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<title>19 July, 2023</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Power users: Technology and Canadian sex workers during COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
The transition from physical to online advertising by sex workers in Canada has been well documented. However, few studies use rigorous sampling methods. This study considers how a technically sophisticated group of advertisers from a large Canadian sex work classifieds site used multiple online resources to promote or provide services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advertisers qualified for the study if they used a URL as part of their contact information and were actively advertising between August 23 and September 22, 2022. A random sample of 1000 qualifying advertisers were selected of which 783 had accessible contact URLs. Themes were identified in downloaded website texts using grounded theory analysis. Ad metadata was used to identify demographic and behavioral distinctions between the sample and other advertisers. Almost all sampled advertisers (99%) provided in person services and most (70%) provided online services. The sample advertised more frequently, were more affluent and were more likely to be Anglophone, White, trans-female, or provide BDSM services. Themes of security, health, identity, and social networks were identified. Advertisers emphasized physical, emotional, and financial security. Most workers did not work in isolation and many participated in extensive social networks.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/u5kd2/" target="_blank">Power users: Technology and Canadian sex workers during COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Deep mutational scanning of whole SARS-CoV-2 spike in an inverted infection system</strong> -
<div>
In order to investigate SARS-CoV-2 mutations and their impact on immune evasion and infectivity, we developed a Deep Mutational Scanning (DMS) platform utilizing an inverted infection assay to measure spike expression, ACE2 affinity, and viral infectivity in human cells. Surprisingly, our analysis reveals that spike protein expression, rather than ACE2 affinity, is the primary factor affecting viral infectivity and correlated with SARS-CoV-2 evolution. Notably, within the N-terminal domain (NTD), spike expression and infectivity-enhancing mutations are concentrated in flexible loops. We also observed that Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 exhibit immune evasion through receptor binding domain (RBD) mutations, although these mutations reduce structural stability. Interestingly, the NTD has evolved to increase stability, compensating for the RBD instability and resulting in heightened overall infectivity. Our findings, available in SpikeScanDB, emphasize the importance of spike expression levels and compensatory mutations in both the NTD and RBD domains for shaping Omicron variant infectivity.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.17.549430v1" target="_blank">Deep mutational scanning of whole SARS-CoV-2 spike in an inverted infection system</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Breakthrough infection elicits hypermutated IGHV3-53/3-66 public antibodies with broad and potent neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2 variants including BQ and XBB lineages</strong> -
<div>
The rapid emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) calls for efforts to study broadly neutralizing antibodies elicited by infection or vaccination so as to inform the development of vaccines and antibody therapeutics with broad protection. Here, we identified two convalescents of breakthrough infection with relatively high neutralizing titers against all tested viruses including BQ and XBB lineages. Among 50 spike-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) cloned from their B cells, the top 6 neutralizing mAbs (KXD01-06) belong to previously defined IGHV3-53/3-66 public antibodies. Although most antibodies in this class are dramatically escaped by VOCs, KXD01-06 exhibit broad neutralizing capacity with the IC50s of KXD01 ranging from 0.011~0.059ug/ml. Deep mutational scanning reveals that KXD01-06 target highly conserved sites on RBD including D420, Y421, L455, F456, A475 and N487. Genetic and functional analysis further indicates that the extent of somatic hypermutation is critical for the breadth of IGHV3-53/3-66 public antibodies. Overall, we discovered and characterized IGHV3-53/3-66 public antibodies with broad and potent neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2, which provides rationale for novel vaccines and antibody therapeutics based on this class of antibodies.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.18.549524v1" target="_blank">Breakthrough infection elicits hypermutated IGHV3-53/3-66 public antibodies with broad and potent neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2 variants including BQ and XBB lineages</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>ACE2 mimetic antibody potently neutralizes all SARS-CoV-2 variants and fully protects in XBB.1.5 challenged monkeys</strong> -
<div>
The rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 to variants with improved transmission efficiency and reduced sensitivity to vaccine-induced humoral immunity has abolished the protective effect of licensed therapeutic human monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). To fill this unmet medical need and protect vulnerable patient populations, we isolated the P4J15 mAb from a previously infected, vaccinated donor, with &lt;20 ng/ml neutralizing activity against all Omicron variants including the latest XBB.2.3 and EG.1 sub-lineages. Structural studies of P4J15 in complex with Omicron XBB.1 Spike show that the P4J15 epitope shares ~93% of its buried surface area with the ACE2 contact region, consistent with an ACE2 mimetic antibody. Although SARS-CoV-2 mutants escaping neutralization by P4J15 were selected in vitro, these displayed lower infectivity, poor binding to ACE2, and the corresponding "escape" mutations are accordingly rare in public sequence databases. Using a SARS-CoV-2 XBB.1.5 monkey challenge model, we show that P4J15 confers complete prophylactic protection. We conclude that the P4J15 mAb has potential as a broad-spectrum anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.18.549530v1" target="_blank">ACE2 mimetic antibody potently neutralizes all SARS-CoV-2 variants and fully protects in XBB.1.5 challenged monkeys</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A high-throughput multiplex array for antigen-specific serology with automated analysis.</strong> -
<div>
The utility of high-throughput systems to evaluate antigen-specific Ab has been highlighted by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Pathogen specific antibody levels are often used to assess protection following vaccination and, in the case of novel pathogens, an indication of prior exposure. Several platforms exist to visualize antigen-specific Ab, however most are not quantitative and difficult to scale for population levels studies. Additionally, the sensitivity across platforms differs making direct comparisons between studies difficult. Cytometric Bead Arrays are an attractive platform for antigen-specific Ab measurements as they allow antibodies reactive against several antigens and of several isotypes to be performed simultaneously. Additionally, cytometric arrays exhibit a high sensitivity and can be designed to provide quantitative measurements. Using commercially available particles, a biotin-Streptavidin loading strategy, and the inclusion of indirect standards, we describe here a flexible system that can be modified to include a variety of antigens. We generated two arrays, one focused on b-Coronavirus antigens and one focused on Influenza. To support the high throughput capacity of this system, we developed a suit of automated tools to process raw data into antigen-reactive IgM, IgA, and IgG. We describe quality control requirements, assay performance, and normalizations to accurately quantitate antigen specific Ig.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.29.534777v2" target="_blank">A high-throughput multiplex array for antigen-specific serology with automated analysis.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The impact of frailty on the outcomes of COVID-19 patients with persistent critical illness: A population-based cohort study.</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objectives: Persistent critical illness (PerCI, &gt; or equal to 10 days in Intensive Care Unit [ICU]) is defined as the time from ICU admission when patients antecedent characteristics define their mortality rather than the admission aetiology. Patients with frailty and without COVID-19 have a higher risk of developing and dying from PerCI. We aimed to investigate the impact of frailty on critically ill patients with COVID-19 experiencing PerCI. Methods: We conducted a retrospective multicentre cohort study including 103 Australian and New Zealand ICUs over two years, investigating the impact of frailty, measured with Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), in patients with COVID-19, between patients with and without PerCI. Results: The prevalence of PerCI was similar between patients with and without frailty (25.4% vs. 27.9%; p=0.44). Hospital mortality was higher in patients with PerCI than without (28.8% vs. 9.3%; p&lt;0.001), with mortality rising with increasing CFS (p&lt;0.001). Frailty independently predicted hospital mortality, but when adjusted for ANZROD and sex, its impact was no different in patients with and without PerCI (odds ratio [OR]=1.30 [95%-CI: 1.14-1.49] vs. OR=1.46 [95%-CI: 1.29-1.64]). Conclusions: The presence of frailty independently predicted hospital mortality in patients with PerCI, but frailty did not have a different impact on patients with and without PerCI.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.17.23292714v1" target="_blank">The impact of frailty on the outcomes of COVID-19 patients with persistent critical illness: A population-based cohort study.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The scientific chaos phase of the Great Pandemic: A longitudinal analysis and systematic review of the first surge of clinical research concerning COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Abstract Background Early stages of catastrophes like COVID-19 are often led by chaos and panic. To characterize the initial chaos phase of clinical research in such situations, we analyzed the first surge of more than 1000 clinical trials about the new disease at baseline and after two years follow-up. Our 3 main objectives were: (1) Assessment of spatial and temporal evolution of clinical research of COVID-19 across the globe, (2) Assessment of transparency and quality - trial registration, (3) Assessment of research waste and redundancies. Methods By entering the keyword “COVID-19” we screened the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform of the WHO and downloaded the search output when our goal of 1000 trials was reached on the 1st of April. Additionally, we verified the integrity of the downloaded data from the meta registry by comparing the data with each individual registration record on their source register. Also, we conducted a follow-up after two years to track their progress. Results (1) The spatial evolution followed the geographical spread of the disease as expected, however, the temporal development suggested that panic was the main driver for clinical research activities. (2) Trial registrations and registers showed a huge lack of transparency by allowing retrospective registrations and not keeping their registration records up to date. Quality of trial registration seems to have improved over the last decade, yet crucial information still was missing. (3) Research waste and redundancies were present as suggested by discontinuation of trials, preventable flaws in study design, and similar but uncoordinated research topics operationally fragmented in isolated silo-structures. Conclusion The scientific response mechanism across the globe was intact during the chaos phase. However, supervision, leadership, and accountability are urgently needed to prevent research waste, to ensure effective structure, quality, and validity to ultimately break the “panic-then-forget” cycle in future catastrophes.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.14.23292667v1" target="_blank">The scientific chaos phase of the Great Pandemic: A longitudinal analysis and systematic review of the first surge of clinical research concerning COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Community-onset urinary tract infection in females in the context of COVID-19: a longitudinal population cohort study exploring case presentation, management, and outcomes</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background COVID-19 affected the epidemiology of other infectious diseases and how they were managed. Urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most common infections treated in the community in England. We investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on UTI primary care consultations and outcomes in female patients. Methods and findings We analysed General Practice (GP) consultation and hospital admission records using the Whole Systems Integrated Care (WSIC) data in North West London between 2016 and 2021. We quantified the changes in UTI GP consultation rates using time series analysis before and during the pandemic. We assessed the outcomes of UTI, measured by subsequent bacteraemia and sepsis within 60 days, for consultations delivered face-to-face or remotely, with or without diagnostic tests recommended by the national guidelines, and with or without antibiotic treatment. Between January 2016 and December 2021, we identified 375,859 UTI episodes in 233,450 female patients. Before the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2016-February 2020), the UTI GP consultation rate stayed level at 522.8 cases per 100,000 population per month, with a seasonal pattern of peaking in October. Since COVID-19, (March 2020-December 2021), monthly UTI GP consultations declined when COVID-19 cases surged and rose when COVID-19 case fell. During the pandemic, the UTI consultations delivered face-to-face reduced from 72.0% to 29.4%, the UTI consultations with appropriate diagnostic tests, including urine culture and urinalysis, reduced from 17.3% to 10.4%, and the UTI cases treated with antibiotics reduced from 52.0% to 47.8%. The likelihood of antibiotics being prescribed was not affected by whether the consultation was delivered face-to-face or remotely but associated with whether there was a diagnostic test. Regardless of whether the UTI consultation occurred before or during the pandemic, the absence of antibiotic treatment for UTI is associated with a 10-fold increase in the risk of having bacteraemia or sepsis within 60 days, though the patients who consulted GPs for UTI during the pandemic were older and more co-morbid. Across the study period (January 2016-December 2021), nitrofurantoin remained the first-line antibiotic option for UTI. The percentage of non-prophylactic acute UTI antibiotic prescriptions with durations that exceeded the guideline recommendations was 58.7% before the pandemic, and 49.4% since. This led to 830,522 total excess days of treatment, account for 63.3% of all non-prophylactic acute antibiotics prescribed for UTI. Before the pandemic, excess antibiotic days of UTI drugs had been reducing consistently. However, this decline slowed down during the pandemic. Having a diagnostic test was associated with 0.6 less excess days of antibiotic treatment. Conclusions This analysis provides a comprehensive examination of management and outcomes of community-onset UTI in female patients, considering the changes in GP consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings highlighted the importance of appropriate urine testing to support UTI diagnosis in symptomatic patients and initiation of antibiotic treatment with appropriate course duration. Continued monitoring is required to assess the overall impact on patients and health systems from the changed landscape of primary care delivery.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.16.23292705v1" target="_blank">Community-onset urinary tract infection in females in the context of COVID-19: a longitudinal population cohort study exploring case presentation, management, and outcomes</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>COVFlow: performing virus phylodynamics analyses from selected SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences</strong> -
<div>
Phylodynamic analyses generate important and timely data to optimise public health response to SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks and epidemics. However, their implementation is hampered by the massive amount of sequence data and the difficulty to parameterise dedicated software packages. We introduce the COVFlow pipeline, accessible at https://gitlab.in2p3.fr/ete/CoV-flow, which allows a user to select sequences from the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID) database according to user-specified criteria, to perform basic phylogenetic analyses, and to produce an XML file to be run in the Beast2 software package. We illustrate the potential of this tool by studying two sets of sequences from the Delta variant in two French regions. This pipeline can facilitate the use of virus sequence data at the local level, for instance, to track the dynamics of a particular lineage or variant in a region of interest.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.17.496544v6" target="_blank">COVFlow: performing virus phylodynamics analyses from selected SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Revising Home Advantage in Sport – Home Advantage Mediation (HAM) Model</strong> -
<div>
Home Advantage (HA) is a robust phenomenon in which sport teams or individuals are more successful when they play in front of their fans. There are a number of causes of HA, but most theories assume that the crowd support spurs home players to better performance and biases referees, and that these two factors in turn influence the result. The interest in HA has grown during the Covid-19 pandemic as most competitions were taking place behind closed doors, a perfect control condition for disentangling the causal effects behind HA. Despite the presence of useful conceptual frameworks, most previous research has focused on investigating isolated individual factors. Here we review our newly developed Home Advantage Mediated (HAM) model, which considers all individual factors and their interrelations simultaneously. HAM assumes that the crowd effects are mediated through other relevant factors, such as referee bias and team performance. Most importantly, HAM can be formally expressed as a mediation model, a technique widely employed in social sciences for investigating causal pathways. We demonstrate how researchers can use HAM to model the HA in European football and how moderating variables, such as Covid-19 and absence of fans, can be incorporated in the model to disentangle the processes behind the HA phenomenon. Besides throwing new (modeling) light on one of the most robust phenomena in sport, we also provide information about practical implementation of mediation and moderated mediation models in the Bayesian framework. Similar implementations can be adapted for use in other sport science domains.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/c8tu3/" target="_blank">Revising Home Advantage in Sport – Home Advantage Mediation (HAM) Model</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Identification of predictive patient characteristics for assessing the probability of COVID-19 in-hospital mortality</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need to understand patient factors that may be used to predict the occurrence of severe cases and patient mortality. Approximately 20% of SARS-CoV-2 infections lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by the harmful actions of inflammatory mediators. Patients with severe COVID-19 are often afflicted with neurologic symptoms, and individuals with pre-existing neurodegenerative disease have an increased risk of severe COVID-19. Although collectively, these observations point to a bidirectional relationship between severe COVID-19 and neurologic disorders, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. Here, we analyzed the electronic health records of 471 patients with severe COVID-19 to identify clinical characteristics most predictive of mortality. Feature discovery was conducted by training a regularized logistic regression classifier that serves as a machine-learning model with an embedded feature selection capability. SHAP analysis using the trained classifier revealed that a small ensemble of readily observable clinical features, including characteristics associated with cognitive impairment, could predict in-hospital mortality with an accuracy greater than 0.85 (expressed as the area under the ROC curve of the classifier). These findings have important implications for the prioritization of clinical measures used to identify patients with COVID-19 (and, potentially, other forms of acute respiratory distress syndrome) having an elevated risk of death.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.16.23292738v1" target="_blank">Identification of predictive patient characteristics for assessing the probability of COVID-19 in-hospital mortality</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Evaluation of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on hospital admission related to common infections</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a multifaceted global challenge, partly driven by inappropriate antibiotic prescribing. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted antibiotic prescribing for common bacterial infections. This highlights the need to examine risk of hospital admissions related to common infections, excluding COVID-19 infections during the pandemic. Methods: With the approval of NHS England, we accessed electronic health records from The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) through OpenSAFELY platform. We included patients with primary care diagnosis of common infections, including lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI), upper respiratory tract infections (URTI), and lower urinary tract infection (UTI), from January 2019 to August 2022. We excluded patients with a COVID-19 record 90 days before to 30 days after the infection diagnosis. Using Cox proportional-hazard regression models, we predicted risk of infection-related hospital admission in 30 days follow-up period after the diagnosis. Results: We found 12,745,165 infection diagnoses from January 2019 to August 2022. Of them, 80,395 (2.05%) cases were admitted to hospital in the follow-up period. Counts of hospital admission for infections dropped during COVID-19, e.g., LRTI from 3,950 in December 2019 to 520 in April 2020. Comparing those prescribed an antibiotic to those without, reduction in risk of hospital admission were largest with LRTI (adjusted odds ratio (OR) of 0.35; 95% CI, 0.35-0.36) and UTI (adjusted OR 0.45; 95% CI, 0.44-0.46), compared to URTI (adjusted OR 1.04; 95% CI, 1.03-1.06). Conclusion: Large effectiveness of antibiotics in preventing complications related to LRTI and UTI can support better targeting of antibiotics to patients with higher complication risks.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.16.23292723v1" target="_blank">Evaluation of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on hospital admission related to common infections</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Surviving but not thriving: VOX and Spain in times of Covid-19</strong> -
<div>
We seek to advance the understanding of how the populist radical right in Spain reacted to Covid-19 in 2020. In particular, our contribution seeks to answer three questions. First, we consider the discursive and rhetorical tools adopted by the party. Second, we analyse how VOX, as an opposition party, has sought to challenge the governing coalition and the mainstream right. Specifically, we analyse the incentives, rationale, process and consequences party’s no confidence measure brought against the governing coalition. Third, we assess to what extent the party’s electoral potential has been influenced by the pandemic by analysing the party’s performance in the polls as well as support for VOX’s leadership amongst the party’s own voter base.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/gvnpe/" target="_blank">Surviving but not thriving: VOX and Spain in times of Covid-19</a>
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<li><strong>Safety and immunogenicity of a heterologous booster with an RBD virus-like particle vaccine following two- or three-dose inactivated COVID-19 vaccine</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Reduced protection against COVID-19 due to the waning vaccine-induced immunity over time and emergence of immune-evading SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) indicate the need for vaccine boosters. LYB001 is an innovative recombinant SARS-CoV-2 vaccine which displays a repetitive array of the Spike glycoprotein9s receptor binding domain (RBD) on a virus-like particle (VLP) vector to boost the immune system, produced using a Covalink plug-and-display protein binding technology. Methods: The safety and immunogenicity of LYB001 as a heterologous booster at an interval of 6-12 months was assessed in 119 participants receiving a booster with (1) 30μg LYB001 (I-I-30L) or CoronaVac (I-I-C), (2) escalated dose of 60μg LYB001 (I-I-60L) or CoronaVac in a ratio of 2:1 after two-dose primary series of inactivated COVID-19 vaccine in part 1 of this study, or (3) 30μg LYB001 (I-I-I-30L) after three-dose primary series of inactivated COVID-19 vaccine in part 2 of this study. Results: A well-tolerated reactogenicity profile was observed for LYB001 as a heterologous booster, with adverse reactions predominantly being mild in severity and transient. The peak neutralizing antibody response was observed at 28 days after booster, with GMT (95%CI) against prototype SARS-CoV-2 being 1237.8 (747.2, 2050.6), 554.3 (374.6, 820.2), 181.9 (107.6, 307.6) and 1200.2 (831.5, 1732.3) in the I-I-30L, I-I-60L, I-I-C, and I-I-I-30L groups, respectively. LYB001 also elicited a cross-neutralizing antibody response against the BA.4/5 strain, dominant during the study period, with GMT being 201.1 (102.7, 393.7), 63.0 (35.1, 113.1), 29.2 (16.9, 50.3) and 115.3 (63.9, 208.1) at 28 days after booster in the I-I-30L, I-I-60L, I-I-C, and I-I-I-30L groups, respectively. Additionally, RBD-specific IFN-γ, IL-2, IL-4 secreting T cells, as measured by ELISpot assay, dramatically increased (more than 10 times versus baseline) at 14 days after a single LYB001 booster. Conclusions: Our data confirm the favorable safety and immunogenicity profile of the LYB001 vaccine when used as a heterologous booster, and support the continued clinical development of this promising candidate that utilize VLP platform to provide protection against COVID-19.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.17.23292762v1" target="_blank">Safety and immunogenicity of a heterologous booster with an RBD virus-like particle vaccine following two- or three-dose inactivated COVID-19 vaccine</a>
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<li><strong>Intranasal lavage with hypochlorous acid safely reduces the symptoms in the ambulatory patient with COVID-19.</strong> -
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ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE This study was designed to investigate intranasal lavage with a hypochlorous acid solution in the reduction of symptoms in the ambulatory COVID-19 patient. STUDY DESIGN Study approval granted by the Institutional Review Board of Reading Hospital (IRB 036-20), with informed consent obtained from all adult participants(age&gt;18 years). SETTING All enrollees, taken from the same ambulatory testing facility, received nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 testing by reverse transcription polymerase chain (RT-PCR) or the COVID-19 antigen specific test (Binax NOW, Abbott Lab) METHODS Convenience sampling methodology was utilized. Each enrollee was provided with the study devices which included a Nasaflo Neti Pot (NeilMed Pharmaceutical, Inc.), and the hypochlorous acid solution (Vashe Wound Solution, Urgo Medical North America, LLC). Participants were instructed to irrigate each nostril with 120 cc (four ounces) of the solution for ten consecutive days, and record the presence or absence of symptoms in a scripted diary log. RESULTS The study included 88 patients of which 74 (84.1%) completed the ten days of nasal lavage. All data analysis was conducted using SPSS version 25.0. Chi square test of association found no significant difference related to gender, age group race, ethnicity, residence, or living arrangements (all p-values &gt; 0.05). There were no statistical differences in any of the co-morbid conditions. Mild adverse reactions included burning, epistaxis, and oral metallic taste. No enrollees required mechanical ventilation. There were no deaths. CONCLUSION This study suggests the feasibility and safety of using intranasal lavage with a hypochlorous acid solution in relieving symptoms in the ambulatory Covid-19 patient.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.17.23292426v1" target="_blank">Intranasal lavage with hypochlorous acid safely reduces the symptoms in the ambulatory patient with COVID-19.</a>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Homologous Booster Study of COVID-19 Protein Subunit Recombinant Vaccine</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: SARS-CoV-2 Subunit Recombinant Protein Vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   PT Bio Farma<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Role of Ivermectin and Colchicine in Treatment of COVID-19: Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Ivermectin Tablets;   Drug: Colchicine 0.5 MG;   Drug: Standared managment<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Ain Shams University<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Evaluate the Immunogenicity and Safety of A Recombinant Protein COVID-19 Vaccine as Booster Vaccines</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   SARS-CoV-2 Infection<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: SCTV01E-2;   Biological: SCTV01E<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Sinocelltech Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Smell in COVID-19 and Efficacy of Nasal Theophylline (SCENT 3)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: theophylline;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Washington University School of Medicine<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Developing an Effective Intervention to Address Post-Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 Balance Disorders, Weakness and Muscle Fatigue in Individuals Aged 65+</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Device: Resistance Training<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Multimodal Long Covid19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Long COVID-19 Syndrome<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Other: Multimodal intervention in Long Covid19<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Universidad de Magallanes;   Teaching Assistance and Research Center of the University of Magallanes CADI-UMAG;   Clinical Hospital Dr. Lautaro Navarro Avaria<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 Trial of the Candidate Vaccine MVA-SARS-2-S in Adults</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Covid19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: MVA-SARS-2-S;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf;   German Center for Infection Research;   Philipps University Marburg Medical Center;   Ludwig-Maximilians - University of Munich;   University Hospital Tuebingen;   CTC-NORTH<br/><b>Withdrawn</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Treatment of Long COVID (TLC) Feasibility Trial</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Low-dose Naltrexone (LDN);   Drug: Cetirizine;   Drug: Famotidine;   Drug: LDN Placebo;   Drug: Cetirizine Placebo;   Drug: Famotidine Placebo<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Emory University;   CURE Drug Repurposing Collaboratory (CDRC)<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficiency and Safety of Paxlovid for COVID-19 Patients With Severe Chronic Kidney Disease</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID-19;   Renal Insufficiency, Chronic<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Chinese PLA General Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Safety, Efficacy, and Dosing of VIX001 in Patients With Neurological Symptoms of Post Acute COVID-19 Syndrome (PACS).</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome;   Cognitive Impairment;   Neurological Complication<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: VIX001<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Neobiosis, LLC<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effects of Music Combined With Sports Games on Alleviating Psychological Stress, Anxiety and Mental Energy Among Adolescents During COVID-19 Pandemic in Lanzhou Gansu Province China</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Stress;   Anxiety and Fear<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Behavioral: Music intervention only;   Behavioral: Sports games intervention only;   Behavioral: Music and sports games intervention<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Wu Jiarun<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Clinical Evaluation of the Safety and Efficacy of Randomized Placebo Versus the 8-aminoquinoline Tafenoquine for Early Symptom Resolution in Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID 19 Disease and Low Risk of Disease Progression</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   COVID 19 Disease;   Mild to Moderate COVID 19 Disease;   SARS-CoV-2;   Infectious Disease;   Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Tafenoquine Oral Tablet;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   60P Australia Pty Ltd<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Evaluate the Efficacy, Safety, Tolerability and PK of SNS812 in Mild to Moderate COVID-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   Disease Caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (Disorder)<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: MBS-COV;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Oneness Biotech Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Efficacy of the Therapy With BRAINMAX® Using fMRI for the Treatment of Patients With Asthenia After COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>:   Asthenia;   COVID-19;   Functional MRI;   Cognitive Impairment<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Other: Structural and functional MRI;   Drug: Ethyl methyl hydroxypyridine succinate + Meldonium;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Promomed, LLC<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>NDV-HXP-S Vaccine Clinical Trial (COVIVAC)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: COVIVAC vaccine<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals, Vietnam;   National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE), Vietnam;   Center for Disease Control of Thai Binh Province, Vietnam<br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Research Progress of Immunomodulation on Anti-COVID-19 and the Effective Components from Traditional Chinese Medicine</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 has posed a threat to the health of people around the world because of its strong transmission and high virulence. Currently, there is no specific medicine for the treatment of COVID-19. However, for a wide variety of medicines used to treat COVID-19, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) plays a major role. In this paper, the effective treatment of COVID-19 using TCM was consulted first, and several Chinese medicines that were frequently used apart from their huge role in treating it…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Phase 2 randomised study to establish efficacy, safety and dosing of a novel oral cathepsin C inhibitor, BI 1291583, in adults with bronchiectasis: Airleaf</strong> - New therapies are needed to prevent exacerbations, improve quality of life and slow disease progression in bronchiectasis. Inhibition of cathepsin C (CatC) activity has the potential to decrease activation of neutrophil-derived serine proteases in patients with bronchiectasis, thereby reducing airway inflammation, improving symptoms, reducing exacerbations and preventing further airway damage. Here we present the design of a phase 2 trial (Airleaf™; NCT05238675) assessing the efficacy and safety…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity and safety of inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in haemodialysis patients: a prospective cohort study</strong> - End-stage renal disease patients on haemodialysis (HD) have been largely excluded from SARS-CoV-2 vaccine trials due to safety reasons and shown to mount lower responses to vaccination. This study aims to evaluate the immunogenicity and safety of inactivated COVID-19 vaccine among HD patients compared to healthy controls. All subjects who received the primary inactivated COVID-19 vaccination had their blood samples tested 21 days after the second dose. We report the immunogenicity based on…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effective SARS-CoV-2 replication of monolayers of intestinal epithelial cells differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes severe acute respiratory symptoms in humans. Controlling the coronavirus disease pandemic is a worldwide priority. The number of SARS-CoV-2 studies has dramatically increased, and the requirement for analytical tools is higher than ever. Here, we propose monolayered-intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) instead of three-dimensional cultured intestinal organoids as a suitable…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Picolinic acid is a broad-spectrum inhibitor of enveloped virus entry that restricts SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A virus in vivo</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic highlights an urgent need for effective antivirals. Targeting host processes co-opted by viruses is an attractive antiviral strategy with a high resistance barrier. Picolinic acid (PA) is a tryptophan metabolite endogenously produced in mammals. Here, we report the broad-spectrum antiviral activity of PA against enveloped viruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), influenza A virus (IAV), flaviviruses, herpes simplex virus, and…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Federal telehealth policy changes during the COVID-19 public health emergency: Associations with telemental health use among rural and urban Medicare beneficiaries</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: TMH mitigated PHE-related barriers to MHS access for rural and urban beneficiaries, but urban residents benefited disproportionately. Among rural beneficiaries, older age was related to lower TMH use. To avoid reinforcing existing MHS access disparities, policies must address factors limiting TMH use among rural beneficiaries, especially those over 75 and those from historically underserved communities.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SARS-CoV-2 Nsp1 regulates translation start site fidelity to promote infection</strong> - A better mechanistic understanding of virus-host interactions can help reveal vulnerabilities and identify opportunities for therapeutic interventions. Of particular interest are essential interactions that enable production of viral proteins, as those could target an early step in the virus lifecycle. Here, we use subcellular proteomics, ribosome profiling analyses and reporter assays to detect changes in polysome composition and protein synthesis during SARS-CoV-2 (CoV2) infection. We identify…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Seasonal coronavirus infections trigger NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages but is therapeutically targetable</strong> - Seasonal coronaviruses widely circulate in the global population, and severe complications can occur in specific vulnerable populations. Little is known on their pathogenic mechanisms and no approved treatment is available. Here, we present anecdotal evidence that the level of IL-1β, a hallmark of inflammasome activation, appears elevated in a subset of seasonal coronavirus infected patients. We found that cultured human macrophages support the full life cycle of three cultivatable seasonal…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Proxalutamide reduces SARS-CoV-2 infection and associated inflammatory response</strong> - Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, data suggested that males had a higher risk of developing severe disease and that androgen deprivation therapy might be associated with protection. Combined with the fact that TMPRSS2 (transmembrane serine protease 2), a host entry factor for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was a well-known androgen-regulated gene, this led to an upsurge of research investigating androgen receptor (AR)-targeting drugs. Proxalutamide, an AR antagonist, was shown in initial clinical studies…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Exploring epigenetic drugs as potential inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 main protease: a docking and MD simulation study</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic has caused havoc around the globe since 2019 and is considered the largest global epidemic of the twentieth century. Although the first antiviral drug, Remdesivir, was initially introduced against COVID‑19, virtually no tangible therapeutic drugs exist to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection. FDA-approved Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir supplemented by Ritonavir) was recently announced as a promising drug against the SARS-CoV-2 major protease (M^(pro)). Here we report for the first time the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inhibition of Cysteine Proteases via Thiol-Michael Addition Explains the Anti-SARS-CoV-2 and Bioactive Properties of Arteannuin B</strong> - Artemisia annua is the plant that produces artemisinin, an endoperoxide-containing sesquiterpenoid used for the treatment of malaria. A. annua extracts, which contain other bioactive compounds, have been used to treat other diseases, including cancer and COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. In this study, a methyl ester derivative of arteannuin B was isolated when A. annua leaves were extracted with a 1:1 mixture of methanol and dichloromethane. This methyl ester was thought to…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>M<sup>pro</sup>-targeted anti-SARS-CoV-2 inhibitor-based drugs</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is a global health emergency. The main protease is an important drug target in coronaviruses. It plays an important role in the processing of viral RNA-translated polyproteins and is highly conserved in the amino acid sequence and three-dimensional structure, making it a good drug target for which several small molecule inhibitors are available. This paper describes the various anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New perspective on the immunomodulatory activity of ginsenosides: Focus on effective therapies for post-COVID-19</strong> - More than 700 million confirmed cases of Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) have been reported globally, and 10-60% of patients are expected to exhibit “post-COVID-19 symptoms,” which will continue to affect human life and health. In the absence of safer, more specific drugs, current multiple immunotherapies have failed to achieve satisfactory efficacy. Ginseng, a traditional Chinese medicine, is often used as an immunomodulator and has been used in COVID-19 treatment as a tonic to increase…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Terpenoid phytocompounds from mangrove plant Xylocarpus moluccensis as possible inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2: In silico strategy</strong> - COVID-19 shook the world during the pandemic, where the climax it reached was vaccine manufacturing at an unfathomable pace. Alternative promising solutions to prevent infection from SARS-CoV-2 and its variants will remain crucial in the years to come. Due to its key role in viral replication, the major protease (Mpro) enzyme of SARS-CoV-2 can be an attractive therapeutic target. In the present work, natural terpenoids from mangrove medicinal plant Xylocarpus moluccensis (Lam.) M. Roem. were…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>‘Pterocephalodes hookeri-Onosma hookeri’ decoction protects against LPS-induced pulmonary inflammation via inhibiting TLR4/ NF-κB signaling pathway</strong> - CONCLUSION: In summary, the combination therapy of ‘P-O’ exhibited good antioxidant activity and anti-inflammatory activity in vitro, as well as a therapeutic effect against pulmonary inflammation in vivo. These findings provide evidence for the clinical application of ‘P-O’ and offer new approaches for treating pneumonia.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Can a New Spanish-Language Media Group Help Donald Trump?</strong> - Americano Media hopes to reach a nationwide conservative audience. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/can-a-new-spanish-language-media-group-help-donald-trump">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Florida’s Vanishing Sparrows</strong> - A group of eccentric endangered birds serves as a bellwether of the climate crisis. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/floridas-vanishing-sparrows">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Evolving Free-Speech Battle Between Social Media and the Government</strong> - A recent court ruling dramatically curtailed the federal bureaucracy’s ability to communicate with Internet platforms. What’s at stake when free speech harms the public? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-evolving-free-speech-battle-between-social-media-and-the-government">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why the Fall in Inflation Is a Big Deal for the 2024 Election</strong> - The positive economic news might give President Biden the political space to make the case for his legislative record without being constantly assailed with cries of “Did you see the price of X?” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-the-fall-in-inflation-is-a-big-deal-for-the-2024-election">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Donald Trump’s Plan to Make the Presidency More Like a Kingship</strong> - For a potential second term, the former President is devising the greatest reshaping of the federal bureaucracy in recent American history. Would the changes stand up to legal scrutiny? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/donald-trumps-plan-to-make-the-presidency-more-like-a-kingship">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>The true story behind Oppenheimer’s atomic test — and how it just might have ended the world</strong> -
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<img alt="A black-and-white photo of Senator Brien McMahon Conversing with Robert Oppenheimer" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/amzHwzuBVQcyeB8Xj-r3VGScQlg=/0x225:3916x3162/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72464653/517394014.0.jpg"/>
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Getty Images
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
It turns out there was an “unlikely” chance the first atomic bomb could have ignited the atmosphere — which didn’t stop the Manhattan Project.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XFj0FA">
In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYPbbksJxIg">one trailer</a> for <em>Oppenheimer</em>, the movie about the making of the atomic bomb releasing on Friday, Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) asks Manhattan Project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy): “Are we saying there’s a chance that when we push that button we destroy the world?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fPS6Qw">
The chance, Oppenheimer assures him, is “near zero.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FLsmj2">
Groves is not wholly assuaged. “<em>Near</em> zero?” Oppenheimer, frustrated, asks what answer he wanted to hear. Groves, of course, speaks for the audience: “Zero would be nice!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="emq5xG">
I would love to tell you that concerns that the first atomic bomb would destroy the world were made up to add some tension to the film. But no, some of the scientists building it were genuinely worried about the possibility. In 1942, Edward Teller, the researcher who later invented the far more powerful hydrogen bomb, gave a presentation in which he observed that an atomic explosion would create temperatures hotter than the sun — and maybe create the conditions under which fusion reactions (which had been discovered only a few years previously and were still poorly understood) could occur.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pEBPKY">
The upshot: There was a chance they could literally ignite the atmosphere, killing everything that depends on it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kjT3Lh">
Teller’s presentation caused a stir. Some physicists emphatically rejected the possibility. Other well-pedigreed ones were not as persuaded it could be ruled out, given how much they still didn’t fully understand about how nuclear reactions would happen.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DgbAPQ">
The Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in New Mexico commissioned a <a href="https://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lareport/LA-00602">secret report</a>, which concluded that this was “unlikely.” This set many fears to rest, but not all of them, and scientists kept rechecking their calculations up to the day of the test. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arthur Compton — who <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/03/ai-gpt4-technology-analogy/673509/">later said</a> that it would be “better to accept the slavery of the Nazi than run a chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind” — was among those who were less than sure right up to the moment of ignition. As the Manhattan Project’s physicists stood waiting for the test at Trinity site, he proposed, mostly jokingly, they <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/bethe-teller-trinity-and-the-end-of-earth/">place bets on whether they’d destroy life on Earth</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IaalJD">
James Conant, then-president of Harvard University and a witness to the Trinity test, said later that when the flash from the test was unexpectedly much brighter and longer-lasting than they’d predicted, <a href="https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/07/16/conant-on-trinity-1945/">his instantaneous reaction</a> was that they really had ignited the atmosphere and doomed the world.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aZIs9h">
We now know enough about fusion to know that nuclear bombs cannot ignite the atmosphere. But in his book <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-precipice-existential-risk-and-the-future-of-humanity-toby-ord/14906429?gclid=Cj0KCQjw8NilBhDOARIsAHzpbLAa-dmZAmzbT8tnyu3ik_aTAMXwB-UHCjLffEFhOv7XL_JFY54Cx8kaAuveEALw_wcB"><em>The Precipice</em></a><em>, </em>existential risk researcher Toby Ord argues that the team at the time could not possibly have been wholly confident in their conclusions. Indeed, we know nuclear weapons scientists miscalculated from time to time: in one deadly mistake, the <a href="https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/cold-war/page-6.html">Bravo test of a hydrogen bomb</a>, an explosion was <em>much</em> larger than calculated, exposing hundreds of people to radiation poisoning. (The scientists thought lithium-7 was essentially inert; in the Bravo explosion, a thousand times greater than that of Hiroshima, they learned that it was actually reactive at the right temperatures. Oops!)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YveFW8">
It’s hard to feel like we got the Trinity one right — instead of just getting lucky.
</p>
<h3 id="c3Z93T">
How do you end up nervously joking about maybe ending the world?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SGLo6y">
What in the world moves decent, intelligent, careful, and thoughtful people — and many of the people working on the atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer himself most of the time, were decent, intelligent, careful, and thoughtful — to behavior that from the outside can look gravely irresponsible?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DMCaqm">
Ordinary people would presumably not agree to a scientific experiment with even a very small chance of destroying the world. That wouldn’t seem like an acceptable risk. We would want researchers to wait until they understood the science better and could be wholly confident that their project wouldn’t ignite the atmosphere.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x9vQ5N">
Much of the answer lies in the geopolitical competition that the Manhattan Project scientists believed themselves to be in with the Nazis. The terrible logic of building the bomb was that if Hitler built it first, he could hold the whole world hostage and spread an ideology of unparalleled evil and destructiveness, so the only thing that mattered was getting there first.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J0sxmY">
That was the conviction in which the Manhattan Project was initiated. Of course, it eventually became clear that the Nazis were never close to completing an atomic bomb. In fact, by the time of the Trinity test — on July 16, 1945 — Germany had already surrendered. Even if taking risks with the fate of every single person alive was justified to stop Hitler, it had stopped being justified months before the Trinity countdown began.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JhGs5H">
If <em>Oppenheimer</em> leaves you with more questions than answers, Richard Rhodes’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-richard-rhodes/7061381?ean=9781451677614"><em>The Making of the Atomic Bomb</em></a> is a book I highly recommend to learn more about the Manhattan Project, the extraordinary personalities driving it, and how they made the decisions that eventually introduced atomic weapons to the world. It’s where I found my answer to this question, though it’s far from a fully satisfying one.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BPg5oS">
That answer is that they were too busy thinking about <em>how</em> to build the bomb to revisit the question of <em>whether</em> they should as the strategic situation changed around them<strong>. </strong>A project of the scope and scale of the Manhattan Project has stunning inertia. At extraordinary expense and great personal costs, under unimaginable pressure, the researchers had spent years of their lives building something wholly transformative and unprecedented.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R0ZP0S">
Psychologically, they simply didn’t have it in them to quit their life’s work on the brink of completion just because the geopolitical justification they’d originally had was no longer valid, even if there were vague worries about igniting the atmosphere and more concrete worries about permanently changing the world for the worse.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J0kYnQ">
They rechecked and rechecked their calculations, but they seemed to be thinking of matters as “we will go ahead with the test unless we discover that it’ll ignite the atmosphere” instead of “we won’t go ahead with the test unless we know enough about fusion to be absolutely confident it won’t,” much less “do we need to go ahead with the project at all now that the Nazis are beaten?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LHqQHt">
Shortly after Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, new President Harry Truman was briefed for the first time on the bomb. He wrote later that FDR’s close adviser Jimmy Byrnes told him they “were perfecting an explosive great enough to destroy the whole world.” And also, of course, “the bomb might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war.”
</p>
<h3 id="2g9uaR">
A question of when, not whether
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ixMOvX">
One gets the sense the latter consideration loomed larger. <em>The Making of the Atomic Bomb</em> characterizes Truman as impatient with being expected to read the long memos meant to bring him up to speed on the bomb project and laser-focused on its implications for the US/USSR relationship. Everyone moved on to deciding <em>where</em> to drop the bomb, presuming it worked; it’s not clear there was a single meeting in which they sat down and seriously discussed whether to go ahead at all. Aside from a few mavericks like the physicist Leo Szilard, who presciently warned that using the bomb would only encourage the Soviet Union to accelerate its own efforts, it was a question of <em>when</em>, not <em>whether</em>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SS70QG">
And that’s how you get the brightest minds in the world nervously joking that they hope they don’t end all life on Earth.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LRgfnN">
The people who built the Manhattan Project were absolutely brilliant. And so far, Earth has survived the introduction of their great invention. But this has always felt to me like a cautionary tale, not a triumphant one.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IqZMxo">
It’s easy to see why those physicists who were completely sure the atmospheric ignition was a fictitious worry went ahead with the test. But what about the ones who<em> weren’t</em> sure, and were joking about it nervously up to the last minute? Did they essentially let themselves get peer pressured into going ahead with a test that they thought might kill every person on the face of the Earth, for a reason (beating the Nazis) that no longer applied? Whose job was it, among genius scientists who were tasked with inventing a superweapon, to call it off if the benefits of a superweapon no longer seemed worth the risks?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gJJqmR">
If there’s an unrealistic part of <em>Oppenheimer</em>, it’s actually Maj. Gen. Groves, who in the trailer presses the scientist about whether even a small chance should be considered unacceptable. I have found no accounts that he, or anyone else outside the team of scientists who tried to check Teller’s calculations, ever seriously grappled with this worry.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Why ultra-green Germany turned its back on nuclear energy</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="German nuclear plant at night." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Zel0ZzfpBILeMx29G-qCKXAlaic=/334x0:5667x4000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72464606/GettyImages_1481996838.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
General outside view of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant during dusk on April 13, 2023, in Essenbach, Germany. | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Can a country be a climate leader without nuclear power?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mRRPxE">
FREIBURG, Germany — Earlier this spring, the German government closed down the country’s three remaining nuclear power plants — the last vestiges of what was once a large domestic fleet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UiKhkl">
While not everyone in Germany supported the closures, many here — particularly supporters of the Greens (Die Grünen), one of the world’s strongest and most powerful environmentally focused political parties — viewed the event as the happy culmination of a decades-long battle to rid the country of nuclear energy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EKf0Js">
“We are embarking on a new era of energy production,” said <a href="https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-en/federal-cabinet/1988576-1988576">Steffi Lemke</a>, a Greens member and Germany’s federal minister for the environment and nuclear safety, in <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/15/europe/germany-nuclear-phase-out-climate-intl/index.html">a CNN interview</a> following the plant closures.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1FCEPN">
Nuclear energy is a controversial topic in most places, but Germany is notable for its historic antipathy toward the technology. “Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany is widespread and longstanding, and it’s highly correlated with concern for <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate">climate change</a>,” says Pushker Kharecha, deputy director of the <a href="https://csas.earth.columbia.edu/">Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions Program</a> at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gwj0zF">
In the United States, Gallop polls <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/474650/americans-support-nuclear-energy-highest-decade.aspx">going back 20 years</a> have found that Americans are generally split on the subject of nuclear energy, though support for nuclear has swelled in recent years.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EcDDFA">
For its part, the White House <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-admin-launches-6-bln-nuclear-power-credit-program-2022-04-20/">has invested heavily</a> in sustaining the country’s nuclear infrastructure, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/joe-biden">President Joe Biden</a> has also <a href="https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/">touted nuclear</a> as an important component in the country’s quest for carbon neutrality. Many countries are following the same path based on similar climate calculations, and some experts support this position. “Nuclear is actually one of the cleanest and safest energy sources,” Kharecha says. For countries that want to mitigate climate change and reduce <a href="https://www.vox.com/air-quality">air pollution</a>, he says that nuclear energy should be embraced — at least until better options come along.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QkC0wD">
But environmental advocacy groups and left-leaning American voters have traditionally opposed nuclear power. And, despite the president’s efforts, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/392831/americans-divided-nuclear-energy.aspx">recent Gallup data</a> suggest this is still the case: Less than half of Democrats back nuclear, compared to 62 percent of Republicans. It’s not all that odd that environmentally conscious Germans would support finishing off the country’s long-dying nuclear sector.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="E5plvR">
What’s harder to square is that as Germany was finalizing its plans to shutter its remaining nuclear plants, it was also reactivating old coal-fired power facilities, mining more lignite (a.k.a. brown coal), and generally ramping up its use of <a href="https://www.vox.com/fossil-fuels">fossil fuels</a> to address energy shortages brought on by the <a href="https://www.vox.com/russia-invasion-ukraine">conflict in Ukraine</a>. According to <a href="https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2023/03/PE23_090_43312.html">figures</a> from Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, one-third of Germany’s electricity in 2022 was generated from coal. That represents an 8 percent increase compared to 2021. Meanwhile, the country’s use of nuclear-generated electricity fell by almost 50 percent during the same period.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ygQhdx">
No less a climate-change evangelist than Greta Thunberg <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/greta-thunberg-germany-using-coal-over-nuclear-bad-idea/">has argued publicly</a> that, for the planet’s sake, Germany should prioritize the use of its existing nuclear facilities over burning coal. Yet this is not the way the country has gone, and there has been relatively little public protest or political handwringing over the increased use of coal-generated power to address its deficits.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9fl1ec">
Why would a country that stands out for its environmentalist bona fides — where the reality of climate change and the push for <a href="https://www.vox.com/renewable-energy">renewable energy</a> sources has been embraced by all major political parties — choose coal over nuclear in the midst of an <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy">energy crisis</a>?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zHXZKa">
A clearer understanding of Germany’s energy choices may help other countries, including the US, better assess the risks and rewards of nuclear power.
</p>
<h3 id="qLAU6Q">
Germany’s complicated history with nuclear energy
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xIknCp">
Christoph Löffler was just 9 years old when a reactor melted down at the Soviet nuclear facility near Pripyat in what is now northern Ukraine.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tlXCa8">
“I was only 9, but I remember Chernobyl,” Löffler says. “There was a shortage of milk, and people here paid more — double the price — for milk produced before a certain date.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6ZxuAh">
Löffler, 46, is an otolaryngologist. He’s also my neighbor. We live in Freiburg im Breisgau, a university city in southwest Germany that is one the greenest regions of the country — both literally and politically. Freiburg is nestled on the western edge of the Black Forest. It is one of the most eco-conscious cities in Europe, and Greens politicians represent the mayorship and the largest bloc of the city’s municipal council.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ccMgSs">
To an American visitor, Freiburg is reminiscent of Berkeley or Santa Cruz — one of those lush northern California college towns where a disproportionate number of people ride bikes, wear Birkenstocks year-round, and rank climate change as the most important consideration when casting their votes. In late 2021, 12,000 people here <a href="https://www.badische-zeitung.de/fridays-for-future-12-000-menschen-demonstrieren-in-freiburg--205078255.html/">marched in the streets</a> in support of climate action.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="People with banners in German march through the street. One person holds an umbrella that reads “solar energie.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0OkuOObHggyoiBw9WU0YLPBTK4k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24795520/GettyImages_1482411726.jpg"/> <cite>Johannes Simon/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Anti-nuclear movement supporters gather to celebrate the shuttering of Germany’s last nuclear power plants on April 15, 2023, in Munich, Germany.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lRHvFw">
The local citizenry’s anti-nuclear zeal is everywhere in evidence; flyers and graffiti around the city advocate for a future without nuclear power. A popular bumper sticker here, one that <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomkraft%3F_Nein_danke">dates back to the 1970s</a>, depicts a smiling sun and the slogan “Atomkraft? Nein danke.” (“Nuclear power? No, thank you.”)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pEKeAP">
When I asked Löffler about nuclear energy, he talked measuredly about its pros and cons. “However, I am more against it than for it,” he concluded.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PeOwZA">
Like other Germans I spoke to for this piece, he brought up the threat of nuclear disaster as a strong argument against the use of the technology. Another friend, a teacher, asked me if pro-nuclear Americans had forgotten the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in Pennsylvania. (I have even seen <a href="https://www.badische-zeitung.de/frontalangriff-auf-gruene-akw-sollen-bis-2026-laufen">newspapers here</a> refer to <a href="https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/scholz-machtwort-regierung-koalition-101.html">nuclear power plants</a> generally as “drei Meiler,” or “Three Milers.”)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hw4g42">
Chantal Kopf, a Greens politician here in Freiburg and elected member of the Bundestag (basically, Germany’s House of Representatives), likewise raised the specter of a nuclear disaster. “As Greens, we’ve always had in our tradition a more critical perspective on whether humans are capable of controlling every circumstance, and we’ve already seen really catastrophic accidents,” she says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TmQhXB">
The Chernobyl meltdown captivated and horrified many Americans. But while the US shuddered, Germans suffered directly from the disaster’s fallout. It wasn’t just a question of tainted milk. Radioactive particles drifted across much of the German landscape. Sandboxes were nicknamed “death boxes.” Contamination <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20002056/">turned up in</a> meat, vegetables, fruits, and foodstuffs produced all over the country, and frightened parents didn’t know what to feed their children. <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-10-05-8603140843-story.html">Some experts estimated</a> that hundreds of thousands of people on the continent would eventually develop Chernobyl-related cancers. That <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16628547/">didn’t come to pass</a>, but recent <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/three-decades-german-mushrooms-still-show-imprint-chernobyl-2021-10-08/">government analyses of German wild mushrooms</a> found that 95 percent of samples still contained radioactive contamination from Chernobyl, and the residue of that disaster has likewise soaked deep into the nation’s views on nuclear power.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Lm2oYb">
“Chernobyl was much bigger and closer to home for Germans than anything Americans have experienced,” says Sarah Wiliarty, an associate professor of government at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. “It was very much a lived threat.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HXM0y8">
Wiliarty has <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1057/pol.2013.9">published work</a> on the history of Germany’s nuclear industry. She says the country’s anti-nuclear movement emerged alongside the environmental movement in the 1970s, and Chernobyl helped weld the two together.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XvwGvV">
While overall support here for nuclear has ebbed and flowed over the years, the Greens Party has never wavered in its opposition to nuclear. And another, more recent disaster helped align the rest of the country behind the Greens’ anti-nuclear agenda.
</p>
<h3 id="qgQdpG">
After Fukushima
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mm6Haa">
At least by American standards, the nations of Europe are small and packed together. Calamities that befall one country often have repercussions for their neighbors.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lnHnBY">
At the start of the conflict in Ukraine, many Germans feared that the fighting would soon find its way to their borders. Similar fears have cropped up whenever the fighting <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/ukraine-russia-shelling-civilians-zaporizhzhia-3631911">has raged</a> near one of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities, including Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest atomic power plant. The destruction on June 6 of the Kakhovka Dam, which is the ultimate source of the plant’s cooling water, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-is-a-dirty-bomb-waiting-to-happen-a-nuclear-expert-explains-209236">raised new fears</a> of a possible nuclear disaster.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XEEjuN">
Some Germans I spoke with told me these sorts of threats are evidence that nuclear power is simply not worth the risk; even if you believe that operator or technological error has been removed from the equation — a debatable position — unforeseen events could still induce a nuclear accident. “There is always the potential for an attack — a terrorist or cyber or war attack like we’re seeing in Ukraine,” says Kopf, the Greens politician. “It may be a small chance something like that happens, but if it happens, the consequences are so dramatic.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ham09C">
More than a decade ago, just such a dramatic event caused Germany to abandon its nuclear industry.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2pE6VY">
In March 2011, a massive earthquake and consequent tidal wave induced the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Just <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1462901112001499">three days after that earthquake</a>, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Germany’s two-party ruling coalition — which until that point had supported the continued use of nuclear energy — ordered the immediate closure of eight of the country’s 17 nuclear power plants. A few months later, the German Parliament <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1462901112001499">approved</a>, by a large majority, the total phase-out of Germany’s nuclear industry by the end of 2022. All of this helped accelerate the country’s shift toward renewable energies (namely wind and solar), which now generate <a href="https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2023/03/PE23_090_43312.html">about half</a> of Germany’s electricity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Obxh2a">
“Pre-Fukushima, the left [in Germany] had an anti-nuclear stance, but the right wing was more favorable to nuclear,” Wiliarty says. “After Fukushima, Merkel essentially said that if Japan can’t handle nuclear, we should not believe that we can handle nuclear, and most Germans agreed with her.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lqomdm">
Mentioning the legacy of WWII, Wiliarty adds that the possibility, however remote, of causing another tragedy on the European continent is enough to make nuclear energy a nonstarter for many Germans. (This may help explain why Germany <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-extends-power-exports-neighbours-2023-01-05/">continues to buy</a>, situationally, nuclear-generated electricity from France even as it moves away from “homegrown” nuclear.)
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The sunrise shines on the smoke coming out of a coal plant." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4gNJxPaVJDptJ2mvMCfDgeiQbG0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24795550/GettyImages_1246860455.jpg"/> <cite>Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
The sun rises behind Mehrum power plant in the Peine district. The coal-fired power plant has been back on the grid as a “market returnee” since August 2022.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VPSn9u">
However, it would be an exaggeration to say that all Germans are anti-nuclear. Especially since the conflict in Ukraine has weakened the country’s energy stability and sent energy prices soaring, Germany’s pro-nuclear camp has gained support. <a href="https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Wide-public-support-for-keeping-German-reactors-on">A 2022 poll</a> found that a majority of respondents would be in favor of extending the life of the country’s existing nuclear facilities, though a majority still oppose the construction of new plants.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wtF4cS">
In many places, not just Germany, this is a significant point of debate and division. Using the nuclear facilities you already have is one thing. Building new ones is quite another.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pULiyK">
Following a parent meeting at our children’s school, a friend of mine — a geologist named Peter Geerdts, 46 — scowled when he recalled the demolition <a href="https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsgermany-shuts-down-philippsburg-2-7585797">in 2020</a> of the nuclear plants at Philippsburg, a town about 100 miles north of Freiburg. One of those plants still had years of operational lifespan. “What a waste,” he says. “That was a perfectly good piece of infrastructure.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZiBB6N">
He says his country’s push for more green and renewable sources of energy is all well and good. But there are times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. With today’s technologies, renewables alone can’t meet his country’s needs. “So now we’re burning coal instead of using nuclear while trying to meet CO2 reduction targets,” he says. “It doesn’t add up.” Many I spoke with here voiced similar views.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q49j5C">
But some energy experts I talked with said that, by and large, Germany has only shuttered nuclear plants that were end-of-life or otherwise unfit for service. “Most of the plants — except where the plants were having serious technical problems — were shut down when they would have been shut down anyhow,” says Miranda Schreurs, a professor of environment and climate policy at the Technical University of Munich.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bfjBRj">
On the broader question of whether the country’s abandonment of nuclear energy has made sense, she says that it has certainly involved uncomfortable trade-offs. “The priority no doubt has been the move away from nuclear, not coal,” she says. “But the German response isn’t either-or, it’s how do we get both out of the system as quickly as possible.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RcxsCa">
Germany has committed to ending its use of coal by 2030. It has also become one of the world leaders in the development and use of renewables, something Schreurs says has only been possible because money and other resources that would have been sucked up by nuclear energy have instead been funneled into renewable technologies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RLx8l4">
However, some argue that the country’s anti-nuclear priorities have come at a steep cost.
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Does nuclear make sense for Germany — or for any country?
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lqeybN">
There are some unimpeachable justifications for opposing nuclear energy. There’s the risk of a catastrophic accident, first and foremost, and also the problem of storing or disposing of nuclear waste.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HXPe5B">
“​​From our point of view, it’s not right to say nuclear is a sustainable technology,” says Kopf, the Greens politician. “You need uranium, which is not extracted in an environmentally friendly way, and there is no real solution for nuclear waste.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VtZ1eO">
However, when making energy trade-offs, these risks must be balanced against the harms associated with the use of non-nuclear energy sources — such as air pollution and CO2 emissions produced by fossil fuels. According to <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy">estimates from Our World in Data</a>, nuclear is cleaner and safer than any power source apart from solar. The number of deaths caused by either accidents or air pollution as a result of nuclear power is estimated to be just 0.03 deaths per terawatt-hour of energy produced. That is far, far below the 18 deaths and 25 deaths per terawatt-hour associated with oil and coal sources, respectively.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8jjd6f">
Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index (EPI) <a href="https://epi.yale.edu/epi-results/2020/component/cch">ranks</a> the world’s countries in terms of their climate-change measurables, such as greenhouse gas emissions. Germany now slots in at 14th, one spot ahead of the United States. While a top-15 ranking is decent enough, nearly all of the other countries near the top of the index have improved their EPI score during the past decade. Germany’s score, on the other hand, has fallen, and that’s due mostly to the country’s CO2, NO2, and other fossil fuel emissions. Germany has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/10/germany-end-nuclear-cost-climate-health/">the third-most “carbon intensive” electric grid</a> among European countries, and <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electricity?tab=chart&amp;time=latest&amp;country=AUT~FRA~EU-27~SWE~POL~ITA~NLD~DEU~GBR~CZE~ESP~PRT~BEL~DNK~FIN~CHE~European+Union+%2827%29">by some estimates</a>, the amount of carbon dioxide it emits to generate electricity is multiples higher than many of its neighbors.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A woman holds a sign that references Hiroshima." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/THjbnEBslIJ1i3BVJqZS93VcVqo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24795556/GettyImages_1482410709.jpg"/> <cite>Johannes Simon/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A woman at a demonstration to celebrate the shuttering of Germany’s last nuclear power plants on April 15, 2023, in Munich, Germany
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kqp97T">
These emissions harm the planet, but they’re also poisonous for people. “By pursuing their complete nuclear phase-out policy over the past decade while continuing to heavily use fossil fuels, Germany has lost the opportunity to prevent thousands of premature air pollution-induced deaths,” says Columbia University’s Kharecha.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1bi4F3">
His comments are grounded in some of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421519303611">his own peer-reviewed research</a>. Similar analyses, including a more-recent <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26598/w26598.pdf">paper</a> from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a US-based nonprofit, have likewise found that Germany’s withdrawal from nuclear resulted in thousands of preventable deaths, mostly due to air pollution caused by the burning of coal. That NBER paper also concluded that the phase-out cost the country $12 billion.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c1TDiH">
Kharecha acknowledges that Germany has done “a very impressive job” of rapidly scaling up solar and wind sources of energy production. But he says the unreliability of renewables requires supplementation with other sources, and that’s where nuclear is needed. “Nuclear provides continuous ‘baseload’ power,” he says. “Renewables and nuclear really should be viewed as complementary choices, not binary ones.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i10Sb7">
But other energy experts say renewables and nuclear make poor bedfellows. “One of the issues with nuclear is its inflexibility — it either operates at 100 percent or zero, and you can’t just flip a switch and turn it on or off,” says Andrzej Ancygier, a lecturer at New York University’s Berlin satellite campus and a senior energy and climate policy analyst at <a href="https://climateanalytics.org/">Climate Analytics</a>. For renewables to work at scale, he says, flexible complementary energy sources are needed, and nuclear isn’t that.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jln8d7">
Also, nuclear power plants have a finite lifespan. To extend that lifespan requires significant investments of both cash and time, and may come with mounting risks. “Operating a plant longer than is planned … in my opinion, it’s dangerous, but I can understand the discussion there,” Ancygier says. On the other hand, he argues that building new nuclear facilities now, in 2022, makes little sense: “Economically and from a climate change perspective, it is complete nonsense. They’re much, much more expensive than renewables, they come with more risks, and they always take much longer to build than planned.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TXQzaj">
Schreurs, the Technical University of Munich professor, makes a similar point. She says that very few Western nations, even pro-nuclear countries, have managed to build new nuclear plants in recent years. Those that have tried — for example, the UK’s still-in-progress Hinkley Point power plant — have run into <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49823305">major delays and massive budget overruns</a>. “The upfront costs of nuclear are immense, and the time to build new plants is on average something like 10 years,” she says. “If you’re talking about building new facilities to reduce emissions quickly, it’s hard to argue for nuclear over renewables.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wbfsFM">
Columbia’s Kharecha agrees that high costs and long lead times are arguably the biggest challenges for new nuclear. But he says these are solvable problems, and history has shown that they can be overcome. “France and Sweden built lots of reactors very rapidly, decades ago, and neither country has experienced major problems with them,” he says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tszkMF">
But here again, there are valid counterarguments. In 2022, more than half of France’s nuclear reactors <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-29/half-of-french-nuclear-fleet-is-shut-for-works-squeezing-supply">were shut down</a> unexpectedly for maintenance reasons, and the country <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-extends-power-exports-neighbours-2023-01-05/">had to rely on German energy imports</a> to meet its shortfalls. Schreurs highlights these problems as evidence that nuclear too can be unreliable.
</p>
<h3 id="Fcdxz9">
What’s next for Germany?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EwZAPA">
Germany’s move away from nuclear and toward renewables has forced it to rely on fossil fuels. Proponents of this strategy say this reliance is temporary — a short-lived trade-off that, in the long run, will allow Germany to power itself cheaply, safely, and sustainably.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2ployg">
Some will no doubt scoff at this argument. In the US, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31291254/">many still view</a> solar, wind, and other renewables as unreliable energy sources that cannot anchor a country’s electricity industry. But even some American observers say the German view of renewables’ potential may be closer to reality.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2t4qJS">
“When Germany first pivoted away from nuclear and prioritized renewables in 2000, a lot of people said this is insane, but they’ve had a lot more success than many anticipated,” says Wesleyan’s Wiliarty. “I think getting to a point where they’re not using nuclear or fossil fuels is realistic. The question is, how long will it take?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SGXFMq">
Ancygier echoes these sentiments. He says German policymakers have at times vacillated in their support for renewables — something that has slowed progress. But while some political dissent persists, the current government has affirmed its commitment to renewables, and its stated policy aims are for these sources to make up 80 percent of the country’s electricity production by 2030.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I57hxu">
The great debate over nuclear energy is sure to rage on, both here and in the United States. In the end, the lesson other countries may take from Germany is that abandoning nuclear in favor of safer and greener renewables is possible but that it comes with uncomfortable trade-offs. It also requires political will and broad public support. For much of the past 20 years, Germany has had both. Whether it can sustain them will likely determine how much success it has, and how quickly that success comes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bFR9iN">
<em>Markham Heid is a freelance journalist who chiefly covers health and science. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, and other outlets</em>.
</p></li>
<li><strong>No one knows what a head of AI does, but it’s the hottest new job</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Illustration of a person carrying a briefcase and wearing a rocket on their back while flying into the air like a superhero." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NhbLzPmKPaB7Q4yfsu3eABjhDCY=/367x0:6267x4425/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72464555/GettyImages_1264127349.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Companies need a head of AI but even those with that title disagree on just what they do. | Getty Images/fStop
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
America’s biggest companies are hiring AI leadership as fast as they can.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i5XIf2">
If <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">AI</a> is coming for our <a href="https://www.vox.com/labor-jobs">jobs</a>, many Americans are hoping to get out in front of it. Regular people are <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/23673018/generative-ai-chatgpt-bing-bard-work-jobs">using AI at work</a>, and tech workers are <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/6/28/23774435/ai-skills-classes-tech-jobs-pivot">rebranding themselves as AI experts</a>. And those in leadership are vying for the hottest new job title: head of AI.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TXjXE8">
Outside of tech, the head of AI position was mostly nonexistent a few years ago, but now people are taking on that title — or at least its duties — at everywhere from <a href="https://www.vox.com/amazon">Amazon</a> to Visa to Coca-Cola. In the US, the number of people in AI leadership roles has grown threefold in the past five years, according to data from <a href="https://www.vox.com/linkedin">LinkedIn</a>, bucking the downward trend in tech hiring overall. And while the head of AI job description varies widely by company, the hope is that those who end up with this new responsibility will do everything from incorporating AI into businesses’ products to getting employees up to speed on how to use AI in their jobs. Companies want the new role to keep them at the forefront of their industries amid AI disruption, or at least keep them from being left behind.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o2AmAn">
“This is the biggest deal of the decade, and it’s ridiculously overhyped,” said Peter Krensky, a director and analyst at Gartner who specializes in AI talent management.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VXAoEK">
Like anything new in tech, the AI revolution can take on a bit of a gold-rush quality. AI is one of the few areas where companies are actively spending money, since they see it as the inevitable future and as a way to improve their bottom line. At the same time, the parameters of the head of AI job — and even AI itself — aren’t very clear, and the pivot to the position can seem opportunistic. Remember <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/shingy-reflects-on-his-time-at-aol-and-whats-next.html">Shingy, AOL’s Digital Prophet</a>?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vIequF">
The thing is that while everyone seems to agree that companies need AI stewards, the nature of new technology means many are uncertain as to what that stewardship means in practice. Furthermore, we’re not sure about who exactly should become the new stewards: the people who have been working on AI for years or those who have been introduced to AI by the latest crop of consumer products and understand how the rest of us use it. We’re also not certain just how big of a disruption AI will be and how fast that disruption will happen.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xDip4g">
Those are just some of the reasons companies are hiring heads of AI. And if they don’t already have a head of AI, most big companies will have one soon.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SXoDtD">
“If I were talking to a CEO a year ago, and I was like, ‘You’d be a fool not to have a head of AI.’ They’d be like, ‘Come on, give me a break,’” said Krensky. “And now they’re like, ‘I know, that’s why I have one.’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g4PKCu">
Krensky estimates that currently about a quarter of Fortune 2000 companies have dedicated AI leadership at the VP level or above. He expects it to be about 80 percent a year from now. While the position will be more commonplace at bigger companies — especially those in banking, tech, and manufacturing — he’s also seeing it crop up at midsize organizations and in government agencies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aB4rVG">
Typically, the person taking what Kensky calls a “cool and sexy” job title — one that he says is often a “hat, not a role” — comes from an existing technology leadership position like chief data officer or chief information officer. But the accessible nature of generative AI tools and their potential use across industries and positions has meant that people in nontech roles like business and marketing are also donning the mantle.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HV4tOo">
And because AI is supposed to be more transformational and more readily profitable than <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22907072/web3-crypto-nft-bitcoin-metaverse">tech fads like Web3</a>, experts think the head of AI is also going to stick.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mfXvK2">
“This is going to be a role that will stay on for a while. It’s not a transitional role,” said Beena Ammanath, executive director of the Deloitte AI Institute. “It’s absolutely crucial.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hIhvFi">
Just what any given head of AI does varies, especially depending on the type of company. Generally, that breaks down into heads of AI at digital companies working to incorporate the technology into their products, while at nontech companies that means figuring out where and how to use existing AI technology to improve their business models. Everyone, it seems, is trying to get the rest of their company to start using AI.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Wfu95o">
Mike Haley, SVP of research at Autodesk, says he’s the company’s de facto head of AI, having guided the architecture and engineering software company’s AI strategy for more than a decade. In addition to steering AI usage within the company, Haley is invested in putting AI to use in Autodesk’s products in order to “dissolve the interface” between users and the software. That means AI could help people use “natural methods of expression” like English or a pencil drawing, for example, to create detailed blueprints.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JU0tEW">
“Suddenly this complex tool that requires all sorts of learning and parameterization becomes way more accessible to more people,” explained Haley, who has a background in computer science and applied math.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4xPBXD">
Bali D.R., head of AI and automation at IT services consulting firm Infosys, is helping clients leverage AI while also trying to use it to “amplify human potential” across Infosys, from recruitment to sales to software development.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vQzCH6">
“All parts of the value chain, we are seeing how we can actually make it better, faster, cheaper,” says D.R., who moved to the AI role from another management role, and who started his career at the company 30 years ago in software development.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R6SW9s">
FICO chief analytics officer Scott Zoldi has been leading the data analytics company’s AI efforts for the past seven years, also without the “buzzy” head of AI title. He’s mainly focused on incorporating AI into the company’s products, including using consumer spending patterns to help detect credit fraud or when a customer is falling for a scam. He also spends a lot of time thinking about how AI can be used responsibly so as not to run afoul of regulatory bodies, corporate governance, or consumers by, for example, using AI that’s more likely to flag a certain group of people for committing fraud.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QipdwN">
Zoldi, who says he’s written more than 100 AI patents, thinks the “head of AI” position should go to someone with a technology background.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zjRez6">
“You really have to be an expert or you’re potentially going to be setting up the organization for failures down the road because it’s very complicated,” Zoldi, who views the position as a sort of watchdog, like a chief of security.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qtYtgl">
While Gartner’s Krensky estimates about 80 percent of AI leadership comes from a tech background, another 20 percent, of course, does not.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ER7RWR">
That’s the case with Coca-Cola’s global head of generative AI, Pratik Thakar, who previously led the company’s global creative strategy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="63fGUj">
Pratik has been using AI to streamline and amplify the company’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/6/29/23777560/cannes-lions-google-meta-ai-advertising-2023">advertising</a> products. That included recently using AI to make roughly 15 percent of a <a href="https://youtu.be/VGa1imApfdg">commercial</a>, which sliced the production time from a year down to two months.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s3NlNl">
Conor Grennan, a dean at NYU’s Stern business school, who recently took on the additional title of head of generative AI, sees the title as more of an initiative and thinks of it as akin to a chief learning officer or chief productivity officer. In the position, he pushes people across NYU, from students to professors to administrators and recruiters, to use AI to become more efficient and better at their tasks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y2VENz">
Grennan, who has an MBA and had previously studied English and politics, thinks it’s actually better for many organizations if their AI leadership doesn’t come from a tech background so that the person is better able to explain its benefits to a wider audience of mere mortals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ziNFM0">
“You don’t need to know the software running your iPhone, just order an Uber,” Grennan said. Instead, what’s important for the role, he says, is creativity with language and breadth.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ik9qv7">
“They need to be an excellent communicator, they need to have a view of the entire firm, at least at the 30,000-foot view. And also it has to be somebody who really understands what generative AI can do,” Grennan said. “You don’t capture everything by putting it in the tech department.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q9Evcx">
Regardless of where the head of AI sits within an organization, the fact remains that it’s a new frontier that will likely change a lot as the technology and our understanding of it develops. And like with any new technology, there’s going to be a mix of genuine innovation and genuine swindling.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iAzF33">
AI is happening, and it will be a very big deal. But its full effects — and exactly what those are — will roll out over many years, so we may have time to figure things out.
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Ashes, 4th Test | Smith leads Australia recovery after early England wickets</strong> - A draw or a win for Australia in Manchester will ensure they retain the Ashes, while victory for the hosts brings the score level and takes this exhilarating series to a decider at the Oval in London</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Shubankar, Karanveer, Pharazon, Dedicate and High Tribute shine</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cellini, Ameerah, Superlative and Baby Bazooka catch the eye</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>India needs strong training with good coaches, says Miodrag</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Daily Quiz | On bicycle racing</strong> - Maurice Garin won the the inaugural Tour de France, an annual men’s multiplestage bicycle race, on this day in 1903. Here is a quiz on bicycle racing</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SCR RPF arrests 85 persons for stone-pelting on trains</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An alternative alliance will emerge after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls: BRS’ B. Vinod Kumar</strong> - ‘The BRS will contest across the nation along with our well-wishers and definitely emerge as an important political party in 2024’</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two held for mortgaging rented cars; 15 four-wheelers recovered</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>CID to probe murder of Jain monk in Belagavi</strong> - Members of opposition BJP have been demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pankaja Munde asked to reconsider ‘political break’ as Madhya Pradesh elections loom</strong> - State leaders said that Ms. Munde was uncomfortable with the inclusion of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) rebel leader Ajit Pawar and eight other NCP MLAs</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Crimea depot blasts force villagers to flee</strong> - The incident comes days after an attack on the Kerch Bridge that links occupied Crimea to Russia.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Europe heatwave: Nearly all major Italian cities on red heat alert</strong> - Parts of Sardinia and Sicily will be the hottest in Europe with highs of 46C or 47C.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Tony Blair was urged to back Ukraine’s EU dream in face of Russia threats - records</strong> - Documents show the ex-PM was told Ukraine’s accession would help combat Russian expansionism.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: No fast results in offensive, warns Ukraine’s General Syrskyi</strong> - Gen Syrskyi, overseeing the renewed push in the east, says quick success is practically impossible.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>VanMoof: E-bike firm goes bust after Covid boom</strong> - The brothers who founded the Dutch electric bike-maker said they were unable to save the firm.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>NASA starts building ice-hunting Moon rover</strong> - VIPER is NASA’s first rover that needs headlights. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954907">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ben Franklin wove colored fibers into paper currency to foil counterfeiters</strong> - Zenas Marshall Crane usually credited with introducing fibers to paper currency in 1844. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954593">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>“Church of Bleach” family goes to trial, representing themselves in court</strong> - The family, defending itself in the trial, declined to provide an opening statement. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954890">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Report: OpenAI holding back GPT-4 image features on fears of privacy issues</strong> - GPT-4’s image capabilities can recognize certain individuals, according to NYT. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954677">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Battery shortage forces GM to pause commercial EV production</strong> - GM’s efforts to scale up EV production are being hampered by supply issues. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954854">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two married buddies are out drinking one night, when one turns to the other and says…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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"You know, I don’t know what else to do. Whenever I go home after we’ve been out drinking, I turn the headlights off before I get to the driveway. I shut off the engine and coast into the garage.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I take my shoes off before I go into the house, I sneak up the stairs, I get undressed in the bathroom. I ease into bed and my wife STILL wakes up and yells at me for staying out so late!"
</p>
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His buddy looks at him and says, “Well, you’re obviously taking the wrong approach.”
</p>
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He continues, “I screech into the driveway, slam the door, storm up the steps, throw my shoes into the closet, jump into bed, rub my hands on my wife’s ass and say, ‘How about a blowjob?’ … and she’s always sound asleep.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/HelpingHandsUs"> /u/HelpingHandsUs </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/153in2y/two_married_buddies_are_out_drinking_one_night/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/153in2y/two_married_buddies_are_out_drinking_one_night/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I sexually identify as a brick.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I’m always hard and I’ve only ever been laid once.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/VivaIbiza"> /u/VivaIbiza </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/153mzwv/i_sexually_identify_as_a_brick/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/153mzwv/i_sexually_identify_as_a_brick/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The boss started to notice that one of his employees, Dave, started gaining lots of female attention..</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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So, one day he asks Dave about his secret.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Dave replies: “Well, before sex I simply whip out my willy and smack it against the bedside table, like a hammer. It numbs it up and makes me last longer”.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Later that day, the boss gets home to his wife and finds her in the shower - a welcome opportunity for sex.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
So, he quickly undresses and starts banging his dick against the dresser, just before hearing his wife calling from the shower:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Dave, is that you?”.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/HelpingHandsUs"> /u/HelpingHandsUs </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152zr2v/the_boss_started_to_notice_that_one_of_his/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152zr2v/the_boss_started_to_notice_that_one_of_his/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Russian mobster goes to meet Italian mafia</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
As soon as Italians notice him, they scoff. “You’re not real gangster.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Why not?” the Russian asks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Do you own a 4 story mansion?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Well, no.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“How many limousines you own?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Limousines? None.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“And where is your solid gold necklace?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I, I do not have one.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Italians mafiosos scoff once again and shoo him away. The Russian leaves, feeling terribly humiliated all the way to his homeland. As soon as he arrives, he gathers all his goons and lackeys.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Okay, listen. After my visit in Italy I realize that it is time for some changes. Ivan, gather your men and go steal a wrecking ball. The two upmost storys of the mansion need to go. Then Vlad, sell all of my helicopters and jets, and buy limos instead. Lastly, Dmitri, fetch my dog, I need his collar for myself.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/This_The_Last_Time"> /u/This_The_Last_Time </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1533fhd/a_russian_mobster_goes_to_meet_italian_mafia/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1533fhd/a_russian_mobster_goes_to_meet_italian_mafia/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What can you say at dinner and also during sex?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
In ‘n Out or Five Guys?
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Onereasonwhy"> /u/Onereasonwhy </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1539s60/what_can_you_say_at_dinner_and_also_during_sex/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1539s60/what_can_you_say_at_dinner_and_also_during_sex/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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