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  • Netflix’s Ted Sarandos’ Career Advice for Young Professionals

    Netflix’s Ted Sarandos’ Career Advice for Young Professionals

    • Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos advised young professionals to be dependable in their roles.
    • He said the trait is becoming a “lost art” and there’s an “entitlement” among younger generations.
    • Sarandos started off as a video store clerk and rose to co-CEO of Netflix.

    Ted Sarandos has a message for the younger generation: Show up.

    The Netflix co-CEO shared one of the most important career lessons he’s passed on to his own children, in an episode of Skims boss Emma Grede’s “Aspire” podcast that aired Tuesday. Sarandos said the advice could be applied to many young adults hoping to level up in their field.

    “The most important thing in any job, in any role, is that you can be depended on,” Sarandos said when asked what advice he gives his two children who work in the entertainment industry.

    It sounds simple enough, but Sarandos said it’s becoming a “lost art” among the younger generation of professionals who’ve built up a sense of “entitlement.” Those who people can count on to show up when they’re supposed to, he said, will go far in their careers.

    “It’ll get you into rooms that you probably wouldn’t have gotten into before,” Sarandos told Grede.

    Representatives for Netflix didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

    Sarandos has firsthand knowledge about grinding from the bottom of an industry to the top. He got his start as a video store clerk renting out DVDs in Arizona. Years later, he met Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings and is now at the helm of the company alongside co-CEO Greg Peters.

    During his time running the video store, Sarandos said he treated it like a business school course and film school wrapped up into one. He learned what went into customers’ movie choices, studied films, and carried out business duties as well.

    He made the most of the experience, and it seems to have paid off.

    “You owe it to the world to show up,” Sarandos said.


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  • Breaking the Code review – tribute to Alan Turing given a fascinating update | Theatre

    Breaking the Code review – tribute to Alan Turing given a fascinating update | Theatre

    When premiered in 1986, giving Derek Jacobi a key career role, Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code was instrumental in spreading knowledge of the precocious brilliance of mathematician Alan Turing, whose brutal treatment by a homophobic and ungrateful state contributed to his suicide in 1954 aged 41.

    Though drawing on Andrew Hodges’ 1983 biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma, Whitemore was ahead of several later plays and movies, including Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game (2014). So, for a long time, Whitemore and Jacobi’s portrayal of Turing formed his public image, which was inevitably tragic, given that he remained a convicted criminal for loving men and his theories had not yet been fully realised.

    Joe Usher, behind, and Mark Edel-Hunt in Breaking the Code. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

    But Turing is now officially pardoned and features on a British banknote in a world that owes much to him for the evolutions in digital technology and now AI (in which Turing saw both the gains and dangers). So Jesse Jones’ smart revival offers a more redemptive portrait of a true genius who lived in an age that proved fatal to him.

    Starting in a Northampton theatre 23 miles from Bletchley Park, where Turing saved British shipping by cracking German naval codes, this touring production will end in Manchester, where he died. It adds a new epilogue by Neil Bartlett, set in the present day at Sherborne School, Turing’s alma mater. The punchy, touching speech follows Ian McEwan’s 2019 novel Machines Like Me in finding a way to give Turing some degree of posthumous triumph over his destruction.

    Most important to this Turing 2.0, though, is a superb performance by Mark Edel-Hunt. It is tempting to play Turing as if he always knew he was in a tragedy but, shown extracts out of context, an audience might think this were a comedy. Edel-Hunt also delivers long speeches of mathematical and computing exposition with immaculate clarity, exuberantly suggesting the humour and sensuality that Turing found in numbers and nature, his body and tongue tangibly loosening when his great brain engages.

    Acting of matching quality comes from Peter Hamilton Dyer as Dillwyn Knox, the cryptographer who recruited Turing to Bletchley; the men’s enthralling dialogues about reality and pretence are, as often in Whitemore’s writing, only fully understood in retrospect through later data. Carla Harrison-Hodge as Pat Green, a Bletchley colleague on whom Turing’s mother hopes he is sweet, radiates braininess and the pain caused to her by the play’s sub-theme of humans being harder to read than machines. Joe Usher, as two of Turing’s love interests, is especially impressive in a brilliant scene in Greece where a language barrier allows Turing to spill his secrets without truly doing so. Joseph Edwards does a nice double as a Sherborne student in the 1920s and 2020s. This is not just a revival but a fascinating reboot.

    At Royal & Derngate, Northampton, until 27 September. Then touring

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  • Live updates: Fed announces first rate cut in nine months, signals more reductions to come

    Live updates: Fed announces first rate cut in nine months, signals more reductions to come

    President Donald Trump is intent on reshaping the Federal Reserve’s top ranks.

    After the president said he fired Fed Governor Lisa Cook, Trump relished the prospect of soon having a “majority” on the Fed’s Board of Governors, which helps set interest rates and manages the central bank’s day-to-day activities.

    At the time, Trump had also already nominated Stephen Miran, his top economic adviser, to the Fed’s powerful Board. Miran was sworn in on Tuesday after Republicans pulled off his swift confirmation process.

    “We’ll have a majority very shortly. So that’ll be great,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on August 26. “Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing, and it’s going to be great.”

    It’s not clear how much of a difference that would make.

    “When Trump talks about having a majority of the Fed, that’s not how anyone has historically thought about the institution. It’s not the Supreme Court,” Daniel Altman, an economist and writer of the High Yield Economics newsletter, told CNN. “The Fed is technical. It’s supposed to be data driven.”

    But there is one way a Fed board packed by Trump loyalists could make a difference: if a majority of Fed governors siding with Trump decide to fire regional Fed presidents.

    According to Fed rules, anyone nominated by the board of directors of a regional Fed bank is subject to approval by the Fed’s Board of Governors in Washington, DC. The governors also have the power to fire them, if they have a enough votes on the board to do so.

    “That would completely change the dynamics of the Fed, make it a much more political organization, and the bottom line is that would make a less effective Fed,” Altman said.

    “But we’re a few steps away from that nuclear scenario.”

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  • CRISPR-based tongue swab test shows promise for tuberculosis detection

    CRISPR-based tongue swab test shows promise for tuberculosis detection

    Tulane University researchers have developed an enhanced CRISPR-based tuberculosis test that works with a simple tongue swab, a potential breakthrough that could allow easier, community-based screenings for the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

    Current TB tests rely on sputum, mucus collected from the lungs and lower respiratory system. While rich in TB bacteria required for testing, collecting sputum is difficult, making it inefficient for large-scale community testing. Sputum testing is also unfeasible in about 25% of symptomatic cases and nearly 90% of asymptomatic cases, a gap which contributes to an estimated 4 million tuberculosis cases going undiagnosed annually.

    In a study published in Nature Communications, Tulane researchers worked to address that gap by refining a previously developed CRISPR-based assay to better detect TB in samples with very low levels of bacteria, such as stool, spinal fluid and tongue swabs.

    Clinical testing showed markedly enhanced detection of TB in tongue swabs over traditional testing (74% compared to 56%).

    The test also showed high sensitivity in detecting TB in respiratory (93%), pediatric stool (83%) and adult spinal fluid samples (93%). With children, HIV patients and those with extrapulmonary TB unable to produce sputum, the research marks a significant step forward toward offering effective diagnoses via a variety of samples.

    More than 10 million people worldwide fall ill with tuberculosis every year, but 40% of those cases are considered missing as people go undiagnosed. To find those missing cases, testing needs to be less invasive and more accessible to reach as many people as possible who may not otherwise be tested.”


    Tony Hu, PhD, corresponding author, Weatherhead Presidential Chair in Biotechnology Innovation and director of the Tulane Center for Cellular & Molecular Diagnostics

    Lead author Zhen Huang, an assistant professor at Tulane University School of Medicine, said developing a viable tuberculosis tongue swab test could transform testing in low-resource communities. “Tongue swabs are painless, easy to collect, and don’t require trained medical staff,” Huang said. “That opens the door to large-scale screenings.”

    The new CRISPR method, called the ActCRISPR-TB, increases amplification and detection of genetic signals from TB bacteria DNA and offers a rapid, streamlined approach that can return a diagnosis in under an hour.

    To administer the test without need for a lab or trained medical staff, researchers developed a “one pot” approach. Like a COVID-19 test, a swabbed sample is added to a tube pre-loaded with a test strip and reagent. That tube is incubated, and after 45 minutes, colored bands on the strip will indicate presence of an infection.

    While there is a clear need for developing non-sputum based detection methods, clinical testing also showed the test to be faster and more accurate than traditional tests when testing for TB in sputum nucleic acid.

    The study marks the latest step in Hu’s effort to move TB testing out of the lab and into the community. In addition to showing TB can be detected from simple samples beyond sputum, Hu’s lab has also developed rapid tests that deliver results in less than an hour on portable devices, one the size of a smartphone and another that requires no electricity. His team has also used artificial intelligence to flag drug resistance so patients get the right medicines faster. Together, these advances outline a practical pathway for fighting TB: screen widely, confirm quickly at the point of care and connect positive results to effective treatment.

    While more research and development is needed, Hu and Huang said this study represents significant progress.

    “If we want to end TB, we need tools that work outside the lab and in the communities where the disease spreads,” Hu said.

    Source:

    Journal reference:

    Huang, Z., et al. (2025). Sensitive pathogen DNA detection by a multi-guide RNA Cas12a assay favoring trans- versus cis-cleavage. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63094-x

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  • Gwyneth Paltrow Is Doubling Down on $725 Sweaters – The Wall Street Journal

    1. Gwyneth Paltrow Is Doubling Down on $725 Sweaters  The Wall Street Journal
    2. Gwyneth Paltrow Wants to Be the Next Ralph Lauren  The New York Times
    3. Gwyn, Skims, The Row: The celebrity fashion brands that have thrived (and the ones that haven’t)  inkl
    4. Gwyneth Paltrow’s next act: The Goop founder on her new clothing line  Kursiv Media
    5. Gwyneth Paltrow: ‘I have so many nicknames: Gunny, Gwinny, Goo-Goo. Everyone at work calls me GP’  The Times

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  • Bad news for astronauts: Human stem cells age more rapidly in space, study suggests

    Bad news for astronauts: Human stem cells age more rapidly in space, study suggests

    Spaceflight may make certain types of human stem cells age faster, a study suggests — but at least some of the damage may be reversible.

    Spending time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) induced aging-like changes in a group of cells key for the health of blood and the immune system, known as hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), a new study in the peer-reviewed Cell Stem Cell journal reports.

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  • News | Big radar power for small aircraft

    News | Big radar power for small aircraft

    Proving the point

    The radar-scanned images captured during that first flight test showed the California terrain clearly and in detail: stretches of dry land next to dense forest, mountains, lakes, islands off the coast. To Larry Martin, what mattered most was that PhantomStrike had worked as he had expected.

    Martin is a senior technology fellow at Raytheon, an RTX business, and the technical lead for the PhantomStrike radar. Years ago, he and his team had set out to develop a system like nothing else on the market. Now it was airborne.

    “It was the cherry on top to see it work,” Martin said.

    Program teams, working on an accelerated schedule, had done the legwork to install the radar on Raytheon’s Multi-Program Testbed aircraft, a Boeing 727 modified to carry, integrate and test sensors and electro-optical/infrared systems.

    “Once we were integrated on the plane, it was a big relief,” he said. “A lot of questions were answered on our initial flights.”

    The result, he said, is a radar that is truly the first of its kind.

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  • Microbial Life Colonizes Post-Impact Craters And Thrives For Millions Of Years

    Microbial Life Colonizes Post-Impact Craters And Thrives For Millions Of Years

    78 million years ago, a 1.6 km asteroid slammed into what is now Finland, creating a crater 23 km (14 mi) wide and 750 km deep. The catastrophic impact created a fractured hydrothermal system in the shattered bedrock under the crater. There’s evidence from other impact structures that in the aftermath of a collision, life colonized the shattered rock and heated water that flowed through it. But determining when the colonization happened is challenging.

    New research shows for the first time exactly when that colonization happened. A team of researchers has zeroed in on the date that microbial life populated the hydrothermal system under the 78 million year old Lappajärvi impact structure.

    Their research is titled “Deep microbial colonization during impact-generated hydrothermal circulation at the Lappajärvi impact structure, Finland” and is published in Nature Communications. Jacob Gustafsson, a PhD student at Linnaeus University in Sweden, is the first author.

    “This is incredibly exciting research as it connects the dots for the first time.” – Dr. Gordon Osinski, Western University, Canada.

    “Deeply fractured rocks of meteorite impact structures have been hypothesized as hot spots for microbial colonization on Earth and other planetary bodies,” the authors write. “Biosignatures of such colonization are rare, however, and most importantly, direct geochronological evidence linking the colonization to the impact-generated hydrothermal systems are completely lacking.”

    Illustration of new research findings in the Lappajärvi crater, Finland, where traces of ancient life have been discovered in the crater’s fractures. The magnified section highlights the blue-marked fracture zones where microbial signatures have been identified. Image Credit: Henrik Drake, Gordon Osinski

    The discovery is based on sulphite reduction. Some microbes employ an anaerobic respiratory process that uses sulfate to accept electrons rather than oxygen. It’s a fundamental process that contributes to Earth’s global sulfate and carbon cycles. Basically, microbes break down organic compounds as an energy source and reduce sulfate to hydrogen sulfide.

    The researchers used powerful, cutting-edge isotopic biosignature analysis and radioisotopic dating to trace microbial sulfate reduction in minerals and fractures in the hydrothermal system under the crater.

    “This is the first time we can directly link microbial activity to a meteorite impact using geochronological methods. It shows that such craters can serve as habitats for life long in the aftermath of the impact,” says Henrik Drake, a professor at Linnaeus University, Sweden, and senior author of the study.

    “The first detected mineral precipitation at habitable temperatures for life (47.0 ± 7.1 °C) occurred at 73.6 ± 2.2 Ma and featured substantially 34S-depleted pyrite consistent with microbial sulfate reduction,” the authors explain in their research.

    This figure shows some of the findings. The pyrite is of particular interest. The 34Sulfur-depleted pyrite is consistent with microbial sulfate reduction. It formed about five million years after the impact when the hydrothermal system had cooled to temperatures that were habitable for life. The calcite is another powerful biosignature, and it appeared 10 million years post-impact, indicating that microbes thrived here for millions of years. Image Credit: Gustafsson et al. 2025 NatComm This figure shows some of the findings. The pyrite is of particular interest. The 34Sulfur-depleted pyrite is consistent with microbial sulfate reduction. It formed about five million years after the impact when the hydrothermal system had cooled to temperatures that were habitable for life. The calcite is another powerful biosignature, and it appeared 10 million years post-impact, indicating that microbes thrived here for millions of years. Image Credit: Gustafsson et al. 2025 NatComm

    “What is most exciting is that we do not only see signs of life, but we can pinpoint exactly when it happened. This gives us a timeline for how life finds a way after a catastrophic event” says Jacob Gustafsson, PhD student at Linnaeus University and first author of the study.

    More evidence of microbial colonization appears about 10 million years post-impact as the temperature continued to gradually decrease. Minerals precipitated into vugs, which is a geological term for cavities lined with mineral crystals. These minerals feature 13 Calcite, which forms in association with microbial sulfate reduction. It’s a powerful and convincing biosignature that strengthens the findings. At 10 million years post-impact, these minerals are further evidence that microbes thrived for a long time in the hydrothermal system.

    Co-author Dr. Gordon Osinski, from Western University in Canada, said “This is incredibly exciting research as it connects the dots for the first time. Previously, we’ve found evidence that microbes colonized impact craters, but there has always been questions about when this occurred and if it was due to the impact event, or some other process millions of years later. Until now.”

    These findings open a window into how life might get started on habitable worlds. Asteroids are known to carry the basic building blocks of life, including amino acids. It’s possible they not only spread these materials throughout solar systems and galaxies in accordance with panspermia, but that they also create a ready-made home for life to gain a foothold in. The research also shows how life can rebound after a catastrophic impact that could overwhelm a biosphere.

    The researchers say that the microbial colonization of the Lappajärvi impact structure is an analog for the emergence of life on early Earth, and even on Mars. Their methods of analysis can be used to study the microbial colonization of other impact structures on Earth. Beyond that, they’re also applicable to any sample return missions from Mars or other bodies.

    “These insights confirm the capacity of medium-sized (and large) meteorite impacts to generate long-lasting hydrothermal systems, enabling microbial colonization as the crater cools to ambient conditions, an effect that may have important implications for the emergence of life on Earth and beyond,” the authors conclude.

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  • Apple Watch’s New Hypertension Feature Could Literally Save Your Life

    Apple Watch’s New Hypertension Feature Could Literally Save Your Life

    If it turns out to be effective, it’ll be a breakthrough in more ways than one. And you may not even need to buy one of the latest watches to take advantage; Apple Watch’s hypertension notification feature is available on all recent models running watchOS 26, reaching back to Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.

    Apple says it developed this technology—recently cleared by the FDA—using data from a multitude of studies involving over 100,000 participants across ages, genders, body compositions, skin tones, and other variables.

    “What this watch is doing is basically using that technology to try to figure out if the arteries are changing in a way that is indicative of hypertension,” says Dr. Naidu.

    If the watch suspects hypertension—a determination based on the previous 30 days worth of data—a notification will appear, along with a prompt recommending you check your blood pressure manually with a third-party blood pressure cuff, logging two readings a day over a consecutive seven-day period. The accompanying iPhone app makes it easy to plug these numbers in and, once complete, export a PDF report that can be sent to your doctor.

    If that last part sounds like too big of an ask, don’t fret. The initial notification on its own is reason enough to make an appointment with your doctor, says Dr. Naidu. “To be honest, if it triggers [the notification], I would just say you should go to your primary doctor,” he says. “I would rather have a lot of people coming in to get checked out earlier in life.”

    Why one doctor we spoke with is calling this a ‘game changer’

    Typically, blood pressure is one of the things your doctor checks during your annual physical. So, you might be wondering, why do we need continuous monitoring for hypertension?

    Well, depending on how far out you are from your next check-up, catching hypertension early—as in today, versus six months from now—can actually make a big difference.

    “When I get that alert, we don’t actually know how high my blood pressure is,” says Dr. Halasyamani. “Is it just a little high, or is it really high? If I have a very elevated blood pressure, that can be quite dangerous and can actually lead to an adverse event in a very short order. If I have blood pressure that’s mildly elevated, the arc of that impact is longer. However, we know that the sooner we get people into treatment, the less likely they are to have negative consequences.”

    Doctors call hypertension a “silent killer,” as it can develop with virtually no noticeable symptoms. “If you injure your leg, it hurts, and so then you go and get care. But you can have high blood pressure and feel kind of the same,” Dr. Halasyamani says. “And the toll it’s taking on your body can continue.”

    It’s also worth noting that in-office blood pressure tests aren’t always a reliable measure of hypertension, particularly for people of the more anxious variety, who tend to produce false positives—or false false positives. “We call it ‘white coat hypertension,’” Dr. Naidu says, “which is a sarcastic way of saying that they come into the office and as soon as you start checking it, they get nervous. And because they get nervous, their pressure goes up.”

    “For whatever reason we stress everybody out,” Dr. Halasyamani says. “So most of the time people will say, ‘Oh, well, my pressure’s high here, but it’s fine every other time. And I don’t really want to take any medicines, because I’m just stressed out when I come here.’ And you know what? That might be true. But if you’re able to show me blood pressure readings that have been taken when you’re at home or doing the things you normally do, then that actually gives me a much better sense of what your blood pressure is and what we need to do about it.”

    “I think that information is incredibly useful,” she says, “and in many ways, really, a game changer.”

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  • Brazilian pairs upset high seeds in women’s qualifiers in Joao Pessoa

    In the most interesting match of the 16-team single qualification round, 16th-seeded Flavia Moura Santos Cezar & Barbara De Sousa Alves Ferreira of Brazil achieved the only tie-breaker victory of the day, a hard-fought 2-1 (20-22, 21-17, 15-13) upset of qualification bracket leaders Xolani Hodel & Kylie Kuyava-De Berg of the United States. Barbara led the team with 20 points, including two aces. Flavia Moura chipped in with another 19, while DeBerg impressed with five kill blocks towards a match-high 27 points. Hodel also finished with 19.

    14th-seeded Brazilians Verena Figueira de Oliveira & Kyce Mikaele Martins Silva also delivered a major upset, a convincing 2-0 (21-13, 21-17) shutout of third-seeded Wies Bekhuis & Emi van Driel of the Netherlands.

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