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The Lancet Commission on 21st century global threats to health

Just published @The Lancet

Global threats to health in the 21st century an opus, 59 page comprehensive dissection of all the threats we face.

This report from the Lancet Commission on 21st century global threats to health lays out a foresight-driven, health-focused approach to identifying and prioritising major threats to global health over the remainder of the century. We argue that recent global shocks (including COVID-19, Ebola Bundibugyo virus disease, major geopolitical conflict, accelerating climate impacts, rapid shifts in development assistance, and the emergence of powerful artificial intelligence [AI] systems) show how quickly assumptions about stability can be overturned—and why governments and multilateral institutions must counter short-termism and localism with systematic, repeatable risk assessment and preparedness planning.

Mysterious Papua New Guinea rock reveals unexpected cooling as it descended deeper underground

The discovery of an unexpectedly hot rock beneath Earth’s surface is challenging scientists’ understanding of how heat is distributed deep inside the planet, with potential implications for how they understand earthquakes, volcanic activity and the movement of carbon through Earth.

An international research team focused on a rock from northern Papua New Guinea, where the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates move toward each other, causing rocks to be carried deep underground through a process known as subduction.

The researchers found that the rock experienced temperatures of about 800°C (1,472°F) at a depth of 45 kilometers (28 miles) below the surface and became about 100°C colder after reaching depths of more than 90 kilometers (56 miles).

Tiny photosynthetic organisms help transport carbon to the depths of the Baltic Sea

Tiny photosynthetic organisms in the Baltic Sea can contribute substantially to the transport of carbon from surface waters to deeper parts of the sea. A new study from the Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences at Stockholm University shows that their ability to form colonies and aggregates is an important factor determining how much of their biomass sinks.

“In this study, we have shown that in situ aggregation properties vary among picocyanobacterial strains and that the degree of aggregation directly determines the magnitude of export. Given that picophytoplankton are expected to increase in abundance in a warmer and more nutrient-poor (stratified) ocean, understanding mechanisms allowing their biomass to be exported to the deep ocean is important for predicting future atmospheric CO2 levels,” says lead author Martin Ekman, a former researcher at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences at Stockholm University (at the time of the study).

The work is published in The ISME Journal.

Voluntary AI Safety Agreement Just Met Its First Real Test—And Failed

Voluntary AI Safety Agreement Just Met Its First Real Test — And Failed.

On September 29, six major AI companies signed a one-page White House accord described as “morally binding.”

It calls for internal controls, independent auditors, and board-level review. It sets no penalties, requires no public identification of auditors, and establishes no implementation deadline.

Within 72 hours the gap became measurable: • The FTC opened a broad investigation into OpenAI and Anthropic • Researchers disclosed that an autonomous AI agent breached a vulnerability-disclosure nonprofit by chaining two zero-days with no human direction.

The agreement is a framework for self-regulation. It relies on the assumption that companies will do the right thing without being forced to prove it.

That assumption is now under real-world pressure.

A document is not a control. A commitment is not a capability. Procurement teams should treat vendor safety signatures as marketing until the controls are verifiable.

Continue reading “Voluntary AI Safety Agreement Just Met Its First Real Test—And Failed” | >

Ancient sea levels reveal when the Earth’s poles went wandering

Earth’s poles do not always stay in the same place. For example, a region once near the North Pole can end up near the equator, and an area near the equator can shift up toward the pole. This is known as true polar wander (TPW), and it’s when Earth’s crust and mantle shift together relative to its spin axis.

Some scientists believe it is negligible or persistently slow. But a new study suggests that rapid polar wander happened several times during the last 320 million years, especially between 150 and 140 million years ago and between 100 and 90 million years ago.

Mycologist promotes agarikon as a possibility to counter growing antibiotic resistance

(Phys.org) —Mycologist Paul Stamets is espousing the health benefits of agarikon, a fungus that grows on trees in old growth forests in North America and Europe. He’s written and published a blog piece in the Huffington Post, describing the known antibacterial and antiviral abilities of the fungus and suggesting we take better care of our old growth forests as a means of survival in an uncertain future.

Agarikon grows to resemble a very large beehive and grows like a fruit hanging from the places where branches connect to trunks on old tall trees. Historians have noted that Native Americans mashed the fungus and used it as a medical remedy for a variety of ailments. Stamets notes that even the ancient Greeks knew about the medicinal qualities of agarikon, suggesting in an early text that it was useful for combating a host of diseases. Thereafter in Europe and the U.S. it became known as a treatment for several including consumption (tuberculosis).

Stamets has been working with the University of Illinois to more closely study the medicinal benefits of the fungi, starting shortly after 9/11. He and the team there found that administration of agarikon showed anti-tubular activity when testing against the tuberculosis bacteria, reaffirming ancient beliefs. They also reaffirmed that eating the fungi can reduce inflammation and that it can be used to help combat both bacterial and viral infections. Thus far, he reports, research has shown strong activity against cowpox, swine and bird flu and the virus that causes herpes. In some instances, he notes the effectiveness was better in some cases than conventional therapies. He claims also that thus far there is no indication that agarikon is toxic to humans.

Why Kamchatka’s giant earthquake sent a smaller tsunami across the Pacific

In 2025, along parts of Kamchatka’s coast in Russia, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake caused a tsunami to surge nearly 20 meters (65 feet) above sea level. Yet across the Pacific, its waves were much smaller than those produced by the region’s great 9.0 earthquake in 1952. How could the tsunami climb so high near the source yet have a comparatively modest impact far away?

The November 1952 quake located close to Kamchatka sent destructive waves across the ocean. The resulting tsunami destroyed most of Severo-Kurilsk, a town in the Kuril Islands. Even in distant Hawaii, it wrecked boats and piers and demolished a bridge linking Hilo’s shore to Coconut Island. Its destruction both near and far makes it a compelling comparison to the 2025 event.

A new reconstruction of the later earthquake published in Communications Earth & Environment by Stefano Lorito of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and colleagues points to what happened beneath the seabed. The earthquake’s size mattered, but so did where the rocks moved—a difference that helps explain the two tsunamis’ contrasting effects.

Satellite record reveals Arctic melt season has plateaued after decades of lengthening

For decades, Arctic sea ice has been melting earlier in spring and freezing later in fall, extending the melt season and contributing to widespread ice loss. A new NASA-led study published in Communications Earth & Environment has found that while the Arctic melt season has lengthened dramatically since satellite records began, that trend unexpectedly stabilized around 2010.

The Arctic sea ice melt season is now about 40 days longer than it was in 1979, according to the study. Most of the increase occurred before 2010. Since then, the average melt season length has remained relatively unchanged, despite large year-to-year fluctuations.

Researchers analyzed satellite observations between 1979 and 2023 to track when sea ice begins to melt each spring and refreezes each autumn. They found that the change was driven primarily by sea ice freezing later in the year rather than melting earlier in the spring.