Virginia high school suspended more than 300 hundred students over anti-ICE walkout during school hours

Good news! Bravo! Maybe these students should learn to protest after school or on weekends!

"A high school in Virginia suspended over 300 students for walking out of class for an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest ...

A letter from principal Heather Abney to parents of students said that the district did not endorse the walkout and that students who left campus without permission would be punished according to their regular code of behavior. A total of 303 students were suspended for three days. ..."

Praise rolls in for high school suspending hundreds of students over anti-ICE walkout: 'Adults are taking charge' | Blaze Media

One night of sleep vital signs may Predict Illness several years ahead and over 100 health conditions

Amazing stuff!

"Difficulty sleeping often precedes heart disease, psychiatric disorders, and many other illnesses. Researchers used data gathered during sleep studies to detect such conditions.

What’s new: SleepFM is a system that classifies Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, prostate cancer, stroke, congestive heart failure, and many other conditions based on a person’s vital signs while asleep — as much as 6 years before they show symptoms. ...

Input/output: Recordings of one night of sleep in, disease classifications out

Architecture: Convolutional neural network encoder, transformer, LSTM

Performance: Can accurately classify over 130 conditions ...

How it works: SleepFM comprises a convolutional neural network (CNN), transformer, and LSTM. The authors trained the system in two stages:

(i) to encode patterns in sleep data and

(ii) to classify diseases.

The training data comprised roughly 585,000 hours of sleep-study recordings that included, in addition to each patient’s age and sex, signals of activity in the brain, heart, respiratory system (airflow, snoring, and blood oxygen level), and leg muscles. The data was mostly proprietary but included public datasets.

The authors trained the CNN and transformer together.  ...

The authors added the LSTM and separately trained it, given 9 hours of sleep data as well as the subject’s age and sex, to classify more than 1,000 diseases.

Results: The authors compared SleepFM’s performance on a proprietary test set to the same system without pretraining and a vanilla neural network that was trained on only demographic information.

Across 14 general categories of disease ..."

From the abstract:

"Sleep is a fundamental biological process with broad implications for physical and mental health, yet its complex relationship with disease remains poorly understood. Polysomnography (PSG)—the gold standard for sleep analysis—captures rich physiological signals but is underutilized due to challenges in standardization, generalizability and multimodal integration.

To address these challenges, we developed SleepFM, a multimodal sleep foundation model trained with a new contrastive learning approach that accommodates multiple PSG configurations.

Trained on a curated dataset of over 585,000 hours of PSG recordings from approximately 65,000 participants across several cohorts, SleepFM produces latent sleep representations that capture the physiological and temporal structure of sleep and enable accurate prediction of future disease risk.

From one night of sleep, SleepFM accurately predicts 130 conditions with a C-Index of at least 0.75 (Bonferroni-corrected P < 0.01), including all-cause mortality (C-Index, 0.84), dementia (0.85), myocardial infarction (0.81), heart failure (0.80), chronic kidney disease (0.79), stroke (0.78) and atrial fibrillation (0.78).

Moreover, the model demonstrates strong transfer learning performance on a dataset from the Sleep Heart Health Study—a dataset that was excluded from pretraining—and performs competitively with specialized sleep-staging models such as U-Sleep and YASA on common sleep analysis tasks, achieving mean F1 scores of 0.70–0.78 for sleep staging and accuracies of 0.69 and 0.87 for classifying sleep apnea severity and presence.

This work shows that foundation models can learn the language of sleep from multimodal sleep recordings, enabling scalable, label-efficient analysis and disease prediction."

The New Open-Weights Leader, Big AI’s Political Influence, Predicting Illness, Faster Reasoning

New AI model predicts disease risk while you sleep "Stanford Medicine scientists and their colleagues created the first artificial intelligence model that can predict more than 100 health conditions from one night’s sleep."

A multimodal sleep foundation model for disease prediction (open access)

Fig. 1: Overview of SleepFM framework.

Reprogramming of brain glial cells to corticospinal neurons may treat ALS and spinal cord injuries

Good news!

"Harvard stem cell biologists have discovered a way to grow the type of brain cells that degenerate in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and suffer damage in spinal cord injuries.

In a paper published in the journal eLife, researchers engineered a cocktail of molecular signals to coax some “progenitor cells” — precursors that can differentiate into other cell types — to generate corticospinal neurons (CSNs), brain cells vital to voluntary motor control. ...

“.progenitor population is that it’s already distributed throughout the brain ... They’re sitting there — resident stem cells.”

The new study offers the first-ever model for growing corticospinal neurons in the lab, opening new windows for researching and potentially regenerating neurons for two devastating neurological afflictions. ..."

"eLife Assessment

This study presents fundamental new findings introducing a new approach for the reprogramming of brain glial cells to corticospinal neurons. The data is highly compelling, with multiple lines of evidence demonstrating the success of this new assay. These exciting findings set the stage for future studies of the potential of these reprogrammed cells to form functional connections in vivo and their utility in clinical conditions where corticospinal neurons are compromised."

From the abstract:

"Corticospinal neurons (CSN) centrally degenerate in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), along with spinal motor neurons, and loss of voluntary motor function in spinal cord injury (SCI) results from damage to CSN axons.

For functional regeneration of specifically affected neuronal circuitry in vivo, or for optimally informative disease modeling and/or therapeutic screening in vitro, it is important to reproduce the type or subtype of neurons involved. No such appropriate in vitro models exist with which to investigate CSN selective vulnerability and degeneration in ALS, or to investigate routes to regeneration of CSN circuitry for ALS or SCI, critically limiting the relevance of much research. Here, we identify that the HMG-domain transcription factor Sox6 is expressed by a subset of NG2+ endogenous cortical progenitors in postnatal and adult cortex, and that Sox6 suppresses a latent neurogenic program by repressing proneural Neurog2 expression by progenitors.

We FACS-purify these progenitors from postnatal mouse cortex and establish a culture system to investigate their potential for directed differentiation into CSN. We then employ a multi-component construct with complementary and differentiation-sharpening transcriptional controls (activating Neurog2, Fezf2, while antagonizing Olig2 with VP16:Olig2).

We generate corticospinal-like neurons from SOX6+/NG2+ cortical progenitors and find that these neurons differentiate with remarkable fidelity compared with corticospinal neurons in vivo. They possess appropriate morphological, molecular, transcriptomic, and electrophysiological characteristics, without characteristics of the alternate intracortical or other neuronal subtypes. We identify that these critical specifics of differentiation are not reproduced by commonly employed Neurog2-driven differentiation. Neurons induced by Neurog2 instead exhibit aberrant multi-axon morphology and express molecular hallmarks of alternate cortical projection subtypes, often in mixed form. Together, this developmentally-based directed differentiation from cortical progenitors sets a precedent and foundation for in vitro mechanistic and therapeutic disease modeling, and toward regenerative neuronal repopulation and circuit repair."

A ‘cocktail’ recipe for brain cells — Harvard Gazette "Stem cell biologists discover how to regenerate type damaged in ALS, spinal cord injuries"

Directed differentiation of functional corticospinal-like neurons from endogenous SOX6+/NG2+ cortical progenitors

Fig. 1 Identification and culture of SOX6+/NG2+ cortical progenitors with high purity and fidelity

How will the roughly $134 billion in tariff revenues, collected by the Trump administration, be refunded?

Now that the US Supreme Court has decided that Trump did not have the authorization for these broad tariffs!

"The ruling leaves open a massive question: refunds. As much as $175 billion has been collected under the struck-down tariffs, and trade attorneys warn the refund process could take months to years. The Court’s opinion was silent on how repayment should work."

"The battle is just starting for the 300,000 businesses that want $134 billion in tariffs refunded. ...

As it turns out, convincing six Supreme Court justices that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority in imposing sweeping tariffs relying on emergency economic powers was the easy part. The hard part: Getting a clear answer on what happens to the tens of billions of dollars that US companies forked over after Trump jacked up tariffs on every global partner last year.

The Trump administration — both formally and informally — has promised to refund duties collected if the Supreme Court issued a ruling against them. But neither the administration nor any of the justices have specified exactly how it would work. ..."

Saturday, February 21, 2026 - Join The Flyover

The $134-billion question: Who will get a tariff refund?

Venezuela approves amnesty that could release hundreds detained for political reasons

Good news!

Venezuela approves amnesty that could release hundreds detained for political reasons - YouTube

The sushi master bringing authentic Japanese techniques to NYC

Recommendable!

The sushi master bringing authentic Japanese techniques to NYC | BBC Global - YouTube

Niels Henrik Abel: The Genius Who Died in Poverty

Recommendable!

(237) Niels Henrik Abel: The Genius Who Died in Poverty - YouTube

SBA Kelly Loeffler talks about the revival of small businesses under Trump with Maria Bartiromo

Recommendable!

(236) FRAUD EXPLOSION: SBA uncovers BILLIONS in questioned loans - YouTube (The title of this video is wrong!)

 

See ‘Pyonghattan’: North Korea’s modern new skyscraper district

Bizarre!

(235) See ‘Pyonghattan’: North Korea’s modern new skyscraper district - YouTube

Seedance Row: Hollywood Studios Take on Bytedance Over AI Videos with Palki Sharma

Recommendable!

(234) Seedance Row: Hollywood Studios Take on Bytedance Over AI Videos | Vantage with Palki Sharma - YouTube

Laura Ingraham discuses the US Supreme Court decision on Trump's tariffs

Recommendable! Laura also discusses the two dissenting opinions, which seem to be a lot more convincing than the decision itself.

(232) Laura: It is LUDICROUS to think this - YouTube

Meet OAT: The New Action Tokenizer Bringing LLM-Style Scaling and Flexible, Anytime Inference to the Robotics World

"Ordered Action Tokenization (OAT), developed by researchers at Harvard and Stanford, is a new framework that enables robots to learn and move using the same autoregressive methods as large language models. Traditional robot tokenizers were often too slow, lacked structure, or caused system crashes due to "undecodable" math. OAT solves these issues by satisfying three "desiderata":

high compression,

total decodability, and a 

left-to-right causal ordering.

Using a technique called Nested Dropout, OAT forces the most important global movements into the first few tokens, while later tokens add fine-grained details. This unique "ordered" structure allows for anytime inference, where a robot can stop generating tokens early to react quickly or continue for higher precision. Across more than 20 tasks, OAT consistently outperformed industry-standard diffusion policies and other tokenization methods, offering a more scalable and flexible foundation for future robotic control ..."

From the abstract:

"Autoregressive policies offer a compelling foundation for scalable robot learning by enabling discrete abstraction, token-level reasoning, and flexible inference. However, applying autoregressive modeling to continuous robot actions requires an effective action tokenization scheme. Existing approaches either rely on analytical discretization methods that produce prohibitively long token sequences, or learned latent tokenizers that lack structure, limiting their compatibility with next-token prediction. In this work, we identify three desiderata for action tokenization - high compression, total decodability, and a left-to-right causally ordered token space - and introduce Ordered Action Tokenization (OAT), a learned action tokenizer that satisfies all three. OAT discretizes action chunks into an ordered sequence of tokens using transformer with registers, finite scalar quantization, and ordering-inducing training mechanisms. The resulting token space aligns naturally with autoregressive generation and enables prefix-based detokenization, yielding an anytime trade-off between inference cost and action fidelity. Across more than 20 tasks spanning four simulation benchmarks and real-world settings, autoregressive policies equipped with OAT consistently outperform prior tokenization schemes and diffusion-based baselines, while offering significantly greater flexibility at inference time."

Microsoft AI Proposes OrbitalBrain | New from Harvard- Ordered Action Tokenization (OAT)...

Meet OAT: The New Action Tokenizer Bringing LLM-Style Scaling and Flexible, Anytime Inference to the Robotics World

OAT: Ordered Action Tokenization (preprint, open access)

Circadian cycles studied at single-cell level across the whole brain

Amazing stuff!

"Although circadian rhythms have been well studied in a few specific regions, their brain-wide organization remains poorly understood. To quantify spontaneous circadian neural activity at single-cell resolution, Yamashita et al. used tissue clearing and whole-brain immunostaining on a large number of mouse brains over two full circadian cycles. Circadian rhythmicity was present in many brain regions. The activity of most regions peaked during the animals’ active phase. However, sleep centers, visual areas, the dentate gyrus, and the cerebellum all peaked during the inactive phase. A closer look revealed distinct circadian phases even within individual regions, highlighting temporal heterogeneity. These findings will be useful for relating physiological and behavioral experimental data to the time-of-day–driven internal regulatory forces."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Although circadian rhythms have been well studied in a few specific regions, their brainwide organization remains poorly understood. To quantify spontaneous circadian neural activity at single-cell resolution, Yamashita et al. used tissue clearing and whole-brain immunostaining on a large number of mouse brains over two full circadian cycles. Circadian rhythmicity was present in many brain regions. The activity of most regions peaked during the animals’ active phase. However, sleep centers, visual areas, the dentate gyrus, and the cerebellum all peaked during the inactive phase. A closer look revealed distinct circadian phases even within individual regions, highlighting temporal heterogeneity. These findings will be useful for relating physiological and behavioral experimental data to the time-of-day–driven internal regulatory forces. 

Structured Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Neural activity across different brain regions underlies essential physiological and behavioral functions. These activities are coordinated in space and time, and circadian rhythms are a fundamental temporal regulator of such activity, influencing sleep, metabolism, hormone secretion, and cognition. Although the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) has been extensively studied as the master pacemaker, how spontaneous neural activity is coordinated across the entire brain over the circadian cycle has remained elusive. Previous approaches, including electrophysiological recordings, in situ hybridization, immediate early gene labeling, circadian gene reporters, and calcium imaging, have typically been restricted to limited regions and lack spatial continuity, making it difficult to achieve a systematic view.

RATIONALE

To overcome these limitations, we used tissue clearing and three-dimensional whole-brain c-Fos immunostaining. c-Fos is notable for its rapid and broad induction across the brain, making it suitable for spatially comprehensive mapping of neural activity. By sampling brains every 4 hours over 2 days under constant darkness, we aimed to generate a whole-brain atlas of circadian neural activity at single-cell resolution and to identify how different regions and subregions contribute to the temporal organization of brain function.

RESULTS

Each brain contained between 0.4 and 3.0 million c-Fos–positive cells.

Time-series analysis of 144 brains revealed that 79% of 642 anatomically defined regions showed significant circadian rhythmicity. Most regions peaked during the late subjective night, corresponding to the active phase in nocturnal mice, whereas some, including sleep-promoting nuclei such as the ventrolateral preoptic area, peaked during the subjective day. Visual regions peaked during the daytime, in antiphase to auditory regions at night, highlighting functional specialization.

The hippocampal memory system showed notable internal diversity: CA1 and CA3 peaked during the active phase, whereas the dentate gyrus peaked during the inactive phase, nearly in antiphase. This inversion aligns with reports of dentate gyrus recruitment during sleep stages, suggesting phase-specific contributions to memory processing.

Voxelwise analysis further revealed distinct subregional dynamics, including heterogeneous patterns in the SCN and dorsomedial nucleus of the hypothalamus, and a gradual peak time shift along the dorsoventral axis within CA1, highlighting continuous spatiotemporal variation even within single structures. In addition, we demonstrated that whole-brain c-Fos activity patterns could accurately predict circadian time using computational approaches adapted from omics data, confirming that brain-wide rhythms collectively encode temporal information.

CONCLUSION

Our study establishes a comprehensive atlas of circadian neural activity at the whole-brain scale. By combining tissue clearing with large-scale time-series sampling and systematic quantitative analysis, we provide a global view of how neural activity rhythms are organized across hundreds of regions and subregions.

The open-access database we developed allows users to explore these rhythms by region or voxel and to upload custom regions of interest for analysis. It is designed to be compatible with gene expression, connectivity, and cell-type resources, enabling integrative analyses that link circadian activity with molecular and anatomical data.

Thus, this resource not only advances chronobiology but also provides a temporal framework across neuroscience, linking time-of-day dynamics to studies of diverse brain functions, pharmacology, and disease."

In Science Journals | Science

A whole-brain single-cell atlas of circadian neural activity in mice (no public access)

Here is an almost 17 minutes long YouTube video about this paper. (Caveat: I did not watch it)

Whole-brain single-cell atlas of circadian neural activity.

US Supreme Court Strikes Down Tariffs Core to Trump Economic Agenda

What's next? Is there another law possibly giving President Trump the authorization?

From an economic standpoint it would be justified (but not recommended) to respond with tariffs if another country imposes tariffs on US imports. Hower, such countervailing/reciprocal tariffs may violate international trade agreements.

"In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump’s executive actions on tariffs exceeded his constitutional authority. 

During oral arguments in November, even Trump-appointed justices seemed skeptical of the government’s arguments that the president could impose tariffs without congressional approval. ...

At issue was whether the president exceeded his executive branch authority by imposing tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law intended to address emergencies only.

The Trump administration has argued the trade imbalance constitutes a national emergency. Trump has consistently argued the United States has gotten a raw deal on trade with other countries that impose tariffs. ..."

SCOTUS Tariffs Ruling Could Have Big Impact on Trump Economy

Unorthodox ‘universal vaccine’ offers broad protection in mice

Good news!

"... scientists report that by dosing mice with a mix of immune-provoking molecules, they re-created this effect and protected the animals for several months against a variety of respiratory pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2. The researchers now hope to test a version of their “universal vaccine” in people. ..."

From the abstract:

"Traditional vaccines target specific pathogens, limiting their scope against diverse respiratory threats. We describe an intranasal liposomal formulation combining toll-like receptor (TLR) 4 and 7/8 ligands with a model antigen, ovalbumin, that provided broad, durable protection in mice for at least 3 months against infection with SARS-CoV-2 and Staphylococcus aureus. In addition, the vaccine protected mice from other viruses (SARS-CoV-2, SARS, SCH014 coronavirus), bacteria (Acinetobacter baumannii), and allergens.

Protection was mediated by persistent ovalbumin-specific CD4+ and CD8+ memory T cells that imprinted alveolar macrophages (AMs), enhancing antigen presentation and antiviral immunity.

Following infection, vaccinated mice mounted rapid pathogen-specific T cell and antibody responses and formed ectopic lymphoid structures in the lung. These results reveal a class of “universal vaccines” against diverse respiratory threats."

Unorthodox ‘universal vaccine’ offers broad protection in mice | Science | AAAS

Mucosal vaccination in mice provides protection from diverse respiratory threats (no public access)

Spiritual practices strongly associated with reduced risk for hazardous alcohol and drug use, A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies

Getting high on religion and religious community may indeed help!

Pray and meditate more and be better off!

"Individuals who engaged in spirituality were significantly less likely to exhibit hazardous use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs, according to a new meta-analysis led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The meta-analysis is the first of its kind to synthesize and comprehensively estimate associations between harmful or hazardous substance use and spirituality—considered any practice, religious or otherwise, through which an individual finds ultimate meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than themselves.  ...

The meta-analysis found that broad spiritual practices, including spiritual and religious community involvement, attending religious services, meditation, and prayer, reduced individuals’ risk of dangerous alcohol and drug use by 13%. This reduction was greater (18%) among individuals attending religious services at least once per week. The results were consistent across all of the drug categories studied (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs). ..."

From the key points and abstract:

"Key Points

Question  What is the association between spiritual exposures and related drug use outcomes?

Findings  This meta-analysis of 55 rigorous studies on spirituality and harmful or hazardous drug use (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or illicit drugs) documented a significant protective association of 13% related to both prevention and recovery. The risk reduction, which extended across all 4 drug categories, reached 18% for individuals with greater than weekly religious service attendance.

Meaning

These results have implications for clinicians and communities regarding future strategies to address harmful or hazardous alcohol or other drug use.

Abstract

Importance

This meta-analysis examines rigorous longitudinal 21st century studies on the associations of spirituality with harmful or hazardous alcohol and other drug (AOD) use.

Objective

To synthesize findings from independent studies about spirituality and AOD use and to produce a comprehensive estimate of the overall effect size of the associated risk reduction.

Data Sources

Studies previously identified in the Balboni and colleagues review on the association between spiritual exposures (including religion) and alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or other drugs were pooled.  ...

Study Selection

From an initial retrieval of more than 20 000 articles, a total of 55 spirituality studies (as defined by Puchalski and colleagues) that were

(1) published 2000-2022 in the English language,

(2) used validated measures of spirituality,

(3) examined longitudinal associations between spirituality and AOD use, and

(4) were either prospective cohort studies with sample sizes of 1000 or more or randomized clinical trials (eg, public health interventions) with sample sizes of 100 or more, were captured.

Data Extraction and Synthesis

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) reporting guidelines were used for abstracting data and assessing quality and validity. Eligible studies were those that reported quantitative outcomes measuring AOD use in relation to spiritual exposures, provided sufficient data to calculate log-relative risks (log-RR) and associated error terms, and focused on either preventive effect (eg, delayed initiation) or recovery-related outcomes (eg, cessation). Effects extracted were transformed into log-RR based on the type of effect.

Main Outcomes and Measures  The primary outcome was the association between spiritual or religious involvement and AOD. Subgroup analyses examined differences by AOD use type (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs) and exposure type (spiritual or religious attendance vs broader spiritual exposures).

Results

Results from the 55 studies, which collectively included 540,712 participants, documented a significant protective association related to both prevention and recovery between spirituality and AOD use outcomes.

Specifically, a consistent 13% risk reduction extended across the studied drugs (RR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.84-0.91), a figure that reached 18% for individuals engaging in spiritual or religious communities (defined as >weekly religious service attendance; RR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.75-0.89).

Virtually all 134 effects extracted from the studies demonstrated protective, not detrimental, results. Multiple sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of evidence.

Conclusions and Relevance

The results of this meta-analysis regarding a protective association between spirituality and AOD use have implications for clinicians and communities regarding future strategies for AOD use prevention and recovery."

Spiritual practices strongly associated with reduced risk for hazardous alcohol and drug use | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Spirituality and Harmful or Hazardous Alcohol and Other Drug Use A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies

New study maps where wheat, barley and rye grew before the first farmers found them

Recommendable!

"Using advanced machine learning and climate models, researchers have shown that the ancestors of crops like wheat, barley, and rye probably were much less widespread in the Middle East 12,000 years ago than previously believed. This challenges traditional assumptions about the geography of early plant domestication and agriculture. ..."

From the abstract:

"This paper presents the first continuous, spatially-explicit reconstructions of the palaeodistributions of 65 plant species found regularly in association with early agricultural archaeological sites in West Asia [Middle East], including the progenitors of the first crops. We used machine learning to train an ecological niche model of each species based on its present-day distribution in relation to climate and environmental variables. Predictions of the potential niches of these species at key stages of the Pleistocene–Holocene transition could then be derived from these models using downsampled data from palaeoclimate simulations. Our models performed well against independent contemporary test data, but their ability to predict the occurrence of specific species at archaeological sites was much more variable, probably reflecting a tendency of the method to underestimate the species’ fundamental niche. Nevertheless, the majority of species are predicted to have had more restricted geographic distributions under past climate conditions compared to today. Crop progenitors and several wild food species are modelled to have been concentrated in the Levant and, to a lesser extent, Cyprus and Western Anatolia, suggesting these regions may have served as glacial refugia. The average size of species’ niche shrunk by an average of c. 25% from the terminal Pleistocene to the Early Holocene, indicating that economically significant plants were adapted to cryo-arid conditions and did not, as often assumed, initially respond positively to the ‘ameliorated’ climate of the Holocene."

New study maps where wheat, barley and rye grew before the first farmers found them

New study maps where wheat, barley and rye grew before the first farmers found them (original news release)

Biogeography of Crop Progenitors and Wild Plant Resources in the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of West Asia, 14.7–8.3 ka (open access)

Figure 1 Map of the study region (West Asia, grey box) with locations of Late Epipalaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic archaeobotanical assemblages.

Sub-$200 Lidar Could be installed in every car

Good news!

"MicroVision, a solid-state sensor technology company located in Redmond, Wash., says it has designed a solid-state automotive lidar sensor intended to reach production pricing below US $200. That’s less than half of typical prices now, and it’s not even the full extent of the company’s ambition. The company says its longer-term goal is $100 per unit. MicroVision’s claim, which, if realized, would place lidar within reach of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) rather than limiting it to high-end autonomous vehicle programs. Lidar’s limited market penetration comes down to one issue: cost. ..."

Low-Cost Solid State Lidar Aims for ADAS Integration - IEEE Spectrum "MicroVision says its sensor could one day break the $100 barrier"

MicroVision hopes to produce a lidar unit costing under US $200—half of typical prices today.

Luther Vandross - Love The One You're With

Enjoy!

Luther Vandross - Love The One You're With - YouTube

India's Prime Minister Modi meets His Serene Highness Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein

This seems unusual! Liechtenstein is a very small country in Western Europe, a principality! Most people probably never heard of!

PM Modi meets His Serene Highness Hereditary Prince Alois of Liechtenstein - YouTube

Female UAE minister of state Reem Al Hashimy praises ‘truly momentous’ day for Trump's Board of Peace

Very recommendable! In her opinion, President Trump makes a huge difference!

(255) UAE minister praises ‘truly momentous’ day for Trump's Board of Peace - YouTube

Trump directs agencies to release the alien files after Obama's 'classified information' breach

We are not alone! 😊

(255) Trump directs agencies to release the alien files after Obama's 'classified information' breach - YouTube

Trump launches 10 BILLION dollar minerals reserve to counter China with Maria Bartiromo

Recommendable!

Interview with Export-Import Bank of the United States president and chairman John Jovanovic.

(255) CHINA COMPETITION: Trump launches 10 BILLION dollar minerals reserve to counter China - YouTube

Macron asks Meloni not to 'comment' on France's affairs after activist remark. Really!

The French President seems to be thin skinned! Or he does not like remarks from a younger woman since prefers older, rich women! 😊

(255) Macron asks Meloni not to 'comment' on France's affairs after activist remark • FRANCE 24 English - YouTube

Kim Jong-un laughs manically as he drives 'world's most powerful' rocket launcher

The dictator looks fat and unhealthy! This is so pathetic! When will this nightmare finally be over! When will the Korean peninsula be reunited? Germany was reunited in 1990.

According to Google search: "Hunger in North Korea is severe and chronic, with food insecurity arguably at its worst since the 1990s famine, say reports from The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and 38 North. Approximately 40-42% of the population is undernourished, with severe shortages exacerbated by border closures ..."

(255) Kim Jong-un laughs manically as he drives 'world's most powerful' rocket launcher - YouTube

What It Takes to Build a Modern Nuclear Shelter for 7K People in Finland

Very recommendable! Amazing stuff!

(250) What It Takes to Build a Modern Nuclear Shelter for 7K People | WSJ -

 YouTube

Can humans learn to listen like an owl with ears shaped like an owl?

Amazing stuff!

"Thanks to their incredibly sensitive hearing, barn owls can hunt down rodents and other tiny prey even on the darkest of nights. One ear is positioned slightly higher than the other, allowing these nocturnal predators to precisely locate sounds in both the vertical and horizontal planes. By rapidly integrating information from both ears, the bird’s brain can construct a three-dimensional map of auditory space.

Humans, by contrast, have symmetrical ears and lack such mental maps. Even so, we’re fairly good at localizing sounds and readily adapt to changes in ear shape and hearing sensitivity that affect the way we perceive spatial cues. ...

To find out, scientists fitted human listeners with custom-made asymmetrical ear molds and tested their ability to localize different types of sound. Study participants wore the molds continuously for up to 5 weeks, only taking them off to sleep. The wearers’ ability to localize sounds in the horizontal plane was largely unaffected, the team reports in a bioRxiv preprint. But the participants had a much harder time determining the vertical position of sounds. This ability did improve over time, but adaptation was limited, suggesting that the human brain can only partially remap spatial dimensions. ..."

From the abstract:

"The brain computes sound location from auditory spatial cues. Humans and barn owls can localize sounds with high accuracy, yet they rely on fundamentally different cue configurations shaped by their ear anatomy and neural circuitry.

In humans, symmetrical ears provide interaural time and level differences for horizontal localization, while vertical localization depends primarily on high-frequency, monaural spectral cues generated by the pinnae.

Barn owls, by contrast, possess asymmetrical ears and use binaural cues to localize sounds in both azimuth and elevation. Because auditory pathways are assumed to be tuned to the statistics of species-specific cues, it remains unclear whether humans can localize sounds using barn-owl-like spatial information.

We addressed this by fitting human listeners with asymmetric ear molds that disrupted normal spectral cues and introduced elevation-dependent interaural level differences, while preserving interaural time differences. Participants wore the molds during daily life and were tested on sound localization using broadband, high-pass, and low-pass noise.

Acute exposure to the molds severely degraded elevation localization, while horizontal localization remained largely unaffected. With prolonged exposure, elevation localization improved, but adaptation was limited. Crucially, improvement was strongest for broadband sounds. Because broadband sounds uniquely provide access to both low-frequency interaural time differences and high-frequency interaural level differences, this pattern indicates that listeners learned to use binaural cues to infer sound elevation.

These findings demonstrate that the human auditory system can partially adapt to extreme barn-owl-like outer-ear acoustics. Binaural cues can be repurposed to support elevation localization, with effective learning requiring access to complementary spatial cues."

ScienceAdviser

Learning to localize sounds like a barn owl

Figure 1. Acoustic spatial cues in humans and barn owls.

Afghanistan’s ‘Catastrophic’ Hunger and starvation since Taliban takeover in 2021

Bad news! Will the Taliban be able to manage and govern to the benefit of the people in this situation?

Total population of Afghanistan: Approx. 44 million.

"Afghanistan faces a historic surge in malnutrition, as aid cuts, displacement, and drought leave two-thirds of the country’s population facing serious or crisis levels for acute malnutrition, reports the AP. 

“We have a catastrophic nutritional crisis on our hands,” ... UN's World Food Program, noting that levels of malnutrition are the highest ever recorded in the country at 17.4 million people.  

Driving hunger: After the 2021 Taliban takeover, foreign aid plummeted and economic collapse left many without a lifeline for nutritional assistance. Since then, conditions have only worsened because of drought, earthquakes, and the return of 5.3 million Afghans expelled from Pakistan and Iran. 

 

U.S. aid cuts last year delivered a devastating blow, and donors have since struggled to keep pace with the needs. ..."

Global Health NOW: Afghanistan’s ‘Catastrophic’ Hunger

Source

Latest issue of Foreign Affairs is full of delusions

Caution: satire!

From the table of contents:

"The Globalist Delusion

Why America Must Build a New Operating System

Nadia Schadlow

The Multipolar Delusion

And the Unilateral Temptation

C. Raja Mohan"

March/April 2026 | Foreign Affairs

Make equity non-negotiable in clinical research. Really!

Do we need to postpone or even jeopardize clinical research to satisfy DEI demagogues?

"Make equity non-negotiable in research
Underrepresentation across sex, age, pregnancy, disability, migration status and socioeconomic disadvantage in clinical research is more than an ethical concern: it's a barrier to safety and reproducibility that exacerbates biases in care, argue a group of biomedical researchers and lawyers. The group has developed the EQUITRIAL framework to provide a metric for representation in clinical trials and a template for translating ethical aspirations into practice. The ‘inclusion by design’ approach looks to work within current clinical trial systems and allows representation to be audited and corrected."

Nature Briefing: Translational Research

Embedding equity in clinical research governance (no public access, but article above has link to the paper)

Researchers have created a human iPS-cell-derived 3D model of the blood-brain barrier

 Good news!

"Researchers have created a 3D model of the blood-brain barrier — a membrane that protects the brain from pathogens — entirely from human induced pluripotent stem cells. The model provides an alternative to rodent and in vitro models which fall short on translatability and hinder drug discovery. Stem cells are induced to become endothelial cells, astrocytes and pericytes or smooth muscle cells, which then develop into vessel-like tubes (pictured) mimicking the blood-brain barrier. Malfunctions of the barrier can cause neurodegenerative disorders and other health problems."

From the abstract:
"Blood–brain barrier (BBB) integrity is critical for brain homeostasis, with malfunctions contributing to neurovascular and neurodegenerative disorders. Mechanistic studies on BBB function have been mostly conducted in rodent and in vitro models, which recapitulate some disease features, but have limited translatability to humans and pose challenges for drug discovery.
Here we report on a fully human induced pluripotent stem (iPS)-cell-derived, microfluidic three-dimensional (3D) BBB model consisting of endothelial cells (ECs), mural cells and astrocytes. Our model expresses typical fate markers, forms a barrier in vessel-like tubes and enables perfusion, including with human blood. Deletion of FOXF2 in ECs, a major risk gene for cerebral small vessel disease, induced key features of BBB dysfunction, including compromised cell junction integrity and enhanced caveolae formation.
Proteomic analysis revealed dysregulated endocytosis and cell junction pathways. Disease features phenocopied those seen in mice with EC-specific Foxf2 deficiency. Moreover, lipid-nanoparticle-based treatment with Foxf2 mRNA rescued BBB deficits, demonstrating the potential for drug development."

Nature Briefing: Translational Research

A fully iPS-cell-derived 3D model of the human blood–brain barrier for exploring neurovascular disease mechanisms and therapeutic interventions (open access)

Fig. 2: Generation and characterization of a fully iPS-cell-derived human 3D BBB model to investigate neurovascular disorders. [what a busy figure]

Apache helicopters downed drones in air-to-air combat with 30mm proximity ammo

Anti drone measures in rapid development!

"The U.S. Army’s Apache attack helicopter AH-64 broke new ground by firing 30mm proximity ammunition at drones in air-to-air combat during a December exercise in Yuma, Arizona, according to the service.

The live fire test saw Apache pilots engage drones flying on ranges at Yuma Proving Ground using the 30x113mm XM1225 Aviation Proximity Explosive, called APEX. ..."

Apache helicopters downed drones in air-to-air combat with 30mm proximity ammo

Russia continues to abduct large numbers of Ukrainian Children From Occupied Territories of the Ukraine

This is perhaps one of the lesser reported crimes against humanity by Putin the Terrible!

"... Official figures place the number of children seized from their homes against their will at almost 20,000. ..."

Russia Uses ‘Cultural Excursions’ to Erase Ukrainian Identity of Children From Occupied Territories – Intel "Ukraine’s intel named officials and state bodies behind Russia’s “Cultural Map 4+85” program that takes Ukrainian children from occupied areas to Russia under the guise of cultural excursions."

Österreich entdeckt die Privatisierung

Mal sehn was draus wird! Der Sozialismus in Österreich!

"... In keinem anderen EU-Land diesseits des ehemaligen Eisernen Vorhangs gehört ein so hoher Anteil der Wirtschaft der öffentlichen Hand wie in Österreich (vgl. Abbildung 1). Ein gutes Fünftel der Marktkapitalisierung ist unter staatlicher Kontrolle; das ist immerhin weniger als im chinesischen Staatskapitalismus, aber fast so viel wie im chronisch etatistisch geführten Argentinien (vor Javier Milei). Vor Österreich liegen fast nur ehemalige Ostblockländer, die in puncto Privatisierung noch Nachholbedarf haben, oder solche, an denen wir uns aus naheliegenden Gründen kein Vorbild nehmen sollten, wie Saudi-Arabien oder Kolumbien. In vergleichbaren EU-15 Ländern (orange dargestellt) stehen meist weit weniger als zehn Prozent der Marktkapitalisierung unter staatlicher Kontrolle. ..."

Alles muss raus! Österreich entdeckt die Privatisierung. – Agenda Austria "Die öffentliche Hand besitzt gewaltige Teile der österreichischen Wirtschaft. Zeitgemäß ist das nicht. Privatisierung ist das Gebot der Stunde. Am Ende gewinnen alle."

Abbildung 1: Staatsanteil

Google Announces Sub-sea Cable Routes To Increase AI Connectivity Between India And The US and more

Good news! Google under Pichai will invest heavily in India!

Google Announces Sub-sea Cable Routes To Increase AI Connectivity Between India And The US - YouTube

From chasing rats to the presidency: 3 moments that made Vladimir Putin

Recommendable, but a little bit too short of a biography of Putin the Terrible! His crimes are barely mentioned!

(249) From chasing rats to the presidency: 3 moments that made Vladimir Putin - BBC World Service - YouTube

Chinese-Taiwanese mixed marriages increasingly politicized

That is another way to invade Taiwan without firing a shot!

(247) Chinese-Taiwanese mixed marriages increasingly politicizedーNHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS - YouTube

China Expanding Nuclear Sites Near Indian border? With Palki Sharma

Serious stuff! What is Xi Jinping up to?

(246) China Expanding Nuclear Sites Near Arunachal Pradesh? | Vantage With Palki Sharma - YouTube

Lula in Delhi: India–Brazil Ties Expand Amid Global Trade Turbulence With Palki Sharma

Good news! A very high profile 5-day visit with over 200 Brazilian companies represented.

(246) Lula in Delhi: India–Brazil Ties Expand Amid Global Trade Turbulence | Vantage With Palki Sharma - YouTube

Canada's Defence Push: $500 Billion and 5% of GDP Divorce From the US With Palki Sharma

Very recommendable! A serious move!

(245) Canada's Defence Push: $500 Billion Divorce From the US | Vantage With Palki Sharma | N18G - YouTube

"Dark Galaxy" Identified by Hubble - NASA

Recommendable!

(245) "Dark Galaxy" Identified by Hubble - YouTube

Lightning's Surprising Secrets (photographed in Arizona)

Very recommendable!

(243) Lightning's Surprising Secrets | Spectacular Earth | BBC Earth Science - YouTube

The Dynasty That Devoured Itself in Ancient Egypt

Recommendable!

(242) The Dynasty That Devoured Itself | BBC Timestamp - YouTube

China’s biotech industry booms

Good news!

"Last year, Chinese biotech firms developed over 1,250 new drugs: more than companies based in the European Union and around 200 shy of those in the United States. International restrictions on the region’s fast-growing sector — such as a US law that prevents federally funded pharmaceutical companies from working with certain Chinese companies — are prompting some in China to argue that the country should go it alone. That would be a backwards step — for China and the rest of the world ..."

"In biomedical science, China still lags behind the United States and Europe when it comes to fundamental research and conducting clinical trials involving investigators and participants from several countries. But the nation is now a global leader when it comes to drug development and manufacturing. And it is becoming increasingly important in frontier science. 

Industry analysts estimate that China now accounts for 70–95% of the global supply chain for many essential pharmaceutical products, including ibuprofen and paracetamol.

In 2024, Chinese biotechnology firms developed more than 1,250 new drugs, surpassing the European Union and approaching the US total of roughly 1,440 ... 

In 2018, China conducted only 9% of the clinical trials conducted by companies around the world. Now, it is responsible for about one-fifth of such trials ... And in the past few years, it has achieved several therapeutic milestones. ..."

Nature Briefing: Translational Research

China’s biotech boom: why the nation must collaborate to stay ahead "Increased geopolitical tensions are prompting some in China to argue that the country should go it alone in biotechnology. That would be a backwards step — for China and the rest of the world."

How do busy bees avoid overheating from flying?

Amazing stuff! 

Was it necessary to kill the bumble bees to make these measurements? "Upon completion of the experiments, unneeded individuals were humanely euthanized in accordance with approved protocols." and "To precisely measure this airflow’s cooling potential, Glass and his colleagues then euthanized 18 bumble bees. Into each they inserted a tiny temperature probe, heated the body to 50°C, and placed it into a wind tunnel that could mimic the air patterns and velocities the team had measured around a hovering bumble bee."

"... But no one had quantified the cooling that comes from air flowing around a bumblebee’s body generated by its beating wings. ...

They calculated that as a bumblebee hovers in place, the breeze it generates can lower the insect’s body temperature by 5°C. The “whopping” magnitude of that cooling means that this fanning effect is a big deal for a flying insect  ..."

From the abstract:

"Understanding how flying insects manage heat exchange is critical for predicting their survival in dynamic thermal environments. To fly, insects propel air downwards to offset body weight, inducing airflow over their bodies. Remarkably, the potential cooling effect of this self-generated airflow is largely unstudied.

We measured induced airflow and wingbeat kinematics for hovering bumble bees (Bombus impatiens) across a range of body sizes and then measured the cooling effect of airflows of the same magnitude in a vertical wind tunnel. We combined these data in heat balance models to predict transient and equilibrium body temperatures of hovering bumble bees with and without self-generated wind. Measured self-induced airflow was substantial (up to 1 m s−1) and varied with body size and wingbeat kinematics, contributing significantly to thermal stability. Without this self-induced airflow, simulated bees of all sizes rapidly overheated across a range of environmental conditions, highlighting the importance of this overlooked heat-loss mechanism in the heat budget of flying insects.

Our findings suggest that shifts in wingbeat kinematics required for altered force production not only affect energetics and, therefore, heat production, but also alter the induced airflow and associated convective heat loss."

ScienceAdviser

How do busy bees avoid overheating from flying? "New measurements could help predict pollinators’ ability to withstand climate change [??? really]"

Induced airflow cools hovering bumble bees (open access)

Fig. 1 Factors affecting the body temperature of a hovering bumble bee in still air. To stay airborne, a bumble bee relies on flight muscle metabolism

Bochumer Theater Premiere „Catarina oder Von der Schönheit, Faschisten zu töten“

Sowas nennt sich wohl Avantgarde! Wer bringt ein Theaterstück mit so einem  schwachsinnigen Titel auf eine öffentliche Bühne!

Gutmenschen greifen Schauspieler auf Bühne des Bochumer Theaters an "Bochum, Schauspielhaus: Bei der Premiere von „Catarina oder Von der Schönheit, Faschisten zu töten“ eskaliert das Publikum. Nach Buhrufen und „Halt die Fresse“-Rufen stürmen zwei Zuschauer auf die Bühne und gehen auf den Darsteller los – weil er den „Faschisten“ spielt."