Enjoy! Based on their song September. How confusing!
Monday, August 31, 2026
Earth, Wind & Fire - December (Official Video)
India Locks in Uranium From Uzbekistan, Targets Nuclear Superpower Status with Molly Gambhir
Good news! India also recently achieved similar deals with Canada and Australia!
Italy's Meloni is About to Set a Government Record. Why Does It Matter?
Good news! Congratulations Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni! Longest government in power since World War II.
Kuwait Holds Defence Talks With India After Pakistan Pact with Palki Sharma
Very recommendable! India, a rising superpower!
Wind Energy bad Economics Explained in Under 4 Minutes
Very recommendable!
Wind power is a scam and highly subsidized and favored by some Western governments! Our ancestors not very long ago abandoned wind power for good reason!
Github Copilot annoyances
I am a heavy user of Microsoft Visual Studio Code programming with Python for my own, non commercial projects.
Github Copilot provides only 2,000 free suggestions per months! This very stingy! But these suggestions are in most cases very usable and relevant!
Sydney woman recalls how she punched a shark again and again during attack near beach. She survived.
What a story!
"A Sydney woman who survived a shark attack has described the moment she came face-to-face with a 4m great white before repeatedly punching it.
Leah Stewart, 34, was dragged under the water at Coogee Beach in June as the shark bit into her thigh and arms, leaving her with extreme blood loss and injuries so severe that doctors had to amputate her left arm. ...
The shark's face was "horrific" with "black little beady eyes" and its "teeth and its mouth was massive".
"We were looking face-to-face," Stewart said, and at one point, the shark was just 30cm from her own.
Even in that moment, Stewart's thoughts remained calm.
"I'm right-handed, so I thought 'let's do a left hook'," she said.
"I just kind of throw my left arm and it just grabs onto my forearm and rips, rips away my skin, my muscle, everything... there's a big gap between my forearm and the hand."
The shark started to pull Stewart under the water, grabbing her leg. ...
Fighting the shark felt "like punching a brick wall" but she kept going.
"I must have got a really good one in and so it let me go. It was the hardest thing in the world, but I fought my way out of there." ..."
Leah Stewart
Famous never give up meme
EU Commission designates ChatGPT, Reddit, Roblox under Digital Services Act | Shaping Europe’s digital future. Really!
Most likely a very stupid big government decision! Reeks of government paternalism!
Apparently, the EU wants to fall further behind in AI!
I hope OpenAI or Reddit and others affected will shut down their service in the European Union in response to this decision by the EU Commission!
"These services declared that they reach at least 45 million average monthly users in the EU and thus meet the threshold for designation.
Following the notification of the designations, these services have four months, i.e. by January 2027, to comply with the additional DSA obligations for VLOPs [Very Large Online Platforms] and VLOSEs [Very Large Online Search Engines], such as assessing and mitigating the systemic risks [???] stemming from their service and algorithmic systems related to the
dissemination of illegal content [???], the
negative effects on minors [???],
users’ physical and mental well-being [???],
fundamental rights [???],
electoral processes and public security [???]. ..."
"... The designations bring the total number of platforms and search engines under the DSA's strictest tier to 28.
The regulation has already produced around €870 million in fines, including a record €550 million penalty against AliExpress in July for failing to curb the sale of illegal and counterfeit goods, a €200 million fine against Temu in May for comparable failings and a €120 million fine against X in December 2025 over content moderation and transparency shortcomings. ..."
EU places ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox under strictest digital safety rules "Brussels has classified ChatGPT as a search engine under the Digital Services Act, a first for an AI chatbot, and designated Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms. All three have four months to comply."
Credits: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard tracks speech-to-text in Hindi, its first Asian language
Good news! However, only phone conversations?
"added its first Indic language sets: Monsoon en-IN and Monsoon hi-IN. The leaderboard previously covered only European languages.
The data comes from unscripted, dual-channel phone conversations recorded by 4,888 speakers across hundreds of Indian districts, each tagged with 12 attributes including age, occupation, device model, and native district.
Each language has a public split for self-scoring and a private, held-out split so models can’t be tuned to the test data;
Hindi references use a lattice of accepted spelling variants rather than one fixed transcript, since no normalizer can resolve Hindi’s spelling variations.
Prior research cited here found ASR error rates ranging from about 4% to 44% across different districts, a gap that standard aggregate word-error-rate scores don’t show. The results show that South Asian languages require different assessment tools, but show promise as ASR extends to billions of speakers on the subcontinent."
The Open ASR Leaderboard Adds Its First Global South Language "Voice Arena and Hugging Face partner to launch open ASR evaluation for Hindi and Indian English"
Scientists Identify Fructose as a Surprise Driver of ovarian Cancer Spread
Will this be the end of fructose in soda drinks? Don't bet on it! 😊
Israel signs biggest-ever defense deal with Greece
Good news!
"Ministry of Defense director general Gen. (res.) Amir Baram today signed an historic agreement with Greece in Tel Aviv for the sale of three air defense systems for €3.1 billion ($3.6 billion).
The deal will surpass the $3.5 billion paid by Germany for a single Arrow 3 long-range air defense system, not including a follow-on agreement for an additional system for $3.1 billion, which "Globes" revealed. ..."
Mechanical compression of electrolytes in solid-state batteries prevents short-circuits
Good news!
"In brief
- A SLAC/Stanford University research team found they could prevent short-circuiting of solid-state batteries by deflecting the dendrite propagation direction using mechanical compression.
- They provided direct evidence that dendrites start in the interior rather than merely at the surface of the electrolyte, settling a long-standing debate within the field.
- The results could have implications for future battery design by incorporating built-in mechanical compression or electrolytes with more defect-free interiors that suppress dendrite initiation.
...
Now, in a study ... researchers have discovered a way to both track these dendrites and suppress them enough to keep the battery from short-circuiting. ...
The team found that when they applied a metal ring to compress the solid electrolyte, it prevented vertical dendrites – the kind that cause short-circuiting – from forming during charging. ...
In fact, under this compression, batteries lasted for thousands of cycles. While vertical dendrites did not form, horizontal dendrites formed internally, but these did not reach the electrodes and therefore did not cause immediate short-circuiting. ...
Under compression, dendrites still formed during charging, but they spread horizontally instead of vertically. ..."
From the abstract:
"Lithium-metal solid-state batteries offer advantages of high energy density and improved safety compared with lithium-ion batteries.
However, solid-state batteries fail through short-circuiting even at low charging rates (less than 1 mA cm−2) due to lithium dendrite initiation and propagation.
The location of dendrite initiation is under debate, particularly regarding whether initiation occurs within the interior of the solid electrolyte or at the surface.
Here we develop an in-plane biaxial compression method that provides direct evidence that dendrite initiation occurs within the interior of garnet Li6.6La3Zr1.6Ta0.4O12 solid electrolytes during long-term cycling when the surface initiation mechanisms are rendered ineffective in shorting the cell.
The biaxial compression deflects dendrite propagation so that it is perpendicular to the electric field direction, leading to the generation of an unprecedentedly high density of dendrites without short-circuiting, even at an extreme fast-charging rate of 100 mA cm−2.
After long-term cycling, dendrites eventually appeared throughout the entire thickness of the solid electrolyte.
Under extreme cycling conditions, isolated lithium deposits are observed at grain-boundary junctions and pores, and these act as the dendrite initiation sites.
This work reconciles the surface and interior initiation mechanisms in garnet solid electrolytes and demonstrates that in-plane biaxial compressive stress can prevent both from short-circuiting the cell."
Dendrite initiation and deflection in biaxially stressed solid electrolytes (no public access)
Dendrite initiation and deflection in biaxially compressed solid electrolytes (preprint, open access)
Compressed electrolyte showing horizontal dendrite propagation, which prevents short-circuiting.
Gefährliche Gedankenspiele: Von der Leyen will private Bankguthaben staatlich lenken
Will sich die EU Kommission tatsächlich an den Sparguthaben der EU Bürger vergreifen oder war das wieder nur ein peinlicher Ausrutscher der Flintenuschi?
Ursula von der Leyen mit erhobenen Fäusten
Erneute Wahl-Panne in Sachsen-Anhalt: Diesmal 1.200 Kuverts doppelt verschickt
Neues aus der Bananenrepublik D! Ist das Ernst oder nur eine journalistische Übertreibung?
Gabe vor 1990 solche Pannen oder wurden sie verschwiegen oder täuscht mich mein Gedächtnis?
Briefwahl ist an Sich mehr unsicher als Urnenwahl in Person z.B. wegen dem potential doppelter oder mehrfach Stimmabgabe. Bei einem knappen Wahlausgang können wenige falsche Stimmabgaben eventuell den Wahlsieg bestimmen.
Want less spoiled kids? Have more kids
Food for thought! This is a very old adage and often repeated news story!
Are single children or one child per family more spoiled and egoistic than children growing up with siblings?
Huge Breakthrough in the Math of Imbalance
Recommendable! It took 15 years to refine the algorithm.
"... You can always make [two or more] teams [of extremely different individuals] surprisingly even, according to researchers studying combinatorial discrepancy theory.
Discrepancy theory is a branch of mathematics concerned with allocating resources as evenly as possible. ...
In the early 1980s, the mathematician János Komlós came up with a counterintuitive [conjecture]. He [predicted] that no matter how many objects (your players) or dimensions (... categories [or dimensions, attributes]) you consider, the discrepancy — which you can quantify — will never exceed a constant amount. There will always be a way to divide the teams with a discrepancy below that exact amount. ...
If the Komlós conjecture is true, it could unlock answers to many other problems, both within discrepancy theory and in fields like operations research. ...
Then, in fall 2025, [researchers] announced the first major advance on the problem(opens a new tab) in nearly 30 years. They found a limit that changes so slowly with the dimension that it is only a hair away from constant, even with an astronomical number of dimensions. ...
The Komlós conjecture imagines each person (or object) as an arrow of length 1 called a unit vector. This vector is defined by a list of coordinates, where each coordinate measures how much of a particular attribute that person has. ...
Now assign each vector to a team. If you put a vector in Team A, leave its coordinates alone. If you put it in Team B, multiply each of its coordinates by −1. (This flips the vector around.) ...
If you’re able to make a perfect split, dividing people into two teams so that each team has an equal ..., then all of these vectors should add up to zero. Perfect harmony.
But perfection usually isn’t possible. So the question becomes: How close to zero can you get? ...
Consider one naïve strategy: Simply assign vectors to teams at random. This leads to a discrepancy that skyrockets as the number of vectors, N, increases.
In 1985, Joel Spencer found a better bound, capping discrepancy below the logarithm of N;
in 1998, Wojciech Banaszczyk improved the bound to 
, which can also be written as log(N)½. Both were meaningful strides, but the amount of imbalance still grew as the number of vectors did. Komlós’ constant felt out of reach. ...
, which can also be written as log(N)½. Both were meaningful strides, but the amount of imbalance still grew as the number of vectors did. Komlós’ constant felt out of reach. ...
In 2010, he came up with an idea for an algorithm(opens a new tab). He started by splitting each vector in half. ..."
Decoupling via Affine Spectral-Independence: Beck-Fiala and Komlós Bounds Beyond Banaszczyk (preprint, open access)
From the abstract
Silent artery plaques may appear in one in 13 adults before age 30 showing a systemic, progressive disease process
Concerning, if not shocking!
"... “These data from multiple locations support the concept of silent atherosclerosis as a systemic, progressive disease process,” ..."
"Atherosclerosis, the process underlying most cardiovascular diseases, begins long before the first symptoms appear.
An international study shows that the disease can already be detected in apparently healthy young adults and is much more common than previously thought. ...
that 57.1% of the more than 16,000 participants included in the study had atherosclerotic plaques, despite having no symptoms or previous diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. ...
The data come from the first phase of REACT, one of the largest studies conducted to date to map the presence of silent atherosclerosis throughout adult life. ...
In the first phase, 16,808 people ages 18–70 were recruited in Denmark and Spain. None of the participants had a known history of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Each participant underwent advanced imaging to detect atherosclerotic plaques in the carotid, femoral and coronary arteries. Cardiovascular risk factors, blood biomarkers, samples for omics studies and retinal images were also analyzed, generating one of the most comprehensive databases on atherosclerosis developed to date.
The results show that the disease is already present in very young adults. Approximately 1 in 13 people ages 18–29 had atherosclerosis in at least one artery. This proportion increased progressively with age, reaching 9 in 10 people ages 60–70. ...
The study also reveals important differences between women and men.
In men, prevalence began to increase at younger ages, with an atherosclerotic profile five–10 years ahead of that observed in women.
In women, the sharpest increase was observed between the ages of 40 and 60, a period that broadly coincides with the menopausal transition. ...
Another of the study's most relevant findings is that the conventional methods currently used to estimate cardiovascular risk, including risk scores such as SCORE2, identify only a small proportion of people who already have silent atherosclerosis. ..."
A former White House teleprompter operator must surrender more than $100,000 in profits and pay a $65,000 fine
Good news!
"... for using advance knowledge of President Trump’s speeches to place bets."
"... The settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, announced Friday [8/28/2026], also dealt Gabriel Perez a three-year trading ban. Perez was placed on unpaid leave from his job at the White House after it was determined he used his position to make bets on what President Trump would say in speeches, two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News last month. ..."
"... A Kalshi spokesperson told CBS News in July that the company investigated Perez's trading activity after its surveillance systems detected trades that didn't adhere to typical buying and selling patterns. Kalshi froze Perez's account, locking more than $90,000 in profits he made on the platform, the spokesperson confirmed.
After completing its investigation, Kalshi referred the case to the CFTC. The Kalshi spokesperson said the company has been working with the CFTC for months. ..."
"... Under the order, Perez must disgorge the profits he made from his unlawful trading totaling $107,539.02 and pay a civil monetary penalty of $65,000, representing a substantial discount under the Division of Enforcement’s new cooperation advisory because of Perez’s exemplary cooperation with the CFTC. Perez agreed to cease and desist from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations. Under the order, a three-year trading ban is imposed on Perez. ..."
CFTC Orders Gabriel Perez to Pay $172,000 for Insider Trading of Mention Market Event Contracts (official news release)
ICE is considering spending up to $2 million on Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dogs
Good spot on news! I suppose, it is too expensive, too dangerous, and takes too long to train real dogs!
"... for hazardous inspections and situational awareness, using technology the Secret Service deployed at Mar-a-Lago in 2024."
".. The Boston Dynamic SPOT Robots will help "support public safety and law enforcement operations by providing a remotely operated robotic capability for inspection, situational awareness, and hazard assessment in environments that may pose risks to personnel," according to the notice. ..."
ICE plans to purchase robot dogs "The move comes as the agency has also sought to purchase electric shock gloves."
Spot robot dog (Source)
Cell therapy substantially reduces severe rheumatoid arthritis in first clinical trial
Good news, but a very small sample size! Impressive!
"Immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapy are used primarily to treat cancer. In the future, these patient-specific therapies, manufactured from patients’ own immune cells, could also help cure autoimmune diseases.
Six patients with particularly severe rheumatoid arthritis have now received this treatment at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. In the journal Nature Medicine*, the researchers report the results from the world’s first clinical trial of its kind: Disease activity decreased substantially in all participants. By the end of the observation period, three of the patients no longer required any medication for rheumatoid arthritis. ...
Currently available treatments can usually keep the inflammation under control, but do not cure the disease. Patients therefore require lifelong medication ...
For the world’s first clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a CD19 CAR T-cell therapy in rheumatoid arthritis, the research team ... initially enrolled six patients with particularly severe disease. The three women and three men, aged 31 to 69, had received up to eight targeted or biologic therapies over the previous ten years, none of which had been sufficiently effective. ...
For the researchers, the results from the first part of the COMPARE trial are highly encouraging: “Disease activity decreased markedly in all six patients. During follow-up of up to one year, three patients were in sustained remission without any medication for rheumatoid arthritis,” ..."
From the abstract:
"Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell-mediated B cell depletion has demonstrated efficacy in several autoimmune diseases.
Here we report clinical and molecular data obtained during the nonrandomized phase 1 part of the phase 1/2 COMPARE trial, evaluating safety and efficacy of mivocabtagene autoleucel (miv-cel), an autologous fully human CD19 CAR T cell therapy, in rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Six patients (three men, three women) with severe, treatment-refractory, anti-citrullinated protein antibody (ACPA)-positive RA received a single infusion of miv-cel after stopping all disease-modifying antirheumatic drug treatments and after standard lymphodepletion therapy.
Patients were followed for 36–52 weeks for safety and efficacy.
Primary endpoints were the incidence and severity of cytokine release syndrome (CRS), immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS) and adverse events (AEs) within the first 4 weeks after treatment.
Secondary and explorative endpoints assessed clinical efficacy and cellular and humoral immune responses.
CRS occurred in all patients and was limited to grade 1 and 2 events. No ICANSs or serious AEs occurred; one dose-limiting toxicity was recorded (grade 3 transaminase elevation, resolved without sequelae).
The primary endpoint was met with acceptable safety findings, allowing advancement to phase 2.
CAR T cell therapy resulted in depletion of CD19+ B cells across blood and tissue, coinciding with a continuous decline of autoantibodies with seroconversion in four of the six patients for ACPAs against mutated citrullinated vimentin and five of six for rheumatoid factor immunoglobulin M.
Despite cessation of immunosuppressive treatments, disease activity improved in all patients (median 34% DAS28-CRP reduction at the latest follow-up with DAS28-CRP remission and American College of Rheumatology 70% response in 3 of 6 patients).
CD19 CAR T cells showed acceptable short-term tolerability in patients with treatment-refractory RA, justifying further evaluation. ..."
Charité study demonstrates efficacy of CD19 CAR T cells in first patients (original news release)
CD19 CAR T cell therapy for treatment-refractory seropositive rheumatoid arthritis: a phase 1 trial (no public access)
Patients own immune cells genetically modified in the laboratory, track down the disease driving B cells, even deep within tissues. Inflammatory foci such as those seen here around the knee joints of a study participant (magenta) are no longer detectable even several months after CD19-CAR T-cell therapy (right in the PET-MRI image). Swelling and pain have subsided, with improved mobility.
US natural gas is helping to directly power the data center boom in the US and more
Good news! US dominates the worldwide development of natural gas power capacity by far!
Notice the usual complaints by new media about the additional greenhouse gases! The greenhouse gas narrative is so phony!
"US gas-fired generating capacity currently under construction reached 52 gigawatts by mid-2026, up 76 percent in just six months, according to Global Energy Monitor, a nonprofit that tracks global energy infrastructure.
At least 16.9 gigawatts of that capacity is being built to directly power data centers, which are increasingly building their own power plants to avoid lengthy waits for connections to the electrical grid."
U.S. gas power proposals tied to data centers nearly double in six months "Driven by rapid data center expansion, U.S. gas-fired power capacity in development jumped 50% to 378 GW, with Texas leading the push."
Japan has begun replacing nearly two million acres of forests to help reduce seasonal allergies.
Planting trees like large forests can be unhealthy! Seems counterintuitive! Wrong trees?
"After World War II, Japan’s government encouraged widespread planting of fast-growing sugi cedar and hinoki cypress trees to supply the country with timber. Unfortunately, the pollen from those trees has since contributed to a national epidemic of hay fever afflicting over 40 percent of the population.
The Japanese government is now accelerating the removal of those forests and replacing them with a variety of local trees, including sugi varieties selectively bred to produce less pollen. The long-term goal is to halve cedar pollen emissions within three decades."
"... In 2023, the Japanese government announced a solution: Fell 750,000 hectares of sugi and hinoki trees in a bid to cut the problem off at the root.
After decades of work, researchers have developed more than 30 strains of low-pollen and no-pollen sugi trees, which will replace some of the trees cut down. ...
The trees were first distributed widely across Japan during the Meiji era, a period of rapid industrialization that ran from 1868 to 1912.
But it was the post-World War II period that accelerated the conversion of natural forests into planted forests dominated by sugi and hinoki. ... explaining that several intersecting shifts in the second half of the 20th century pushed Japan to favor sugi and hinoki trees.
Between 1950 and 1985, Japan’s planted forests grew to account for some 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) — more than a quarter of the country’s total land area — with much of it converted from natural forests. Deciduous species formerly used for firewood like kunugi (Quercus acutissima) and konara (Quercus serrata) fell out of favor as fossil fuels became widely available. ...
Meanwhile, the construction industry drove demand for timber from sugi and hinoki trees. By the war’s end, aggressive bombing campaigns by the U.S. had left the country in need of some 4.2 million homes, according to a 2021 case study. Japan rebuilt at a staggering pace, spending as much as 40% of the national budget on construction projects. By 2020, the construction industry had built more than 76 million apartments and houses, the study found, with detached single family homes made of wood accounting for the largest share of new housing units. ..."
A cloud of tree pollen emanates from a sugi tree
Anthropic is developing software hardware standard that makes it much easier for AI agents to operate laboratory and manufacturing equipment
Good news!
"... The system, called the Model Hardware Standard, allows AI models to control and coordinate devices from different manufacturers through a standardized interface.
Anthropic claims the system can reduce the time it takes a typical lab or factory to integrate its equipment with AI from weeks to just a few hours, making it much easier to set up autonomous experiments. A select group of research labs and manufacturers are currently testing the system, but it is ultimately intended to be open source. ..."
"We’re opening a research preview of the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), a shared specification for AI agents to safely operate physical devices, to a first group of scientific research labs and advanced manufacturers. MHS enables AI agents to operate multiple lab and manufacturing instruments, such as microscopes, liquid handlers, and robotic arms, in parallel, and perform intricate tasks ranging from routine drug discovery experiments to laser calibration on a quantum computer. ...
Getting multiple devices in a lab or on a factory floor to communicate with one another can be challenging, even setting aside the added difficulty of integrating AI into the setup.
Each device tends to have its own programming interface, and so far there has been no standardized way to integrate them. And once the devices are connected, there is no common way for them to share data with an AI agent, nor to let the agent operate them safely.
MHS addresses these challenges by introducing a standardized driver: software that translates between a computer’s operating system and a hardware device. The MHS driver uses a simple set of primitives—commands like “read” (for example, “get temperature”) or “write” (for example, “set temperature”)—that any hardware device can understand and act on.
And it makes each device discoverable in a standard format, so that devices and agents can find each other and communicate across networks without needing a bespoke “translator” program in between.
The MHS driver also helps an AI agent understand how to use a device it has never seen before, giving it information about machine characteristics that may not be discernable from code alone (for example, the weight of a robot arm, which is important for knowing how to manipulate it safely). ..."
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Witness how students of Tashkent University amaze India PM Modi with their talent and knowledge and reciting some of Modi's poems!
Amazing stuff! I did not know that Narendra Modi also published several collections of his poems.
Something Is Wrong With Indonesian Economy | Dark Side of Indonesia’s Economic Boom
Recommendable!
So Western countries decided not to buy nickel anymore when it comes from coal powered smelters like in Indonesia?
On top of that these smelters are owned by Chinese companies.
Where are China’s youth headed in a crowded job market?
Very recommendable! High youth unemployment seems to be serious issue in China for the past 10 years or longer! Graduating from a university is no longer a guarantee of a good employment.
This has been reported multiple times in recent years.
Iceland votes against restarting EU membership talks
Good news! Stay independent of the EU as much as you can!
Population of Iceland about 400,000.
"Iceland has voted against resuming talks on joining the European Union 13 years after they were broken off.
Public broadcaster RUV reported that 52.8% of the more than 225,000 people who voted had rejected the government's proposal, while 47.2% had backed it. Some 12,600 votes separated them.
Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir's centre-left government promised to hold a referendum by 2027, but brought it forward because of international tensions, including US President Donald Trump's threats against Greenland.
However, debate in this island nation of almost 400,000 people centred more on its fishing industry rather than security concerns.
With some 270,000 people eligible to vote, RUV reported the turnout of 82.5% was the highest in any Icelandic election since 2009.
Already part of the EU's single market and Schengen border-free zone, full EU membership would bring Iceland into the customs union and eventually the eurozone currency union. ..."
Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee proposes renaming Nashville international airport after Dolly Parton
Sounds like a good idea to me! A fitting tribute indeed!
The airport will be renamed from Barry Field Airport (BNA) to Dolly Parton airport. "Berry Field: The airport was named after Colonel Harry S. Berry.
Who was Col. Berry: He was a World War I and II U.S. Army veteran and directed the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Tennessee." Google Search)
Who was Col. Berry: He was a World War I and II U.S. Army veteran and directed the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Tennessee." Google Search)
"Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has proposed the renaming of Nashville International Airport in honor of Dolly Parton, the country music legend who died on Tuesday at age 80.
Lee said in a statement, “It is fitting that Nashville International Airport would bear the name of our state’s favorite daughter and greet travelers with the enduring legacy of Dolly’s music, generosity, faith, and kindness.” ..."
"... The governor and first lady are people of strong faith. They are active in numerous faith-based ministries, which have taken them all over the world to serve people in need, including to Africa, Haiti, Central America, and the Middle East. ..."
Gov. Lee Announces Partnership to Name Nashville International Airport in Honor of Dolly Parton (official news release) "A lasting tribute is being envisioned to honor her remarkable life, enduring legacy, and immeasurable impact on Tennessee and beyond"
TN Governor Bill Lee and his second wife/first lady Ann Lee
Israel is replacing Palestinian workers with 330,000 foreign workers
More consequences of the coward mass murder terrorist attack of October 7, 2023!
The pressure is on the Arabs living in the Gaza Strip and West Bank to never allow again coward terrorists to operate among them building tunnels, hiding command centers and weapons underneath a children hospital and so on!
"Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been rapidly replacing its Palestinian labor force with foreign workers.
250,000 foreign workers are already in Israel and their number is set to rise to 330,000.
Many unseen challenges lay behind these numbers, the most substantial of which is the question of the housing that employers are obligated to provide for their foreign employees. The law stipulates a detailed definition of suitable housing and some companies are renting entire buildings and converted them into homes. But evidence of crowding and poor conditions is increasing and the government's solutions are mostly on paper. ...
After October 7, 2023, Israel decided to close its border crossings in Judea and Samaria with the Palestinian Authority and barred the entry of Palestinian workers into Israel. An estimated 150,000 Palestinian workers were regularly entering Israel before the war, of whom 92,000 were working legally, many of them in the construction industry. Only 20,000 Palestinian workers currently work in Israel, primarily in essential enterprises and communities beyond the Green Line. ..."
Mouth Microbes transmitted to gut Could Help Diagnose gastrointestinal Cancers
Amazing stuff! Cancer is history (soon)!
Is this maybe another good reason to do daily tongue scraping?
"... In a new study, researchers have shown that mouth bacteria migrate through the gastrointestinal tract in certain types of cancer.1 The findings raise hope that the breakdown of these carefully sectioned-off compartments in the body could be an indicator of disease, leading to easier and quicker diagnostic tests for gastrointestinal cancers. ..."
"... In a study ... researchers report that by analyzing the make-up of oral microbes, they may be able to detect signals associated with gastric (stomach) and colorectal cancer. These findings could lead to the development of new, less-invasive screening tests for gastrointestinal cancers. ...
To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 507 volunteers to donate both oral and fecal samples, using a highly standardized collection process. The cohort included 129 healthy individuals; 215 people with metabolic disorders such as metabolic syndrome, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and type 2 diabetes; 77 people with gastric cancer; and 86 people with colorectal cancer. For the volunteers with cancer, samples were collected before the start of any treatment. ...
The findings were more nuanced than a simple cancer-versus-healthy comparison. The MF index was significantly elevated in patients with gastric or colorectal cancer but not in people with metabolic disorders. After accounting for alcohol consumption, regular exercise, and BMI, the association remained robust for both gastric and colorectal cancers. ..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
• Mouth and gut microbial compartmentalization is disrupted in gastrointestinal cancers
• Mouth-to-gut transmitted bacteria correlate with metabolic and inflammatory markers
• Oral-fecal transmission signatures enable cancer classification by oral microbiome alone
• Transmission-based classifier surpasses microbiota models and fecal occult blood testing
Summary
The human microbiome is spatially compartmentalized, yet oral bacteria can ectopically colonize distal sites such as the gut, potentially influencing disease.
By analyzing paired oral and fecal microbiomes from 507 participants across healthy controls and patients with metabolic disorders or gastrointestinal cancers, we established a quantitative mouth-to-feces (MF) index to measure MF microbial transmission.
The MF index revealed elevated mouth-to-gut transmission in cancer and a strong association with host metabolic and inflammatory indicators.
Using transmitted taxa, we developed a random forest classifier that accurately distinguished gastric/colorectal cancer from healthy controls across seven independent cohorts, even when trained solely on oral microbiome data.
When benchmarked against the conventional screening test, the MF-based model achieved markedly higher sensitivity than the fecal occult blood test.
These findings uncover disease-specific transmission signatures and highlight MF microbial profiling as a generalizable, non-invasive framework for gastrointestinal cancer diagnosis and risk stratification."
Graphical abstract
Figure 2. MF transmission index as an assessment of the mouth-gut microbiome axis
Tracking motions of single electrons at the space-time limit with attosecond time resolution or the extension of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Amazing stuff! Very impressive! This could be a breakthrough!
"... developed subfemtosecond scanning tunneling microscopy to directly visualize the quantum motion of individual electrons at this space-time limit as they tunneled through an energy barrier.
Modulating the barrier with the carrier field of near-infrared waveforms produced isolated sub–1-femtosecond electronic wave packets, the spatial extent of which depended on a complex interplay between multiphoton and field-driven dynamics. By balancing quantum path interference, the authors minimized the wave function’s space-time volume down to the attosecond-angstrom scale."
"... Between position and time, however, there is no Heisenberg uncertainty principle. A research team ... has now observed for the first time that the location and time evolution of an electron cannot be measured with arbitrary precision simultaneously. This so-called space-time limit has important implications for future applications. ...
ultrafast microscopes are developed and used to directly capture the motion of electrons, atoms, and molecules in microscopic slow-motion movies with the highest possible spatial and temporal resolution.
Ten years ago ... the motion of a single molecule in space and time was resolved for the first time using ultrafast scanning tunneling microscopy.
Compared to atoms and molecules, on this length scale electrons move a thousand times faster—namely, on time scales of attoseconds. ...
To achieve a corresponding increase in temporal resolution compared to previous experiments and to directly image and control the quantum dynamics of individual electrons, the researchers developed a new laser system.
Using its laser pulses they control electron motion on these extreme time scales in such a way that the electrons transfer from an atomically sharp metal tip to a silver surface over a distance of only a few atomic diameters. These electron movements are measured as current, and the temporal information is obtained by using two pulses of light. ...
The electron motion observed in this way exhibits signatures on attosecond timescales—which means that the light pulses can transfer electrons on these timescales, and one can watch them do so.
What makes this special is that the electrons do not move like classical particles. Rather, as quantum mechanical waves, the electrons penetrate the energy barrier between the tip and the sample, for which they actually do not possess enough energy according to the laws of classical physics. They “tunnel” through it, as if they were passing through a massive wall without destroying it. ...
To gain a better understanding of microscopic electron dynamics at the “space-time limit,” ... conducted complex quantum simulations. The calculations explain the experimental results with remarkable accuracy. They also show that the electron does not follow the light field immediately, but with a tiny delay of 500 attoseconds. ...
In this frontier region of the smallest spatial and temporal scales, the fundamental physical limits of quantum physics become apparent on multiple levels. The effect of the laser pulses, for example, cannot be clearly assigned to either the wave or photon picture of light, but bears features of both—and this is precisely what enabled the researchers to penetrate so deeply into the “space-time limit.” When electrons are moved by light pulses on such short time scales, this has complex consequences for the spatial distribution of the electrons, which are described in quantum mechanics as wave packets.
“The more precisely we want to pin down the electron’s position in time, the more energy we need to provide. And as a result, the electron wave packet spreads out more spatially.” The team investigated this relationship using a single atom placed on the surface to confine the electron wave packets atomically just before the light pulses arrive. This allowed them to directly determine the relationship between the spatial and temporal spread of the electron wave packets. Fortunately, despite strong excitation, the electron wave packets remain spatially defined with sufficient sharpness to enable atomically resolved microscopy on attosecond timescales.
With this latest breakthrough, the team is pushing the boundaries of a previously only vaguely suspected spatiotemporal limit of quantum mechanical electron wave functions, in order to systematically investigate for the first time how the temporal dynamics of electrons shape the spatial structure of their wave function. This also opens up entirely new possibilities for applications. For example, transferring an electron to a molecule corresponds to the smallest possible charge transfer; however, if the electron is confined to a tiny space-time volume, this corresponds to extremely high local peak current densities of up to 1 trillion amperes per square centimeter."
From the abstract:
"The dynamics of an electronic wavefunction often have non-trivial consequences on its spatial distribution, for example, during tunnelling or chemical bond formation.
Yet, revealing spatio-temporal coupling requires ultrafast videography at the intrinsic size of electronic wavefunctions, at the so-called space-time limit.
Here we experimentally access the intrinsic quantum motion of individual electrons at the space-time limit while they are tunnelling through an energy barrier, using atomic-scale lightwave-driven scanning tunnelling microscopy with attosecond time resolution.
While modulating the tunnelling barrier with two time-delayed near-infrared pulses forming phase-controlled single-cycle waveforms, isolated electron tunnelling transients shorter than 1 fs are identified.
The measured spatial extension depends on the interplay of multi-photon and field-driven dynamics, as confirmed by full quantum simulations.
We experimentally localize the attosecond-confined tunnelling wave packet on the angstrom scale and use it to map a single copper adatom on a silver surface. This fusion of attosecond science with atomic-scale scanning tunnelling microscopy makes it possible to study wavefunction dynamics inside atoms, molecules and solids."
Microscopy at the Space-Time Limit (original news release) "Ultrafast scanning tunneling microscopy at the Regensburg Center for Ultrafast Nanoscopy (RUN) reaches the quantum mechanical space-time limit for the first time"
Tracking electrons at the space-time limit (open access)
Fig. 1: Attosecond lightwave STM [scanning tunneling microscopy].
Fig. 2: Evolution of lightwave-driven tunnelling currents with [tau] delay time
Fig. 4: Atomically resolved subcycle currents.
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