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Artificial intelligence-powered harvesters, drones, and precision farming systems are quickly entering the mainstream of American agriculture. At its core, the technology promises efficiency and sustainability and carries a potential solution to a decades-old farming problem: the need for physical labor.

As the capabilities of robotics evolve, many jobs that once required human hands are being delegated to machines. Some artificial intelligence (AI) developers working on integrating this technology into America’s farms say early data support the possibility of a major farm labor force reduction.

The American Farm Bureau Federation estimated 17 percent of all U.S. agricultural labor in fiscal year 2024 comprised temporary migrant workers brought in under the H-2A visa program.

There are also millions of illegal immigrant workers, who, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) made up 42 percent of farm workers from 2020 to 2022.

Roman Rylko, chief technology officer of Pynest, said his company has worked with vegetable growers in the Midwest to deploy AI systems.

“We built the onboard model that lets an autonomous weeder separate spinach seedlings from pigweed in real time. A single rig now clears a 50-acre block in about eight hours. Before, that job meant a crew of 10 walking the rows for two days,” he told The Epoch Times.

Historically, agricultural labor required a lot of intelligence, judgment, and dexterity that only a human being could supply. (Agricultural laborers are smarter than the Crust would have you believe.) This made automation difficult and gave rise to modern ‘factory farms’ where farms were laid out to suit the available machines rather than how they would have been laid out when manual labor was paramount. Increasingly, however, machines are becoming smaller, cheaper, and more capable, and someday we may have the world envisioned in Asimov’s CAVES OF STEEL in which small robots take care of agriculture as well as a human but more efficiently.

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Northwestern University biomedical engineers have developed a completely new approach to cancer therapy that doubled the effectiveness of chemotherapy in animal studies.

Rather than focusing on directly killing cancer cells, this pioneering method stops the cells from adapting in ways that allow them to resist treatment. By blocking this evolutionary escape route, the disease becomes more vulnerable to drugs already in use. The strategy not only nearly eliminated cancer in cell cultures but also greatly enhanced the impact of chemotherapy in mouse models of human ovarian cancer.

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President Donald Trump on Monday moved to relieve Lisa Cook from her position as governor on the Federal Reserve Board.

Trump informed Cook of his decision in a letter dated Monday.

“You are hereby removed from your position on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, effective immediately,” he wrote.

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President Donald Trump reportedly plans to sign an executive order Monday aimed at eliminating “cashless bail” for arrested suspects in Washington, D.C.

Reuters could not immediately verify the Axios report.

The order marks the latest step in Trump’s federal takeover of the capital’s law enforcement, which has already deployed thousands of federal agents and National Guard troops across the city.

Dumping criminals back on the streets without the necessity to post bail is a cornerstone of the Woke crime regime that puts the ‘rights’ of criminals ahead of those of victims (and potential victims).

UPDATE: Scoop: Trump plans order to end “cashless bail” in D.C. (Axios)  ‘Sccop’ is apparently what Axios calls using a shovel after the horse has already passed by.

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It’s hard to argue with the recent numbers. Washington DC has long been a national embarrassment for the American public, consistently ranking high on the list of the most crime ridden cities in the US. The city consistently ranks in the top 20 for overall crime, 13th out of 200 US cities with the highest property crime and it was ranked 4th in the US for homicide last year.

While Democrats claim that the mayhem has been in decline since 2023, they don’t mention the fact that there was a dramatic spike in assaults, robberies, rapes and murders that year. Meaning, even with the drop, in 2025 DC still ranks among the worst cities in the US. There are also suspicions of data rigging by DC officials.

…

Recent reports show that Washington crime has plunged in the past two weeks. Property crime dropped 19%, violent crime dipped 17%-22% (depending on the source), robberies/muggings have dropped 40%-46% and carjackings have dropped 83%. The average murder rate in DC is one killing every 36hrs – There has not been a single murder since August 13th.

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Inside a cinder-block office building perhaps best known for the Hindu temple and table tennis club next door, a startup company is testing what may be one of the hottest new developments in clean-energy technology. Literally.

At the back of a small warehouse laboratory buzzing with fans and motors, an MIT spinoff company, Electrified Thermal Solutions, is operating something they call the Joule Hive, a thermal battery the size of an elevator.

The Hive is a large, insulated metal box loaded with dozens of white-hot ceramic bricks that convert electricity to heat at temperatures up to 1,800 degrees Celsius — well beyond the melting point of steel.

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Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is throwing his support behind Alpha School, a private education network that blends artificial intelligence with an unconventional approach to learning, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The school, which already operates in Texas, Florida, and California, plans to open a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade campus in Manhattan this fall.

Alpha’s model is unusual: students complete math, reading, and other fundamentals in just two hours a day using AI-driven software. The rest of the schedule is filled with activities meant to build confidence and practical skills, such as bike rides or drone workshops.

“We do not let anything—political, social issues—come in the way,” said co-founder MacKenzie Price. “We stay very much out of that.”

Price, who has become a prominent critic of traditional education on social media, launched Alpha more than a decade ago. The school employs “guides” rather than certified teachers and charges families between $40,000 and $65,000 annually, depending on location.

A step in the right direction, but of limited utility at $40k-$65k annually.

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The surgery is expected to soon take place in Israel, in which a personalized engineered human spinal cord will be implanted in a paralyzed patient, with the goal of enabling the patient to rise from a wheelchair and walk again. Behind this medical advance stands Prof. Tal Dvir, Head of the Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology, Head of the Nanotechnology Center at Tel Aviv University, and Chief Scientist of the biotech company Matricelf.

A few months ago, Prof. Dvir and his research team at Matricelf received preliminary approval from Israel’s Ministry of Health to begin “compassionate use” trials in eight patients, which means that the first patient in the world to undergo this innovative procedure would be Israeli. Prof. Dvir commented: “This is undoubtedly a matter of national pride. The technology was developed here in Israel, at Tel Aviv University and at Matricelf, and from the very beginning it was clear to us that the first-ever surgery would be performed in Israel, with an Israeli patient.”

The upcoming spinal cord implant surgery marks the next stage in a process that began about three years ago, when Prof. Dvir’s lab at Tel Aviv University succeeded in engineering a personalized three-dimensional human spinal cord in the laboratory. The groundbreaking findings were published in the prestigious journal Advanced Science and demonstrated that mice suffering from chronic paralysis and treated with the engineered implants started walking once again.

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The breakthrough happened entirely by chance when Hill and his collaborator, Dr. Brian Wong, a professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the University of California–Irvine, were frustrated with their attempts to reshape cartilage using lasers.

Hill said that they decided to try heating the material using an electric current, but accidentally used a far smaller current than they intended. They expected to see the cartilage bubbling and shaking. However, when Wong touched the cartilage, it wasn’t hot—suggesting another effect was at play.

While Wong is a medical professional, Hill is a physical chemist, and it was their partnership that allowed them to connect the dots.

Low electrical currents change the pH of cartilage, loosening molecular bonds and making tissues more malleable.

“And it’s like, this is electrochemistry,” Wong said. “That’s hydrogen and oxygen being evolved, so the discovery was entirely by accident on cartilage—100 percent by accident.”

ALSO : The Shockingly Simple Vision Breakthrough That Might End LASIK (SciTechDaily)

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The D.C. Police Union released new crime statistics on Monday, showing an 8% drop in overall crime in the nation’s capital following President Donald Trump’s announcement of a federal takeover of the Washington, D.C., police force last week.

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Apple is developing an all-new operating system codenamed “Charismatic,” according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Gurman is a solid and respectable source of Apple news.

This is likely Apple’s long-rumored “homeOS” operating system.

In a report this week, Gurman said both Apple’s rumored smart home hub in 2026 and tabletop robot in 2027 will run the new operating system. He said the software platform will blend elements of tvOS and watchOS. For example, he expects there to be a hexagonal grid of apps, just like on the Apple Watch.

The platform largely revolves around clock faces and widgets, and it will have multi-user support, Gurman said. Users will primarily interact with it using Siri voice commands, but touch will also be an option, he said. Some of the preinstalled apps from Apple will apparently include Calendar, Camera, Music, Reminders, and Notes.

Scientific American, a Voice of the Crust.

From Cape Town to Tehran to Lima to Phoenix, dozens of cities across the globe have experienced water shortages recently. And in the next five years the world’s demand for fresh water could significantly outpace supply, according to a United Nations forecast. Now several companies are turning to an unexpected source for a solution: the bottom of the ocean.

Called subsea desalination, the idea is to remove the salt from water in the deep sea. If it worked at scale, the technology could greatly alleviate the world’s water access problems.

Costs and energy requirements have kept desalination from going mainstream in most of the world. Early desalination involved boiling seawater and condensing the steam, a purely thermal method that used loads of energy. This approach was later replaced by multistage flash distillation, in which temperature and pressure “flash” salt water to steam. In the past 25 years reverse osmosis has become more common—it uses high pressure to push seawater through a membrane with holes so small that only water molecules squeeze through, leaving salt behind.

Reverse osmosis is more efficient than distillation, but it takes a lot of energy to pressurize millions of gallons of seawater and move it through filters. What if we could let that movement happen naturally by harnessing the pressure hundreds of meters underwater?

Some good news for a change.

The Washington Post, paper of record of the Deep State.

Rainbow colors adorn the downtown Orlando intersection that leads to the site where dozens died during a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in 2016. The crosswalk was decorated to show the city’s solidarity with the LGBTQ community and to memorialize the 49 people killed inside the popular gay club.

One would think that being abnormal indicates some sort of moral superiority.

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The United States Navy is testing industrial-scale 3D printing systems it says could reshape the way it supplies and repairs its ships, aircraft and other equipment, particularly in remote or contested environments where weeks-long waits for parts are not an option.

The demonstrations took place during Trident Warrior, an annual exercise in which the Navy trials advanced technologies under operational conditions. The event is designed to ensure only proven systems advance toward procurement, and it draws heavily on feedback from fleet personnel.

Working alongside the Marine Corps, the Navy showcased 3D printing capabilities that are already in use, some installed in shipping container-sized mobile labs that can be deployed aboard vessels or sent to forward bases. The printers can produce parts ranging from a small hinge to a load-bearing titanium component, and in some cases deliver them off-site via drones or unmanned surface vessels, TheDefensePost.com reports.

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We’ve expanded our coverage of humanoid robots and robot dogs for very good reason: “iPhone moment” for these AI-powered machines is just a few years away. These bots are expected to enter homes by the end of the decade, if not the early 2030s. We even got our hands on a Chinese Unitree robodog to test its capabilities, and yes, there’s even a Picatinny rail for a flamethrower attachment.

Robot companies, such as Figure AI, have been training humanoid robots for factory applications, as well as the home…

“Today we unveiled the first humanoid robot that can fold laundry autonomously,” Figure AI wrote on X earlier today.

I’d buy one–if it actually works. Towels are easy. How does it do with underwear, T-shirts, and dress shirts? Or pants?

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Mexico has expelled 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the United States in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as American authorities ratchet up pressure on criminal networks sending drugs across the border, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The cartel leaders and other prominent figures were being flown from Mexico to the U.S. on Tuesday, the person said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation that was still ongoing.

Those being handed over to U.S. custody include Abigael González Valencia, a leader of “Los Cuinis,” a group closely aligned with notorious cartel Jalisco New Generation or CJNG. Another person, Roberto Salazar, is accused of participating in the 2008 killing of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, the person said.

Trump just keeps on winning. Reminder: He’s only been in office seven months.

The War Zone.

Speculation over a very large-scale German order for anti-aircraft guns, as part of a broader air defense initiative focusing, to a significant degree, on counter-drone capabilities, has brought these kinds of weapons back under the spotlight.

Last week, it was reported that German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall is awaiting a multi-billion-dollar order from the German Armed Forces for its Skyranger anti-aircraft gun. During a recent earnings call, the firm’s CEO, Armin Papperger said that he expected Skyranger contracts from the German military worth between $7-9 billion to be signed this year. The systems would be delivered by 2035.

…,

Previously, the German Army relied on the Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft gun to fulfill many of its short-range air defense (SHORAD) needs, especially on the battlefield. Armed with twin radar-aimed 35mm automatic cannons, mounted on a single turret, the Gepard was based on the chassis of the Leopard 1 main battle tank, meaning it could keep up with armored formations on the move. Search and tracking radars on the Gepard allowed it to locate, track, and engage targets at night and amid poor weather conditions.

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Long-standing rivals Armenia and Azerbaijan separately published the document that could form the basis for peace between the two countries. The initiative, announced on Monday, August 11th, follows meetings between the respective national leaders, including a trilateral meeting with U.S. president Donald Trump, credited with brokering the peace deal, on August 8th.

Formally agreed to back in March, Articles 1 to 17 of the agreement aim to resolve any remaining border disputes peacefully, resorting to peaceful third-party dispute resolution where this can’t be reached by the two states. Following the meeting with Trump, it appears that an agreement has been reached on a proposed transit connection of Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave through Armenian territory.

Critics of the new treaty note that it lacks specific details regarding how the process will be implemented, which would likely involve the withdrawal of mutual complaints in international courts and competing territorial claims.

Another reason to give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize–which, of course, will never happen in a world where Obama got it just for being the Magic Negro.

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China has developed a breakthrough material, CHSN01 (China high-strength low-temperature steel No 1), capable of withstanding extreme cold and massive magnetic forces, and deployed it this year in the world’s first fusion nuclear power generation reactor, according to SCMP.

The steel puts China at the forefront of materials science and could have applications beyond fusion.

The ultra-strong cryogenic steel meets the demands of superconducting magnets operating near absolute zero and in magnetic fields of up to 20 Tesla. It can endure stresses of 1,300MPa and has superior fatigue resistance to traditional alloys. “In addition to its applications in superconductivity, this steel can also be used in other related areas,” said Zhao Zhongxian, a top Chinese physicist.

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Did you know that 99% of synthetic diamonds are currently produced using high-pressure and high-temperature (HPHT) methods? A prevailing paradigm is that diamonds can only be grown using liquid metal catalysts in the gigapascal pressure range (typically 5-6 GPa, where 1 GPa is about 10,000 atm), and typically within the temperature range of 1300-1600 °C. However, the diamonds produced using HPHT are always limited to sizes of approximately one cubic centimeter due to the components involved. That is—achieving such high pressures can only be done at a relatively small length scale. Discovering alternative methods to make diamonds in liquid metal under milder conditions (particularly at lower pressure) is an intriguing basic science challenge that if achieved could revolutionize diamond manufacturing. Could the prevailing paradigm be challenged?

A team of researchers led by Director Rod RUOFF at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials (CMCM) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), including graduate students at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), have grown diamonds under conditions of 1 atmosphere pressure and at 1025 °C using a liquid metal alloy composed of gallium, iron, nickel, and silicon, thus breaking the existing paradigm. The discovery of this new growth method opens many possibilities for further basic science studies and for scaling up the growth of diamonds in new ways.

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In the latest step towards the future of food, one company has launched what it calls the world’s first factory that can grow food out of thin air.
Key food industry players and innovative start-ups are racing to develop more sustainable methods to produce food for an ever-growing global population.
Some companies are leaning into traditional plant-based proteins like pulses, beans, and legumes. Others are creating ‘real’ cultivated meat, in a process that typically takes animal cells and cultivates – or grows – them in a laboratory setting, not dissimilar to the way that beer is fermented.
Now, Finland-based Solar Foods has announced its unique approach to making a more sustainable food system: growing protein out of air.
The company has just opened the world’s first air protein factory, based near the Finnish capital of Helsinki. At the facility, Solar Foods will operate a commercial-scale production of Solein, its signature air protein, which combines a tiny but mighty micro-organism with CO2 – known simply as air – to grow it into a nutritious yellow powder. The bioprocess is said to resemble winemaking.

If you eat something, even a substantial snack, you will feel the urge to poop within 30 minutes–sometimes within ten.

Listen to your body. Take your first opportunity to poop.

You’ll be glad you did.

Just sayin’.

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Hiroshima University researchers have found that fermented stevia extract may fight pancreatic cancer without harming healthy cells—potentially making it more than just a zero-calorie sugar substitute.

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Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Robert Francis O’Rourke and his radical organization, Powered by People, for unlawful fundraising activity, including potentially operating a misleading financial-influence scheme to fund runaway Democrats who fled Texas to break quorum.

“Democrat runaways are likely accepting Beto Bribes to underwrite their jet-setting sideshow in far-flung places and misleadingly raising political funds to pay for personal expenses,” said Attorney General Paxton. “This out-of-state, cowardly cabal is abandoning their constitutional duties. I will not allow failed political has-beens to buy off Texas elected officials. I’ll see you in court, Beto.”

O’Rourke and Powered by People intentionally misled donors to fund runaway Democrats’ personal expenses, despite advertising it as political fundraising. By knowingly blurring the distinction, O’Rourke and Powered by People sought to take advantage of uninformed donors by directing them to explicitly political fundraising platforms, all while intending to use the funds for purposes they understood to be constituted as personal expenditures. Texas law prohibits organizations from engaging in false, misleading, and deceptive acts, such as the fundraising scheme operated by O’Rourke and Powered by People.

Attorney General Paxton has requested a temporary restraining order and an injunction preventing O’Rourke and Powered by People from continuing to raise or distribute money for the purpose of funding the runaway Democrat House members. Attorney General Paxton previously demanded documents from Powered by People and opened an investigation into a Soros-funded group that is also underwriting the quorum break.

UPDATE: Judge blocks Beto O’Rourke from financially supporting Texas Democrats who left the state

Apparently Paxton’s theory is that O’Rourke financially supporting the Democrat exodus constitutes a species of bribery. We’ll see where that goes.

The Times (UK).

Nigel Farage is drawing support from five distinct voter groups — including younger, affluent and progressive voters — according to a new study that reveals deep public disillusionment across traditional political lines.

Commissioned by Best for Britain and conducted by YouGov and the research agency Faster Horses, the study combined polling with video diaries to examine why voters are turning to Reform.

It found potential Reform voters are united by a sense of betrayal, hopelessness and anger, though they differ sharply on issues such as the NHS, climate change and the welfare state.

They’re mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it any more. So to speak.

Unfortunately, they still haven’t discovered Reagan’s Law: Government is not the solution, government is the problem. Britain has too much government, and has had since 1945.

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Unlike Obama and Biden, who roamed about the world looking for other people’s business into which they could stick their noses, Trump actively tries to create peace–as with the “Abraham accords”– for which he will get ABSOLUTELY NO CREDIT from the Usual Suspects.

UPDATE: Trump Peace Summit Set To End Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict

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VIZZ works by gently shrinking the pupil of the eye, using aceclidine. This creates a “pinhole effect” – like narrowing a camera lens — which helps bring nearby objects into sharper focus. Unlike older eye drops, this one does not significantly affect the eye’s focusing muscles, so it doesn’t blur your distance vision or cause that “zoomed-in” effect (aka a myopic shift).

Ultimately, the drops offer improved reading vision for up to 10 hours, without the need for glasses and, importantly, without the side effects of older treatments.

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President Donald Trump said Thursday he has directed the Department of Commerce to launch preparations for a new and “highly accurate” national census, according to a post to his Truth Social account.

The president said the count would reflect current information, incorporate data from the 2024 presidential election, and explicitly exclude individuals residing illegally in the U.S.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” his post read. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

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Five soldiers were shot Wednesday at Fort Stewart in Georgia, leading to a lockdown at the Army base before the suspect, and an active-duty soldier was arrested.

All five soldiers are in stable condition and expected to fully recover, Brig. Gen. John Lubas, commanding general of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is based at Fort Stewart, said at a news conference that aired live on Newsmax. The suspected shooter was identified as Quornelius Radford, 28.

The shooting took place in the team area of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, which is also known as the Spartan Brigade.

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According to the team, the newly developed drug, Adriana, is a groundbreaking painkiller, which works on a completely different mechanism to morphine and other existing synthetic opioids. The drug has the potential to revolutionize pain control in the medical field, the team said.

The team also expects that the drug will help resolve the so-called opioid epidemic, in which a large number of deaths occur mainly due to overdoses of opioids.

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Italian police arrested 13 people in a nationwide sweep against Chinese organized crime groups, striking what authorities called a “double blow” to criminal networks accused of drug trafficking, labor and sex exploitation, and money laundering.

Multiple coordinated operations conducted across a total of 25 provinces, including Milan, Rome, Florence, Prato, and Catania, targeted Chinese clans operating with mafia?style intimidation and territorial control, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry and remarks by anti-organized crime police official Andrea Olivadese.

“On one front, the State Police carried out a ‘high?impact’ action in 24 Italian provinces targeting entrenched Chinese criminal groups engaged in illegal trafficking, exploitation of prostitution and labor, product counterfeiting, drug dealing, and international money laundering,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

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A stabbing at a Michigan Walmart on Saturday was stopped by an armed man, a Marine veteran, who went to the shooting range but “forgot to take his pistol off his hip.” The New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, NPR, NBC News, BBC, and many others completely ignored the gun used to stop the attack. But an eyewitness described how others who had tried to stop the attacker were stabbed, but it took the Marine with a gun to stop the attack. The attack was stopped several minutes before the first responders were able to arrive. One thought is that this hero might get some coverage in the legacy media simply because he is black and the attacker is white.

Nope. Having a gun costs more Wokemon Points than being a Negro gains.

This case was far from unusual. Between January 2021 and December 2024, concealed handgun permit holders stopped 37 attacks that police said would have turned into mass public shootings if not for their intervention. But they rarely get national news attention.

Remember: When seconds count, police respond in minutes … if you’re lucky.

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The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Aug. 4 that it has ended a decree initiated more than 44 years ago, which imposed across the federal government hiring practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) theories.

This is not the end of anti-white racism. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the beginning.

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Imagine if every moment is filled with a high-pitched buzz or ring that you can’t turn off.

More than 25 million adults in the U.S., have a condition called tinnitus, according to the American Tinnitus Association. It can be stressful, even panic-inducing and difficult to manage. Dozens of factors can contribute to the onset of tinnitus, including hearing loss, exposure to loud noise or a viral illness.

There’s no cure, but there are a range of strategies to reduce the symptoms and make it less bothersome, including hearing aids, mindfulness therapy, and one newer option – a device approved by the FDA to treat tinnitus using electrical stimulation of the tongue.

Gallup.

A view long held in American political philosophy is that working for oneself is a more desirable state than working for others.

New research on entrepreneurial insights from Gallup, supported by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, finds empirical evidence to support such ideals about entrepreneurship. Adults who employ others score higher than other groups, including employees and non-employer owners, on a variety of measures — income, wealth, life evaluation and work engagement.

The War Zone.

Overall, the upgraded Mogami class frigate would represent a massive improvement over the Anzac class design, the first of which entered Australian service in 1996 and the youngest of which are now pushing 20 years old. The final selection of the winner of the SEA 3000 competition comes at a time when Australia is facing growing demands to safeguard its own maritime interests, including being able to keep highly strategic maritime trade routes open, particularly amid growing regional competition with China. There is also the prospect of becoming involved in a major conflict in the Pacific with China, alongside allies like the United States and Japan, where naval capabilities would play key roles. With all this in mind, Australia is separately in the process of acquiring its first-ever nuclear attack submarines with the help of the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as looking to bolster its surface and subsurface fleets with new uncrewed capabilities.

Purchasing Mogami class frigates from Japan also deepens Australia’s ties with an important ally, and vice versa. For Japan, a sale of warships would represent a major entry into the global arms market that the country has been building toward for years now. Japanese authorities and defense contractors have clearly been looking to sweeten the offer to Australia. In February, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced plans to expand its facilities in Canberra. The month before, Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida, Chief of Staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, had said Australia could skip ahead of his country in the production queue if it picked the Mogami offer.

ALSO: The Combat Information Center In Japan’s New Frigate Is Like A Starship’s Bridge

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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

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As we’ve looked at in the past, Sharrow has completely reimagined the marine propeller, swapping the usual thin-edged blades with a set of closed loops designed to cut efficiency-sapping tip vortices down to virtually nil. With smoother, more effective hydrodynamics, the propellers are claimed to offer up to 30% better fuel efficiency than a traditional propeller while also cutting noise and vibration.

Sharrow has developed several different propeller models, including the mesmerizing CX stacked contra-rotator and the more mass-market-friendly MX-A small outboard propeller. The latter took a big step at addressing one of Sharrow’s biggest drawbacks: uninvitingly high prices. It starts at US$1,995, which is still a far cry from inexpensive but is a solid step down from the $4,995 to $11,995 range of other variants.

Beyond propellers, Sharrow is looking toward its next chapter with Sharrow Labs. Based in Michigan Central’s Newlab innovation and mobility hub, Sharrow Labs is focused on pioneering new technologies and innovations in propulsion, clean energy and next-generation mobility. It will also look to expand Sharrow’s footprint into new industries, including aerospace, wind energy and defense.

Everybody who runs a boat has been waiting impatiently for these people to get off the dime and produce products for them to use. YouTube has videos of the props in action; it’s pretty exciting.

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A catalyst tethered by DNA boosts the efficiency of the electrochemical conversion of CO2 to CO, a building block for many chemical compounds.ds

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Skechers recently started selling a line of kids shoes that have a hidden compartment under the insole for inserting Apple’s AirTag item tracker.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

The Times (UK)

The abiding image of Charles Darwin is of the naturalist in his later years, bearded and with a face etched by time, sitting in his garden at Down House in Kent. But he was a youthful 22-year-old when he embarked on what would be one of the most consequential expeditions in human history: his five-year journey onboard HMS Beagle, beginning in 1831, which gave rise to the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Two centuries on, a magnificent Dutch three-masted topsail schooner — the Oosterschelde — has docked in the shadow of Tower Bridge after a two-year conservation expedition retracing Darwin’s steps, having stopped at big ports where the Beagle made landfall. But whereas Darwin’s voyage forced humanity to reconsider its past, this project looks to the future.

The Darwin200 initiative was spearheaded by the British naturalist and geographer Stewart McPherson, 43, who sought to harness the naturalist’s legacy to inspire and train a new generation of scientific thinkers.

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What the researchers from Japan, China, Canada, and the US found is that a particular family of these TEs, called MER11, can strongly influence gene expression and act like “genetic switches” — without actually changing the underlying DNA.

“Our genome was sequenced long ago, but the function of many of its parts remain unknown,” study coauthor Fumitaka Inoue from Kyoto University said in a statement about the work.

MER11 sequences are what’s known as long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons. Spookily, these are believed to have originated from an endogenous retrovirus (ERV) that infected a simian ancestor tens of millions of years ago, hijacking the DNA of the cells it invaded to produce copies of its genetic makeup that have never gone away, but have largely remained inert. Per the researchers, at least eight percent of the human genome comes from these retroviruses.

That, plus all the other TEs littering our genome, makes for a lot of puzzling clutter for human scientists to sift through. The authors argue that the current methods for classifying and annotating TEs are inaccurate, leading to DNA sequences being overlooked as genetic junk. This inspired them to test their own classification system.

UPDATE: Your DNA Is Full of Ancient Viruses – And They’re Running the Show

Judge dismisses lawsuits against Trump’s dismantling of USAID (Kaelan Deese/Washington Examiner)

Democrats Get Lowest Rating From Voters in 35 Years, WSJ Poll Finds (Aaron Zitner/Wall Street Journal)

FCC Chairman: President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape (CNBC)

Fetterman Thanks Trump Team for Infrastructure Wins

Trump notches winning streak in Supreme Court emergency docket deluge (The Hill)

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In today’s world, allergies are nearly unavoidable. For instance, a report from Stanford Medicine suggests that nearly 40 percent of the human population (over three billion people) suffers from at least one allergic condition, making allergies one of the most widespread health issues globally.

The situation is even worrisome in the US, where over 50 percent of all kids suffer from this problem. However, surprisingly, there’s one group in America that seems almost immune to allergies, the Amish. Compared to the earlier 50 percent figure, only seven percent of Amish kids have developed any allergic condition.

Moreover, “generally, across the country, about 8 to 10 percent of kids have asthma. In the Amish kids, it’s probably 1 to 2 percent. A few of them do have allergies, but at much, much lower rates compared to the general population,” Carole Ober, an expert on human genetics from the University of Chicago, told The Washington Post.

These numbers are so incredible that scientists are now digging deep into Amish barns and homes to understand how these children are being protected. They believe that their findings could lead to treatments that prevent allergies altogether.

I thought it was the beards but what do I know?

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If you ask 1,000 different Americans about the state of the U.S. economy, you will get 1,000 different opinions. But what is the truth? In this article, I am going to share information with you that is indisputable. I like to examine things from an analytical point of view, and so I always want to know what the cold, hard numbers are telling me. And what the cold, hard numbers are telling me is very troubling.

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Elon Musk’s retro-futuristic Tesla Diner and Supercharger in Los Angeles quietly opened its doors to first responders over the weekend. Musk announced on X that if the concept proves successful, a nationwide rollout is a possibility.

“If our retro-futuristic diner turns out well, which I think it will, @Tesla will establish these in major cities around the world, as well as at Supercharger sites on long-distance routes,” Musk said.

LiveScience.

Twenty-two years after the completion of the Human Genome Project, scientists have unveiled the most expansive catalog of human genetic variation ever compiled.

Across two new papers published Wednesday (July 23) in the journal Nature, scientists sequenced the DNA of 1,084 people around the world. They leveraged recent technological advancements to analyze long stretches of genetic material from each person, stitched those fragments together and compared the resulting genomes in fine detail.

The results deepen our understanding of “structural variants” within the human genome. Rather than affecting a single “letter” in DNA’s code, such variations affect large chunks of the code — they may be deleted from or added to the genome, or encompass places where the DNA has been flipped around or moved to a different location.

ScienceAlert.

In a bid to better understand fear and how it works, a team led by neurobiologist Hui-Quan Li of the University of California San Diego has mapped the changes in brain chemistry and neural signaling in mice receiving hefty frights – and, even better, figured out how to stop it.

“Our results provide important insights into the mechanisms involved in fear generalization,” says neurobiologist Nicholas Spitzer of UC San Diego.

“The benefit of understanding these processes at this level of molecular detail – what is going on and where it’s going on – allows an intervention that is specific to the mechanism that drives related disorders.”

The study was conducted in mice genetically modified to express a specific transporter of the important neurotransmitter glutamate in the brain, as well as a fluorescent protein in the nuclei of their brain cells, to allow the team to track the changes in the brain.

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My man….