It’s never too late to join the F1 Fantasy fun, and to celebrate McLaren’s home race at Silverstone we have a new McLaren Mini League for you to join.
The new F1 Fantasy league covers three iconic European events with the British Grand Prix, a Sprint weekend at Spa for the Belgian Grand Prix and the Hungarian Grand Prix, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
If you missed the start of the fantasy season, here’s a great opportunity to put your F1 knowledge to the test, pick your team and compete for exclusive prizes, including a tour of the McLaren Technology Centre, McLaren’s legendary HQ and home of their F1 team.
Haven’t played before? A new chance to join F1 Fantasy
For existing players, if your team is flagging in the league, it’s a chance for a reset. Just make sure to join the league within the game.
If you’re new to the game, this is a great place to start and try your hand at building a team.
F1 Fantasy is free and easy to play. Picking your team and joining the league is done in minutes. You get a $100m fantasy budget to spend on your selection of five drivers and two constructors. Then you join to play against friends, family or other fans, taking the Grand Prix weekends to the next level.
Papaya prizes in play
McLaren returned to the top last year, winning the Constructors’ Championship and matching Williams with a ninth team title – second only to Ferrari in the all-time standings.
We’re offering some exclusive papaya prizes to the top players in the McLaren Mini League, including a tour of the futuristic Technology Centre. You could win:
First Place: McLaren Plus Technology Centre Tour for two guests and gift bag with signed cap (by Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri)
Second Place: Signed cap (signed by Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri)
Third Place: Cap
Who gets your pick?
Tips for the triple-header
Sprint in Spa
Extra points are available in Belgium with the Sprint format, giving you an opportunity to make the most of chips like Limitless or Extra DRS.
Are Ferrari back?
Should the Scuderia be in your team after upgrades put them back on the podium?
Stick with Papaya
McLaren are still scoring well, with both drivers regularly in the top points as they duel for the Drivers’ title.
To join the McLaren Mini League, pick your F1 Fantasy team and finalise before Qualifying at The British Grand Prix starts on Saturday July 5 at 1500 local time (1400 UTC). Come on in and join the F1 Fantasy fun!
A mini solar telescope strapped to the side of the International Space Station (ISS) has captured its first images, revealing subtle changes in our home star’s outer atmosphere that have never been seen before.
NASA’s Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) is a small solar telescope attached to the outside of the ISS. It is a coronagraph, meaning that it blocks out the solar disk to allow the telescope to focus on the sun’s atmosphere, or corona, in unprecedented detail — mimicking the way the moon blocks the sun’s visible surface during a total solar eclipse on Earth. The occulting disk blocking out the sun’s light is around the size of a tennis ball and it is held in place by three metal arms at the end of a long metal tube, which also cast distinctive shadows in the resulting images.
CODEX arrived on the ISS on Nov. 5, 2024, on board a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule, Live Science’s sister site Space.com previously reported. It was affixed onto the station’s hull by the robotic arm, Canadarm2, on Nov. 9, according to NASA.
The first photos from CODEX were released on June 10 at the 246th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Anchorage, Alaska. They include footage of temperature fluctuations in the outer corona, captured over the span of several days, and a photo of giant “coronal streamers” shooting out of the sun.
“The CODEX instrument is doing something new,” Jeffrey Newmark, a heliophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and the principal investigator for CODEX, said in a statement. “These are brand new observations that have never been seen before, and we think there’s a lot of really interesting science to be done with it.”
Related: Watch eerie ‘UFOs’ and a solar ‘cyclone’ take shape in stunning new ESA video of the sun
The first full coronagraph image shows “coronal streamers” shooting through the corona. Researchers want to know how events like these influence the sun’s outer atmosphere. (Image credit: NASA/KASI/INAF/CODEX)
The main goal of the new telescope is to discover how the superhot particles constantly streaming out of the sun, known as the solar wind, interact with the sun’s outer atmosphere. “Previous coronagraph experiments have measured the density of material in the corona, but CODEX is measuring the temperature and speed of material in the slowly varying solar wind flowing out from the Sun,” Newmark said.
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Mission scientists also want to understand how solar wind gets heated to such high temperatures — up to 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), which is around 175 times hotter than the sun’s surface, according to Space.com.
To do this, the telescope measures the sun using four narrow-band filters, two for temperature and two for speed. “By comparing the brightness of the images in each of these filters, we can tell the temperature and speed of the coronal solar wind,” Newmark said.
The researchers hope that better understanding the solar wind will help predict dangerous space weather events, particularly those that originate from gigantic “coronal holes” that spew streams of particularly fast solar particles toward Earth.
CODEX will be able to study the corona in varying levels of detail. (Image credit: NASA/KASI/INAF/CODEX)
In the last few weeks, Earth has experienced two significant geomagnetic storms, which were both triggered by coronal holes: First, on June 13, when a sizeable storm triggered auroras in up to 18 U.S. states; and more recently on June 25, when a slightly weaker disturbance briefly lit up the night skies.
This flurry of activity is the result of solar maximum, the most active phase of the sun’s roughly 11-year sunspot cycle. This chaotic peak is now likely coming to an end, meaning less explosive outbursts in the future. However, some experts believe that solar wind could remain unpredictable for several years as the sun’s localized magnetic fields vie for dominance in a period dubbed the “solar battle zone.” Therefore, the CODEX instrument has likely switched on at the optimal time.
“We really never had the ability to do this kind of science before,” Newmark said. “We’re excited for what’s to come.”
“F1” could be on the road to getting a sequel after it broke box office records in its opening weekend.
Joseph Kosinski, the film’s director, said in interviews published by GQ and Entertainment Weekly last weekend that it’s up to the audience to decide if a sequel should be made.
So far, things are looking good.
The racing drama is already being dubbed a hit after it topped box office charts in its opening weekend, grossing $144 million worldwide. In the US, “F1” beat the record for the best domestic debut for an original movie held since 2020, which was broken earlier this year by “Sinners.”
“F1” is also Apple’s most successful theatrical debut. The movie was produced by the tech company’s original film branch, which has until now struggled to make box office hits.
F1 has grown in popularity in recent years thanks to shows like Netflix’s documentary series “Drive to Survive” and social media platforms like TikTok, Twitch, and podcasts.
Capitalizing on the trend, “F1” follows APXGP, an underdog Formula 1 racing team as it tries to win its first race and establish itself.
Damson Idris plays Joshua Pearce, a rookie for APXGP who represents the modern F1 driver. JP is forced to act like a celebrity by attending influencer parties, modeling, and constantly smiling for the camera.
Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a veteran racer whose F1 career was ruined by a near-fatal crash, is the opposite. He’s a rulebreaker who refuses to engage with the press, but APXGP is desperate, since the board plans to sell the team if they do not win their next competition.
“I think we leave it on a really open-ended moment for Sonny, for Kate, and for Joshua,” Kosinski told GQ, referring to Kerry Condon’s character Kate, who was APXGP’s technical director. “So yeah, I think there’s certainly more to tell of the APXGP team, and where Sonny Hayes goes from here. But that’s not my decision.”
“F1” is a big-budget racing movie from Apple, starring Damson Idris and Brad Pitt.
Apple
The ‘F1’ director proposed a ‘Days of Thunder’ crossover starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt
In the interview with GQ, Kosinski was asked to pitch a film idea starring Tom Cruise and Pitt, as he worked with them in his last two films, “F1” and “Top Gun: Maverick.”
Kosinski suggested the film could be a crossover with the 1990s racing drama “Days of Thunder,” which starred Tom Cruise as a rookie NASCAR driver trying to win the Daytona 500.
Kosinski’s pitch was: “Well, right now, it’d be Cole Trickle, who was [Cruise’s] ‘Days of Thunder’ character, we find out that he and Sonny Hayes have a past. They were rivals at some point, maybe crossed paths.
“I heard about this epic go-kart battle on ‘Interview with a Vampire’ that Brad and Tom had, and who wouldn’t pay to see those two go head-to-head on the track?” he added, referring to the 1994 movie, which starred both actors.
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in “Days of Thunder.”
Paramount Pictures/Getty Images
While the crossover movie is only an idea, Cruise did show up at the “F1” premiere.
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Cruise and Pitt almost starred together in the Oscar-winning racing drama “Ford v. Ferrari.” When Kosinski was chosen as the movie’s director, they were going to play the rival lead characters, Shelby and Miles.
Kosinski told GQ that he, Pitt, and Cruise left the movie when the studio couldn’t meet his proposed budget, and James Mangold decided on a different cast.
Karachi faced severe traffic jams on Monday after police used tear gas and water cannons to stop protesting government employees. The protesters, part of the Sindh Employees’ Alliance (SEA), were marching towards the Chief Minister’s House to demand better salaries and pensions. Police intervened when talks between the protest leaders and government officials failed to reach an agreement.
DIG South Syed Asad Raza said the protesters wanted a 70% pay and pension raise for grades 1 to 22 employees. They also demanded a 50% Disparity Reduction Allowance and post-retirement benefits similar to those in Balochistan. After talks collapsed, the protesters began moving from the Karachi Press Club towards the CM House, where police had already blocked roads.
To stop them, law enforcement used water cannons and fired tear gas near Aiwan-e-Saddar Road, close to the Governor House. Protesters were pushed back and redirected to the Karachi Press Club. Police confirmed that no arrests were made, but protest leaders claimed officers used force and “tortured” some demonstrators.
SEA leaders said that Planning and Development Minister Nasir Shah had accepted their demands. However, CM Murad Ali Shah asked for three days to finalize discussions. The protest leaders are now planning their next move, possibly marching to Bilawal House in Clifton if their demands remain unmet.
The protest caused chaos on Karachi’s roads. Major roads like Aiwan-i-Saddar, Dr Ziauddin Ahmad, and Din Muhammad Wafai were closed. As a result, traffic from 4pm to 7pm was badly affected, especially on I.I. Chundrigar, Abdullah Haroon, and Saddar. Police diverted vehicles to alternative routes to manage the congestion.
A three-dimensional model of lung tissue developed by University of Colorado Cancer Center member Chelsea Magin, PhD, will help the U.S. military better research, treat and prevent lung cancer.
“Military service members are more likely to develop lung cancer than the general population due to a combination of occupational exposures and lifestyle factors,” Magin explains. “Many veterans were exposed to hazardous substances, such as particulate matter from burn pits or diesel exhaust, during military service. Additionally, smoking rates among veterans are approximately twice as high as the general population. Due to these factors, nearly 1 million veterans remain at high risk for lung cancer.”
A three-dimensional model of lung tissue developed by CU Cancer Center member Chelsea Magin, PhD, will help the U.S. military better research, treat, and prevent lung cancer
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— CU Cancer Center (@cucancercenter.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Cancer in three dimensions
In response to a call for novel research on lung cancer treatment and prevention, Magin recently received a Department of Defense (DoD) grant for her 3D hydrogel lung modeling system, which she says is superior to the petri dish cultures commonly used to study lung cancer cells.
“Our research uses hydrogel materials that contain proteins from the lungs,” says Magin, principal investigator of the Bio-Inspired Pulmonary Engineering Laboratory in the Department of Bioengineering at the CU School of Medicine. “We want to compare healthy lungs, lungs from people who smoke, and lungs from lung cancer patients. We can put those proteins into our material, then put our material around a very thin slice of lung tissue that has all the cells and architecture of the lung. We can use that model to look at how the different proteins in the lungs influence the initiation of lung cancer.”
Collaborative effort
Magin’s research lab is also working with the lab of CU Cancer Center member Erin Schenk, MD, PhD, to study how different immunotherapy treatments interact with different types of lung tissue. The research also includes collaboration with Bradford Smith, PhD, associate professor of bioengineering, and CU Cancer Center member Robert Keith, MD, professor of pulmonary sciences and critical care medicine.
“The material that holds your cells together is called the extracellular matrix, and it’s made up of proteins and carbohydrates and other big molecules,” says Magin, also an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine. “We think that different exposures, like being exposed to smoking or not, creates changes in that microenvironment that can influence the initiation of or susceptibility to cancer. It could also influence whether you are a good candidate for immunotherapy treatment.”
Predictive path
Over the course of the three-year project, Magin and her co-researchers plan to analyze the proteins they put into the hydrogels, looking for differing protein signatures in healthy, cancerous and smoke-exposed lungs.
“What we learn about how the tissue responds to each protein signature will help us understand things like, ‘If a patient has this protein signature, they’re more likely to get cancer, or their cancer is more likely to be aggressive,’” Magin says. “We also hope to learn which protein signatures are most responsive to the immunotherapies.”
Eventually, Magin hopes, the research could lead to a clinician’s ability to biopsy a small amount of lung tissue and analyze its protein signature to determine the best course of treatment.
“They could tailor the therapies based on that combination of proteins,” she says.
This article was originally published June 9, 2025, by the University of Colorado Cancer Center. It is republished with permission.
LA JOLLA, CA, & PITTSBURGH, PA—New research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and La Jolla Institute for Immunology, published today in Nature Microbiology, reveals an opportunity for developing a therapy against cytomegalovirus (CMV), the leading infectious cause of birth defects in the United States.
Researchers discovered a previously unappreciated mechanism by which CMV, a herpes virus that infects the majority of the world’s adult population, enters cells that line the blood vessels and contributes to vascular disease. In addition to using molecular machinery that is shared by all herpes viruses, CMV employs another molecular “key” that allows the virus to sneak through a side door and evade the body’s natural immune defenses.
The finding might explain why efforts to develop prophylactic treatments against CMV have, so far, been unsuccessful. This research also highlights a new potential avenue for the development of future antiviral drugs and suggests that other viruses of the herpes family, such as Epstein-Barr and varicella-zoster virus (which causes chickenpox and shingles), could use similar molecular structures to spread from one infected cell to the next while avoiding immune detection.
“If we don’t know what weapons the enemy is using, it is hard to protect against it,” said senior author Jeremy Kamil, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at Pitt. “We found a missing puzzle piece that represents one possible reason why immunization efforts against CMV have been unsuccessful.”
In the United States, approximately one in every 200 babies is born with congenital CMV infection. Of the babies infected, one in five will have birth defects, such as hearing loss, or go on to have long-term health challenges. For most adults, CMV infections are asymptomatic. But a CMV infection during pregnancy presents significant health risks to the developing child and could be deadly for people who are immunosuppressed, including organ transplant recipients.
Herpesviruses cause an astonishing array of health problems. They are the cause of chickenpox, shingles, and mononucleosis (aka “mono”). A herpesvirus called cytomegalovirus (CMV) is actually the leading infectious cause of congenital birth defects.
Because of the large size of its genome and its complicated molecular machinery, CMV long evaded attempts to develop prophylactic treatments. Similar to other herpes viruses, CMV relies on a protein called gH to enter cells of the vessel lining. But unlike other herpes viruses, which use a protein partner called gL to facilitate infection, the new study found that CMV replaces gL with another partner called UL116 and recruits a protein called UL141. The resulting complex of gH-UL116-UL141, called GATE by the authors, then becomes an alternative tool for breaking into cells lining the blood vessels and causing internal damage while simultaneously preventing the body’s own immune system from recognizing the signs of infection.
The newly discovered GATE could become a potential vaccine target for CMV and other herpes viruses.
“Previous attempts to generate a CMV vaccine have failed, but that was before we identified the GATE complex. We hope that new strategies targeting GATE will improve our chances to combat CMV infection, and also perhaps cleanse our bodies of this lifelong infection,” said Chris Benedict, Ph.D., Associate Professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology and co-senior author of the study with Kamil and LJI Professor, President & CEO Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., MBA. “If we can develop antiviral drugs or vaccines that inhibit CMV entry, this will allow us to combat the many diseases this virus causes in developing babies and immune-compromised people.”
Other authors of the study, “The GATE glycoprotein complex enhances human cytomegalovirus entry in endothelial cells,” are Michael Norris, Ph.D., of the University of Toronto; Lauren Henderson, Mohammed Siddiquey, Ph.D., both of Louisiana State University Health Shreveport; and Jieyun Yin, Ph.D., Kwangsun Yoo, Ph.D., Simon Brunel, Ph.D., and Michael Mor, Ph.D., all of La Jolla Institute for Immunology.
This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants AI11685, AI139749, AI101423 and T32HL155022) and by ARPA-H APECx contract 1AY1AX000055.
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About the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
As one of the nation’s leading academic centers for biomedical research, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine integrates advanced technology with basic science across a broad range of disciplines in a continuous quest to harness the power of new knowledge and improve the human condition. Driven mainly by the School of Medicine and its affiliates, Pitt has ranked among the top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1998. In rankings released by the National Science Foundation, Pitt is in the upper echelon of all American universities in total federal science and engineering research and development support.
Likewise, the School of Medicine is equally committed to advancing the quality and strength of its medical and graduate education programs, for which it is recognized as an innovative leader, and to training highly skilled, compassionate clinicians and creative scientists well-equipped to engage in world-class research. The School of Medicine is the academic partner of UPMC, which has collaborated with the University to raise the standard of medical excellence in Pittsburgh and to position health care as a driving force behind the region’s economy. For more information about the School of Medicine, see www.medschool.pitt.edu.
From lowering blood pressure to reducing blood sugar levels, pomegranates are known for their many health benefits. But did you know that the peels are equally nourishing and a powerhouse of nutrients too? According to a study, the peel is a rich source of bioactive compounds with diverse pharmacological effects. It is a rich reservoir of antioxidants, polyphenols, dietary fiber, and vitamins, which contribute to its remarkable bioactivity. Studies have demonstrated the anti-inflammatory, cardioprotective, wound-healing, anticancer, and antimicrobial properties of pomegranate peel owing to the presence of phytochemicals, such as gallic acid, ellagic acid, and punicalagin. This piece of information explores the 5 key benefits of consuming pomegranate peel regularly.
The planet Venus is like Earth’s worst twin – roughly the same size but with a thick layer of acid clouds over a crushing, hellish atmosphere. Its clouds in particular have been a source of interest, but it is difficult to understand how they change long-term: most missions around the planet don’t last long. New observations might have finally filled that gap in knowledge, thanks to weather satellites orbiting our planet that caught a glimpse of Venus accidentally.
The Himawari-8 and -9 satellites, launched in 2014 and 2016, are Japanese meteorological satellites. They were designed to study global atmospheric phenomena, something that they do well thanks to a particular type of instrument: multispectral Advanced Himawari Imagers (AHIs). This device can – when the alignment is right – capture Venus just at the edge of Earth.
A team from the University of Tokyo, led by visiting researcher Gaku Nishiyama, realized that the instrument would be able to measure variation in the temperature on top of the Venusian clouds. They collected data from 2015 to 2025, providing crucial monitoring of the nearby rocky planet.
“The atmosphere of Venus has been known to exhibit year-scale variations in reflectance and wind speed; however, no planetary mission has succeeded in continuous observation for longer than 10 years due to their mission lifetimes,” Nishiyama said in a statement. “Ground-based observations can also contribute to long-term monitoring, but their observations generally have limitations due to the Earth’s atmosphere and sunlight during the daytime.”
The team was able to find 437 occurrences of the alignment in total, and they were able to show that temperatures did indeed change across the 10 years. Such methods will be very useful for continuous monitoring of Venus before future missions get there, though, while the European EnVision mission to Venus is still scheduled for the next decade, NASA’s two missions to Venus are in jeopardy following the Trump administration’s cuts.
“We believe this method will provide precious data for Venus science because there might not be any other spacecraft orbiting around Venus until the next planetary missions around 2030,” said Nishiyama.
It might not just be a tool for Venus either. The team believes that they can use accidental photobombs in weather satellites to study other worlds of the Solar System. The advantage of orbital observations is the lack of atmosphere, which affects what we can do from the ground.
“I think that our novel approach in this study successfully opened a new avenue for long-term and multiband monitoring of solar system bodies. This includes the moon and Mercury, which I also study at present. Their infrared spectra contain various information on physical and compositional properties of their surface, which are hints at how these rocky bodies have evolved until the present,” added Nishiyama.
The study is published in the journal Earth, Planets and Space.
