Some Western and other news media falsely reported this as if Trump had asked to stop any attacking of Russian targets.
The Ukraine can always resume to hit refineries in Russia!
Sunday, September 13, 2026
Trump urges Zelensky to stop targeting Russian diesel infrastructure. There are plenty of other targets
Higher education enrollment is growing rapidly in India
Good news!
"Higher education is growing rapidly in India. According to the country’s Ministry of Education, India’s higher-education gross enrollment ratio—the total number of enrolled students divided by the college-aged population—rose from 23.7 percent in 2014–15 to 30 percent in 2023–24.
The female gross enrollment ratio increased even faster, from 22.9 percent to 31.2 percent."
How many and which US Supreme Court Justices will retire after the midterm elections?
This is one of the biggest federal political questions outstanding!
President Donald Trump has appointed three US Supreme Court Justices so far (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett).
If President Trump gets to appoint 2-3 more US Supreme Court Justices he would rank among the top three US presidents in terms of appointments.
Is President Trump ready?
Should We Accept Degrowth as a Serious Academic Concept? Definitely not!
This is a very recommendable overview article!
Degrowth is the arena for big government and central planning! The degrowth literature seems to regurgitate a number of typical, well known and false claims against capitalism.
Criticism of economic growth started at least after WW II: Growth for growth sake ; limits of growth; growth as a fetish; do consumers need all these products and services?; the environmental consequences and so on.
The criticism of economic growth as an objective is at least several decades old and it is a fetish to some. Most of this criticism is baloney!
The book Doughnut Economics is a reminder of the notion of redistribution of a fixed cake. The book title suggests a static view, but economics is dynamic and it constantly challenges. In my quick take on this book is that the author subsumed economics under environmentalism (a modern religion).
Those who call on Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels (a capitalist who financially supported Karl Marx's bohemian lifestyle for decades) for inspiration in 2nd quarter of the 21st century are most likely fools.
Caveat I did not read any of the listed books below.
"In recent years, an intellectual movement known as “degrowth” has grown in popularity through the efforts of a small but growing group of academics and activists.
Key texts that champion this ideology, such as
Jason Hickel 2020 book Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World and Kate Raworth 2017 Doughnut Economics, appear on bestseller lists and in bookstores worldwide.
Jason Hickel 2020 book Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World and Kate Raworth 2017 Doughnut Economics, appear on bestseller lists and in bookstores worldwide.
In 2020, Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito published Capital in the Anthropocene (published in English in 2024 as Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto), arguing that Karl Marx, in his later writings, anticipated the damage capitalism would do to the environment and called for rejecting unconstrained economic growth. ..."
"... The Doughnut of Social and Planetary Boundaries (the Doughnut) offers a visual monitor of progress towards the goal of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. ..."
The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries.
Huawei unveils new optical tech standard in challenge to Nvidia, Broadcom
Amazing stuff!
"Huawei on Thursday [9/10/2026] introduced its own standard for optical communication technology in a challenge to Nvidia and Broadcom, as the Chinese tech giant aims to have a greater say in an emerging area of chipmaking that could shape the future of artificial intelligence computing. ..."
"As NVIDIA, Broadcom and TSMC rally behind co-packaged optics (CPO),
Huawei is charting a different course with near-packaged optics (NPO). ... the Chinese tech giant unveiled its own NPO standard and debuted a 7.2Tbps solution on Thursday [9/10/2026] at the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE). ...
Huawei’s new module features 36 channels running at 200Gbps each. Notably, the combined 7.2Tbps bandwidth puts Huawei’s module at the forefront of a new wave of high-density optical interconnects for AI infrastructure, alongside Broadcom’s 6.4Tbps optical engines designed for CPO ...
Huawei expects 3.2Tbps NPO modules to enter real-world deployments this year, while the more advanced 7.2Tbps generation could see broader adoption over the next two years. ...
NPO, by contrast, serves as an intermediate step between conventional pluggable optical modules and CPO. ... Huawei’s NPO, which also brings photonics closer to electronics, integrates at the printed circuit board level rather than within the chip package. ... unlike CPO, NPO uses a pluggable architecture, allowing faulty components to be replaced individually. ..."
A majority of larval cells fundamentally transform in metamorphosis
Amazing stuff!
"In brief
- A new study revealed that the majority of larval cells in the marine worm “Schizocardium californicum” appeared to fundamentally transform in metamorphosis, against prior understanding of the process.
- Genetic sequencing of thousands of cells showed evidence of this cellular reprogramming, with larval nerve and gut cells taking on different functions in the adult.
- The findings are the strongest evidence yet of developmental reprogramming in bilaterally symmetrical animals, where one side of the body mirrors the other.
...
Unlike humans, about 80% of animal species undergo metamorphosis, a stepped development from egg to larva to adult, but how it works at a cellular level is not well understood. Some theories and prior research suggested that the original cells in the larva die and are replaced with newly generated adult cells. Other work pointed to cells growing into their same function – for example, larval skin cells would become adult skin cells.
Instead, a ... [new] study has found strong evidence in an acorn worm called Schizocardium californicum that most larval cells were reprogrammed, with even neurons taking on a new role in the adult organism. ...
Cellular reprogramming is thought to happen after an injury or in some species that regenerate organs or whole limbs – but not as a feature of normal development. ..."
From the abstract:
"A major gap in our understanding of animal development is how adult body plans arise in animals with indirect development, where adults emerge from the transformation of a distinct larval form during metamorphosis.
We address this question by examining cellular changes in the enteropneust hemichordate Schizocardium californicum, a species with a complex lifecycle and dramatic metamorphosis.
Employing whole-body single-cell RNA sequencing, we chart the cellular composition and transcriptional dynamics of larval, metamorphic, and adult stages. Our tissue-level atlas reveals that ectodermal and endodermal cell types in larvae and adults occupy distinct transcriptional spaces, showing greater similarity to other cell types within the same life stage than to their counterparts in the opposite stage.
In contrast, mesodermal cell types from both larvae and adults cluster closely together, indicating conserved transcriptional profiles.
These findings demonstrate that the extensive morphological reorganization during metamorphosis is accompanied by broad shifts in transcriptional identity and reveal life-history stage as a major organizing axis of cellular state during the larva-to-adult transition."
Fig. 1: Indirect developing hemichordates as a model to study the transition between larval and adult body plans.
Fig. 2: Single-cell sequencing reveals the broad diversity of hemichordate cell types.
Fig. 5: Genetic makeup of cell type diversity across life history stages.
New $11bn Pinglu canal underscores China's turn toward Southeast Asia
Good news!
"Next week, Chinese officials plan to inaugurate a new shipping channel intended to invigorate trade along the country's south coast and spur development in inland provinces.
In recent years, Southeast Asia has overtaken Europe and North America as China's top trading partner, and the new Pinglu Canal could help accelerate this even further. Built in just four years, the canal's rapid construction contrasts with lackluster progress on overseas canal projects involving Chinese interests. ..."
"The Pinglu Canal ... is a 134.2-kilometer inland river I-class waterway under construction between Xijin reservoir on the Yu river in Hengzhou and the lower part of the Qin River, allowing access to the Gulf of Tonkin.
The canal will shorten the route between inland Guangxi and the sea by up to 560 km (350 mi).[1] It is China's first river-to-sea canal since the founding of the People's Republic. ..." (Wikipedia)
The global market for Trump towers is booming
Good news! Business goes on! So far no attacks on Trump Towers! Pardon my bad joke.
"An ex-Soviet republic is the latest location for a Trump Tower.
... as private developers from Abu Dhabi to Vietnam to the Maldives over the past three years have lined up to adorn their hotel and golf course projects with the Trump name. Now a set of Georgian developers are planning to launch marketing on the Trump Tower Tbilisi, a skyscraper poised to be the country’s tallest.
The prospect strikes a note of particular foreign-policy discord, with Georgia’s ruling party having drawn U.S. ire for legislation that cracks down on dissent and other moves that hewed closer to Russia."
Canada wants to become an ‘associate member’ of the EU.
Good luck with that! The EU is no panacea (aske the UK)!
"Prime Minister Mark Carney is accelerating a strategic pivot to Europe. After holding private conversations with almost every major European leader on how to more deeply plug Canada into the European Union, he instructed his team to scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership in Europe’s 27-nation club.
In effect, President Trump’s threat to make Canada the 51st state has pushed America’s northern neighbor so close to Europe that leaders have begun to half-in-jest dub it the EU’s newest member."
Physicists detect the tiny atomic collisions that give a gas its pressure
Amazing stuff!
"... Now, physicists have observed such tiny impacts by detecting individual atoms in a gas colliding with a tiny glass sphere, or nanoparticle, suspended in laser light. The technique ... could potentially lead to a new standard for defining pressure, push the limits of quantum theory, and help scientists search for new particles. ...
Such a system could also be used to develop a new standard to define pressure in an ultrahigh vacuum, just as an atomic clock defines the second. Researchers could determine the pressure by counting collisions ..."
From the abstract:
"We experimentally demonstrate the detection of momentum transfers from individual collisions of Kr, Xe, and SF6 with an optically levitated nanoparticle, finding good agreement with theoretical expectations.
The observed event rates accurately measure the gas partial pressures, while the spectral shape provides a sensitive probe of the surface properties of the nanoparticle, including its temperature.
The reconstruction of impulse signals as small as 200 keV/c further establishes that levitated optomechanical sensors can reach the sensitivity required for precision measurements of fundamental particle interactions, and demonstrates a proof-of-principle for a primary pressure sensor based on the detection of individual gas particle collisions."
Barriers to Help-Seeking Among Male Victims of Female-Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence
One of those taboo subjects!
Why they so often like to call the victims of intimate partner violence "survivors" is a riddle to me! It is a misnomer that conjures up extreme violence and drama when in fact the violence is often far from being deadly!
This a very old, well known problem dates back several decades! Yes, men who suffered from violent female partner do not necessarily seek help.
On the other hand, how often does it happen? How many men are affected? Unless the number of unreported cases is large, we are dealing here probably with a almost negligible number. I seriously doubt the 44% of men figure reported by the CDC (see below). What is the definition of violence? The definition given in the article below is clearly too broad and therefore rather meaningless!
"Men are less likely than women to seek help after experiencing intimate partner violence, and new research from George Mason University found that the main barriers include viewing it as a private matter, fear of retaliation, shame, and concerns about not being believed. ...
This study is among the first large-scale (nearly 1,200 men) U.S. studies to compare help-seeking barriers among non-Latino Black, Latino, and non-Latino White male victims of intimate partner violence. ...
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 44% of men report being victims of IPV, but many of these men are not receiving support ..."
From the abstract:
"This study examined barriers to help-seeking among male victims of intimate partner violence perpetrated by female partners, comparing differences across non-Latino Black, Latino, and non-Latino White men in the United States.
Using a sample of 1,194 men recruited through the online panel Centiment, this study assessed the prevalence of specific barriers to help-seeking and examined differences across racial/ethnic groups.
Data were collected through a structured survey with an additional open-ended item to capture barriers not reflected in the checklist. Results indicated that men across all racial/ethnic groups reported similar core barriers to help-seeking, including viewing intimate partner violence as a private matter, fear of retaliation, shame, and concerns about not being believed; however, the pattern of barrier endorsement varied by group.
Latino men were significantly more likely than both Black and White men to report difficulty knowing how to disclose their experiences and were more likely than White men to report language- and immigration-related barriers.
In contrast, Black men were less likely than Latino and White men to report concerns about bias or disbelief, a pattern that warrants cautious interpretation given broader historical and structural contexts.
White men, meanwhile, were more likely than Latino men to report difficulty recognizing or labeling their experiences as abuse.
Together, these findings highlight the need for culturally responsive, gender-inclusive interventions that address stigma, structural barriers, and institutional biases shaping men’s help-seeking and service engagement following intimate partner violence victimization."
"... Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a critical public health issue that transcends geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic boundaries, affecting individuals worldwide ... Defined as any form of physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological harm inflicted by a current or former intimate partner, IPV encompasses a spectrum of abusive behaviors within intimate relationships ...
Over the past few decades, research has confirmed that men experience IPV at substantial rates, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reporting that approximately 44.2% of men and 47.3% of women experience contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime ..."
Saturday, September 12, 2026
CIA declassifies dozens of never-before-seen intelligence reports dating before and related to 9/11
It appears nothing new here! If there were any warnings prior to 9/11 from the US intelligence community, they were to vague and unspecific.
AOC and Mamdani seen laughing and smiling as 9/11 families weep at Ground Zero. Really!
This is a piece of lousy, deplorable junk journalism!
Some other junk news article even titled it "giggle-gate"! What a nonsense!
"House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, who is leading efforts to gird America against future terror threats, is blasting fellow Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for failing to display appropriate decorum during Friday's solemn commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"It's an absolute travesty [???]," Crawford, R-Ark.,"
Xi tells Modi China and India bear ‘significant responsibilities’ as global powers at BRICS summit
Hopefully, India will assume more responsibilities as a superpower going forward. The old ways of being neutral or non-aligned are hopefully over!
Their first responsibility would be to pressure Putin the Terrible to end the Russo-Ukrainian War going on since 2022!
Meteorite dust holds records of magnetism that may have helped form the sun
Amazing stuff!
"Around 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was little more than a giant ball of gas and dust. Over the next few million years, this “solar nebula” underwent a huge transformation, flattening into a disk of matter that then condensed to form the central sun and orbiting planets.
Scientists have assumed that the early solar system was shaped mainly through gravity. But a new study finds that magnetism also likely played a role.
... scientists have discovered records of ancient magnetism in the oldest samples of meteorites known today. The team analyzed microscopic grains embedded in a meteorite that was discovered in Antarctica in 2008. These grains, called calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions, or CAIs, originally formed during the solar system’s first 200,000 years, making the samples the oldest known solar system material.
The findings suggest that a magnetic field existed very early on, during the time of the solar nebula. The researchers estimate that this nebular magnetic field was stronger than Earth’s magnetic field today, and likely played a significant role in pulling together primordial matter to form the early sun. ..."
From the significance and abstract:
"Significance
A key step in the formation of planetary systems is the collapse of a cloud of gas and dust into a protoplanetary disk. It has been unclear what forces transformed the disk into the final configuration of a central massive star surrounded by planets. In particular, it has been proposed that in the earliest stages of disk evolution gravity and/or magnetism played a central role.
Here we report studies of the remanent magnetization in calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions, the oldest known solar system solids. We find that they record ancient magnetic fields with intensities stronger than that of the Earth today. This supports the hypothesis that magnetism played a key role in driving mass transport in the early protoplanetary disk.
Abstract
The initial stage of planet formation is expected to take place in a nascent protoplanetary disk (PPD) accreting onto the protostar embedded in an infalling envelope.
This stage is likely accompanied by the formation of high-condensation temperature solids resembling calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs), the oldest known solar system solids. However, it is unknown whether magnetism and/or gravity dominantly drove accretion in the youngest evolutionary stages of PPDs and the solar nebula.
Here we report paleomagnetic measurements of CAIs indicating that they record a nebular magnetic field of ∼150 to 600 μT.
This intensity is consistent with magnetic fields playing a key role driving disk accretion while also heating the very inner disk to 103 K at the earliest stages of solar system formation."
Paleomagnetic evidence for a nebular magnetic field from calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (open access)
Fig. 3 Summary of high-resolution imaging of CAI 11 indicating the presence of primary magnetic phases.
There and Back Again: Bidirectional Diffusion Bridges for Multimodality Translation
This could be an interesting new paper by Stefano Ermon and his team!
From the abstract:
"Multimodality translation (e.g., text-to-image) is a core generative AI task. However, existing approaches
(1) follow generative paths that do not directly represent the source modality, limiting the flexibility of some sampling algorithms; and
(2) are unidirectional, preventing inversion (e.g., image-to-text).
We propose BIT: Bidirectional Image-Text Diffusion Bridges.
In contrast to previous approaches, BIT starts directly from text and interpolates into images, providing
(1) a source-aware generative path that enables diverse and flexible sampling algorithms; and
(2) an endpoint-conditioned process that can be traversed from image to text, providing a unified, bidirectional generative framework.
BIT is derived through stochastic calculus, yielding SDE forms amenable to simulation and tractable loss functions that scale to high dimensions.
Our experiments show that BIT is competitive with denoising-diffusion and deterministic-flow baselines, and outperforms them on several vision--language and natural-science evaluations."
Autonomy pivots to gas vehicles to keep the dream of car subscriptions alive
Good news! Competition is good, more competition is better!
I like the idea of car subscriptions! Seems to be long overdue. Another business model besides leasing or renting a car, purchasing a used car.
Caveat I am not familiar with the offerings of this company nor with the company itself.
"Four years ago, California startup Autonomy pledged to buy 23,000 EVs from 17 automakers, including Tesla, and make them available as part of a vehicle subscription service. It was a combination of two trends that had taken off in the early 2020s.
It didn’t work out. ..."
Weight-loss drug slows ageing in female mice (one inbred strain of laboratory mice). Really!
Amazing stuff! However, this was only reported for a very narrowly defined population of mice. I am not sure why Nature journal highlighted this research.
You get another chance to gain weight again! Just kidding!
"The GLP-1 medication semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) has anti-ageing properties, at least in mice, write gerontologists ... Older female mice that received semaglutide lived longer than those that didn’t receive the drug, and had better outcomes for inflammation, cellular senescence, and neurodegeneration outcomes. The treated mice also performed better on cognitive tests than untreated mice fed a strict diet, suggesting the drug has benefits that aren’t explained by calorie reduction alone."
From the abstract:
"Pharmacological glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) activation reduces food intake and is an effective therapy for type 2 diabetes and obesity.
The use of GLP-1 medicines has revealed pleiotropic beneficial effects beyond glucose and weight control but little is known about the underlying basis of the pleiotropic effects.
Here, treatment of 20-month-old female C57BL/6 mice with the GLP-1R agonist semaglutide for 3 months improved physiological function, attenuated hallmarks of ageing and modulated nutrient sensors and conserved genetic regulators of ageing. Continued treatment extended mouse lifespan.
These effects parallel key features of calorie restriction, a dietary intervention that slows ageing, extends lifespan and alleviates a wide spectrum of ageing-associated diseases.
In a longitudinal study in direct comparison to matched calorie restriction, semaglutide treatment preserved baseline function and recapitulated many functional benefits of calorie restriction by attenuating age-associated decline, while also producing improvements above baseline and more favourable trajectories than calorie restriction in exploratory drive, spatial memory and glucose control.
Together, these findings demonstrate that GLP-1R activation initiated late in life slows ageing and extends lifespan in female mice, supporting its function as a calorie restriction mimetic and providing a mechanistic framework that may help to explain its broad beneficial effects while revealing effects beyond those attributable to reduced calorie intake."
Weight-loss drug slows ageing in female mice (behind paywall) "In one inbred strain of laboratory mice, late-life treatment with a GLP-1 drug extends lifespan. This effect might be more than just a consequence of calorie restriction."
Fig. 1: GLP-1R activation late in life extends lifespan and improves physiological function.
Venezuela's Maduro is gone, but his digital surveillance apparatus made in China still continues
Certainly a concern!
"... Yet one of the most consequential pieces of Maduro’s authoritarian legacy remains intact.
As we show in our new report, Warning Signals: Venezuela and the risk of Chinese AI-enabled digital authoritarianism, Venezuela retains an apparatus of digital surveillance and political control built partly with Chinese technology. Before Maduro’s removal, Caracas had also begun preparing to add something new: Chinese artificial intelligence. ...
For two decades, Venezuela imported much of the plumbing of digital authoritarianism, such as telecommunications equipment, identity systems, cameras, command centres and technology for controlling the internet.
In July 2025 it took a potentially more consequential step: signing an agreement with Chinese AI company iFlytek.
After years of buying the infrastructure, Venezuela had contracted for the intelligence that could run on top of it. That AI layer has not yet been built. There is no public evidence that iFlytek, or any other Chinese company, is currently operating an AI surveillance system inside Venezuela. ..."
"... Now Venezuela is primed to upgrade its surveillance technology. This report shows that in the months before Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces in January 2026, the Venezuelan government signed an agreement to adopt Chinese-built AI systems, an initiative led by Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez, and signalled its intent to use Chinese AI to enhance existing state-sponsored surveillance.
The US has installed Rodríguez, who once supervised Venezuela’s repressive intelligence agency, as the country’s acting president. Under her leadership the Venezuelan government has neither liberalized nor dismantled the surveillance regime.
If Caracas continues to implement its plan to use Chinese AI for surveillance — and it has given no signal that it won’t — Venezuela will become one of the first countries outside China to import China’s new generation of LLM-based AI systems for surveillance and control, and the most advanced adopter in the Western Hemisphere. ..."
The titles of at least 3200 research papers directly quote or make puns related to The Beatles song names or lyrics
Amazing stuff! One of the greatest pop music bands of all times lives on! Or how contagious is the Beatlemania?
Tells you something about the age of the researchers! Just kidding!
Apparently, the authors of medical articles make the most use of the song lyrics/titles of the Beatles (see chart below)
However, it is a drip in the bucket. "The worldwide annual output of science and engineering research articles totals roughly 3.3 million peer-reviewed papers per year" (Google Search)
"Scientists seeking to make an academic paper more engaging often get by with a little help from The Beatles . References to the “Fab Four” are here, there and everywhere, researchers have found: The titles of at least 3200 papers directly quote or make puns related to their song names or lyrics ..."
From the abstract:
"The Beatles’ cultural influence reaches well beyond music into television, fashion, and global media.
As we show, it reaches into scientific publishing too. This study documents how often Beatles song titles and lyrics appear in academic article titles, identifying 2,237 exact references and 963 instances of creative wordplay in data from Scopus.
Working from a curated list of Beatles songs and lyrics, we combine automated title queries with large-language-model screening, followed by manual verification, to detect both exact references and wordplay.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically identify wordplay on Beatles song titles and lyrics in scientific article titles. We report which titles and lyrics are referenced most often, trace how their use has grown over the decades, and show that this growth has outpaced the expansion of the scientific literature as a whole while varying systematically across disciplines.
The result is the first large-scale, cross-disciplinary account of how the Beatles have left their mark on scientific writing."
Fig 1. Comparison of exact matches of Beatles song titles in academic article titles on a log-log scale: Scopus vs. Google Scholar.
Fig 3. Subject areas of articles referencing the 10 most frequently matched Beatles song titles.
Many millions of tons of microplastics are released into the environment every year. Really!
I bet the author of this article confused plastics and microplastics!
When one suffers from Plastophobia please seek immediate medical help!
"The world produces over 430 to 460 million metric tons of plastic every year." (Google Search)
This junk journalism was again published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)!
"Many millions of tons of microplastics are released into the environment every year. How much of that load is transported to the ocean by rivers? Qin et al. have provided a global dataset of daily riverine concentrations and export fluxes of microplastics. They found that microplastic export by rivers is much higher than previously realized; that the great majority of that export occurs in the global south; and that rainfall creates dramatic spikes in microplastic concentrations and fluxes, the overwhelming majority of which occur in developing countries. Better waste management is essential if these fluxes are to be reduced."
How psychoactive substances formed Andean civilization in South America
Very Recommendable!
The article "High Society" is quite long, I did not read all of it.
"The journey of humans into South America was a strange trip—literally. When people arrived some 15,000 years ago, they encountered an ecologically diverse continent peculiarly rich in psychoactive plants. Botanists estimate more than 100 species there significantly alter human consciousness, accounting for more than two-thirds of the global total.
Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that psychoactive substances played a starring role in many of the empires that arose there, particularly in the Andes. ..."
"Chavín De Huántar, Peru ... Archaeologists have long believed this 3000-year-old temple complex in a high and remote valley in the central Peruvian Andes was a center of drug rituals ...
Such finds strongly suggested the practice of mind-altering rituals, but in 2016 a team ... began to unearth what he calls “the smoking gun.” They uncovered a new gallery ... including 21 bone tubes,” ... which yielded traces of tobacco and something considerably more potent: seeds from the vilca tree, which contain bufotenine; dimethyltryptamine (DMT); and 5-MEO-DMT, a combination that produces short-lived but extremely intense visions. ...
Drug-based rituals, it is now becoming clear, played a central role in the emergence of Andean civilization. ... believes Chavín’s ritual leaders invited elites from other regions to take part in elaborate ceremonies centered on ingesting powerful substances amid a dramatic sound and light show. In so doing, “they harnessed the process of mental alteration to establish powerful levels of authority.” ...
Chavín’s success spawned imitators throughout the region. In subsequent centuries, the Tiahuanaco and Wari peoples built on these traditions to cement political, social, and religious power as their territories expanded to encompass vast swaths of western South America.
Widespread ritual drug use fell into decline only when the Inca rose after 1200 C.E.; Spanish conquerors suppressed remaining practices after their 1532 invasion. Although psychoactives remained in use for medicinal and small-scale religious purposes—many can still be found for sale in open-air markets—their powerful and pervasive influence on Andean society was relegated to the shadows. ...
Scattered evidence suggests early societies along the Peruvian coast experimented with psychoactives as early as the third millennium B.C.E. More solid evidence is found at Chavín, which emerged 150 kilometers to the north by 1200 B.C.E. The temple complex remained in continuous use until decline set in after an earthquake around 550 B.C.E. Notably, it lacks defenses, palaces, or signs of an organized military. Chavín was not the center of a political state, but a pilgrimage site that for centuries drew visitors from afar. ..."
High culture "How psychoactive substances helped spur Andean civilization"
Snuff trays and tubes, like these found at San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, were used to ingest crushed seeds of the psychoactive vilca plant
Twenty-five leading mathematicians signed an open letter arguing that AI companies are threatening their intellectual work
That is almost unheard of! They say mathematics is the queen of all sciences (according to Carl Friedrich Gauss)!
Maybe machine learning and AI are dethroning math to a regular science! Maybe the once elite club of mathematicians ("mathematical community") lost its nimbus!
"Twenty-five leading mathematicians signed an open letter arguing that AI labs are threatening their intellectual work as they seek to one-up each other with solutions to famous math problems. Each signatory has been awarded the Fields Medal, considered the most prestigious prize in mathematics. ..."
"Over the last few months, the mathematical capabilities of LLMs have improved dramatically, to the point that they can solve major outstanding problems in many fields of mathematics. However, the push by AI companies to solve mathematical problems as a benchmark is detrimental to the science of mathematics, and to the mathematical community. The goals of the AI companies and the goals of the mathematical community are severely misaligned. We see these as part of broader alignment issues impacting other scientific and creative professions, as well as the whole of society. ...
The mathematical community functions, in many ways, as a miniature version of humanity. It consists of individuals using a wide variety of different approaches, joined by core values. The most precious resources of our profession are students and ideas, and these we nurture with great care. ..."
Friday, September 11, 2026
France's military jets go on a 40-day global flight to project power and alliance. Really!
All show and nothing to show for! President Macron is weak!
When will the French military attack the Houthis in Yemen?
'That's Your Problem': Trump Ditches MBS As Houthis Rain Bombs On Saudi Arabia
Recommendable, but bad news! I hope the report is largely wrong as fas as President Trump is concerned!
Where are the coward European powers when you need them!
'We Believe In Ourselves': Traore Launches New $30 Mn Burkina Faso Textile Hub
Recommendable! Maybe strongman tactics! Nationalization of foreign companies is also questionable.
200 people jumped, others fell from the twin World Trade Center towers on 9/11
I had almost forgotten about these horrible images!
Individuals hanging from the windows
Chronic interferon exposure prompts a switch from anti-tumor activity to immunosuppression
Good news! Cancer is history (soon)!
"Type II interferon (IFN-II) normally activates the immune system to fight cancer. However, prolonged IFN-II exposure can promote an immunosuppressive tumor environment that supports cancer growth, a confounding factor in cancer therapies. Johnson et al. explored why IFN-driven inflammation can be tumor suppressive in certain contexts but tumor promoting in others.
Chronic IFN-II stimulation unveiled secondary protumorigenic type I IFN (IFN-I) signaling that increased production of prostaglandins, bioactive lipids that inhibit anticancer immune responses.
Suppressing prostaglandin synthesis restored the ability of the immune system to attack tumors and reversed resistance to immunotherapy in melanoma cells.
The IFN-II–mediated IFN-I response was instigated by the release of mitochondrial RNA that activated innate immune signaling.
Timely inhibition of IFN-I signaling or blocking mitochondrial RNA release may therefore provide a means to promote antitumor immunity."
"Highlights
- ... researchers identify what flips a molecular “switch” that causes anti-cancer interferon activity to transition into pro-cancer activity, a longstanding mystery in cancer biology
- Chronic interferon activates a mitochondrial signaling pathway that, when turned off, effectively reverses tumor growth and immunotherapy resistance in a mouse model of melanoma
- The study could reveal new therapeutic targets to sustain anti-tumor immune responses
..."
From the abstract:
"Interferons (IFNs) are proinflammatory cytokines that promote immune cell engagement to eliminate malignant cells.
Paradoxically, chronic interferon signaling can also activate anti-inflammatory mechanisms that allow cancer cells to evade the immune system.
In this study, we sought to determine the cellular mechanisms underlying this switch from antitumorigenic to protumorigenic interferon activity.
We show that chronic type II interferon (IFN-II) exposure distinctively induced tumor growth by activating a type I interferon (IFN-I) response mediated by release of double-stranded mitochondrial RNA (ds-mtRNA) into the cytoplasm. This IFN-I signal synergized with IFN-II to enhance tumor growth by increasing immunosuppressive prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) synthesis through increased cyclooxygenase 2 expression.
Elimination of PGE2 synthesis in immunotherapy-resistant melanoma cells restored their responsiveness to anti-PD1 treatment, indicating that this covert mtRNA-IFN-prostaglandin pathway could be a therapeutic target to combat immunotherapy resistance."
Why does the immune system sometimes help tumors grow? (original news release) "Salk Institute researchers define how chronic interferon exposure prompts a switch from anti-tumor activity to immunosuppression in mice, revealing a key target to sustain anti-tumor immune responses and combat immunotherapy-resistant cancer"
Representative images showing mitochondrial RNA (mtRNA) transcripts (red) present outside of the confines of mitochondria (cyan) in a melanoma cell following chronic interferon II exposure. Arrows point to specific examples of mtRNA outside the mitochondria.
Detroit Schools pay Students and parents a lot of money to Show Up
This program seems to be insanely expensive and ill conceived!
The current mayor of Detroit is Mary Sheffield (D, age 39) who took office on January 1, 2026. She is a career politician since age 26. Her resume is very thin!
First female (and female black) mayor of Detroit!
"The program launched in January 2026 for high schoolers, offering $100 gift cards for every five-day period of perfect attendance — up to $1,000 over 10-weeks. Middle school parents will now receive $50 gift cards for their children’s perfect attendance under the same five-day structure. ..."
"The Detroit Public Schools Community District is expanding its program [Perfect Attendance Pays] that pays students for perfect attendance.
Middle school students, not just high school students, can earn money this year, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email. ..."
Detroit schools pay students for perfect attendance on certain weeks "$100 gift cards aim to boost attendance"
Mary Sheffield
Somali Pirates continue Hijackings of vessels since April 2026 of at least 8 vessels
Another reason why crude oil prices are so high!
Where are the coward European powers when you need them! These pirates e.g. should be arrested and subjected to martial law by the European powers!
"Somali pirates have hijacked at least four international commercial vessels off the coast of northern Somalia’s Puntland state during this period, including two in mid-August.
Three of the vessels were fuel tankers, while the other ... was a cargo ship reportedly carrying Turkish military equipment. Suspected Somali pirates have also attempted at least four additional hijackings since May, according to the UN International Maritime Organization. ...
This level of piracy has not occurred since the peak of Somali piracy over a decade ago. Somali pirates averaged 33 hijackings annually from 2005 to 2011 and conducted 15 hijackings in 2012. ..."
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