Valeo Group | 2 Jul, 2025
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Valeo was recognized for strategic partnership, innovation and proactive cost and process optimization.
The Volkswagen Group highlights Valeo’s “exceptional achievements and innovative strength”.
WHEN THE first draft of the DNA sequence that makes up the human genome was unveiled in 2000, America’s president at the time, Bill Clinton, announced that humankind was “learning the language with which God created life”. His assessment was a little quick off the mark. For one thing, the full sequence would not be completed until 2022. For another, whereas scientists can use sequencing tools to read DNA, and CRISPR technology to make small edits, actually writing the genomic language has proved trickier.
BBC News NI political editor
Getty ImagesCar buyers in Northern Ireland could soon have less choice and pay higher road tax when purchasing new vehicles because of post Brexit trading arrangements due to come into force next year, MLAs have been warned.
Some of Northern Ireland’s top dealerships have also warned of job losses in the sector which currently employs around 17,500 workers.
Representative from Charles Hurst, Agnews and Donnelly Group set out their concerns at a sitting of Stormont’s economy committee.
MLAs were told that from January 2026 Great Britain approved new cars will no longer be able to be registered in Northern Ireland.
Instead all new cars registered in Northern Ireland must be an “EU type approved” vehicle.
The changes will only apply to new and not used vehicles.
Dave Sheeran from Donnelly Group said consumers in Northern Ireland will face “a restricted offering, restricted price list and potentially higher taxation”.
“Not everything being offered in GB will be able to be sold in Northern Ireland because of a divergence in regulations with the EU,” he added.
“This is an unintended pain of Brexit.”
He also warned that plug-in hybrid vehicles in Northern Ireland will have to follow different carbon dioxide emissions rules to Great Britain, which will see consumers paying higher tax.
“Somebody buying a car in Belfast will face a higher tax than someone buying the same new car in Birmingham,” he said.
Jeff McCartney from Charles Hurst said the changes will be challenging for consumers and local car dealers.
“The irony is customers will be able to go to GB and buy a new car but dealers in Northern Ireland will no longer be able to source the vehicles for them,” he said.
He urged MLAs to back calls for the government to allow local dealers to continue to sell GB type approved new vehicles after January.
The Vera Rubin Observatory is about to start a decade-long survey of the night sky. In the process, it will generate hundreds of petabytes of astronomical data. Hidden within that firehose of information will be clues about some of the universe’s deepest mysteries—from dark matter and dark energy to the evolution of galaxies. To help scientists unlock those new celestial tales, the Rubin Observatory’s team had to invent a bespoke way to organise, analyse and share the data. That technology, which will usher in a new, automated era for astronomy, may be one of the observatory’s most important and enduring legacies.
In the second of two episodes, we visit the Rubin Observatory, 2,700m high in the Chilean Andes, to uncover how the telescope’s data travel from the summit to astronomers’ desks around the world. Listen to the first episode here.
An ex-banker who gave his wife £78m will not have to split it equally with her following their divorce, according to a supreme court ruling experts say sets a precedent for dividing up assets after a marriage ends.
In 2017, prior to their divorce, Clive Standish, 72, transferred investments worth £77.8m to his wife Anna as part of a tax planning scheme. These assets had originally been Clive’s non-matrimonial property, the court was told.
The couple married in 2005 – this was the second marriage for both – and have two children together. However, the marriage broke down in 2020.
In 2022, a high court judge split the family’s total wealth of £132m by awarding Clive £87m and Anna £45m. The former challenged this decision at the court of appeal, arguing that the majority of the money, including the transferred assets, was earned before they began living together.
Last year, court of appeal judges assessed that 75% of the near-£80m had been earned prior to the marriage and cut Anna’s share to £25m.
The supreme court has now upheld the £25m figure after five justices unanimously agreed that because most of the sum of money had been earned prior to the marriage, Clive was entitled to keep the largest share.
The landmark judgment might involve the super-wealthy but is “relevant to everyone,” said family lawyer Caroline Holley, partner at law firm Farrer & Co.
The law firm Stewarts, which represented retired banker Clive in the case, said: “Divorcing couples across England and Wales now have clearer guidance on how their assets will be categorised upon divorce.”
Legal experts suggested the judgment could increase demand among couples for prenuptial agreementsand postnuptial agreements as a way of protecting people’s interests if it all goes wrong later.
Clive Standish, being domiciled in the UK, was worried about paying millions in inheritance tax if he died with the assets in his name, Lords Burrows and Stephens explained in their ruling on Wednesday.
They said: “In short, there was no matrimonialisation of the 2017 assets because, first, the transfer was to save tax, and, secondly, it was for the benefit of the children, not the wife.
“The 2017 assets were not, therefore, being treated by the husband and wife for any period of time as an asset that was shared between them.”
Clive Standish expected his wife to use the money to set up two offshore trusts, but she did not do that and remained the sole owner of the assets when legal action began, the court heard.
Chris Lloyd-Smith, partner in the matrimonial team at law firm Anthony Collins, said: “With the judgment being in favour of Mr Standish, the court has set a precedent of firmer boundaries between personal and shared wealth.”
He said “the most important takeaway” was that transparent financial planning in relationships was crucial. “When it comes to managing expectations and reducing legal uncertainty, pre- and postnuptial agreements that are reviewed regularly are important tools to divide and protect assets with clarity. This way, you protect yourself and set your own terms, instead of relying on a court decision.”
Cornell researchers have found a new and potentially more accurate way to see what proteins are doing inside living cells – using the cells’ own components as built-in sensors.
This approach could help scientists study how molecules associate inside cells, including in viruses, and how proteins misfold in diseases like cancer and neurodegeneration.
The researchers discovered a novel way to use natural proteins produced by a cell as tiny sensors to report on their environment and interactions, without traditional invasive techniques that could interfere with a cell’s normal biology and skew research results. The study was published July 1 in Nature Communications.
The method is mainly useful for understanding new biological mechanisms, such as those that could be involved in disease states like cancer or during infection. For example, one could conceivably track the assembly of a virus using this method to understand how and where its components are built within cells.”
Brian Crane, the George W. and Grace L. Todd Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences and corresponding author on the publication
Crane, who directs the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, and his colleagues focused on flavins, small, vitamin B2-derived molecules that can act like magnetic labels inside cells. This magnetic property makes them detectable by a technique called electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy, which is like an MRI machine but measures extremely small changes and nanoscale distances. By tracking the behavior of proteins called flavoproteins, which carry flavins, researchers can detect how other molecules organize and move in living cells.
Because flavoproteins exist in many biological systems, the researchers saw a way to use them as built-in sensors. By triggering the flavin’s magnetic properties with light, they could use ESR to study protein structures directly inside cells – without synthetic chemicals.
“We were studying the properties of certain flavoproteins and discovered that their magnetic spin-states were more stable than expected in cells,” said Timothée Chauviré, a research associate within the Crane Lab at the Weill Institute and lead author on the study. “And from earlier work on light-sensitive proteins, we realized we could use light to trigger the signal we needed to detect these molecules using ESR.”
Forcing artificial tags into cells might interfere with cellular function, but cells naturally produce flavin-containing probes, so “if you can trick the cell into making them, that is much better,” Crane said.
To test their new method, the researchers studied a bacterial protein called Aer, which helps E. coli bacteria sense oxygen. Aer works with two other proteins, CheA and CheW, to transmit signals across the membrane. While these proteins have been studied before, this was the first time researchers were able to directly observe how the Aer receptor assembles inside a living cell.
“We learned that Aer forms higher-order assemblies, arrays of molecules in the membrane, that work together to amplify signals,” Crane said. “These architectures are unstable and won’t form outside of cells.”
With ESR, the team measured the distance between the two flavins in an Aer dimer – complexes of two identical protein molecules – with angstrom-level precision, confirming not only the dimer structure but also revealing larger assemblies that form inside cells.
The researchers also developed a small engineered flavoprotein called iLOV, which can be genetically fused to other proteins to make them visible with ESR. This tool acts like a molecular tag, enabling scientists to study the structure and positioning of nearly any protein inside a living cell.
The study also demonstrated that ESR, previously mainly limited to purified proteins in test tubes, can now be used in living systems with remarkable detail.
“ESR spectroscopy is not limited to just studying purified molecules or reconstituted systems,” Crane said.
The team is now adapting the method to other cell types, particularly mammalian cells, to see if they can track processes in more complex environments, he said.
Contributors to the study include Siddarth Chandrasekaran, Ph.D. ’17; Robert Dunleavy, M.S. ’19, Ph.D. ’23; and Jack H. Freed, professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (A&S).
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology and the National Biomedical Center for Advanced ESR Technologies.
Source:
Journal reference:
Chauviré, T., et al. (2025). Flavoproteins as native and genetically encoded spin probes for in cell ESR spectroscopy. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-60623-6.
Del Monte Foods, the 139-year-old company best known for its canned fruits and vegetables, is filing for bankruptcy protection as U.S. consumers increasingly bypass its products for healthier or cheaper options.
Del Monte has secured $912.5 million in debtor-in-possession financing that will allow it to operate normally as the sale progresses.
“After a thorough evaluation of all available options, we determined a court-supervised sale process is the most effective way to accelerate our turnaround and create a stronger and enduring Del Monte Foods,” CEO Greg Longstreet said in a statement.
Del Monte Foods, based in Walnut Creek, California, also owns the Contadina tomato brand, College Inn and Kitchen Basics broth brands and the Joyba bubble tea brand.
The company has seen sales growth of Joyba and broth in fiscal 2024, but not enough to offset weaker sales of Del Monte’s signature canned products.
READ MORE: What happens to DNA data of millions as 23andMe files bankruptcy?
“Consumer preferences have shifted away from preservative-laden canned food in favor of healthier alternatives,” said Sarah Foss, global head of legal and restructuring at Debtwire, a financial consultancy.
Grocery inflation also caused consumers to seek out cheaper store brands. And President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff on imported steel, which went into effect in June, will also push up the prices Del Monte and others must pay for cans.
Del Monte Foods, which is owned by Singapore’s Del Monte Pacific, was also hit with a lawsuit last year by a group of lenders that objected to the company’s debt restructuring plan. The case was settled in May with a loan that increased Del Monte’s interest expenses by $4 million annually, according to a company statement.
Del Monte said late Thursday that the bankruptcy filing is part of a planned sale of company’s assets.
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Bob Vylan have been banned from playing a Manchester festival a day after they said they were being “targeted for speaking up” on Palestine during a controversial Glastonbury set.
The punk rap duo will no longer play the headline slot at Radar festival this weekend. The act is the subject of a police investigation for leading crowds in chants of “death, death to the IDF”, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
A statement posted on the festival’s Instagram account said: “Bob Vylan will not be appearing at Radar festival this weekend.”
The headliner slot for Saturday now reads “TBA” (to be announced) on the website of the festival, which takes place at Victoria Warehouse from Friday to Sunday.
In response, the group shared the festival’s statement on Instagram with the caption: “Silence is not an option. We will be fine, the people of Palestine are hurting. Manchester we will be back.”
The chant that sparked the furore was made by the band’s frontman, Pascal Robinson-Foster, who goes by the alias Bobby Vylan, on stage at Glastonbury and streamed live on the BBC.
The broadcaster later said the chant was “antisemitic”. It was called “appalling hate speech” by the government and “vile Jew-hatred” by the UK’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis.
Bob Vylan, who formed in Ipswich in 2017, also had their US visas revoked in the aftermath of the performance.
In a statement on Instagram, Bob Vylan said: “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine … a machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.”
They said they were “a distraction from the story”, adding: “We are being targeted for speaking up.”
Israel began bombing Gaza on 7 October 2023 after Hamas – a proscribed terror group in the UK – killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took 251 others hostage.
Since then the IDF has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza – including hundreds of journalists and aid workers – with more than a third of the casualties thought to be children.
Many thousands more have been injured. However, it is impossible to independently gather casualty figures as Israel does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza.
Bob Vylan are still expected to perform at the Boardmasters surfing and music festival in Newquay, Cornwall, in August.
The mystery of how we became human still drives scientific inquiry, especially among researchers probing the ancient genetic shifts that gave rise to our complex brains, capacity for language, and upright posture—traits that set us apart from our closest ape relatives.
“What we found in our study was that a range of different traits—skeletal, neuropsychiatric, pigmentation, cholesterol synthesis, and so on—were accelerated at different points in the history of humans,” said Vagheesh Narasimhan, who co-authored a study published in Cell Genomics in January 2025. Narasimhan is an assistant professor in the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin).
The study integrated three powerful data sources: ancient DNA from fossils; 3D MRI scans from hundreds of thousands of participants in the UK Biobank revealing the structure of the brain, skeleton, and major organs; and comparative functional genomics that mapped how the human genome aligns—and diverges—from that of chimpanzees, orangutans, and other great apes. By layering these datasets, researchers were able to uncover where bursts of human-specific evolutionary changes and genetic mutations likely occurred.
“We looked at gene expression and gene regulation through embryo development between humans and other primates, particularly Rhesus macaque,” Narasimhan said. “We then carried out genomic enrichment analysis, which determines whether the overlap between our evolutionary annotation and our annotation associated with traits is more than we expect by chance compared to the genome wide average.”
Narasimhan and colleagues leveraged this method to look at whether sections of the human genome associated with traits had bursts at particular time intervals.
With advanced computing power from the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), scientists were able to identify when key human traits may have undergone major evolutionary changes. TACC supported the research by awarding Narasimhan allocations on its Frontera and Lonestar6 supercomputers, along with data storage and management resources on the Corral system.
Lonestar6 helped the researchers process 80,000 3D MRI images of the heart, brain, liver, and pancreas, as well as hip, knee, spine, and whole-body X-ray scans from the UK Biobank.
“We trained AI models for segmentation and classification on the imaging data using TACC GPU (graphics processing unit) resources, particularly Lonestar6, which has a large number of GPUs that were capable of processing this type of data,” Narasimhan said.
“For carrying out genomic analyses, we are heavy users of the CPU (central processing unit) infrastructure on Frontera, largely because the genome is a very large data problem,” he added. “Having a large number of CPU nodes on a supercomputing cluster like Frontera was tremendously useful to shrink compute time from a linear process to a parallel process and allow the study to happen.”
The HIPAA protections on TACC’s Corral data storage allowed Narasimhan to simultaneously compute on two different environments, Lonestar6’s GPUs and Frontera’s CPUs.
“It’s impossible to do this work without this integrated enterprise at TACC,” Narasimhan said.
Narasimhan is excited about the new GPU computing capacity with TACC’s AI-focused Vista supercomputer, which entered production in November 2024.
“We’re hoping to use Vista soon and continue our work,” he said. “TACC’s vision to keep pace with new data generation is transformative.”
A more recent study by Narasimhan published in April 2025 in the journal Science also acknowledges TACC support. It found genetic correlations between pelvic proportions and traits such as osteoarthritis, walking speed, and back pain, giving insight into facets of the obstetrical dilemma—the biological tradeoffs between the size of a mother’s birth canal and the brain of her child.
“To truly understand change in the human genome, we need massive amounts of data from a vast number of individuals to look at what’s happening in each of these three billion DNA bases,” Narasimhan said. “It’s a monumental data problem that can only be tackled by using supercomputing infrastructure.”
This article was originally published by TACC and is reprinted with permission.