The effects of climate change are making themselves known as this year hits new records of uncertainty. And these records are just the beginning if humanity doesn't change course.

1. Hottest month on record

This year saw a sweltering summer, with July 2023 being declared the hottest month on record, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). The month's average temperature was 62.51 degrees Fahrenheit, six-tenths of a degree higher than the previous record set in 2019, The Associated Press reported.

"These records have dire consequences for both people and the planet exposed to ever more frequent and intense extreme events," Copernicus Deputy Director Samantha Burgess told AP. The high temperatures are a combination of anthropogenic climate change as well as the El Niño weather phenomenon. "July's record is unlikely to remain isolated this year," as "temperatures are likely to be well above average," said C3S Director Carlo Buontempo.

"The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is more urgent than ever before," Petteri Taalas, a professor and the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said in a statement. "Climate action is not a luxury but a must."

2. Hottest ocean temperatures

Climate change has also caused unprecedented ocean warming. Along with global air temperatures, water temperatures also hit a record high, almost reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some locations. In the Florida Keys, the water temperature hit 101 degrees Fahrenheit, which could potentially be a new world record, The New York Times reported.

However, scientists expect that the record will likely be broken again. "The fact that we've seen the record now makes me nervous about how much warmer the ocean may get between now and next March," Copernicus' Burgess told BBC. This is because oceans absorb more heat than land does. "The more we burn fossil fuels, the more excess heat will be taken out by the oceans, which means the longer it will take to stabilize them and get them back to where they were."

The water heat is wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems, including coral reefs. "There is widespread coral bleaching at shallow reefs in Florida, and many corals have already died," Dr. Kathryn Lesneski of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told BBC. The ocean is the "most accurate thermometer we have for the actual effect of climate change because it's where most of the heat ends up," Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at nonprofit research institute Berkeley Earth, told the Times.

3. Lowest Antarctic ice cover

Winter in the Southern Hemisphere is when Antarctic ice is supposed to form. However, this year "growth has been stunted," and the amount of sea ice in the region is "hitting a record low by a wide margin," per The New York Times. "The Antarctic sea ice extent low in 2023 is unprecedented in the satellite record," Liping Zhang, a project scientist at the NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, wrote in an email to the Times.

The previous record low was from 2022, but this year the ice level is approximately 1.6 million square kilometers below last year, CNN reported. "The Antarctic system has always been highly variable," Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, told CNN. "This [current] level of variation, though, is so extreme that something radical has changed in the past two years, but especially this year, relative to all previous years going back at least 45 years."

The warmer ocean temperatures are likely mixing into Antarctic waters, preventing ice from forming. Melting ice is a key factor in sea level rise. Ice also serves to reflect back sunlight, helping to regulate global temperatures.

4. Passing 2-degree warming

The United Nations has consistently warned of the dangers of temperatures rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. However, we finally saw a real taste of this temperature. On Nov. 17, the planet briefly exceeded two degrees Celsius of warming, the upper maximum of warming cautioned by experts. While exceeding these temperatures by just one day doesn't mean that all is lost, "it's a striking reminder that the climate is moving into uncharted territory," The Washington Post.

Passing the threshold indicates a shifting baseline. "Our best estimate is that this was the first day when global temperature was more than 2°C above 1850-1900 (or pre-industrial) levels, at 2.06°C," Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. The breach acts as a "canary in the coal mine," Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading, told CNN. It is "entirely expected that single days will surpass 2 degrees above pre-industrial well before the actual 2 degrees Celsius target is breached over many years."

The temperature is testing the limits of ecosystems and infrastructure alike, putting pressure on power grids and making some regions deadly without access to air conditioners. “Global temperature records are being broken with alarming regularity,” Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, told The Atlantic. Curbing warming is critical. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise every year and further warming is pushing the planet to several tipping points.

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• It could help save thousands of lives every year, with the difficulty in diagnosing pancreatic cancer making it one of the deadliest cancers

An artificial intelligence tool developed by Chinese scientists has led to a breakthrough in early-stage screening of one of the most fatal cancers.

Pancreatic cancer, often called the “king of cancers”, has an average five-year survival rate of less than 10 per cent. It killed Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011, and more recently, it was the cause of death last month of Wu Zunyou, chief scientist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

One of the main reasons pancreatic cancer has such a high death rate is the difficulty in early detection. It is rarely found in its early stages, when the chance of curing it is at its greatest. That is because it often does not cause symptoms until it has spread to other organs, according to the Mayo Clinic.

But the early screening model, developed jointly by AI scientists from tech firm Alibaba Group’s DAMO Academy and clinical researchers from hospitals including the Shanghai Institution of Pancreatic Diseases, has shown promising results. Alibaba is the owner of the South China Morning Post.

The model combines a non-contrast computed tomography (CAT) scan with an AI algorithm. In a paper published by the peer-reviewed journal Nature Medicine on Monday, the team said the specificity of the early screening model reached 99.9 per cent, implying there is only one false-positive case in every 1,000 tests.

Meanwhile, its sensitivity, or ability to detect pancreatic tumours, could reach 92.9 per cent, beating mean radiologist performance by 34.1 per cent.

One of the paper’s reviewers, Li Ruijiang, an associate professor of radiation oncology at the Stanford School of Medicine, said the work represented “an important step in the right direction for pancreatic cancer screening”.

Yet AI-based imaging applications have not been granted approval by Chinese authorities, according to a doctor from the Cancer Hospital at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences who declined to be named. So despite its impressive initial results, there is still a long way to go before the technology could be used in clinical practice.

The early screening model developed by the team is tailored for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common subtype of pancreatic cancer, which accounts for over 95 per cent of all cases. PDAC causes around 466,000 deaths per year worldwide.

In the United States, pancreatic cancer is now the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths for both men and women, and trends indicate that it will be the second leading cause of cancer death in the country by 2030.

Research published in April by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which looked at trends in age-standardised cancer incidence, survival and mortality rates between 2000 and 2019, found that death rates from pancreatic cancer have been steadily increasing – 0.2 per cent every year from 2006 to 2019.

Early or incidental detection can significantly improve a patient’s chance of survival. Studies have shown that high-risk patients who had PDAC detected in early screening have a median overall survival of 9.8 years, while those with late diagnoses have a median survival of 1.5 years.

However, there is a lack of effective and easily accessible screening technology for the general population.

With the prevalence of pancreatic cancer relatively low – there are fewer than 13 cases per 100,000 – the use of expensive contrast-enhanced CAT scans across the general population is uneconomic.

“On the other hand, existing early screening tools for pancreatic cancer are generally poor in accuracy, leading to many cases of misdiagnosis and unnecessary panic,” said lead author Cao Kai from the Shanghai Institution of Pancreatic Diseases in an interview with mainland media website Zhishifenzi.

It was during a conversation last year between Cao and Lu Le, the leader of DAMO Academy’s medical team, that they came up with the idea of using AI to assist in early cancer screening.

The pair quickly took action and, together with more than 10 prestigious medical institutions, they initiated a research project aimed at developing a technology that would combine non-contrast CAT scans, which are widely used in medical facilities and hospitals, with AI to create a model suitable for large-scale pancreatic cancer screening.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer, which is notoriously difficult to detect. Photo: AP

Their brainchild was an algorithm for “pancreatic cancer detection with artificial intelligence” – known as PANDA. It was trained based on more than 3,200 image sets from a high-volume pancreatic cancer institution in China, about 70 per cent of which stemmed from patients with a pancreatic lesion.

Thanks to the large data set, meticulous data processing and innovative training strategy design, PANDA was trained as a highly perceptive AI imaging expert.

Researchers at DAMO Academy discovered that subtle density differences in non-contrast CAT scans, which may be difficult to detect with the naked eye, can be picked up by AI.

When applying PANDA to real-world clinical scenarios involving 20,530 patients to validate its accuracy, the researchers found that the AI tool could achieve impressive sensitivity of up to 92.9 per cent and a specificity of 99.9 per cent.

According to information provided by Alibaba Cloud, the PANDA model has been used more than 500,000 times in settings including hospitals and medical examinations, and has detected multiple cases of early-stage pancreatic cancer that were previously missed.

“The accuracy metrics of the PANDA algorithm are superior to those of several acknowledged screening methods,” German clinical expert Joerg Kleeff and his colleague wrote in a comment piece published in the same Nature issue.

However, they also warned that further assessment was needed before the AI-based screening could become widespread practice.

They pointed out that any potential screening method for pancreatic cancer should detect early stages such as “T1 lesions”, which are smaller than 2cm (0.79 inches) in diameter, but the AI model from China did not report specificity and predictive values for this subgroup.

“The value of any screening method for cancer lies in reducing all-cause mortality. The study was of retrospective design and so could not assess the effect of screening on the mortality of included patients,” they said, adding that AI-based screening should be evaluated with the same rigour as conventional screening.

“This AI model is still at the early stage and warrants more validation efforts,” the doctor at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences said. He added that given the low prevalence of pancreatic cancer, the demand for this AI tool would be limited.

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Tuesday, 28 November

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 4:00 - 8:31 a.m. UTC
• Where: Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral, Florida, US
• Why: SpaceX will be sending 23 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, this group of satellites is known as Starlink Group 6-30. Under this designation you can view these satellites from Earth using various satellite tracking apps.

Wednesday, 29 November

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 6:04 - 7:18 p.m. UTC
• Where: Vandenberg AFB Space Launch Complex 4, California, US
• Why: SpaceX will be launching the EO/IR 1 satellite to orbit for South Korea. It is part of the 425 Project reconnaissance satellite project and is the electro-optical / infra-red component. Ireland is also hitching a ride as its EIRSat 1 will fly as a secondary payload.

Friday, 1 December

• Who: Galactic Energy
• What: Ceres 1
• When: Unknown
• Where: Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre
• Why: Not much is known about the mission other than that it’s called “We won’t stop!” and that EllipSpace’s Xingchi 2A/B satellites are the payload.

• Who: Orbital ATK (Northrop Grumman)
• What: Minotaur IV rocket
• When: Unknown
• Where: Vandenberg AFB Space Launch Complex 8, California, US
• Why: This rocket will launch the NROL-174 mission for the US National Reconnaissance Office. Details of the mission aren’t available as the payload is classified.

• Who: Roscosmos
• What: Soyuz 2.1a
• When: 9:25 a.m. UTC
• Where: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
• Why: This mission is the 86th Progress cargo mission to the International Space Station. Resupply missions like this usually include scientific experiments and supplies for the crew.

Recap

• The first mission last week saw SpaceX launch a Falcon 9 carrying 22 Starlink satellites. This was Starlink Group 7-7.

• Next up, SpaceX launched Starlink Group 6-29.

• We didn’t write about this next launch in the last TWIRL edition, probably because North Korea is so secretive but the country did launch its Chollima-1 rocket carrying the Malligyong-1 satellite this week from the Sohae Satellite Launching station. According to officials in the country, the reconnaissance satellite entered into orbit 705 seconds after launch.

• Lastly, China launched a Long March 2D rocket carrying the Satellite Internet Technology Test Satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan Province. The satellite entered its planned orbit successfully and will be used to test satellite internet technologies.

That's all for this week, check in next time!

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China’s hospitals have been flooded with cases of respiratory illnesses and sick children complaining of pneumonia-like symptoms, leading to increased scrutiny from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

A Beijing children’s hospital told state media CCTV that at least 7,000 patients were being admitted daily to the institution, far exceeding its capacity.

Last week, the largest paediatric hospital in nearby Tianjin reportedly received more than 13,000 children at its outpatient and emergency departments.

Liaoning province, about 690km northeast of the capital, is also grappling with high case numbers.

The increasing number of cases prompted the WHO on Wednesday to issue a formal request for disease data on the respiratory illnesses and reported clusters of pneumonia in children.

It is rare for the UN health agency to publicly seek more detailed information from countries, as such requests are typically made internally. The agency’s China office said this was a “routine” request.

Chinese health authorities later said they found no “unusual or novel diseases”.

They said the rising infections are a mix of already known viruses and are linked to the country’s first full cold season after strict Covid restrictions were lifted last December.

The lifting of the curbs, along with the circulation of known pathogens like mycoplasma pneumoniae, may have contributed to increasing cases of such illnesses, suggested the authorities.

The WHO also said on Wednesday that any link between clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia and a rise in respiratory infections is unclear as of now.

What has happened so far?

Northern China has reported an increase in “influenza-like illnesses” since mid-October, compared to the same period in the previous three years, according to the WHO.

On 21 November, public disease surveillance system ProMED had issued a notification about reports of “undiagnosed pneumonia”. ProMED, that is run by health experts, had earlier in 2019 raised the alarm over the virus that causes Covid.

“With the outbreak of pneumonia in China, children’s hospitals in Beijing, Liaoning and other places were overwhelmed with sick children, and schools and classes were on the verge of suspension,” ProMED said while citing a report by FTV News.

“It is not at all clear when this outbreak started as it would be unusual for so many children to be affected so quickly.

“This report suggests a widespread outbreak of an undiagnosed respiratory illness in several areas in China as Beijing and Liaoning are almost 800 km apart.

“The report does not say that any adults were affected suggesting some exposure at the schools.”

Some parents in Shanghai on Friday said they were not overly concerned about the wave of sickness.

“Colds happen all over the world,” said Emily Wu outside a children’s hospital. “I hope that people will not be biased because of the pandemic... but look at this from a scientific perspective.”

What are the symptoms?

According to Chinese health authorities, the outbreak could be linked to mycoplasma pneumoniae, also known as “walking pneumonia”, a common bacterial infection typically affecting children that has been circulating since May.

Symptoms of walking pneumonia include a sore throat, fatigue and a lingering cough that can last for weeks or months. In severe cases, this can eventually deteriorate into pneumonia.

A Beijing citizen, identified only as Wei, told FTV News that infected children “don’t cough and have no symptoms. They just have a high temperature (fever) and many develop pulmonary nodules.”

How infectious is the disease?

Bruce Thompson, head of the Melbourne School of Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne, told Reuters very preliminary data suggested there was nothing out of the ordinary.

“At this stage, there is nothing to suggest that it may be a new variant of Covid,” he said.

“One thing to note is that we can be reassured that the surveillance processes are working, which is a very good thing.”

The WHO suggested people in China get vaccinated, isolate if they are feeling ill, wear masks if necessary and get medical care as needed.

“While WHO seeks this additional information, we recommend that people in China follow measures to reduce the risk of respiratory illness,” the agency said.

What are scientists saying?

Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist who advised the WHO on Covid, said there needs to be “more information, particularly diagnostic information”.

“We have to be careful.”

“The challenge is to discern the outbreaks and determine the cause,” said David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He pointed out that there was a likely background of seasonal respiratory infections.

“I am not going to push the pandemic panic button on the basis of what we know so far, but I will be very keen to see the response to WHO from China and see the WHO’s assessment following that,” said Brian McCloskey, a public health expert who also advised the WHO on the pandemic.

“What we are seeing is WHO’s International Health Regulations system in action”, he said, referring to the rules governing how countries work with the WHO on potential outbreaks.

Virologist Tom Peacock from Imperial College London said it was unlikely the increasing infections happened under the radar as there are tools now to “pretty rapidly” pick up emerging influenza or coronaviruses.

“(I) suspect it may end up being something more mundane or a combination of things – say Covid, flu, RSV [respiratory syncytial virus] – but hopefully we’ll know more soon,” he said.

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A recent quantitative meta-analysis, published in the Psychological Bulletin, concludes that those who suffer from mental disorders are more likely to find themselves in stressful situations of their own making.

The team, co-led by Angela Santee, a psychology graduate student at the University of Rochester, and Katerina Rnic, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, looked at 95 longitudinal studies, spanning over 38,000 study participants, and more than 30 years of research.

They found that psychopathology—such as mental illness or disorders, including depression—predicted dependent stressful life events (events that the person, at least in part, contributed to) more strongly than it predicted independent or fateful events.

The stress generation model

The meta-analysis bore out the stress generation model, developed in 1991 by University of California, Los Angeles, psychology professor Constance Hammen. According to the model, some people contribute more than others to the occurrence of dependent stressors—that is stressful life events that occur, at least in part, due to a person’s behavior or personal characteristics—such as relationship breakups, failing a class, or job loss because of conflict with a coworker. Conversely, according to the model, people do not influence independent stressors like fateful events that occur regardless of a person’s influence—such as the death of a loved one, or job loss due to an economic downturn.

While Hammen’s model had spawned plenty of research over the past three decades, the resulting literature had never been quantitatively summarized before.

“People with depression might be more likely to have arguments with others, or put off completing important tasks at work or home,” says Rnic. “This can lead to more stressors in their relationships, work, education, finances, health—all domains of life.”

Importantly, though, the team found that the theory of stress generation not only holds for people with depression but also across many other mental health disorders, such as anxiety, personality disorders, substance use, and childhood disruptive disorders.

The finding is crucial, the team argues, because it means that people have some agency over the stress they experience. To Santee, this degree of stress malleability could be a silver lining:

“It’s a powerful realization that some of the stressors we experience are within our control and so, theoretically, we can act to control how much stress we experience and the impact of that stress on us,” Santee says. “We all have the ability to shape our worlds.”

The meta-review’s findings include:

• There’s clear evidence of stress generation across a broad range of psychopathologies, with a significantly larger effect for dependent stress (caused by the person), rather than independent stress (fateful outside events).

• Stress generation effects were larger for people with depression than people with anxiety.

• While stress generation occurs across all mental disorders and demographic groups, the effects were strongest among children, adolescents, and young adults.

• The team found no differences in stress generation by gender, race, or geographic location, which indicates a universal phenomenon.

• Over time, dependent stress (caused by the person) worsened a person’s mental illness symptoms, possibly contributing to chronic psychopathology, such as chronic depression.

• Interventions seeking to prevent stress generation may lessen chronic psychopathology.

• Importantly, the new meta-analysis offers strong evidence that stress generation seems to act as a factor that maintains and feeds a person’s depression.

“This finding is crucial because the major reason that depression is such a burden on society is that it’s a recurrent and often chronic problem,” says Lisa Starr, a senior coauthor of the meta-analysis, an associate professor in the University of Rochester’s psychology department, and Santee’s advisor.

How can someone break this cycle?

Being able to target the self-perpetuating stress generation with specific interventions can lessen a person’s mental illness or psychological disorder. That’s why the researchers embarked on a second undertaking: trying to isolate the specific processes that contribute to, or protect against, the occurrence of life stress. Treatments that target stress generation could reduce “the personal and economic cost of mental disorders,” the team writes.

The result is a second meta-analysis, published in Clinical Psychology Review, which looked at both modifiable risk and protective factors in stress generation, incorporating the findings of 70 studies with a total of nearly 40,000 participants, and spanning more than 30 years of research.

Risk factors that predict stress generation over time are:

• Personal characteristics, traits, and behaviors commonly associated with mental disorders

• Ineffective interpersonal emotion regulation, such as excessively seeking reassurance from others or excessive co-rumination—that is, conversations with others that focus repetitively on one’s own stresses

• Repetitive negative thoughts, including excessive ruminating and worrying

• Excessive standards for oneself

• The tendency to withdraw or avoid challenging situations or social interactions

Addressing these risk factors in treatment approaches, the authors argue, may be crucial to breaking the vicious cycle of stress generation.

Because a plethora of factors contribute to the generation of stress, a multi-pronged approach may be most effective. The team also found that preventive factors remained generally understudied.

Additional coauthors of the two meta-analyses are from the University of Rochester; the University of British Columbia; and the University of Western Ontario.

Source: University of Rochester

Original Study DOI: 10.1037/bul0000390

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• OpenAI was ‘working on model so powerful it alarmed staff’

The OpenAI farce has moved at such speed in the past week that it is easy to forget that nobody has yet said in clear terms why Sam Altman – the returning chief executive and all-round genius, according to his vocal fanclub – was fired in the first place. Since we are constantly told, not least by Altman himself, that the worst outcome from the adoption of artificial general intelligence could be “lights out for all of us”, somebody needs to find a voice here.

If the old board judged, for example, that Altman was unfit for the job because he was taking OpenAI down a reckless path, lights-wise, there would plainly be an obligation to speak up. Or, if the fear is unfounded, the architects of the failed boardroom coup could do everybody a favour and say so. Saying nothing useful, especially when your previous stance has been that transparency and safety go hand in hand, is indefensible.

The original non-explanation from OpenAI was that Altman had to go because he had not been “consistently candid” with other directors. Not fully candid about what? A benign (sort of) interpretation is that the row was about the amount of time Altman was devoting to other business interests, including a reported computer chip venture. If that is correct, outsiders might indeed be relaxed: it is normal for other board members to worry about whether the boss is sufficiently focused on the day job.

Yet the whole purpose of OpenAI’s weird governance setup was to ensure safe development of the technology. For all its faults, the structure was intended to put the board of the controlling not-for-profit entity in change. Safety came first; the interests of the profit-seeking subsidiary were secondary. Here’s Altman’s own description, from February this year: “We have a nonprofit that governs us and lets us operate for the good of humanity (and can override any for-profit interests), including letting us do things like cancel our equity obligations to shareholders if needed for safety.”

The not-for-profit board, then, could close the whole show if it thought that was the responsible course. In principle, sacking the chief executive would merely count as a minor exercise of such absolute authority.

The chances of such arrangements working in practice were laughably slim, of course, especially when there was a whiff of an $86bn valuation in the air. You can’t take a few billion dollars from Microsoft, in exchange for a 49% stake in the profit-seeking operation, and expect it not to seek to protect its investment in a crisis. And if most of the staff – some of the world’s most in-demand workers – rise in rebellion and threaten to hop off to Microsoft en masse, you’ve lost.

Yet the precise reason for sacking Altman still matters. There were only four members of the board apart from him. One was the chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, who subsequently performed a U-turn that he didn’t explain. Another is Adam D’Angelo, chief executive of the question-and-answer site Quora, who, bizarrely, intends to transition seamlessly from the board that sacked Altman to the one that hires him back. Really?

That leaves the two departed women: Tasha McCauley, a tech entrepreneur, and Helen Toner, a director at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. What do they think? Virtually the only comment from either has been Toner’s whimsical post on X after the rehiring of Altman: “And now, we all get some sleep.”

Do we, though? AI could pose a risk to humanity on the scale of a nuclear war, Rishi Sunak warned the other week, echoing the general assessment. If the leading firm can’t even explain the explosion in its own boardroom, why are outsiders meant to be chilled? In the latest twist, Reuters reported on Thursday that researchers at OpenAI were so concerned about the dangers posed by the latest AI model that they wrote to the board. Those directors have some explaining to do – urgently.

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Artist’s illustration of extensive air showers induced by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Credit: Toshihiro Fujii/L-INSIGHT/Kyoto University

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Quote

Windows Refund Day - When Linux Users Demanded Their Money Back - YouTube

In the 1990s, Linux users who do not use Windows complained that Microsoft pre-installed Windows on commercial PCs and included the license fee in the price of the PC.Michael MJD, a YouTube channel that deals with information on old PCs, has posted a video from the "Windows Refund Day," a demonstration held to demand a refund of the license fee from Microsoft, with commentary.Windows Refund Day" was a massive demonstration on February 15, 1999, in front of Microsoft's headquarters by some users demanding a refund of their Windows license fees.

In 1999, most PCs came with Windows 98 pre-installed, and since the price of the PC included the Windows license fee, users who wanted to use an OS other than Windows, such as Linux, had to pay for a Windows license fee that they did not use. Although the Windows license agreement stated that refunds could be made by contacting the PC manufacturer, few PC manufacturers actually agreed to the refunds.

In 1999, a Linux user group called "Silicon Valley Linux User Group" led a march to Microsoft's headquarters.

A Linux user group called "Silicon Valley Linux User Group" led a protest to Microsoft's headquarters.

Windows 98 manual

"The back of the T-shirts worn by the participants is printed with the mascot of Linux, which is a penguin called Tux."

 "Over 150 people joined the protest, and it made national news in the United States."

http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/dear-valued-customer.html

A Microsoft spokesman commented to the press, "I think this protest is a PR activity to raise the interest of some Linux fans in Linux," indicating that refunds should be made by the PC makers.

A member of the Silicon Valley Linux User Group, frustrated by this attitude of Microsoft, was about to get into Microsoft's headquarters. However,

the elevator was set to not stop at the 9th floor where the headquarters office is located, so the members could not get into Microsoft after all.

Source : http://marc.merlins.org/linux/refundday/

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We're four full days into the OpenAI fiasco, and it still hasn't been made clear about what happened or why Sam Altman was fired. After the Friday events, Microsoft stepped in Monday to offer Altman and Greg Brockman a job at Microsoft to work on AI research. Then, a few hours later - Ilya Sutsever, believed to be one of the instigators, came out to say that he regretted his decision.

And shortly after that, the entire OpenAI team made an ultimatum to the board - "either resign, or we will leave". The letter that the OpenAI employees prepared initially had 500 signatures (out of 700~ employees), and recent reports say that that number is almost 100% now.

This is arguably the most shocking news story of the year (OpenAI leading the pack two years in row!), so naturally there is a lot of debate, speculation and arguments being presented. However, we still don't know for certain what is going on. Since the letter was proposed to the board, there has been no response from anyone at the OpenAI team. Bloomberg reports that some investors are considering lawsuits to make the situation right (whatever that means).

Not only that, it's gotten to the point where other CEOs are openly proposing offers to existing OpenAI employees. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, posted on X earlier:

And things will progressively get worse for however long this keeps dragging on. The interim CEO, Emmett Shear, has not publicly commented on rectifying the situation since being appointed.

But this isn't just about OpenAI, the company.

This is also about the people and, more importantly, the 2 million developers who use the OpenAI API. Whether for personal purposes or business. There has been an enormous amount of self-made people on Twitter, Discord, and other social media platforms worrying that the world is about to come crashing down on the dreams that OpenAI has enabled them to accomplish.

"We have all the rights and all the capability."

As the situation continues to unfold, Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, did some public speaking on the matter. Nadella spoke with Kara Swisher on Spotify, addressing several key points relevant to the current crisis.

Nadella emphasized Microsoft's deep involvement in AI development alongside OpenAI. Despite the upheaval, he reassured that Microsoft retains "all the rights and all the capability" necessary for AI innovation. This statement suggests a robust backup plan, ensuring the continuity of services and technologies developed in partnership with OpenAI.

Microsoft's investment in OpenAI, as Nadella highlighted, is not just financial but also includes significant contributions in terms of computing resources. This investment grants Microsoft substantial rights and a strong position in any future developments, regardless of OpenAI's internal changes.

The interview also touched on the potential absorption of OpenAI talent into Microsoft. As highlighted earlier, over 600 OpenAI employees are considering leaving unless the board resigns, Microsoft appears ready to welcome these AI experts, potentially under the leadership of Sam Altman in a newly formed advanced AI research team within Microsoft.

For the 2 million developers using OpenAI's API and the wider AI community, Nadella's statements offer reassurance. Microsoft's commitment and capability to continue AI development could mean stability and continuity for those relying on OpenAI's technologies.

While the OpenAI board and leadership crisis remains unresolved, Nadella's interview indicates that Microsoft is poised to play a crucial role in shaping the future of AI, potentially absorbing OpenAI's mission and talent into its own expansive ecosystem. This development could significantly influence the trajectory of AI research and application in the coming years.

The actual contract Microsoft has with OpenAI is not publicly available

As per this WSJ report back in June, the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI is both highly impactful and complex, marked by mutual benefits and underlying tensions. While Microsoft's significant investment has afforded it early access to every product that OpenAI develops, the company deliberately kept its stake at 49%, likely to sidestep antitrust concerns.

Internally, this partnership has not been without its challenges. Microsoft has faced internal criticisms over decreased investment in its in-house AI development and limited access to the core aspects of OpenAI's technology for most of its employees. Despite the significant investment and collaboration, most Microsoft employees interact with OpenAI’s technology as they would with any external vendor, with only a select few teams having deeper access.

This is yet another hint that Microsoft does have access the internal code of OpenAI's models, and if worst comes to worst - it is without a doubt that Microsoft could find a legal means to retain that code should OpenAI be unable to rectify its current predicament.

This is still a developing story... see you in the next one.

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Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella decided to make himself open to questions from business media outlets. In a video interview with Bloomberg, reporter Emily Chang asked Nadella directly if Altman told him he wanted to return to OpenAI, but he did not give a direct answer:

We really want to partner with OpenAI and we want to partner with Sam. And so In respect of where Sam is, he is working with Microsoft, and that is the case on Friday and that is the case today, and I absolutely believe that will be the case tomorrow.

When asked in an interview with CNBC whether it was clear or not if Altman was going back to OpenAI and if all those employees might join him or join Microsoft, Nadella also punted on that subject:

That is for, you know, OpenAI board and management and the employees to choose. I think at this point for me, I just want in this moment, what is it that I care about? I care about just making sure that we can continue to innovate and, as I said, I feel very, very confident, quite frankly, Microsoft has all the capability to just do that on our own. But we chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI and we want to continue to do so and obviously that depends on the people of OpenAI and staying there or coming to Microsoft so I'm open to both options.

Nadella also stated in the Bloomberg interview he was not aware of any wrongdoing by Altman that would have caused the OpenAI board to fire him on Friday.

The latest on this situation comes from Bloomberg, which reports that in a memo sent to OpenAI employees, the company's global affairs VP Anna Makanju stated that the remaining board members, and its current interim CEO Emmett Shear are still in some kind of talks with Altman. Those talks are supposed to continue later today.

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• The board provided little notice to its shareholders and even big investors like Microsoft.

• Yahoo's CEO said OpenAI's "crazy governance model" is to blame for Altman's abrupt removal from the firm.

OpenAI's board ousted its high-profile CEO and the man behind its chatbot superstar ChatGPT, Sam Altman on Friday, in a move that shocked its investors and the tech industry as a whole.

OpenAI's board announced Friday that Altman is out saying it "no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." 

The board did not notify its investors of this decision in advance, including Microsoft which invested over $10 billion into the AI firm and even owns as much as 49% of it, according to some reports. 

The board consisted of six people including OpenAI's president and cofounder Greg Brockman, OpenAI's chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Adam D'Angelo, Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner and Sam Altman himself. 

Altman and Brockman were not privy to the decision beforehand, raising concerns about why and how a leading tech figure was pushed out of a company he cofounded so effortlessly. 

John Bates, a British tech entrepreneur and former fellow at Cambridge University, told Business Insider that CEOs are often "working at the pleasure of the board of directors." 

"It's part of the board's job, hiring and firing CEOs, whether it's a public company, private company, or whatever." 

He pointed out that even CEOs are "at-will employees," at US companies, but that OpenAI's board "behaved like a bunch of kids" and "erratically" in this instance.

"I don't think there's anything wrong in principle with boards firing CEOs," he said. "That's a good and necessary thing. We have to have that because we don't want dictators who can't be removed if they behave badly. It's just, in this case, the system's gone wrong because the board have not communicated what they've done, they've not thought of the shareholders, they've not thought of the staff." 

Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella said on Kara Swisher's podcast on Monday that the tech giant should have been "consulted" before Altman was ousted because of its investment in the company. It's the "very least," they could have done, he said.

"They have the right to do this, but that board's behaved very oddly because the first thing you do is socialize this with your shareholders," Bates told BI.

"You have a responsibility. They may not feel the need to do that but maybe they're just an immature board." 

He added: "This is one of the most important companies in the world. It's doing amazing things. It has a $13 billion investment from Microsoft and to behave so naively in front of the world, I think really hits the credibility of that company."

Yahoo's former CEO Marissa Mayer agrees with this view and said on X — formerly Twitter — that OpenAI's "crazy governance model," is what enabled Altman to be pushed out. Mayer added that its board members were "broken and underadvised." 

It partly comes down to OpenAI's atypical structure 

OpenAI was founded as non-profit company in 2015 to build artificial intelligence in a way that is responsible and beneficial for the public. It then created a capped-profit company OpenAI LP in 2019 to raise investments while limiting the profits made. It received a huge $1 billion investment from Microsoft at the time. 

Most of OpenAI's board members don't own shares in the company, including Sam Altman himself who chose not to take any equity in, which ultimately limited his power and influence. A simple majority vote from board members was all it would take to get rid of him.

This stands in great contrast to companies like Google and Meta. For example, Mark Zuckerberg is virtually unfireable because Meta has a dual-class structure. This means that the company has two types of stocks which provides different voting rights to shareholders. 

Zuckerberg holds a type of stock that gives him greater voting rights and decision-making powers at the company than any other shareholder, making him almost untouchable, BI previously reported. 

Bates said Altman's decision to forego equity was "strange" but he may have been "inspired by the goal of changing the world." 

"To young people, what's increasingly more important is solving climate change, helping the world, helping people, that's all more important than money."

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Referring to the cultural similarities between Iran and India, the UT president emphasized the need to develop scientific, academic, economic and political relations between the two countries.

"The University of Tehran is developing international cooperation with considering neighboring countries that share common viewpoints with the Islamic Republic of Iran as a priority," Moqimi said, adding that, "In this regard, we have started activities to set up Tehran University branch in Iraq and we have made agreements with Iraqi governmental and non-governmental sectors in order to set up Tehran University branch in different cities of Iraq."

The UT President of Tehran University further stated that holy Najaf is the first city targeted in Iraq for the establishment of the first branch of  the University in the neighboring country, adding that, "In Syria, we have also started a joint cooperation with Damascus University in order to establish a branch of Tehran University in that country. Also, at the Georgia branch of Tehran University, we are going to enroll students from February 2024."

Referring to the experience of holding seven meetings of presidents of major Iranian and Russian universities in Tehran and Moscow, he announced the planning to create the same experience between the major universities of Iran and China, with the two universities of Tehran and Nanjing at the center of the activities, and by proposing to hold a meeting of presidents of universities between Iran and India.

"I suggest that a joint university parliament be formed between major universities of Iran and India, its secretariat should be located in Tehran University," Moqimi added.

The ambassador of India Shresth, for his part, welcomed the suggestion to establish the branch of Tehran University in India, and considered the idea of the president of Tehran University to establish a joint university parliament between India and Iran as a promising idea for progress in bilateral cooperation.

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The study, "Deep learning and single-cell phenotyping for rapid antimicrobial susceptibility detection in Escherichia coli," has been published in Communications Biology.

In their study, the team used a combination of fluorescence microscopy and artificial intelligence (AI) to detect antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This method relies on training deep-learning models to analyze bacterial cell images and detect structural changes that may occur in cells when they are treated with antibiotics. The method was shown to be effective across multiple antibiotics, achieving at least 80% accuracy on a per-cell basis.

The researchers say their model could be used to identify whether cells in clinical samples are resistant to a range of a wide variety of antibiotics in the future.

Co-author of the paper Achillefs Kapanidis, Professor of Biological Physics and Director of the Oxford Martin Program on Antimicrobial Resistance Testing, said, "Antibiotics that stop the growth of bacterial cells also change how cells look under a microscope, and affect cellular structures such as the bacterial chromosome. Our AI-based approach detects such changes reliably and rapidly. Equally, if a cell is resistant, the changes we selected are absent, and this forms the basis for detecting antibiotic resistance."

The researchers tested their method on a range of clinical isolates of E. coli, each with varying levels of resistance to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin.

The deep-learning models were able to detect antibiotic resistance reliably and at least 10 times faster than established state-of-the art clinical methods considered to be gold standard.

The team hopes to continue developing their method so that it becomes faster and more scalable for clinical use, as well as adapting its usage for different types of bacteria and antibiotics.

According to the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project—a partnership involving the University—almost 1.3 million people died in 2019 due to AMR.

Current testing methods rely on growing bacterial colonies in the presence of antibiotics. However, such tests are slow, often requiring several days to understand how resistant bacteria are to a range of antibiotics.

This can be problematic when patients have potentially life-threatening infections, such as sepsis, requiring urgent treatment. This usually forces doctors to either prescribe specific antibiotics based on their clinical experience or a cocktail of antibiotics known to be effective across multiple bacterial infections.

However, if ineffective antibiotics are prescribed the patients' infections may get worse and they will need to be treated with more antibiotics. One potential outcome of this is increased AMR to antibiotics in the community.

The researchers say that if developed further, the rapid nature of their method may facilitate targeted antibiotic treatments—helping to decrease treatment times, minimize side effects, and ultimately slow down the rise of AMR.

Co-author of the paper Aleksander Zagajewski, doctoral student with the University's Department of Physics, said, "Time is beginning to run out for our antibiotic arsenal; we are hoping our novel diagnostics will pave the way for a new generation of precision treatments for the most sick patients."

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• Some of them say they are on work-dependent visas, which they could lose if they are forced to quit.

• It's a sign of how much loyalty Altman has inspired among staff.

OpenAI's employees are calling on the company's board to bring back Sam Altman — and some are even willing to put their visas at risk to get him back as CEO.

A number of OpenAI employees say they have signed a letter threatening to quit if Sam Altman is not brought back as CEO despite being on work-related visas, meaning they could lose the right to remain in the US should they resign.

As of Monday evening, over 700 of OpenAI's 770 employees had signed the letter threatening to quit and join Altman at Microsoft if the AI startup's board does not reinstate him as CEO and resign.

That includes senior figures such as CTO Mira Murati and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever — who had a change of heart after initially backing the board coup against Altman.

"I am on an H-1B, in the process of getting my green card and relocating my family to the US," said OpenAI technical staffer Reiichiro Nakano in a post on X.

"Me and many other colleagues in a similar situation have signed this letter. I do not know what will happen next, but I am confident we will be taken care of. The board should resign," he said.

Boris Power, OpenAI's head of applied research, also posted on X that he risked losing his visa should he quit the company.

"I'm on a research visa too that I will lose if I resign. These are details — onwards with the mission!" he said.

OpenAI's employees have publicly backed Altman to the hilt since he was unexpectedly fired by the company's board on Friday, posting coordinated messages on social media and reportedly refusing to attend an all-hands hosted by new boss Emmett Shear.

A number of senior OpenAI employees are already expected to follow Altman and ex-OpenAI president Greg Brockman to Microsoft.

Altman has also hinted that workers who choose to resign from OpenAI will be welcomed into the new AI team he is heading up at Microsoft, posting on X that "we are all going to work together some way or other, and I'm so excited."

In the letter to the board calling for its resignation, OpenAI's employees said that Microsoft "assured us there are positions for all OpenAI employees" at the company — although sources told Business Insider that these assurances were strictly verbal and not set in stone.

But Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said in a conversation with tech journalist Kara Swisher on an episode of her podcast that aired on Monday that it would "definitely have a place for all AI talent."

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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The COP28 climate summit comes at a critical moment for the planet.

A summer that toppled heat records left a trail of disasters around the globe. The world may be just six years away from breaching the Paris Agreement’s temperature target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, setting the stage for much worse calamities to come. And governments are cutting their greenhouse gas pollution far too slowly to head off the problem — and haven’t coughed up the billions of dollars they promised to help poorer countries cope with the damage.

This year’s summit, which starts on Nov. 30 in Dubai, will conclude the first assessment of what countries have achieved since signing the Paris accord in 2015.

The forgone conclusion: They’ve made some progress. But not enough. The real question is what they do in response.

To help understand the stakes, here’s a snapshot of the state of the planet — and global climate efforts — in 10 numbers.

1.3 DEGREES CELSIUS

Global warming since the preindustrial era

Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have been driving global temperatures skyward since the 19th century, when the industrial revolution and the mass burning of fossil fuels began to affect the Earth’s climate. The world has already warmed by about 1.3 degrees Celsius, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and most of that warming has occurred since the 1970s. In the last 50 years, research suggests, global temperatures have risen at their fastest rate in at least 2,000 years.

This past October concluded the Earth’s hottest 12-month span on record, a recent analysis found. And 2023 is virtually certain to be the hottest calendar year ever observed. It’s continuing a string of recent record-breakers — the world’s five hottest years on record have all occurred since 2015.

Allowing warming to pass 2 degrees Celsius would tip the world into catastrophic changes, scientists have warned, including life-threatening heat extremes, worsening storms and wildfires, crop failures, accelerating sea-level rise and existential threats to some coastal communities and small island nations. Eight years ago in Paris, nearly every nation on Earth agreed to strive to keep temperatures well below that threshold, and under a more ambitious 1.5-degree threshold if at all possible.

But with just fractions of a degree to go, that target is swiftly approaching — and many experts say it’s already all but out of reach.

$4.3 TRILLION

Global economic losses from climate disasters since 1970

Climate-related disasters are worsening as temperatures rise. Heat waves are intensifying, tropical cyclones are strengthening, floods and droughts are growing more severe and wildfires are blazing bigger. Record-setting events struck all over the planet this year, a harbinger of new extremes to come. Scientists say such events will only accelerate as the world warms.

Nearly 12,000 weather, climate and water-related disasters struck worldwide over the last five decades, the World Meteorological Organization reports. They’ve caused trillions of dollars in damage, and they’ve killed more than 2 million people.

Ninety percent of these deaths have occurred in developing countries. Compared with wealthier nations, these countries have historically contributed little to the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming — yet they disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change.

4.4 MILLIMETERS

Annual rate of sea-level rise

Global sea levels are rapidly rising as the ice sheets melt and the oceans warm and expand. Scientists estimate that they’re now rising by about 4.4 millimeters, or about 0.17 inches, each year — and that rate is accelerating, increasing by about 1 millimeter every decade.

Those sound like small numbers. They’re not.

The world’s ice sheets and glaciers are losing a whopping 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. Those losses are also speeding up, accelerating by at least 57 percent since the 1990s. Future sea-level rise mainly depends on future ice melt, which depends on future greenhouse gas emissions. With extreme warming, global sea levels will likely rise as much as 3 feet by the end of this century, enough to swamp many coastal communities, threaten freshwater supplies and submerge some small island nations.

Some places are more vulnerable than others.

“Low-lying islands in the Pacific are on the frontlines of the fight against sea-level rise,” said NASA sea-level expert Benjamin Hamlington. “In the U.S., the Southeast and Gulf Coasts are experiencing some of the highest rates of sea-level rise in the world and have very high future projections of sea level.”

But in the long run, he added, “almost every coastline around the world is going to experience sea-level rise and will feel impacts.”

LESS THAN SIX YEARS

When the world could breach the 1.5-degree threshold

The world is swiftly running out of time to meet its most ambitious international climate target: keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Humans can emit only another 250 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide and maintain at least even odds of meeting that goal, scientists say.

That pollution threshold could arrive in as little as six years.

That’s the bottom line from at least two recent studies, one published in June and one in October. Humans are pouring about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, with each ton eating into the margin of error.

The size of that carbon buffer is smaller than previous estimates have suggested, indicating that time is running out even faster than expected.

“While our research shows it is still physically possible for the world to remain below 1.5C, it's difficult to see how that will stay the case for long,” said Robin Lamboll, a scientist at Imperial College London and lead author of the most recent study. “Unfortunately, net-zero dates for this target are rapidly approaching, without any sign that we are meeting them.”

43 PERCENT

How much greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 2030 to hit the temperature target

The world would have to undergo a stark transformation during this decade to have any hope of meeting the Paris Agreement’s ambitious 1.5-degree cap.

In a nutshell, global greenhouse gas emissions have to fall 43 percent by 2030, and 60 percent by 2035, before reaching net-zero by mid-century, according to a U.N. report published in September on the progress the world has made since signing the Paris Agreement. That would give the world a 50 percent chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.

But based on the climate pledges that countries have made to date, greenhouse gas emissions are likely to fall by just 2 percent this decade, according to a U.N. assessment published this month.

Governments are “taking baby steps to avert the climate crisis,” U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said in a statement this month. “This means COP28 must be a clear turning point.”

$1 TRILLION A YEAR

Climate funding needs of developing countries

In many ways, U.N. climate summits are all about finance. Cutting industries’ carbon pollution, protecting communities from extreme weather, rebuilding after climate disasters — it all costs money. And developing countries, in particular, don’t have enough of it.

As financing needs grow, pressure is mounting on richer nations such as the U.S. that have produced the bulk of planet-warming emissions to help developing countries cut their own pollution and adapt to a warmer world. They also face growing calls to pay for the destruction wrought by climate change, known as loss and damage in U.N.-speak.

But the flow of money from rich to poor countries has slowed. In October, a pledging conference to replenish the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund raised only $9.3 billion, even less than the $10 billion that countries had promised last time. An overdue promise by developed countries to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to rising temperatures was “likely” met last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said this month, while warning that adaptation finance had fallen by 14 percent in 2021.

As a result, the gap between what developing countries need and how much money is flowing in their direction is growing. The OECD report said developing countries will need around $1 trillion a year for climate investments by 2025, “rising to roughly $2.4 trillion each year between 2026 and 2030.”

$7 TRILLION

Worldwide fossil fuel subsidies in 2022

In stark contrast to the trickle of climate finance, fossil fuel subsidies have surged in recent years. In 2022, total spending on subsidies for oil, natural gas and coal reached a record $7 trillion, the International Monetary Fund said in August. That’s $2 trillion more than in 2020.

Explicit subsidies — direct government support to reduce energy prices — more than doubled since 2020, to $1.3 trillion. But the majority of subsidies are implicit, representing the fact that governments don’t require fossil fuel companies to pay for the health and environmental damage that their products inflict on society.

At the same time, countries continue pumping public and private money into fossil fuel production. This month, a U.N. report found that governments plan to produce more than twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with the 1.5-degree target.

66,000 SQUARE KILOMETERS

Gross deforestation worldwide in 2022

At the COP26 climate summit two years ago in Glasgow, Scotland, nations committed to halting global deforestation by 2030. A total of 145 countries have signed the Glasgow Forest Declaration, representing more than 90 percent of global forest cover. Yet global action is still falling short of that target. The annual Forest Declaration Assessment, produced by a collection of research and civil society organizations, estimated that the world lost 66,000 square kilometers of forest last year, or about 25,000 square miles — a swath of territory slightly larger than West Virginia or Lithuania. Most of that loss came from tropical forests.

Halting deforestation is a critical component of global climate action. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that collective contributions from agriculture, forestry and land use compose as much as 21 percent of global human-caused carbon emissions. Deforestation releases large volumes of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, and recent research suggests that carbon losses from tropical forests may have doubled since the early 2000s.

ALMOST 1 BILLION TONS

The annual carbon dioxide removal gap

Given the world’s slow pace in reducing greenhouse gas pollution, scientists say a second approach is essential for slowing the Earth’s warming — removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The technology for doing this is largely untested at scale, and won’t be cheap.

A landmark report on carbon dioxide removals led by the University of Oxford earlier this year found that keeping warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less would require countries to collectively remove an additional 0.96 billion tons of CO2-equivalent a year by 2030.

About 2 billion tons are now removed every year, but that is largely achieved through the natural absorption capacity of forests.

Removing even more carbon will require countries to massively scale up carbon removal technologies, given the limited capacity of forests to absorb more carbon dioxide.

Carbon removal technologies are in the spotlight at COP28, though some countries and companies want to use them to meet net-zero while continuing to burn fossil fuels. Scientists have been clear that carbon removal cannot be a substitute for steep emissions cuts.

1,000 GIGAWATTS

Annual growth in renewable power capacity needed to keep 1.5 degrees in reach

The shift from fossil fuels to renewables is underway, but the transition is still far too slow to meet the Paris Agreement targets.

To keep 1.5 degrees within reach, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that the world needs to add 1,000 gigawatts in renewable energy capacity every year through 2030. By comparison, the United States’ entire utility-scale electricity-generation capacity was about 1,160 gigawatts last year, according to the Department of Energy.

Last year, countries added about 300 gigawatts, according to the agency’s latest World Energy Transitions Outlook published in June.

That shortfall has prompted the EU and the climate summit’s host nation, the United Arab Emirates, to campaign for nations to sign up to a target to triple the world’s renewable capacity by 2030 at COP28, a goal also supported by the U.S. and China.

“The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable,” International Energy Agency boss Fatih Birol said last month. “It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’ — and the sooner the better for all of us.”

This story is part of POLITICO's COP28 Special Report.

Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

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These findings, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, underline the need to implement aggressive control of cardiovascular risk factors at younger ages, requiring a change in primary prevention strategies to include "surveillance of subclinical atherosclerosis and early cardiovascular risk factor control."

The study was co-led by Dr. Valentín Fuster, CNIC General Director and Physician-in-Chief at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and Dr. Borja Ibáñez, CNIC Scientific Director, a cardiologist at Hospital Universitario Fundación Jiménez Díaz, and a member of the CIBERCV cardiovascular research network in Spain.

Subclinical atherosclerosis often progresses in middle-aged individuals, especially if LDL-cholesterol levels and blood pressure are even mildly or moderately elevated. Medical professionals and the general public need to be aware that atherosclerosis progression can be stopped if risk factors are managed aggressively from an early age.

"Screening for subclinical atherosclerosis from an early age together with aggressive risk-factor control could help to reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Fuster.

Dr. Ibáñez explained that "in this study, we show that moderate increases in blood pressure and cholesterol have a much more pronounced impact on atherosclerosis progression in younger people."

3-dimensional ultrasound reconstruction of a carotid artery in an apparently healthy PESA-CNIC-Santander study participant. The upper image shows the situation at the time of the first imaging study, when no atherosclerotic plaques were detected. The lower image shows the same artery six years later, when several plaques were detected. Credit: CNIC

Very few studies have investigated the progression of silent atherosclerosis in people who are completely free of symptoms, whether they are young or in apparently healthy middle age, and how this disease progresses throughout life.

The PESA-CNIC-Santander study (Progression of Early Subclinical Atherosclerosis) was launched in 2009 and is a close collaboration between the CNIC and Santander Bank.

More than 4,000 apparently healthy middle-aged Santander Bank employees in Madrid volunteered to undergo an exhaustive, noninvasive analysis of the carotid, femoral, and coronary arteries and the aorta. Participants also provided blood samples for advanced genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic analysis.

"The PESA study has already made important contributions to our understanding of cardiovascular disease and is considered the most advanced study of its kind in the field," said Dr. Fuster.

The current findings have important implications for cardiovascular prevention and personalized medicine. The study shows that the control of risk factors (principally elevated cholesterol and hypertension) should begin early in life, when the arteries are more vulnerable to the effects of these risk factors.

Dr. Borja Ibáñez said, "These results point the way to personalized approaches that use imaging technology to monitor the presence and progression of silent atherosclerosis and guide the intensity of risk-factor control."

Cardiologist Guiomar Mendieta, the first author of the study, added that "the other key finding of this study is that atherosclerosis, previously believed to be irreversible, can disappear if risk factors are controlled from an early stage."

"These findings are the outcome of the exhaustive collection of imaging and biochemical data over six years, combined with an innovative statistical analysis," explained Dr. Mendieta, who joined the CNIC through the CARDIOJOVEN SEC-CNIC training program, a joint initiative of the CNIC and the Spanish Society of Cardiology.

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Kissane's autoimmune arthritis seems to make her susceptible to unusual vaccine side effects. After getting an mRNA booster last year, her joints ached so painfully that her doctor prescribed steroids to dampen the inflammation. She still considers the mRNA vaccines "miraculous," knowing COVID could be far worse than temporary aches.

Nonetheless, when the pain subsided, she pored through studies on Novavax's shot, a vaccine that is based on proteins rather than mRNA and has been used since early 2022 in other countries. Data from the United Kingdom found that people more frequently reported temporary reactions—like low fevers, fatigue, and pain—as their immune system ramped up in the days following booster vaccination with Moderna's mRNA vaccine versus the one by Pfizer. And those boosted with Novavax's had fewer complaints than either of those. That finding was corroborated in an analysis of international data published last year.

Such studies have driven people with long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME/CFS) to seek out Novavax, too, since the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention greenlighted Novavax's vaccine—updated to protect against recent omicron coronavirus variants—about three weeks after recommending updated mRNA vaccines in September.

Waiting paid off for Kissane, whose arm was briefly sore. "It was a dramatically different experience for me," she said. "I hope that plays out for others."

Another group who waited on Novavax are biologists who geek out over its technology. When asked why he opted for Novavax, Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, replied on X, formerly known as Twitter: "Because I am [a] vaccine nerd, I like insect cell produced vaccines."

Whereas mRNA vaccines direct the body to produce spike proteins from the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which then train a person's immune system to recognize and fight the virus, Novavax simply injects the proteins. These proteins are grown within moth cells in a laboratory, while other protein-based shots use cells from mammals. And Novavax has said that a special ingredient derived from the bark of Chilean soapbark trees enhances the vaccine's power.

Research suggests that the Novavax vaccine is about as safe and effective as the mRNA shots. Its main disadvantage is arriving late to the scene.

Vaccine uptake has plummeted since the first shots became widely available in 2021. Nearly 70% of people got the primary vaccines, compared with fewer than 20% opting for the mRNA COVID boosters released last year. Numbers have dwindled further: As of Oct. 17, only 5% of people in the United States had gotten the latest COVID vaccines, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Daniel Park, an epidemiologist at George Washington University, said low rates might improve if people who felt lousy after their last mRNA shots gave Novavax a try. It protects against severe illness, but researchers struggle to specify just how effective this and other vaccines are, at this point, because studies have gotten tricky to conduct: New coronavirus variants continuously emerge, and people have fluctuating levels of immunity from previous vaccines and infections.

Still, a recent study in Italy suggests that Novavax is comparable to mRNA vaccines. It remained more than 50% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID four months after vaccination. Some data suggests that mixing and matching different types of vaccines confers stronger protection—although other studies have found no benefit.

Given all this, Park held out for the Novavax vaccine on account of its potentially milder side effects. "Between a demanding full-time job and two young kids at home, I wanted to stay operational," he said. His arm was sore, but he didn't have the 24-hour malaise accompanying his last mRNA shot.

Most people don't strike a fever after mRNA shots. Even when they do, it is brief and therefore far less detrimental than many cases of COVID. In fact, most reactions are so minor that they're hard to interpret. During clinical trials on mRNA vaccines, for example, up to a third of people in the placebo group reported fatigue and headaches after injection.

People with ME/CFS and long COVID—a potentially debilitating condition that persists months after a COVID infection—have responded to COVID vaccinations in a wide variety of ways. Most participants with long COVID in an 83-person Canadian study said their levels of fatigue, concentration, and shortness of breath improved following vaccination. Inflammatory proteins that have been linked to long COVID dropped as well.

However, larger studies have yet to corroborate the hopeful finding. Jennifer Curtin, a doctor who co-founded a telehealth clinic focused on long COVID and ME/CFS, called RTHM, said vaccines seem to temporarily aggravate some patients' conditions. To learn how Novavax compares, she posted polls on X in late October asking if people with long COVID or ME/CFS felt that their symptoms worsened, improved, or stayed the same after Novavax. Most replied: unchanged.

"It's not scientific, but we need to figure it out since these folks don't want to get COVID," Curtin said. "My patients are all wondering about what vaccine to get right now."

Adding to the uncertainty, the rollout of Novavax and mRNA vaccines has been bumpy as pharmacies struggle to predict demand and insurance companies figure out how to reimburse providers for the shots. Unlike previous vaccine offerings, these options are no longer fully covered by the federal government. A testament to this season's struggle to get vaccinated is that at least one do-gooder has created an online tool to find open appointments for Novavax.

Buoyed by anecdotes of relief from others with long COVID, Hayley Brown, a researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research who has the condition, opted for Novavax recently. Unfortunately, her symptoms have flared. She said a temporary discomfort will still be preferable to risking another infection. "As someone with long COVID, the idea of getting COVID again is terrifying."

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Over the past few decades, evidence has been mounting that the average human body temperature is not really 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead, most people’s baseline is a little bit cooler.

The standard of 98.6 was established over 150 years ago by the German physician Dr. Carl Wunderlich, who reportedly took over a million measurements from 25,000 people. Temperatures ranged from 97.2 to 99.5, and the average was 98.6. Dr. Wunderlich also established 100.4 degrees as “probably febrile.”

However, a study published in September that evaluated the temperatures of more than 126,000 people between 2008 and 2017 found that the average is closer to 97.9 degrees. Other modern-day studies have reported similar numbers.

Experts who study body temperature have differing opinions about why we appear to have gotten cooler over time, and whether that matters when it comes to evaluating fevers and diagnosing infections.

Why 98.6 is off base

Some researchers say it could just be a measurement issue — Dr. Wunderlich might have assessed temperatures using different methods and standards than we do today. One account reports that he used a foot-long thermometer that went into a person’s armpit.

Many factors can influence a body temperature reading, the most significant being where you take it: Rectal temperatures are reliably higher than oral temperatures, which are reliably higher than readings taken from the skin. Body temperature is also influenced by the time of day, whether it’s hot or cold outside and even whether the person just had something to eat or drink. Readings can also vary from thermometer to thermometer, depending on how they are calibrated.

Comparing historical and modern-day data gives you “a hodgepodge mixture of observations,” said Dr. Philip Mackowiak, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who, in a 1992 paper, was one of the first researchers to scrutinize Dr. Wunderlich’s conclusions. The drop in temperature may be “a true phenomenon,” he added, “but there’s no way of knowing because the data are so varied.”

Other experts think humans really have gotten cooler over the past 150 years. Our temperatures may have declined because “we are so lucky to be healthier than we used to be,” said Dr. Julie Parsonnet, a professor of medicine and of epidemiology and population health at Stanford Medicine, who led the September study on body temperature.

For instance, it could be that many people in Dr. Wunderlich’s sample had slightly elevated temperatures from low-grade inflammation. Better treatment of infections, improved dental care and the development and use of medications like statins and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs may all have contributed to a decline in inflammation since the 19th century, which in turn lowered people’s average temperature, Dr. Parsonnet said.

Regardless of the reason for the shift, the experts interviewed for this article agreed that 98.6 degrees should no longer be considered the universal human standard. But instead of shifting the average temperature down a degree or so, it should be given as a range, said Dr. Waleed Javaid, a professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who published a 2019 review paper on body temperature.

A range would account for the natural variability in temperature that occurs across gender and age — women tend to run slightly warmer than men, and older adults run cooler than younger people. Additionally, everyone’s body temperature fluctuates throughout the day — it is typically lowest in the morning and highest in the late afternoon.

“Like there’s a range for heart rate, there’s a range for blood pressure,” temperature also has a range, Dr. Javaid said.

What counts as a fever

If we redefine “normal” human body temperature, then what registers as abnormal?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that temperatures of 100.4 and above qualify as a fever — a roughly two-degree increase from 98.6. But if the average human temperature is lower, it’s possible that the temperature indicating a fever could be lower, as well.

Dr. Parsonnet would like to see a personalized approach to fever, where doctors compare each patient against their own baseline so that low-grade fevers aren’t missed in people who run cooler. The mission is somewhat personal for her: Dr. Parsonnet’s mother-in-law has a heart infection that went undiagnosed for months because she never registered as being feverish. Her temperature was around 98.6, but, Dr. Parsonnet said, that “was not normal for her, for her age.”

To Dr. Mackowiak, this individualized approach would be ideal, but it’s unrealistic given the time constraints doctors and nurses are already under.

He and Dr. Javaid are also not as concerned about the possibility of low-grade fevers being missed because of the current temperature standards.

Instead of changing the definition of a fever, they said the solution may be to place less of an emphasis on fever overall, and to think of it as one sign among many — something that many doctors already do. (This advice applies to parents, as well as physicians.)

If a temperature is sky-high, that’s important information, Dr. Javaid said, but “the temperature is not the only thing one should look at.”

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The record was hit on Sunday in the town of Araçuaí, in Brazil's south-eastern state of Minas Gerais.

The unprecedented weather has been attributed to the El Niño phenomenon and climate change.

Forecasters say some of the heat is likely to ease this week.

According to the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet), only three state capitals will see temperatures approaching 40C, CNN Brasil reported.

The government agency said Araçuaí's high of 44.8C had beaten the country's previous record of 44.7C, measured in 2005.

The heat has seen red alerts issued across the country, a month before the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere. Brazil's energy consumption has soared to record levels as people try to keep themselves cool.

The high temperatures led to Taylor Swift cancelling one of her concerts in Rio de Janeiro after a fan fell ill and died before a show on Friday.

According to the organisers, 23-year-old Ana Clara Benevides Machado had sought help at the stadium after feeling unwell. She was transferred to hospital but died one hour later.

Official research released two weeks ago showed that the average temperature in the country had been above the historical average from July to October.

Extreme weather is becoming more frequent and more intense in many places around the world because of climate change.

According to scientists, heatwaves are becoming longer and more intense in many places and this is expected to continue whilst humans keep releasing planet-warming greenhouse gases.

Meanwhile, the Earth is currently in an El Niño weather phase, during which time global temperatures typically increase.

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