In May, the federal government announced without warning that it would take apart a network of ocean monitoring systems that it had spent over $350 million to build. No reason was given for the decision to shut down the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), but suspicion immediately focused on the network's role in tracking climate change.

But the OOI also provides data that's useful for weather forecasting and fisheries management, leading to widespread opposition. Today, it appears that the opposition has won, as the government will announce that it's reversing the decision. The big remaining question is how much damage the OOI took during the intervening month.

As of now, there is no formal statement available from the federal government. However, The New York Times reports that the decision will be announced later today, and Ars received a statement from Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, indicating that the decision has been made.

The OOI is a federally supported resource that provides ocean data for use by academic researchers, government planners, and private companies. It consists of arrays of monitoring systems in several locations in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that can track things like currents, salinity, chemical levels, temperatures, and tectonic activity. (There are over 100 individual entries on the page that display the data gathered by the system.)

Obviously, there are many potential uses of that data. The fact that it has been gathered continuously for a decade means it can help track changes in how carbon dioxide and heat enter the oceans. This is probably what made it a target for the climate change denialists who helped set the Trump administration's policy.

Those policymakers are perfectly happy to annoy people with environmental concerns, but they apparently neglected to consider how upset everyone else would be about losing access to the other data. The ensuing public backlash led the Senate on Wednesday to unanimously agree with a measure that would block the government from taking down the OOI. Today's decision may indicate that the administration recognized it had gotten itself into a fight it knew it was losing.

The big question is whether some of the monitoring equipment has already been removed. “We also don't yet know how much damage they have already done," Lofgren's statement said. "To be clear, this should have never happened. This pathetic scheme was illegal." For now, however, it appears that this is one instance where we won't have to wait for the courts to decide whether that last claim is accurate.

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Plague swept through groups of hunter-gatherers in southeastern Siberia 5,500 years ago, leaving dozens dead in its wake—with DNA from Yersinia pestis bacteria still trapped inside their teeth.

University of Oxford ancient DNA researcher Ruairidh Macleod and his colleagues recently sequenced the telltale bacterial DNA in teeth from plague victims at four ancient cemeteries in the area around Russia’s Lake Baikal. The tragedy that befell these communities is now the earliest known plague outbreak, courtesy of the oldest strain of Y. pestis ever sequenced.

Unearthing a new backstory for the plague

Until recently, scientists who study the evolution of diseases have held two fairly solid ideas about the origins of plague, the disease caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria. It's a scourge so awful that it has gone down in history as not just a plague but the plague. The first idea is that the earliest strains didn't have the right genetic traits to be really lethal. And the second is that the plague first began menacing humans when the first farmers settled in densely packed towns alongside rats and domestic animals.

But the dead of Ust'-Ida I cemetery, near Lake Baikal, tell a very different story.

"Our findings demonstrate that the earliest known outbreaks of plague occurred in prehistoric hunter-gatherers centuries before infections are observed in Neolithic farmers," wrote Macleod and his colleagues in their recent paper.

That challenges our previous assumption that plague spillover was a side effect of people taking up farming and settling in permanent villages and towns, living closer to each other and to an assortment of animals (and their fleas).

"Much of the accepted theory around epidemiology of disease in the past is that this kind of thing shouldn't occur in hunter-gatherers because hunter-gatherers are constantly moving around the landscape because they're in such small groups all the time," said Macleod in a press conference. "The theory, at least, is that infectious disease can't really take hold and devastate entire communities in this way.”

So much for that theory.

Welcome to the world’s first plague cemetery

The Angara River flows from the depths of Lake Baikal. The people who lived along it thousands of years ago survived by hunting, foraging, and fishing. They would have lived in relatively small groups, but they seem to have stayed connected across hundreds of kilometers through marriage and family ties. Although their lifestyle would have been one of constant movement, they buried their dead in cemeteries such as Ust'-Ida, interring them with offerings of clay pots, stone tools, and bone and antler points.

This map shows the location of Ust'-Ida I and Shumilikha cemeteries near Lake Baikal and the Angara River Credit: By Tara Young, taray@ualberta.ca and NASA https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/api/ - NASA's freely offered GDEM https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/api/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21156871

At Ust'-Ida, archaeologists with the Baikal Archaeology Project unearthed a grim mystery: an unusually high number of dead children, a cluster of radiocarbon dates suggesting that many of the cemetery's occupants died at around the same time, and no evidence of violence. Something tragic happened to this ancient hunter-gatherer community, but what? Archaeologists thought ancient DNA might shed some light on the mystery.

Macleod and his colleagues started with shotgun sequencing, a technique used to identify the DNA sequences in a sample when scientists don't know exactly which organisms they're looking for. They used samples from the roots of 46 ancient people's teeth from four different cemeteries along the Angara River.

And to their complete surprise, they found plague.

Fun fact: Because dental roots are fed by lots of blood vessels, anything in your bloodstream is likely to pass through your teeth at some point, which means if you die with the plague, it may leave its DNA behind in your teeth. “This is really cool evidence that the plague was in the bloodstream, which is lethal,” said co-author Frederik Seersholm, a University of Copenhagen ancient DNA researcher who clearly knows a fun fact when he sees one, in a press conference.

About 11 of the 31 people Macleod and his colleagues tested at Ust'-Ida had Y. pestis DNA in their teeth, and Macleod says that's "consistent with pretty much everybody [in the cemetery] having died of plague," not just those 11. That's because the detection rate for plague DNA in the remains at Ust'-Ida matches that at Smithfield's, a known mass grave specifically for plague victims in London. It's safe to assume everyone buried there had the plague.

"We really didn't know what to expect going into this, so it was a complete surprise that we discovered this really, really early evidence for large-scale lethal outbreaks of plague amongst these hunter-gatherer communities at this point in time," said Macleod in the press conference.

Ancient DNA and future outbreaks

Macleod and his colleagues managed to sequence a full Yersinia pestis genome from at least one of the samples, and it turns out to be the oldest strain of Y. pestis ever sequenced. According to the research, it's very close to the base of the plague family tree, emerging just a few hundred years after Y. pestis last shared a common ancestor with another bacterium called Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. This ancient plague isn't quite the one we're familiar with today or the version that devastated medieval Europe.

This very early version of Yersinia pestis doesn't have some of the genes that made its descendants so virulent; it's missing, for example, a gene that produces Yersinia murine toxin, which helps the bacteria survive passing through a flea's digestive tract on its way from a wild prairie dog to an unlucky hiker. It also lacks the right genes to form buboes (the painful swelling and darkening of the lymph nodes that gives bubonic plague its name). But its genome, not to mention the bodies it left in its wake, reveals that this early strain of Y. pestis was still horrifically deadly and probably deeply unpleasant to have.

"There are really a kind of perfect cocktail of other types of virulence genes that cause it to be so deadly—particularly, unfortunately, for children," said University of Copenhagen evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev during the press conference.

Understanding that perfect cocktail could be useful for battling modern epidemics, despite this strain of Y. pestis being so different from the ones circulating now in North America and Asia.

“What it gives you is an idea of which mutations in combination {...} are something that survives in nature,” said Willerslev. Because any combinations of features that work well tend to reappear (in the same microbe or in a different species), he said, studying ancient bacterial DNA “actually gives you some information on how these pathogens, including the plague, will develop.”

Why did the plague kill so many children?

Bubonic plague spreads through flea bites, but pneumonic plague is a respiratory disease, which spreads in a similar way to the flu or COVID-19, and that seems to be how this early version would have passed from person to person. So we can assume it would have come with respiratory symptoms like cough and difficulty breathing, along with fever. But for children, it probably would have been even worse.

When archaeologists plotted the ages of the dead on a graph, they noticed a sharp peak in children between 7 and 11 years old. Adults older than 20, on the other hand, had the lowest death rate. That lines up with data from plague outbreaks thousands of years later in London, when parish records document local children bearing the brunt of the plague's death toll.

The Y. pestis genomes that Macleod and his colleagues sequenced offer a clue about why. According to Iversen, the 5,500-year-old strain carries a gene that makes what’s called a superantigenic toxin: a chemical that triggers a dramatic, disorganized overreaction by the immune system. Children are especially vulnerable to this kind of reaction, said Oxford University immunologist Astrid Iversen during the press conference, because their immune systems are still learning how to respond to pathogens.

Telling the story of an ancient outbreak

The outbreak probably started when the bacteria made the leap from an infected marmot (a type of ground squirrel that's still a common plague carrier in the area) to a single person and then spread like wildfire through several interconnected hunter-gatherer groups along the river. For millennia, people around Lake Baikal have hunted marmots for food and for their fur, and close contact with a plague-ridden marmot can spread the infection. This is how it goes: accidentally inhale a few droplets of blood while skinning your latest kill or eat an undercooked marmot stew, and you’ve just doomed your whole band. And the neighbors.

Why are all the plague reservoirs also things I want to pick up and hug? Credit: By Stéphane Magnenat - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7566004

That scenario is supported by the fact that people at Ust'-Ida carried the same strain of plague as those buried 37 kilometers away at another cemetery, Shumilikha, which is what epidemiologists would expect to see if they were part of the same outbreak. The burial customs at the two cemeteries suggest they belonged to different subcultures within the wider Isakovo tradition, but DNA from the plague victims reveals threads of kinship connecting them—and the plague may have made those threads deadly.

Macleod and his colleagues sequenced the DNA of the plague victims, piecing together how they were related and (through radiocarbon dating) when each member of the family died. That data revealed that the plague seemed to have spread among family members, often killing several at close enough to the same time that siblings often share graves.

"The incidence of detected infections among co-buried kin... would be consistent with the transmission of plague among humans, particularly via pneumonic transmission in the scenario of concurrent deaths," wrote Macleod and his colleagues.

Or as Macleod put it during the press conference, direct spread between people makes a lot more sense than "an outlandish scenario that absolutely everybody got together at the same time and ate the same infected marmot."

At Ust'-Ida, a young boy shares a grave with his aunt; both had Yersinia pestis in their bloodstreams when they died. The aunt also has a teenage niece buried nearby in a grave alongside a teenage boy who isn't biologically related to her (it's hard to tell if they were adopted siblings or cousins, a couple, or just close friends). And the boy's father is buried nearby in yet another grave.

“It's so obvious from the way people are buried… that somebody was around to bury the dead that knew who these people were when they were alive,” said Macleod. “And that adds a really really human element to the scientific work that we've done, seeing the impact on communities and how these communities responded to this very tragic set of events.”

Nature, 2026 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10540-5 (About DOIs).

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The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded. In September 1859, auroras were visible as close to the equator as Columbia and some telegraph stations were severely damaged by current induced in the lines. If a similar event occurred today, with a lot more more wiring to pick up current than just an embryonic telegraph network, the results would almost certainly be cataclysmic.

Various modifications to the grid have been proposed to avoid another storm of that magnitude bringing on a new dark age, but a recent paper in the journal Space Weather proposes a more radical solution: using the sun’s energy to create a massive barricade in space.

While the authors of the paper refer to this concept by the compelling name StormWall, it’s not a physical wall. It’s actually just gas, likely of alkali metal atoms, to be deployed by solar-powered satellites.

To oversimplify, the proposal is to release lots and lots of neutral gas in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO), in what the researchers call “artificial mass loading” — the neutral gas would of course be ionized by the storm, but in so doing could absorb up to 50% of the incoming energy of the geomagnetic storm, frustrating its coupling to Earth’s magnetosphere. As a bonus, it would protect not just terrestrial assets like the power grid, but everything in a lower orbit than the mass load: everything from communication satellites in GEO to the International Space Station. Assuming its hasn’t been reduced to debris laying at the bottom of Point Nemo by then, anyway.

In simulations, the StormWall required 384,048 kg of gas, which is not exactly trivial. But even accounting for tanking, the researchers estimate that would only take about six launches of SpaceX’s Starship. Though that does assume its GEO capabilities end up being roughly equivalent to the massive vehicle’s projected 100-tons-to-Mars payload capacity.

It’s certainly an interesting hack to solve a problem that has caused a lot of worry these past decades. If you’re interested in learning more about the record-setting geomagnetic storm, we have a piece about the 1859 Carrington Event that should give you plenty of anxiety about the frailty of our modern infrastructure.

Most brands celebrate a 60th anniversary with a retrospective book or a limited-edition colorway. Bowers & Wilkins celebrated theirs by unveiling what may genuinely be the most advanced loudspeaker range they have ever made. The 800 Series Diamond D5 arrived with that kind of quiet confidence that doesn’t need fanfare to make its point, even if it was announced to considerable fanfare.

I’ve always believed that truly great audio equipment occupies a strange place between technology and sculpture. The 800 Series has lived in that space for decades. It’s the kind of speaker you find in professional recording studios around the world, at Skywalker Ranch where teams have mixed and mastered legendary film soundtracks, and also in the living room of the person who just needs the room to sound exactly right. That dual citizenship, professional and deeply personal, tells you everything about what Bowers & Wilkins has been building toward.

Designer: Bowers & Wilkins

The D5 is the fifth generation of the Diamond series, and the tagline “60 years in the making” isn’t marketing hyperbole. It’s a mission statement rooted in John Bowers’ original True Sound philosophy: nothing added, nothing taken away. Every generation of 800 Series starts from the same question: what stands in the way of the music? The answers keep evolving. The ambition stays constant.

The range includes seven models, from the compact 805 D5 stand-mount to the flagship 801 D5 with its twin 10-inch bass drivers. The iconic Turbine Head, that distinctive aluminum sphere housing the midrange driver in complete acoustic isolation from the bass section, remains one of the most recognizable silhouettes in audio design. It was bold when it debuted, and it’s still striking today. It’s been refined here, not rethought, and I think that’s the right call. Some shapes earn the right to stay.

What’s new in D5 runs much deeper than the surface. The Space Frame Bracing system introduces parallel aluminum rails bolted directly to the rear Matrix cabinet bracing, making the enclosure significantly stiffer and mechanically quieter than its predecessor. A revised aluminum top plate, with thicker ribbing and updated decoupling mounts, better supports the Turbine Head and Solid-Body-Tweeter assemblies. The crossover components have been moved entirely outside the cabinet, mounted on aluminum rails at the rear, which eliminates internal air pressure fluctuations from affecting crossover behavior. As an added benefit, natural convection keeps those components running cooler during extended listening.

The Diamond Dome tweeter gets a new grille mesh, first developed for the acclaimed 801 D4 Signature, that’s more acoustically transparent while still protecting the dome. The result is better off-axis performance and noticeably improved resolution. Every midrange and bass driver across the range has also been upgraded with lower-distortion motor systems derived from Signature-grade components. That’s not a minor tune-up; that’s serious trickle-down engineering from the very top of the catalog.

Aesthetically, the D5 introduces four new finishes: Stealth Black, Warm White, Light Walnut, and Dark Walnut. The paint has been upgraded for greater depth and durability, and the design detailing across every surface, from the spine to the plinth to the drive unit pods, has been refined. These are speakers handcrafted in Worthing, UK, and they carry that provenance visibly. Luxurious isn’t too generous a word.

Where I land on all of this is that the 800 Series Diamond D5 represents something genuinely uncommon in a market crowded with premium pricing and thin justification: a product that earns its position through accumulated expertise and genuine craft. There’s real, demonstrable engineering here, the kind that takes decades to develop, and Bowers & Wilkins isn’t shy about showing their work. The D5 range is scheduled to ship in fall 2026, and the anticipation feels entirely warranted.

Sixty years of obsessive refinement, applied to a speaker that takes the living room as seriously as a professional studio, will do that. When the engineering is this thorough and the design this considered, the only question left is how loud you want to play it.

The post Bowers & Wilkins Spent 60 Years on These Speakers. It Shows. first appeared on Yanko Design.

We're about six weeks out from the debut of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the follow-up to 2021’s No Way Home. It's been five years since Spidey graced the big screen, so naturally Sony Pictures has released a new trailer to build audience anticipation.

(Spoilers for No Way Home below.)

As previously reported,  No Way Home ended on a pretty bleak note, with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) asking Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to erase him from everyone’s memory to protect the multiverse, including MJ (Zendaya).

Brand New Day is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings). Per the official synopsis:

Four years have passed since the events of No Way Home, and Peter is now an adult living entirely alone, having voluntarily erased himself from the lives and memories of those he loves. Crime-fighting in a New York that no longer knows his name, he’s devoted himself entirely to protecting his city—a full-time Spider-Man—but as the demands on him intensify, the pressure sparks a surprising physical evolution that threatens his existence, even as a strange new pattern of crimes gives rise to one of the most powerful threats he has ever faced.

Naturally, Holland is reprising his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, along with Zendaya as MJ and Jacob Batalon as Peter’s former bestie Ned Leeds. The film also features Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle/Punisher, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk, Michael Mando as Mac Gargan/Scorpion (captured by Spider-Man in Homecoming), Marvin Jones III as albino crime lord Lonnie Lincoln/Tombstone, and Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock/Daredevil (briefly Peter’s lawyer in No Way Home). Sadie Sink, Liza Colon-Zayas, and Trammel Tillman join the case in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

We learned from the first trailer back in March that something strange is happening to Peter physically; he woke up surrounded in webbing and sought the help of Banner. It’s possible that Peter’s DNA is mutating, which, said Banner, “would be enormously dangerous.” But if Peter can make it through this new cycle, he might just get a rebirth—and a fresh trilogy of Holland-starring Spider-Man.

In this latest trailer, Peter specifically asks Banner if there is a way to get rid of the bad parts and keep the good parts of whatever is going on with his mutation. Banner's response: "How would you decide what parts of nature are good or bad?"

Meanwhile, our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is faced with a new threat that nobody can see. Peter is the only person who seems to immune to whatever strange power is affecting everyone else—and the "only one who can sense it." He does have an ally in Banner, who naturally Hulks out when the situation calls for it. Peter gets a chance to save MJ, who still doesn't remember their previous reality.  And he gets a grumpy pep talk from Frank Castle: "If you're gonna do something you'd better do it now." Perhaps those new powers will come in handy in the inevitable showdown.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters on July 31, 2026.

 

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