Inflation will be in the spotlight this week, with fresh data due that could influence Federal Reserve officials’ stance on interest rate cuts.
Several companies are slated to report earnings, including networking giant Cisco Systems, cloud computing company CoreWeave, and stablecoin issuer Circle.
Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee, and Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic are among the Fed officials set to deliver remarks this week.
Last week, a marked shift in comments from Federal Reserve officials suggested interest rate cuts could be coming sooner rather than later, after a weak jobs report. This week, inflation could take the spotlight, with fresh data due that could influence their position.
Scheduled earnings from a number of tech companies, including networking giant Cisco Systems and Nvidia-backed CoreWeave, could also offer more insights into AI infrastructure spending and developments in the cryptocurrency industry. Stablecoin issuer Circle’s expected report comes as U.S. legislation offering greater regulatory clarity has boosted cryptocurrencies.
Read to the bottom for our calendar of key events—and one more thing.
Inflation Data Comes as Fed Deliberates Cutting Interest Rates
Market watchers will get an update on inflation with Tuesday’s expected release of the Consumer Price Index for July, after recent reports indicated price pressures are ticking higher in the wake of Trump’s tariffs, including a higher June CPI reading.
Wholesale inflation data is set to come two days later. Plus, the planned Friday release of consumer sentiment survey results could show how the public views inflationary pressures.
Fed officials will be watching the data closely as they look ahead to their September meeting, where some members will likely be pushing for the central bank to cut rates for the first time this year. Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee, and Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic could offer more clarity when they deliver remarks this week.
Tech Earnings To Shine a Spotlight on Stablecoins, AI Data Centers
Scheduled earnings reports from several tech companies this week could also give market watchers detail on developments in the AI and cryptocurrency industries.
Stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) is set to report Tuesday, after the U.S. enacted the GENIUS Act in July, providing a legislative framework for stablecoins, cryptocurrencies with a value pegged to another currency or financial asset such as the U.S. dollar. Shares of Circle have soared over 400% from their initial public offering price in early June.
Cisco’s (CSCO) earnings set for Wednesday come after the network equipment maker reported strong results for the prior quarter on the back of rising AI infrastructure demand, helping to drive its revenue higher.
Cloud computing firm CoreWeave (CRWV), a partner to chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA), is also scheduled to report its second-quarter earnings just as its stock recently got a boost after CoreWeave said it would invest $6 billion in a Pennsylvania data center.
Others set to report earnings this week include semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT), nuclear energy provider Oklo (OKLO), construction equipment maker Deere (DE), and restaurant chain Cava (CAVA).
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This Week’s Calendar
Monday, Aug. 11
Key Earnings: Monday.com (MNDY) and Oklo
Tuesday, Aug. 12
Consumer Price Index (July)
Federal Reserve Officials Speaking: Richmond Fed President Barkin
More Data to Watch: Monthly U.S. federal budget (July), NFIB small business optimism (July)
Key Earnings: CoreWeave, Circle Internet Group, Cava Group, Smithfield Foods (SFD)
Wednesday, Aug. 13
Federal Reserve Officials Speaking: Chicago Fed President Goolsbee, Atlanta Fed President Bostic
Key Earnings: Cisco Systems
Thursday, Aug. 14
Producer Price Index (July)
Federal Reserve Officials Speaking: Richmond Fed President Barkin
More Data to Watch: Initial jobless claims (Week ending Aug. 9)
More Data to Watch: Consumer sentiment – preliminary (August), Import/export price index (July), Industrial production (July), Capacity utilization (July), Empire State manufacturing survey (August)
One More Thing
ESPN, the sports network owned by Walt Disney (DIS), announced a slew of new deals last week. Investopedia’s Aaron Rennie breaks down some of the changes coming to the sports broadcast giant, including a big agreement with the NFL.
What it is: The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, revisited by the James Webb Space Telescope
Where it is: Close to the Big Dipper in the night sky
When it was shared: Aug. 1, 2025
TheJames Webb Space Telescope‘s (JWST) latest extragalactic survey has revealed fainter and more distant objects than ever before, some dating back to the earliest periods of the universe. But it stands on the shoulders of a giant: When NASA published the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image in 2004, it stunned the world of astronomy. A composite of 800 images from exposures totaling 11 days, the deep image of an otherwise unremarkable part of the night sky revealed nearly 10,000 galaxies, many among the most distant known.
Now, JWST has observed that same patch of sky with different eyes — and found 2,500 more objects. Crucially, they’re even more distant.
JWST’s new take on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, named the MIRI Deep Imaging Survey (MIDIS), is the deepest-ever mid-infrared image of that part of the night sky.
The extraordinary new image is the result of nearly 100 hours of observing time using the space observatory’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). It includes hundreds of extremely red galaxies, some of which may date back to less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
Related: 42 jaw-dropping James Webb Space Telescope images
At the core of the composite image is one ultralong exposure. Using just one of MIRI’s filters, JWST took an exposure of the night sky for 41 hours — the longest single-filter observation it has performed of an extragalactic field to date. The plan was to capture galaxies in mid-infrared light — something neither Hubble nor human eyes can detect — which also revealed previously unseen regions of dust and old, red stars.
Capturing light in wavelengths beyond the capabilities of human vision always brings a problem: How can we even begin to look at it? Processing such images requires filters that assign a different color to each different wavelength of light. In this image, galaxies rich in dust and star-forming activity are orange and red, extremely distant compact galaxies are greenish, and galaxies bright in the near-infrared are blue and cyan.
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Researchers described the image in a paper in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, along with a slider tool, a pan video and a transition video with the Hubble Ultra Deep Field for comparison.
For more sublime space images, check out our Space Photo of the Week archives.
A new federal lawsuit accuses 32 elite colleges of engaging in an “early decision conspiracy” that inflates the tuition paid by students.
getty
A class-action lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts accuses 32 elite colleges and universities of conspiring to inflate tuition costs through their use of the early decision admissions process.
According to the complaint, filed by four current and former students, the universities “openly participated and are participating in practices that entrench patterns of inequality of access while inflating the price of attendance. Among these is the central practice challenged in this case: a horizontal agreement to reduce or eliminate competition through use of the early decision process.”
The 32 institutions named as defendants are Amherst College, Barnard College, Bowdoin College, Brown University, Bryn Mawr College, Carleton College, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Haverford College, Johns Hopkins University, Macalester College, Middlebury College, Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, Oberlin College, Pomona College, Rice University, Smith College, Swarthmore College, Trinity College, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, University of Rochester, Vanderbilt University, Vassar College, Washington University in St. Louis, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College.
Also named as defendants, in what the complaint calls an “early decision conspiracy,” are the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, an organization of highly selective college that shares information on admissions and financial aid, along with the Common Application and Scoir Inc., two college admissions platforms used by the schools.
Under an early-decision admissions process, students who apply early in the admissions cycle to the institution they want to attend receive an admission decision well ahead of the usual notification date. If they are accepted, they agree to enroll and accept the college’s financial aid offer, withdrawing their applications to other schools. Although early-decision agreements are not legally binding, they are traditionally regarded as firm commitments.
Using this system, highly selective schools usually accept a higher percentage of students compared to their regular admission cycle, but in exchange, applicants forego the chance to shop around for better financial aid offers from other schools.
The difference in admission odds can be considerable. According to the college admissions consulting firm, College Transitions, acceptance rates are often two to three times higher for early-decison versus regular-admissions applicants at prestigious institutions.
The plaintiffs claim this trade-off puts “price-sensitive” applicants at a disadvantage because they are forced to make a decision without knowing the full cost of attending one school or the other, a comparison that is less crucial to wealthy students.
Plaintiffs called early decision “a classic per se violation of the antitrust laws,” writing, “ultimately, Early Decision is enforced by mutual agreement between would-be competitors not to compete for students offered admission through Early Decision at other schools.”
The complaint also alleges that although the “agreement is presented in a form that resembles a contract, an applicant’s commitment is not actually legally binding.” Rather than being an “enforceable contractual obligation,” it imposes an “ethical” obligation that “doesn’t have any legal standing.”
Nonethless, colleges themselves benefit from the fact that early decision is not a binding contract, in part because they can withdraw their offers of acceptance if students don’t keep their grades up or engage in some type of prohibited conduct.
The plaintiffs also charge that early decision admissions serve to drive up the price students have to pay for their education. “The schools lose their incentive to compete on price for students admitted through Early Decision, driving up overall ‘top line’ tuition levels and reducing both need-based and merit-based aid for Early Decision admittees. The result is that both Early and non-Early Decision students pay higher prices than they would have paid absent the conspiracy at the center of the Early Decision scheme,” reads the filing.
The pros and cons of early-decision admissions have long been debated. The issue often boils down to the question of whether early-decision is good primarily for institutions or for students. It’s obvious how schools using early-decision benefit: they increase their admission yield (and revenue) and sometimes beat out more selective colleges for applicants who don’t want t0 risk being rejected by a more prestigious school.
But early admissions can discriminate against low-income students in several ways. First, compared to privileged students, non-affluent students generally are less aware of the option and the advantages of applying early. Second, they can’t afford to visit multiple schools before making a well-informed college choice. Third, it’s difficult for low-income students to commit to a college without comparing financial aid offers so they know they’re making a good financial decision.
Elite institutions are aware, of course, of the criticism that early decisions admissions creates a privilege that favors wealthy applicants. Many of them, including several of the defendants in the new lawsuit, participate in QuestBridge, one of the country’s most visible and successful efforts to mitigate some of the bias associated with early-decision admissions.
“Early Decision applicants lose choice and negotiation leverage, while Regular Decision applicants are left to scramble for an artificially diminished number of admission slots doled out at lower acceptance rates,” said Benjamin Brown, managing partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs. “We contend that all of this is only made possible by an agreement not to compete that violates bedrock antitrust law.”
Most of the defendants have not yet commented on the lawsuit. However, Brown University’s Senior Vice President for Communications Cass Cliatt told the The Brown Daily Heraldthat the complaint had no merit and the university “is prepared to mount a strong defense to make this clear.” She added, “Brown has always made decisions about its admissions processes and financial aid independently as part of the University’s longstanding commitment to enhancing access to the benefits of a Brown education regardless of socioeconomic circumstances.”
The lawsuit marks the second major antitrust claim against prestigious universities’ admission polices in recent years. In 2022, several students filed a lawsuit alleging that 17 elite institutions — members of the former “568 Presidents Group” — had colluded with their ”consensus methodology” to extend financial aid offers that artificially inflated the net prices of attendance.
Although they have consistently denied doing anything wrong, the majority of those institutions have now settled the lawsuit for a cumulative amount in excess of $300 million.
It can be frustrating to scroll through your iPhone’s Recent calls tab to find the right voicemail or to remember when you talked to someone last. But when Apple introduced iOS 18 in 2024, it included a trick that let you find calls faster in your recent call history.
That update brought a lot of new features, like customizable home screens and RCS messaging, as well as a search bar in your iPhone’s Phone app. This lets you easily search your call history and voicemails. Before iOS 18, your Phone app’s Recent calls tab was a running list of all the calls made to and from your iPhone. But now you can easily search through the list, so you aren’t needlessly scrolling.
Here’s what to know about the search function in your iPhone’s Recents tab.
Can I search recent calls on my iPhone?
Explaining why my spouse is saved in my iPhone as “El Hoppo” is a long story.
Apple/Screenshot by CNET
With iOS 18, yes. To search your recent calls, go to your Phone app and tap Recents across the bottom of the menu. Tap the search bar across the top of the page to open a new menu that shows the sections Calls and Voicemails. Both of these options also have the option to See All.
You can use the search bar to search for a specific contact’s name, a contact’s number or dates. For example, typing “mom” or “dad” pulls up all the phone calls and voicemails from your mom or dad, as well as their contact card. Similarly, typing “August” or “July” into the search bar pulls up all calls and voicemails from that month.
You can also type a specific date, like “July 5,” and that pulls up calls and voicemails from that particular date.
For more on iOS, here are my first impressions of the iOS 26 beta, how to enable call screening in the beta and all the other new features Apple said that update will bring to your device later this year.
Monday evening (Aug. 11) offers a perfect chance to identify what many consider the most beautiful object in the night sky: the ringed planet Saturn. Helping guide the way, will be another familiar celestial companion, the moon, shining in its waning gibbous phase.
As I’ve pointed out over the years here at Space.com, to the naked eye, Saturn does not exactly scream for attention. It lacks the dazzling, eye-popping brilliance of Venus or Jupiter and it does not have the fiery orange-yellow color of Mars.
In fact, to the eye, Saturn appears to be nothing more than a bright “star” that shines with a yellowish-white glow. Most people looking around the current midsummer sky might take note of it as they look low toward the eastern horizon at around 10:30 p.m. local daylight time, but not knowing they are looking at the solar system’s ringed wonder.
But on Monday, the moon will make it easier to spot as it will be situated to the upper right of Saturn.
If it is clear, that evening will be a great night to invite your friends and neighbors over to peer through your eyepiece at both Saturn and our nearest neighbor in space, two wonderful sky objects.
View of the moon and Saturn at approximately 11 p.m. local time on Aug. 11 (Image credit: Created in Canva Pro by Daisy Dobrijevic)
After you are done showing off the moon to your friends, it will then be time to turn your telescope toward Saturn. It’ll be located about 5 degrees, roughly “half a fist” at arm’s length, to the lower left of the moon.
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
A final “gee-whiz” fact you can reveal to your friends is that what you are seeing in Monday’s sky is an illusion of perspective. The moon and Saturn are nowhere near each other in space. The moon will be 230,000 miles (370,000 km) from Earth, while Saturn is more than 3,500 times farther away at 816 million miles (1.31 billion km).
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers’ Almanac and other publications. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook
On a sunny day in San Francisco, along the city’s waterfront, families dived into the wacky world of artificial intelligence inside the Exploratorium museum.
Visitors made shadow puppets for AI to identify, used AI to generate songs, asked chatbots questions and faced off with AI in a game in which players tried to draw images that only humans would recognize. A giant robot hand moved around and people peered into a video game chip.
They jotted down their hopes and worries about AI on cards displayed in the museum. Hope: AI will cure cancer. Worry: People will rely on AI to the point they can’t think for themselves.
A visitor listens to the audio component of the “Mistaking AI” exhibit at the Exploratorium’s “Adventures in AI” in downtown San Francisco on Thursday.
Billboards for the AI company Fin line Interstate 80 as the freeway enters the Financial District on Wednesday in San Francisco.
“It sort of breaks down those guardrails, those big walls that people have put up around AI, and allows them to have a conversation with somebody else,” said Doug Thistlewolf, who manages exhibit development at the Exploratorium.
Art. Office Space. Billboards. Protests. The AI craze has intensified in San Francisco, spreading through work and social life in what some have described as a new gold rush. The AI boom, coupled with the election of new Mayor Daniel Lurie, has also infused the city with optimism — tinged with anxiety. Some worry about the city’s high cost of living, and whether AI will replace workers as tech layoffs continue.
For years, Silicon Valley has been at the center of innovation with some of the world’s valuable tech companies such as Meta, Google, Apple and Nvidia locating their massive headquarters south of San Francisco. AI’s rise, though, has shone a bright spotlight on San Francisco, home to multibillion-dollar companies such as OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Perplexity and Databricks.
AI has long played a big role in consumer technology, helping to recommend social media posts, translate languages and power virtual assistants. But the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT — a chatbot that can generate text, images and code — set off a fierce race to propel technology that touches industries from media to healthcare.
Companies are battling it out for talent, offering lucrative compensation to recruit top researchers and leaders, while investments in AI companies have surged.
In the first half of 2025, venture capital funding for AI companies in the San Francisco Metro area surpassed $29 billion — more than double the amount during the same period in 2022, data from PitchBook shows. As of Aug. 5, VC deals for AI startups in the area, which includes San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont, made up 46.6% of funding for U.S. AI companies this year.
The headquarters of OpenAI, the maker of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, in Mission Bay, San Francisco.
Exactly how this frenzy will shape the future of San Francisco, home to cable cars and robotaxis, remains to be seen. Ask ChatGPT what SF will look like in 10 years and it generates an image of the city’s skyline with futuristic architecture and flying saucers next to the Golden Gate Bridge.
AI has been a “bright spot” in the city’s economy, helping San Francisco to recover after retailers, office workers and some companies such as X (formerly Twitter) left the downtown area during and after the pandemic as remote work picked up.
“The economic impact is [AI companies] take more office space, they pay more taxes, they hire more people,” said Ted Egan, chief economist of the city and county of San Francisco.
Over the past five years, AI-related companies have leased more than 5 million square feet of San Francisco office space and the amount is projected to grow, according to CBRE, a real estate service and investment firm. The city’s office vacancy rate of 35.8% in the first quarter would be cut in half if these companies take up 16 million square feet of office space by 2030.
San Francisco resident Vijay Karunamurthy has seen the city’s boom and bust cycles unfold over the last 25 years while working at startups and tech giants such as Google and Apple.
In 2000, when he moved from Chicago to San Francisco for an engineering job at a data startup, he saw major business such as Pets.com collapse during the dot-com crash. Fueled by social media’s popularity, the city’s tech sector came roaring back only to take a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now the city is ascending yet again. Ambitious entrepreneurs, old and new, are advancing powerful artificial intelligence tools that could transform lives.
“That amount of energy being concentrated in San Francisco has just been huge for the city,” said Karunamurthy, 46, the former field chief technology officer at Scale AI, a data-labeling startup. “It means every single night there’s AI events, and if you go to a coffee shop, you’ll run into people working on AI.”
Still, there are plenty of AI skeptics. In late July, outside of OpenAI’s headquarters in Mission Bay, a small group of protesters including a person dressed up as a robot held up signs that said “AI will kill us all” and “AI steals your work to steal your jobs.”
Children interact with the “Giant Mirror” at the Exploratorium’s “Adventures in AI” exhibition in Downtown San Francisco on Thursday.
Generative AI’s ubiquity has forced educators to rethink what and how they teach students in the classrooms.
Arno Puder, professor and chair of San Francisco State University’s computer science department, said generative AI represents a historic “paradigm shift.”
The longtime San Francisco resident is equally excited, but also a little scared, about how it will affect labor. Over the last two years, he’s seen student enrollment in computer science at the university drop amid tech layoffs and generative AI’s rise. As coding assistants reshape computer science jobs, the university launched a new undergraduate certificate in generative AI for the fall of 2026.
“Generative AI is a different beast,” Puder said. “That does make me worry a little bit, but if you ask me for a prediction on what services or what the world’s going to look like in a few years from now, I don’t know.”
AI’s rise has inspired the creation of new spaces throughout San Francisco where people can discuss technology’s benefits and risks.
Notes written by people visiting the Exploratorium’s “Adventures in AI” exhibition list their greatest worries and hopes related to artificial intelligence in Downtown San Francisco on Thursday.
Thistlewolf said creating the AI exhibit at the Exploratorium involved talking to workers and researchers from tech companies and universities. The exhibit, which runs through mid-September, took roughly a year and half to develop.
Backed by Anthropic, the San Francisco company that developed the AI chatbot Claude, the exhibit aims to educate people about AI but doesn’t shy away from the debate surrounding technology.
San Francisco resident Martha Chesley, 77, came to the exhibit with her grandchildren. Living in San Francisco for 50 years, Chesley sees potential benefits from AI companies coming to the city.
“If it brings people and money, it’s good for the city because right now we have a lot of closed storefronts,” she said. “Maybe there would be more money also for housing being built.”
Throughout the city, AI startups are broadcasting their mission loudly on billboards and ads displayed at bus stops and train stations. Messages include “Stop Hiring Humans. To Write Cold Emails” and “Droids ship software while you touch grass.”
A bus stop advertises Outset, an AI software company, in the Mission District in San Francisco.
(Florence Middleton/For The Times)
AI ads could also be spotted in the Mission district, a neighborhood deeply rooted in Latino culture and history. The area, filled with popular taquerias, colorful murals and a park with a view of the downtown skyline, has struggled with homelessness like other parts of the city.
At a bus stop on 16th Street, an ad from AI startup Outset struck a positive tone: “Listen to humans. Don’t replace them.”
Founded in downtown San Francisco in 2022, Outset created an AI interviewer so researchers could quickly gather feedback from more people to better understand customer needs and improve products.
The company’s 36-year-old chief executive, Aaron Cannon, said before the rise of ChatGPT, he and his co-founder experimented with AI systems that can generate and understand human language and saw its potential.
“I don’t think either of us could have told you it was going to absolutely take over the world,” he said. The San Francisco resident said the city’s talent pool also makes it an attractive location for startups. He declined to disclose its finances but said the company, which employs 15 and counts Microsoft among its clients, is “growing fast.”
Throughout San Francisco, founders and real estate companies have dubbed certain areas as AI hubs.
A billboard advertising Cluely, an AI company, rises over Mission Street in downtown San Francisco.
(Florence Middleton/For The Times)
Hayes Valley, a neighborhood with Victorian houses, boutique shops and trendy restaurants, bears the nickname “Cerebral Valley,” a nod to the hacker houses and AI communities that popped up in the area.
Jamestown, a real estate and investment company, markets the Northern Waterfront an emerging AI hub after leasing more than 43,000 square feet of office space to AI companies. Some of the startups work on AI loan servicing or AI-powered lip syncing technology.
Located near public transportation, water and greenery, the fresh air and serene nature of the area has attracted AI entrepreneurs that want to collaborate in person, said Michael Phillips, principal and chairman of Jamestown.
“If you’re working on these fast to market, highly competitive products,” he said, “you really need to be together.”
Main Manto Nahi Hoon is a drama that has captivated the audience. The strong performances of the cast members is what has put the show on the map. Every artist is giving their hundred percent and every scene shows how much hard work was put in. With already strong names like Saima Noor, Sajal Aly, Asif Raza Mir and Babar Ali winning hearts, we now have Syed Mohammad Ahmed here to steal the show.
Mohammad Ahmed is playing Ifrah’s father. Ifrah played by Hajrah Yamin was Farhad’s girlfriend. She went missing and her father is going to every place possible to get to know about her whereabouts. A father broken by his daughter’s estrangement and now missing status was beautifully played by the veteran star.
Check out how Mohammad Ahmed made every scene of Main Manto Nahi Hoon emotional and engaging:
Fans are loving Mohammad Ahmed’s entry into the show. One user said,”Adding Mohammad Ahmed was a masterstroke. What an emotional performance.” Another added, “He showed the true emotions of a helpless father.” One said, “Ifrah’s father’s performance left me speechless.” This is what fans think:
Hydrogen-rich white dwarfs can appear deceptively ordinary in optical light, making their true origin difficult to determine. Ultraviolet data is crucial because it can detect the faint carbon signatures that betray a merger history. Without Hubble’s ultraviolet capability, WD 0525+526 would likely have been classified as a typical white dwarf, masking the fact that it is the product of a violent stellar collision. WD 0525+526, zombie star, ultra-massive white dwarf, Hubble Space Telescope, NASA, James Webb Space Telescope, star merger, binary star evolution, stellar collision, ultraviolet astronomy, carbon signature, hydrogen-rich atmosphere, semi-convection, University of Warwick, Nature Astronomy, stellar remnant, neutron star, gamma-ray burst, post-merger evolution, massive white dwarf, stellar death
GUANGZHOU, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) — Chinese scientists have achieved a breakthrough in preventing mosquito-borne diseases by developing an intelligent vector mosquito surveillance system that offers scientific guidance for disease control.
Developed by a team led by Chen Xiaoguang, a professor at Southern Medical University, this monitoring technology has been deployed across multiple communities in south China’s Guangdong Province.
Accurate surveillance proves vital since diseases like chikungunya primarily spread through Aedes mosquito bites.
However, traditional methods for monitoring mosquitoes face limitations. “Mosquito traps and mosquito nets only monitor non-blood-fed mosquitoes, while mosquito oviposition traps target blood-fed egg-laying mosquitoes,” Chen explained.
Automated monitors use human-mimicking attractants to capture non-blood-fed mosquitoes, while smart oviposition buckets utilize container-type miniature water pools to monitor blood-fed gravid Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, achieving four times the efficiency of conventional oviposition traps, he added.
Field tests demonstrated remarkable effectiveness. During its first operational week, the system issued timely alerts for abnormal mosquito density surges across multiple zones and generated targeted intervention protocols.
“Manual mosquito trapping caused data delays. Now, real-time cloud-based alerts have substantially accelerated grassroots disinfection responses,” Chen said. After deployment, surveillance showed nearly a 40 percent decrease in adult mosquito captures within key areas.
Currently implemented across multiple sites in Guangdong’s Foshan City, this technology represents a significant advancement. “Our team is striving to accelerate mosquito-borne disease prevention through technological innovation,” Chen said. ■
The North of England Centre for Music and Arts runs a number of bands and orchestras
An arts centre has launched a youth session orchestra to help young people learn the skills needed to work in film and television.
The North of England Centre for Music and Arts, based in Marsden, West Yorkshire, runs a number of bands and hosts performances from its base at Standedge Visitor Centre.
Jenny Hanson, who runs the centre and has played on session recordings for Universal Studios and the Liverpool Philharmonic, said she wanted to share her knowledge with young musicians.
She said: “I wasn’t prepared when I started. [These sessions] are a chance to have a chat with other people and enjoy the process. Even just understanding a bit more of what makes a really good film soundtrack.”
“A decent session musician has to be able to turn their hand to all sorts of different things at the drop of a hat,” the viola player and violinist added.
“A lot of our kids are playing classical music and contemporary arrangements of pop songs and sometimes film music.
“They get a chance to play, but it would be really lovely to explore how it actually feels to sit in a session, to have that buzz of ‘right, the light is on, now we’re going to record this’. You’ve never seen the music before.’”
Hazel Davis
Clem Melling is hoping to be part of the youth session orchestra
Clem Melling, 13, is a member of the North of England Centre for Music and Arts Saturday Strings group and is hoping to join the session orchestra.
She plays violin, piano, ukulele and hopes to one day study opera at music college.
She said: “It would be really nice to play in a really big orchestra with my friends and other people. And I really like the idea of film music.
She added: “Film music is really powerful, how music can completely alter how we see a video.
“If you change the music to say Jaws then it could be like a completely different type of film. And I find that really interesting.”
