Brentford B midfielder Riley Owen has put pen to paper on a new deal with the club, signing on until at least the summer of 2026.
Across 40 matches last season, he played 90 minutes in 28 of them, becoming a reliable presence in the heart of the midfield. Often operating in a deeper role, his calmness in possession and ability to progress play under pressure stood out.
And it’s been a steady rise for Owen since signing with the club after a successful trial period in August 2023, with the midfielder enjoying back-to-back strong seasons under former Brentford B head coach Neil MacFarlane’s leadership.
Brentford technical director Lee Dykes said: “Riley is a player with a high technicallevel and has the ability to influence games from midfield.
“He has excelled in the B team, and we believe we can help him develop to another level over the next few years.”
Having signed a contract extension, Owen sees the decision as a reflection of his development so far and a platform for what’s to come.
“I’ve grown a lot since I joined the club,” he said. “I want that to continue, wherever and whatever that looks like. I’m just focused on giving my all and making the most of whatever comes next.
“I played most of the games and was one of the main players in midfield.
“We had hoped to win the Premier League Cup as well as the U21 PDL title, but overall, it was a good season, for the team and for me personally, so I’m very happy about it.”
Trusted with responsibility in the centre of the pitch, he formed a solid partnership with team-mate Ethan Brierley, who completed a season-long loan deal to Exeter City in June, with both players taking on key roles across the campaign.
“We worked well together, me and Ethan,” he added. “I’m really pleased for him that he’s out on loan now and getting the chance to show what he can do. We both took on a lot in midfield and had real trust in each other.
“I’m happy for all the boys who’ve gone out on loan – these are good opportunities and I know they’ll take them.
“For me, I’m just focused on continuing to grow, whether that’s training more with the first team, going on loan, or developing further here with the B team.”
COLD SPRING HARBOR, N.Y., July 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Picture juicy red tomatoes on the vine. What do you see? Some tomato varieties have straight vines. Others are branched. The question is why. New research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) provides the strongest evidence to date that the answer lies in what are called cryptic mutations. The findings have implications for agriculture and medicine, as they could help scientists fine-tune plant breeding techniques and clinical therapeutics.
Tomatoes grow on the vine at Uplands Farm, about a mile east of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s main campus on Long Island. The agricultural research station offers a shared resource for CSHL scientists studying various topics, from plant genetics to quantitative biology and cancer.
Cryptic mutations are differences in DNA that don’t affect physical traits unless certain other genetic changes occur at the same time. CSHL Professor & HHMI Investigator Zachary Lippman has been researching cryptic mutations’ effects on plant traits alongside CSHL Associate Professor David McCandlish and Weizmann Institute Professor Yuval Eshed. Their latest study, published in Nature, reveals how interactions between cryptic mutations can increase or decrease the number of reproductive branches on tomato plants. Such changes result in more or fewer fruits, seeds, and flowers. The interactions in question involve genes known as paralogs.
“Paralogs emerge across evolution through gene duplication and are major features of genetic networks,” Lippman explains. “We know paralogs can buffer against each other to prevent gene mutations from affecting traits. Here, we found that collections of natural and engineered cryptic mutations in two pairs of paralogs can impact tomato branching in myriad ways.”
One crucial component of the project was the pan-genome Lippman and colleagues completed for Solanum plants around the globe, including cultivated and wild tomato species. Where genomes typically encompass one species, pan-genomes capture DNA sequences and traits across many species. The pan-genome pointed Lippman’s lab toward natural cryptic mutations in key genes controlling branching. Lippman lab postdoc Sophia Zebell then engineered other cryptic mutations using CRISPR. That enabled Lippman’s lab to count the branches on more than 35,000 flower clusters with 216 combinations of gene mutations. From there, McCandlish lab postdoc Carlos Martí-Gómez used computer models to predict how interactions between specific combinations of mutations in the plants would change the number of branches.
“We can now engineer cryptic mutations in tomatoes and other crops to modify important agricultural traits, like yield,” Lippman says.
Additionally, the kind of modeling done here could have many other applications. McCandlish explains: “When making mutations or using a drug that mimics the effects of a mutation, you often see side effects. By being able to map them out, you can choose the manner of controlling your trait of interest that has the least undesirable side effects.”
In other words, this research points not only to better crops but also better medicines. So, you see tomatoes? Science sees tomorrow.
About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the private, not-for-profit Laboratory employs 1,000 people including 600 scientists, students and technicians. For more information, visit www.cshl.edu.
The CEO of X, Elon Musk’s social network, announced on Wednesday she would step down after two years in the role.
Linda Yaccarino wrote: “When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”
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Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, purchased Twitter in 2022 and later renamed it X.
Organizations have long viewed artificial intelligence as a way to achieve productivity gains. But recent research about AI adoption at U.S. manufacturing firms reveals a more nuanced reality: AI introduction frequently leads to a measurable but temporary decline in performance followed by stronger growth output, revenue, and employment.
This phenomenon, which follows a “J-curve” trajectory, helps explain why the economic impact of AI has been underwhelming at times despite its transformative potential.
“AI isn’t plug-and-play,” said University of Toronto professor Kristina McElheran, a digital fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and one of the lead authors of the new paper “The Rise of Industrial AI in America: Microfoundations of the Productivity J-Curve(s).” “It requires systemic change, and that process introduces friction, particularly for established firms.”
University of Colorado Boulder professor Mu-Jeung Yang; Zachary Kroff, formerly with the U.S. Census Bureau and currently an analytics specialist at Analysis Group; and Stanford University professor Erik Brynjolfsson, PhD ’91, co-authored the report.
Working with data from two U.S. Census Bureau surveys covering tens of thousands of manufacturing companies in 2017 and 2021, the researchers found that the AI adoption J-curve varied among businesses that had adopted AI technologies with industrial applications. Short-term losses were greater in older, more established companies. Evidence on young firms showed that losses can be mitigated by certain business strategies. And despite early losses, early AI adopters showed stronger growth over time.
Here’s a look at what the study indicates about the adoption and application of AI, and the types of firms that outperform others in using new technology.
1. AI adoption initially reduces productivity.
The study shows that AI adoption tends to hinder productivity in the short term, with firms experiencing a measurable decline in productivity after they begin using AI technologies.
Even after controlling for size, age, capital stock, IT infrastructure, and other factors, the researchers found that organizations that adopted AI for business functions saw a drop in productivity of 1.33 percentage points. When correcting for selection bias — organizations that expect higher returns are more likely to be early AI adopters — the short-run negative impact was significantly larger, at around 60 percentage points, the researchers write.
This decline isn’t only a matter of growing pains; it points to a deeper misalignment between new digital tools and legacy operational processes, the researchers found. AI systems used for predictive maintenance, quality control, or demand forecasting often also require investments in data infrastructure, staff training, and workflow redesign. Without those complementary pieces in place, even the most advanced technologies can underdeliver or create new bottlenecks.
“Once firms work through the adjustment costs, they tend to experience stronger growth,” McElheran said. “But that initial dip — the downward slope of the J-curve — is very real.”
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2. Short-term losses precede long-term gains.
Despite companies’ early losses, the study found a clear pattern of recovery and eventual improvement. Over a longer period of time — there was a four-year gap in the study data — manufacturing firms that adopted AI tended to outperform their non-adopting peers in both productivity and market share. This recovery followed an initial period of adjustment during which companies fine-tuned processes, scaled digital tools, and capitalized on the data generated by AI systems.
That upswing wasn’t distributed evenly, though. The firms seeing the strongest gains tended to be those that were already digitally mature before adopting AI.
“Firms that have already done the digital transformation or were digital from the get-go have a much easier ride because past data can be a good predictor of future outcomes,” McElheran said. Size helps too. “Once you solve those adjustment costs, if you can scale the benefits across more output, more markets, and more customers, you’re going to get on the upswing of the J-curve a lot faster,” she said.
Better integration of the technology and strategic reallocation of resources is important to this recovery as firms gradually shift toward more AI-compatible operations, often investing in automation technologies like industrial robots, the researchers found.
3. Older firms see greater short-term losses.
Short-term losses aren’t felt equally across all firms, the study found. The negative impact of AI adoption was most pronounced among established firms. Such organizations typically have long-standing routines, layered hierarchies, and legacy systems that can be difficult to unwind.
These firms often have trouble adapting, partly due to institutional inertia and the complexity of their operations. “We find that older firms, in particular, struggle to maintain vital production management practices such as monitoring key performance indicators and production targets,” the researchers write.
“Old firms actually saw declines in the use of structured management practices after adopting AI,” McElheran said. “And that alone accounted for nearly one-third of their productivity losses.”
In contrast, younger, more flexible companies appear better equipped to integrate AI technologies quickly and with less disruption. They may also have less to unlearn, making the transition to AI-enabled workflows more seamless.
“Taken together, our findings highlight AI’s dual role as a transformative technology and catalyst for short-run organizational disruption, echoing patterns familiar to scholars of technological change,” the researchers write. They note that the results also show the importance of complementary practices and strategies that mitigate adjustment causes and boost long-term returns to “flatten the J-curve dip and realize AI’s longer-term productivity at scale.”
Third in 2022, second in 2024, Lisa Tertsch will line up for Saturday’s 2025 WTCS Hamburg as the woman to beat, even after Cassandre Beaugrand’s golden return to form at the previous stop of the Series in Alghero.
A surprise addition to the Tiszaujvaros World Cup last weekend, Tertsch’s desire to further sharpen and tune up ahead of the next chapter in her quest to become World Champion paid off as she scooped the gold with a controlled display. For an athlete who thrives on preparation and confidence, the stage could be set for a first Series win on home soil to further enhance her title credentials.
It’s a classic sprint-distance course that awaits as the 2025 season reaches the halfway mark, with 1,000 Series ranking points as well as the gold to the winner. The 750m swim in central Hamburg’s Binnenalster Lake is followed by a 20km bike through the tight city streets, and then a 5km run to the sun. Watch all the action over on TriathlonLive.tv from 6.40pm local time.
Tertsch fresh from Tizzy success
Coming in hot as the number one athlete in the Series right now, Lisa Tertsch hails from Frankfurt some 500km south, but Hamburg has become her second home since a chastening Series debut way back in 2016 at the age of just 17. A first Series podium here with silver in 2022 was followed up with the same result 12 months ago, helping her to fourth overall in the Series last year.
Now a familiar face at the front of the swim as well as a fearless biker, Tertsch has shown she has both the power and tactical guile to hold off the likes of Beth Potter and Jeanne Lehair. Only Cassandre Beaugrand has remained unbeatable in a toe-to-toe run to the tape for the 26-year-old. Gold here would be a huge statement of intent for the rest of the year and her world title ambitions.
Beaugrand’s back alright
If one athlete has become synonymous with Hamburg in recent times, then it is the Olympic and World Champion Cassandre Beaugrand. Winner here of the last two editions, this was also the venue of her Series debut in 2014 and her first Series win four years later.
Throw in silver in 2019 and four consecutive Mixed Relay world titles from 2018 to 2022 and it would be fair to say that the city has been a successful hunting ground for the French star over the years. After skipping Abu Dhabi and crashing out in Yokohama, a second win of the year after that remarkable Alghero comeback performance would put Beaugrand right back into contention for the title defence.
Lehair and Potter ready to dig deep
The outstanding performer in Yokohama, Jeanne Lehair stands second in the Series with that win and a pair of seventh-placed finishes either side including an almighty 10km run in Alghero after missing the front pack. Mexico’s Rosa Maria Tapia stands in third as she continues to crank up the top 10 consistency across the season so far.
For Beth Potter, missing the front pack in Alghero also proved costly, but there are plenty of opportunities remaining to add to her silver in Yokohama, where the run rhythm that had been hard to come by across much of 2024 was very much back in business.
The French team will be bolstered by the return of Emma Lombardi, 4th in the Paris Olympics and third in the Series last year and now ready to get back into race mode for the first time this year alongside the invariably excellent Leonie Periault.
Another big name making her return to the blue carpet is Britain’s Tokyo 2020 Olympic Relay gold and individual silver medallist Georgia Taylor-Brown, who has spent a six-month triathlon hiatus rediscovering its core components as well as going back to her cross country roots. Hamburg will represent an experiment and a test of where she is in her racing, with more intangible targets than a big point score.
Bianca Seregni (ITA) and Olivia Mathias (GBR) will be drawing plenty of attention after their spectacular swim-bike-runs to silver and bronze respectively in Alghero, Taylor Spivey and Gwen Jorgensen lead the line for the USA and Kate Waugh makes her second Series start of the year after a spectacular start to her T100 racing with gold in Singapore.
FULL WTCS HAMBURG START LIST TRIATHLONLIVE.TV 12 JULY 2025 18:40 CEST
NOTE FOR EDITORS: The 2025 World Triathlon Championship Series comprises SEVEN RACES plus the Championship Finals. A Series win is worth 1,000 POINTS. The winner of the Championship Finals receives 1,250 POINTS. Continental Championship winners receive 400 points. The number of points reduces by 7.5% with each position thereafter. (WTCS Abu Dhabi was worth 750 points as per the 2024 rules) The top THREE points scores from the season PLUS those earned in the Finals will be combined to determine the 2025 WORLD CHAMPION.
Sony has announced the ECM-778, a new shotgun microphone designed for filmmakers and content creators requiring high-quality audio in a compact and lightweight package.
Measuring 176mm in length and weighing 102g, the ECM-778 is designed for flexibility on set, whether mounted on a boom pole or directly on a camera. The microphone uses a newly developed capsule, a precision-machined brass acoustic tube, and a dedicated electronic circuit board to deliver clear high frequencies and stable mid-low frequencies, aiming to capture voices and ambient sounds with spatial detail.
Sony states that the ECM-778 offers sharp forward directivity by suppressing sound from the sides and rear across the frequency range. This can help isolate subjects during recording while reducing environmental noise—important when working in confined or acoustically challenging locations.
The Sony ECM-778 Shotgun Microphone on a Sony FX6. Image credit: Sony
Features for varied environments
For practical on-set use, the ECM-778 includes a built-in low-cut filter to reduce low-frequency noise from wind or handling. Two windscreen options—a lightweight foam type and a fur type—are included to address different recording conditions.
The microphone’s machined aluminium exterior is designed to reduce external vibrations and electrical noise while maintaining a lightweight form factor. The ECM-778 connects via XLR and is compatible with external audio recorders and cameras with XLR inputs, including Sony Cinema Line and Alpha mirrorless cameras.
Made for on-set use, also on a boom: The Sony ECM-778 Shotgun Microphone. Image credit: Sony
Developed with sound engineers
According to Sony, the ECM-778 was developed with input from film sound engineers, who provided feedback during the design and testing phases. The company highlights the microphone’s ability to maintain consistent tonal characteristics across varying distances, which is useful when shifting from close-up to wider shots during production.
Don’t forget to check our other coverage of microphones relevant for filmmakers.
The ECM-778 is positioned as part of Sony’s broader lineup of tools for professional and independent filmmakers looking to match high-resolution image capture with clear and precise audio recording.
In photos: Sotheby’s auctions dinosaur bones, Mars rock for Geek Week – All Photos upi.com
When dinosaurs rule the world of collecting Financial Times
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‘What a shame when a dinosaur disappears into the mansion of an oligarch rather than being displayed for all to enjoy’: The ethics of the dinosaur auction Country Life
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New Jersey – July 9, 2025 – Cushman & Wakefield announced today that the real estate services firm has released its Q2 2025 New Jersey Market Report, highlighting robust performance across both the industrial and office sectors. Leasing activity showed positive trends in specific submarkets, and demand for Class A properties drove key metrics for both sectors despite ongoing challenges.
The industrial market in New Jersey experienced increased leasing momentum in Q2 2025, with activity totaling 5.7 million square feet (msf), a 4.7% rise from the previous quarter. The Port South and Meadowlands submarkets led the way, accounting for 33.9% of leasing activity. Year-to-date leasing in the Port South submarket improved 22.0% year-over-year (YOY) to reach 2.3 msf.
While overall net absorption remained negative for the ninth consecutive quarter (-1.9 msf), Class A industrial properties saw positive absorption, driven by consistent tenant demand despite increasing sublease availability. Vacancy surged 220 basis points YOY to 9.9%, influenced by 13.1 msf of new vacancies. Pre-leasing activity also declined to 28.4% as only 15.4% of newly delivered projects were occupied upon completion.
“New Jersey’s industrial market remains resilient despite ongoing challenges,” said Felix Soto, Senior Research Analyst at Cushman & Wakefield. “Submarkets such as Port South and the Meadowlands continue to see robust leasing activity, highlighting their strategic value and appeal for modern warehouse and distribution spaces.”
New Jersey’s office market demonstrated signs of stabilization midway through 2025, driven by steady demand for the third consecutive quarter. Net absorption turned positive in Q2, led by occupancy gains within Class A office space. The office vacancy rate saw a slight improvement, falling 40 basis points YOY to 22.2%, with conversions and demolitions helping offset vacancy growth.
New leasing activity held strong at 1.8 msf in Q2, surpassing the two-year quarterly average, with 67.6% of demand focused on Class A office spaces. Asking rents for Class A properties saw a 3.3% YOY increase to $36.40 per square foot, while the overall market average declined by 0.6% from the previous quarter to $32.45 psf.
“As we reach the midpoint of 2025, the New Jersey office market is finding balance,” Soto added. “Sustained demand for Class A office environments and strategic adaptations, like conversions, are keeping the market competitive and attractive for tenants looking for premium spaces.”
