The mother of a baby whose stomach and bowel “moved into her chest” has hailed new research aimed at treating her daughter’s rare condition.
Amelia Turner was given life-saving surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) when she was a few days old.
She suffered from severe congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) – a potentially fatal condition affecting one in every 3,000 babies.
The condition means the diaphragm – the muscle between the abdomen and the chest – has not fully developed.
As a result, organs that are supposed to sit within the abdomen could move into the chest space and crush fragile growing lungs. It means babies don’t have enough space to grow fully formed lungs.
Current treatment for severe CDH involves surgery while the baby is in the womb, with surgeons delicately placing a surgical balloon into the baby’s windpipe to stimulate the lungs to grow. This only increases survival odds to 50%.
Image: Amelia was born with severe congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Pic: Georgia Turner/PA
‘A complete whirlwind’
Amelia’s mother, Georgia Turner, 26, from London, said finding out she had the condition made her pregnancy “a complete whirlwind”.
“The team hoped Amelia’s condition would only be moderate,” she said. “Unfortunately, after Amelia was born, the clinical team told me how serious her condition was as her bowel and stomach had moved into her chest.”
Amelia spent four months recovering on the neonatal unit at GOSH, then another three months at her local hospital, before she could go home for the first time.
The “cheeky” 17-month-old needed a second surgery after her CDH reoccurred when she was 15 months old.
It’s hoped new research will not only make treatment less invasive and significantly increase survival rates but also lower the chances of relapses.
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Image: Georgia Turner with her daughter Amelia. Pic: Georgia Turner/PA
Science-fiction made real
A system developed by experts at GOSH and University College London in the UK, and KU Leuven in Belgium, would see treatment delivered straight to a baby while still in their mother’s womb.
It would see nanodiamonds used to transfer a hormone, known as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which stimulates lung growth.
It was tested on lab-grown mini-lungs, using 3D printing to simulate compression, as well as rats with the condition.
One of the experts, Dr Stavros Loukogeorgakis, a GOSH surgeon, said: “Nanodiamonds, 3D-printing and growth hormones in the womb all sounds a bit science-fiction. But this research is really showing us what is possible.”
He said the treatment could be available to families in as little as five years.
Ms Turner said: “New research like this is great to see how experts are trying to make the treatment for CDH more successful for all children, and less invasive.
“Hopefully better treatments will also prevent relapse cases like Amelia.”
The second big machine learning accelerator talk of the afternoon belongs to AMD. The company’s chip architects are at this year’s show to tell the audience all about the CDNA 4 architecture, which is powering AMD’s new MI350 family of accelerators.
Like it’s MI300 predecessor, AMD is using 3D die stacking to build up a formidable chip, layering up to 8 accelerator complex dies (XCDs) on top of a pair of I/O dies, making for a 185 billion transistor behemoth.
Large Language Models: Explosive Growth
Large Language Model usage is booming. And AMD is here to ride the wave of demand for hardware.
Models are getting more and more complex. LLMs are getting long, but also reasoning models require longer context lengths.
GenAI Needs
Keeping these models performant requires even more memory bandwidth and capacity, not to mention remaining power efficient. And, of course, being able to cluster multiple GPUs to house the largest models.
Instinct MI350 Series
MI350 was delivered this year, with AMD noting how they’re right on schedule for their roadmap.
MI350 Architecture Enhancements
MI350 is used in two platforms: MI350X for air cooled systems, and MI355X for liquid cooled systems.
MI350 GPU
MI350 uses 185B transistors, with AMD continuing to use chiplets and die stacking. Like MI300, the compute dies sit on top of the base dies, with 4 compute dies per base die.
The total board power for a liquid cooled system is 1.4kW.
The I/O die is still on 6nm and AMD says there are few benefits to trying to build the base dies on a smaller process.
Meanwhile the compute dies are built using TSMC’s latest-generation 3nm N3P node, in order to optimize per-per-watt.
MI350 GPU Chiplets
Diving into the I/O die, the infinity fabric has been changed to accommodate the fewer base dies used in MI350. 2 dies has reduced the number of chip-to-chip die crossings. And it allows for wider, lower clocked D2D connections, ensuring power efficiency.
There are 7 IF links per socket.
MI350 GPU Metrics
Overall, IF 4 offers 2TB/sec more bandwidth than IF 3 used in MI300. And the large memory capacity allows for fewer GPUs overall, cutting down on the amount of synchronization required.
MI350 GPU Cache & Hierarchy
Looking at the cache and memory hierarchy, the LDS has been doubled versus MI300.
Accelerator Complex Die (XCD)
4 compute dies can go on each of the new, larger I/O dies. For 8 compute dies in each MI350. Peak engine clock of 2.4GHz. And each XCD has a 4MB L2 cache that is coherent with the other XCDs.
Supported Data Formats
CDNA 4 architecture nearly doubles throughput for many data types. And it introduces hardware support for FP6 and FP4 data types.
Supported Data Formats Performance Comparison
By nearly doubling the math throughput for AI datatypes, AMD reckons they’re upwards of 2x faster than competitive accelerators.
SoC Block Diagram
And here’s an SoC logical block diagram, illustrating how the infinity fabric, infinity cache, memory, and XCDs come together.
Flexible GPU Partitioning
Shifting gears, AMD is focusing to a platform-level view of the hardware, and how those GPUs are used to build up to complete systems.
A MI350 can be configured as single a single NUMA domain, or two NUMA domains.
There is a latency hit to going to HBM that’s attached to another base die. Which is where two NUMA domains comes in, to restrict an XCD’s access to just its local memory.
Flexible GPU Partitioning, Cont
Separate from the memory partitioning options, the XCDs can also be split into multiple compute partitions. Anywhere from a single domain to making each XCD its own GPU.
Infinity Platform
And going bigger still, a multi-socket system allows for up to 8 GPUs on a single base board. Infinity Fabric is used to link up the GPUs in an all-to-all topology, while PCIe is used to connect to the host CPU and NICs.
Air Cooled OAM
AMD uses standard OAM modules to house MI350 GPUs.
Air Cooled UBB
With up to 8 of these modules on a universal baseboard (UBB)
Leveraging Existing DC Infrastructure
MI350X is a drop-in upgrade for existing air-cooled MI300 and MI325 systems.
Liquid Cooling
Meanwhile the liquid cooled MI355X platform offers even higher performance, at a cost of a 1.4kW TDP per GPU. This is still using OAM modules, but with smaller direct liquid cooling cold plates in place of large air heatsinks.
MI350X and MI3550X Platforms
Both MI350 platforms have the same memory capacity and bandwidth. But they differ in compute performance, reflecting the difference in clockspeeds.
Rack-Scale Solutions
And for hyperscalers, liquid cooled racks can be configured up to 96 or 128 GPUs per rack. While air-cooled options will support 64 GPUs per rack.
Rack Infrastructure
And when you need a whole rack, AMD offers a reference rack solution where all of the major chips are from AMD. GPU, CPU, and scale-out NICs.
ROCm 7
AMD’s ROCm software has slowly been coming in to its own. And software-based performance gains are just as important as hardware performance gains in boosting overall performance.
Inference PerformanceLarge Inference PerformanceGPU Training Performance
And here are a few slides looking at performance for both inference and training.
Annual Roadmap
Once again reiterating AMD’s roadmap, and AMD’s ability to reliably deliver on it. And that will extend to MI400 next year.
Accelerating AI Compute PerformanceInstinct MI400
MI400 will deliver up to 10x more performance for AI frontier models next year.
And that’s the MI350/CDNA 4 recap at Hot Chips 2025. MI350 has started shipping to AMD’s partners, so the company is very eager to see what it can do as manufacturing ramps up over the next few quarters.
Alphabet’s life sciences arm Verily laid off staff and eliminated its entire devices program Monday.
CEO Stephen Gillett announced the “difficult decision” to wind down the program in a staff memo, according to Business Insider.
“Over the years, Verily has built a legacy in developing world-class, innovative medical devices,” Gillett wrote, noting that the “path forward requires difficult decisions” as Verily refocuses on AI and data infrastructure.
The move continues Alphabet’s aggressive efforts to invest in AI while cutting costs elsewhere. The company has conducted multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, including cuts to its HR and cloud units in February and voluntary exit programs for its more than 25,000 Platforms & Devices employees in spring.
Alphabet’s biggest recent layoffs came in January 2023, when it slashed 12,000 jobs — 6% of its workforce at the time — in anticipation of an economic slowdown.
That same month, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, gaining over 100 million users in two months and kicking off the generative AI boom that today drives the tech industry’s priorities.
New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, in partnership with the University of Bath, has found that the reasons why a person chooses to use cannabis can increase their risk of developing paranoia.
The use and potency of cannabis is increasing worldwide, and dependence and cannabis-induced psychosis are also greatly increasing as a result, especially in North America. Two new research papers, both using data from Cannabis & Me – the largest survey of its kind – have identified key risk factors associated with the more severe forms of paranoia in cannabis users.
The first study, published today in the BMJ Mental Health, explored the relationship between why people first started using cannabis, and how this affected their subsequent use.
3389 former and current cannabis users aged 18 and over responded to a survey examining their reasons for first and continued use, their weekly consumption of cannabis in THC units, and their mental health.
Researchers established several key findings. Respondents who first started using cannabis to self-medicate an illness, including physical pain, anxiety, depression, or because they were experiencing minor psychotic symptoms, all demonstrated higher paranoia scores.
This was in contrast to those respondents who tried cannabis for fun or curiosity, or with their friends, who reported the lowest average paranoia and anxiety scores.
Dr Edoardo Spinazzola, a Research Assistant at King’s IoPPN and the study’s first author said, “Our study provides vital evidence on how the reason someone first starts using cannabis can dramatically impact their long-term health.
“This research suggests that using cannabis as a mean to self-medicate physical or mental discomfort can have a negative impact on the levels of paranoia, anxiety, and depression. Most of these subgroups had average scores of depression and anxiety which were above the threshold for referral to counselling.”
Respondents were also asked to provide data on the frequency and strength of the cannabis they were using so that researchers could track their average weekly consumption of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the principle psychoactive component of cannabis.
The researchers found that the average respondent consumed 206 units of THC a week. This might equate to roughly 10-17 ‘joints’ per week, if the user was consuming an expected 20 per cent THC content that is standard for the most common types of cannabis available in London.
However, respondents who started using cannabis to help with their anxiety, depression, or in cases where they started due to others in their household who were already using cannabis, reported on average 248, 254.7, and 286.9 average weekly THC units respectively.
Professor Tom Freeman, Director of the Addiction and Mental Health Group at the University of Bath and one of the study’s authors said, “A key finding of our study is that people who first used cannabis to manage anxiety or depression, or because a family member was using it, showed higher levels of cannabis use overall.
“In future, standard THC units could be used in a similar way to alcohol units – for example, to help people to track their cannabis consumption and better manage its effects on their health.”
In a separate study, published in Psychological Medicine, researchers explored the relationship between childhood trauma, paranoia and cannabis use.
Researchers used the same data set from the Cannabis & Me survey, with just over half of respondents (52 per cent) reporting experience of some form of trauma.
Analysis established that respondents who had been exposed to trauma as children reported higher average levels of paranoia compared to those who hadn’t, with physical and emotional abuse emerging as the strongest predictors.
Researchers also explored the relationship between childhood trauma and weekly THC consumption. Respondents who reported experience of sexual abuse had a markedly higher weekly intake of THC, closely followed by those who reported experiencing emotional and physical abuse.
Finally, the researchers confirmed that the strong association between childhood trauma and paranoia is further exacerbated by cannabis use, but is affected by the different types of trauma experienced. Respondents who said they had experienced emotional abuse or household discord1 were strongly associated with increased THC consumption and paranoia scores. Respondents reporting bullying, physical abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect and emotional neglect on the other hand did not show the same effects.
Dr Giulia Trotta, a Consultant Psychiatrist and Researcher at King’s IoPPN and the study’s first author said, “This comprehensive study is the first to explore the interplay between childhood trauma, paranoia, and cannabis use among cannabis users from the general population.
“We have not only established a clear association between trauma and future paranoia, but also that cannabis use can further exacerbate the effects of this, depending on what form the trauma takes.
“Our findings will have clear implications for clinical practice as they highlight the importance of early screening for trauma exposure in individuals presenting with paranoia.”
Professor Marta Di Forti, Professor of Drug use, Genetics and Psychosis at King’s IoPPN, Clinical Lead at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust’s Cannabis Clinic for Patients with Psychosis, and the senior author on both studies said, “There is extensive national and internation debate about the legality and safety of cannabis use.
“My experience in clinic tells me that there are groups of people who start to use cannabis as a means of coping with physical and emotional pain. My research has confirmed that this is not without significant further risk to their health and wellbeing, and policy makers across the world should be mindful of the impact that legalisation , without adequate public education and health support, could have on both the individual, as well as on healthcare systems more broadly.”
Cannabis & Me was possible thanks to funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC).
/Public Release. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here.
American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s well-known hierarchy of needs theory, first proposed in 1943, positions self-actualisation at the apex of human motivation and flourishing. According to Maslow, it is only after an individual’s basic physiological needs are met – along with the need for safety, love and esteem – that they can go on to achieve their fullest human potential, finding meaning and purpose in their lives.
“What a man can be, he must be,” Maslow states, on his way to explaining that the specific shape this self-actualisation takes will “vary greatly from person to person”.
What’s less well-known is that a year before his death in 1970, the revered psychologist revised his theory, creating an even higher stratum of motivation, which he reserved for self-transcendence. This refers to “transcendence of the selfish Self” and “implies a wider circle of identifications, i.e., with more people approaching the limit of identification with all human beings”.
Review: Arborescence – Rhett Davis (Hachette)
Rhett Davis’s latest novel Arborescence offers up a sort Maslovian dreamscape of transcendental potential.
The novel is set in a not-too-distant future where people are being used as avatars by self-actualising, deadpan artificial intelligences. With humanity going to hell in a handbasket, the possibility of escaping one’s ego and body begins to look more and more appealing to more and more people. What starts off with the odd green shoot here and there quickly grows into a fully-fledged forest, as people start literally turning into trees. Or, as the protagonist’s biosocial anthropologist partner puts it: “I think what it means to be human might be changing.”
Rhett Davis. Hachette
Arborescence is a thematically and aesthetically consistent successor to Davis’s 2022 debut Hovering, which won the Victorian Premier’s Award for an unpublished manuscript and went on to be shortlisted for the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The postmodern sway over that subtly surreal earlier novel continues in Arborescence, with nods to the likes of Don DeLillo, John Barth, Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges.
The ethical imperative and turn toward sincerity typical of post-postmodernism (sometimes called “new sincerity”) also finds its way into the story via the guidance of American satirist George Saunders, whom Davis cited as an influence in an interview shortly after the publication of his first novel. In fact, this appraisal of Saunders’ method from 2006 transposes uncannily onto Davis’s oeuvre:
A Saunders story typically operates by some gross exaggeration of contemporary life, set in a not-too-distant future where things have gone irrevocably haywire. His admixture of comedy and pathos, absurdity and realism, and his playful touch make it so you barely feel the political sting. But it’s there.
Detached foreboding
When Arborescence begins, its protagonist Bren and his partner Caelyn are struggling to find any real meaning in the world. Bren works for an e-commerce site called Queue: a Temu-inspired company with an Orwellian “telescreen” interface. Caelyn whiles her time away in a garden centre on the highway just outside the city – that is, until she gets fired for stealing/rescuing pot plants.
Early set-piece conversation topics are superficial and quotidian: house insurance, towels, missing keys. The dialogue is rife with non sequiturs and a sort of detached foreboding reminiscent of DeLillo’s White Noise:
“I was late for my glass-blowing class again. Do you know if Travis has house insurance, love?”
“We rarely find time to talk about insurance these days,” I say.
“Tch. I was just asking.”
“Ask him!”
“He doesn’t answer my questions,” she says.
“Well, I guess we’ll never know.”
“At least until his house burns down. Then we’ll know.”
In the middle of the restless, artificially luminescent night, things start to get interesting. Lying in bed doomscrolling, Caelyn comes across a video of people standing around in a field with their eyes closed – waiting, it appears, for something significant to happen. She recognises the location and decides she’ll go and investigate, with the goal of writing an article about this “tree cult”.
Her quirky curiosity quickly becomes an obsession and, before long, she has a PhD in psychobiotics and is the world’s leading expert on the phenomenon she dubs “arborescing”.
The strengths of this novel are chiefly intellectual, rather than dramatic. The arresting premise feels ready-made for festival panels, environmentally-conscious book-club discussions, and (thinking of my own selfish, yet-to-be-transcended needs) university syllabi.
In a little under 300 pages, Davis addresses, or at least pays deference to, all the big-ticket concerns of our time: artificial intelligence, ecological disaster, societal decay, colonial culpability and overconsumption. He also leaves plenty of space for readers to make up their own minds about what might constitute a positive outcome for a species on the brink of existential annihilation.
On this front, Arborescence is a smart, thoughtful and ultimately serious book. Davis pairs his fondness for pastiche with a deeper philosophical interest in questions of sentience and consciousness. “I wonder what it’d be like […] Being a tree”, the protagonist asks, in a play on philosopher Thomas Nagel’s famous “what is it like to be a bat?” line of enquiry. And while the novel’s depiction of the absurdities that characterise modern life threaten to overwhelm its loftier concerns, one appreciates the high-minded ambition.
In terms of plot and character development, however, Arborescence is a little root-bound. Conditions are favourable and yet it somehow fails to blossom into an affecting story. Apart from the exquisitely rendered climax, I found myself reading with an indifference characteristic of the novel’s protagonist Bren, whose mounting troubles are never so great they can’t be warded off with a good takeaway coffee.
While Bren shows the potential for tremendous physical change, he proves less susceptible to the emotional and psychological growth needed to make him memorable. He is more narrator than character, more flat than round, more reactive than active. Somewhat wilted, if you will.
One could mount a solid theoretical defence for this rendering: Isn’t technology passivizing all of us? Isn’t narrative desire inherently anthropocentric? Isn’t a “poetry of witness” the “radical” gesture we need in this age of man-made cataclysm?
But these are the sort of post-hoc, academically-manufactured arguments that tend to mean very little to readers out there in the real world. Did the character touch me in a way that felt like actual human contact? is the more enduring question. And the answer, in this case, is not quite.
The figurative wood-chipper
Formally, Davis avoids that overly manicured garden look by putting the narrative through the figurative wood-chipper, splintering the chapters into a rough-hewn assortment of various sizes and pieces. These range from several pages in length to single sentences and amplify the crosstalking technique heavily employed in the dialogue.
This deceptively simple landscaping technique is, however, somewhat spoilt by the large deposits of metafictional fertiliser wheelbarrowed into the narrative. These take the form of imaginary texts, which purport to offer a “clever commentary on the artificiality of dramatic structures”, while servicing a flimsy backstory about a missing childhood friend.
Italo Calvino. Wikimedia Commons.
The primary example here is a comic book turned television series called Voidstar, which reads like a sci-fi version of Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It is unclear whether this hypotext owes a debt to Zachary Mason’s science-fiction novel Void Star (two words) or whether it’s just a nomenclatural coincidence (I suspect the latter). But rather than promoting growth, its presence overpowers all living things with its thick ammonic scent.
Where the novel succeeds is in the mythic register. Examples of “arborescence” are found in countless folktales, from Indigenous Dreaming Stories through to Hellenic accounts of transmutation.
Of bodies into novel shapes transformed My Muse the tale designs.
Thus the Roman poet Ovid begins Book One of his Metamorphoses, in which the nymph Daphne escapes an infatuated Apollo by changing into a laurel tree.
In that tale, nature counteracts the god’s ravenous all-too-human desires through sublime intervention – extremely and literally overwhelming the senses with its awe-inspiring countenance.
A similar goal sat at the heart of the reactionary 18th century Romantic movement, whose poets and artists drew from ancient myths and invoked formidable scenes of nature in the face of an all-consuming industrial age. The allusion to myth and the fantastical evolutionary leaps of faith in Arborescence might likewise be viewed as a sublime Romantic gesture fit for our age of quantum uncertainty.
Apollo and Daphne – Piero del Pollaiuolo (c.1470) Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In his book The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell locates the experiential frame of reference for all human beings in an “undifferentiated continuum of simultaneously subjective and objective experience (Participation), which is all alive (Animism), and which was created by a superior being (Artificialism)”.
“No small wonder then,” writes Campbell, “that the above Three Principles are precisely those most represented in the mythologies and religious systems of the whole world.”
Arborescence sits closer to the animistic end of this continuum than the religious. Somehow reminiscent of the simulated animal calls found in Peter Sculthorpe’s music and the tortured and distorted figures rising out of the landscape in Arthur Boyd’s Nebuchadnezzar paintings, Davis’s representations tap into hybrid kinships that precede stuffy Enlightened conceptions of culture and spirituality. They are terrifying and bewitching at the same time.
Davis attempts to account for this beguiling manoeuvre when, masquerading as Bren, he performs the following metafictional intrusion:
I’m starting to think it’s the same story, over and over. We’ve been copying the ancient Greeks for thousands of years, while ignoring the ancient storytellers of our own land. Introduction, inciting incident, rising action […] Over and over […] As if it’s the only way we want to understand the world, as if we can’t submit to its chaos.
To my mind, this makes for a somewhat reductive analysis of what is actually far more interesting and impressive literary feat. Australian playwright Timothy Daly comes closer to accounting for the achievement when he reminds budding dramatists that
The most amazing scenes in Shakespeare are precisely those which are least “realistic”: the ghost scenes, or the mad, bedlamic scenes, where bestial impulses, paranormal phenomena, bizarre miracles and freakish feats of nature are unleashed on the awe-struck human witnesses.
Like that copycat William Shakespeare, Davis is at his most amazing, not when he is decrying narrative structure, but when he is wielding it like a talisman against the encroaching chaos of a looming inhuman future.
Psychotherapy leads to measurable changes in brain structure. Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of Münster have demonstrated this for the first time in a study in “Translational Psychiatry” by using cognitive behavioural therapy. The team analysed the brains of 30 patients suffering from acute depression. After therapy, most of them showed changes in areas responsible for processing emotions. The observed effects are similar to those already known from studies on medication.
Around 280 million people suffer from severe depression worldwide. This depression leads to changes in the brain mass of the anterior hippocampus and amygdala. Both areas are part of the limbic system and are primarily responsible for processing and controlling emotions. In psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an established method for treating depression. “CBT leads to positive changes in thought patterns, emotions and behaviour. We assume that this process is also linked to functional and structural changes in the brain. The effect has already been demonstrated with therapy involving medication or electrostimulation, but has not yet been proven for psychotherapy in general,” says Professor Ronny Redlich, who heads the Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology at MLU.
Now researchers at MLU and the University of Münster have succeeded in demonstrating this in an extensive study involving 30 people suffering from acute depression. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to examine the participants’ brains before and after 20 sessions of therapy. “MRI scans provide information about the size, shape and location of tissue,” explains psychologist Esther Zwiky from MLU. In addition to the MRI scans, clinical interviews were conducted to analyse the symptoms of the disease, such as difficulty in identifying and describing feelings. In addition, 30 healthy control subjects, who did not undergo therapy, participated in the study for comparison purposes.
The study provided clear results: 19 of the 30 patients were found to have hardly any acute depressive symptoms after therapy. The researchers were also able, for the first time, to document specific anatomical changes. “We observed a significant increase in the volume of grey matter in the left amygdala and the right anterior hippocampus,” says Esther Zwiky. The researchers found a clear connection to the symptoms: individuals with a greater increase in grey matter in the amygdala also showed a stronger reduction in their emotional dysregulation.
“Cognitive behavioural therapy was already known to work. Now, for the first time, we have a reliable biomarker for the effect of psychotherapy on brain structure. Put simply, psychotherapy changes the brain,” explains Ronny Redlich. However, Redlich stresses that there is no fundamentally better or worse treatment – medication works better for some people, while electrostimulation works very well for others; for others, CBT can be most helpful. “It is therefore all the more encouraging that we were able to show in our study that psychotherapy is an equally effective alternative from a medical and scientific standpoint,” says Redlich.
The study was supported German Research Foundation (DFG), the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Study: Zwiky E. et al. Limbic gray matter increases in response to cognitive behavioural therapy in major depressive disordner. Translational Psychiatry (2025). doi: 10.1038/s41398-025-03545-7
/Public Release. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here.
Ukraine acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that Russia’s army had entered the Dnipropetrovsk region, a central administrative area previously spared from intense fighting. “Yes, they have entered, and fighting is ongoing as of now,” said Viktor Tregubov, a spokesperson for Ukrainian forces in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city. Russian forces have slowly gained ground in costly battles for largely devastated areas in eastern and southern Ukraine, normally with few inhabitants or intact buildings left.
Separately, Ukraine’s military general staff rejectedMoscow’s claims to have fully captured the villages of Zaporizke and Novogeorgiivka just inside Dnipropetrovsk oblast. But battlefield monitor DeepState, which has close ties to Ukraine’s military, said on Tuesday that Russia had “occupied” them and was “consolidating its positions [and] accumulating infantry for a further advance”. Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea – thatMoscow has illegally annexed as Russian territory.
Ukrainian men aged 18 to 22 are now allowed to cross the border freely in either direction under martial law, the prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, has announced. “This applies to all citizens in this age group. The decision also concerns citizens who, for various reasons, are located outside Ukraine,” said Svyrydenko. “We want Ukrainians to maintain a maximum of links with Ukraine.” Previous regulations introduced after Russia’s February 2022 invasion barred men aged 18-60 from leaving the country.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had met with military leadership about the situation at the frontline and in the border areas. “We discussed in detail the key needs of each direction and units. It is very important that the nature of the situation in the border areas of Sumy and Kharkiv regions is determined by our units.” Ukraine’s president added: “Of course, we pay due attention to the Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions. We discussed the needs for additional supplies for these directions. The commander-in-chief reported on the implementation of the headquarters’ decisions on providing reserves for the defence forces.”
Zelenskyy said contact was being made with Turkey, the Gulf states and European countries about hosting talks if Vladimir Putin ended up agreeing. “From our side, things will be prepared to the maximum in order to end the war,” said the Ukrainian president. Ukrainian top presidential aide Andriy Yermak and national security council chief Rustem Umerov were in Doha on Tuesday meeting with the Qataris.Zelenskyy added: “Russia is only giving signals that it is going to continue to avoid real negotiations. This can only be changed by strong sanctions, strong tariffs – real pressure.”
The Finnish president,Alexander Stubb,said he hoped Donald Trump’s patience with Putin would run out soon. Stubb said he had warned Trump that Putin was deploying a “typical” Russian delaying tactic to avoid meeting Zelenskyy. Finland and other European countries “will do everything we can do achieve lasting peace”, Stubb said.
On security guarantees for Ukraine, Zelenskyy said their “defence component … should be detailed in the near future”. In Brussels on Tuesday, the EU foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper said the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, hadovernight been on a call with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and several European foreign ministers. European Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho said there should soon be a report from national security advisers on what would be put forward for Ukraine’s security.
A combat drone, presumed to be Ukrainian, went off course and exploded over Estonia without causing any casualties, the Baltic state and close Ukraine ally said on Tuesday, AFP reported. Pieces were found by an agricultural worker near the south-eastern town of Tartu, 75km (45 miles) from the border with Russia. Margo Palloson, director general of Estonia’s Internal Security Service (ISS), said it was believed the drone was aimed at Russia but “diverted from its trajectory by Russian GPS jamming and other electronic warfare means, causing it to enter Estonian airspace”.
No actor defined the 2010s more than Jennifer Lawrence. Less than halfway into the decade, at the age of 22, Lawrence had won the hearts of audiences as the hero Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, and a best actress Oscar for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook (famously tripping en route to accept it). She was bold, beautiful, brash and inescapable; her self-deprecating humour paired with megawatt talent made her a messiah for millennials – until she wasn’t.
By the decade’s midpoint, the internet seemed to sour on Lawrence as quickly as it had fallen in love with her. Her foot-in-mouth disease began to offend instead of charm, and her dominance in the media teetered into overexposure. “I just think everybody had gotten sick of me,” she reflected in 2021. “I’d gotten sick of me.”
This period saw the release of Lawrence’s most provocative project to date. Part home invasion thriller, part religious parable – Mother! follows Lawrence’s unnamed protagonist as she tends to the home shared with her aloof husband, a poet played by Javier Bardem (credited as Him).
As she supports her husband through writer’s block, a series of guests unexpectedly arrive at their remote house. First, a wounded man seeking refuge (Ed Harris), then his serpentine wife (played by a deliciously villainous Michelle Pfeiffer). Before long, the couple’s sons burst into the home, followed by a funeral party. By the film’s climax, thousands of people have entered the home against mother’s wishes, each claiming to be a devotee of her husband’s work. As the guests become zealot-like in their fervour for the poet, Lawrence’s character is driven to madness.
What begins as a surrealist take on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? devolves into a full-blown Boschian nightmare – and through it all, we are with Lawrence. She barely ever exits the frame, and Mother! hinges on her complete command of the screen. Lawrence moves from wallflower to pariah throughout the film’s torturous passage; it’s a high-wire act that, in the hands of Lawrence, turns a character who risks passivity into a deeply emotional, almost primal being who guides us through the delirium. It’s a movie star turn of the highest calibre.
Mother! broke Lawrence’s streak of box office success, landing with a thud. Receiving a rare F cinema score from audiences and struggling commercially, the frosty reception to Mother! played nicely into the predictably misogynistic narrative about Lawrence’s waning star power. Despite the backlash and her first Razzie nomination, Lawrence’s fearless performance landed her some of the best critical notices of her career.
The film’s director, Darren Aronofsky, has said that Mother! is a metaphor for the destruction of the environment, with Lawrence playing Mother(!) Nature. During filming, the pair began a highly publicised relationship, which ended shortly after Mother!’s release went up in flames. Lawrence later cited the tension of wanting to be a supportive partner while also being a creative muse as playing a role in their break-up; the irony that this dynamic had already played out on-screen in Mother! was undoubtedly not lost on either of them, Arguably, their willingness to mine the deeply personal is part of what makes Mother! an astonishing and brutal achievement.
While audiences largely rejected Mother! in 2017, time has only revealed it to be a searing takedown of the era of stardom in which Lawrence made her name, as well as predicting the hostile social environment of the Covid era. In a viral clip, Lawrence recounted the double standards she experienced as a woman in Hollywood, having now moved into producing her own starring vehicles. She has also been a vocal advocate against sexual violence after her nude photographs were leaked in a highly publicised phone hacking scandal. In an interview discussing the crime, Lawrence remarked: “I would much prefer my whole house to have been invaded.”
The full-throttle nature of Mother! is riveting in its sheer audacity. The film’s overwhelming nature and shock value elicit equal laughter and gasping. We witness Lawrence endure humiliation after humiliation and, intentionally or not, the film invites us to consider our own complicity in the spectacle of celebrity and what Lawrence has endured as a result of her stardom. “I have nothing left to give,” mother cries at the film’s apex. Lawrence’s fearless performance in Mother! is the work of an actor with nothing left to prove.
Mother! is available to stream on Stan and Paramount+ in Australia and to rent in the US and UK. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
For the first time in Western Force history, the Club will take Super Rugby to Perth’s fast-growing northern corridor with one game at Arena Joondalup’s HIF Health Insurance Oval in the 2026 season proper.
The Force have worked with the City of Joondalup and VenuesWest to bring to life the exciting opportunity for the Round 2 fixture on Saturday 21 February.
Joondalup has a population of 164,000 residents and is a rugby heartland with Fortescue Premier Grade clubs Joondalup Brothers and Wanneroo located in the region.
Register your interest in a 2026 Western Force Membership
The Joondalup venue, which features a main grandstand and large grass hill surrounding the playing arena with a total capacity of 12,500, previously hosted the Perth Spirit in the 2014 National Rugby Championship season.
The Force have taken the opportunity to connect with community, due to a venue clash at HBF Park for the Women’s AFC Asian Cup featuring the Matildas in February and March.
Under the agreement with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), HBF Park will be unavailable from March 1–21 2026, including a two-week period prior to the tournament as they prepare the venue and pitch for the event.
Working with HBF Park operator VenuesWest and meeting Super Rugby Pacific venue standards, the Force identified Arena Joondalup’s HIF Health Insurance Oval as the replacement venue for the Round 2 game with the requisite broadcast, corporate and changeroom facilities within the Perth metropolitan area. It is fully accessible by Perth’s rail network.
The announcement comes after the Force revealed its two Super Rugby AUS home games in September will be played at Fortescue Premier Grade club Palmyra RUFC’s ground Tompkins Park, located south of the river.
Western Force CEO Niamh O’Connor said: “We’re really excited to take the Western Force and Super Rugby to Joondalup for one game in the 2026 season to connect with the community which is a key pillar of our organisation. We are a Club for the whole of the state and the whole of Perth.
“Working with VenuesWest, with HBF Park unavailable for a five-week period, we determined that Arena Joondalup was the ground in Perth’s metropolitan area best suited to meet Super Rugby’s venue standards whilst also offering us an opportunity to engage the community and create a grass-roots atmosphere for the one-off game.
“We’ll continue to work with VenuesWest and the City of Joondalup to bring to life an awesome gameday experience for our fans and Members at Arena Joondalup.”
Joondalup, which is located 26 kilometres north of Perth’s CBD, is a region full of British expatriates and rugby fans. Joondalup mayor Albert Jacob said the game was exciting for the area.
Jacob said: “The City of Joondalup welcomes the opportunity to host the Western Force for one Super Rugby Pacific match in our community.
“Arena Joondalup is the premier sporting precinct in Perth’s northern growth corridor, home to world-class facilities and one of Western Australia’s premier playing surfaces.
“Nearly 40 per cent of residents in our region were born overseas, predominantly from the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa, and the chance to see premier domestic rugby in our backyard will be eagerly-anticipated.
“We also look forward to seeing Joondalup showcased internationally through millions of viewers around the globe.”
VenuesWest CEO David Etherton said: “We’re excited to welcome the Western Force to Arena Joondalup in February 2026 for their game against the Blues.
“A Super Rugby game at the venue will increase the visibility of elite sport to grassroots players, and this is a rare opportunity for the community and patrons to get close to the action.
“VenuesWest appreciates the understanding from the Force and their Members, and we look forward to bringing together the rugby community and the northern suburbs for this exciting fixture.”
Due to the one-off Joondalup game, 2026 Force Memberships will be structured as six-game packages at HBF Park, with pricing adjusted accordingly.
The Joondalup game will be ticketed separately via Ticketmaster, and Force Members will receive priority access when tickets go on sale in the new year. The Club will be in touch with Members with more information closer to the time.
The full 2026 Super Rugby Pacific fixtures will be confirmed later this week.
Register your interest in a 2026 Western Force Membership
