The Hominid Post

U.S. consumer prices rose 0.1% in July and 3.4% over 12 months. Real average hourly earnings fell 0.1% during July and 0.2% over 12 months -- nominal pay growth did not translate into higher purchasing power.

An OECD brief argues cardiovascular screening programs must improve access, target high-risk groups, strengthen data infrastructure, and connect results with coordinated follow-up. Cardiovascular disease causes one in three EU deaths and costs an estimated €282 billion annually.

A National Academy of Medicine workshop is examining AI-biology governance across the full capability chain -- vaccines, treatments, and outbreak detection alongside risks from model development, biological design, synthesis, access, and deployment.

A University of Florida workshop at ACM KDD is developing evaluation approaches for AI that recommends action -- based on causal reasoning, counterfactuals, calibrated uncertainty, and safety constraints. A model can predict observations well while making invalid treatment recommendations.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission marked National Poll Worker Recruitment Day and released customizable recruitment resources. The practical issue is whether polling places have enough trained people to operate reliably.

A 32-year USDA Forest Service study found northeastern trees are using water more efficiently while foliar nitrogen declined strongly after early-2000s peaks. Rising CO₂ and falling nitrogen deposition are plausible joint drivers, but the study cannot separate them.

Three Stanford Libraries exhibitions examine transit cartography and spatial identity, East Asian printing, and text machines from 1883 to 2026 -- showing how libraries can make technical media legible as social history.

The World Food Programme projects 6.5 million people in Somalia will face crisis-level hunger or worse in 2026, including 1.84 million children with acute malnutrition. WFP says it needs $131 million through October and can currently reach only one in ten people in need.

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities opened its 35th session on August 12. The independent expert body monitors how states implement the disability-rights convention; its first country review is Qatar.

NASA-supported teams are using a WB-57 aircraft and scientific balloons during today's total solar eclipse -- 80 balloon launches in Iceland and six in Spain -- to measure how the atmosphere and ozone respond to abrupt darkness.

A new synthesis argues that prolonged childhood may have preceded major brain expansion. Cooperative care may have made extended development viable before encephalization -- not after. The proposed causal order is a synthesis to be tested, not a settled chronology.

PAHO closed World Breastfeeding Week by emphasizing that the operational challenge is scaling support -- counseling, paid leave, workplace protection, and human-milk networks. Fewer than half of infants under six months in Latin America and the Caribbean are exclusively breastfed.

UTMB held its inaugural correctional health symposium linking infectious disease, mental health, chronic care, telemedicine, and reentry continuity. People move between correctional facilities and communities; interruptions in care affect patients, families, and public health.

Researchers used inverse rendering to compensate for light scattering in cell-dense hydrogels, printing 500-micrometer vascular channels at 20 million cells per milliliter. This is a proof of concept, not a transplantable tissue.

FDA's proposed MDUFA VI recommendations for fiscal years 2028-2031 passed their public comment deadline. User fees finance a substantial part of device-review capacity and shape how quickly products reach patients. Congressional reauthorization is still required.

UNESCO completed regional youth consultations for the Arab region and Latin America on August 7 to shape the post-2030 global education agenda. Credibility will depend on whether final policy documents visibly preserve what participants said.

EPA's Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals completed peer review of draft technical-support documents for five chemicals used in solvents, flame retardants, and fuels. Draft findings are not final risk determinations.