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1. An experimental gene therapy from Uniqure slowed the progression of Huntington’s disease by 75% after three years — study results reported Wednesday that are likely to support the first approval of a genetic treatment for the rare neurodegenerative condition. For people living with Huntington’s, an effective, one-time therapy that significantly slows the loss of muscle control and cognition around mid-life could preserve years of quality relationships and gainful employment that would normally be lost to the disease. In a three-year analysis of the study, Huntington’s patients treated with a high dose of Uniqure’s gene therapy, called AMT-130, lost an average of 0.38 points on a measure of disease progression called cUHDRS. That compared to a loss of 1.52 points for matched participants in an external control group based on a large, natural history study. The AMT-130 benefit was statistically significant and achieved the primary goal of the study. (Source: statnews.com. Italics mine.)
2. The cultivation of rice—the staple grain for more than 3.5 billion people around the world—comes with extremely high environmental, climate and economic costs. But this may be about to change, thanks to new research led by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and China’s Jiangnan University. They have shown that nanoscale applications of the element selenium can decrease the amount of fertilizer necessary for rice cultivation while sustaining yields, boosting nutrition, enhancing the soil’s microbial diversity and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, in a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they demonstrate for the first time that such nanoscale applications work in real-world conditions. (Source: umass.edu)
3. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK):
“More than three-quarters of the Earth’s support systems are not in the safe zone. Humanity is pushing beyond the limits of a safe operating space, increasing the risk of destabilizing the planet”, says PIK Director Johan Rockström. The seven breached boundaries are: Climate Change, Biosphere Integrity, Land System Change, Freshwater Use, Biogeochemical Flows, Novel Entities, and Ocean Acidification (new in 2025). All of these seven boundaries show worsening trends.
The 2025 Planetary Health Check reveals a stark new development: the Ocean Acidification boundary has now been assessed as breached for the first time. This shift, driven mainly by fossil fuel burning and worsened by deforestation and land-use change, is degrading the oceans’ ability to act as Earth’s stabilizer. This marks the seventh boundary transgressed, pushing humanity further beyond the safe zone for civilization. The consequences are already noticeable: Ocean Acidification has now gone beyond what is considered safe for marine life and ecosystems are already feeling the effects. Cold-water corals, tropical coral reefs, and Arctic marine life are especially at risk as acidification continues to spread and intensify. (PIK’s Planetary Health Check 2025 report is here. More on the report is here. The director of PIK, Johan Rockström, was awarded the Tyler Prize last year for his contributions to environmental science. Sources: pik-potsdam.de. planetaryhealthcheck.org, wsj.com, dornsife.usc.edu)
4. Eurointelligence:
Scott Bessent described the Trump foreign policy doctrine with a clarity we have not heard from Donald Trump himself:
“Now Putin has started making incursions into the NATO borders. The one thing I can tell you is the US is not going to get involved with troops or any of that. We will sell the Europeans weapons.”
In other words: the US did not perform a policy U-turn this week, as some of the more naive European political observers were hoping for. Quite the contrary. The US is signalling to Russia that it will not respond to current wave of Russian provocations in Europe. Putin is testing Nato’s resolve. And he is getting the result he was hoping for.
We normally base our own policy analysis on revealed, not stated preference. It is Bessent’s message, not Trump’s message at the UN, that is the policy. (Source: eurointelligence.com)
5. Niall Ferguson:
(The war in Ukraine) is almost entirely a drone war, with a supporting role for small and highly vulnerable infantry units.
The thing that is hard to grasp is the sheer number of drones in the skies. Hundreds can be in the air at any given moment—swarms of them, buzzing overhead like outsize and lethal hornets, some watching with unblinking eyes for targets, others descending inexorably for the kill. Soon there will be thousands. According to Oleksandr Kamyshin, a key adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, 95 percent of the damage inflicted on the battlefield is now by drones. (Sources: niallferguson.com, thefp.com. Ferguson’s column is worth reading in full.)
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