Three scientists to share 12m Swedish kronor prize for their work on ‘light-gated ion channels and optogenetics’

The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine 2026 has been awarded to three scientists for their work on investigating the mysteries of the brain.

Karl Deisseroth of both Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University, Peter Hegemann of the Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg have been awarded the prize “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”.

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Move would strengthen Britain’s case to be included in new legislation to protect European manufacturing

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The UK is considering whether to impose tariffs on Chinese car imports to align itself with the EU and strengthen its case to be included in new legislation designed to protect the European manufacturing sectors including autos and chemicals.

It is understood the EU has raised the question of tariffs with the UK as part of the discussions on the upcoming “Made in Europe” legislation, known as the Industrial Accelerator Act.

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This is a chance for the PM to advance his progressive agenda and tackle urgent issues such as AI regulation and climate action

Among the many crucial decisions Andy Burnham has to make over the next few weeks, one has gone almost completely unremarked: what Britain’s priorities will be when it assumes the presidency of the G20 next year.

Burnham has said he wants to concentrate on domestic policy. But with the world in turmoil, chairing the group of the world’s largest economies will be one of his most important responsibilities.

Michael Jacobs is professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield and a former energy and climate change adviser to Gordon Brown when he was prime minister

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We pick the best youngsters at each club born between 1 September 2009 and 31 August 2010, an age band known as first-year scholars. Check the progress of our classes of 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 … all the way to 2014

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Parti Québécois promises to hold independence referendum in Canada’s French-speaking region by 2028

Voters in Quebec are going to the polls in provincial elections which will probably result in victory for a party that has promised to hold a referendum on independence from Canada within the next two years.

If polls are correct, the Parti Québécois (PQ) will form the government of the province of roughly nine million, the first time that the separatist movement will have gained power in the French-speaking region for more than a decade.

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BILTHOVEN (ANP) - Nederland moet meer werk maken van de bestrijding van hepatitis B en C, vinden experts van het Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM). Ze hebben een plan opgesteld om het aantal infecties met de virussen verder omlaag te krijgen. Daarin wordt onder meer gepleit voor het testen van meer mensen uit landen waar hepatitis nog relatief veel voorkomt.

Dat is een groot deel van de wereld, van landen in Oost-Europa tot in Midden- en Zuid-Amerika, Afrika en Azië. Een van de opties die de deskundigen noemen, is om asielzoekers op hepatitis te testen na binnenkomst in Nederland, zoals dat nu ook al gebeurt met tuberculose: wie uit een land komt waar die ziekte veel voorkomt, krijgt standaard een test.

Ook met betere registraties valt nog winst te behalen. Het RIVM ziet graag dat er een centraal systeem komt, waarin diagnoses en behandelingen worden vastgelegd. "Met dit inzicht kunnen zwakke plekken in de zorg sneller worden opgespoord en aangepakt", is de uitleg.

Nationaal Hepatitisplan

Het plan is een bijgewerkte versie van het Nationaal Hepatitisplan uit 2016. Doelen daaruit zijn ondanks vooruitgang niet allemaal behaald. Dat komt onder meer door "gebrek aan financiering en de coronapandemie", staat in het maandag verschenen rapport.

Jaarlijks overlijden 450 tot 500 mensen aan de gevolgen van hepatitis B en C. Duizenden mensen lopen ongemerkt jaren rond met het virus, omdat klachten pas later komen. Naast migranten lopen mannen die seks hebben met mannen, mensen die drugs gebruiken en gedetineerden een verhoogd risico.

Vaccinatie

Jonge kinderen worden in Nederland gevaccineerd tegen hepatitis B. Ook op latere leeftijd is vaccinatie mogelijk. Voorlichting daarover moet beter, vinden de deskundigen. Tegen hepatitis C bestaan geen vaccins. De ziekte is meestal goed te behandelen, maar dan moet de besmetting wel eerst zijn opgespoord.

Hepatitis is een ontsteking van de lever, die verschillende varianten kent. Vaak verlopen infecties zonder klachten. Bij hepatitis B en C kunnen echter ook chronische infecties ontstaan, die tot ernstige ziekte leiden. Zo is er een risico op levercirrose, wat vervolgens weer een grotere kans op leverkanker geeft. Andere klachten zijn vermoeidheid, koorts, spierpijn en verlies van eetlust en geelzucht, waarbij onder meer huid en oogleden geel verkleuren.

DHUBAB (ANP/RTR) - Het Jemenitische regeringsleger zegt de controle over de zeestraat Bab al-Mandeb terug te hebben veroverd op de Houthi's, meldt Al Jazeera. Die groep nam het gebied rond die belangrijke vaarroute vorige maand in na een snelle opmars, maar het regeringsleger kondigde maandag een tegenoffensief aan.

Het geweld tussen de Houthi's en de internationaal erkende regering van Jemen laaide in juli weer op, na een aantal jaar relatieve rust. De Houthi's veroverden snel gebied rond de kust van de Rode Zee en konden daardoor de hele zeestraat Bab al-Mandeb controleren, de vaarroute tussen de Indische Oceaan en de Rode Zee (en de Middellandse Zee in het verlengde daarvan).

Door die inname kunnen de Houthi's de olie-export van Saudi-Arabië, een belangrijke bondgenoot van de Jemenitische regering, hevig verstoren. Saudi-Arabië mengt zich ook in het nieuwe offensief in Jemen.

Het regeringsleger zegt nu in elk geval een belangrijk vliegveld in Dhubab te hebben heroverd op de Houthi's.

- In 2022 Altair Engineering open sourced "OpenRadioss", an industry-leading finite element solver under the GNU AGPL License, reports Phoronix.

- Siemens acquired Altair Engineering last year

- Siemens closes access to OpenRadioss.

"Siemens didn't just end the project but they shutdown the GitHub repository that hosted the open-source code and removed other resources that had built around it," writes Phoronix, before announcing a new open-source community fork:



Radioss has been an industry-leading solver for analyzing crashes, blasts, and other purposes. Altair creating OpenRadioss was a huge milestone for the technical computing industry. It also had other effects like for myself in finally being able to benchmark with this (Open)Radioss code for CPU performance testing compared to the expensive licensing on Radioss itself...

Siemens argues the OpenRadioss closure is for consolidating efforts:


"After four years of successful community-driven research, Siemens is entering a new chapter for the Radioss solver. To accelerate innovation and provide the robust support our global users require for production-grade simulation, we are consolidating our efforts."


It was Brian Clemens. founder/VP Rocky Linux and the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation who launched the community fork of OpenRadioss — to be called OpenCourant. Its web site announces they'll be "carrying forward the OpenRadioss code base under the GNU AGPL, in the open, where it belongs."

Phoronix writes in a follow-up:

OpenCourant is based on the last publicly known open-source OpenRadioss snapshot before Siemens shut it down and removed access to the Git repository... OpenCourant continues with the OpenRadioss GNI AGPLv3 licensing and will be run as part of the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation. They have run into a small issue though with part of OpenRadioss consisting of binary dependencies and not having the very latest versions prior to Siemens' removal of the repository. Details on that via this discussion thread for anyone that happens to have recent OpenRadioss binaries.



In other open source news, Kagi is ending their development work on the Orion Browser for Linux and Windows, reports the site Linuxiac — but Kagi "plans to open-source both versions so other developers or organizations can keep them going."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Het monster dat vervuiling heet is ongrijpbaar. Dat voelt onze tv-recensent thuis ook. Bij Argos is te zien hoe Chemelot en een gedeputeerde van economische zaken er alles aan doen om het ongrijpbaar te houden.

Iedere eerste maandag van de maand besteedt Rijnmond aandacht aan veiligheid. Dit keer: wat moet een kind eigenlijk weten als er thuis brand uitbreekt? Brandweervrouw Sjors en brandweerman Jeffrey geven regelmatig les in schoolklassen.

Fat Burns ☮ has added a photo to the pool:

Your comments and faves are greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

Brown Treecreeper
Scientific Name: Climacteris picumnus
Description: The Brown Treecreeper is the largest of Australia's treecreepers. It is mostly pale brown in plumage. Birds of northern Queensland are darker brown. The head, throat and upper breast are pale greyish-brown, while the lower breast and belly are strongly streaked with black and buff. In flight, a buff stripe can be seen in the wing. The sexes are similar, except females have rufous edges to the feathers of the upper breast, while in the male these edges are black. Young Brown Treecreepers resemble the adults, but are duller, have less obvious stripes on the underparts and the lower belly is a pale rufous colour.
Similar species: Other treecreeper species that overlap in range with the Brown Treecreeper include the White-browed Treecreeper, Climacteris affinis, and the White-throated Treecreeper, Cormobates leucophaeus. The White-browed Treecreeper is darker grey-brown with a more distinct white stripe above the eye (edged with red-brown in the female). The eyebrow of the Brown Treecreeper is less distinct and is more buff. The smaller White-throated Treecreeper has much darker upperparts, a contrasting white throat and little or no marks above the eye.
Where does it live?
Habitat: Found in the drier open forests and woodlands, the Brown Treecreeper stays in the same area all year round.
Feeding: The Brown Treecreeper climbs up the trunks and branches of trees in search of food. It probes into cavities and under loose bark with its long downward curving bill. In this way it searches for insects and their larvae. The most favoured insects are ants. Some feeding also takes place on the ground on fallen logs. Sometimes, birds can be seen diving on ground-dwelling prey from a perch in a tree. Feeding normally takes place in pairs or small groups.
Breeding: The nest is a collection of grasses, feathers and other soft material, placed in a suitable tree hollow or similar site. Both sexes build the nest, but the female alone incubates the eggs. Pairs often have two broods during each breeding season. Occasionally, other birds ("helpers") assist the breeding pair with building of nest and feeding the young chicks. Brown Treecreepers are highly sociable birds, living and breeding communally. Each year, the previous year's offspring will remain to help the breeding male feed the female and rear new chicks. Interestingly, it is usually only males which remain to perform this duty.
Calls: The Brown Treecreeper has a loud 'spink' call, which is given either singly or in a series, and normally betrays its presence before the bird is seen.
Minimum Size: 16cm
Maximum Size: 18cm
Average size: 17cm
Average weight: 33g
Breeding season: June to January
Clutch Size: 2 to 3 eggs
Incubation: 17 days
Nestling Period: 26 days
(Source: www.birdsinbackyards.net)

© Chris Burns 2026
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All rights reserved.

This image may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying and recording without my written consent.

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Today(05/10/26) afternoon village scenery, Tallawong, Sydney, Australia.
Peace be with you.