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  • Exposure to pesticides and increased risk of AMD

    Exposure to pesticides and increased risk of AMD

    (Image Credit: AdobeStock/New Africa)

    The risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) was found to increase as a result of exposure to the urinary dialkyl phosphate (DAP) metabolites in organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs), according to a new Chinese study.1 The authors, led by first author Yu-Xin Jiang, MD, are from the Department of Ophthalmology, Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine; the National Clinical Research Center for Eye Diseases; the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Fundus Diseases; and the Engineering Center for Visual Science and Photomedicine, all in Shanghai, China.

    The investigators pointed out that AMD is a multifactorial disease resulting from aging, genetic susceptibility, lifestyle habits, and environmental exposures, which make the pathogenesis of AMD highly intractable to prediction and interpretation. Considering that patient responses to current intravitreal treatments vary and complications are associated with treatment,2 early prevention of AMD from exposure to numerous risk factors is the most effective and feasible measure.

    “Among all factors, the adverse effects from environmental chemical exposures on AMD have been heatedly discussed in population-based epidemiologic studies. For example, several researchers have emphasized the impacts of heavy metals,3 air pollutants,4 and radiation5 exposure on the development of AMD. OPPs, a group of organophosphate or phosphate sulfide esters, are prevalent insecticides commonly applied worldwide in agricultural, residential, and commercial settings with the advantages of cost-effectiveness and high efficacy in controlling pests and preventing insect-borne diseases.6 Nevertheless, the persistent non-biodegradable nature and propensity of residue accumulation in soil and water bodies, in conjunction with multiple routes of human exposure to OPPs, for instance, ingestion, inhalation, and skin contact, have raised public attention to concern about their toxic effects on human health and ecosystems,7” they said.

    The OPPs can be swiftly absorbed, metabolized, and eliminated as urinary DAP metabolites from the body, commonly used as biomarkers in cohort studies.8

    Previous research has identified that OPPs are relevant to diverse diseases, including cancer,9 central nervous system disorders (Parkinson’s disease 10and depression),11 sleep problems,12 diabetes,13 hypertension,14 sex hormone function,15 and atopic diseases.16

    The investigators identified patients from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey17 between 2005 and 2008. Urinary DAP metabolites were used to construct a machine learning (ML) model for AMD prediction, they explained.

    They used interpretability pipelines, ie, permutation feature importance (PFI), partial dependence plot (PDP), and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), to analyze the effects of exposure features to prediction outcomes.

    Exposure effects

    The authors reported that of the 1,845 patients in the study, 137 had been diagnosed with AMD. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis evaluated Random Forests as the best ML model with its optimal predictive performance among 11 models. PFI and SHAP analyses indicated that DAP metabolites were of significant contribution weights in AMD risk prediction, higher than most of the sociodemographic covariates. Shapley values and waterfall plots of randomly selected AMD individuals emphasized the predictive capacity of ML with high accuracy and sensitivity in each case. The relationships and interactions visualized by graphical plots and supported by statistical measures showed the indispensable effects of six DAP metabolites to the prediction of AMD risk, the investigators reported.

    The authors believe this study yields a novel insight into the link between environmental factors and health outcomes.

    The study concluded, “Urinary DAP metabolites of OPPs exposure are associated with AMD risk, and ML algorithms show excellent generalizability and differentiability in the course of AMD risk prediction.”

    References
    1. Jiang Y-X, Gui S-y, Sun X-D. Associations between organophosphorus pesticides exposure and age-related macular degeneration risk in U.S. adults: analysis from interpretable machine learning approaches. Int J Ophthalmol. 2025;18:1214-1230. DOI:10.18240/ijo.2025.07.04
    2. Rakoczy EP. The promise of long-term treatment for neovascular age related macular degeneration. Lancet. 2024;403(10436):1517-1519.
    3. Park SJ, Lee JH, Woo SJ, et al. Five heavy metallic elements and age related macular degeneration: Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2008-2011. Ophthalmology. 2015;122:129-137.
    4. Liu L, Li C, Yu HH, et al. A critical review on air pollutant exposure and age-related macular degeneration. Sci Total Environ. 2022;840:156717.
    5. Brodzka S, Baszyński J, Rektor K, et al. Immunogenetic and environmental factors in age-related macular disease. Int J Mol Sci. 2024;25:6567.
    6. Costa LG. Organophosphorus compounds at 80: some old and new issues. Toxicol Sci. 2018;162:24-35.
    7. Nandi NK, Vyas A, Akhtar MJ, et al. The growing concern of chlorpyrifos exposures on human and environmental health. Pestic Biochem Physiol. 2022;185:105138.
    8. Li AJ, Kannan K. Profiles of urinary neonicotinoids and dialkylphosphates in populations in nine countries. Environ Int. 2020;145:106120.
    9. Sun HB, Sun ML, Barr DB. Exposure to organophosphorus insecticides and increased risks of health and cancer in US women. Environ Toxicol Pharmacol. 2020;80:103474.
    10. Narayan S, Liew Z, Bronstein JM, et al. Occupational pesticide use and Parkinson’s disease in the Parkinson Environment Gene (PEG) study. Environ Int. 2017;107:266-273.
    11. Wu YD, Song J, Zhang Q, et al. Association between organophosphorus pesticide exposure and depression risk in adults: a cross-sectional study with NHANES data. Environ Pollut. 2023;316(Pt 1):120445.
    12. Han L, Wang Q. Association between organophosphorus insecticides exposure and the prevalence of sleep problems in the US adults: an analysis based on the NHANES 2007-2018. Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2023;255:114803. 14
    13. Guo XW, Wang H, Song QX, et al. Association between exposure to organophosphorus pesticides and the risk of diabetes among US Adults: Cross-sectional findings from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Chemosphere. 2022;301:134471.
    14. Dong YQ, Xu W, Liu SP, et al. Serum albumin and liver dysfunction mediate the mediate the associations between organophosphorus pesticide exposure and hypertension among US adults. Sci Total Environ. 2024;948:174748.
    15. Zhang YQ, Wu WK, Zhu XD, et al. Organophosphorus insecticides exposure and sex hormones in general U.S. population: a crosssectional study. Environ Res 2022;215(Pt 2):114384.
    16. Dantzer J, Wood R, Buckley JP. Organophosphate pesticide exposure and atopic disease in NHANES 2005-2006. J Allergy Clin Immunol Pract. 2021;9:1719-1722.e3.
    17. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/ index.htm.

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  • ‘I Didn’t Vote for Trump’

    ‘I Didn’t Vote for Trump’

    While accepting the President’s Award during the opening night of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Friday, actor Peter Sarsgaard spoke out on the current political division in the U.S., stating: “As my country retreats from its global responsibilities and tries to go it alone, it is also being divided into factions from within, factions of politics, gender, sexuality, race, Jews split over the war. But when there’s a common enemy, there is no going it alone. Enemies are the forces that divide us, that individuate us. We all know who they are.”

    Asked by Variety why he decided to go political with his acceptance speech, the Golden Globe nominee says, “To me, it is not political at all to say we’re being divided into smaller and smaller groups.”

    “This is the way authoritarianism works, right?” adds the actor. “They’re making you feel bigger and that person feels smaller. You are worried about your job, your status, being deported, all that sort of stuff, so if you’re safe, you are holding onto the life raft. Maybe you’re a little sad about the other person who’s drowning, but you hold on.”

    Closing his acceptance speech, the American actor quoted Czech statesman and playwright Vaclav Havel, saying that “one half of a room cannot remain forever warm while the other half is cold.” Commenting on why he chose the quote, Sarsgaard says, once again, that he feels it is not a “political” sentiment. “That’s just humanitarian.”

    “I don’t know that you could tell who I voted for,” he continues, bringing up the 2024 U.S. presidential election. “I mean, you could probably tell I didn’t vote for Trump, right? But I wouldn’t say that Biden was my person either. I consider myself a humanitarian. Politics are not that interesting to me.”

    The actor adds that what “impressed” him about the Czech statesman growing up was “a willingness to sacrifice yourself personally for a greater good,” something he doesn’t believe the left “or even the anti-Trump group” in the U.S. possesses. “The left in my country that has been vocal is typically wealthy and satisfied. The hippies got rich and we’re just happy chilling out and not doing much. They don’t want to lose their stuff, they don’t want to go to jail. Havel chose jail over exile. No one that I know would do that.”

    “While a lot of people in my country were struggling, the left was cruising by, drinking their cappuccinos,” he goes on. “It’s time to suffer, you know? My daughters are going to be willing to do that, even though they grew up in a nice, cushy environment. Their futures are on the line and they know that.”

    While the actor doesn’t feel hopeful about his generation, he nurtures hope for the younger ones. “The middle and left are talking about leaving the country and handing over everything for [their] personal comfort. The United States has a huge responsibility. We have nuclear weapons, a massive economy that controls so much of the world… It’s worth fighting for. Where are you going to run to? The planet’s not that big. I don’t know what it means to fight, but I do know it means to put down your cappuccino,” he concludes, taking a sip of his coffee.

    Sarsgaard, who was raised Catholic, also spoke about the religious sentiment of “love your enemy,” particularly during troubled times sociopolitically. “I was extremely Catholic, I was an altar boy and Jesuits were my heroes in high school. I didn’t have pedophile Jesuits around me. For me, Catholicism was a great experience. Love your enemy is a complicated term; it doesn’t mean everything they’re doing is ok, it’s more like being interested in them, don’t discount them. And that’s what an actor does. I don’t just play ideal people.” 

    Elsewhere in the conversation, the actor reminisced on coming up in the scene in the 90s and working on films like “Boys Don’t Cry” alongside Chloë Sevigny and Hillary Swank. 

    “There was no movie star in that movie,” he emphasizes. “It used to be like that, where you could go to watch a movie and you might not recognize every actor in it. Now I don’t know how a young actor comes up and gets into anything interesting in the States. The government doesn’t give any money to the movies, and even less now to the arts. I’ve been doing a lot of movies that are not shooting in the States, not because I don’t want to, but because it certainly has dried up.”

    On working with his wife, filmmaker and actor Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sarsgaard says he is “probably tougher” on her than any director he’s worked with. The actor starred in Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut “The Lost Daughter” and her upcoming sophomore effort, “The Bride.” “She says I’m very tough with her, but that’s just because I can, I guess [laughs]. But I respect her and would do anything for my wife, not just because she’s my wife but because she’s so talented. I really believe in her talent.”

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  • Everything We Know So Far About the 2025 Venice Film Festival

    Everything We Know So Far About the 2025 Venice Film Festival

    Below, everything else you need to know about this year’s ceremony:

    Alexander Payne will chair the jury

    American director Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants, The Holdover) will take on the role of jury president at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, succeeding Isabelle Huppert. His appointment has proven controversial, however, given the filmmaker has faced allegations of sexual assault from actress Rose McGowan.

    Kim Novak and Werner Herzog will receive honorary Golden Lions

    Kim Novak made her final film appearance in 1991, in Mike Figgis’s Liebestraum, before retiring from Hollywood. This summer, however, Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic muse—best known for her role as Madeleine Elster in Vertigo—will return to the spotlight to receive a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2025 Venice Film Festival.

    According to artistic director Alberto Barbera, who shared the news on June 10, the decision to honor the actress was an obvious one, as she is “one of the most beloved icons of an entire era of Hollywood films, from her auspicious debut during the mid-1950s until her premature and voluntary exile from the gilded cage of Los Angeles a short while later.”

    Earlier this year, it was announced that Werner Herzog would also receive the same honor. With more than 70 films to his name—spanning fiction and documentary works created across the globe—the German filmmaker has left an indelible mark on the history of cinema. According to Alberto Barbera, Herzog has done so by “testing our ability to see, challenging us to grasp what lies beyond the surface of reality, and pushing the limits of cinematic representation in a relentless quest for a higher, ecstatic truth and new sensory experiences.”

    When will the full lineup be released?

    The full slate of films headed to the 2025 Venice Film Fesitval is expected to be unveiled at the end of July.

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  • Companies keep slashing jobs. How worried should workers be about AI replacing them?

    Companies keep slashing jobs. How worried should workers be about AI replacing them?

    Tech companies that are cutting jobs and leaning more on artificial intelligence are also disrupting themselves.

    Amazon’s Chief Executive Andy Jassy said last month that he expects the e-commerce giant will shrink its workforce as employees “get efficiency gains from using AI extensively.”

    At Salesforce, a software company that helps businesses manage customer relationships, Chief Executive Marc Benioff said last week that AI is already doing 30% to 50% of the company’s work.

    Other tech leaders have chimed in before. Earlier this year, Anthropic, an AI startup, flashed a big warning: AI could wipe out more than half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years.

    Ready or not, AI is reshaping, displacing and creating new roles as technology’s impact on the job market ripples across multiple sectors. The AI frenzy has fueled a lot of anxiety from workers who fear their jobs could be automated. Roughly half of U.S. workers are worried about how AI may be used in the workplace in the future and few think AI will lead to more job opportunities in the long run, according to a Pew Research Center report.

    The heightened fear comes as major tech companies, such as Microsoft, Intel, Amazon and Meta cut workers, push for more efficiency and promote their AI tools. Tech companies have rolled out AI-powered features that can generate code, analyze data, develop apps and help complete other tedious tasks.

    “AI isn’t just taking jobs. It’s really rewriting the rule book on what work even looks like right now,” said Robert Lucido, senior director of strategic advisory at Magnit, a company based in Folsom, Calif., that helps tech giants and other businesses manage contractors, freelancers and other contingent workers.

    Disruption debated

    Exactly how big of a disruption AI will have on the job market is still being debated. Executives for OpenAI, the maker of popular chatbot ChatGPT, have pushed back against the prediction that a massive white-collar job bloodbath is coming.

    “I do totally get not just the anxiety, but that there is going to be real pain here, in many cases,” said Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, at an interview with “Hard Fork,” the tech podcast from the New York Times. ”In many more cases, though, I think we will find that the world is significantly underemployed. The world wants way more code than can get written right now.”

    As new economic policies, including those around tariffs, create more unease among businesses, companies are reining in costs while also being pickier about whom they hire.

    “They’re trying to find what we call the purple unicorns rather than someone that they can ramp up and train,” Lucido said.

    Before the 2022 launch of ChatGPT — a chatbot that can generate text, images, code and more —tech companies were already using AI to curate posts, flag offensive content and power virtual assistants. But the popularity and apparent superpowers of ChatGPT set off a fierce competition among tech companies to release even more powerful generative AI tools. They’re racing ahead, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers, facilities that house computing equipment such as servers used to process the trove of information needed to train and maintain AI systems.

    Economists and consultants have been trying to figure out how AI will affect engineers, lawyers, analysts and other professions. Some say the change won’t happen as soon as some tech executives expect.

    “There have been many claims about new technologies displacing jobs, and although such displacement has occurred in the past, it tends to take longer than technologists typically expect,” economists for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a February report.

    AI can help develop, test and write code, provide financial advice and sift through legal documents. The bureau, though, still projects that employment of software developers, financial advisors, aerospace engineers and lawyers will grow faster than the average for all occupations from 2023 to 2033. Companies will still need software developers to build AI tools for businesses or maintain AI systems.

    Worker bots

    Tech executives have touted AI’s ability to write code. Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said that he thinks AI will be able to write code like a mid-level engineer in 2025. And Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella has said that as much as 30% of the company’s code is written by AI.

    Other roles could grow more slowly or shrink because of AI. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects employment of paralegals and legal assistants to grow slower than the average for all occupations while roles for credit analysts, claims adjusters and insurance appraisers to decrease.

    McKinsey Global Institute, the business and economics research arm of the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., predicts that by 2030 “activities that account for up to 30 percent of hours currently worked across the US economy could be automated.”

    The institute expects that demand for science, technology, engineering and mathematics roles will grow in the United States and Europe but shrink for customer service and office support.

    “A large part of that work involves skills, which are routine, predictable and can be easily done by machines,” said Anu Madgavkar, a partner with the McKinsey Global Institute.

    Although generative AI fuels the potential for automation to eliminate jobs, AI can also enhance technical, creative, legal and business roles, the report said. There will be a lot of “noise and volatility” in hiring data, Madgavkar said, but what will separate the “winners and losers” is how people rethink their work flows and jobs themselves.

    Tech companies have announced 74,716 cuts from January to May, up 35% from the same period last year, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a firm that offers job search and career transition coaching.

    Tech companies say they’re slashing jobs for various reasons.

    Autodesk, which makes software used by architects, designers and engineers, slashed 9% of its workforce, or 1,350 positions, this year. The San Francisco company cited geopolitical and macroeconomic factors along with its efforts to invest more heavily in AI as reasons for the cuts, according to a regulatory filing. Other companies such as Oakland fintech company Block, which slashed 8% of its workforce in March, told employees that the cuts were strategic not because they’re “replacing folks with AI.”

    Diana Colella, executive vice president, entertainment and media solutions at Autodesk, said that it’s scary when people don’t know what their job will look like in a year. Still, she doesn’t think AI will replace humans or creativity but rather act as an assistant.

    Companies are looking for more AI expertise. Autodesk found that mentions of AI in U.S. job listings surged in 2025 and some of the fastest-growing roles include AI engineer, AI content creator and AI solutions architect. The company partnered with analytics firm GlobalData to examine nearly 3 million job postings over two years across industries such as architecture, engineering and entertainment.

    Workers have adapted to technology before. When the job of a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman was disrupted because of the rise of online search, those workers pivoted to selling other products, Colella said.

    “The skills are still key and important,” she said. “They just might be used for a different product or a different service.”

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  • ‘It really felt like I was in a fairytale’: Mustafa Seven’s best phone picture | Photography

    ‘It really felt like I was in a fairytale’: Mustafa Seven’s best phone picture | Photography

    Mustafa Seven and his friend Hazem were attempting to escape the tourists in an Austrian village when they took this image. Rumoured to have inspired Disney’s Frozen franchise, Hallstatt has been known to attract up to 10,000 visitors a day during high season. Seven had seen many Instagram shots of the place and was curious to visit. He was taken aback by what he found.

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    “There were tourist buses and people everywhere,” he says. “Frankly, neither of us like taking landscape photos, but the fairytale surroundings pulled us along. When I realised every image I’d shot had someone in the frame, we decided to change our route and walk up the slips of the village instead.”

    The cold weather and heavy snowfall made it hard going, but after half an hour the pair reached the edge of the village. They paused by a garden to rest a little, and it was there they found this docile, curious cat.

    “I was trying to get closer to say hello and kept expecting it to get scared and run away, but it didn’t.

    “We all seemed to be there for the same reason: to soak up a rare moment of peace and enjoy the view of the village, church and lake below us. It really felt like I was in a fairytale, like a scene that was too fictional to be real.”

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  • AI Uncovers Breakthrough Treatment For Rare Genetic Disorder

    AI Uncovers Breakthrough Treatment For Rare Genetic Disorder

    A team of researchers from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University developed a promising new treatment for a severe genetic disorder, powered by artificial intelligence. The breakthrough utilizes an AI-driven drug discovery process with innovative disease modeling to identify a potential therapy for Rett syndrome, a disorder primarily affecting girls.

    Researchers identified vorinostat, a medicine used to manage cutaneous T cell lymphoma, as a potential therapy.

    AI Battles Rett Syndrome

    Photo: Have a nice day/Shutterstock

    Rett syndrome affects approximately 1 in 10,000 girls globally. Mutations in the MeCP2 gene cause the disease and are historically viewed as a neurological disorder. However, it also impacts non-neurological systems, such as the digestive, musculoskeletal, and immune systems. This makes it difficult to develop a treatment.

    The Wyss Institute team’s study was published in Communications Medicine.

    Researchers discovered that vorinostat showed promising disease-modifying abilities across neuronal and non-neuronal tissues. In preclinical models, it was “superior” to trofinetide, the only current approved treatment.

    A key was the Wyss Institute’s computational algorithm, nemoCAD. The AI approach analyzes changes across gene networks across multiple organ systems to predict drug candidates. Traditionally, drug prediction targets a single molecule. Wyss Institute’s “target-agnostic” method rapidly and effectively identified potential therapies.

    Researchers used genetically engineered Xenopus laevis tadpoles that replicated Rett syndrome features to model the disease. The team compared gene expression changes in the modified tadpoles to healthy ones. NemoCAD then predicted drugs to reverse the pathological changes. Finally, vorinostat emerged as a top candidate. According to the researchers, it significantly suppressed symptoms such as seizures, unusual movements, and gastrointestinal issues in the modified tadpole models.

    “The identification and further development of vorinostat as the potentially first curative treatment for Rett syndrome would not have been possible without our unique AI-enabled computational approach to drug discovery, and its combination with an innovative disease model that broadly mimics the features of Rett syndrome,” said Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., senior author and Wyss Founding Director.

    Vorinostat is already FDA-approved for treating a blood disease. Unravel Biosciences, a Wyss-enabled startup, is now repurposing it for Rett Syndrome.


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  • A ‘Golden Handle’ will appear on the moon on July 5. Here’s how to see it

    A ‘Golden Handle’ will appear on the moon on July 5. Here’s how to see it

    Saturday night presents a perfect opportunity to spot a “Golden Handle” shining brightly on the moon’s surface. It is a fleeting sight that appears when sunlight catches the peaks of a mountain range on the moon.

    On July 5, the moon’s terminator, the line that separates lunar night from day, falls slightly to the west of the great circular plain Sinus Iridum (Latin for the ‘Bay of Rainbows’) in the northwest region of the lunar surface. At this time the sun is perfectly positioned to illuminate the eastern peaks of the vast Montes Jura mountain range bordering Sinus Iridum’s northernmost edge, giving rise to a spectacular golden arc that has since become known as the “Golden Handle”.

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  • When To See The ‘Buck Moon’ Rise Where You Are

    When To See The ‘Buck Moon’ Rise Where You Are

    Topline

    The full buck moon — the first full moon of summer in the Northern Hemisphere — will turn full on Thursday, July 10. It will be best seen at moonrise as it appears in the east during dusk that evening. It takes its name from the antlers that emerge from a buck’s forehead in summer. Occurring so soon after the solstice, like last June’s strawberry moon, it will also be one of the lowest-hanging full moons of the year.

    Key Facts

    The buck moon will turn full at 4:38 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 10. It will look full the night before and the night after it’s officially 100%-lit by the sun, but the best time to watch it rise will be at moonrise during dusk on Thursday, July 10.

    EarthSky says July’s full moon is called the buck, thunder and hay moon in North America. Cultural and seasonal names for a full moon vary hugely across the world.

    A full moon always looks at its best when it first appears on the eastern horizon during dusk. The sight is optimized when the moon rises shortly after sunset, which it does this month in North America, with the moon rising about 25 minutes after the sun goes down.

    As well as rising late at night in the Northern Hemisphere, July’s buck moon is one of the lowest-hanging full moons of the year. That’s because the full moon is opposite the sun, by definition, so it mirrors the sun’s position — the full moon is at its lowest when the sun is at its highest. In practice, that means July’s full moon never gets very high in the sky.

    To see the full buck moon at its best at moonrise, find an elevated location, an open field or an east-facing coastline with a clear view of the eastern horizon.

    Best Time To See The Full ‘buck Moon’ Rise

    To find the best time to see it appear from where you are, consult a moonrise calculator. Here are some sample times :

    • New York: sunset at 8:29 p.m. EDT, moonrise at 8:54 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 10.
    • Los Angeles: sunset at 8:07 p.m. PDT, moonrise at 8:33 p.m. PDT on Thursday, July 10.
    • London: sunset at 9:16 p.m. BST, moonrise at 9:46 p.m. BST on Thursday, July 10.

    The Iconic Image Of All Humans But One, From The ‘buck Moon’

    On July 21, 1969, the late Michael Collins — Command Module Pilot on NASA’s Apollo 11 spacecraft — took this image of the lunar lander Eagle as it returned Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 Mission Commander, and Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module Pilot, from the moon’s surface where they had become the first humans to walk upon it. In the background is Earth, making Collins the only human not featured. Technically speaking, those on Earth’s night side aren’t in it, either, but it remains an iconic image. Collins took it while he orbited about 60 miles (97 km) above the moon in Apollo 11’s Columbia command module, where he had remained alone for 22 hours.

    Background

    The buck moon is the seventh of 12 full moons in 2025. A solar year is 365.24 days, while a lunar year is around 354.37 days, so sometimes there are 13 full moons in one calendar (solar) year — as in 2023 and next in 2028. Of the 12 full moons in 2025, three will be “supermoons” and two “blood moon” total lunar eclipses (the first happened on March 13-14, and the next lunar eclipse is on Sept. 7-8).

    The next full moon is the sturgeon moon, which will occur on Saturday, Aug. 9. It will be the second full moon of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

    Further Reading

    ForbesSee Two ‘Blood Moons,’ Three ‘Supermoons’ And The Biggest Full Moon Since 2019: The Moon In 2025By Jamie CarterForbesWhen To See June’s ‘Strawberry Moon,’ The Lowest Full Moon Since 2006By Jamie Carter

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  • Everything You Should Know About iOS 18 Before Apple Releases iOS 26

    Everything You Should Know About iOS 18 Before Apple Releases iOS 26

    Here’s what you need to know about the software, as well as hidden tips and tricks.

    Headshot of Zachary McAuliffe

    Zachary McAuliffe Staff writer

    Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him reading and drinking coffee or watching a TV series with his wife and their dog.

    Expertise Web hosting | Operating systems | Applications | Software Credentials

    • Apple software beta tester, “Helps make our computers and phones work!” – Zach’s grandparents


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  • From Bloomers to Boxers to Bermudas, 8 Ways to Style Summer Shorts

    From Bloomers to Boxers to Bermudas, 8 Ways to Style Summer Shorts

    Long summer days call for, you guessed it, summer shorts. While classic denim cut-offs have long been a seasonal staple, we’ve been noticing more innovation in the category as of late. On the runways at Chloé, for example, models sauntered out in bloomers and frilly crochet, while at Paco Rabanne, striped boxer-like styles mingled with boyish separates.

    The key here is a departure from youthful pairs, with thoughtful styling that reflects a more considered mood. At times preppy, at times boho, other times polished—shorts this season have a truly elevated appeal. Here are eight fresh ways we’ll be wearing them all summer, and perhaps, you now, too.

    Vogue’s Favorite Summer Shorts

    Featured in this article
    The Romantic Eyelet

    Dôen Arbre broderie anglaise cotton shorts

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    Image may contain: Clothing, Shorts, Skirt, and Swimming Trunks
    The Sweet Stripe

    The Frankie Shop Lui striped cotton-poplin shorts

    See More

    Image may contain: Clothing, Shorts, Skirt, and Underwear
    The Lightweight Linen

    Suzie Kondi Hera Bloomers linen-chambray shorts

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    The Mini Denim Short

    A peach mini short form Chloé takes on a Birkin-like attitude with a knit henley, basket bag, and gladiators.

    Nili Lotan

    Oaklynn striped silk-jersey top

    Madewell

    Millie thong lace up sandals

    The Pleated Bermuda Short

    Lean into the elegant appeal of pleated Bermuda shorts by pairing them with a classic belt and button up.

    Madewell

    The Essential leather belt

    The Jort

    Knee-length denim shorts and a linen halter make for a high-low ensemble that works day or night.

    Massimo Dutti

    linen crossover halter top

    The Lace Trim

    Double down on the eyelet trend with trimmed shorts and a breezy tank. Bonus points for adding Miu Miu’s lace bandana.

    Miu Miu

    poplin and lace logo scarf

    Christen

    mono leather T-strap flat sandals

    The Sporty Short

    Part sporty, part preppy–pair a pink and white polo with Adidas’s pinstripe satin shorts. Suede loafers and a paracord bracelet add balance to keep things interesting and fashion-forward.

    Adidas

    Originals pinstripe satin shorts

    The Knit Short

    Stripes are undoubtedly the print of the summer, and we love them here in the form of a cute knit set with flip-flops and a woven basket bag.

    La DoubleJ

    Veneziana ribbed cotton shorts

    The Linen Bloomers

    Emphasize the girlish innocence of bloomer shorts by adding a ruffled blouse and raffia Mary Janes.

    Suzie Kondi

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