Unrecognizable.

Swami overslept.

“It’s the first thing I read every morning.” — Annie Lamont, co-founder of Oak HC/FT, a leading venture capital firm.

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1. Nature:

1. The video opens with a man in his 80s slumped in a hospital bed, his face hollow as he scrunches his eyes. A jump cut advances the scene three days: the man is alert now, words gathering as he identifies his son.

Six months later, he is pictured sitting upright, engaged in conversation. His gaze is animated. At eight months, the man walks briskly down a hospital corridor. He recites a near-century-old Maoist military anthem from memory. He is practically unrecognizable from the withered figure in the opening frame.

The footage records the recovery of a man who, in September 2020, became the first person in the world to undergo a surgery known as deep cervical lymphatic-venous anastomosis (dcLVA) to treat Alzheimer’s disease. The procedure involves connecting tiny lymphatic vessels in the neck — part of the drainage system that carries waste away from the brain — to nearby veins, creating a route that, in theory, allows fluid and waste proteins to flow more easily into the bloodstream.

The treatment was first reported in 2022 in a Chinese-language journal by microsurgeon Qingping Xie, president of the Qiushi Hospital in Hangzhou, China. At the time, it drew little notice. But that changed the following year, when Wei Chen, a lymphatic microsurgeon at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, began showing the footage (with consent from Xie and the man’s family) at surgical meetings around the world.

“A lot of jaws dropped,” recalls Chen. “It basically started a frenzy of this surgery being performed left and right.” (Source: nature.com)

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2. David Crowley, the top elected official in Milwaukee County, seized a surprise win Tuesday for the Democratic nomination in Wisconsin’s race for governor, giving the party’s establishment a victory over a democratic socialist. Mr. Crowley, 40, will face Republican Tom Tiffany, a congressman from Wisconsin’s rural north who easily defeated political novice Andy Manske in Tuesday’s GOP primary. Tiffany, 68, spent a decade in the state legislature before he was elected to the House in a special election in 2020. The margin of Crowley’s victory was razor thin: ~4000 votes with 95% of the precincts reporting). (Sources: washingtonpost.com, nytimes.com)

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3. Senator Darline Graham, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, advanced yesterday to the special Republican primary runoff for Senate in South Carolina, when she will face Representative Ralph Norman, a longtime hard-line conservative lawmaker, according to The Associated Press. The matchup on Aug. 25 will offer a sharp contrast in experience, though few policy differences. Ms. Graham, who stepped in to complete her brother’s Senate term after he died last month, has offered little in the way of specifics about her positions, other than to back President Trump and the Republican Party line. Mr. Norman is a five-term congressman and vice-chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus. (Source: nytimes.com)

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4. The national news media’s take (generally speaking) on last night’s results is captured in this Wall Street Journal piece:

The unexpectedly close race (for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Wisconsin) is the latest evidence that an intraparty fight among Democrats is far from over. Last week, Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in a divisive and costly Democratic Senate primary in Michigan that saw progressives claim one of their biggest victories to date. Similar to El-Sayed, recent polls had suggested Hong was ahead.

But the tight margins in Wisconsin and Michigan indicate that while the far-left appeared to be surging, many voters still believe a more centrist approach is Democrats’ best hope to win competitive general elections. (Source: wsj.com. Italics mine)

We’re more taken by the turnout differential in yesterday’s primaries. Polls this year have shown a fired-up Democratic base and a less enthusiastic GOP base. That was much in evidence last night. (Sources: nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com)

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