Sam Altman is best known as the chief executive of OpenAI — the pioneering artificial intelligence company that has turned him into one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful people. But before that, Altman was known as one of the tech industry’s most prolific angel investors, making dozens of investments in a range of companies focused on extending life to building fusion reactors.

Now, his sprawling web of investments in start-ups is facing fresh scrutiny, as some of them do business with OpenAI or could benefit from preferential access to OpenAI’s technology.

Since 2010, Altman has personally invested in 125 companies, according to venture capital research firm PitchBook. Other entities that he’s associated with, including an investment firm he founded with his brothers called Hydrazine Capital, have invested in two dozen more. This year alone, as OpenAI grew rapidly under his leadership, he made more than 20 investments. From 2011 to 2019, Altman was also an investor at Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s most prominent start-up incubator, where he served as lead partner on another 280 deals, giving him influence among dozens of the most promising start-ups in tech.

Here are a few of the most notable investments in Altman’s empire.

Helion Energy

Nuclear fusion has been a science-fiction fantasy for decades. Unlike regular nuclear reactors, which generate power by splitting atoms, fusion reactors do the same by smashing two atoms together. A recent breakthrough from U.S. government scientists has ignited excitement that clean and cheap fusion energy may actually be possible. Despite those recent advances, many scientists and engineers are still skeptical that fusion will work any time soon. Several start-ups are trying to do it anyway, including Helion Energy. Altman invested in the Everett, Wash.-based company as a partner at Y Combinator in 2014. Then in 2021, he invested $375 million in the company, according to venture capital data firm CB Insights, his largest personal investment ever.

In May, just months after investing billions of dollars in OpenAI, Microsoft signed a deal to be the first company to buy electricity from Helion, which it expects to begin producing in 2028.

Boom Aviation

Remember the Concorde jet? Boom Aviation is one of a small group of companies trying to bring back supersonic commercial travel more than 20 years after the Concorde made its last flight. Altman first invested in Boom as a private investor in 2016. Then, as a partner at Y Combinator in 2019, Altman invested in the company again. Boom has signed tentative purchase agreements for its still-under-development Overture jet with United and American Airlines and it plans to have the jets carrying passengers by 2029.

Retro Biosciences

The biotechnology company wants to slow aging by developing techniques to remove damaged cells and treating older cells to make them act as if they were young again. Altman invested $180 million in the company in 2022. Along with Helion, the two huge investments accounted for “all my liquid net worth,” Altman told MIT Technology Review earlier this year. Despite the huge cash infusion, the company is still very early stage, announcing its presence to the world in 2022 when Altman made his investment.

Humane

Former Apple employees and married couple Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno believe they’ve invented a new hardware device for the age of AI. Human’s “Ai Pin” is worn on the chest and can be controlled by voice commands and hand movements. A laser display can be projected onto the user’s hand, obviating the need for a screen. Altman has contributed to three of Humane’s funding rounds, from 2020 to 2023. At the same time, he’s invested in another similar hardware company, called Rewind AI.

Cruise

The self-driving car company went through Y Combinator when Altman worked there, and he made a personal investment in 2015. The next year, General Motors acquired the start-up. Cruise is now one of the most prominent self-driving car companies, and it was the first to provide a driverless ride-hailing service in San Francisco. But the company is now in crisis. In October, a human driver hit a pedestrian, flinging her into the path of a Cruise car, which then rolled over the person and dragged her for 20 feet. California authorities accused Cruise of trying to cover up the details of the accident. The company lost its permits to operate in California and pulled its entire self-driving fleet off public roads. In November, Chief Executive Kyle Vogt stepped down.

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When it comes to influencing climate change, the world’s smallest ocean punches above its weight. It’s been estimated that the cold waters of the Arctic absorb as much as 180 million metric tons of carbon per year – more than three times what New York City emits annually – making it one of Earth’s critical carbon sinks. But recent findings show that thawing permafrost and carbon-rich runoff from Canada’s Mackenzie River trigger part of the Arctic Ocean to release more carbon dioxide (CO2) than it absorbs.

The study, published earlier this year, explores how scientists are using state-of-the-art computer modeling to study rivers such as the Mackenzie, which flows into a region of the Arctic Ocean called the Beaufort Sea. Like many parts of the Arctic, the Mackenzie River and its delta have faced significantly warmer temperatures in recent years across all seasons, leading to more melting and thawing of waterways and landscapes.

In this marshy corner of Canada’s Northwest Territories, the continent’s second largest river system ends a thousand-mile journey that begins near Alberta. Along the way, the river acts as a conveyor belt for mineral nutrients as well as organic and inorganic matter. That material drains into the Beaufort Sea as a soup of dissolved carbon and sediment. Some of the carbon is eventually released, or outgassed, into the atmosphere by natural processes.

Scientists have thought of the southeastern Beaufort Sea as a weak-to-moderate CO2 sink, meaning it absorbs more of the greenhouse gas than it releases. But there has been great uncertainty due to a lack of data from the remote region.

To fill that void, the study team adapted a global ocean biogeochemical model called ECCO-Darwin, which was developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The model assimilates nearly all available ocean observations collected for more than two decades by sea- and satellite-based instruments (sea level observations from the Jason-series altimeters, for example, and ocean-bottom pressure from the GRACE and GRACE Follow-On missions).

Like a conveyer belt of carbon, the Mackenzie River, seen here in 2007 from NASA’s Terra satellite, drains an area of almost 700,000 square miles (1.8 million square kilometers) on its journey north to the Arctic Ocean. Some of the carbon originates from thawing permafrost and peatlands.
NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

The scientists used the model to simulate the discharge of fresh water and the elements and compounds it carries – including carbon, nitrogen, and silica – across nearly 20 years (from 2000 to 2019).

The researchers, from France, the U.S., and Canada, found that the river discharge was triggering such intense outgassing in the southeastern Beaufort Sea that it tipped the carbon balance, leading to a net CO2 release of 0.13 million metric tons per year – roughly equivalent to the annual emissions from 28,000 gasoline-powered cars. The release of CO2 into the atmosphere varied between seasons, being more pronounced in warmer months, when river discharge was high and there was less sea ice to cover and trap the gas.

Ground Zero for Climate Change

Scientists have for decades studied how carbon cycles between the open ocean and atmosphere, a process called air-sea CO2 flux. However, the observational record is sparse along the coastal fringes of the Arctic, where the terrain, sea ice, and long polar nights can make long-term monitoring and experiments challenging.

“With our model, we are trying to explore the real contribution of the coastal peripheries and rivers to the Arctic carbon cycle,” said lead author Clément Bertin, a scientist at Littoral Environnement et Sociétés in France.

Such insights are critical because about half of the area of the Arctic Ocean is composed of coastal waters, where land meets sea in a complex embrace. And while the study focused on a particular corner of the Arctic Ocean, it can help tell a larger story of environmental change unfolding in the region.

Since the 1970s, the Arctic has warmed at least three times faster than anywhere else on Earth, transforming its waters and ecosystems, the scientists said. Some of these changes promote more CO2 outgassing in the region, while others lead to more CO2 being absorbed.

For example, with Arctic lands thawing and more snow and ice melting, rivers are flowing more briskly and flushing more organic matter from permafrost and peatlands into the ocean. On the other hand, microscopic phytoplankton floating near the ocean surface are increasingly taking advantage of shrinking sea ice to bloom in the newfound open water and sunlight. These plantlike marine organisms capture and draw down atmospheric CO2during photosynthesis. The ECCO-Darwin model is being used to study these blooms and the ties between ice and life in the Arctic.

Scientists are tracking these large and seemingly small changes in the Arctic and beyond because our ocean waters remain a critical buffer against a changing climate, sequestering as much as 48% of the carbon produced by burning fossil fuels.

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Monday, 25 December

• Who: Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA)

   

• What: Long March 11H
• When: 11:20 p.m. UTC
• Where: South China Sea
• Why: This rocket will be launching a satellite called Xianggang from a ship called Bo Run Jiu Zhou. The satellite is Hong Kong’s first high-res remote-sensing AI satellite.

Tuesday, 26 December

• Who: CNSA

   

• What: Long March 3B/E
• When: 3:10 a.m. UTC
• Where: Xichang Satellite Launch Centre
• Why: This rocket will launch two BeiDou navigation satellites into orbit for the Chinese government. These two satellites will be the last BeiDou-3M satellites and will complete the medium Earth orbit component of the third phase of BeiDou.

Wednesday, 27 December

• Who: ExPace

   

• What: Kuaizhou 1A
• When: 6:57 a.m. UTC
• Where: Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre
• Why: In this launch, ExPace will be launching an unknown payload into orbit.

• Who: Roscosmos
• What: Soyuz 2.1v
• When: 7:00 a.m. UTC
• Where: Plesetsk Cosmodrome
• Why: Roscosmos will use the Soyuz 2.1v rocket to launch a classified satellite called Kosmos. It is most likely to be a Razbeg reconnaissance satellite capable of taking high-res images for civilian and military purposes.

Friday, 29 December

• Who: SpaceX

   

• What: Falcon 9 B5
• When: 5:09 - 8:32 a.m. UTC
• Where: Vandenberg AFB
• Why: SpaceX will launch 21 Starlink satellites into a low Earth orbit. Interestingly, this is the first launch of direct-to-cell Starlink satellites which will allow customers to connect their devices directly to the satellites. This batch of satellites is called Starlink Group 7-9, this can be used to find the satellites on tracking apps.

Saturday, 30 December

• Who: ExPace

   

• What: Kuaizhou 1A
• When: 12:00 a.m. UTC
• Where: Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre
• Why: ExPace will launch an extremely low Earth orbit satellite for Chaodigui for China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation and EOI Space. These companies are apparently working on a beyond-line-of-sight idea that could bring satellites closer to Earth than they are today.

Recap

The first launch last week was iSpace’s Hyperbola 1 rocket carrying the DEAR 1 satellite from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. The satellite will be used for optical observations and for carrying life science payloads.

Next, SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink satellites and the first stage of the Falcon 9 performed a landing ready to be reused.

Last week we also got a launch from Blue Origin which we haven’t seen in a while. The company launched the New Shepard rocket carrying 3 payload from NASA and education institutes.

Finally, Firefly Aerospace launched the fourth Firefly Alpha rocket from Vandenberg AFB carrying the Electronically Steered Antenna from Lockheed Martin.

That’s all for this week, check back next time.

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TASS news agency quoted an unidentified law enforcement official as saying that Yevgeny Fomichev had been interrogated and charged with large-scale fraud, which carries a prison term of up to 10 years and a fine of 1 million rubles ($10,972).

TASS said Moscow's Basmanny District Court, which often handles high-profile cases, ordered Fomichev to be held in pretrial detention until Feb. 21 at the request of Russia's Investigative Committee, which deals with serious crimes.

Fomichev is head of NPP Geophysics-Cosmos, a company whose website says it manufactures "optical electronic orientation and navigation devices for spacecraft." It says that almost all Russian spacecraft use its equipment.

The website includes a nine-page anti-corruption policy that says management has a key role in creating a culture of zero-tolerance toward corruption.

Russia's space program suffered a huge setback in August when its Luna-25 spacecraft smashed into the surface of the moon while attempting to land there.

An investigation blamed a malfunction in an onboard control unit for the failure of Russia's first moon mission in 47 years.

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In a significant change within the electronic manufacturing sector, Chinese engineers from Foxconn are mentoring a new generation of iPhone assemblers in India. Upon arriving at the Sunguvarchatram iPhone factory in Tamil Nadu, engineer Li Hai immediately recognized the importance of cultural adaptation to achieve success. Apple, along with other technology giants, has been seeking partners from different regions such as India, due to a variety of economic and political reasons.

Li Hai highlighted the need for effective communication and building strong relationships with the local workforce to ensure smooth operations in the production process. By bringing together skilled engineers from China and the eager workforce in India, Apple aims to create a global manufacturing ecosystem that can cater to the ever-growing demand for their products while promoting job creation and technology transfer in the region.

Foxconn’s investment in its Sunguvarchatram facility

Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, has heavily invested in its iPhone factory in Sunguvarchatram, situated on the outskirts of Chennai. The facility has become increasingly crucial in recent years, especially with the growing demand for Apple products in India and the company’s push to expand its production capabilities in the country. Not only has this investment created numerous employment opportunities for local communities, but it has also contributed to India’s efforts to position itself as a competitive manufacturing hub on the global stage.

Challenges faced by Apple in the Indian market

Nevertheless, increased material costs and a higher percentage of faulty phones have resulted in the iPhones made in India being less profitable than those manufactured in China. This has caused strain within the company. Moreover, the pressure to maintain high production standards while minimizing faulty devices has led to challenges in managing manufacturing facilities and meeting consumers’ expectations in India. As a result, Apple may need to reassess its supply chain strategies and address the root causes of these issues to sustain long-term financial success and customer satisfaction.

Training and skill development initiatives for Indian workers

To increase production and get the Sunguvarchatram facility ready for the forthcoming iPhone 15, Foxconn enlisted experienced Chinese employees like Li to assist in training the Indian workforce. These Chinese trainers have been instrumental in implementing efficient manufacturing practices and ensuring high-quality standards are met at the Indian facility. As a result, thanks to the collaborative efforts of both the Chinese experts and Indian workers, the Sunguvarchatram plant has been making significant progress in ramping up production for the highly anticipated iPhone 15.

However, passing on Foxconn’s efficient methods and ambitious goals to the Indian employees was a substantial challenge due to their limited familiarity with the complex and demanding nature of modern electronic production. To overcome this hurdle, the company provided comprehensive training programs and invested in skill development initiatives for the Indian workforce. This not only empowered the employees but also ensured quality production, bringing the facility closer to achieving its ambitions and setting a new benchmark in India’s electronic manufacturing sector.

Potential downsides of meeting rigorous standards

Consequently, the stress of meeting Foxconn’s rigorous standards negatively impacted the local workforce, raising doubts about the long-lasting viability of this transition. Moreover, such demanding expectations may lead to high employee turnover rates, making it difficult for the company to maintain a stable and skilled workforce. Ultimately, this could endanger the sustainability of Foxconn’s operations in the region, as well as potentially harm its reputation.

Foxconn’s continued pursuit of expansion

Despite these obstacles, Foxconn continues to pursue its expansion plans, indicating that the transformation in the manufacturing sector is still in progress. Moreover, the company’s determination exemplifies its commitment to evolving and adapting its business model to stay competitive within the constantly changing landscape of the industry. Additionally, as technological advancements surge forward and automation plays a greater role in manufacturing processes, other companies within the sector may follow Foxconn’s lead in embracing these shifts to maintain their foothold in the market.

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They decided to find out, especially since COVID was becoming a big problem again in the U.S. Hospitals were filling up, and people were getting sick more often. Plus, not many people had gotten the latest vaccine.

Before COVID came around, doctors already knew that probiotics were good at fighting off other illnesses that affected our breathing.

Paul Wischmeyer, a doctor and a big part of this research, thought it was time to see if probiotics could do the same against COVID.

So, they started their experiment in March 2020, when COVID vaccines weren’t common yet.

They looked for people who hadn’t gotten the vaccine but were around someone who had COVID. They wanted to see if giving these people probiotics could stop them from getting sick.

They found 182 people to join their study. They split them into two groups: one group took the probiotic, and the other group took a pill that didn’t do anything (a placebo). The fun part was, no one knew who was taking what, not even the people running the study!

As they were doing this study, things changed. More people got vaccinated, and COVID cases started to go down for a bit. This meant they had fewer people who could join their study, so they had to finish it earlier than planned.

In the end, they found out something interesting. The people who took the probiotic were less likely to get COVID symptoms.

About 26 out of 100 people in the probiotic group got sick, compared to 43 out of 100 in the other group. Also, those who took the probiotic could fight off the infection longer than those who didn’t.

Even though not as many people in the probiotic group got COVID, the difference wasn’t big enough to be sure it was just because of the probiotic. This was mostly because they couldn’t have as many people in the study as they wanted.

Wischmeyer wasn’t too surprised by this. There were other studies before, like one with babies in India, that showed probiotics were really good at fighting respiratory infections. Some studies even said probiotics could make vaccines work better against viruses like the flu.

He explained that probiotics help our immune system in many ways. They increase good cells in our body, decrease harmful substances, protect our lungs better, and even change how our body’s defense genes work.

Even though their study wasn’t as big as they hoped, it still showed that the tiny microbes living in our body could be big helpers in fighting diseases like COVID-19.

This could be really important for places where not many people can get vaccines or even in the U.S., where not everyone gets their booster shots.

If you care about COVID, please read studies about Vitamin D deficiency linked to severe COVID-19, and how diets could help manage post-COVID syndrome.

For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about new evidence on rare blood clots after COVID-19 vaccination, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.

The research findings can be found in Clinical Nutrition.

Copyright © 2023 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.

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India is planning to employ artificial intelligence (AI) for weather forecasting after an intense year of extreme climate ranging from torrential rains and floods to droughts.

The country is doing tests with AI to build climate models, with plans to incorporate those into traditional forecasting models, a top weather official said.

India recorded extreme weather events on 235 of the 273 days between January 1 to September 30 this year, according to Indian daily Hindustan Times.

Citing a study by Indian not-for-profit advocacy group Centre for Science and Environment, the report said extreme weather events killed nearly 3,000 people in the country during the nine-month period.

The study did not include estimates on losses of public property or crops due to a lack of data.

But it noted the weather events impacted 1.84 million hectares of crop area, destroyed more than 80,000 houses, and killed more than 92,000 livestock.

India’s weather crisis stems from global warming, which has triggered intense clashes of weather systems in the country in recent years.

That makes accurate weather forecasting particularly crucial in India, a country of 1.4 billion people — many of whom are impoverished.

India is also the world’s second-largest producer of rice, wheat and sugar.

AI generated public alerts

Weather agencies around the world are focussing on AI, which can bring down cost and improve speed.

Britain’s Met Office has said AI could “revolutionise” weather forecasting, with a recent Google-funded model found to have outperformed conventional methods.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) provides forecasts based on mathematical models using supercomputers. Using AI with an expanded observation network could help generate higher-quality forecast data at lower cost.

The department expects the AI-based climate models and advisories it is developing to help improve forecasts, KS Hosalikar, head of climate research and services at IMD said.

The weather office has used AI to generate public alerts regarding heatwaves and such diseases as malaria, Hosalikar said.

It plans to increase weather observatories, providing data down to village level, potentially offering higher-resolution data for forecasts, he said.

Better data needed

The government said on Thursday it wants to generate weather and climate forecasts by incorporating AI into traditional models. It has set up a centre to test the idea through workshops and conferences.

“An AI model doesn’t require the high cost involved in running a supercomputer – you can even run it out of a good quality desktop,” Saurabh Rathore, an assistant professor at Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, said.

Better data is also needed to make the most out of AI, experts say.

“Without having high-resolution data in space and time, no AI model for location-specific magnification of existing model forecasts is feasible,” said Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

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That's the conclusion of researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Montpellier in France, after they ran a genetic analysis of modern field pansies (Viola arvensis) against older ones grown from seeds collected in previous decades.

This disruption of 100 million years of evolution is likely to have serious consequences, according to the study team. It may cause insect declines to accelerate, as well as making plant populations less diverse and more vulnerable to environmental change.

"Population genetics analysis reveals a 27 percent increase in realized selfing rates in the field during this period," write the researchers in their published paper, indicating a sharp increase in the pansies opting for self-pollination.

"We documented trait evolution towards smaller and less conspicuous corollas, reduced nectar production and reduced attractiveness to bumblebees, with these trait shifts convergent across the four studied populations."

The flower's surface was around 10 percent smaller on average compared with those that bloomed 20 to 30 years ago, the results showed, while nectar production levels had dropped by 20 percent. The study showed that modern plants were also less frequently visited by insects.

You can see the feedback loop going on here: fewer insects means fewer pollination visits, which means the effort and energy that a plant is putting in to produce nectar and make itself attractive is going to waste. As it shrinks its petal size and cuts down on making nectar, the diminishing numbers of insects have even less reason to stop by.

Other aspects of the field pansies, including the leaf size and the total size of the plant, hadn't changed significantly across the decades. That indicates that the main change here is a shift to self-sufficiency when it comes to reproducing.

We already know that flowers are capable of quickly evolving in order to maximize their chances of survival, but the researchers point to the dangers of inbreeding on genetic diversity and ultimately extinction risk for the plant species involved.

The team behind the study wants to see more done to protect insects against the threats of habitat loss and a warming planet – key processes driven by human activity that continue to kill off insect species and which are now having knock-on effects on the flowers that they pollinate.

"This study demonstrates that plant mating systems can evolve rapidly in natural populations in the face of ongoing environmental changes," write the researchers.

"The rapid evolution towards a selfing syndrome may in turn further accelerate pollinator declines, in an eco-evolutionary feedback loop with broader implications to natural ecosystems."

The research has been published in New Phytologist.

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or a while vitamin D was looking like a bona fide health elixir. It was recognized a century ago as the cure for rickets, a childhood disease that causes weak and deformed bones. Then, in the early 2000s, researchers began amassing a pile of studies suggesting that low vitamin D levels could be a factor in cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, fractures, respiratory illnesses and Parkinson's disease. It seemed reasonable to think that raising our levels of this simple vitamin—one that our bodies make when lit up by sunshine and that we can get more of from supplements—could cure practically whatever ailed us.

At least two books called The Vitamin D Cure were published, along with other books and news reports whose titles include words like “revolution” and “miracle.” There was also a growing concern that we weren't getting enough of the vitamin. Good Morning America aired a segment that began with reporter Diane Sawyer declaring 100 million Americans were deficient. Her guest was Dr. Oz, who told viewers they could determine their vitamin D level with a simple blood test. Sunshine is the best way to get this vitamin, he said. But if that wasn't enough, he advised cod liver oil or supplements.

Numerous celebrities and vitamin companies raised hopes that vitamin D could be a panacea, says JoAnn Manson, an endocrinologist and epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and a lead investigator on some of the biggest vitamin D studies to date. Sales of supplements containing the vitamin soared, as did rates of vitamin D testing.

Then the bottom fell out. Although thousands of studies had linked low levels of vitamin D to an assortment of medical conditions, when scientists tried administering it as a means to prevent or treat those problems, the wonder supplement failed miserably. The notion that our lives would be better if we all just raised our vitamin D levels began to look like a fantasy. The idea that vitamin D deficiency was widespread also crumbled. It turned out that notions of what constitutes a deficiency were based on a dubious understanding to begin with. National population sampling showed that most people were already getting enough of the vitamin.

There's no question that vitamin D plays an important role in health. It helps your body absorb and retain calcium and phosphorus; both are critical for building bone. But except for a few subsets of the population (such as breastfed infants and people with particular medical conditions), most people probably don't need supplements.

The story of how vitamin D was discovered, rocketed to miracle status and then returned to Earth illustrates the sometimes jagged path of scientific discovery. It's also a cautionary tale about the need to interpret scientific results with humility. Ultimately it's about the self-correcting nature of science and how knowledge becomes honed over time.

For much of human history, people got their vitamin D mostly from the sun. It turns out humans are a little bit like plants—we can turn ultraviolet light into something our bodies need in a process akin to photosynthesis.

When the high-energy rays of UV light—UVB—hit your skin, they start a chain reaction that converts a compound in your skin called a sterol into a vitamin D precursor. This molecule, after a few more steps, becomes a form of the vitamin that promotes calcium absorption from the gut and increases bone mineralization. Vitamin D also seems to bolster the immune system and tamp down inflammation. It does these things in part by influencing the production of inflammatory compounds and suppressing the buildup of proinflammatory cells. Researchers are studying whether vitamin D can prevent dangerous inflammatory reactions in people with COVID.

Producing vitamin D became increasingly difficult for human bodies during the Industrial Revolution, when smoke and soot darkened the skies and children spent more time in the shade of crowded cities, leading to an increase in rickets. By the late 1800s researchers had documented geographic differences in the prevalence of rickets that pointed to a possible link to sunlight.

In the 1920s Johns Hopkins University biochemist Elmer McCollum identified vitamin D in cod liver oil and gave it its name. German chemist Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus won a Nobel Prize in 1928 for showing how the body made vitamin D from sunlight. Calling this previously unknown substance a vitamin gave it a sheen of beneficence. The term “vitamin” had been coined by Polish scientist Casimir Funk, who created the word by combining the terms “vita” (Latin for “life”) and “amine” (for amino acids, building blocks of life). The word created “an aura of safety and health,” says Catherine Price, author of Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think about Food.

The practice of fortifying food with vitamin D began when McCollum's former student Harry Steenbock, then at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, discovered that he could produce vitamin D in both rats and their feed by irradiating them with UV light. The rays hit sterol compounds, found in the cells of plants, animals and fungi, and start a conversion process. For instance, exposing chickens to UVB light boosts the vitamin D in their meat and egg yolks. Most of the vitamin D in modern supplements comes from irradiated lanolin, a grease derived from sheep's wool.

Steenbock also found that feeding dairy cows irradiated feed or mixing irradiated fat extract into milk raised D levels. Today fortified milk and other dairy products—which also use the lanolin-derived form of the vitamin—are some of the most common dietary sources.

In 1936 the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company introduced “Sunshine Vitamin D” beer. The ads exclaimed that “beer is good for you—but SCHLITZ, with SUNSHINE Vitamin D, is extra good for you. Drink it daily—for health with enjoyment.” If it sounds antiquated, consider that in 2022 beer brand Corona launched Corona Sunbrew, a nonalcoholic beer fortified with vitamin D.

Beer is not, however, a health food. The “natural, evolutionarily appropriate way to get vitamin D is through synthesis in your skin,” says Anastassios Pittas, chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at Tufts Medical Center. But that does not require getting a sunburn. It turns out that you don't need high doses of sun to get sufficient vitamin D. A 2010 study calculated that between April and October, someone in Boston with 25 percent of their skin exposed would need between three and eight minutes of sunlight per day to get enough. Of course, in the winter it might be challenging to find even this amount of sun at some latitudes.

Fortunately, your body is equipped to deal with this kind of variation. Your liver and fat cells store vitamin D for future use, Pittas says. That means you don't necessarily need a big dose every day. Your vitamin D cache generally lasts for about 10 to 12 weeks, so even if you don't have a lot of daily D coming in via sunshine in the winter, Pittas says, you could still have enough circulating from your liver to maintain adequate calcium and phosphorus levels. It's natural to have a winter dip, he says, but that is worrisome only if you're already running low on vitamin D.

Interest in getting extra vitamin D took off when studies suggested it might lower the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and a range of other conditions.

The problem is that this evidence came mostly from observational studies, a type of analysis that can't show cause and effect and that might produce misleading results, Manson says. These observational studies looked for associations between vitamin D levels and a particular health issue or compared vitamin D status among people with a condition and those without. For instance, an offshoot of the Framingham Heart Study published in 2008 followed more than 1,700 people without prior cardiovascular disease over about five years and found that people with low vitamin D levels had a higher risk of developing heart disease. The results generated a lot of excitement and hype around vitamin D, Manson says.

Diabetes, too, seemed to track with D levels. A study published in 2010 followed close to 6,100 people in Tromsø, Norway, over a period of 11 years. Their incidence of type 2 diabetes showed an inverse relation with blood levels of vitamin D before their body mass was taken into account: higher D levels were correlated with fewer cases of diabetes. Similarly, a 2011 study of more than 6,500 people in Australia found that the risk of developing diabetes over the course of five years was lowest for the participants with the highest D levels.

All these observational studies have a fundamental weakness: they can identify a co-occurrence between vitamin D and a disease, but they can't prove there is a cause-and-effect relation—or, if there is one, they can't identify in which direction it might go. Think of it this way: there's a strong link between someone's wealth and the price of their car, but that doesn't mean buying an expensive vehicle will make you rich.

“Just because you see an association, that doesn't mean that, okay, if we fix the serum vitamin D level, that's going to fix the problem,” says physician Leila Kahwati, associate director of the Research Triangle Institute–University of North Carolina Evidence-based Practice Center. There might be other factors at play. For instance, people who take vitamin D supplements may be more health conscious and do other things that protect them from disease, and people who are already in poor health probably spend less time outdoors getting vitamin D from sunlight.

For these reasons, randomized controlled trials, in which researchers recruit a group of participants and then assign them to receive different treatments (or a placebo), are considered the strongest kind of medical evidence, says physician Jodi Segal, associate director of the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research at Johns Hopkins University's school of public health. A randomized design makes it much more likely that any differences between the study and placebo groups are caused by the intervention rather than by some other variable.

In 2009 Manson and her team embarked on the world's largest and most far-reaching randomized vitamin D trial, called VITAL. The study followed nearly 26,000 generally healthy adults, randomized to receive either 2,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D or a placebo, for an average of 5.3 years. The volunteers were almost evenly split between men and women, and 20 percent of the participants were Black. The study was designed to look at whether vitamin D supplements could prevent cancer or cardiovascular disease.

The results came as a shock. Not only did vitamin D not make a dent in rates of cancer or heart disease, but the trial also found that vitamin D did not prevent falls, improve cognitive function, reduce atrial fibrillation, change body composition, reduce migraine frequency, improve stroke outcomes, decrease age-related macular degeneration, reduce knee pain or even reduce the risk of bone fractures. The finding about fractures “was a real surprise to many people,” Manson says.

Extra vitamin D also didn't lower diabetes risk. In a trial published in 2019 in the New England Journal of Medicine, Pittas and his colleagues randomized more than 2,400 people at risk for diabetes to take either 4,000 IU of vitamin D or a placebo daily. After two and a half years, a similar number of people in each group went on to develop the disease.

The Vitamin D Assessment Study (ViDA) recruited 5,110 volunteers ages 50 to 84 in New Zealand and randomized them to get either a placebo or 200,000 IU of vitamin D per month—a huge dose much higher than the recommended daily allowance. The study found that levels made no difference in cardiovascular disease, acute respiratory infections, nonspinal fractures, falls and all types of cancer. Other trials found that vitamin D supplementation did not reduce mortality rates or the risk of invasive cancer. These results, along with others coming out of VITAL, led to growing skepticism about vitamin D by around 2020, says Clifford Rosen, an endocrinologist at the Maine Medicine Center's Research Institute.

The ViDA trial did find some modest supplement benefits in people who had started the study with a vitamin D deficiency. But what exactly does “deficiency” mean?

It does not mean what many doctors think it does, apparently. The widespread notion that much of America is walking around deficient in vitamin D came from what Manson calls a “misinterpretation and misapplication” of the normal levels for vitamin D set by the Institute of Medicine (IOM, now known as the National Academy of Medicine) more than a decade ago.

Here's what happened. In 2011 the IOM convened an expert committee to conduct a thorough analysis of all existing studies on vitamin D and health. Based on this evidence, the committee concluded that the bone-strengthening benefits of vitamin D plateau when blood levels (as measured by a standard vitamin D blood test) reach 12 to 16 nanograms per milliliter. They also found that there were no benefits to having levels above 20 ng/ml. So they set that as the ceiling for their recommendations while noting that the majority of the population is just fine at 16 ng/ml.

According to measurements of vitamin D levels in the general U.S. population collected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, most people had levels of 20 ng/ml or more in 2011. Levels have actually risen since then, meaning that most people are well within the medical recommendations, says Rosen, who served on the IOM committee.

So where did the idea of mass deficiency come from? First off, 20 ng/ml was erroneously interpreted by some health-care workers as the bare minimum, instead of a level marking good amounts for most people. Recall the IOM found that 16 ng/ml was satisfactory. The implication of the misreading was that people needed more than 20 ng/ml for good bone health, Manson says.

But some of the confusion stems from a second set of guidelines that another medical group, the Endocrine Society, put out around the same time as the IOM standards. Whereas the institute made recommendations for healthy populations, the society's guidelines were aimed at clinicians, particularly those caring for patients at risk for vitamin D deficiency. The makers of these guidelines looked at much of the same evidence that the institute committee reviewed, but they concluded that anything under 20 ng/ml represented “deficiency,” and they labeled vitamin D levels of 21 to 29 ng/ml as something they called “insufficiency.”

The terms “insufficiency” and “deficiency” have created “a tremendous amount of confusion,” says Christopher McCartney, an endocrinologist and clinical research specialist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He adds that the Endocrine Society guidelines have been largely taken to mean that everyone needs vitamin D levels of 30 ng/ml or more.

The IOM guidelines don't support that conclusion, and in 2012 the institute committee published a rebuttal paper, “IOM Committee Members Respond to Endocrine Society Vitamin D Guideline.” It contended that aspects of the society's guidelines, including the definition of insufficiency, were not well supported by evidence. For instance, the society's guidelines used a 2003 study of only 34 people to support its contention that vitamin D levels above 30 ng/ml are better for calcium absorption. At the same time the society's committee ignored a study of more than 300 people that found that calcium absorption pretty much maxes out at vitamin D levels of 8 ng/ml.

Michael Holick was the lead author of the Endocrine Society guidelines. An endocrinologist at Boston University's medical school, Holick says that the insufficiency standard is justified by an observational study from 2010. It found that about a quarter of the otherwise healthy adult males had evidence of osteomalacia, a bone-softening condition linked to low vitamin D levels. The study didn't find bone problems in people above 30 ng/ml; hence Holick's contention that 30 was the minimum.

The Endocrine Society is currently in the process of updating its guidelines, with McCartney serving as its methodologist. He says that the new guidelines will focus on randomized trials, not observational ones, and they'll be careful to call out the evidence gaps that remain.

Credit: Now Medical Studios; Graphics consultant: Anastassios Pittas/Tufts Medical Center

The committee is also taking care to avoid outside influence. “Our conflict-of-interest policy is much more transparent and rigorous than I think it has been in the past,” McCartney says. Holick, who ran the original guideline-writing group, advocates large doses of vitamin D supplements. Although there is no evidence that his judgments were affected by commercial ties, Holick has received at least $100,000 from various companies involved in making vitamin D supplements and tests, according to a 2018 investigation by Kaiser Health News (now KFF Health News) and the New York Times. McCartney says that, in part, concerns raised about Holick prompted the Endocrine Society to pay extra attention to ethics.

Holick made a name for himself espousing the health-promoting powers of vitamin D and wrote a book called The Vitamin D Solution: A 3-Step Strategy to Cure Our Most Common Health Problems. He takes 6,000 IU daily and advises his patients to take a minimum of 2,000 to 3,000 IU per day. For comparison, the 2011 IOM report calculated that the average person's daily requirement is 400 IU.

Holick told Scientific American that it is “not true” that he has conflicts of interest. He acknowledged receiving industry money but said most of the money had “nothing to do with vitamin D” and was instead “associated with me talking about a new drug coming on the market,” for patients with chronic hypoparathyroidism.

Still, some in the field see Holick's evangelism for vitamin D as conflicting with his role working on the Endocrine Society guidelines. Rosen says that the guidelines “were driven by Mike. He was the chair of the committee.” Rosen trained with Holick and considers him a friend. “He's a good guy,” Rosen says. But “just because you hypothesize something doesn't mean you have to stick with it.... Michael went to extremes to show that vitamin D had something to do with chronic diseases.”

Much of the information put out by companies offering direct-to-consumer testing still claims that anything under 30 ng/ml is low. Athlete Blood Test, for instance, markets blood tests to active people and encourages them to aim for a level of at least 50 ng/ml. While working on this story, I had my vitamin D checked by another testing company, and the laboratory results came back with reference ranges of 30 to 100 ng/ml, implying that anything under 30 was not enough. The lab explanation did note that the IOM's cutoff was 20. (My number was 32.8 ng/ml, which suggests that sunshine really can help—I never take supplements, but I exercise daily outdoors.)

More than 10 million vitamin D tests are done annually in the U.S., despite the fact that these tests are not recommended by major medical organizations such as the Endocrine Society, the National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Three medical societies have endorsed a recommendation to “not order population-based screening for vitamin D” from Choosing Wisely, an initiative to reduce wasteful medical practices.

Yet the testing goes on. A study published in 2020 examined medical records from a large regional health system in Virginia and found that about 10 percent of the system's patients were tested for D levels, although many of the tests were not indicated by the patients' health conditions.

Supporting the idea of the tests being unneeded, 75 percent of the results came back as normal, says study author Michelle Rockwell, an assistant professor of family and community medicine at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Furthermore, some of the test results categorized as abnormal may have been considered just fine by the IOM standards; the study used a higher reference range of 30 to 99.9 ng/ml.

Given the VITAL trial's large size and wide scope, many vitamin D researchers hoped it would put many of the purported benefits of vitamin D supplements to rest. “But there's a religiosity around vitamin D,” Rosen says. Rosen wrote an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine saying most people can stop taking vitamin D supplements and that the large VITAL study was a “decisive verdict.” Even then, he says, he got pushback from colleagues who refused to believe that vitamin D wasn't the panacea they had come to believe. “The evidence is out there,” he says. “People don't want to pay attention to it.”

Although most people don't need supplements, there are exceptions. Breast milk does not contain enough vitamin D for infants, so the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies who are breastfed (partially or exclusively) be supplemented with 400 IU a day of vitamin D beginning in the first few days of life to promote stronger bones. In addition, the academy says all infants and children who consume less than 32 ounces of vitamin D–fortified formula or milk per day should also get supplements of 400 IU. Crohn's disease, cystic fibrosis, celiac disease, and certain liver and kidney conditions can cause vitamin D deficiency, so people with these illnesses might also need supplements. People who are hospitalized or who have had gastric bypass surgery may also become deficient.

Typical tests may, however, overestimate vitamin D problems in some people of African ancestry. The standard test measures circulating blood levels of a vitamin D precursor, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, that is bound to a particular protein. A 2013 New England Journal of Medicine study found that some people have gene variants that allow circulation of more of the unbound precursor form and less of the bound one. So by focusing on the bound version, the test underestimates total vitamin D availability. The study, which involved more than 2,000 people, found that those who were Black had lower vitamin D levels than white participants according to the standard blood test. Yet those Black people had strong bones and good calcium levels.

Manson is quick to caution that more isn't necessarily better when it comes to vitamin D. “Vitamin D is essential to good health, but we require only small to moderate amounts,” she says. She doesn't dissuade people from taking supplements of up to 2,000 IU per day, but she doesn't recommend higher levels because some studies have found that excess vitamin D can increase the risk of dangerous falls—researchers speculate that intermittent high doses affect the central nervous system, which could impair balance. And whether you're taking supplements or not, you are probably getting supplemental vitamin D if you consume dairy products, breakfast cereal, plant milks, or other fortified foods, says Price, author of Vitamania.

Credit: Zara Picken

Despite the disappointing trials on vitamin D, it's not time to dismiss the vitamin completely, Manson says. There's still plenty more to understand. For instance, the VITAL trial showed that among slender or normal-weight people, defined as having body mass indexes of 25 or less, vitamin D supplements appeared to lower the incidence of cancer, cancer deaths and autoimmune disease. This protective effect did not show up among heavier people with higher body masses. Manson cautions that these numbers need to be verified by further work because they are from a smaller subanalysis of the main study. But it's possible that excess body fat may somehow hamper the effectiveness of vitamin D. Obesity itself is a risk factor for both cancer and autoimmune disease, so it's likely that any connection is complex.

Pittas remains convinced that for people at high risk for diabetes, vitamin D can play a role in prevention. His earlier trial did hint that people who received supplemental vitamin D were less likely to develop diabetes: 24.4 percent of them got the disease, versus 26.9 percent of the placebo group. That difference alone was too small to be statistically significant. But when he pooled the results with those of two other randomized trials, he found a modest but consistent benefit of about a 3 percent reduction in diabetes risk over three years.

There are some positive signs for treating COVID, too. Clinical and lab studies have shown that vitamin D has a positive effect on the immune system and can tamp down inflammation. “We saw this in our VITAL trial,” Manson says. Holick adds that vitamin D can help downregulate so-called cytokine storms, immune system overreactions that have provoked life-threatening respiratory problems in some COVID patients.

Manson's research group has two randomized trials currently underway to test whether vitamin D can help with COVID. One is investigating whether high-dose vitamin D can reduce the chances of getting the extended and debilitating ailment of long COVID. The other trial is looking at whether 1,000 IU of vitamin D per day can reduce the risk of that illness or overall symptom severity. Manson hopes to finish analyzing the data in 2024.

Vitamins hold a certain allure. They're cheap, they're relatively safe, and there's a sense, emphasized by marketers, that they're “natural” and therefore somehow better than drugs, Rosen says. “There's this magical thinking that vitamins improve health, and some people do feel better” when taking them, he says, pointing to the placebo effect as a potential contributor.

The ups and downs of vitamin D offer a lesson in humility. The relation between the vitamin and disease is far more complicated and nuanced than it first seemed and a reminder that scientific understanding is always evolving.

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Today, the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program, based in San Diego, trains bottlenosed dolphins and California sea lions to protect ships and harbors. Sea lions help retrieve equipment from the ocean floor, dolphins locate underwater mines and both species detect unauthorized swimmers. Animals in the program have also helped researchers understand dolphin echolocation, assess the impacts of human-generated noise on wildlife and more. Current projects are testing whether it’s possible to judge dolphins’ health based on their whistles and whether a video game system can provide Navy sea lions with cognitive enrichment.

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The girl needed a surgical tracheostomy – an opening in her windpipe below her voice box – to support her breathing for over a year. According to a new case report on the event, COVID's impact on the nervous system may cause vocal cord paralysis in rare cases.

The authors say this is the first case of vocal cord paralysis in a teenager after a COVID-19 diagnosis, though there have been reports of the condition in adults.

"The virus has known neurologic complications, including headache, seizure, and peripheral neuropathy," write otolaryngologists Danielle Larrow and Christopher Hartnick from Mass Eye and Ear at Harvard Medical School.

"The current case reveals that vocal cord paralysis may be an additional neuropathic sequela of the virus."

Thirteen days after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, the 15-year-old girl presented to a hospital emergency department. Her initial symptoms including congestion, fever, and fatigue, improved after five days. But she reported having trouble breathing suddenly nine days after the positive test, especially when active.

Emergency department doctors noted her breathing was rapid and noisy when inhaling, indicating obstructed airflow, though her oxygen levels were normal. Tests for SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory infections were negative.

The patient, who had a history of asthma and anxiety, was given steroids and bronchodilators for a suspected asthma attack, but it didn't help.

Otolaryngologists examined her vocal cords and diagnosed paradoxical vocal fold motion (PVFM), where the vocal cords close instead of opening while a person is breathing in. She began speech therapy to treat this involuntary closure, but her symptoms didn't improve and it became clear they didn't match the typical signs of PVFM.

She continued to have trouble breathing and developed new problems like difficulty swallowing, weakness on one side, tingling and numbness, and unsteady walking, so the girl was admitted to a pediatric hospital for a thorough evaluation.

Otolaryngologists examined her vocal cords again, and this time they diagnosed bilateral vocal cord paralysis, essentially meaning both her vocal cords were unable to move. But they still couldn't find a cause for the paralysis.

Results from a battery of tests ruled out infections and neurological disorders. Her brain and spine scans showed no obvious issues that could be related to her symptoms, nor did tests on her swallowing.

Based on their findings, doctors concluded that the teenager's previous COVID-19 infection appeared to have weakened her vocal cords, and may also be the cause of her numbness and weakness on one side.

Botulinum toxin injections into her throat muscles – a method that's shown efficacy in treating some throat pathologies in children – was unsuccessful in alleviating her breathing issues.

Eventually the girl had surgery for a tracheostomy, where a small opening is made in the trachea (windpipe) to assist breathing. And finally, her breathing got better.

Her weakness, tingling, and numbness improved over time, raising the likelihood that they were related to her past COVID-19 infection.

The medical team tried a few times to see if she could breathe without the tracheostomy, but it wasn't until the 15th month after insertion that they were able to remove it safely.

"She was having her senior prom a year and a quarter to the date of when she lost her function, and she told me she was not going to go to the prom with her tracheostomy in place," says Hartnick.

"We decided to intervene so that she could graduate high school and go to her prom tracheostomy-free, which she did."

The case report has been published in Pediatrics.

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If you're a bit of a plane nerd—and if you're reading this site, the odds are good that you are—a rather interesting eBay auction ended over the weekend. The auction site knows it as item number 116001533010; a less anodyne description would be a Rolls-Royce Olympus 593 turbojet engine, one of four that powered a Concorde—complete with afterburner attached.

 

The world's first and most successful supersonic airliner, Concorde was an ambitious and extremely expensive joint project developed by the UK and France. The initial plans started in 1956, with the first in a series of studies commissioned by the British Ministry of Supply, which set about exploring the idea of a supersonic transport plane—then, as now, the sole preserve of military jets.

 

A parallel effort was also underway across the Channel in France, with both countries coming up with fairly similar designs. At some point, bean counters on both sides of la manche realized that the cost of developing such an extreme aircraft was perhaps better shared than borne alone, and in 1962 the two projects—one headed by the British Aircraft Corporation, the other by Sud-Aviation combined—were merged.

 

The first airframes were laid down in early 1965, and in March 1969 Concorde 001, which was built in France, first flew from Toulouse. Five weeks later, Concorde 002—built in Bristol, England, made its maiden flight.

 

Things initially looked rosy. With 18 airlines showing interest, BAC and Sud-Aviation had potential orders for 100 aircraft.

 

But the development of Concorde was anything but rosy, and the price tag soared higher than the airliner's 56,000-foot cruising altitude. By 1976—at which point only Air France, British Airways (then BOAC), and Iran Air had placed orders, with only the former two ever operating the plane—the UK government estimated the cost at between $12.2 billion and $17 billion (inflation-adjusted to 2023).

 

At the time, most military jets capable of breaking the speed of sound could do so in short bursts, rapidly emptying their fuel tanks in the process. But Concorde was designed to cruise at twice the speed of sound, or 1,350 mph (2,170 km/h). To do that, it required four Olympus jet engines, each capable of a continuous 28,000 lbs of thrust, or a peak output of 38,060 lbs.

 

Derived from an engine designed for the cancelled British TSR2 strike bomber, the engines were fed by variable geometry intakes and exhausts, and afterburners that increased power by 17 percent. Cruising fuel consumption was around 20 tons of fuel per hour.

 

It could carry 100 passengers across the Atlantic in about three hours—the actual record was 2:52.59, set in 1996 by a British Airways Concorde. Today, the fastest you could do the same trip would be a little under five hours, provided you have one heck of a tailwind.

 

The unknown buyer of the eBay engine paid $728,240 (565,000 pounds) for engine number CBE 083, which flew as one of four engines under the wings of Concorde G-BFKW (later G-BOAG), which you can go and wander around if you visit the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

 

This is the only photo ever taken of a Concorde at supersonic speeds. Concorde had to actually

slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5 in order for an RAF jet (with a photographer on board) to be

able to catch up to it in flight.

Adrian Meredith / Crown Copyright

 

They won't be able to take to the air with the new second-hand Olympus 593-610 engine, however. A condition of sale from British Airways when it left the airline's possession was that the turbojet, which is the only one in private hands with both afterburner and engine serial number plate both intact, is for static or display use only.

 

That also rules out fitting it to a rolling chassis a la Thrust SSC or the Bloodhound LSR car. Putting the whole engine on display is one option. But I have a feeling that CBE 083 might be destined for life as furniture—coffee tables with a single (polished) compressor blade sell for around $30,000–$50,000, and side tables with blades from smaller stages discs still sell for several thousand dollars. But what would you do with it if it were yours?

 

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“Do your own research” is a popular tagline among fringe groups and ideological extremists. Noted conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper first ushered this rallying cry into the mainstream in the 1990s through his radio show, where he discussed schemes involving things such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an Illuminati cabal and alien life. Cooper died in 2001, but his legacy lives on. Radio host Alex Jones’s fans, anti-vaccine activists and disciples of QAnon’s convoluted alternate reality often implore skeptics to do their own research.

Yet more mainstream groups have also offered this advice. Digital literacy advocates and those seeking to combat online misinformation sometimes spread the idea that when you are faced with a piece of news that seems odd or out of sync with reality, the best course of action is to investigate it yourself. For instance, in 2021 the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General put out a guide recommending that those wondering about a health claim’s legitimacy should “type the claim into a search engine to see if it has been verified by a credible source.” Library and research guides, often suggest that people “Google it!” or use other search engines to vet information.

Unfortunately, this time science seems to be on the conspiracy theorists’ side. Encouraging Internet users to rely on search engines to verify questionable online articles can make them more prone to believing false or misleading information, according to a study published today in Nature. The new research quantitatively demonstrates how search results, especially those prompted by queries that contain keywords from misleading articles, can easily lead people down digital rabbit holes and backfire. Guidance to Google a topic is insufficient if people aren’t considering what they search for and the factors that determine the results, the study suggests.

In five different experiments conducted between late 2019 and 2022, the researchers asked a total of thousands of online participants to categorize timely news articles as true, false or unclear. A subset of the participants received prompting to use a search engine before categorizing the articles, whereas a control group didn’t. At the same time, six professional fact-checkers evaluated the articles to provide definitive designations.

Across the different tests, the nonprofessional respondents were about 20 percent more likely to rate false or misleading information as true after they were encouraged to search online. This pattern held even for very salient, heavily reported news topics such as the COVID pandemic and even after months had elapsed between an article’s initial publication and the time of the participants’ search (when presumably more fact-checks would be available online).

For one experiment, the study authors also tracked participants’ search terms and the links provided on the first page of the results of a Google query. They found that more than a third of respondents were exposed to misinformation when they searched for more detail on misleading or false articles. And often respondents’ search terms contributed to those troubling results: Participants used the headline or URL  of a misleading article in about one in 10 verification attempts. In those cases, misinformation beyond the original article showed up in results more than half the time.

For example, one of the misleading articles used in the study was entitled “U.S. faces engineered famine as COVID lockdowns and vax mandates could lead to widespread hunger, unrest this winter.” When participants included “engineered famine”—a unique term specifically used by low-quality news sources—in their fact-check searches, 63 percent of these queries prompted unreliable results. In comparison, none of the search queries that excluded the word “engineered” returned misinformation.

“I was surprised by how many people were using this kind of naive search strategy,” says the study’s lead author Kevin Aslett, an assistant professor of computational social science at the University of Central Florida. “It’s really concerning to me.”

Search engines are often people’s first and most frequent pit stops on the Internet, says study co-author Zeve Sanderson, executive director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics. And it’s anecdotally well-established they play a role in manipulating public opinion and disseminating shoddy information, as exemplified by social scientist Safiya Noble’s research into how search algorithms have historically reinforced racist ideas. But while a bevy of scientific research has assessed the spread of misinformation across social media platforms, fewer quantitative assessments have focused on search engines.

The new study is novel for measuring just how much a search can shift users’ beliefs, says Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College. “I’m really glad to see someone quantitatively show what my recent qualitative research has suggested,” says Zimdars, who co-edited the book Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age. She adds that she’s conducted research interviews with many people who have noted that they frequently use search engines to vet information they see online and that doing so has made fringe ideas seem “more legitimate.”

“This study provides a lot of empirical evidence for what many of us have been theorizing,” says Francesca Tripodi, a sociologist and media scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. People often assume top results have been vetted, she says. And while tech companies such as Google have instituted efforts to rein in misinformation, things often still fall through the cracks. Problems especially arise in “data voids” when information is sparse for particular topics. Often those seeking to spread a particular message will purposefully take advantage of these data voids, coining terms likely to circumvent mainstream media sources and then repeating them across platforms until they become conspiracy buzzwords that lead to more misinformation, Tripodi says.

Google actively tries to combat this problem, a company spokesperson tells Scientific American. “At Google, we design our ranking systems to emphasize quality and not to expose people to harmful or misleading information that they are not looking for,” the Google representative says. “We also provide people tools that help them evaluate the credibility of sources.” For example, the company adds warnings on some search results when a breaking news topic is rapidly evolving and might not yet yield reliable results. The spokesperson further notes that several assessments have determined Google outcompetes other search engines when it comes to filtering out misinformation. Yet data voids pose an ongoing challenge to all search providers, they add.

That said, the new research has its own limitations. For one, the experimental setup means the study doesn’t capture people’s natural behavior when it comes to evaluating news says Danaë Metaxa, an assistant professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania. The study, they point out, didn’t give all participants the option of deciding whether to search, and people might have behaved differently if they were given a choice. Further, even the professional fact-checkers that contributed to the study were confused by some of the articles, says Joel Breakstone, director of Stanford University’s History Education Group, where he researches and develops digital literacy curriculums focused on combatting online misinformation. The fact-checkers didn’t always agree on how to categorize articles. And among stories for which more fact-checkers disagreed, searches also showed a stronger tendency to boost participants’ belief in misinformation. It’s possible that some of the study findings are simply the result of confusing information—not search results.

Yet the work still highlights a need for better digital literacy interventions, Breakstone says. Instead of just telling people to search, guidance on navigating online information should be much clearer about how to search and what to search for. Breakstone’s research has found that techniques such as lateral reading, where a person is encouraged to seek out information about a source, can reduce belief in misinformation. Avoiding the trap of terminology and diversifying search terms is an important strategy, too, Tripodi adds.

“Ultimately, we need a multipronged solution to misinformation—one that is much more contextual and spans politics, culture, people and technology,” Zimdars says. People are often drawn to misinformation because of their own lived experiences that foster suspicion in systems, such as negative interactions with health care providers, she adds. Beyond strategies for individual data literacy, tech companies and their online platforms, as well as government leaders, need to take steps to address the root causes of public mistrust and to lessen the flow of faux news. There is no single fix or perfect Google strategy poised to shut down misinformation. Instead the search continues.

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Reuters published an explosive investigative report Wednesday chronicling Tesla's alleged patterns of deliberate neglect and shifting blame onto customers for parts failures. The damning exposé accounts the Elon Musk-led company’s alleged long-running tendency to claim vehicle owners had engaged in “driver abuse,” charging them for repairs over failures caused by parts the company discussed internally as being flawed. The issues are often related to suspension and steering. Externally, Tesla’s portrayal of the problems has ranged from flat-out denial to partial acknowledgment.

Several accounts in the story document Tesla owners who were told their car's issues stemmed from prior damage or driver abuse. In some cases, they had just bought the vehicles:

One of the drivers Reuters interviewed, Shreyansh Jain, suffered a suspension collapse in a 2023 Tesla Model Y he had owned for less than 24 hours. When the automaker told him a lower control arm separating from the steering knuckle caused the failure, he expected Tesla to cover the repairs. A service rep who inspected the car said they found “no evidence of any external damage,” as revealed in a text message.

About a week later, Tesla sent a letter to Jain, skirting blame and citing “a prior external influenced damage to the front-right suspension” as the cause.

Jain said he was the only person to have driven the car on its first day of ownership, and he hadn’t had an accident before the suspension failed. “I was like, ‘Bloody hell, how can metal just snap like that when I know for sure the car has not hit anything?’” he said to Reuters. Three months later, the repairs were complete, and Jain paid a $1,250 deductible (with his insurance covering the rest). He says his rates then spiked dramatically on another car he owned.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk stands behind the Model Y at its 2019 unveiling. (Tesla)

Cincinnati surgeon Trace Curry paid $110,000 for a 2016 Tesla Model X. He replaced the SUV’s control arms twice, once covered by warranty and a second time at his expense. After the warranty ran out, Reuters reviewed invoices showing Curry paid around $10,000 for failed suspension and drive-axle parts. Then, in 2018, he replaced the front half shafts (under warranty); he replaced them again (at his own cost) for $1,500.

Reuters’ investigation suggests Tesla knew that many of the parts that required replacing in Curry's Model X — control arms, suspension and front half shafts — had high failure rates.

Andrew Lundeen was driving his wife’s 2018 Model 3 in August when the car’s power steering failed while driving over a speed bump. The Santa Rosa, California, resident told Reuters a Tesla service manager told him a power steering connector had corroded — and attributed it to a car wash, which the employee cited as a known problem.

Lundeed paid $4,400 out of pocket to replace the steering rack and a wiring harness, allegedly thanks to his bold decision to visit a car wash. “This is the only car I’ve ever heard of where a car wash can damage the wiring,” he told the Tesla manager. Lundeed described the employee as saying, “All I can tell you is we’re not a 100-year-old company like GM and Ford. We haven’t worked all the bugs out yet.”

The investigation also documents Tesla’s can-kicking and inconsistent responses to part recalls in different regions. For example, the company’s engineers identified the aft link, part of the suspension, as having snapped in several incidents while owners drove at low speeds (similar to Jain’s account). A former Tesla employee “with direct knowledge of the matter” told Reuters that between 2016 and 2020, Tesla “resolved” around 400 aft link complaints in China — either through in-warranty repairs or through “goodwill repairs” if they were out-of-warranty.

The Musk-led automaker delayed a recall for four years, only agreeing to one after Chinese regulators applied pressure. The country’s State Administration for Market Regulation described a “risk of accidents” as part of the rationalization.

However, despite global reports of failures, Tesla never recalled the part in the US and Europe. The company told US regulators the problems resulted from “driver abuse.” Reuters also viewed a 2019 “talking points” memo urging service centers to blame “vehicle misuse,” like “hitting a curb or other excessive strong impact,” as the culprit. “Abuse” and “misuse” are conditions in the Musk-led company’s contract, giving the automaker leeway to reject in-warranty repairs for incidents it labels as such.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been investigating Tesla since 2020 for the fore link (a suspension part) in Model S and X, and it began looking into power steering failures in the 2023 Model 3 and Model Y in July. Reuters’ nearly 5,000-word report is worth a read, especially if you’re a Tesla owner who has paid for repairs out of pocket. The NHTSA will likely find it an equally compelling read.

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Although Google struck the deal with state attorneys general in September, the settlement's terms weren't revealed until late Monday in documents filed in San Francisco federal court. The disclosure came a week after a federal court jury rebuked Google for deploying anticompetitive tactics in its Play Store for Android apps.

The settlement with the states includes $630 million to compensate U.S. consumers funneled into a payment processing system that state attorneys general alleged drove up the prices for digital transactions within apps downloaded from the Play Store. That store caters to the Android software that powers most of the world's smartphones.

Like Apple does in its iPhone app store, Google collects commissions ranging from 15% to 30% on in-app purchases — fees that state attorneys general contended drove prices higher than they would have been had there been an open market for payment processing. Those commissions generated billions of dollars in profit annually for Google, according to evidence presented in the recent trial focused on its Play Store.

Eligible consumers will receive at least $2, according to the settlement, and may get additional payments based on their spending on the Play store between Aug. 16, 2016 and Sept. 30, 2023. The estimated 102 million U.S. consumers who made in-app purchases during that time frame are supposed to be automatically notified about various options for how they can receive their cut of the money.

Another $70 million of the pre-trial settlement will cover the penalties and other costs that Google is being forced to pay to the states.

Although Google is forking over a sizeable sum, it's a fraction of the $10.5 billion in damages that the attorneys general estimated the company could be forced to pay if they had taken the case to trial instead of settling.

Google also agreed to make other changes designed to make it even easier for consumers to download and install Android apps from other outlets besides its Play Store for the next five years. It will refrain from issuing as many security warnings, or “scare screens," when alternative choices are being used.

The makers of Android apps will also gain more flexibility to offer alternative payment choices to consumers instead of having transactions automatically processed through the Play Store and its commission system. Apps will also be able to promote lower prices available to consumers who choose an alternate to the Play Store's payment processing.

Investors seemed unfazed by the settlement as shares in Google's corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., rose slightly in Tuesday's midday trading.

The settlement represents a “loud and clear message to Big Tech — attorneys general across the country are unified, and we are prepared to use the full weight of our collective authority to ensure free and fair access to the digital marketplace,” said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.

Wilson White, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, framed the deal as a positive for the company, despite the money and concessions it entails. The settlement “builds on Android’s choice and flexibility, maintains strong security protections, and retains Google’s ability to compete with other (software) makers, and invest in the Android ecosystem for users and developers,” White wrote in a blog post.

Although the state attorneys general hailed the settlement as a huge win for consumers, it didn't go far enough for Epic Games, which spearheaded the attack on Google's app store practices with an antitrust lawsuit filed in August 2020.

Epic, the maker of the popular Fortnite video game, rebuffed the settlement in September and instead chose to take its case to trial, even though it had already lost on most of its key claims in a similar trial targeting Apple and its iPhone app store in 2021.

The Apple trial, though, was decided by a federal judge instead of the jury that vindicated Epic with a unanimous verdict that Google had built anticompetitive barriers around the Play Store. Google has vowed to appeal the verdict.

Corie Wright, Epic's vice president of public policy, derided the states' settlement as little more than a one-time payout that provides “no true relief for consumers or developers," in a blog post.

In court documents, the attorneys general said they decided to settle because of significant risks posed by a trial, including the possibility that a jury may have thought their plan to seek $10.5 billion in damages was exorbitant. The attorneys general also cited for the potential of jurors becoming confused had their case been presented alongside Epic's claims in the trial, as had been the original plan.

But now the Epic trial's outcome nevertheless raises the specter of Google potentially being ordered to pay even more money as punishment for its past practices and making even more dramatic changes to its lucrative Android app ecosystem.

Those changes will be determined next year by U.S. District Judge James Donato, who presided over the Epic Games trial. Donato also still must approve Google's Play Store settlement with the states.

“In the next phase of the case, Epic will seek meaningful remedies to truly open up the Android ecosystem so consumers and developers will genuinely benefit from the competition that U.S. antitrust laws were designed to promote,” Wright pledged.

Google faces an even bigger legal threat in another antitrust case targeting its dominant search engine that serves as the centerpiece of a digital ad empire that generates more than $200 billion in sales annually. Closing arguments in a trial pitting Google against the Justice Department are scheduled for early May before a federal judge in Washington D.C.

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The move may be a sign that Musk is seeking to further expand his empire of influence beyond X, the massive communication platform he now runs, as well as the multiple other companies he owns and leads, his investments in artificial intelligence development and his engagement with world leaders.

Members of Musk’s inner circle — including Jared Birchall, who runs Musk’s family office — are named as leaders of The Foundation, a new school planning to teach “STEM subjects and other topics,” in an application to the Internal Revenue Service asking for tax-exempt status last year. Birchall is also a director of Musk’s own charitable arm, Musk Foundation. (Many of the world’s richest people use family offices to guide their investing.)

The IRS filing, dated October 2022, was obtained and posted publicly by Bloomberg, which first reported plans for the school on Wednesday. CNN was not able to independently confirm the authenticity of the filing.

However, in a letter posted publicly on the IRS website, the agency approved The Foundation’s tax-exempt status in March. Both the filing posted by Bloomberg and the IRS letter used the same employer identification number.

“The School is being designed to meet the educational needs of those with proven academic and scientific potential, who will thrive in a rigorous, project based curriculum,” the filing posted by Bloomberg states.

The school plans to initially enroll about 50 students and grow over time, according to the filing. It expects to be funded through donations and tuition fees, although it notes that the school will offer scholarships to support students who couldn’t otherwise afford to attend. The filing also noted that the group was in the process of hiring an executive director, as well as teaching and administrative staffers, and eventually plans to seek accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.

“The School intends ultimately to expand its operations to create a university dedicated to education at the highest levels,” according to the filing.

A spokesperson for Musk’s X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the billionaire about the new project.

Musk’s foray into education comes as he is increasingly under scrutiny for promoting conspiracy theories and fringe figures, including an antisemitic conspiracy theory, which he later apologized for, and the dangerous 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

It also comes as Austin emerges as a growing alternative education hub. The city is home to the University of Texas’ flagship Austin campus, as well as a start-up university called University of Austin, launched by a group including conservative journalist Bari Weiss, that’s aiming to combat perceived “illiberalism” at mainstream schools and plans to begin enrolling students next year.

Musk moved to Austin from California in 2020 — and Tesla’s headquarters moved with him a year later — after expressing frustration with California’s Covid-19 safety measures at the height of the pandemic.

Musk was involved in starting the Ad Astra school a decade ago at SpaceX’s California headquarters to educate his own young children and those of other employees, which has since expanded to an online education program, according to its website.

The billionaire has also previously discussed the possibility of starting a new university. In 2021, he tweeted that he was considering starting a school called the “Texas Institute of Technology & Science” — although it was unclear if the post was a joke given the raunchy potential acronym and a follow-up post that said the school would have “epic merch.”

The Foundation said in its filing said that it had raised around $100 million in contributions since mid-2022 for the new Austin school. The 2022 annual 990 tax filing for the Musk Foundation, also made public by Bloomberg, notes that the Musk charity donated $10 million in cash to the group that year, as well as nearly $90 million worth of Tesla stock.

Birchall is listed as the school’s president and trustee. Also involved in the school project are Ronald Gong and Teresa Holland of Catalyst Family Office, a group that provides accounting services to Musk’s charity, as well as Steven Chidester, a partner at the law firm Withers Bergman, which also works with the Musk Foundation, according to tax documents.

Chidester declined to comment on the plans for the school. Birchall and Gong’s Catalyst did not immediately return a request for comment.

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Researchers from Case Western Reserve University in the US have now pulled back the molecular curtain and figured out why insulin, the hormone that maintains stable blood sugar, often stops working at its full effect.

The principal investigator, Jonathan Stamler, is widely acclaimed for the discovery of S-nitrosylation, which is the process that turns nitric oxide (NO) into a ubiquitous messenger molecule capable of sharing information between cells. It's kind of like putting a stamp on a letter.

Nitric oxide is produced in almost all cell types and tissues, and it plays a crucial role in the functioning of the nervous system, the immune system, and in blood vessel dilation. What's more, dysregulation of S-nitrosylation is increasingly found to be associated with a number of health conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, sickle cell disease, and asthma.

Only recently, however, has NO been linked to aspects of the body's metabolism.

Stamler and his colleagues previously suspected that the role of NO is overlooked in some types of diabetes, and now, they have the evidence to support their hypothesis.

The team at Case Western Reserve has discovered a novel enzyme, called SCAN (SNO-CoA-assisted nitrosylase), that plays a role in S-nitrosylation. It helps attach NO to its target proteins, such as the receptors on insulin.

In humans and mice with resistance to insulin, SCAN activity appears to be heightened.

In mouse models of diabetes, Stamler and his colleagues found that when SCAN was inhibited, the animals did not show the classic symptoms.

Together, the findings suggest that type II diabetes may be driven by an overabundance of NO attaching to proteins like insulin. Any enzymes, like SCAN, that work to attach NO to its receptors could, therefore, be useful targets in future research.

Stamler hopes that by blocking the SCAN enzyme, scientists may find new treatments for at least some types of diabetes.

Type I diabetes, however, is caused by a sheer lack of insulin production, and this would probably require a different avenue of treatment.

"This paper shows that dedicated enzymes mediate the many effects of nitric oxide," explains Stamler.

"Here, we discover an enzyme that puts nitric oxide on the insulin receptor to control insulin. Too much enzyme activity causes diabetes. But a case is made for many enzymes putting nitric oxide on many proteins, and, thus, new treatments for many diseases."

The study was published in Cell.

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While the public health risk remains low, studies from Columbia University and in China suggest the subvariant is escaping many people's immunity and could lead to another wave of infections, reports CNN.

The Centers for Disease Control reports that JN.1 has already more than doubled in prevalence in the U.S. between late November and mid-December, and variant trackers say it'll only be a matter of weeks before JN.1 is the leading coronavirus variant in the world.

Several European countries, including Denmark, Spain, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, have seen exponential growth of the subvariant and rising hospitalizations along with it. Australia, Asia and Canada have also been experiencing a rapid increase in the JN.1, and scientists believe it could be connected to waning immunity.

Only about 18% of adults had received the latest COVID-19 vaccine as of Dec. 9, and the CDC is advocating for more vaccinations, urging doctors to emphasize to their patients that it's not too late in the season to still get vaccinated.

"Fewer people are getting the booster, and fewer people are getting Paxlovid," an antiviral which can reduce the risk of severe COVID symptoms, said Dr. Alex Greninger, assistant director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory at the University of Washington.

The World Health Organization (WHO) designated JN.1 as a variant of interest on Tuesday, due to its "rapidly increasing spread," but said there was a low additional health risk to the public.

Scientists have also noted that the spike in the new subvariant could be connected to heightened holiday travel.

"When I just look at the growth curve, it is rising quite sharply, and it seems to coincide with the Thanksgiving break in terms of timing," said Dr. Shishi Luo, who deals with infectious disease research for the genomic sequencing company Helix.

2023 New York Daily News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Dr. Regis Fernandes, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist, says fats that raise your bad cholesterol levels and increase your risk for heart disease are the ones to avoid.

"Saturated fat is a type of fat that solidifies in room temperature," says Dr. Fernandes.

Coconut oil is an example, so is palm oil.

"Saturated fat consumption is directly related to cholesterol levels in the blood," he says. "The higher the saturated fat intake, the higher will be the cholesterol level in the blood."

"There are two types of unsaturated fats that are considered healthy fats. We have the polyunsaturated fats, and you have the monounsaturated fats. And those two types of fats are considered the good fats because they do not raise the LDL cholesterol," says Dr. Fernandes.

LDL is low-density lipoprotein. That's the bad cholesterol. The opposite is high-density lipoprotein.

"HDL is considered a good cholesterol because it's measuring the amount of cholesterol that is removed from your arteries back to the liver," Dr. Fernandes says.

You'll find these good fats in olive oil, avocado oil, and soybean and vegetable oil.

Try these tips to reduce unhealthy fats in your diet:

• Use oil instead of butter. For example, saute with olive oil instead of butter, and use canola oil when baking.

• Eat fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, instead of meat at least twice a week.

• Choose lean meat and skinless poultry. Trim visible fat from meat. Remove fat and skin from poultry.

• Limit processed foods, which often contain saturated fat. Instead reach for whole fruits and vegetables when you're hungry.

2023 Mayo Clinic News Network. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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