Brief – Others 2026-10-29
Worth Noting
A new estimate suggests brain disease is nearly universal among NFL veterans. Brain Disease Is Pervasive in N.F.L., New Estimate Suggests — Using statistical modeling, researchers now estimate that three of four retired pro players likely had CTE at death, a far higher prevalence than prior autopsy-based counts suggested and a number that reframes football’s core safety debate.
RFK Jr. bypassed the FDA to open the door for unapproved peptide injections. Kennedy to Allow Broad Use of Unapproved Peptide Injections — Several peptides pushed by wellness influencers will now be widely dispensable through compounding pharmacies despite FDA objections, another unilateral health-policy move that sidesteps the agency’s normal review process.
Heat batteries are emerging as a serious industrial decarbonization bet. A New Kind of Battery Is Taking Off. This One Stores Blistering Heat. — Start-ups are betting that storing cheap renewable electricity as high-temperature heat can displace natural gas in factories, a less glamorous but potentially larger decarbonization lever than grid batteries.
A sixth dwarf planet candidate may have turned up in the outer solar system. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory may have just discovered our solar system’s sixth dwarf planet — The object, farther out than Pluto, was hiding in the glare of the Milky Way; it’s an early, striking result from a telescope expected to reshape solar-system cartography over its ten-year survey.
A previously animal-only virus has killed a person for the first time. Animal-borne Shamonda virus infects and kills a human for the first time — Experts say the outbreak risk is low, but the species jump itself is the kind of event virologists watch closely for lessons about spillover pathways.
A GOP donor’s kratom lobbying got an opioid-related ban quietly reversed. Trump Administration Backs Down on an Opioid Ban After Kratom Industry Lobbying — Health officials will now allow certain levels of a potent opioid-like compound in “natural” kratom products, a decision that could benefit a donor facing wrongful-death lawsuits over the same substance.
One Thing Worth Reading Deeply
Can Scientists Make Football Safer? — Paired with the new CTE prevalence estimate, this piece walks through genuinely strange proposed interventions, including near-infrared light therapy and psilocybin, being tested against a disease that has no diagnostic test in living patients. It’s a useful corrective to assume football’s brain-injury problem is either solved or unsolvable, showing instead a messy, early-stage science scrambling to catch up with a crisis already measured in generations of players.