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  • Ant genes show how evolution created perfect teamwork

    Ant genes show how evolution created perfect teamwork

    Ants, with their unique genes, outnumber people by roughly 2.5 million to one. Their combined dry mass, about 12 million tons of carbon, rivals one‑fifth of humanity’s weight on land.

    An international research team has compared 163 ant genomes to show how these insects turned cooperative living into an evolutionary engine. They reshuffled DNA while guarding key caste genes for more than 100 million years.

    Genetic clues to colony life


    Dr. Lukas Schrader of the University of Münster helped coordinate the project and still sounds amazed by its scope.

    Charles Darwin once fretted over sterile workers, calling them a “special difficulty” because natural selection seemed unable to favor individuals that never breed.

    Inclusive‑fitness theory, formalized in 1964, solved the logic by showing that workers spread their genes by helping sisters.

    The new data add genetic proof to that idea: worker‑specific gene clusters stayed almost identical across lineages, hinting that any mutation hurting brood care was swiftly purged.

    Ant colonies behave like bodies

    Biologists label an ant colony a superorganism because its members behave like cells of one body.

    The new dataset spans army ants with millions of workers, species such as Camponotus japonicus whose queens dwarf their tiniest laborers more than 100‑fold, and even parasites that have lost workers altogether.

    Researchers sequenced 145 species from 25 countries and folded in 18 earlier genomes to reach chromosome‑level quality for 17 of them. That’s no small feat when many ants are smaller than a comma.

    “The publication is a milestone in our understanding of the molecular and genetic foundations of ants and probably also other social insects such as honeybees,” said Schrader.

    Across the tree, queen and worker blueprints sit side by side. Yet workers never hatch reproductive organs because development is rerouted by hormones and gene‑regulation circuits embedded in the shared DNA.

    Ants keep critical survival genes

    The study tracked synteny, the order of genes along a chromosome. Whole blocks had flipped, fused, or fractured at a rate up to four times that seen in vertebrates. Ant groups with the fastest breakage spawned the most species.

    Even so, 970 tiny gene clusters, street blocks in the genetic city, remained frozen across 80 percent of species. Many code for metabolism and caste traits, suggesting that breaking them would cripple colony function.

    One conserved block houses two vitellogenin genes vital for queen egg yolk and sits unchanged in 148 genomes. Another links fatty‑acid enzymes to worker‑biased expression, underlining how diet and labor intertwine.

    Holding those modules steady while the surrounding landscape rearranged let ants explore new lifestyles without losing the caste machinery that keeps colonies alive.

    Hormones decide jobs and stability

    A single molecule can tip a larva toward royalty or toil. Juvenile hormone has long been that switch, and gene copies for the enzyme JHAMT rise in species with extreme queen‑worker size gaps. 

    Insulin and MAPK signaling join the act. In the jumping ant Harpegnathos, blocking MAPK with the drug trametinib makes workers grow larger, echoing lab findings that this pathway expands ovaries when workers become egg‑laying gamergates. 

    The new comparison shows MAPK genes under intensified selection in lineages where workers can still replace a queen, but relaxed selection where caste roles are rock‑solid.

    That fits the idea that plastic colonies need fine hormonal tuning, while rigid ones lock their switches.

    Hormone receptors for juvenile hormone and insulin sit inside conserved synteny islands. This hints that the entire endocrine toolkit rode through deep time as a connected package.

    Ant genes shift with colony size

    Bigger colonies and steeper queen‑worker dimorphism marched together in evolution; both correlate with trails, trophallaxis, and worker polymorphism.

    Genes tied to brain development, such as GCM and the muscarinic receptor mAChR‑A, show worker‑type biased activity and signs of adaptive change in species sporting soldiers beside tiny foragers.

    Where workers lost ovaries altogether, selection on oogenesis genes like otu relaxed, but those same genes stay under pressure in species whose workers can still lay male eggs.

    Social parasites flip the pattern. Workerless inquilines shed odorant‑receptor genes and rack up chromosomal breaks, mirroring their narrow ecological niche and tiny population sizes.

    Ant genes explain social evolution

    Many themes, hormonal control, preserved gene neighborhoods, break‑induced innovation, also shape honeybees, wasps, and higher termites. Ants simply had a 150‑million‑year head start, offering a living time machine for social evolution.

    Knowing which genes stay linked during caste splits could aid synthetic‑biology efforts that aim to engineer division of labor in microbes or even tissues.

    The study also reminds us that nature can be both flexible and conservative: colonies reinvent chromosome layouts yet keep critical circuits intact, a balance worth emulating in adaptive technologies.

    Ants may be tiny, but their genomes read like manuals on how cooperation rewires life. Future research will test whether the same genetic choreography repeats whenever individual interests yield to collective success.

    The study is published in the journal Cell.

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  • Infinix Hot 60 5G+ is launching next week with ‘One-Tap AI Button’

    Infinix Hot 60 5G+ is launching next week with ‘One-Tap AI Button’

    Infinix recently unveiled the Hot 60i with the Helio G81 Ultimate chip at the helm, and now it has announced that it will soon launch the Hot 60 5G+ featuring a “One-Tap AI Button.”

    The image shared by Infinix with us shows that the One-Tap AI Button will be located on the right side of the Hot 60 5G+ below the volume rocker and power button. Infinix says it’s a “smart and seamless shortcut that redefines user interaction” with the device and is designed for professionals, gamers, students, and regular users alike.

    The One-Tap AI Button supports single press, double press, and long press, and can be customized for over 30 apps. Moreover, the AI Button adapts to an individual’s usage patterns to provide relevant, real-time assistance.

    The One-Tap AI Button can also be used to summarize articles, trigger Circle to Search, or get explanations of the on-screen content. It can also launch personalized tools based on the content displayed on the phone’s screen.

    Infinix hasn’t revealed anything else about the Hot 60 5G+, but said the smartphone will launch in India on July 11 and will be sold online exclusively through Flipkart.

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  • Children Die, and Parents Go On Living

    Children Die, and Parents Go On Living

    Jenessa Abrams reviews Yiyun Li’s “Things in Nature Merely Grow.”

    Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025. 192 pages.

    ONCE YOU ARE a mother, you are a mother forever. You are a mother before your child is born, you are a mother once your child becomes too large to fit in your arms, you are a mother when your child no longer needs you. You are a mother when your child leaves this earth before you do.

    Yiyun Li is a mother who has lost both of her children—her two sons: Vincent, who died at age 16 in 2017, and James, who died at age 19 in 2024. Each chose to end their lives by suicide. I use the language of “suicide” intentionally here; Li makes her disdain for euphemisms clear, given that their primary function is to make other people feel more comfortable. That is not her responsibility. Her responsibility is to her children. Should it be your desire to be made to feel more comfortable, should “a mother using the word ‘died’ or ‘death’ offen[d] your sensibilities,” then, “dear readers,” as Li writes near the beginning of her new book, Things in Nature Merely Grow, “this is a good time for you to stop reading.”

    Losing both of your children, no longer having their living physical forms as proof of their existence, does not mean that the relationship between mother and child ends. Instead, it must take a different form. Li, whose medium is writing, uses words to conjure up her children again in the pages of two books, each constructed with respect to both of her sons’ ways of existing within and experiencing the world.

    The first, Where Reasons End, written in the wake of Vincent’s suicide and published in 2019, is structured as an imagined conversation between a mother and her dead son. The volume was published as fiction “because it could only be called that: no dead child has ever come back to have an argument with his mother.” The second, Things in Nature Merely Grow, is the book Li wrote after James’s suicide and published this spring, a work of nonfiction in which she uses language to reconstruct thought, attempting to reconfigure the particular, astonishing complexity of her son’s mind—all the while knowing that it will be merely that: a reconstruction.

    Li’s project evokes the title of Elizabeth McCracken’s masterful 2008 memoir of the stillbirth of her first child: An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. I’ve always taken that title to mean that the living child McCracken later births is a replica of the dead child who lived only in her imagination. For Li, perhaps, the books she has written for her two sons are precisely that: replicas of them as they continue to live in her imagination. The “book for Vincent,” as Li often refers to it, is a book that captures his curiosity, his tenacious spark, their passionate mother-son sparring; it “was as much written for Vincent as it was written by Vincent.” James, on the other hand, “resisted metaphor and evaded attention,” making the task of summoning his essence in literature effectively impossible. Li understands this from the outset but chooses to write the book anyway. It is this understanding of the inherent impossibility of bringing James back that makes the resulting piece of writing so remarkable: “Anything I write for James,” she acknowledges,

    is bound to be a partial failure. Sooner or later there will come the moment when my understanding parts ways with his essence. I can ask questions—answerable or unanswerable—but it is likely that by the end of the book I will have failed to find the right questions, just as I will have failed to pinpoint the exact moment when James’s contemplation of suicide shifted from Vincent’s to his own.

    Within those sentences, which appear near the beginning of Things in Nature Merely Grow, Li arrives at what I believe is the essential project of the book: the conflation of her inability to recreate James in writing and her inability to have predicted his suicide. And yet, with painstaking care, Li resists reflecting on James’s death as if it had been preventable. Her work, and perhaps also her life, is dedicated to honoring her children and respecting the choices they made, which means not only writing in the vein of the distinct lives each lived but also repeatedly referring to their deaths as deaths, using the word suicide, again and again, so that we must acknowledge what it is that happened to them, what they chose, that they existed. That they exist still.

    ¤

    Things in Nature Merely Grow has an organically cyclical nature. There are refrains and repetitions, like mathematical equations, like philosophical conceits, like musical compositions—like James. Two of the most hauntingly affecting are products of one another, a play on a line in Camus’s Caligula (1944), which James had been rereading before his death: “Men die; and they are not happy.” As Li observes,

    Half of the line is a fact; the other half, a conjecture. There is no cause and effect emphasized: do men die because they are not happy, or are they not happy because they have to die someday? The two statements, existing together, are like two hands kept close, either barely touching or with their fingers intertwined.

    Li reinvents the line as “Children die, and parents go on living,” and she often returns to the image of two hands “barely touching or with fingers intertwined.” Each time these lines appear, they mean something slightly different. Each time, that meaning is clearer.

    Another unexpectedly compelling facet of Things in Nature Merely Grow’s composition is the frequent inclusion of voices outside of Li’s, in the form of emails, conversations, and telephone calls from close friends—which feel like her conduit for communication much in the same way her son James, who had a predilection for silence, turns toward logic, philosophy, and existentialist literature in order to speak. The book is given weight from the people who kept Li and her husband alive after the death of their children. That is never explicitly stated, but one feels the intensity of what these interlocutors mean to Li: people willing to look with her to see her dead children, to name them, to wonder into Vincent’s and James’s lives and their respective decisions to end them.

    There are two such inclusions—one near the beginning of the book and the other near the end—that serve as pillars holding the project together. The first arrives in the form of an email to Li “precisely an hour and a half after [James’s] death” from a friend who was one of James’s professors. “You did everything you could to help James find his place in life, but he wanted to leave and one must let go.” Li repeats the line in italics, ruminating on how deeply the friend understands James and understands the unforgiving nature of life itself. Like Li, I found myself repeating the line and rereading it countless times, feeling the words somewhere underneath my skin, knowing what it means to love someone fiercely whose experience of the world brings them astonishing pain. Recognizing that your desire for them to live is a desire that does not account for their suffering.

    Li’s decision to braid the narrative of James’s life and his death with fragments of speech and writing she received in the wake of his suicide is one of the many stylistic choices that ensures the book transcends genre conventions. Things in Nature Merely Grow is a textured, living record of Li’s unfathomable loss. Beyond that, it is an invitation to the reader to carry the unimaginable with her. It is an insistence: rather than turning away from the horror or gawking from a distance, it is necessary to sit inside the room where she and her husband are greeted by police officers for a second time to learn that their last living child has died.

    ¤

    At one point in the book, Li invokes the concept of assisted suicide, choosing to refer to it with that precise term rather than the elegant, somewhat poetically veiled death with dignity. I pondered this as I read. What does it mean for society to embrace one’s decision to wield power or to assert control over the end of their life when faced with a terminal physical illness in late adulthood, and why are we comparatively unable to understand that some younger people live every day of their lives with a pain that is unspeakable, a pain that makes living no less of a torment? “Those who have learned swimming in their childhood tend to swim unthinkingly,” Li reflects, after beginning swimming lessons following her sons’ deaths. “For some people, the same must be true in life; for them living is a natural process. This has never been the case for me or for my children.”

    Just as the mother character in Where Reasons End never asks her dead son, a portrait of the late Vincent, why he has killed himself, Li rarely wonders in Things in Nature Merely Grow why James has ended his life. The answer to that question will not change his death, and the answer, for her, is not unfamiliar. Toward the book’s close, Li describes a visit from a friend who asks “how much [Li] thought James’s suicide was connected to Vincent’s.” “Do you think,” the friend ventures, “that Vincent’s suicide might have given James a sense of possibility?” Another mother might fall apart at this question or become enraged, but Li feels gratitude. Her friend is willing to stare directly into the abyss of child loss with her, to ask a potentially off-limits question, which then allows Li—who is moving through the book as James might, leading with logic and reason—to ask herself: “How did my suicide attempts affect Vincent? Did I, by trying to end my life, also make him see that as a possibility to end his own suffering? Was I the person to have pointed at what separates life from death and said, Look, that partition is not as solid as people make it out to be?”

    Exercising (as ever) extraordinary control and restraint, Li refrains from opening this line of inquiry until the very end of Things in Nature Merely Grow. Before this inclusion, knowing that Li has been open, in the past, about her own suicide attempts, I felt shadows of the shield Joan Didion put up in Blue Nights (2011), the memoir she wrote after the death of her only child, her daughter Quintana. While Didion’s posture of distance is a signature of her style, I’ve always found Blue Nights less narratively satisfying than Didion’s earlier memoir The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), which follows her husband John’s unexpected death. In the latter, Didion exhibits traces of vulnerability that undercut her persona, but Blue Lights seems less interested in contending with the thorny complexities of a parent outliving their child. Li is a very different writer from Didion, though they share an aversion to sentimentality and are each masters in their own right. Li, for her part, chooses to see and see and see and see, reflecting and refracting the image of her hospitalizations for suicidal ideation and her sons’ successful attempts.

    A reader, naturally, might ask, following the logic Li herself embeds in the narrative: What might have happened had Li been able to write these books for her children before? To capture their essence while they were living, trace the shadows of their deaths earlier? Which, invoking Li’s preference for bluntness, is another way of asking: Could she have prevented their suicides? But it’s a false question, or, to use a term from the book, it is a pebble of a question: “Better kick the pebble out of your way instead of letting it stop you.” It is a pebble of a question because it presupposes that the deaths of Li’s children are her fault, it places the blame—the responsibility—on the mother. It puts the onus on her children living on her; it disregards the very likely possibility that they were deeply loved and that even that was not enough to make the pain of their lives livable. It disrespects James and Vincent’s choices as much as it does Li’s own.

    ¤

    Li does not discuss her suicide attempt fully until the second half of the book. She similarly waits until we’ve become familiar with James in the pages of Things in Nature Merely Grow before, indirectly, mentioning certain aspects of his identity that might provide fodder for investigation or assumptions about his decision to die. Initially, when these details appeared, my mind returned to Didion as I contemplated whether Li was protecting herself by withholding; then, I was reminded that, just as Li’s every word is painstakingly chosen, her every decision is measured, calculated, and weighed. Here, she ensures that the reader does not assume the role of detective to try to find clues or answers about James’s death, because doing so is a reductive act. His life is not a puzzle to be solved. Any attempt to do so is dismissive and pathologizing. The answer to his death is not what this book is about.

    This book is about James. At the same time, it is, in some ways, about Vincent and in others, about Li herself. Li has long alluded to the unhappiness of her childhood in communist China and her mother’s inhumane cruelty, but it is in Things in Nature Merely Grow that she lays bare her mother’s astonishing abuse. I suppose it is naive to consider a mother inflicting pain on her child as astonishing, but what is certainly astonishing is that in all of Li’s work, it is here, in this book for James, that she most bluntly presents her mother’s staggering violence.

    In a late section titled “Things I Never Told My Children,” Li writes about the beatings she endured at the whims of her mother. While the physical violence is devastating, what is arguably more devasting is the psychological violence Li’s mother inflicted, including inventing a game of isolation in which an imagined twin of Li is a child finally worthy of love. Throughout her childhood, Li’s mother asked her: “[D]o you want a dead mother or a mad mother?” In response, Li now writes: “Nobody knew that I had always thought a dead mother would be better than a mad mother,” adding, “That thought too was on my mind when I felt too bleak to live: it’s not my children’s job to keep me alive; in fact, it’s my job to protect them from myself, if I cannot save my sanity.” After Li’s suicide attempt, her mother’s response was “Why did you do that to me?” The question positions Li’s mother herself at the center of her daughter’s pain, rather than attempting to understand or acknowledge it.

    Intergenerational trauma defies language. We hold the wounds of our parents inside us: whether or not we’re aware of it, the violence is there, and our children may well feel it. Li’s decision to write about her mother now, then, in the wake of her children’s suicides, reads like an act of defiance, an act of freedom. It is a direct rejection of her mother’s question; just as Li is not responsible for the deaths of her sons, her sons are not responsible for the pain she experiences as she goes on living.

    ¤

    Toward the book’s close, Li includes a section titled “Minor Comedies—for James,” whose tone takes on an almost childlike glee—if one can ethically use the word “glee” in the space of child loss. Still, glee is the word that occurs to me each time I recall the section of text in which Li seems to inhabit the joy James might’ve felt had he been able to witness her dedicating a substantial portion of the book to publicly exposing the people who have behaved horrifically toward their family in the wake of the children’s deaths—so horrifically that their actions verge on comedy. There is a freeness to the prose in this section that feels shocking for a writer who is an artist of precision.

    The way Li playfully embraces vengeance feels both refreshing and somewhat dangerous. Suddenly, no one and nothing is safe: in a scathing paragraph of uncharacteristic catharsis, Li directly addresses the Chinese media and tabloids who ran salacious and crude headlines about the deaths of her children in conjunction with her perceived role in their suicides as well as the many visitors she and her husband were forced to host who inflicted their own harm. Most notable is the mother of one of Vincent’s friends, who came to “file a complaint about [Li’s] dead son.” To them, she now writes: “I am sorry for whatever losses you have suffered or whatever deficiencies you were born with that make you, unavoidably, who you are and what you are.” The descriptions of utter inhumanity serve as a reminder of the difficulty inherent in being human, a feeling Li and her children know intimately.

    There is no redemption arc in Things in Nature Merely Grow, no hero’s journey, no arrival at a deeper meaning of life after the compounding tragedies of Vincent and James’s suicides. Instead, there is an astonishing act of what Li refers to as “radical acceptance,” the only form of control she can assert on the tragedies of her life, which is to acknowledge them, which is not to try to play a god that she does not believe in, which is not to try to imagine (at least not for long and with very little indulgence) what might have happened if she had mothered her sons differently, what might have happened if her sons had discovered a world in which they could live—though, of course, they have one now. It is the world she has made in the books she wrote for them.

    LARB Contributor

    Jenessa Abrams is a writer, literary translator, and practitioner of narrative medicine. Her fiction, literary criticism, and creative nonfiction have appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, the Chicago Review of Books, BOMB, and elsewhere.

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    LARB Staff Recommendations

    • Ultimately, “Where Reasons End” is a tremendous act of empathy.

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    Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?


    LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!

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  • Why are heart attacks less deadly then they used to be

    Why are heart attacks less deadly then they used to be

    A day before my 47th birthday last month, I took the subway to Manhattan’s Upper East Side for a coronary artery calcium scan (CAC).

    For those who haven’t entered the valley of middle age, a CAC is a specialized CT scan that looks for calcium deposits in the heart and its arteries. Unlike in your bones, having calcium in your coronary arteries is a bad thing, because it indicates the buildup of plaque comprised of cholesterol, fat, and other lovely things. The higher the calcium score, the more plaque that has built up — and with it, the higher the risk of heart disease and even heart attacks.

    A couple of hours after the test, I received a ping on my phone. My CAC score was 7, which indicated the presence of a small amount of calcified plaque, which translates to a “low but non-zero cardiovascular risk.” Put another way, according to one calculator, it means an approximately 2.1 percent chance of a major adverse cardiovascular event over the next 10 years.

    2.1 percent doesn’t sound high — it’s a little higher than the chance of pulling an ace of spades from a card deck — but when it comes to major adverse cardiovascular events, 2.1 percent is approximately 100 percent higher than I’d like. That’s how I found myself joining the tens of millions of Americans who are currently on statin drugs, which lower levels of LDL cholesterol (aka the “bad” cholesterol).

    I didn’t really want to celebrate my birthday with a numerical reminder of my creeping mortality. But everything about my experience — from the high-tech calcium scan to my doctor’s aggressive statin prescription — explains how the US has made amazing progress against one of our biggest health risks: heart disease, and especially, heart attacks.

    A dramatic drop in heart attack deaths

    A heart attack — which usually occurs when atherosclerotic plaque partially or fully blocks the flow of blood to the heart — used to be close to a death sentence. In 1963, the death rate from coronary heart disease, which includes heart attacks, peaked in the US, with 290 deaths per 100,000 population. As late as 1970, a man over 65 who was hospitalized with a heart attack had only a 60 percent chance of ever leaving that hospital alive.

    A sudden cardiac death is the disease equivalent of homicide or a car crash death. It meant someone’s father or husband, wife or mother, was suddenly ripped away without warning. Heart attacks were terrifying.

    Yet today, that risk is much less. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the proportion of all deaths attributable to heart attacks plummeted by nearly 90 percent between 1970 and 2022. Over the same period, heart disease as a cause of all adult deaths in the US fell from 41 percent to 24 percent. Today, if a man over 65 is hospitalized with a heart attack, he has a 90 percent chance of leaving the hospital alive.

    By my calculations, the improvements in preventing and treating heart attacks between 1970 and 2022 have likely saved tens of millions of lives. So how did we get here?

    In 1964, the year after the coronary heart disease death rate peaked, the US surgeon general released a landmark report on the risks of smoking. It marked the start of a decades-long public health campaign against one of the biggest contributing factors to cardiovascular disease.

    That campaign has been incredibly successful. In 1970, an estimated 40 percent of Americans smoked. By 2019, that percentage had fallen to 14 percent, and it keeps declining.

    The reduction in smoking has helped lower the number of Americans at risk of a heart attack. So did the development and spread in the 1980s of statins like I’m on now, which make it far easier to manage cholesterol and prevent heart disease. By one estimate, statins save nearly 2 million lives globally each year.

    When heart attacks do occur, the widespread adoption of CPR and the development of portable defibrillators — which only began to become common in the late 1960s — ensured that more people survived long enough to make it to the hospital. Once there, the development of specialized coronary care units, balloon angioplasty and artery-opening stents made it easier for doctors to rescue a patient suffering an acute cardiac event.

    Our changing heart health deaths

    Despite this progress in stopping heart attacks, around 700,000 Americans still die of all forms of heart disease every year, equivalent to 1 in 5 deaths overall.

    Some of this is the unintended result of our medical success. As more patients survive acute heart attacks and life expectancy has risen as a whole, it means more people are living long enough to become vulnerable to other, more chronic forms of heart disease, like heart failure and pulmonary-related heart conditions. While the decline in smoking has reduced a major risk factor for heart disease, Americans are in many other ways much less healthy than they were 50 years ago. The increasing prevalence of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and sedentary behavior all raise the risk that more Americans will develop some form of potentially fatal heart disease down the line.

    Here, GLP-1 inhibitors like Ozempic hold amazing potential to reduce heart disease’s toll. One study found that obese or overweight patients who took a GLP-1 inhibitor for more than three years had a 20 percent lower risk of heart attack, stroke, or death due to cardiovascular disease. Statins have saved millions of lives, yet tens of millions more Americans could likely benefit from taking the cholesterol-lowering drugs, especially women, minorities, and people in rural areas.

    Lastly, far more Americans could benefit from the kind of advanced screening I received. Only about 1.5 million Americans received a CAC test in 2017, but clinical guidelines indicate that more than 30 million people could benefit from such scans.

    Just as it is with cancer, getting ahead of heart disease is the best way to stay healthy. It’s an astounding accomplishment to have reduced deaths from heart attacks by 90 percent over the past 50-plus years. But even better would be preventing more of us from ever getting to the cardiac brink at all.

    A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!

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  • Vizsla Silver Corp.’s (TSE:VZLA) market cap touched CA$1.4b last week, benefiting both individual investors who own 59% as well as institutions

    Vizsla Silver Corp.’s (TSE:VZLA) market cap touched CA$1.4b last week, benefiting both individual investors who own 59% as well as institutions

    • The considerable ownership by individual investors in Vizsla Silver indicates that they collectively have a greater say in management and business strategy

    • The top 25 shareholders own 36% of the company

    • Insiders have been selling lately

    This technology could replace computers: discover the 20 stocks are working to make quantum computing a reality.

    To get a sense of who is truly in control of Vizsla Silver Corp. (TSE:VZLA), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are individual investors with 59% ownership. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

    While individual investors were the group that reaped the most benefits after last week’s 5.6% price gain, institutions also received a 34% cut.

    Let’s delve deeper into each type of owner of Vizsla Silver, beginning with the chart below.

    See our latest analysis for Vizsla Silver

    TSX:VZLA Ownership Breakdown July 5th 2025

    Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.

    Vizsla Silver already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can’t rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It’s therefore worth looking at Vizsla Silver’s earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

    earnings-and-revenue-growth
    TSX:VZLA Earnings and Revenue Growth July 5th 2025

    We note that hedge funds don’t have a meaningful investment in Vizsla Silver. Our data shows that Sprott Inc. is the largest shareholder with 7.0% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 4.2% and 3.1% of the stock. In addition, we found that Michael Konnert, the CEO has 0.7% of the shares allocated to their name.

    Our studies suggest that the top 25 shareholders collectively control less than half of the company’s shares, meaning that the company’s shares are widely disseminated and there is no dominant shareholder.

    Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock’s expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

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  • How to Tell When It’s More Than Stress

    How to Tell When It’s More Than Stress

    Chances are you don’t realize the impact anxiety can have on guys. Studies continuously show that women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder–but that doesn’t mean you’re immune.

    Researchers can’t explain the causes of this disparity, but believe guys may feel pressured to exhibit anxious feelings in ways that seem more masculine.

    “I think the biggest thing is men are socialized not to show anxiety,” said Carmen McLean, PhD, a researcher and clinical associate professor at Stanford University’s Department of Psychiatry. “Socializing to show agency and self-efficiency dissuades from showing anxiety.”

    This is one reason anxiety is often accompanied by substance abuse and other “internalizing disorders, ” said McLean. Sometimes these signs can be subtle, meaning it’s especially important to recognize symptoms of anxiety disorders specific to males.

    Some clues—nervousness, dread over impending danger and rapid breathing—are common across gender lines, but these five manifestations of anxiety disproportionately impact men:

    Anxious Men Fear Dating

    Men with social anxiety disorder are more likely to fear dating and are more commonly single, separated or divorced, according to an analysis of survey information from Columbia University.

    “Men are supposed to take the lead in dating,” explained Stefan G. Hofmann, PhD and psychology professor at Boston University who researches anxiety. “The male is the one who is expected to take the first step. That puts them in a performance situation.”

    Even in the age of apps, men are typically the pursuer. On OkCupid, males are three times more likely to send a first message in an opposite-sex exchange. This means constantly offering yourself up for evaluation and rejection–an anxiety-inducing prospect.

    “It’s a challenge for people who don’t like to play that game,”said Hofman.

    Plus, some agonize over being chronically single–with reason–David Ezell, clinical director of Darien Wellness, a psychology clinic in Connecticut, told Men’s Health.

    “Men really benefit from marriage,” Ezell said. “They’re less likely to be sick. They’re less likely to be hospitalized. They’re hospitalized for shorter stays if they are hospitalized.”

    Also, marriage is a status symbol, a sign of “maturation,” said Ezell.

    With so much at risk, dating and bachelorhood are significant sources of stress in men with anxiety.

    Flashpop//Getty Images

    Anxious Men May Abuse Alcohol and Drugs

    Men drink and use drugs to relieve anxiety more often than women, according to the same Columbia University study. Research has consistently shown a link between substance abuse and mental health disorders, particularly in men.

    “They are looking for medication,” said Ezell. He explains a glass of booze pairs well with the “I-can-fix-it-myself” attitude associated with masculinity because it doesn’t require medical assistance and may seem like a socially acceptable way to ease stress.

    “Alcohol is a very effective drug,” said Hofmann. “It’s why it’s so popular.”

    Think about college students who “pre-game” by drinking at a dorm or with a small group of friends before going to larger parties. They may not realize it, but this helps manage the anxiety of socializing.

    Guys who forego professional treatment may instead turn to drugs or heavy drinking to cope with anxiety–and this may be a doorway to addiction.

    Anxious Men May Seem Angry

    In some men, anxiety may manifest as rage or anger. “It’s much more acceptable,” said McLean. While women may find support from friends or mental health professionals, guys often let their feelings build up until they hit a breaking point–and then the flood gates open.

    “Because emotions don’t get expressed [by men], because anxiety isn’t expressed in a healthy way, there are busts of anger as a result,” said Ezell. “I think anger is considered decisive.”

    If typical signs of anxiety, like nervousness or fear, are discouraged in men, anger is their only acceptable emotional response.

    Businesswoman and businessman arguing in office passageway

    Westend61//Getty Images

    Anxious Men Have Strained Relationships

    In another study of survey data from Columbia University, men were more likely than women to experience relationship strain from worrying.

    This could be because women are more likely to have a circle of close friends, whereas men tend to have few confidants who can provide support through emotional distress.

    “Men tend to rely on romantic partners for stress,” said Hofman. This can be a burden, he explained.

    Sociologist Eli J. Finkel further detailed the risk of putting all that psychological dependence on one person in his book, The All-Or-Nothing Marriage. Finkel argued that modern relationships are tense because people seek comfort, growth, purpose, and a host of other needs from romantic partnerships. Prior generations sought comfort in an entire network of family and friends.

    “Marriage for a long time served a set and relatively limited array of different functions for us,” Finkel told the NPR podcast Hidden Brain. “And over time we’ve piled more and more of these emotional and psychological functions.”

    Anxious men might burn out their few outlets (or only outlet) for social support quickly.

    Anxious Men Obsesses Over Status

    Ezell’s practice is located in Darien, Connecticut, a bedroom community for hedge fund managers and Wall Street executives. With a median family income of $208,125, it’s frequently named one of the wealthiest municipalities in the United States.

    Despite their success, Ezell has clients who are riddled with anxiety over what they haven’t accomplished. “My clients make a lot of money,” said Ezell. “They are still not happy and want to know why.”

    Guys are often anxious about getting ahead of peers, he said. If a friend winters in Aspen, his client wants to winter in the Alps. There is a particular pressure in status attainment—and status advancement—that fuels anxiety disorders for many.

    “We are very grateful by getting things,” Ezell said, “but we get acclimated to that status very quickly. If I am eating well; I want to be eating better.”

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  • Metagenomics-based novel Caulimoviridae virus discovery and its development of identification markers in Lilium lancifolium thunb | Virology Journal

    Metagenomics-based novel Caulimoviridae virus discovery and its development of identification markers in Lilium lancifolium thunb | Virology Journal

    DNA viruses in the detected samples

    By assembling and analyzing the metagenomic sequencing data, this study only discovered two virus contig sequences, tig000081 and tig000315, which possessed the characteristics of Caulimoviridae viruses. Therefore, the two novel Caulimoviridae viruses, tig000081 (7,546 nt) and tig000315 (7,585 nt) are tentatively named “Lancifolium Caulimovirus A” (LCaA) and “Lancifolium Caulimovirus B” (LCaB), respectively.

    To validate the accuracy of the two reference contig sequences, overlapping fragments from LCaA and LCaB were cloned, sequenced, and assembled to obtain full-length genomic sequences. Final genome lengths were determined as 7,542 nt for LCaA and 7,582 nt for LCaB, with complete sequences deposited in the China National GeneBank Database (CNGB) under accession number sub064865. The open reading frame (ORF) prediction using ORF Finder (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/orffinder/) and conserved domain analysis via InterPro (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/) revealed distinct genomic architectures of the two viruses. For LCaA, it had four ORFs: ORF1 was 963 nt and encoded a viral movement protein (MP) (aa 23–277), which was necessary for initial cell-to-cell movement during the early stages of viral infection and predicted to be responsible for the intercellular transport of viral genomes in plant cells [29]. ORF2 was 2,571 nt and encoded an 856-amino acid protein containing one Caulimovir coat domain (amino acids 427–522), homologous to coat proteins in Cauliflower mosaic virus. ORF3 was 1,656 nt and encoded a viral replication and maturation polyprotein (amino acids 104–527). This polyprotein contained one RT POL domain (139–318) and one RNase HI RT Ty3 domain (412–535). The retroviral reverse transcriptase (prototypical RT) had three enzymatic activities: RNA-dependent DNA polymerase, ribonuclease H, and DNA-dependent DNA polymerase. These activities involve copying the plus-strand RNA genome to produce minus-strand DNA, removing the RNA template, and synthesizing plus-strand DNA using minus-strand DNA as a template [30]. ORF4 was 1,233 nt and encoded a hypothetical protein (amino acids 64–393) with an uncharacterized function. (Fig. 1A). Former research had reported that the CaMV genome always encodes six proteins, a cell-to-cell movement protein, two aphid transmission factors: a polyprotein precursor of proteinase, a precursor of the capsid proteins, the reverse transcriptase and ribonuclease H, and an inclusion body protein/translation transactivator [5, 31]. Our newly detected LCa virus processed most of the key proteins of the CaMV, and ORF2 containing one Caulimovir coat domain. Based on the description of the above-mentioned LCa virus characteristics, we believe that this virus belongs to the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus.

    Fig. 1

    Circular representation map of the LCa genome. (A) LCaA genome. (B) LCaB genome

    LCaB contained three ORFs. ORF1 encoded a viral movement protein (amino acids 47–145), which, like LCaA, was predicted to be a Caulimoviridae movement protein. ORF2 encoded a protein containing one caulimovir coat domain (amino acids 371–467), one retropepsin-like domain (amino acids 750–841), and one RT POL domain (amino acids 982–1,161). ORF3 encoded a protein with a cytoplasmic domain (amino acids 1–30), a transmembrane region (amino acids 31–50), a noncytoplasmic domain (amino acids 54–94), and another transmembrane region (amino acids 95–113) (Fig. 1B).

    The genetic evolutionary relationship of the genus Caulimovirus

    According to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV; https://ictv.global/), the genus Caulimovirus currently comprises 18 recognized species, including Cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) and eight other taxonomically validated members (Fig. 2). All the known genus Caulimovirus virus sequences were alignment with Mega 11 [32], and using maximum likelihood statistical method with 100 bootstrap replications to test the phylogeny. Then, the obtained tree file was up-loaded to the iTOL(https://itol.embl.de/) to beautify the graphics. Systematic phylogenetic analysis classified all reported Caulimovirus species into four well-supported monophyletic groups (Fig. 2). These species share a common evolutionary origin but subsequently diverged into four distinct lineages during key evolutionary transitions. Besides, the obtained phylogenetic tree showed that LCaA and LCaB share the closest evolutionary affinity, forming a distinct clade with Plant associated caulimovirus (PAC), Strawberry vein banding virus (SVBV), Pelargonium vein alating virus (PVA), and Malva yellow mosaic virus (MYMAV) (Fig. 2). That means within this branch, the genetic variation shared among species (the similarity of homologous gene sequences) is significantly higher than that between them and the species in other branches on the evolutionary tree. This indicates that they separated from each other for a shorter period during the evolutionary process and accumulated fewer genetic differences.

    Fig. 2
    figure 2

    The genetic evolutionary relationship of the genus Caulimovirus. Mirabilis mosaic virus (MMV) AF454635, Carnation etched ring virus (CERV) CERV X04658, Figwort mosaic virus (FMV) FMV X06166, Cauliflower mosaic virus (CMV) V00141, Strawberry vein banding virus (SVBV) X97304, Eupatorium vein clearing virus (EVCV) EU569831, Lamium leaf distortion associated virus (LLDAV) EU554423, Horseradish latent virus (HLV) JX429923, Soybean mild mottle pararetrovirus (SMMPV) JQ926983, Dahlia mosaic virus (DMV) JX272320, Atractylodes mild mottle virus (AMMV) KR080327, Angelica bushy stunt virus (ABSV) KU508800, Metaplexis yellow mottle-associated virus (MYMAV) MW656214, Dahlia common mosaic virus (DCMV) JN032736, Isatis caulimovirus A (IsCVA) MH898528, Silene caulimovirus A (SCA) MH898523, Plant associated caulimovirus (PAC) OL472131, Pueraria virus A (PVA) MZ826138

    Marker-based identification of LCa DNA viruses

    The tiger lily plants suspected to be infected with the virus were selected, and their phynotypes were shown in Fig. 3A and B. Based on Sanger sequencing and assembly of virus fragments in the pooled samples, we observed natural genetic variations in the LCaA and LCaB viruses. We finally obtained seven LCaA virus isolates and six LCaB isolates, and their genome sequences were deposited in the China National GeneBank (CNGB; accession number sub064865) and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), which is also shown in Sub Table 2. The genome sequence similarities among LCaA virus isolates ranged from 99.59 to 99.73%, while those among LCaB isolates ranged from 98.51 to 98.91%. To identify these newly discovered LCa viruses, their genome sequences were aligned using Clustal Omega (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/msa/clustalo/). Based on conserved sequences shared by LCaA and LCaB, four marker primers (listed in Table 1) were specifically designed to detect LCa viruses. Following PCR amplification, Marker 1 produced amplicons of 519 bp (LCaA) and 513 bp (LCaB), whereas Marker 2 yielded 269 bp amplicons for both variants (Fig. 3D). Furthermore, using LCaA-specific conserved sequences, Marker 3 produced a 342 bp amplicon for LCaA. Combined detection using Markers 1, 2, and 3 enabled specific identification of LCaA viruses (Fig. 3D). Marker 4 generated a 203 bp amplicon using this approach. Using Markers 1, 2, and 4, LCaB viruses were reliably identified (Fig. 3D). Furthermore, the bulbs’ DNA of the marked samples in Shuanghe town were amplified using the four primer pairs. The results showed that the Shuanghe-1(SH-1) was infected with both LCaA and LCaB, the Shuanghe-2(SH-2) was infected with LCaA, the Shuanghe-3 (SH-3) was infected with LCaB, the Shuanghe-4(SH-4) not infected with LCa virus (Fig. 3E). The above experiments demonstrated that the four primer pairs enable efficient and specific identification of LCa viruses.

    Fig. 3
    figure 3

    Virus infection symptoms and identification in tiger lilies. (A), (B), and (C) Phenotypic characteristics of tiger lilies suspected of virus infection. (D) Agarose gel electrophoresis showing virus identification markers. M: DL2000 marker; 1 and 2: PCR products amplified via marker 1 primers (LCa-SP-F2/LCa-SP-R2) from tiger lily’s total DNA infected with and not infected with LCa viruses respectively; 3 and 4: PCR products amplified via marker 2 primers (LCa-SP-F4/LCa-SP-R4) from tiger lily’s total DNA infected with and not infected with LCa viruses, respectively; 5 and 6: PCR products amplified via marker 3 primers (LCaA-SP-F/LCaA-SP-R) from tiger lily’s total DNA infected with and not infected with LCaA virus, respectively; 7 and 8: PCR products amplified via marker 4 primers (LCaB-SP-F/LCaB-SP-R) from tiger lily’s total DNA infected with and not infected with LCaB virus, respectively; 9, 11, and 14: PCR products amplified via marker 1 primers from tiger lily’s total DNA infected with LCa viruses; 10, 12, and 15: PCR products amplified via marker 2 primers from tiger lily’s total DNA infected with LCa viruses; 13: PCR products amplified via marker 3 primers from tiger lily’s total DNA infected with LCaA virus; 16: PCR products amplified via marker 4 primers from tiger lily’s total DNA infected with LCaB virus. (E) LCa virus identification in the tiger lily bulbs from Shuanghe (SH) town. M: DL2000 marker; 1, 5, 10, and 13: PCR products amplified via marker one primers; 2, 6, 11, and 14: PCR products amplified via marker two primers; 3, 7, 12, and 15: PCR products amplified via marker three primers; 4, 8, 13, and 16: PCR products amplified via marker four primers

    At the same time, another forty tiger lily plants were randomly collected at each sample collecting point. Their DNA was extracted using the methods mentioned before. Furthermore, the extracted DNA was used as templates for PCR. Marker 1 and Marker 2 were used as the primers to detect the LCa virus in those randomly collected samples. The following identification experiments were performed as mentioned before. The results showed that the LCa virus incidence of the tiger lily in Shuanghe, Sancha, Caoba Xia, Zhengdian, and Dongshan was 10%, 1%, 2%, 2%, and 2%, respectively (Sub Fig. 1).

    Viral abundance analysis of all detected viruses

    We analyzed the DNA and RNA virus abundance based on the viral metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analysis. Only one Caulimoviridae family virus was detected using viral metagenomic sequencing data, and the above experiments demonstrated that this family Caulimoviridae virus is a newly found LCa virus. The viral abundance analysis using viral metatranscriptomic sequencing data, and the virus contigs information were provided in Sub Table 2. The viral abundance statistic data are shown in Sub Table 3. The result showed that order Sobelivirales account for 8%, Iris potyvirus A species account for 5%, Shallot yellow stripe virus species account for 4%, genus Potexvirus account for 8%, Lily symptomless virus species account for 7%, Cucumber mosaic virus species account for 3%, order Reovirales account for 0.1%, Lenarviricota phylum account for 0.005%, family Caulimoviridae account for 0.001%. Other viruses were unclassified, and nearly 64% unclassified viruses belong to the order Martellivirales. 2% of unclassified virus belong to the genus Carlavirus, and 2% belong to the order Tymovirales (Fig. 4).

    Fig. 4
    figure 4

    Viral abundance analysis based on the viral metatranscriptomic sequencing data

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  • Five stocks to buy for the second half, according to Morgan Stanley

    Five stocks to buy for the second half, according to Morgan Stanley

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  • Virtual forest bathing can reduce stress and improve mood

    Virtual forest bathing can reduce stress and improve mood

    People often feel stressed. Many don’t have time to go outside and relax. Cities keep growing, and virtual access to natural spaces feels more common while real ones feel far away.

    In Japan, people use forest bathing to reduce stress. They call it Shinrin Yoku. It simply means spending quiet time in a forest. No phones, no distractions – just nature.


    Researchers wanted to test something different. Can forest bathing work through a screen? Can people feel calmer by using virtual reality instead of going outside? They set up a study to find out.

    Building a virtual forest

    The researchers wanted to create a very realistic virtual forest experience. To do this, they filmed a 360° VR video in Sonnenberg nature reserve. This forest is the largest Douglas fir forest in Europe.

    The team didn’t stop at just recording the scenery. They also captured all the natural sounds, like the wind blowing through the trees and birds singing.

    On top of that, the researchers added the scent of Douglas fir essential oils to match what someone would actually smell in the forest. Participants in the study had different experiences based on the setup.

    Some people got the full experience. They saw the forest video through VR headsets. At the same time, they heard the forest sounds and smelled the fir scent. This gave them a complete, rich, multisensory experience.

    Other participants only experienced one sense at a time. Some only watched the forest video without sound or scent. Others only listened to the forest sounds, while some only smelled the scent without visuals or audio.

    When the researchers tested hearing or scent alone, they kept the visuals simple and plain. They wanted to avoid flashy images or colors that could distract people. The goal was to focus only on one sense at a time for clear results.

    Virtual forest improved mood

    The researchers didn’t just let people jump into the virtual forest. First, they showed participants stressful images to raise their stress levels.

    Once people felt stressed, they put on VR headsets. They then experienced one of four versions of the forest. Some got the full version. Others experienced just one sense.

    People who used sight, sound, and scent together felt the biggest mood boost. They also felt more connected to nature.

    The single-sense versions helped too but not as much. Some participants even showed slight improvements in working memory. This type of memory helps with short-term thinking and tasks.

    Still, the researchers said more studies are needed. They explained that the results may not apply to everyone.

    Study lead author Leonie Ascone is a researcher in the Neuronal Plasticity working group at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE).

    “We can already say that digital nature experiences can absolutely produce an emotional effect – even if they don’t replace actual nature,” noted Ascone.

    VR nature in busy everyday places

    Virtual nature won’t replace real forests, but it may help in other spaces. Simone Kühn, who led the research, is director of the Center for Environmental Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development

    Kühn believes VR nature could help people in stressful environments. “Especially in places with limited access to nature – such as clinics, waiting areas or urban interiors – multisensory VR applications or targeted nature staging could support mental well-being.”

    “The images, sounds and scents of nature offer previously underestimated potential for improving mood and mental performance in everyday situations.”

    The research suggests that nature videos can even reduce pain in some cases. Now, Kühn sees more possibilities. Virtual nature could help people in hospitals, offices, and city spaces. It might make everyday life feel less tense.

    Nature still works, even virtually

    This study gives one simple message – nature affects people in a positive way. Even when nature appears on a screen, it still changes how people feel. The researchers saw clear improvements in mood and connection to nature, even though participants never left the room.

    But it’s important to be realistic. Virtual forest bathing is not a perfect solution. It cannot fully replace being outdoors. Real forests offer more than just sights, sounds, and smells. There is fresh air, physical movement, and other factors that VR cannot copy.

    Still, virtual forest bathing can help people who cannot easily go outside. People in hospitals, city apartments, or busy workplaces often have no access to real forests. For them, even a short virtual nature experience may reduce stress and lift their mood.

    The study is published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

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  • Charles Leclerc leads Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen during final Silverstone practice

    Charles Leclerc leads Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen during final Silverstone practice

    Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc topped the timesheets during Saturday’s final practice session for the British Grand Prix, leading the way from McLaren rival Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen – as rookies Gabriel Bortoleto and Ollie Bearman endured late crashes.

    After a bright and warm first day at Silverstone, topped by home favourite Lando Norris, cloudy, cooler conditions greeted the drivers for FP3, which gave them one more chance to tweak their cars ahead of the mid-afternoon Qualifying hour.

    When the session got under way at a slightly delayed time of 1135, drivers gradually trickled out on track to begin their programmes and assess the conditions – Pirelli’s soft, medium and hard compound tyres all being used in the opening minutes.

    Lewis Hamilton was one of the early movers when the action got under way, bolting on a set of soft tyres and clocking a 1m 26.529s to hold the provisional P1 spot, which prompted plenty of cheers from the packed grandstand and grass banks around the track.

    As per Friday’s running, there were some significant gusts of wind for Hamilton and the rest of the drivers to deal with – seemingly highlighted when Lance Stroll drifted his way out of the Luffield hairpin and just about prevented his Aston Martin from spinning.

    Kimi Antonelli also reported a “massive moment” through the Maggotts and Becketts complex when he began to push, while there was drama for Alex Albon when he faced a slow-moving Aston Martin at the entry to Copse and swore over the radio to express his frustration.

    As for lap times, Leclerc used the soft tyres to get down to a 1m 25.922s and take over from team mate Hamilton in P1, a couple of tenths clear of a more competitive looking Max Verstappen, who nonetheless complained of brake bias difficulties.

    “A little bit of rain,” Leclerc then commented over the radio with around 20 minutes to go, but it was nowhere near enough to stop drivers from pumping in laps on slicks and making improvements – George Russell proving this when he slotted into second position.

    With some 15 minutes remaining, Norris sent the home crowd wild again by going quickest on a 1m 25.606s, followed closely by Verstappen and team mate Piastri via similarly significant gains, before Leclerc fired in a 1m 25.498s to reclaim P1.

    Hamilton was also on a rapid lap at this point, hitting the Sector 2 beam 0.074s clear of Leclerc, only for the red flag to be thrown for debris on track – meaning he had to abandon the effort. “We think the bodywork might be yours,” was the subsequent message to Haas driver Bearman.

    The session resumed with a few minutes to go but was soon halted again when Gabriel Bortoleto lost control of his Kick Sauber through the aforementioned Maggotts/Becketts sweeps, bounced over the grass and ended in the gravel with suspension damage.

    It meant Leclerc ended up fastest over Piastri, Verstappen and Norris, with Yuki Tsunoda an encouraging fifth for Red Bull, Bearman taking sixth despite another moment late on when he misjudged his entry to the pit lane and damaged his front wing, and Albon putting Williams back into the top 10 positions.

    Russell was the fastest of the Mercedes cars on a so far difficult weekend for the Silver Arrows, placing eighth over the Racing Bulls of Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson, Hamilton, and the other Williams and Haas machines of Carlos Sainz and Esteban Ocon.

    Next up was Antonelli in 14th, as the Saubers of Nico Hulkenberg and Bortoleto along with the Aston Martins and Alpines brought up the rear – Fernando Alonso placing in front of Franco Colapinto, Stroll and Pierre Gasly.

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