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  • Preparing Robots to Crawl on the Moon

    Preparing Robots to Crawl on the Moon

    CU Boulder researchers are working with the company Lunar Outpost to develop a digital twin of a rover on the surface of the moon. (Credit: Nico Goda/CU Boulder)

    The future of moon exploration may be rolling around a non-descript office on the CU Boulder campus. Here, a robot about as wide as a large pizza scoots forward on three wheels. It uses an arm with a claw at one end to pick up a plastic block from the floor, then set it back down.

    To be sure, this windowless office, complete with gray carpeting, is nothing like the moon. And the robot, nicknamed “Armstrong,” wouldn’t last a minute on its frigid surface.

    But the scene represents a new vision for space exploration — one in which fleets of robots working in tandem with people crawl across the lunar landscape, building scientific observatories or even human habitats.

    The Armstrong robot, top, and its digital twin, bottom. (Credit: Network for Exploration and Space Science)

    Xavier O’Keefe operates the robot from a room down the hall. He wears virtual reality goggles that allow him to see through a camera mounted on top of Armstrong.

    “It’s impressively immersive,” said O’Keefe, who earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering sciences from CU Boulder this spring. “The first couple of times I used the VR, the robot was sitting in the corner, and it was really weird to see myself using it.”

    He’s part of a team of current and former undergraduate students tackling a tricky question: How can humans on Earth get the training they need to operate robots on the hazardous terrain of the lunar surface? On the moon, gravity is only about one-sixth as strong as it is on our planet. The landscape is pockmarked with craters, some cast in permanent darkness.

    In a new study, O’Keefe and fellow CU Boulder alumni Katy McCutchan and Alexis Muniz report that “digital twins,” or hyper-realistic virtual reality environments, could provide a useful proxy for the moon — giving people a chance to get the hang of driving robots without risking damage to multi-million-dollar equipment.

    The study is funded by NASA and the Colorado company Lunar Outpost. It is part of a larger research effort led by Jack Burns, astrophysics professor emeritus in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS) and the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy (CASA).

    For Burns, a co-author of the study, Armstrong and its VR digital twin represent a big leap forward, despite the robot’s humble appearance. Burns is part of a team that has received a grant from NASA to design a futuristic scientific observatory on the moon called FarView — which would be made up of a web of 100,000 antennas stretching over roughly 77 square miles of the lunar surface. Daniel Szafir of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill was also a co-author of the new study.

    The space group’s first hurdle: Creating a digital twin for Armstrong to roam around in. To do that, the researchers began by creating a digital replica of their office in a video game engine called Unity—right down to the beige walls and drab carpet.

    Next, the team ran an experiment. In 2023 and 2024, they recruited 24 human participants to operate Armstrong while sitting in a room down the hall. Donning VR goggles, the subjects took the robot through a simple task: They picked up and adjusted a plastic block that represented one of the antennas in FarView.

    Here is an exclusive Tech Briefs interview, edited for length and clarity, with O’Keefe.

    Tech Briefs: What was the biggest technical challenge you faced while developing this digital twin?

    O’Keefe: It was probably synchronizing the physical robot with the digital robot because it’s pretty easy to just get something into a simulation and get it to move. But to actually get it to move as precisely as the real robot does and to be able to match those characteristics and verify them? That took a lot of work.

    Tech Briefs: How’d you wind up doing that?

    O’Keefe: We had a couple different ways. We measured the movement speeds of the arm with a Python script and then matched those movement speeds in Unity. Then we did a couple of experiments with the physical rover where we drove it a set distance and made sure it went that same distance, in the same time, in the simulation. And we did the same thing for turning as well to make sure it turned at the same speed.

    Tech Briefs: The article I read says, “Today, Burns’ team is moving on to a new goal. They’re recreating the much more complex environment of the lunar surface. The researchers are working with Lunar Outpost to build a digital twin of a rover on the moon, but in the same game engine.” My question is: Do you have any updates you can share? How’s that going?

    O’Keefe: No major updates. Actually, immediately after that interview, my co-worker and I merged our work together, so the simulation looks a lot more accurate. We’ve got the planets in the night sky. We were able to figure out exactly where the planets would be at a specific date and render that into the engine. So that’s probably the biggest update we’re currently working on — fine-tuning the physics of the rover and also getting the dust clouds that it kicks up to be simulated correctly.

    Tech Briefs: Once you have that digital twin, what will your next steps be?

    O’Keefe: I’m actually not sure where that goes next. After we’ve got the digital twin done, we might be switching focus to dip back into VR technology. The control interface and the ability to debug stuff with VR is pretty promising. So, we’re thinking about working with that. Or, we might switch over to another one of the Lunar Outpost vehicles and do the same thing with that.

    Tech Briefs: Going back to what you just said, the article also says the hardest part is getting the lunar dust just right. How did you overcome that?

    O’Keefe: That’s definitely still a work in progress, because we can’t just go up to the moon and see if our stuff looks right. There are a couple of videos online of rovers driving around, so I think we’re going to try and match with that. There’s a decent amount of research out there with models of dust physics, so it’s really going to be just try and verify everything we can with the materials we have, and then, hopefully, at some point we’ll get some real data to verify it that way.

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 [equipment squeaking] (Xavier O’Keefe) The task  was to identify which of the three antennas was   misaligned, drive up to it, pick it up, rotate  it to be aligned how it should, and then leave. On the moon there’s going to be, you know,  a lot of missions, a lot of things going on,   hopefully soon. Potentially deploying as  many as 100,000 antennas. And that would   be a real pain for human operators  to do manually with their hands. And the robot allows for that extra degree  of precision that humans may not have. [squeaking] The big picture idea is to develop  a training platform for telerobotics on the   moon. So, on the moon there’s a lot of missions  that need to be done with robots and the cost   of failure is a lot higher. You know, it’s  a multi-million or billion dollar mission. So we want operators to be able to train on a  very realistic high fidelity simulation on Earth  

    00:00:50 and then, you know, have that experience  transfer really well to the moon. We had two groups of participants, one  who just completed the task with the   physical rover. The second who completed  the task with the digital twin and then   went on to do the same task  with the physical rover. Most significant result was the amount  of failures that we saw between the   groups. So the second group had  85% fewer unrecoverable failures   than the first group, and these were when  the participants would knock over the antenna. This was pretty much impossible to undo  without an expert operator. And on the moon,   this would be something that  you couldn’t recover from,   this would be a loss of a lot of money,  potentially loss of the mission.

    00:01:25 So showing that we were able to  reduce these failures by 85% is,   I think probably the most  promising part of this work. That’s what I’m hoping will continue to  happen here, is that we’ll keep perfecting   our platform and keep learning how to  simulate these rovers better and keep   applying it to real robots that help real  companies solve real problems, on the Moon.


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  • Final Hours to Save $140 on This 34-Inch Samsung ViewFinity Ultrawide Monitor

    Final Hours to Save $140 on This 34-Inch Samsung ViewFinity Ultrawide Monitor

    Choosing the right monitor can make a world of difference to your productivity, especially if you’re limping along with an old, small display. This Samsung ViewFinity is neither of those things, thanks to its large 34-inch ultrawide display that will give you plenty of space to work with. Even better, you can pick one of your very own up today for just $410. But you do need to do it today — this deal will end tonight.

    In fact, this deal could end sooner if stocks run dry before the end time comes around. This monitor would normally sell for around $550, so you’re saving 25% here. With that in mind, why risk missing out?

    This monitor features a 34-inch ultrawide display with a QHD resolution of 3440 x 1440 and sports an impressive 100Hz refresh rate. That means you should expect nice, smooth scrolling through apps and webpages, while games will also look good as well.

    Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money.

    This monitor also packs features that are well worth calling out, not least a pair of built-in stereo speakers and support for picture-by-picture. The latter feature means you can plug two devices into the monitor at once, effectively turning the ultrawide display into two normal screens. The display is also curved to make it more comfortable to use.

    Around the back, you’ll find two Thunderbolt 3 ports for connectivity, with a single cable handling data and enough power to charge laptops at up to 85 watts.

    Planning on playing games as well as getting stuff done? This ViewFinity monitor also supports AMD FreeSync so it can match its refresh rate to your graphics card. The result is less stutter and tearing when playing fast-paced games, which we can all agree is a very good thing indeed.

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    Why this deal matters

    Big, ultrawide monitors can be a real productivity bost, and this model hits the spot without being too big. It won’t dominate your desk but will still give you the space you need to get your work done, all while offering a solid gaming experience when the time comes. And who doesn’t like saving $140?


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  • Experiences and needs of patients with esophageal cancer receiving eso

    Experiences and needs of patients with esophageal cancer receiving eso

    Introduction

    Esophageal cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in the upper digestive tract, and the population of this cancer type is growing. According to global cancer statistics, esophageal cancer is the seventh most commonly diagnosed cancer type in the world, and it is also the sixth leading cause of cancer-related death.1 Surgery is still the first-line treatment and the main curative treatment for patients with esophageal cancer. However, as one of the most complicated surgical operations, esophagectomy causes a long-term burden of symptoms, resulting in significant suffering to patients.2,3 Moreover, patients undergo a transition period from fasting, liquid food and semiliquid food to a normal diet to avoid anastomotic leakage, which can lead to malnutrition and affect health-related quality of life.4 Although the prognosis has improved with the development of medical technology, patients with esophageal cancer who are undergoing surgical treatment face significant physical and psychological burdens.5

    Patients with esophageal cancer usually seek medical attention owing to dysphagia and involuntary weight loss. They reported a serious psychological burden while waiting for surgery in the hospital. With the popularization of minimally invasive technology and the development of enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS), the average hospitalization time of patients undergoing esophageal cancer surgery has decreased.6 However, the postoperative recovery process of patients with esophageal cancer is lengthy. The existing evidence shows that patients usually have a variety of severe and persistent symptoms after esophagectomy, including some general symptoms (eg, pain and fatigue) and some esophageal-specific symptoms (eg, reflux, bloating and lack of appetite), which can impair patients’ function and affect their survival and prognosis.7 Most symptoms are gradually relieved within one year after surgery, and some gastrointestinal symptoms can persist for years after surgery.5,8 A shorter hospital stay and more severe symptom burden mean that patients face a variety of unmet needs during hospitalization and after discharge. Some studies have reported that patients with esophageal cancer have a wide range of unmet supportive care needs during the diagnostic, treatment, and follow-up phases, including but not limited to information needs, psychological and physical needs, daily living needs, patient care needs and support needs.9–11 These research results suggest that medical staff should pay more attention to offering supportive care in time according to patients’ needs in their cancer trajectory, thereby improving the quality of cancer care. The theory of chronic disease trajectory model holds that chronic disease itself is a long process, which will inevitably change with the change of time.12 Esophageal cancer may form different trajectories at different states or periods throughout the entire disease progression. The treatment, care and rehabilitation of esophageal cancer is a complex process, and the patient’s needs, behaviors and experiences change dynamically with the stages. Care should be adjusted according to different stages of chronic diseases to help patients control symptoms, reduce the occurrence of complications, maintain a stable psychological state, and ultimately improve the quality of life.

    Supportive care framework was put forward by Fitch, which refers to providing necessary comprehensive care around the needs of patients in the stages of disease diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.13 Supportive care is defined as the services necessary to meet patients’ physical, psychological, and social needs through the entire cancer experience to prevent, control or mitigate various complications and side effects.14 The fundamental basis of providing dynamic supportive care for patients is to scientifically and accurately assess the disease experience as well as the dynamic needs of patients in various phases and formulate targeted intervention programs. Timing It Right (TIR) theoretical framework was proposed by Cameron et al in 2008; this framework divides the disease process into five phases: diagnosis, stabilization, preparation, implementation, and adaptation.15 TIR theory emphasizes that patients’ support and needs develop with the progression of the disease phase. Currently, some scholars have used different research methods to explore the dynamic needs of patients and their caregivers in various phases of the disease under the framework of TIR and provide active care for patients.16–18

    According to our literature review, qualitative research worldwide concerning the full course of the disease experiences and needs of esophageal cancer patients is limited. The concept of “time” has been incorporated into the qualitative longitudinal research, which makes “change” the focus. Through interviews across time points, we can gain a deep understanding of the changes in patients’ needs over time.19 Therefore, to fill this gap, this study aimed to utilize a phenomenological research approach to develop a longitudinal qualitative study using the TIR framework to understand the experiences and needs of esophageal cancer patients receiving esophagectomy at different stages of illness and to provide a reference for the formulation of supportive care programs for this patient population.

    Materials and Methods

    Design

    Phenomenology, as a methodological framework, focuses on seeking reality in individuals’ narratives and capturing the essence of the lived experiences of a phenomenon.20 In this study, a qualitative phenomenological design was used to understand the experiences of esophageal cancer patients undergoing surgical treatment in the process of diagnosis, treatment and recovery and to explore the supportive care needs of these patients at each stage of their cancer journey. This study was carried out in accordance with the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ).21

    Participants

    Using purposive sampling and maximum difference sampling, patients who were hospitalized in the thoracic surgery department of a university-affiliated tertiary grade A cancer center in China from March 2024 to August 2024 were selected. The eligible participants were (1) aged ≥18 years; (2) diagnosis of esophageal cancer for the first time; (3) were scheduled for esophagectomy; (4) had normal cognition and communication ability; and (5) were able to provide informed written consent. The exclusion criteria were as follows: (1) other comorbid types of cancer; (2) severe cardiac, cerebral or renal dysfunction; and (3) scheduled for neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy before surgery. The participants were purposefully selected according to sex, age, cancer stage and the placement of a gastric tube and/or nasal feeding tube to ensure a heterogeneous sample with broad representation.

    Data Collection

    On the basis of the TIR theory and the suggestions of clinical and nursing experts, five phases were slightly adjusted: the diagnosis phase (within 48 hours after admission; T1), the perioperative phase (T2), the discharge preparation phase (1–2 days before discharge; T3), the adjustment phase (discharge to 1 months after surgery; T4), and the adaptation phase (1–3 months after surgery; T5). To conduct longitudinal qualitative research, it is necessary to select a specific time point for data collection.22 Participants with esophageal cancer were interviewed at the five specified time points. The interviews at the first three time points were conducted face-to-face, and the last two interviews were conducted by telephone or during outpatient follow-up examinations.

    The one-to-one semistructured interviews were conducted in a separate and quiet room in the department of thoracic surgery, and no other persons were present during the interviews. An interview guide was developed on the basis of a literature review. Before the formal interview, two patients were preinterviewed, and some of the interview outline was amended. The questions of the final interview outline are shown in Table 1. The questions were broad to encourage discussion. The interview time was approximately 15–30 minutes for each interviewee. In the interview process, the interviewer’s attitude remained neutral all the time, and there were no hints or guidance. The interviewees were encouraged to fully express their experiences and thoughts, and their facial expressions and body movements were recorded.

    Table 1 Interview Guide

    Researchers’ Positionality

    The research team in charge of this research included two nursing graduate students, two hospital nursing administrators and two professors of thoracic surgery. Three members had more than ten years of experience in clinical nursing and nursing management. The interviewers were the first author and the corresponding author with extensive experience in qualitative interviews. Mandarin Chinese was used for the interviews. The female interviewers were not the patients’ charge nurses, and they had established a trusting relationship with the participants before the interview.

    Ethical Consideration

    The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki,23 and ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committees of the Henan Cancer Hospital (2022-KY-0163). By replacing names with numbers (eg, P1 and P2) and deleting identifying information from the written records, anonymity and confidentiality were maintained. All participants provided written informed consent for the publication of anonymized responses and direct quotes. The participants were informed that their participation was voluntary and they could refuse or withdraw from the study at any time.

    Data Analysis

    NVivo 11 software was used to manage the qualitative data. Immediately after the interviews (within 24 hours), the audio-taped interviews were transcribed verbatim via Colaizzi’s 7-step analysis method in phenomenology.24 First, two researchers read all the transcripts several times to understand the meanings conveyed. Second, the researchers found important statements and phrases from each transcript and restated them in general terms. Third, the data hidden in the significant statements of each transcript were described and analyzed. Fourth, the researchers integrated all the results into a narrative and detailed description, and at the same time, they created and validated formulated meanings through the discussion of the research team to reach consensus. Fifth, the formulated meanings were sorted into clusters of themes and categories. Sixth, the fundamental structure of the experience was jointly identified by the members of the research team, who developed a full description of the themes in clear statements. Finally, the participants were asked whether these findings captured the essence of their experiences, thus validating the study. If there was disagreement on the theme, a discussion was conducted by the research team to determine the final theme.

    Quality Control

    The trustworthiness of qualitative research is determined by the following criteria: credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability.25 To achieve credibility, timely verbatim transcription and field notes were used to obtain the exact expressions. For dependability, two researchers independently analyzed and coded the data. To enhance confirmability, this was achieved by rigorously following Colaizzi’s method of phenomenological analysis process with a nonjudgmental approach. Finally, for transferability, a detailed and clear description of the research design (open-ended questions), participants, data collection and analysis was provided.

    Results

    A total of 20 potential participants were identified, but three patients refused to participate because they were not interested in the study. In the end, 17 patients took part in the study and were interviewed at T1, T2, and T3. 14 participants were interviewed at T4 and T5, and three patients withdrew due to ill health. The final dataset consisted of 79 interviews at five different time points, and the demographic characteristics of the 17 patients are presented in Table 2. The average age was 66 years (range 54–75), 65% of the patients had stage I–II disease, and 10 were male.

    Table 2 Characteristic of Participants

    Five themes and 12 subthemes were constructed from the qualitative data. The qualitative study identified themes of esophageal cancer patients’ experiences and needs in each of the five phases (Table 3).

    Table 3 Themes, Subthemes, and Concepts From the Interviews

    Theme 1.The diagnosis phase: Pessimistic feelings and lack of disease treatment information.

    Deep in Fear and Excessive Worry

    Esophageal cancer diagnosis signals the start of a difficult phase. People are scared of talking about “cancer” under the influence of traditional thinking. Almost all patients expressed that they had strong pessimism. In addition, due to the uncertainty of surgery, patients’ emotions were complex and changeable, and they were eager for psychological support.

    “I just feel a little hard to swallow food recently. However, I was suddenly told that I had cancer. I feel like I am going to die, and my head keeps sweating. I feel like the sky is falling”(P3).

    “It is bad anyway. I am nervous, worried, and scared. I have never thought I would have this disease. Cancer is equivalent to a terminal disease” (P2).

    Desire for Comprehensive and Professional Information

    Most of the interviewees said that they lacked knowledge of esophageal cancer disease and surgery. All the interviewees hoped to acquire comprehensive knowledge about surgery, including detailed process, expected curative effect, success rate of surgery, cost and postoperative complications. They acquired relevant knowledge through informal channels such as family members and online publicity. The information obtained by patients was mixed, and patients hoped to obtain accurate information from healthcare professionals in time and understand the details of the treatment plan and prognosis.

    “My son checked some cancer-related information on the Baidu internet via his mobile phone. I do not know how accurate the information is. Do I still need radiotherapy or chemotherapy after surgery”(P6)?

    “The doctor said I need an esophagectomy. I want to ask when the operation will be performed? How soon can I discharge from the hospital? Will there be any complications after surgery”(P10)?

    Theme 2. The perioperative phase: Heavy psychological burden and high symptom burden.

    Multiple Pressures and Looking Forward to Humanistic Care

    After admission, patients couldn’t carry out daily activities as they did before diagnosis, and they often needed the help of others, which led to a serious psychological burden. Moreover, a small number of participants said that they worried about their family’s economic situation. Moreover, some participants said that their dignity was damaged due to lack of privacy, communication barriers, loss of control and emotional needs being ignored during hospitalization, and they were eager to get humanistic care from medical staff.

    “The transformation of ‘patient identity’ makes me feel guilty and self-blaming because my family members have to take turns to take care of me in the hospital. I am concerned about being a burden of them”(P12).

    “I feel like I’m dragging my family down. I have spent a lot of money since I was hospitalized. I have to borrow money, and I even develop a sense of guilt (choked up and crying)”(P10).

    “Drastic changes in my physical appearance after operation; I gradually became self-denying and grumpy” (P4).

    “I always lie alone and look at the ceiling, hoping that some nurses will spend some time chatting with me, but they are too busy” (P1).

    Not Adapted to the Ward Environment and Sleep Disorders

    Owing to the shortage of beds caused by limited medical resources, most wards have multiple beds. Some patients expressed discomfort with the limited ward environment and depressive ward atmosphere after hospitalization. Most interviewees said that the quality of sleep during hospitalization was poor, and the alarm sound of instruments and frequent nursing activities at night interfered with sleep.

    “The patient in the next bed snores at night and is a little bit noisy”(P17).

    “There are beds all over the corridor. It is truly crowded. The doctor told me to do more aerobic exercise, but I am afraid I will disturb other people’s rest if I want to exercise”(P5).

    “I just cannot sleep, and my mind is a mess”(P14).

    Urgently Require for Symptom Management Program

    Most patients experienced progressive dysphagia and rapid weight loss before esophageal cancer surgery.26 Moreover, esophageal cancer surgery is related to digestive tract reconstruction and the extensive scope of the operation, which is accompanied by a high incidence of postoperative complications. The participants reported that they usually experienced multiple, persistent and severe symptoms after surgery, including some general symptoms and some esophageal-specific symptoms.

    “My surgical incision and wound were particularly painful a few days after surgery. I did not dare to move even with the anesthetic. In addition, I often feel dizzy and tired. How to deal with it”(P11)?

    “After esophagectomy, doctors place two tubes in the nose to pump in enteral nutrition solution and some medicine. They (doctors) didn’t let me take any food or water by mouth. My throat and lips were particularly dry those days”(P16).

    “Reflux and chest tightness occur as long as I lie flat. I can only lift the bedside and lean on it to sleep. The nurse said that I would sleep in a semisupine position for life”(P8).

    “I have no appetite at all now. I will feel abdominal distention after eating a little food. By the way, I often cough when I eat, even if I take a sip of water” (P2).

    Theme 3. The discharge preparation phase: information about medical care and self-management.

    Home-Based Rehabilitative Information and Medication Guidance

    With the popularization of minimally invasive surgery technology and ERAS, the average hospitalization time of patients with esophageal cancer has decreased. Most patients had not fully recovered their physical functions and normal diet at discharge, and they were confused about how to continue their rehabilitation after returning home. Most participants expressed a great desire for professional guidance from medical staff and hoped to obtain enough professional home-based rehabilitation information to keep their condition stable.

    “What should I do after discharge? You can give me a rehabilitation plan form, so I know what I have to do every day” (P1).

    “I hope that healthcare providers can provide more guidance and patience. However, they are too busy. They have many patients, sometimes I want to ask but dare not, for fear that they will annoy me (laugh)”(P7).

    “The doctor asked me to discharge with an enteral nutrition tube. I’m still not sure what I will eat when I go home. Additionally, how to care for this tube? Can you make a plan for me or give me some scientific recipes”(P6)?

    Home Self-Monitoring and Continuous Care Needs

    Many participants expressed their desire for further health-related guidance and supervision from hospital staff after discharge, which they thought was crucial for their physical and psychological recovery because they could know their health status dynamically.

    “Is there an electronic continuous nursing service platform in your hospital to keep in touch and help me manage myself well” (P8)?

    “Can I have the WeChat of your medical staff? If I have any questions, can I contact you by video consultation? I think it can be more intuitive” (P12).

    “I’ve had fantastic treatment in the hospital. I just feel that when I discharge, I am kind of on my own. I want to receive further care from your doctors and nurses”(P11).

    Theme 4. The adjustment phase: changes in living habits and desire for social support.

    Loss of Normal “Daily Life”

    Almost all patients expressed that they were confronted daily with the limitations of their body symptoms and eating, and they expressed that the activities of daily living were affected by the decline in physiological functioning.

    “Everything changes. I can’t eat in the same way I used to… I have to eat semiliquid food slowly, and I have to eat 6–7 meals a day. I cannot eat the same food with my family anymore”(P8).

    “You know. I just feel I struggled to adapt to a changed body. The doctor told me to exercise more after meals. However, I cannot control my tired and weak… even though I just sit and I don’t do anything”(P1).

    “My physical strength has not returned to the same level as before treatment. In addition, I also have reflux and bloating. I’m not sure whether these symptoms will improve over time”(P9).

    Avoidant Social Behavior

    The interviews indicated that participants avoided interactions with social groups after discharge. Some patients were worried about the social discrimination caused by the diagnosis and their social activities were significantly reduced.

    “I don’t want to see people. I just don’t want to go out because I am afraid of being looked down upon when I go out. I just want to be alone” (P16).

    “I don’t go out much. I just feels like there’s no interest in doing anything. I also don’t want to contact my old colleagues and friends, and I fear that people will ask me about this disease”(P1).

    “The biggest concern is that I don’t know whether there would be a relapse. It is difficult to plan for the future. I feel that I have no hope for anything, and I just want to stay at home”(P4).

    Social Support Needs

    With increasing amounts of cancer care being moved to home settings, family caregivers usually take on multiple responsibilities to support patients’ recovery and rehabilitation. Family support is fundamentally important to patients’ quality of life after being discharged.

    “The family is a motivation. I feel they are there, and they are taking care of me. I feel very warm and have more confidence to go for active rehabilitation” (P12).

    “Sometimes I am really tired. I especially hope my daughter can understand more and not always be impatient”(P3).

    “Fortunately, there is my lover, which makes me feel very warm and keeps me going” (P2).

    Some survivors also mentioned that peer experiences influence their rehabilitation attitudes, and they reported the need to build social connections with other esophageal cancer survivors.

    “There should be more peer support groups. We have the same disease experience, so we have a lot to talk about. Their behaviors more or less also play a certain role” (P13).

    Many survivors said that in the process of transition from hospital to home, there was limited support currently available from grassroots medical and health services, particularly in rural/remote areas. Seven interviewees expressed the hope that they could receive high-quality reexamination services near their places of residence in the future and improve the accessibility of services.

    “The hospital conditions in our county are not good, and many rehabilitation facilities are not available” (P17).

    “I hope that the community can provide more medical checkups, some good rehabilitation programs and health talks” (P9).

    “Some examinations can only be done in big hospitals, which are far away from us and really inconvenient” (P11).

    Theme 5. The adaptation phase: adjustment to “new normal”

    Improved Health Management Behavior

    Patients expressed that this disease experience gave them more time to think about life and death. Some participants said that after experiencing many types of physical and psychological distress, they were more concerned about their own health and reexamined their priorities in life.

    “After everything you’ve been through, now I feel that health is the first priority. I also started to actively manage myself, exercise regularly, stay optimistic, and pay more attention to my diet as well as regular physical examinations” (P14).

    “I began to feel better. Now I am proactively seeking healthy habits to stay healthy. Changing our lifestyle is the most critical thing” (P15).

    Integration Into Society Needs and Eager for National Policy Support

    In the adaptation phase, patients’ overall health status steadily improved. Patients with better physical recovery hoped to return to work or return to their original lives, and they needed to maintain autonomy and independence in their everyday lives.

    “Although there are still some symptoms of discomfort, I want to go back to work and earn some money to financially support my family” (P12).

    “I don’t expect a 100% recovery. I think I can still do some basic housework and do some basic things like grocery shopping. Instead of what others told me, you’ve been through a lot, so don’t do anything. This reminds me that I am a cancer patient”(P6).

    “Now I occasionally get together with my friends, and sometimes I call my family to go out to the park. There is still a need to integrate myself into society. It is impossible not to get sick in one’s life”(P10).

    Nearly half of the patients said that they were facing economic pressure and urgently needed policy support, such as the reduction of treatment expenses, the expansion of medical insurance coverage, the increase of reimbursement ratio and the payment of caregivers’ subsidies.

    “In fact, many expenses during hospitalization were not covered by medical insurance. I hope the government can pay more attention and introduce policies to help us solve practical difficulties”(P3).

    “I hope that the state can give some economic support and social welfare according to the actual situation of cancer patients, so as to reduce the burden of daily life”(P11).

    Discussion

    Esophagectomy has an extensive scope of operation, including removing esophageal tumors and replacing them with an alternative, usually a portion of the stomach or colon, to reconstruct the digestive tract.2 The longitudinal qualitative study design provided unique insight into the experiences and specific needs of patients with esophageal cancer at key time points in their cancer journey. On the basis of the TIR framework, we found that patients’ experiences and needs changed dynamically with different phases of the disease. In the diagnosis phase, patients usually experienced stressful panic and lack treatment information related to the disease. During the perioperative phase, patients did not adapt to the ward environment, had a variety of psychological pressures and physical burdens, and needed psychological and emotional support from their family members as well as medical staff. During the discharge preparation phase, patients expressed a desire for home-based rehabilitation information and continuous care from medical professionals. In the adjustment phase, patients felt that they had lost their original life and had avoidant social behavior, expecting social support. Finally, in the adaptation phase, patients enhanced their ability to independently manage their health over time, and they wanted to be independent and return to society.

    As a major stress event, almost all the participants diagnosed for the first time described the pessimistic feelings (fear, hopelessness, sadness, grief and collapse) that they had to cope with a cancer diagnosis. On the one hand, it stems from insufficient understanding of surgery, unpredictable postoperative survival rate and concern about potential complications; On the other hand, it is related to the long waiting period before operation because of various medical tests. This finding suggested that medical staff should pay more attention to patients’ emotional changes and adopt strategies to support patients. Furthermore, most patients knew little about the disease and had limited access to information resources, so Baidu was the main source they relied on. After a simple internet search through mobile phones, they would be more stressful panic and make inappropriate decisions because the quality and credibility of the information on Baidu are different. A previous study also revealed that patients have a deficiency in their comprehension of the disease and that healthcare professionals tend to underestimate cancer patients’ need for information.11,27 Therefore, healthcare professionals should proactively provide tailored evidence-based disease information to patients and their families (including the whole treatment and recovery process) from the beginning of their cancer experience. Studies showed that knowledge education from healthcare professionals help cancer patients correctly cope with disease problems and improve their adverse emotions.28 Medical staff should communicate with patients in a clear, compassionate, humanistic, and patient-centered way to alleviate patients’ fear, thus increasing patients’ acceptance of diagnostic information, enhancing treatment compliance and increasing confidence in treatment.

    During the perioperative phase, most participants experienced multiple pressures and sleep disorders, and these feelings arose from high cost of esophageal cancer treatment, the long treatment cycle, role change and somatic symptom burden. This coincides with the findings of Ma.29 They were even worried about becoming a burden to their friends and relatives. Psychotherapists can be engaged as necessary to pay attention to the problem of patients’ negative emotions and develop targeted interventions to reduce patients’ pressures.30 In addition, some patients reported that they were not accustomed to the limited space and depressing atmosphere in the ward. Therefore, hospital administrators must never ignore the effects of the ward environment on cancer patients’ daily lives and emotions. A bright and spacious hospital environment staffed by empathetic healthcare workers may avoid this situation and promote disease recovery. This study also found that patients often feel lonely, helpless and lack of dignity, and were eager for humanistic care from medical staff during hospitalization. Therefore, nurses should increase bedside nursing time, take the initiative to care about patients’ psychological feelings, take various measures to help patients express their needs and increase humanistic care. Symptom management needs are prominent needs after esophagectomy. The participants expressed that they experienced the highest number of symptoms and the most pronounced symptom burden during hospitalization, which is consistent with the findings of previous studies.7,26 Pain, fatigue, lack of appetite, choking, cough, dysphagia, bloating, and reflux are common and expected adverse consequences of surgery, which would improve over time. In addition, we found that patients with high somatic symptom burden would have more pronounced psychological distress. Therefore, healthcare providers should attach great importance to the dynamic symptom management of patients and provide effective symptom management skills, including medications and nonpharmacological therapies.31 In addition, patients are confronted with the challenges of daily diet and nutrition problems due to changes in esophageal physiology and transition from fasting to liquid food and semiliquid food.32 Nurses should pay more attention to patients’ dietary and nutritional needs after surgery and provide one-to-one enteral nutrition guidance, intravenous high-nutrition guidance and oral nutritional intake guidance. Notably, eating slowly, consuming small and frequent meals, chewing 50 times, performing chin-down-plus-larynx-tightening maneuvers, and avoiding lying flat immediately after the finish of a meal can prevent digestive tract discomfort in patients with esophageal cancer after eating.33

    Owing to the comprehensive promotion of ERAS, the length of hospital stay of patients has been shortened, and some participants felt that they were not adequately prepared for discharge. This may be because they have low confidence in self-management, including rehabilitation exercise, diet, symptom management and medication taking.34 Analysis of the reasons, on the one hand, may be that patients need to independently manage their own complex diseases after discharge, and lack of necessary knowledge may lead to their inability to cope with emergencies; On the other hand, it may be that patients do not know enough about postoperative rehabilitation knowledge and face individual differences, which makes patients worry about their recovery after discharge. In addition, most patients with esophageal cancer are older and from remote rural areas, which made follow-up review difficult and weakened medical support.35 Improving self-management and disease awareness in patients can improve surgical outcomes and promote long-term survival. Consequently, medical professionals must reassess their self-management ability and patient readiness for discharge to provide diverse discharge teaching as well as home-based rehabilitative information to strengthen the memory of the teaching subjects, particularly accounting for patients’ cultural context. Some participants showed serious dependency on medical staff and were eager to receive further care from hospital staff after discharge. Some internet-based mobile smart devices should be considered to maintain their continued contact with medical professionals after they return home,36 and hospitals should carry out hospital-society-family triple-linkage rehabilitation programs to help patients recover.

    In our interviews, most participants described their life after going home as “losing normal life” during the adjustment phase period. The patients’ original lifestyles were completely disrupted including diet, exercise, recreation, and they were unable to adjust to a rhythm of life within a short period after discharge. The altered dietary habits and uncontrolled symptoms as well as the patient’s illness experience may result in withdrawal from social situations and isolation.37 Therefore, nurses should encourage patients to communicate with others and improve their level of posttraumatic growth.38 Moreover, some participants were worried about future hardship and cancer recurrence. This shows that it is necessary to inform survivors that recovery is a continuous process and that the length of recovery will vary from person to person. At the same time, nurses can provide timely remote cancer recurrence monitoring education for patients to help them know their health status promptly and dynamically and develop individualized health maintenance plans. During the adjustment phase, the ability of patients to care for themselves is limited. Therefore, adequate social support plays a vital role in promoting patient recovery because esophageal cancer patients need to perceive being loved and cared for by their family members, friends, peers, and other communities in general. Our results are consistent with those of previous studies on other cancer patients, which shows that the social support system of cancer patients is an important factor in their posttraumatic growth.39 In Confucian ethical concepts, the family is regarded as the basic unit of society, and emotional connections and mutual support among family members are extremely important. The care of family members makes patients feel safe and warm. However, some patients’ family caregivers need to go out to work and they cannot stay with patients often, which will lead to weakened family support. Nurses should comprehensively assess the social support system of these patients and provide holistic support and education for patients’ family caregivers. Peer support is a unique form of social support and peer experience can enhance the psychosocial well-being of patients during recovery. Therefore, promoting communication among similar patients may be beneficial, and hospitals can establish peer support groups or regularly organize peer meetings and activities to share rehabilitation skills.

    Interestingly, we found that patients’ self-management was a dynamic process. As time went by, patients would gradually increase their acceptance of symptoms and gradually adapt to a life of recovery living with symptoms. During the adaptation phase, some patients said that this illness experience made them more deeply aware of the importance of health and changed their unhealthy lifestyle to keep their condition stable Some survivors tried to re-establish “normality” in their lives through self-management practices, and they began to downplayed or even ignore some of their symptoms gradually. Furthermore, some participants described that they hoped to maintain autonomy in their everyday lives and that they needed to carry out their daily routine as much as possible. Thus, at this point, their family members should pay more attention to their changing needs over time and take corresponding measures to help such people deal with what they can as soon as possible instead of overprotecting.40 Research reports that the behaviors of others have profound impacts on patient wellbeing.41 Inappropriate social support weakens individuals’ ability to regain their functional ability, impedes their recovery, affects their self-efficacy and reduces their self-esteem.42,43 Similarly, cancer survivors will feel guilty owing to their inability to fill their former role, such as a family member, friend, or employee.44 Therefore, families should recognize the need to lessen their physical support and enhance patients’ confidence in their self-care ability. More importantly, state policies are supposed to support the reintegration of cancer survivors into society through various policy benefits.45 Medical insurance should also increase the reimbursement ratio for cancer patients, and the government should provide certain economic support to cancer patients to alleviate their financial and living pressures. Finally, there are limited hospitals with high-quality medical resources in China, and most of them are concentrated in big cities.The state should pay attention to making up for the shortage of regional medical resources, such as setting up cross-regional medical platforms to provide online medical guidance for patients, avoiding patients’ long journey to seek medical treatment and alleviating their pressure.

    Relevance for Clinical Practice

    The results of this study indicated that at various stages of the cancer journey, esophageal cancer patients had a wide range of needs in terms of health information, symptom management, psychological care, and social support. Healthcare providers should scientifically and systematically assess and provide supportive care to patients. Medical staff should assess the dynamic needs of patients based on their different stages of disease, provide disease education and rehabilitation information, psychological therapy, symptom management skills at appropriate times, and cultivate patients’ social support networks, including peer support groups, patient-centered group activity, binary coping of husband and wife, and organization of family meetings. Moreover, it is necessary to use e-health (ie internet or smartphone apps) to provide continuous care services. These interventions play a pivotal role in helping esophageal cancer patients recover and reintegrate into social life.

    Limitations

    This is the first time that the TIR theory has been applied to explore the longitudinal disease experiences and needs of esophageal cancer patients undergoing esophagectomy. There were still several limitations in this study. First, this was a single-center study in one of the large-volume national cancer regional medical centers. Therefore, the generalizability of our results may be limited due to small sample size and single source. Second, patients who received neoadjuvant therapy before surgery were excluded because these patients had to undergo multicycle chemoradiotherapy and long-term repeated hospitalization. Finally, some interviews were conducted by telephone, and some patients were accompanied by their family members. They might not fully express their views.

    Conclusion

    This research add depth and breadth to the understanding of disease experiences and needs of esophageal cancer patients undergoing esophagectomy in China. Esophageal cancer patients undergoing esophagectomy had interrelated and dynamic experiences and needs in the process of cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery, and physical and emotional symptoms were interrelated with each other, which have a range of negative effects on their daily lives. Medical professionals should carry out dynamic and individualized interventions as well as provide adequate information resources and social support to reduce symptom burden, improve quality of life and promote long-term survival.

    Data Sharing Statement

    The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

    Ethics Approval

    The program was granted approval by the Henan Cancer Hospital (2022-KY-0163).

    Consent

    This study obtained written informed consent from participants, reconfirmed by their oral consent prior to the interviews to have the interviews digitally recorded.

    Acknowledgments

    We acknowledge all the patients who shared their experiences and the nurses in clinical units for their assistance.

    Funding

    This study was supported by Henan Province Medical Education Research Program (WJLX2023008).

    Disclosure

    The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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  • Israeli strike on Gaza church kills three and injures priest Pope Francis called daily | Israel-Gaza war

    Israeli strike on Gaza church kills three and injures priest Pope Francis called daily | Israel-Gaza war

    An Israeli strike has hit the only Catholic church in Gaza, killing three people and injuring 10 others including the parish priest, who used to receive daily calls from the late Pope Francis.

    The Catholic charity Caritas Internationalis said the three victims were Saad Salameh, the 60-year-old janitor of the Holy Family church; Fumayya Ayyad, an 84-year-old woman who was receiving psychological support in a Caritas tent in the church’s compound when the blast occurred, and Najwa abu Daoud, 69, who was sitting close to Ayyad.

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    Ibrahim Saqallah, a paramedic at the nearby al-Ahli Arab hospital, told the Guardian that about 10 people were wounded, some critically. The injuries were caused by shrapnel from an exploding artillery shell.

    Saqallah said the hospital was notified that the church had been hit. “I got into the ambulance and headed straight to the church,” he added. “This [Israeli] army is arrogant – it does not distinguish between Christian or Muslim, nor does it care whether it’s a church, a mosque, a home, or even a school. We are living in the midst of a brutal war.”

    The shelling of the church also damaged its compound, where hundreds of Palestinians, including children and people with disabilities, have been sheltering during the 21-month war. Israel issued a rare apology and said it was investigating.

    Attallah Terzi, a displaced 75-year-old Christian now sheltering in a school next to the church, said: “I had just returned to the classroom after being outside for a few minutes when a massive explosion occurred. It was the first time since the beginning of the war that the sound of an explosion was so intense.”

    Before his death in April, the former pope would call Gabriel Romanelli, an Argentinian, every evening. He began the routine on 9 October 2023, two days after the attacks on Israel by Hamas ignited the devastating war in Gaza.

    Reuters footage from the hospital showed Romanelli to be lightly injured, with a bandaged left leg but able to walk.

    Terzi witnessed the killing of a woman who had been assisting a man in a wheelchair and another whose head was hit by a stone that appeared to have fallen from the church. She also saw a young man being struck by shrapnel. Romanelli had run to help him before being injured himself.

    Pope Leo XIV said in a telegram sent by the Vatican’s secretary of state in his name that he was “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life and injury caused by the military attack” and that he was renewing his calls for an immediate ceasefire.

    In a statement, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said: “The Israeli raids on Gaza have also hit the Holy Family church. The attacks against the civilian population that Israel has been carrying out for months are unacceptable. No military action can justify such behaviour.”

    Christian Palestinians mourn Saad Salameh and Fumayya Ayyad during their funeral ceremony at the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City. Photograph: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images

    Elizabeth Funnell, the Middle East representative for the Catholic aid agency Cafod, said: “We once again call on the international community to act urgently to protect civilians, places of worship and humanitarian spaces, and to ensure that people in Gaza have access to the most basic right: the chance to survive.”

    The Israel Defense Forces said they were aware of the reports.

    “The circumstances of the incident are under review. The IDF makes every feasible effort to mitigate harm to civilians and civilian structures, including religious sites, and regrets any damage caused to them,” its statement added.

    The Holy Family church in Gaza spoke in a separate statement of “a number of injured, some in critical condition”.

    Dozens of Palestinians were killed and wounded during Israeli airstrikes on several areas of the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including four who were killed in an attack on a home close to the Imam al-Shafi’i school in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City.

    After Francis’s death, Romanelli, who has served as the parish priest since 2019, told the Guardian: “Even after he was hospitalised, he continued calling to check on us. Our grief is deep because we lost someone we felt had become a member of our church.”

    Francis was a strong advocate of ending the war. In his last public address on Easter Sunday, he condemned the “deplorable humanitarian situation” in Gaza and implored Israel and Hamas to “call for a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people, that aspires to a future of peace”.

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    A new episode of the IEA podcast Everything Energy looks at the spectacular growth in the global market for batteries over the past decade, which has been driven by the energy sector.

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  • Study finds unexpected amount of radioactive material in the ocean

    Study finds unexpected amount of radioactive material in the ocean

    Scientists analyzing sediment scraped from a rugged ridge nearly three miles under the Central Pacific Ocean expected calm, predictable chemistry. Instead they found a dense band of the radioactive isotope beryllium‑10 (10Be) packed into the layer that formed about 10 million years ago.

    This enough extra atoms to raise the normal background by roughly seventy‑three percent.


    Dr. Dominik Koll of the Australian National University (ANU) and Helmholtz‑Zentrum Dresden‑Rossendorf (HZDR) led the international crew that pulled the samples and ran the accelerator mass‑spectrometry tests for the study.

    10Be signals from the ocean floor

    The long‑lived radionuclide 10Be forms high in the atmosphere when energetic cosmic rays shatter nitrogen and oxygen nuclei.

    Those new atoms float with aerosols for about one to two years before rain or snow carries them to the surface. Most wash into the ocean, where they mix with stable Beryllium-9 (9Be) that rivers deliver from eroding rocks.

    Levels of 10Be in modern sea water differ by more than a factor of two between polar and tropical basins because production, scavenging, and circulation of the element vary by latitude.

    When the isotope finally sticks to an iron‑manganese ridge on the seafloor it starts an atomic clock that ticks for 1.39 million years, the half‑life of 10Be.

    Why 10Be fascinates geologists

    Because the element decays so slowly, researchers use it to date marine sediments, ice cores, and even meteorites across spans up to 15 million years.

    A typical cosmogenic nuclide profile in a growing crust drops smoothly with depth as older layers lose 10Be; any bump therefore signals either faster supply or slower loss.

    The crusts grow at speeds of mere millimeters per million years, so a handheld drill producing two‑millimeter slices can resolve history in 400,000‑year steps.

    Such precision lets scientists spot subtle environmental swings that fossils or chemical ratios may miss.

    Buried in ferromanganese crusts

    “The floor of the major oceans on Earth exhibits one of the most pristine geological archives recording millions of years of environmental conditions and changes – ferromanganese crusts,” said Dr. Koll.

    Core after core from the Pacific showed the same pronounced swell centered on 10.1 million years. Accumulation persisted for at least 1.4 million years and boosted the integrated 10Be ocean inventory by 25 percent.

    The discovery held across three independent ferromanganese crust samples that were hauled from sites thousands of miles apart, ruling out drilling artifacts or local pollution.

    No comparable spike appears in younger sediments, showing that the event was unique within the last 15 million years of record.

    Late Miocene climate shifts

    The Late Miocene saw the modern Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) strengthen as gateways south of Australia and South America widened, reorganizing global circulation.

    If swift new currents swept 10Be‑rich southern water into the central Pacific they could have flooded the region with extra isotope for centuries.

    A reconfigured ACC would also explain why stable 9Be in the same layers declined, a hint that ocean mixing rather than land erosion controlled the signal.

    Meltwater pulses from shrinking Antarctic ice sheets are another possibility, yet sea‑level reconstructions place the largest rises earlier than the 10Be spike and model runs suggest they would dilute rather than concentrate the isotope.

    Geochemical markers of carbonate dissolution track the beryllium layer, strengthening the argument that deep‑water flow, not surface runoff, brought the anomaly.

    This pattern aligns with known disruptions in deep-ocean chemistry during the Miocene, including a sharp drop in calcium carbonate that was linked to shifting current regimes.

    How 10Be settles in the ocean

    Cosmic factors linger in the debate about how and why 10Be accumulates on the ocean floor.

    An unusual lull in Earth’s magnetic field or an extended solar grand minimum lets more galactic particles penetrate the atmosphere, but known episodes boost production for thousands, not hundreds of thousands, of years.

    Another proposal invokes a dense interstellar cloud compressing the heliosphere so that Earth lost its protective bubble and endured a sustained cosmic ray barrage.

    Though speculative, the timing sits within astrophysical uncertainty windows and remains on the table pending stellar‑motion models.

    Any celestial trigger must still mesh with the clear oceanographic fingerprint, so researchers increasingly suspect a two‑step story in which circulation changes amplified a modest atmospheric surge.

    What happens next

    Teams are now targeting their search for 10Be to low‑sedimentation South Pacific ocean muds that offer finer time resolution than crusts. If the anomaly sharpens to a narrow peak it favors a cosmic origin, whereas a broad plateau supports current‑driven delivery.

    They are also testing 53Mn, another long‑lived isotope, with new laser‑assisted mass spectrometers to cross‑check the clock.

    If future cores confirm the layer worldwide, stratigraphers could assign it as a global “golden spike,” simplifying the correlation of marine archives and sharpening models of Miocene climate evolution.

    Oceanographers, in turn, would gain a benchmark for tracing how the ACC matured and began ventilating the deep Pacific, a key step toward the ice‑dominated Earth we inhabit.

    Astrophysicists might even glean constraints on past supernova rates or cloud encounters, linking galactic events to earthly sediments in a way that is rarely possible.

    Either way, a thin ribbon of beryllium in the Pacific reminds us that the ocean floor is more than a record of water: it is a cosmic diary written in radioactive ink.

    The study is published in Nature Communications.

    —–

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  • Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane sells at auction for £11m | Film

    Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane sells at auction for £11m | Film

    The iconic sled from Orson Welles’s 1941 classic Citizen Kane has sold for $14.75m (£11m) at auction.

    The item therefore becomes the second most valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever sold, following last December’s sale of a pair of ruby slippers from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz for $32.5m (£24.2m).

    The buyer is unknown, but the seller was the director Joe Dante, who was given the item in 1984 while working on Explorers on the Paramount lot, previously home to RKO Pictures.

    “One of the crew who knew I was a fan of vintage films came to me with a wood prop and said, ‘They’re throwing out all of this stuff. You might want this,’” said Dante. “I’m not sure he knew what the sled was, but he must have had some inkling, or why else would he have asked me?

    “I was astonished. Since I am a huge fan of the movie, I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll be glad to take it.’”

    The prop is primarily pine hardwood, with the original paint but signs of both wear and tear on the lot and with a few missing rails, likely donated to the wartime drive for scrap metal.

    “I’ve had the honour of protecting this piece of cinematic history for decades,” Dante said in a statement released by action house Heritage. “To see Rosebud find a new home – and make history in the process – is both surreal and deeply gratifying. It’s a testament to the enduring power of storytelling.”

    Dante featured the sled in Explorers, as well as 1989’s The Burbs, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and an episode of the early 90s series Eerie, Indiana.

    The exact number of sleds produced for the film is unknown – the auction house says a “few” were made; one sold to Steven Spielberg in 1982 for $60,500 (£45,150) in 1982 and another to an anonymous buyer for $233,000 (£174,000) in 1996.

    Other sales in the auction include a filming miniature X-wing from The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones’ bullwhip originally given to HRH Prince Charles by Harrison Ford at the royal premiere of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Austin Powers’s green velvet suit.

    A nude photo of Marilyn Monroe is also available, armour from Ben-Hur and a Ralph Lauren blazer owned by Audrey Hepburn.

    “This is one of the most important events in entertainment auction history,” said Heritage Auctions executive vice president Joe Maddalena. “These aren’t just props. They’re mythic objects. They tell the story of Hollywood’s greatest moments, one piece at a time, each tied to a memory, a performance, a legend.”

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  • Yoane Wissa: Newcastle accelerate interest in Brentford striker

    Yoane Wissa: Newcastle accelerate interest in Brentford striker

    Newcastle are expected to accelerate their interest in Brentford striker Yoane Wissa in the next 24 hours after withdrawing from their pursuit of Hugo Ekitike.

    The Magpies want to sign a new centre-forward but their £70m offer to Eintracht Frankfurt for 23-year-old Frenchman Ekitike was rejected.

    Liverpool have also targeted Ekitike as a possible alternative to their first-choice target, Newcastle’s Alexander Isak.

    And with Newcastle adamant Isak is not for sale, the Anfield club are now expected to step up their interest in Ekitike.

    Sources have told BBC Sport that with Newcastle’s efforts to land Ekitike hitting complications in the last 24 hours, the Magpies have turned their attentions to Wissa.

    Brentford attacker Wissa, 28, is also a target for Tottenham and Nottingham Forest

    It is understood Newcastle’s interest in the Democratic Republic of Congo international is less advanced than that of those clubs as things stand, but it is now set to ramp up as the club from north east England increase their efforts to sign a striker.

    Brentford are adamant they do not want to lose Bryan Mbeumo, who is coveted by Manchester United, and Wissa this summer – but Wissa is open to leaving the Bees for a chance to play in the Champions League.

    He has scored 45 goals in 137 Premier League appearances since joining from Lorient in 2021.

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  • Barrick to Report Second Quarter 2025 Results on August 11, 2025 – Barrick Mining Corporation

    1. Barrick to Report Second Quarter 2025 Results on August 11, 2025  Barrick Mining Corporation
    2. Will Barrick Mining (B) Beat Estimates Again in Its Next Earnings Report?  Yahoo Finance
    3. Barrick Mining to Announce Q2 2025 Results on August 11  TipRanks
    4. Mining Giant Barrick Announces Q2 2025 Earnings Date: CEO Mark Bristow to Host Results Call  Stock Titan

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