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Can Your Microbiome Affect Your Mood?

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This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American’s board of editors.

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

People often talk about having “gut feelings,” but new research suggests there may be more to the idiom than we thought. Scientists are finding that specialized cells in our intestines can send signals directly to the brain, potentially influencing appetite and even mood.

Recent studies hint that our microbiomes could play a role in this communication system, though researchers are still trying to understand exactly how these interactions work and what they mean for our health.

Here to walk us through the emerging science of the belly-to-brain connection is Maya Kaelberer, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Physiology.

Thanks so much for coming on to chat with us today.

Maya Kaelberer: It’s my pleasure. I’m happy to be here.

Feltman: So you recently co-authored a study that looks at the gut-brain connection a little bit. Could you tell us a little bit about why scientists are interested in that and what we know about it so far?

Kaelberer: Yeah, I mean, I think more than just scientists are interested in it; we have our gut feelings all the time. And so my work is really focused on understanding the biology behind those gut feelings and how is it that our gut can communicate to us. ’Cause we know, right, things like hangry exist. We know that how we feel or what food we eat or even what microbes are there is gonna affect overall how we feel in the world.

Feltman: Mm.

Kaelberer: And so understanding the molecular and cellular and neuronal connections between the gut and the brain is gonna help us better understand, like, this relationship that we have, that we have these gut feelings, right?

Feltman: Yeah.

Kaelberer: We know they’re there [laughs].

Feltman: Well, and beyond, you know, hanger, which is obviously a great example, what are some conditions that have been connected to the gut that might surprise people?

Kaelberer: So when I was in my postdoc we discovered that there was this direct connection between these cells in the surface of the gut, we call them neuropod cells, and neurons that communicate directly—they reach directly into the brain. And so we call this as—our “gut sense,” and the number-one question I would always get was: Who cares? Like, what [laughs], you know, what is our gut possibly telling us that our mouth and our nose did not already tell us about the food that we ate?

And so we delved into this a little bit more in some previous publications with regards to sugar sensing, and I use this example ’cause it’s really salient in my own life, which is that I like artificial sweetener in my coffee.

Feltman: Mm.

Kaelberer: And I don’t like regular sugar because regular sugar just feels heavy to me, and I want that, like, artificial sweetener. It kind of keeps me going. I can be caffeinated. I can be, like, on the go. I’m not gonna, like, sit down and take a nap afterwards. And so we know that these two stimuli feel different in our gut. And what we found is that these neuropod cells are actually distinguishing between the two stimuli, between real sugar and artificial sweetener. And they release different signals, and then the signal for sugar actually drives the animal to consume the sugar over the artificial sweetener.

So now we take it back to my coffee preference, and suddenly, I’m like, “Well, this makes sense. I like the artificial sweetener because I don’t want that heaviness.” And that heaviness is telling me that that food was gratifying or that food was satisfying; there was some kind of value associated with that that’s gonna help me survive in nature. And so then this is now this communication system of, like, “Oh, our gut sense is telling us something about the food we eat past whether or not it tastes good. It’s telling us a little bit about the value of what we’re consuming.”

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https://static.scientificamerican.com/dam/m/56b72855a9cc4b9b/original/2509_SQ_WED_GUT_HEALTH-Podcast-Span-Art.jpeg?m=1758049242.69&w=900

An illustration of a man revealing his brain and stomach with an arrow drawn between them on a purple background  De Agostini/Getty Images

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Click the link below for the complete text and podcast:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/new-research-shows-gut-cells-communicate-directly-with-the-brain/

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Is Anyone Ever Financially Ready To Have A Baby?

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Dear GEP,

I am trying for my first child, which is both exciting and making me anxious. I thought babies didn’t need much, but the more I talk to other people, the more I realize that having a child will be as expensive as it is wonderful. What do I actually need to support a kid? And is anyone ever financially ready to have a baby?

There is a saying widely repeated in my family that all you really need to have a baby is “a towel, and a drawer.” My father, who has had five children and eight grandchildren, is the origin of this statement – and I don’t doubt that when he had his first baby in the early seventies, at the age of 27, they didn’t have too much more than those advised essentials.

As I folded hand-me-downs last month with my younger brother, whose first baby is now just a few weeks old, we chuckled about our dad’s perhaps apocryphal advice. What did he know, anyway? What’s so wild about it, though, is that, a decade into parenting, the “towel-and-a-drawer” maxim feels both completely absurd and refreshingly wise.

A lot has changed since the seventies. When I was pregnant with my first child, my dad’s perspective on parenting preparation felt as silly as giving a colicky baby a finger of whiskey. First, the cost of living for families in this country has grown astronomically. My parents, for example, could afford a home in a diverse city on two therapist’s salaries. Now, the house I grew up in has been divided into luxury condos that I could only dream of affording. Childcare costs are real, and overwhelming: My husband and I calculated when our last child started public kindergarten that we had spent almost $200,000 on the first five years of care for our two children. Children need medical care, and medical care in this country is becoming more expensive and elusive by the day.

And, of course, there is the stuff. Fifty years ago, my dad, who I promise you did have a legit crib for my oldest sibling, had few options and little pressure to make baby-related purchases. Now, new parents like my brother and his partner are bombarded with ads and suggestions from other parents to buy high-tech strollers, specially designed tummy-time mats, and smart bottle-warmers. Even with older children, I find it difficult to turn down this constant thrum, the promise that if I just shell out a few more bucks, some aspect of life that I perhaps hadn’t even considered as a danger would be made easier for myself or my kids.

But what do our children, what do we really need??? Don’t get me wrong – the social and political child, so you’re not having to do that work during the first year of parenting.

“It allows you to prioritize, and then you’ll have a better sense of what you’re willing to let go of if you have to make trade offs as a new parent.” She also recommends worrying less about college savings and more about retirement, as you can borrow and scheme for the former but not the latter.

I would also add in that flexing your communal and collaborative muscles – getting to know your neighbors, sharing responsibilities with friends, getting comfortable asking for and offering help– will be enormously beneficial to you when you realize that even a teenaged babysitter can charge $25 an hour, and if you only need one car if you can arrange a daycare carpool. This, of course, takes work, but it is worth it. And it’s not only for your mental-health – childcare swaps, shared meals, and pooled resources can end up saving you money in the long run.

Who is ready to have a baby? No one. And also, mostly everyone. I’m sure you can find a towel and a drawer somewhere.

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https://imgix.bustle.com/uploads/image/2025/8/25/eb8a542a/gep_finances_header.jpg?w=720&h=810&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.4979Sure, there are the essentials, but a lot of it just isn’t necessary.

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.romper.com/romper-new-parent-finance

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U.S. Deports Planeload of Iranians After Deal With Tehran, Officials Say

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The Trump administration is deporting a planeload of about 100 Iranians back to Iran from the United States after a deal between the two governments, according to two senior Iranian officials involved in the negotiations and a U.S. official with knowledge of the plans.

Iranian officials said that the plane, a U.S.-chartered flight, took off from Louisiana on Monday night and was scheduled to arrive in Iran by way of Qatar on Tuesday at the earliest. The U.S. official confirmed that plans for the flight were in the final stages. All the officials spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details publicly.

The identities of the Iranians on the plane and their reasons for trying to immigrate to the United States were not immediately clear.

The deportation is one of the starkest efforts yet by the Trump administration to deport migrants, no matter the human rights conditions in countries on the receiving end. The expanding deportation campaign has sparked lawsuits by immigrant advocates, who have criticized the flights.

For decades, the United States had given shelter to Iranians fleeing their homeland, which has one of the harshest human rights records in the world. Iran persecutes women’s rights activists, political dissidents, journalists, lawyers, religious minorities, and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, among others.

In the past several years, there has been an increase in Iranian migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border and crossing illegally, including many who have claimed fear of persecution back home for their political and religious beliefs.

Hossein Noushabadi, the director general of parliamentary affairs in Iran’s foreign ministry, said on Tuesday that U.S. immigration authorities planned to deport 400 Iranians living in the United States back to Iran over the coming months.

“In the first phase, they decided to deport 120 Iranians who entered the U.S. illegally, mostly through Mexico,” he told Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards force.

Some who will be deported held U.S. residency, he said, adding that all of those being deported left Iran legally.

The United States had long hesitated or had trouble deporting migrants to certain countries, like Iran, because of a lack of regularized diplomatic relations and an inability to get travel documents in a timely manner.

That had forced American officials to either hold migrants in detention for long periods or release them into the United States. The United States deported more than two dozen Iranians back to the country in 2024, the highest number in years.

The two Iranian officials who spoke to The Times said the deportees included men and women, some of them couples. Some had volunteered to leave after being in detention centers for months, and some had not, they said.

The officials said that in nearly every case, asylum requests had been denied or the people had not yet appeared before a judge for an asylum hearing.

The deportation is a rare moment of cooperation between the United States and the Iranian government, and was the culmination of months of discussions between the two countries, the Iranian officials said.

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https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/09/30/multimedia/30int-iran-deportation-mtlv/30int-iran-deportation-mtlv-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webpAddressing the United Nations General Assembly last week, President Trump insisted that the United States would double down on efforts to deport masses of migrants. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/world/middleeast/us-iran-deportation-flight.html

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Here’s What Happened at RFK, Jr.’s Overhauled Vaccine Panel Meeting

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This week’s meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices represented a notable departure from its prior practice of presenting and debating high-quality data on vaccine safety and risk-benefit analyses. Committee members, many of whom were hastily installed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., cited—without solid evidence—hypothetical risks of immunization with mRNA COVID vaccines, disregarding extensive studies showing the Food and Drug Administration–approved vaccines are safe and effective. The consequences of this meeting extend far beyond the specific votes the committee made today and could undermine confidence in vaccines and the U.S. medical establishment more broadly, some experts have noted. The story below has been updated with details of the discussion and votes regarding each vaccine considered.

The already tumultuous landscape of U.S. vaccine policy faces more turmoil in what’s anticipated to be a politically charged two-day meeting of a recently overhauled advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is an independent panel of experts that has traditionally met three times a year to make science-based recommendations about who should receive certain vaccines. But this year the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine science and public health has upended the committee. Just yesterday former CDC director Susan Monarez, who led the agency for a month, testified to the Senate about her experience of being pushed out of office for not condoning attacks on vaccines unsupported by evidence. Most dramatically, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of health and human services and a veteran antivaccine activist, fired the panel’s membership, with the newest appointees announced only days ago.

On September 18 and 19, the committee is holding its second meeting of the year, and experts now worry that the new ACIP members will continue eroding public access to lifesaving vaccinations. Already, one in six parents in the U.S. reports delaying or skipping a vaccine for their child, according to a recent poll.

“I fear for the health of children in this country,” says Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “RFK, Jr.’s goal is to make vaccines less available, less affordable and more feared. That’s his goal, and he’s doing a great job of it.”

ACIP’s decisions are important because they dictate the price of lifesaving preventive care. The Affordable Care Act requires private insurance companies to cover ACIP-recommended vaccines at no cost; government-run insurance programs, including the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, which covers half of childhood vaccines administered nationwide, also base costs on the panel’s decisions.

At this week’s meeting, the newly reconstituted panel will discuss three vaccines: the combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine, the hepatitis B vaccine and this year’s updated COVID shots.

The meeting’s agenda is a departure from ACIP’s norm, says Edwin Asturias, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at the University of Colorado, who joined ACIP in July 2024 and was dismissed during Kennedy’s overhaul of the committee earlier this year. “This is one of the shortest agendas that we have seen for a long time from ACIP,” Asturias says. “Typically, ACIP has a lot of things to look through because there’s a lot of vaccines that are advancing through different aspects of development, as well as new data being generated.” Meetings in 2024 each discussed at least eight different vaccines.

Asturias and other public health experts are particularly worried the meeting will institutionalize attacks on the childhood vaccine schedule—a carefully choreographed, evidence-based timeline of vaccines given to kids in their earliest years.

“The childhood immunization schedule has proven to be very effective at reducing a lot of diseases that cause a lot of pain, suffering, and death in children,” Asturias says.

The meeting will be livestreamed on both September 18 and September 19. Here’s what experts are keeping an eye on.

The Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella Vaccine

What Happened

Members voted 8-3 not to recommend the single combination MMRV vaccine before age four, removing the option for children younger than four years old to receive the shot for the first dose. Children younger than age four are recommended separate MMR and varicella vaccines.

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https://static.scientificamerican.com/dam/m/4ed9ee0d28a0c681/original/man-getting-vaccinated.jpg?m=1758137162.498&w=900Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-a-contentious-cdc-vaccine-meeting-will-affect-public-health/

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In Going After His Foes, Trump Sets a Precedent That Could Haunt His Allies

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The indictment of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, demanded by President Trump, sent a shiver of fear through others on the so-called enemies list of the current F.B.I. director Kash Patel. But one other person who might have reason for concern is Kash Patel himself.

There will, presumably, come a time when the Republican Party is no longer in control. A precedent has now been set for prosecuting a former F.B.I. director disfavored by the current administration for allegedly lying to Congress. Democrats already are accusing Mr. Patel of having lied to Congress in his confirmation hearings when he promised not to engage in political retaliation.

Mr. Trump’s campaign to imprison, fire or otherwise punish his political foes and use government power to crack down on free speech he does not like has broken norms that stood for generations. But it has also established new standards for what a president can do that even some conservatives worry may come back to bite them. Power claimed by one party is then eventually available to the other. Limits ignored by one administration may no longer seem binding on the next.

If the precedent set by Mr. Trump takes hold, America may be entering a period when each new administration takes aim at the last one in a cycle of retaliation, a what-goes-around-comes-around pattern more familiar in authoritarian countries than in developed Western democracies. Even presidents more restrained than Mr. Trump may succumb to the temptation to follow at least some of his example.

“Conservatives should see this for what it is: shortsighted and dangerous,” said Sarah Matthews, a deputy White House press secretary in Mr. Trump’s first term who resigned in protest after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“If a Democrat wins in 2028, what’s to stop them from turning the D.O.J. on Trump officials or unleashing the F.C.C. on Fox News?” she said. “Trump is setting a precedent that will come back to haunt the right, and they’ll have no leg to stand on if Democrats use the same playbook against them.”

Mr. Trump’s threat to investigate and prosecute left-wing groups after the assassination of the right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk crystallized the concern among some of the president’s own MAGA allies. In particular, some bristled at the pressure applied by Mr. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission to take the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air because of comments related to Mr. Kirk’s murder.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, decried the threat against ABC and its affiliates by Brendan Carr, the F.C.C. chair, comparing it to mafia tactics, and added that it would empower Democrats to someday do the same. “They will silence us,” Mr. Cruz said. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”

Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host and a MAGA favorite, warned that the Trump administration’s threats to go after “hate speech” could impinge on everyone’s free speech rights. “If they can tell you what to say,” he said, “they’re telling you what to think.”

The concern about precedent goes beyond Mr. Trump’s self-described campaign for “retribution.” . His assertions of vastly expanded presidential power will naturally accrue to his successors. If he can override Congress on what money to spend or not spend, fire leaders of independent agencies, unilaterally gut government departments, and send troops into the streets of American cities, then so can the next president — a point made recently by the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page about his effort to rein in the independence of the Federal Reserve.

“I worry about future presidents of both parties abusing all of the unprecedented powers that Trump is claiming,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College.

“Do Republicans want to give President A.O.C. unilateral powers to determine which Defense Department programs she wants to fund?” he added, referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a liberal Democrat from New York and bête noire to conservatives.

“We shouldn’t trust any administration with the dangerous and extraordinary powers Trump is claiming,” he continued. “Unfortunately, the recent history of the office suggests Democrats will pocket past expansions of executive power and just promise to wield them more carefully.”

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https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/09/29/multimedia/29dc-assess1-hjlz/29dc-assess1-hjlz-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webpPresident Trump demanded the indictment of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/us/politics/trump-comey-retribution-precedent.html

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‘Amazing’ Dick Van Dyke, 99, flexes muscles in the gym with Rick Springfield

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Dick Van Dyke’s fitness routine has Rick Springfield in awe.

In a Sept. 26 Instagram post, the “Jessie’s Girl” singer posed with the “Mary Poppins” star, who turns 100 Dec. 13, in the gym as the two showed off their muscles.

“Filming an episode of Men’s Health, and I went to the gym and who should be there but 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke working out on every machine,” Springfield captioned the photo. “I thought I was doing well at 76, but Dick got up from the chest press machine and did a little dance step before I left! ❤️ Amazing!”

Van Dyke, whose book “100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist’s Guide to a Happy Life” is scheduled for release in November, has maintained an impressive gym regimen for years.

“I’ve always exercised three days a week. We go to the gym, still, three days a week,” Van Dyke told Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen on the Jan. 22 episode of the “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” podcast.

“I get down and do a lot of stretching and yoga-type things, sit-ups. And they have machines … something for almost every exercise.”

Dick Van Dyke ‘couldn’t be happier’ as he nears 100 years old

On Sept. 21, three months after dropping out of a Vandy Camp event due to illness, Van Dyke celebrated his wife Arlene Van Dyke’s birthday with a “whimsical” Vandy Camp birthday bash in Malibu.

He and the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to Arlene more than once, with the couple sharing a sweet smooch at the end of one of the serenades.

“We’ve been married 13 years. In two-and-a-half months, I’m going to be 100 years old. I hope!” he told the crowd, per a video shared by photographer Trevor Perez. “And I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman in my life than this one.”

After explaining their fated first meeting at the 2006 Screen Actors Guild Awards, Van Dyke said, “Now we’ve been married 13 years, and I couldn’t be happier.”

Another video from the event shows Van Dyke holding a cane in his left hand as he wiggles his hips and twists his leg.

Van Dyke often takes opportunities to display his spryness by dancing in public, including in Coldplay’s “All My Love” music video in 2024. In the seven-minute director’s cut, he imparted his musings on a long career in Hollywood as well as the meaning of love.

“I think I’m one of those lucky people who got to do for a living what I would have done anyway,” he said. “I got to do what I do. Play and act silly.”

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https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1NtFbj.img?w=768&h=512&m=6&x=1520&y=670&s=911&d=911

Honoree Dick Van Dyke arrives for the 43rd Kennedy Center Honors at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2021. © JOSHUA ROBERTS, REUTERS

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/other/amazing-dick-van-dyke-99-flexes-muscles-in-the-gym-with-rick-springfield/ar-AA1NtFbn?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=68da3f93001945ac85e9b9e2a2aac55a&ei=24

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Vaccine Policy Shift, Brain Changes in Athletes and Ants That Harness Another Species’ DNA

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Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week with a quick roundup of some of the latest science news.

First, let’s check in on vaccines. On Thursday and Friday of last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, met to review and vote on recommendations for official U.S. vaccine guidelines. Back in June, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, dismissed all sitting members of the committee. Several of the 12 new panel members, all handpicked by Kennedy, have publicly expressed doubts about the safety of vaccines or the severity of the COVID pandemic.

An agenda released ahead of last week’s meeting stated that the ACIP would propose recommendations for the hepatitis B, COVID and measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccines.

Here’s Lauren Young, associate editor for health and medicine at Scientific American, with a quick update as of Friday.

Lauren Young: So far we’ve seen a few votes come through. The first one that they focused on was the MMRV vaccine. This is the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine. Varicella is commonly known as chickenpox, and they decided not to recommend the single combined shot for kids younger than age four.

Another vaccine that was discussed was the hepatitis B vaccine. There wasn’t really any changes to this, but members did vote in support that all pregnant people should be tested for hepatitis B infection, which is the current standard practice of care.

ACIP also considered an additional recommendation to remove the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine, with the first dose not given earlier than one month of age, [for infants born of people who test negative for the virus]. But they decided to table that vote because there was some confusion around some of the phrasing around that recommendation. That’s been a really big theme around these meetings this past week. There’s just been a lot of confusion.

So that’s just come to show how much these meetings have changed since RFK, Jr., has overhauled the ACIP panel. We’ve seen the shift away from science and away from scientific evidence of reviewing, very rigorously, vaccine data. And now it’s turned more into a lot of confusion and a lot of discourse around questioning the evidence in ways that just don’t quite always make sense. And our staff is watching this super closely. So check out our website for the latest updates.

Feltman: Speaking of vaccines, last Tuesday AHIP—the national trade association representing the health insurance industry—put out a statement on vaccine coverage. The organization said its member insurance plans would continue to cover all immunizations recommended by ACIP as of September 1, 2025, through the end of 2026. This includes updated flu shots and COVID vaccines.

Now for some public health news on a very different topic: head injuries in sports. You’ve probably heard of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. This progressive neurodegenerative disease, which can only be diagnosed with certainty via autopsy, is believed to be caused by repeat brain trauma, including the kind of repetitive head injuries one might endure while playing contact sports. It can include symptoms such as headaches, confusion, memory loss, poor judgment, depression, dementia, sensory-processing disorders, and other potentially debilitating issues. CTE symptoms generally appear some years after repetitive brain trauma occurs. In a study published Wednesday in Nature, researchers reported that brain degeneration may be detectable in young athletes before CTE starts to set in.

Researchers studied frozen brain tissue from 28 adult men. Some of the study subjects hadn’t played contact sports at all, and others had played American football or soccer but hadn’t been diagnosed with CTE. The rest of the study subjects played contact sports and had been diagnosed with early stages of CTE.

The researchers found signs of inflammation and vascular injury, including a marked drop in the number of neurons, in all the contact athletes they studied—even those who did not have the telltale signs of full-blown CTE. According to the study authors, this suggests that all athletes who frequently hit their heads could be at risk of experiencing some amount of brain damage.

A separate study also published last Wednesday, this one in the journal Neurology, found an association between headers, or a player using their head to control or pass a soccer ball, and changes in the brain. The study asked 352 amateur adult soccer players to estimate their number of head impacts over the course of a year. The use of headers varied pretty widely. When divided into four groups, the top head-users cited an average of 3,152 headers, while those at the other end of the spectrum estimated just 105 a year.

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https://static.scientificamerican.com/dam/m/e6dcddde1ff81ed/original/2509_SQ_MON_SEPT_22-Podcast-Span-Art.jpeg?m=1758312387.198&w=900Above: Maciej Rogowski/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images; Below: Chris Leduc/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/vaccine-panel-overhaul-head-trauma-in-sports-and-strange-reproduction-in/

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Rihanna Gives Birth to Her Third Child With A$AP Rocky—and It’s a Girl!

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Congratulations are in order for Rihanna and A$AP Rocky.

The celebrity couple has welcomed their third child, as confirmed by an Instagram post earlier today. Named Rocki Irish Mayers, their daughter was born on September 13, 2025—and continues the tradition of every member of the family receiving a moniker beginning with “R.” (The couple are also parents to two boys, three-year-old RZA and two-year-old Riot.)

In May, the Fenty founder sensationally confirmed her pregnancy at the 2025 Met Gala, held in honor of the “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” exhibition. She showed off her prominent baby bump in a black cropped woolen jacket, a wool bustier bodysuit, and a black pinstripe wool tailored skirt with a bustle, all by Marc Jacobs.

Since then, she’s enjoyed a fashionable pregnancy that included wearing a sheer baby blue baby-doll set by Chanel to the Belgian premiere of Smurfs, as well as a chocolate-brown Saint Laurent fall 2025 gown to the Los Angeles one. For the latter, her two sons wore custom Dior by Jonathan Anderson. (Safe to say, her newest arrival is joining quite the fashionable family.)

Rihanna has long spoken about her love of pushing maternity fashion boundaries: “When I found out I was pregnant, I thought to myself: There’s no way I’m going to go shopping in no maternity aisle,” she told Vogue in May 2022 about her pregnancy style. “I’m sorry—it’s too much fun to get dressed up. I’m not going to let that part disappear because my body is changing.”

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https://assets.vogue.com/photos/68d4884d61078361ea737db2/master/w_1600,c_limit/Rocki%20Irish%20Mayers%20Sept%2013%202025.jpgPhoto: Courtesy of Rihanna

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.vogue.com/article/rihanna-third-child-announcement#intcid=_vogue-verso-hp-trending_0fed1d5e-2e20-4fcb-a7b5-dee78e735173_popular4-2

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Kimmel Wins; Trump Whines

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Jimmy Kimmel is back hosting late-night TV, and President Trump has some big feelings about it.

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Click the link below for the complete article (sound on for video):

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/tv/news/kimmel-wins-trump-whines/vi-AA1Nenyo?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=68d85e2904ca434dad408e5ae8d3fc14&ei=10

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Deep-Earth Diamonds Reveal ‘Almost Impossible’ Chemistry

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A pair of diamonds that formed hundreds of kilometers deep in Earth’s malleable mantle both contain specks of materials that form in completely opposing chemical environments—a combination so unusual that researchers thought their coexistence was “almost impossible.” The substances’ presence provides a window into the chemical goings-on of the mantle and the reactions that form diamonds.

The two diamond samples were found in a South African mine. As with plenty of other precious gemstones, they contain what are called inclusions—tiny bits of surrounding rocks captured as the diamonds form. These inclusions are loathed by most jewelers but are an exciting source of information for scientists. That’s especially true when diamonds form deep in the unreachable mantle, because they carry these inclusions basically undisturbed to the surface—the only way those minerals can rise hundreds of kilometers without being altered from their original deep-mantle state.

The two new diamond samples each contain inclusions of carbonate minerals that are rich in oxygen atoms (a state known as oxidized) and oxygen-poor nickel alloys (a state known as reduced, in the parlance of chemistry). Much like how an acid and a base immediately react to form water and a salt, oxidized carbonate minerals and reduced metals don’t coexist for long. Typically, diamond inclusions show just one or the other, so the presence of both perplexed Yaakov Weiss, a senior lecturer in Earth sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his colleagues, so much so that they initially put the samples aside for a year in confusion, he says

But when they reanalyzed the diamonds, the researchers realized that the inclusions capture a snapshot of the reaction that made the sparkling stones and confirm for the first time that diamonds can form when carbonate minerals and reduced metals in the mantle react. The new samples are the first time scientists have ever seen the midpoint of that reaction captured in a natural diamond.

“It’s basically two sides of the [oxidation] spectrum,” says Weiss, the senior author of the new study describing the find, which was published on Monday in Nature Geoscience.

The find has implications for what lies in the mantle’s mysterious middle. As you travel deeper into the earth, away from the surface, the rocks and minerals become increasingly reduced, with fewer and fewer oxygen molecules available, but there is little direct evidence of this shift from the mantle.

Theoretical calculations have given researchers a notion of how the planet shifts from oxidized to reduced with depth. “We knew about that reduction with some empirical data, with real samples down to maybe 200 kilometers,” says Maya Kopylova, a professor of Earth, ocean, and atmospheric science at the University of British Columbia, who was not involved in the new study but who wrote an editorial accompanying the paper. “What happened below 200 km [was] just our idea, our models, because it’s so difficult to get the

materials.” There are only a few samples from below this depth, she said.

These new samples, which come from between 280 and 470 km below Earth’s surface, provide the first real-world fact-check on this theoretical mantle chemistry. One finding, Weiss says, is that oxidized melted material exists deeper than expected. Kimberlites, the erupted rocks that bring diamonds to the surface, are oxidized, so researchers had thought they couldn’t originate much below 300 km of depth. But these findings suggest that oxidized rocks occur deeper than that, and thus so might kimberlite rocks.

Diamond-forming reactions likely happen when carbonate fluids are dragged down by subducting tectonic plates, which bring oxygen-heavy minerals in contact with the metal alloys of the mantle, Weiss says. (Another way chemists think diamonds may form is by precipitating out of carbon-rich fluids that cool as they rise upward in the mantle, like sugar crystalizing from syrup. The new paper doesn’t rule out that process happening as well.)

The nickel-rich inclusions might also help explain an odd occurrence in some diamonds: occasional atoms of nickel seem to replace the carbon of these diamonds’ crystal lattice. That’s been a mystery, Kopylova says, because nickel is so much heavier than carbon that it shouldn’t be able to easily swap into the crystal structure. “Now, looking at these data, I see that it might be just a sign of diamond formation at certain depths,” she says. “That would be very interesting to investigate further.”

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https://static.scientificamerican.com/dam/m/5f42de011a37a5a3/original/Deep-earth-diamond.jpg?m=1758549530.032&w=900

Deep-Earth diamond.  Yael Kempe and Yakov Weiss

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Click the link below for the complete article:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/almost-impossible-deep-earth-diamonds-confirm-how-these-gems-form/

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