimental psychology, it has long been assumed that there is a free parameter, the learning rate, that determines individual variance in learning efficiency and is relatively independent of the magnitude of reward.
This suggests that learning depends primarily on the amount of experience (number of rewards). However, recent theoretical work mapping dopamine (DA) function onto reinforcement learning algorithms, combined with classic results on DA encoding of reward, suggested that learning rates might in fact depend upon reward magnitude. This also raises the possibility that, as a field, we may have settled on suboptimal reward magnitude distributions that slow training in complex laboratory tasks and also underestimated the efficiency of animal learning.
RATIONALE
An influential set of observations led to the hypothesis that DA neuron activity implements the reward prediction error component of reinforcement learning algorithms. However, recent work has proposed that DA activity may map onto the learning rate during acquisition.
The learning rate parameter, as the name implies, determines how fast learning converges to its asymptote. Classic experimental results demonstrated that DA activity is correlated with reward magnitude. Together, these two points imply an unexpected hypothesis:
Reward magnitude could determine the efficiency of reinforcement learning. There are few data on what magnitude of reward is optimal for learning in any laboratory animal. This is especially true for the range of navigation, motor skill, and decision-making tasks typical of modern systems neuroscience experiments in mice.
Nonetheless, essentially the entire field uses reward magnitudes from within a very small range. Those chosen reward magnitudes are quite small relative to the daily needs of a mouse (<1%). Thus, we set out to determine whether, and if so why, increases in reward magnitude could increase the efficiency of animal learning.
RESULTS
Increasing reward magnitude by one to two orders relative to the standard reward sizes used in the field substantially increased the efficiency of learning across a range of tasks. We found that mice could learn from at least an order of magnitude fewer trials in a hidden target navigation task, an effort-based reach-to-pull motor skill task, and a sensorimotor decision-making task.
In general, across all three tasks, the efficiency of learning was increased without a notable change in the quality of the final, trained performance. At the upper limit, these effects could be substantial. For example, some mice learned a hidden target navigation task in only a few experiences of reinforcement, something that requires hundreds or thousands of reinforcements using standard reward magnitudes. We further showed that these effects could be well explained once one appreciates that the efficiency of learning is determined by three critical components:
(i) the learning rate,
(ii) the ability to capture learned improvements from prior sessions, and
(iii) the extent of sustained engagement in a task.
In our study, large rewards improved all three aspects. Large rewards produced longer, more sustained activity of DA neurons during reward consumption. We tested whether augmenting normal responses to reward with optogenetic-mediated sustained activation of DA were sufficient to enhance learning efficiency with standard reward magnitudes. Sustained optogenetic “boosting” of DA reward responses was able to increase learning efficiency in both hidden target navigation and the effort-based motor skill task.
DA stimulation increased learning efficiency by increasing the learning rate and reducing disengagement, but failed to enhance capture of prior learning. Finally, we showed that increasing reward magnitude, while always improving learning as measured in DA activity, does not always lead to obvious improvements in behavioral measures of learning. For example, the presence of large rewards appears to interfere with anticipatory behavior in classical conditioning paradigms.
CONCLUSION
We found that larger reward magnitudes than used in the field could indeed enhance the learning efficiency of mice across a range of complex tasks, including navigation, motor skill, and decision-making. One of the largest sources of variance across individual mice was the ability to stay engaged in task performance. Unexpectedly, variance in learning rate across individuals appeared to be much smaller. As a result, large rewards could substantially attenuate variance across individuals in learning efficiency.
Finally, mesolimbic DA neuron activity could produce multiple effects on learning depending upon the magnitude and time course of DA activation."
The Bigger the Reward, the Faster We Learn (original news release) "Researchers in the Dudman Lab at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus found that learning happens faster when there’s a bigger payoff for success, potentially changing how neuroscientists think about learning and how they study it"
Reward magnitude determines reinforcement learning efficiency (no public access)
New research from the Dudman Lab finds animals learn faster when they are given larger-than-normal rewards as they learn to perform a task. Artificially extending the dopamine signals associated with small rewards also caused learning to happen faster.
Disclaimer
Since end of February, I am 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.
Chinese EV makers awaken Western rivals' zombie production lines
Clever move!
"Chinese electric vehicle makers are scooping up idle production lines across the world, intensifying their overseas push as Western competitors pare back output of gasoline cars and need to shed excess capacity. ..."
Sunday, May 24, 2026
A new approach to cancer vaccination yields more powerful T cells
Good news! Cancer is history (soon)!
"... have developed a new way to amplify the T-cell response to mRNA vaccines — an advance that could lead to much more powerful cancer vaccines and stronger protection against infectious diseases.
Most vaccines generate both antibodies and T cells that can target the vaccine antigen by activating antigen-presenting cells, such as dendritic cells.
In this study, the researchers boosted the T-cell response with a new type of vaccine adjuvant (a material that can help stimulate the immune system). The new adjuvant consists of mRNA molecules encoding genes that turn on immune signaling pathways and promote a supercharged T-cell response.
In studies in mice, this mRNA-encoded adjuvant enabled the immune system to completely eradicate most tumors, either on its own or delivered along with a tumor antigen. The adjuvant also boosted the T-cell response to vaccines against influenza and Covid-19. ...
As an alternative approach, the researchers decided to deliver mRNA strands encoding two genes, IRF8 and NIK, which are involved in antigen presentation and can switch immune cells into a more active state. ...
The researchers tested the immune-remodeling mRNAs in several mouse models of cancer, including an aggressive bladder cancer, colon carcinoma, melanoma, and metastatic lung cancer.
In nearly all of these mice, the injected mRNA stimulated a strong T-cell response that significantly slowed tumor growth and in many cases completely eradicated the tumors. This happened even when the mice were not given a vaccine against a specific cancer antigen. When they were, the response was even stronger. ..."
From the abstract:
"Although immunotherapy has benefited a subset of persons with cancer, its broader efficacy remains limited, primarily because of an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment characterized by insufficient numbers of functional tumor-specific T cells, antigen-presenting cells (APCs) and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes.
Here we engineer immune cells in the tumor microenvironment using lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to deliver immune-remodeling mRNAs (IR-mRNAs) encoding NF-κB-inducing kinase or interferon regulatory factor 8. These IR-mRNAs activate APCs in tumors, significantly increasing activated type 1 conventional dendritic cells, immunostimulatory cytokines and priming antitumor CD8+ T cells.
IR-mRNAs encapsulated in LNPs elicited durable antitumor responses in multiple syngeneic mouse tumor models through both intratumoral and intravenous delivery.
Coadministration of IR-mRNA and ovalbumin mRNA elicited a ~10-fold increase in antigen-specific CD8+ T cell responses, sustained long-term memory and effectively prevented tumor growth in vaccinated mice.
Additionally, coadministration of IR-mRNA and hemagglutinin mRNA enhanced the humoral response ~5-fold and the cellular response ~15-fold, underscoring their potential as adjuvants for boosting adaptive immunity."
A German cosmetics store in Hong Kong
I must be an ignorant or I lived in a cave, I never heard of this company Babor that was founded in 1956 near Cologne, Germany. 😊
There are things to be discovered about Germany in Hong Kong! Amazing!
Caveat: I am not an exactly an expert in cosmetics.
Hong Kong presents contemporary German art in public space
Why not urinals? The artist is believed to be Andreas Schmitten (I am not quite sure, unfortunately the sign on the photo below next to the artwork is difficult to read.)
Presumably, the artwork is titled "Verzückung" (ecstasy, rupture)
Here is a German language article about this German artist and another artist.
Maybe the most famous artwork showing an urinal is this one by Marcel Duchamp titled "Fountain" dating from 1917 (as part of the Dada movement)
Handwriting speed may be a sign of cognitive decline in older (institutionalized) people. Really!
When I write, I write 99% all the time on a computer or device keyboard! Thus, I have more and more difficulty to write with my hand over the years.
Longitudinal monitoring or after a stroke of handwriting may seem to make sense for some individuals.
"... The study included 58 older adults, aged between 62 and 92, living in care homes. ..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
- Diagnostic differentiation emerged only in tasks with higher cognitive–motor demands.
- Temporal efficiency and stroke organization were the most robust predictors of cognitive impairment.
- Process–product coupling was minimal in healthy aging but pronounced in cognitive impairment.
- Dictation tasks showed greater sensitivity than isolated pen-control tasks.
- Digital handwriting analysis offers a scalable, non-invasive approach for early cognitive screening and longitudinal monitoring.
Background:
Handwriting is a hierarchical cognitive–motor activity requiring the integration of motor execution, visuospatial processing, working memory, and executive control.
Digital handwriting technology enables simultaneous assessment of process (kinematics) and product (performance outcomes), offering a theoretically grounded approach to detecting cognitive vulnerability in aging.
Methods:
This study examined whether kinematic handwriting features differentiate institutionalized older adults with and without cognitive impairment and whether these features predict handwriting product performance under varying cognitive–motor demands.
Fifty-eight participants (20 cognitively healthy; 38 cognitively impaired), classified using education-adjusted MMSE cutoffs, completed pen-control tasks (DOTS, LINES) and four handwriting-speed tasks (two copy, two dictation) on a digitizing tablet. Nine standardized kinematic variables were analyzed using logistic and multiple linear regression models with correction for multiple comparisons.
Results:
Pen-control tasks (DOTS, LINES) did not significantly discriminate between the two groups, the handwriting-speed tasks, particularly dictation, revealed significant group differences.
Temporal efficiency and stroke organization variables (e.g., Duration, Number of Strokes) significantly contributed to classification in high-demand tasks. Among cognitively healthy participants, associations between kinematic and product measures were limited, suggesting preserved compensatory mechanisms.
Conversely, cognitively impaired individuals exhibited stronger process–product coupling, with Start Time, Vertical Size, and Duration significantly predicting handwriting performance in dictation tasks.
Conclusion:
Handwriting kinematics, especially temporal and stroke-related features, are sensitive indicators of cognitive impairment when assessed under high cognitive–motor load. These findings support the use of digitally mediated handwriting tasks—particularly dictation paradigms—as ecologically valid, low-cost tools for screening and monitoring cognitive decline in older adults. ..."
A 6,000-year-old necropolis in central Spain is forcing a radical rethink of who built Europe's first megalithic tombs
Amazing stuff!
Too bad, the University of Salamanca (a very famous and very old university), Spain website is in Spanish only! I don't speak Spanish and I have no time to translate. And Google Translate failed (see screenshot below). Researchers from this university were involved in this study!
The other Spanish University website, i.e. University of Alcalá, was also not very helpful to find additonal information on this research! At least it offered EN translation!
"... Archaeologists working in Toledo, central Spain, have discovered what they believe is the oldest documented monumental necropolis in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula. This ancient site dates back to about the end of the 5th millennium BC (about 4300 to 4000 BC) and challenges a long-held theory that megalithic funerary structures were initially restricted to the coastline before spreading inland. ...
The prehistoric site, called Valdelasilla, sits on a hill overlooking the town of Illescas. It was discovered in 2020 and excavated during that year. ...
The site contains a large circular chamber tomb measuring 6 meters across, surrounded by a large, ditched enclosure measuring roughly 36 meters in diameter. Around it are several smaller funerary chambers made from wood, clay, and compacted earth, and measuring 2 to 3 meters wide. Human remains from at least 46 individuals were found inside 11 of the funerary structures and dated using radiocarbon dating and computer modeling. ..."
From the abstract:
"This study presents an analysis of funerary practices at the site of Valdelasilla (Illescas, Toledo, Spain). The methodology integrates the morphological study of burial structures, anthropological analyses, a consideration of grave goods and the radiocarbon dating of human bone.
The chronological data indicate funerary activity at the site from the Late Neolithic to the Chalcolithic period. Bayesian modelling confirms the establishment of a planned cemetery by the end of the fifth millennium cal. bc, featuring small burial chambers organized around a larger tomb enclosed by a ditch. The burial chambers, which were constructed from wood, clay and small stones, created distinct spaces for the deceased.
This embryonic form of monumentalization, the funerary practices observed and the early chronology link Valdelasilla to other peninsular cemeteries associated with the emergence of megalithism, now identified for the first time on the plateau. The location of the necropolis offers new insights into the role of inland regions in the emergence of Iberian and European megalithism."
Location of the site in the Iberian Peninsula and aerial photograph taken during the excavation work.
Graves, enclosure and post-holes of upper area with the excavation sequence of each of them.
Figure 7.
Grave goods.
(a) Hairpins next to the skull in VLD-T296;
(b) stone beads from chamber VLD-T450;
(c) flint microliths from VLD-T520;
(d) flat rods from VLD-T452.
Huawei says new Kirin chip for phones overcomes US sanctions by 2031, first ever to adopt the LogicFolding architecture
If it will take Huawei up to five years to catch up, then these sanctions are kind of effective. I have my doubts it will take them that long!
Impressive progress by Huawei!
"Huawei Technologies on Monday said it has found a new way to design chips to bring its semiconductor capabilities close to those of global chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Intel, as China's tech champion continues working to overcome U.S. sanctions that have cut it off from top-tier global suppliers. ..."
"... the Tau (τ) Scaling Law, a new principle for guiding the future development of the semiconductor industry. This law proposes replacing geometric scaling with time (τ) scaling as a new guiding principle for the evolution of both semiconductors and electronic systems.
Based on this principle, innovative technologies such as LogicFolding can be used to continuously compress signal propagation delay and steadily improve transistor density, which will drive the ongoing evolution of semiconductors and electronic systems. ...
HUAWEI's application of the τ Scaling Law to smartphones and AI computing. Over the past six years, HUAWEI has designed and mass-produced 381 chips based on the τ Scaling Law, serving a wide range of industries, sectors, and markets.
The Kirin chips scheduled to launch in Fall 2026 will be the first ever to adopt the LogicFolding architecture, which will considerably enhance the chips' performance.
By 2031, the high-end chips HUAWEI designs based on the τ Scaling Law are expected to feature a transistor density that is equivalent to 14 Å (1.4 nm) processes. ..."
HUAWEI Presents the Tau (τ) Scaling Law, Enabling Breakthroughs in Transistor Density and System Performance (I believe, this is the underlying news release by Huawei)
Can one parent silence the other’s genes? Natural ‘paramutations’ found in mice
Amazing stuff!
"... The new research ... indicates genes from one parent can sometimes unexpectedly silence those inherited from the other, and that the effect could persist for generations. If the findings extend to humans, they could help explain why some people who carry a disease-causing genetic variant never develop the condition.
The phenomenon, named paramutation, challenges the conventional view of inheritance and had not been shown to naturally occur in mammals. It’s a form of epigenetics, in which chemical modifications to DNA sequences or proteins they wrap around turn genes on or off. In paramutation, through a process scientists don’t fully understand, one copy of a gene can silence the dominant version inherited from the other parent by coating it with methyl groups.
Paramutation’s discovery in mice marks a major shift in how scientists think about epigenetic inheritance in mammals ..."
"... Since its discovery in maize in 1950s, paramutation has been observed in other plants, fruit flies, and nematodes. The effects can be visible. ...
Until recently, researchers lacked the tools to reliably trace which parent has passed along a particular version of a gene, called an allele. Traditional DNA sequencing didn’t read long sequences of DNA to see the variation needed to distinguish maternal and paternal alleles—the short stretches were often identical, obscuring their origin. But the arrival of long-read sequencing changed that, as researchers could examine enough DNA from a gene at once to link individual alleles to a specific parent. ..."
"... “Non-Mendelian patterns of inheriting epigenetics could be a faster way to acquire diverse or new traits than alterations in the genomic sequence itself, especially in response to environmental pressures,” ..."
From the abstract:
"Epigenetic mechanisms such as genomic imprinting demonstrate that molecular inheritance can deviate from typical Mendelian patterns. Despite this, the intergenerational inheritance of DNA methylation remains poorly understood.
Here we developed a genome-wide approach to study epigenetic inheritance in mice using long-read nanopore sequencing. Using this approach in both liver and muscle, we found that ~93% of autosomal epigenetic inheritance patterns followed Mendel’s laws, primarily driven by cis-acting methylation quantitative trait loci.
However, we also identified extensive non-Mendelian inheritance, including emergent epigenetic inheritance patterns, widespread sex-specific DNA methylation patterns localized to the liver, and five seemingly new autosomal and X-linked imprinted genes.
Notably, we also report an example of naturally occurring intergenerational paramutation, confirmed over strain-specific transposable elements within Capn11 and highly likely at Vps37c.
Overall, an unexpectedly high ~7% of autosomal epigenetic inheritance patterns identified were non-Mendelian, highlighting the importance of epigenetic information in the analysis of inherited traits and disorders."
Lab Study Reveals Patterns of Inheritance That Defy Mendel's Laws (original news release)
Fig. 1: Identification and characterization of Mendelian and non-Mendelian epigenetic inheritance patterns.
China has developed into a powerhouse for clinical trials of innovative drugs conducted in the country since 2015
Good news! Impressive! This might just be the beginning!
When will India catch up? The world population will be healthier!
"Regulatory reforms in China, which started in 2015, have contributed to a continued increase in the number of clinical trials of innovative drugs conducted in the country over the following decade.
As a result, China contributed 50% of worldwide clinical research activity of this type in 2025, compared with 13% in 2015. But a focus on oncology and specific well-validated drug targets has led to a homogenization of drug discovery."
Climate change gives rivers in the Himalayas wanderlust. Really!
Smells strongly like junk or shoddy science, again featured by the the AAAS! Plus, it is a Chinese study (any possible political motive in this case?).
Only 40 years of history (satellite imagery) is nothing or definitely not enough data! What about other human factors that may have contributed to this phenomenon (overpopulation, increasing tourism etc.)?
If you believe in global warming/climate change then everything is automatically related to it. These scientists most likely suffered from this bias!
"High in the Himalayas, a system of rivers and glaciers known as the “Water Tower of Asia” supplies freshwater to roughly two billion people downstream. Scientists who examined 40 years of satellite imagery from three major river basins—the Yarlung Tsangpo, Indus, and Ganges—observed that, due to climate change, the waters there have started wandering more.
As rivers flow, they rarely follow a straight path, curving in different directions and forming bends called meanders. Since water erodes the outer bank over time and deposits sediment on the inner bank, those bends move across the floodplain and the river shifts sideways, in a “meandering migration.” Researchers found that, in the Himalayas, rates of lateral channel migration nearly doubled between 1980 and 2020. Rivers also abandoned meandering loops, jumped channels, and changed patterns more often, drastically reshaping downstream ecosystems.
Scientists believe the changes are caused by the thawing and retreat of the region’s ice and frozen ground, a phenomenon known as “cryosphere degradation.” As temperatures in the upper Himalayas rise at roughly twice the global average rate, glacial melt accelerates, frozen ground thaws, and riverbanks lose the icy cohesion that once held them in place. This rise in meandering is part of a broader pattern, geophysical scientists Shawn Chartrand and Jonas Eschenfelder argue in an accompanying Science Perspective, noting that the dynamics of rivers in cold regions “ can be early indicators of environmental change under a warming climate.”"
From the abstract of the Perspective:
"Surface sediments in polar and high mountain regions underlain by permafrost—ground that is frozen for two consecutive years or longer—undergo seasonal freezing and thawing. This yearly cycle influences river dynamics by changing water flow and susceptibility to erosion.
Consequently, a warming climate can change river configurations in cold landscapes. However, elucidating a causal link between atmospheric temperature trends and river erosion is more difficult than it appears. Despite previous efforts, there is no generally accepted theory describing river erosion in permafrost-dominated basins, in part because of a lack of long-term observations. On page 716 of this issue, Lin et al. (8) report that rates of river migration in high Himalayan river basins accelerated over the past two decades. This suggests that cold-region river dynamics can be early indicators of environmental change under a warming climate."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
High mountain ranges are particularly sensitive to climate change [???], and their landscapes provide an early warning for how surface processes may shift with warming. Using 40 years of satellite imagery, Lin et al. compiled river migration data across three major high Himalayan drainages ... Measures of channel mobility for over 1000 river bends indicated a near doubling of migration rates between 1980 and 2020 in response to melting glaciers, higher sediment loads, and warmer ground. The accelerated meandering of upland rivers will alter soil and sediment fluxes and could have a destabilizing effect on downstream ecosystems, infrastructure, and human populations. ...
Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
River meandering and migration are two of the most ubiquitous geomorphic processes on Earth, governing floodplain evolution, ecosystem disturbance, and infrastructure stability. A long-standing, but largely untested, hypothesis proposes that climate change systematically alters the pace of river planform morphodynamics [???]. The upper high Himalayas, where temperatures are rising nearly twice as fast as the global average, offer a critical natural laboratory to detect climatic imprints within upland rivers that sustain billions of people downstream.
RATIONALE
River meandering is controlled by complex interactions between channel dynamics, hydrology, sediment supply, bank strength, and external disturbances. Climate warming may [???] influence these controls through multiple pathways, including cryosphere degradation such as increased runoff or permafrost thaw, vegetation change, and altered hydrosedimentary regimes. However, distinguishing climatic forcing from intrinsic self-organization processes, human disturbances, and geological controls has remained a fundamental challenge, particularly at regional scales. To address this gap, we conducted a multidecadal analysis of river planform dynamics across the upper high Himalayas and evaluated the relative contributions of nonclimate and climatic drivers.
RESULTS
We show that unconfined Himalayan rivers experienced a widespread and coherent acceleration of morphodynamics over the past four decades.
Mean lateral migration nearly doubled between 1980–2000 and 2000–2020, accompanied by increases in cutoff frequency (115%), avulsion activity (77%), and channel pattern transitions (97%). The integrated river planform morphodynamics index more than doubled, whereas characteristic migration timescales shortened by 40%.
Sensitivity tests confirmed that these accelerations are robust across temporal resolutions, sinuosity classes, and ground thermal regimes.
Statistical analyses support significant associations between accelerated morphodynamics and rising temperature and related environmental changes.
By using structural equation modeling, we show that climate warming has both direct and indirect impacts on meandering and migration dynamics by weakening bank stability, modifying vegetation conditions, and altering hydrosedimentary regimes, whereas nonclimate factors such as geological structures, river slope, or channel width contribute comparatively little at regional scales. [no human factors???]
CONCLUSION
Our study reveals that river morphodynamics in the Himalayan uplands have detectably and substantially accelerated in response to climate warming over the past four decades and are primarily driven by cryosphere degradation rather than anthropogenic disturbances, local topography, or channel self-organization. Unlike Arctic permafrost rivers, where warming decelerates meandering through shrub-induced bank stabilization, sparsely vegetated Himalayan uplands lack this buffering mechanism, making this region a sensitive sentinel of climate-driven fluvial change.
Channel planform dynamics of Himalayan rivers serve as an emerging geomorphic signal of climate change and underscore a previously underappreciated pathway through which warming reshapes landscape evolution.
The doubling of lateral channel mobility over four decades accelerates sediment reworking, shortening organic carbon residence times on upland floodplains and posing potential risks to water security, infrastructure stability, and riparian ecosystems, which warrants further attention to climate change impacts on upland river systems.
Our findings underscore the urgency of integrating climate-fluvial feedback into sustainable development strategies for this vulnerable region."
River dynamics in a warming climate (Perspective, no public access) "Rivers in high Himalayan mountain regions are evolving rapidly because of climate change [???]"
Accelerated Himalayan river meandering and dynamics due to climate change (no public access)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)