Swiss researchers invented a new type of pixel that can both control and analyze light

Amazing stuff! This could be a breakthrough!

"Swiss researchers at ETH Zurich invented a new type of pixel that can both control and analyze light, a breakthrough that could dramatically improve digital photography."

"In brief

• Pixels create images on screens or capture them in cameras. Until now, however, there have been no pixels that could do both.  
• Researchers have now developed a new kind of pixel that can both create and analyse images and patterns. 
• In the future, these pixels could be used to realise two-way camera–displays. 

In 1927, the term „picture element“, later abbreviated to „pixel“, appeared for the first time in the American technology magazine Wireless World.  ...

These pixels can both steer light and analyse it. Not only the intensity of the light, but also its oscillation phase and polarisation can be controlled and analysed. ...

Patters and images from overlapping light waves

The new results ... are based on a fundamental physical effect: the so-called interference of light waves. When light is scattered by a surface, the waves originating from different points on the surface overlap. The shape of the surface determines the oscillation phases with which the waves propagate further. If the phases are equal, the light waves reinforce each other, but if they are opposed, the waves cancel out. ...

use this effect to precisely control light with wave-shaped sculpted surfaces. They developed this processing method, which is precise to within a few nanometres, already a few years ago. For steering, the pixel—that is, the area on the chip where the material has been processed—first transforms the incoming light into a surface wave (a so-called surface plasmon polariton) propagating along the surface of the chip. 

At a different position within the pixel, the surface wave is scattered back out of the material as a light wave. Through interference of the light waves, patterns and images can be created. Using mathematical Fourier analysis, the researchers can calculate what these images will look like and what kind of surface pattern is needed for a specific image.  ...."

From the abstract:

"Digital cameras and displays use picture elements (pixels) that perform a single function: detecting or emitting light intensity. To exploit the full information content of electromagnetic waves, more advanced elements are required. This has driven the development of multifunctional components that, for example, simultaneously detect and emit intensity or extract intensity and spectral information.

However, no pixel exists that both senses and generates optical wavefronts with full control over amplitude, phase and polarization, limiting bidirectional control and feedback of sophisticated light fields.

Here we present a route to such pixels by demonstrating a versatile platform of miniaturized diffractive elements based on Fourier optics.

We use plasmonic surface waves, which propagate coherently and efficiently across metallic surfaces. When these plasmons are launched towards wavy microstructures designed with simple Fourier analysis, arbitrary and background-free optical wavefronts are generated. Conversely, incoming light can be sensed, and its amplitude, phase and polarization can be fully characterized.

By combining or superposing several such components, we create multifunctional ‘Fourier pixels’ that provide compact and accurate control over the optical field. Our approach, which we extend to photonic waveguide modes, establishes a scalable, universal architecture for vectorially programmable pixels with applications in adaptive optics, holographic displays, optical communication and quantum information processing."

Wednesday, July 8, 2026 - Join The Flyover

Researchers in Switzerland invent a new type of pixel "Pixels either control light or analyze it. This one does both."

A new type of pixel (original news release) "Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed pixels that can not only create images, but also analyse them. In the future, this could lead to the development of devices that function as camera and display at the same time."

Fourier pixels for bidirectional light control (open access)

The coloured logo was created using the new ETH researchers‘ Fourier pixels. The letter “E” is roughly 1 millimetre tall on the camera.

Fig. 1: Fourier pixels for generating light with arbitrary amplitude and phase.

The Woman Iran Could Not Break or the persecution of Baha'i believers in Iran

Make no mistakes about Iran under the theocratic dictatorship!

"... She was jailed because she is a Baháʼí.

The Baháʼí Faith is a global monotheistic religion founded in 19th-century Persia by Baháʼu’lláh. It teaches the essential worth of all major religions, the unity of humanity, and the harmony of science and religion. Baháʼís are persecuted in Iran because the Islamic Republic views the religion as a “deviant cult” and a political threat. ..."

The Woman Iran Could Not Break - by Iram Ramzan "Mahvash Sabet spent a decade in Iran's prisons because she is a Baháʼí. Her memoir offers a rare firsthand account of faith, survival, and the Islamic Republic's persecution of a religious minority."

Book cover Source

How China Is Meddling in America’s AI Debate by covert operations discovered by OpenAI

Like the heavy meddling of the former Soviet Union, I have no doubt that this is happening! The war of words and propaganda wars!

By crippling Western AI advances in the court of public opinion, China is trying to get ahead!

It is truly astonishing how little attention this OpenAI report (released 6/10) got in the news media! Are they already too scared or too much under the control of the Communist Party of China?

"... We now know that another extraordinarily influential force has also put its thumb on this crucial American policy discussion: the People’s Republic of China.

In a blockbuster report issued last week, entitled “PRC-linked influence operations are targeting AI debates in the US,” tech giant OpenAI found that actors originating in China “used our models in support of apparent covert influence operations that promoted narratives in an attempt to manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and wider tech policies.”

Specifically, one cluster of Chinese users of OpenAI’s platform, in plain violation of its terms and conditions, “generated social media comments and images claiming that data center buildouts for AI were increasing electricity prices for average families.”

A second cluster produced and disseminated content “criticizing US tariffs as attempts to dominate technological competition and specified in their prompts that the content should not include China’s leader Xi Jinping in the output and instead include only President [Donald] Trump.” ..."

"... The accounts we [OpenAI] banned sought to influence two groups of audiences. They primarily targeted US audiences and generated English-language short comments and images claiming that data centers and AI applications were increasing electricity demand and causing higher costs for ordinary Americans.  ..."

How China Is Meddling in America’s AI Debate | American Enterprise Institute - AEI

PRC-linked influence operations are targeting AI debates in the US

Scientists find ozone depletion began decades before discovery of ozone hole and was caused by carbon tetrachloride since the 1930s

Amazing stuff!

These authors seem to be obsessed with the instrument of a thought experiment! In this particular study it might have been overused.

"... In a study ... the scientists suggest that the first signs of ozone depletion appeared as early as 1957 — about 30 years before the ozone hole was discovered. And, this first signal of ozone loss popped up not in the Antarctic, but in the upper stratosphere of the tropics. What’s more, the cause of this early depletion was not due to CFCs, but to another industrial chemical: carbon tetrachloride.  ..."

From the significance and abstract:

"Significance

This paper examines the earliest emergence of human-caused ozone depletion: the when, the where, and the why.  ...

The “when” is as early as the late 1950s—about 30 y before the Antarctic ozone hole was discovered and 20 y before the Molina–Rowland theory. The “where” is the tropical upper stratosphere, where a relatively small signal stands out against even smaller noise, allowing the earliest emergence. The “why” is the use of carbon tetrachloride as a solvent decades before chlorofluorocarbons became common in refrigeration and spray cans.

Abstract

The Antarctic ozone hole was first reported in 1985, and small ozone losses at the global scale were also observed in the late 1980s. The combination of field and laboratory measurements, together with modeling, quickly established anthropogenic chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as the cause of both the Antarctic and global ozone depletion.

However, when, where, and why the earliest ozone depletion could have been detected has not been determined.  ...

We find that human-caused ozone depletion was likely identifiable as early as 1957 in the tropical upper stratosphere. This region’s low internal variability enables the earliest detection of the anthropogenic signal, even though tropical ozone losses in the upper stratosphere were smaller than those in higher-latitude regions. ... 

Further, while CFCs are widely recognized as the primary drivers of current ozone depletion, we find that early ozone loss was primarily caused by human-made carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), used mainly as a solvent. These findings suggest that a clear human influence on the stratospheric ozone layer began nearly 70 y ago, even before substantial emissions of CFCs from spray cans or air conditioning."

Scientists find ozone depletion began decades before discovery of ozone hole | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Using modern tools, they also determined that carbon tetrachloride, used as a dry-cleaning and degreasing agent as early as the 1930s, was at the root of early ozone loss."

The emergence of human influence on the ozone layer by the 1960s

Resonance structures of ozone with lone pairs indicated (Source)

Polarity of Carbon Tetrachloride (CCl4) (Source)

The Next Russia Threat: Moscow’s Military Power After Ukraine. Really!

The Cold War warriors are back at the Foreign Affairs journal!

What if glasnost and perestroika return to Russia? Was Mikhail Gorbachev (the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the country's dissolution in 1991) only a one time, singular historical accident in Russia? I doubt it!

Will the Russian people remember War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (published in 1869)?

Will the Russian people, which suffered now over 1 million war casualties that maimed and killed young Russian men in this absurd Russo-Ukrainian War, not have second thoughts about another strong man like Putin the Terrible?

"... Even if defeated, Russia will remain the primary threat in Europe for years to come. Despite its stagnating economy, poor demographics, and ossifying authoritarian regime, Russia remains the main power capable of and invested in upending the continent’s security architecture. ..."

The Next Russia Threat: Moscow’s Military Power After Ukraine

Current issue

Front page of War and Peace sixth volume, first edition, 1869 (Russian)

President Trump’s healthcare fraud crackdown is paying off with over 455 defendants so far

Good news! Bravo!

"Federal prosecutors recently announced that they’d charged 455 defendants in connection with more than $6.5 billion in alleged fraud involving Medicare, Medicaid, and other public healthcare programs. ..."

Trump’s healthcare fraud crackdown is paying off - Pacific Research Institute "Rooting out healthcare fraud deserves to remain a central focus for the administration. Those who steal from programs intended to serve seniors, low-income families, and people with disabilities should expect to be caught. Taxpayers and patients deserve nothing less."

Young Americans are worse than fed up - Harvard Youth Poll Fall 2025. Really!

Is the situation really so gloomy or did Harvard University manipulate the poll?

Are not young people easily influenced by news media coverage for lack of life experience? If so, then all the reporting on price inflation in recent times is reflected in the poll (see chart below)

According to Google: "Around 53-54 million 18- to 29-year-olds live in the U.S."

"Poll finds deep economic insecurity, eroding trust in democratic institutions, growing social fragmentation.

Key Takeaways

• Young Americans feel the country is off course and their futures are unstable.
• Across every measure — national direction, personal finances, and day-to-day security — instability is the dominant reality shaping how young Americans see their lives and their future.
• Only 13% say the U.S. is generally headed in the right direction, while 57% say things are off on the wrong track; 28% are unsure.

..."

51st Edition - Fall 2025 | The Institute of Politics at Harvard University

Britain has decarbonised enough (so have other Western countries)

Net zero is a terrible scam part of the global warming/climate change hoax!

Unfortunately, this article is way too long winded and contains a lot of story padding etc.! The author Kristian Niemietz, the Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs included a long introduction about a special German words (he invented), i.e. Wutknopfargument.

"... For Extinction Rebellion/Just Stop Oil/Greta Thunberg-type climate change activists, the argument that pushes their rage ... is that Britain contributes less than 1 per cent to global CO2 emissions. They hate that argument like nothing else in the world. If they had to choose between stopping climate change, and stopping people from saying that Britain doesn’t contribute much to climate change, they wouldn’t undoubtedly choose the latter. ...

We are doing a huge amount on decarbonisation, we have been doing so for over thirty years, and we are unilaterally imposing a huge cost on ourselves.

Climate change entered mainstream political discourse in the 1990s, and climate policy discourse still reflects a 1990s world. Let’s take 1992, the year when the first international agreement on climate change was adopted, as a benchmark. In 1992, high-income countries still accounted for two thirds of the world’s carbon emissions. The US emitted twice as much CO2 as China; Germany emitted more than India and Pakistan taken together, and the UK emitted about as much as the whole of South America. Under those circumstances, it made sense for environmentalists in high-income countries to say: why don’t we take the first step? Why don’t we do this unilaterally at first?

And we have done precisely that. ... Since 1992, (what is now) the EU-27 has cut its carbon emissions by a third, and the UK by almost half. Global emissions, however, have almost doubled over the same period. Our relative contribution has therefore tumbled. The EU-27 now contributes less than 7 per cent to global emissions, and the UK, as mentioned, less than 1 per cent. China accounts for almost a third, and India for more than 8 per cent. ..."

Britain has decarbonised enough

US Army tests autonomous mass mine-laying

When will autonomous mass demining be tested? What happens when children find and play with landmines?

"... The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (Ottawa Convention, entered into force in 1999): This treaty, adhered to by over 160 states, categorically bans the development, production, stockpiling, and use of anti-personnel landmines.

Some nations, notably the United States, have retained modified landmine policies that allow for use under specific tactical conditions while adhering to broader Law of War Manual prohibitions against inherently indiscriminate weapons. ..." (Google search)

"... When mounted to a vehicle, the U.S. Army’s Volcano mine dispenser can blanket roughly 32 acres with up to 960 mines. Now, the service is testing a system that can do the same thing without a driver behind the wheel. ..."

US Army tests autonomous mass mine-laying

The Autonomous Volcano system uses the M139 Volcano mine dispenser. It is mounted on the Palletized Load System (PLS) A1 truck.

A list of US military strikes against alleged drug-carrying vessels since September 25, 2025 until now

Most news media don't seem to report anymore about this still ongoing US military campaign!

"As of June 22, the Trump administration and U.S. military have disclosed 66 strikes, killing at least 196 people. ...

June 2026

June 21: U.S. Southern Command announced a lethal kinetic strike against an alleged drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean, killing two and leaving six survivors. SOUTHCOM notified the U.S. Coast Guard, which conducted a search and rescue mission for the survivors. ..."

A list of US military strikes against alleged drug-carrying vessels

English for trippers: A sage with a saga

Fresh sage, what a delicious herb! Going gaga!

Four Dimocratic Party ruled States Seek $1.4 Trillion from Meta in penalties

How frivolous is this? Or how greedy is the Dimocratic Party! Quite insane and damaging to business!

"Four states are seeking a whopping $1.4 trillion in penalties from Meta, claiming Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict children and that the company misled the public about the platforms’ safety.

The sum approaches Meta’s entire market capitalization of roughly $1.5 trillion. California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey calculated the figure by multiplying estimated young users harmed by fine amounts set under state law. ..."

Wednesday, July 8, 2026 - Join The Flyover

Boston Mayor Wu sues Meta, other 'addictive' social media apps that target children

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu

The U.S. Postal Service plans to raise prices on stamps and other services. Really!

The USPS wants to accelerate its demise! When will the USPS finally be fully privatized?

"The U.S. Postal Service plans to raise Forever stamp prices from 78 to 82 cents on July 12 as part of a broader 4.8% USPS rate hike across mailing services."

Wednesday, July 8, 2026 - Join The Flyover

Toyota will be shifting most Tacoma pickup production from Mexico to Texas where it was once produced

Surprising news!

Is this another President Trump effect? Is this part of the attempt to onshore more  manufacturing industry?

"Toyota will invest $3.6 billion to expand its San Antonio plant, shifting most Tacoma pickup production from Mexico and adding 2,000 jobs to Texas."

"... The fourth-generation Tacoma has been produced exclusively in Mexico since it entered production in 2024. Before that change, assembly was shared between Toyota's Texas plant and facilities located in Mexico. ..."

Wednesday, July 8, 2026 - Join The Flyover

Toyota Brings Tacoma Production Back To Texas With $3.6 Billion Investment

Two US Marines recognized for emergency aid response during North Carolina nightclub shooting

Well rounded training and versatility! Bravo!

US Marine soldiers on and off the dance floor or when a nightclub becomes a warzone! 😊

"... Cpl. Johnny Tamayo and Cpl. Emily Martinez, both assigned to 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, respectively, for their actions following the June 6 [Saturday] shooting at Unhinged Nightclub, where one person was killed. ..."

Marines recognized for response during North Carolina nightclub shooting

Cpl. Emily Martinez, left, and Cpl. Johnny Tamayo, during an award ceremony on June 25, 2026.

Source

Haartransplantation: Abzocke in Deutschland

Schönheit oder schön sein/besser aussehen war schon immer teuer!

Der bekannteste und vielleicht übelste Prominente mit Haartransplantation: Der senile, demente und lebenslange Lügner, der 46igste Präsident der USA. 

Haartransplantation: Abzocke in Deutschland | FAZ "Schwindet die Haarpracht, hoffen viele Männer auf eine Haarverpflanzung. Doch in Deutschland hat sich ein undurchsichtiger Schwarzmarkt entwickelt. Justiz und Aufsichtsbehörden scheinen machtlos."

Source

Narcissus von Caravaggio

Ukraine to get ‘license’ for making Patriot interceptors, President Trump pledges

Good news! Bravo!

"President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States will give a license to Ukraine for Patriot missiles as he said both Russia and Ukraine want to see the war settled. ..."

Ukraine to get ‘license’ for making Patriot interceptors, Trump pledges

Russia's Largest Oil Refinery Stops Processing After Ukraine’s 3,000-km Strike in Omsk, Siberia

Good news! Very impressive!

"In brief: Ukraine's long-range drone strike has forced Russia's largest oil refinery in Omsk to halt crude processing, according to Reuters. The Monday shutdown affects one of Russia's key fuel producers and could worsen domestic fuel shortages. Ukrainian military officials say the refinery was the last of Russia's 11 largest gasoline producers to be targeted, while conflicting reports remain over which processing unit sustained the heaviest damage. ...

According to Reuters, the Omsk refinery processed 22 million metric tons of crude oil (about 440,000 barrels per day) in 2024 and produced approximately 5 million tons of gasoline and 8 million tons of diesel, making it one of Russia’s most important fuel production facilities. ..."

Russia's Largest Oil Refinery Stops Processing After Ukraine’s 3,000-km Strike

Fixing US Patent Eligibility Is an Easy Win for Innovation

How serious is the situation? Will the latest legislation improve things?

"America was the first country to recognize copyrights and patents in its constitution, and industries built on intellectual property produce over 40 percent of US GDP whilst supporting tens of millions of jobs.

Now, however, a handful of Supreme Court decisions have excluded entire categories of invention from patentability. US investment in diagnostic technologies fell $9.3 billion below expected levels, as a result of depriving American innovators of rights and protections enjoyed by their counterparts in Asia and Europe. 

In one much-cited example, a molecular diagnostics company developed non-invasive prenatal testing that allowed fetal DNA to be collected from the mother’s blood, replacing invasive in-utero testing that risks pregnancy loss. The judge called it a “meritorious invention” but was compelled to invalidate patents because the circulating DNA is a natural phenomenon, and the test was well understood. The discovery was beyond the reach of patent eligibility. Competitors were immediately empowered to duplicate the technique.

The result has been a decline in innovation, ceding America’s global leadership in critical areas like medical diagnostics to our foreign partners and rivals. The bipartisan Patent Eligibility Restoration Act of 2025 (PERA) attempts to rectify this by clarifying what inventions can be protected under the US Patent Act Section 101. PERA is before the Senate Judiciary Committee and would define clear statutory exceptions to patentable subject matter that would replace broad and vague judge-made exceptions.  ..."

Fixing Patent Eligibility Is an Easy Win for Innovation | The Daily Economy "Restrictive patent eligibility has pushed investment in key technologies overseas, weakening one of America’s historic competitive advantages. Congress can still reverse course."

China-Russia-North Korea Combined military Exercises to provoke South Korea

What rogue states do best!

When will the Korean peninsula be reunited again like Germany in 1990!

"The PRC, North Korea, and Russia conducted aerial and naval incursions into South Korea’s ADIZ and near the NLL on June 27, provoking a South Korean response. The PRC and Russia are signaling their desire for greater cooperation with North Korea and willingness to encroach upon South Korean territory."

Korean Peninsula Update, July 7, 2026 | AEI

Let’s Dance: Examining the influence of David Bowie and Prince on American pop culture 10 years later, an anthology

Both artists died 10 years ago in 2016!

Caveat: I did not read the article.

"Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign is the first critical anthology dedicated to exploring the legacies of the pop music icons David Bowie and Prince. Daphne A. Brooks brings together an extraordinary array of writers, artists, and scholars, including Greg Tate, Jack Halberstam, Kara Keeling, Eric Lott, and Ann Powers, to offer fresh insight into how Bowie and Prince each fundamentally changed pop culture as musicians who emerged at the intersections of modern movements surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and art. Featured alongside these pieces are interviews with trusted collaborators of Bowie and Prince such as D. A. Pennebaker, Sheila E., and Marie France, giving vital insider context to the impact both artists had on pop culture and the complexities of their repertoires, politics, and private lives. This work is essential reading for any fan of two of the most formidable and eminent figures in pop culture history."

Let’s Dance: Examining the influence of David Bowie and Prince on American pop culture | Yale News "A new anthology edited by Yale’s Daphne Brooks reflects on the pop icons’ lasting legacies 10 years after their deaths."

Source

Average testosterone levels in men declined by 54% between 1972 and 2019 according to an international study of over 118,000 men

Serious stuff, if confirmed! Of course, climate change needed to be implicated by The Guardian!

Unfortunately, I was not able to find the study e.g. via Google search, Google Scholar, the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine etc. Presumably, this study has not yet been published.

"Average testosterone levels in men declined by 54% between 1972 and 2019, according to data presented this week at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in London; researchers say rising obesity and diabetes are the key drivers but also highlighted endocrine-disrupting chemicals and climate change as potential factors [???]. ..."

"... These findings come from an international study led by Prof. Hagai Levine of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine. ..." (Google search)

Global Health NOW: Pandemic-Era Push for PPE Stalls; and Long Road of Autism Advocacy in Guinea

SuperFlex: Deformable Superquadrics for Point Cloud Decomposition

This could be an interesting new paper by Leonidas Guibas and his team!

From the abstract:

"Superquadrics have proven to provide a compact, geometrically meaningful representation for 3D objects. However, existing methods suffer from limited reconstruction accuracy, are restricted to rigid primitives, and lack robustness to partial point clouds.

In this work, we present SuperFlex, an enhanced framework that expands the expressive power and applicability of superquadric decompositions. First, we introduce a novel loss formulation which significantly improves reconstruction accuracy.

Second, we include bending and tapering deformations, enabling high-fidelity representation of curved and asymmetric geometries.

Finally, we leverage these high-quality decompositions as supervision to train a model that is robust to partial real-world point clouds.

Experiments demonstrate substantial improvements in reconstruction accuracy over both optimization- and learning-based baselines while maintaining a highly compact primitive representation."

[2607.01015] SuperFlex: Deformable Superquadrics for Point Cloud Decomposition (preprint, open access)

Project page: this https URL

Short video

President Trump in Turkey: Greenland 'should be controlled' by U.S.

President Trump can be very persistent! Is Greenland an obsession of him? Or what is the strategic value of Greenland to the US? I am afraid the value is high.

I bet President Trump and Denmark can work out something regarding Greenland! The Danes are reasonable people! Perhaps, an outright purchase of the island is not possible!

I suppose since the Vikings discovered Greenland around 9th century, this island has been part of Denmark.

To all the global warming/climate change hoax purveyors: Why was Greenland called greenland by the Vikings? Hint: Medieval warming period, Greenland was much less ice covered.

Trump in Turkey: Greenland 'should be controlled' by U.S. | Just The News "Trump, in both his first and second terms, has attempted to secure a deal to purchase Greenland from Denmark, though both parties have balked at the prospect and NATO members have fumed over Trump's territorial aspirations."

Sleep Deprivation Leaves a Mark on the Human Brain by Altering Synaptic Density

This effect has been suggested for several decades!

Notice the excellent graphical material provided with this research!

"Synaptic connections between brain cells become stronger when an animal is awake, raising energy consumption and causing the buildup of proteins, which limits the capacity for learning.1 While scientists believe that sleep fixes this imbalance, they didn’t have much human evidence to support this hypothesis.

Now, ... sleep scientist ... used positron emission tomography (PET) to test whether the synaptic hypothesis of sleep holds true in humans. The findings ... indicate that wakefulness does strengthen synaptic connections in human brains, providing molecular evidence behind the neurobiology of sleep. ..."

From the abstract:

"Sleep is essential for synaptic homeostasis, a proposed mechanism whereby wakefulness leads to synaptic potentiation and sleep facilitates synaptic down-selection. Synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A (SV2A), whose availability is quantifiable by [¹⁸F]SynVesT-1 positron emission tomography (PET), is commonly interpreted as a proxy for synaptic density.

In this randomized study, we examined 40 healthy adults (mean age 27.5 ± 6.5 years) who underwent two [¹⁸F]SynVesT-1 PET scans on consecutive days.

Half of the participants were assigned to the normal sleep (i.e., control) condition and half to the sleep deprivation condition.

Scans were performed at the same circadian time point, approximately 4 h after awakening in the control group and during baseline in the sleep deprivation group or after ~28 h of continuous wakefulness in the sleep deprivation group after sleep deprivation.

Sleep deprivation led to significant increases in synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A binding in multiple brain regions, including the thalamus (+4.6%), hippocampus (+5.6%), and parietal cortex (+3.2%), whereas no changes were observed in controls.

The degree of increase in synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A positively correlated with elevated slow wave activity during recovery sleep, a physiological marker of sleep pressure.

These findings provide in vivo support for the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis in humans and suggest that synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A PET imaging is sensitive to sleep-wake dependent synaptic plasticity."

Sleep Deprivation Leaves a Mark on the Human Brain | The Scientist "Neuroimaging revealed that prolonged wakefulness strengthened synaptic connections which could saturate learning capacity, highlighting the biology behind sleep."

A Night Without Sleep Alters Synaptic Density in the Brain (original news release) "What happens in the brain when people stay awake all night? A new PET/MRI study by researchers at the Forschungszentrum Jülich involving 40 healthy adults provides one of the most direct indications to date in humans: After approximately 28.5 hours of wakefulness, a marker of synaptic density was elevated in several brain regions. Synapses are the contact points through which nerve cells exchange information. The finding supports the assumption that sleep is not just rest, but helps the brain restore balance to its neural connections."

Sleep deprivation increases levels of the synaptic density marker SV2A in the human brain (open access)

I did not know that sleep deprivation could be so beautiful! Just kidding!

Learning Process Rewards via Success Visitation Matching for Efficient RL

This could be an interesting new paper by Sergey Levine and his team!

From the abstract:

"In many modern applications of reinforcement learning (RL), the natural reward for a task of interest is inherently sparse: a reward of 0 is given everywhere except when the task is completed, when a reward of +1 is given.

Training a policy to maximize such a sparse reward requires solving a challenging credit assignment problem, leading to slow or ineffective RL improvement.

We propose a simple approach to transform a sparse outcome reward into a dense process reward.

Our approach relies on training a discriminator to distinguish between previous successful and unsuccessful episodes, and using this discriminator to incentivize the RL-learned policy to match the state-action visitations of successful episodes, while avoiding those of unsuccessful episodes.

By incentivizing the policy to match the visitations over all states, not just those that correspond to task success, this reward provides dense feedback on whether progress is being made towards task completion, and, we show, provably achieves this without changing the optimal policy.

Focusing on finetuning of robotic control policies, we demonstrate that our approach leads to significantly faster RL finetuning performance on both simulated and real-world manipulation tasks, as compared to simply maximizing the sparse outcome reward."

[2606.23640] Learning Process Rewards via Success Visitation Matching for Efficient RL

English for trippers: A suitor in a suit waiting in a suite

 Suits me! Suitable! Let's sue!

Thousands of women in India are murdered or driven to take their own lives over dowry disputes and female feticide each year

I believe it was my late mother, who told me about this horrible practice some 50 or more years ago. When will this abuse finally end?

Or is there something a Westerner misses here? Like it occurs only in rural areas or among Indian minorities etc. I also understand that it is perhaps very difficult to completely stop this practice, but I guess tremendous improvements were already achieved.

"Thousands of women in India are murdered or driven to take their own lives over dowry disputes each year—yet the cases no longer spark public outrage or debate, according to a new study, despite a rise in cases (from 1,841 in 1988 to 6,516 in 2022); dowries were officially banned in 1961 but remain widespread. ..."

From the abstract:

"This article investigates the relationship between attention and large‐scale killing that takes place away from warzones and battlefields.

Structural femicide in India in the form of dowry deaths and female feticide arguably erases as many lives every year as many wars and conflicts, yet it barely begets any public attention today.

The collective apathy toward structural femicide is puzzling and cannot be accounted for by the neoliberal turn of the feminist movement in India, or then by the juridical domestication of dowry‐deaths and sex‐selection.

This article offers a new genealogy for the demise of the protests against dowry‐deaths and the escalation of female feticide.

It argues that the new temporality inaugurated by The Hindu Marriage Act (1955) disembedded marriage alliances from long‐term ritual exchange to a pared down temporality calculable by law, enabling marriage payments to conjoin with the logic of capital in new ways.

Examining the waxing and waning of the public ire against dowry deaths, on the one hand, and a consistent indifference toward feticide, on the other, offers an opportunity to examine the political work of attention and releases the anthropological scholarship on attention from its current emphasis on algorithmic consumerism and self‐cultivation.

While the protests against dowry killings in the 1970s and 1980s were an exceptional moment, what pushed them out of political attention span was neither habituation, nor loss of newness, but rather new infrastructures of inattention constituted by capital, ritual, and the law."

Global Health NOW: Pakistan’s Pediatric HIV Outbreak; and Overheated Europe Looks to an Air-Conditioned Future

Infrastructures of Inattention and Necropolitical Kinship: Ritual, Capital, and the Time of the Law in India (open access)

Trump Admin Has provided $310 Million in Venezuela Earthquake Relief, Delivered 60,000+ Aid Kits

Good news!

"... Due to over two decades of repressive and corrupt socialist mismanagement, the country was especially vulnerable to a natural disaster due to its barely functional healthcare system, a dilapidated electrical grid, and poorly constructed socialist housing complexes that reportedly collapsed rapidly. 

The Venezuelan socialist regime, led by interim “president” Delcy Rodríguez, was quick to invite American forces into the country to help dig out survivors and tend to victims. ...

“What began as an urgent life-saving operation is now transitioning into a sustained humanitarian relief and recovery effort,” ... “Our four American urban search and rescue teams have completed their mission and returned home.”

the U.S. has released over $310 million in support for Venezuelans. Much of this is being distributed with the aid of international organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse, Catholic Relief Services, and the World Food Program (WFP), helping keep money out of the hands of corrupt socialist officials. ..."

Trump Admin Has Invested $310 Million in Venezuela Earthquake Relief, Delivered 60,000+ Aid Kits "The United States has invested over $310 million in humanitarian support for victims of Venezuela’s devastating June 24 earthquakes as of this week and delivered upwards of 60,000 food, hygiene, and other aid kits to victims, America’s top diplomat in the country told reporters on Tuesday."

Wärmepumpen, der nächste Klimawahnsinn der Bananenrepublik D?

Klimawahn und kein Ende! Ob Geothermie besser und nachhaltig ist als Sonnen- und Windenergie ist zweifelhaft!

"Großwärmepumpen kommen dort zum Einsatz, wo Gewerbe, Industrie, Quartiere oder große Nichtwohngebäude Wärme und Kälte benötigen. Dort können leistungsstarke Wärmepumpen fossile Energie ersetzen, Abwärme zurück in Prozesse bringen und ganze Versorgungssysteme effizienter machen. Genau für diese Anwendungen ist nun die Richtlinie VDI 4646 „Anwendung von Großwärmepumpen“ erschienen. Sie setzt dort an, wo Standardlösungen enden. ...

Viele Unternehmen benötigen Niedertemperaturwärme, etwa für Reinigung, Trocknung, Raumwärme, Warmwasser, Vorwärmung oder bestimmte Produktionsschritte. Gleichzeitig fällt an anderer Stelle Abwärme an, die bisher oft ungenutzt bleibt. Großwärmepumpen können diese Energie auf ein nutzbares Temperaturniveau anheben. ..."

"... 135 Erdwärmesonden, jeweils rund 170 m tief, insgesamt 23.552 Bohrmeter: In Lübeck entsteht derzeit ein kaltes Nahwärmenetz, bei dem nicht die Netztemperatur die technische Herausforderung ist, sondern die langfristige Energiebilanz des Untergrunds. Denn ein Quartier kann dem Boden im Winter nur dann dauerhaft Wärme entziehen, wenn das System über das Jahr hinweg wieder ausreichend regeneriert wird. ..."

Neue VDI 4646: Großwärmepumpen rücken Industrie und Kommunen in den Fokus "In vielen Bereichen können Großwärmepumpen fossile Energie ersetzen [???], Abwärme zurück in Prozesse bringen und ganze Versorgungssysteme effizienter machen."

23.000 Bohrmeter für ein kaltes Wärmenetz: Warum Lübeck so tief geht "135 Erdwärmesonden, 3 km Leitungsnetz und dezentrale Wärmepumpen: Lübeck baut ein kaltes Nahwärmenetz und nutzt Geothermie fürs Wohnquartier."

Membrane technologies for crude oil separation could cut refining energy use by up to 90%

Good news!

"Three teams have developed membranes that can efficiently separate hydrocarbons in crude oil. These materials are scalable, can work under industrial conditions and help reduce the energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions compared with conventional methods. ‘Membrane-based hydrocarbon fractionation is [now] moving from a promising idea toward a more practical technology,’ ..."

Membrane technologies for crude oil separation could cut refining energy use by up to 90% | Chemistry World (behind paywall) "Separating crude oil into useful fractions take 1% of the world’s energy. These researchers have a plan to tackle this"

Heatwave suffering Europe Looks to a more Air-Conditioned Future

About time! How much of this low residential A/C usage in Europe is due to the climate change ideology and demagoguery? 

"Air conditioning usage is rapidly growing across Europe, as intensifying heat waves strain infrastructure built for cooler climates.

~20% of European homes have AC units; but adoption is expanding even in historically cooler countries like the 

U.K., where homes with AC doubled over the past three years [from a very low level I suspect]; and 

Germany, where AC adoption jumped 6% between 2023–2024.  

Prioritizing health care: Britain’s Climate Change Committee warned that air conditioning is becoming urgently needed in hospitals. This week, medical machines broke down in sweltering UK hospital wards even as heat-related admissions surged.   

The cost of cooling: Higher electricity prices and aging power grids make widespread AC adoption especially challenge ..."

Global Health NOW: Pakistan’s Pediatric HIV Outbreak; and Overheated Europe Looks to an Air-Conditioned Future

China News Network (CNN)

CNN [Cable News Network founded by Ted Turner in 1980] was the only major Western news service not censored by the Great Firewall in China mainland as far as I could tell during my most recent long stay in China.

CNN was widely available in central China.

What would Ted Turner [1938-2026] say if he was still alive.

Ted Turner

Britain needs tax code simplification

The same or similar can be said about the convoluted tax code of many other Western countries! This has been known for several decades and various economists have raised the issue.

Britain needs tax simplification

Exclusive: Woman who dated U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her five years ago - POLITICO. Really!

Why did this woman not come forward five years ago? Why did she not report it to the police at the time?

Men watch out!

This seems to be now a common pattern: The successful career of a male is destroyed by some claim of an sexual assault by some woman that happened years ago. This is very disturbing!

Politico apparently did make an effort to confirm the story:

"... The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office. ..."

Exclusive: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her - POLITICO "The Maine Democrat denied the allegations and said, “Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.”

"

What is IBM’s nanostack chip architecture? - IBM Research

Recommendable! Explains the latest chip design breakthrough by Big Blue!

See also my recent blog post here regarding new IBM chips.

What is IBM’s nanostack chip architecture? - IBM Research "This new microchip architecture from IBM builds up, not out, to overcome the spatial limitations of scaling transistor density."

Nanosheet transistor architecture (center), introduced by IBM in 2017, has supplanted the previously dominant FinFET technology (left). Nanostack transistor architecture (right) is expected to extend transistor scaling for more than a decade.

English for trippers: Barely bearable

Definition: You home A/C broke down and it is over 100F (between 40-45C) degrees hot outside (like now in July in Phoenix, AZ) and you are waiting for over 48 hours for an A/C technician to show up and fix it! Is this an emergency or what? 😊

P.S. You can even watch your almost useless ceiling fan sweating too! Just kidding!

P.S. All the while, you are constantly worried that your laptop does not get too hot too.

The first 100 American autonomous ground vehicles (ATVs) are fighting in Ukraine against Putin the Terrible

Good news! Bring it on! Make Putin the Terrible sweat more!

"Forterra, a U.S. builder of autonomous vehicles, revealed today that more than 100 of its self-driving ATVs have been deployed in conflict zones in Ukraine for the past nine months, in what the company believes is the largest deployment of autonomous ground vehicles in combat by any U.S. defense tech company. ..."

The first American autonomous ground vehicles are fighting in Ukraine | TechCrunch

German Foreign Minister Wadephul warns against weakening Palestinian Authority, says it could harm Israel's security. Really!

What a fool this German foreign minister is! The PA is long overdue to be replaced with something better for the Arabs living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank!

The Palestinian Authority has been a disaster and a terrorism sponsor for several decades! Remember the crook Yasser Arafat!

German FM warns against weakening Palestinian Authority, says it could harm Israel's security | The Jerusalem Post

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul speaks during a press conference on the day he meets with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem, July 7, 2026.

German FM Wadephul to sign agreement with Israel giving Yad Vashem five million euros yearly

Good news! Bravo!

"Yad Vashem raises controversy with German educational centers

In May, Yad Vashem announced plans to open an educational center in Munich and a satellite branch in Leipzig, its first permanent facilities outside Israel. ..."

German FM Wadephul to sign agreement giving Yad Vashem five million euros yearly | The Jerusalem Post "The agreement will replace an older one agreed upon in 2020, in which Germany committed to providing €1 million annually until 2031."

Iran fires missiles at two commercial ships in Strait of Hormuz, causing major damage

Where are the coward Europeans when you need them! The US will remember!!!

Where are the European minesweepers and navy escort protection for commercial ships?

Iranian missiles reportedly hit Saudi, Qatari tankers in Strait of Hormuz | The Jerusalem Post "Qatar said on Tuesday the targeting of the Qatari tanker Al Rekayyat near the Strait of Hormuz was an unacceptable attack on the security of international navigation and global energy supplies."