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💊 Direct-to-consumer drug pricing could compete with prescription insurance
#drugs

Direct-to-consumer drug pricing could compete with prescription insurance
A new study offers a glimpse at how direct-to-consumer pharmacy pricing could one day present stiff competition to the private prescription drug insurance model, researchers say.

Sonnet 028 - XXVIII
How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarred the benefit of rest?
When day's oppression is not eas'd by night,
But day by night and night by day oppress'd,
And each, though enemies to either's reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.
I tell the day, to please him thou art bright,
And dost him grac…

Mass dependence of overshooting beneath convective envelopes
J. Pratt, I. Baraffe, M. -G. Dethero, M. Stuck, D. G. Vlaykov, T. Goffrey
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18543 https://

Mass dependence of overshooting beneath convective envelopes
Although the dependence of convective core overshooting on mass has attracted much attention, no corresponding work exists for overshooting below a convective envelope. We aim to quantify this relationship for pre-main sequence stars of intermediate mass ranging from $1.2 M_{\mathsf{sun}}$ to $6 M_{\mathsf{sun}}$. These stars have a similar thermal and density structure, making this a suitable choice to isolate the effect of changing mass. We produce a series of two-dimensional global simulatio…

Neural Network and ANFIS based auto-adaptive MPC for path tracking in autonomous vehicles
Yassine Kebbati, Naima Ait-Oufroukh, Vincent Vigneron, Dalil Ichala
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17213

Neural Network and ANFIS based auto-adaptive MPC for path tracking in autonomous vehicles
Self-driving cars operate in constantly changing environments and are exposed to a variety of uncertainties and disturbances. These factors render classical controllers ineffective, especially for lateral control. Therefore, an adaptive MPC controller is designed in this paper for the path tracking task, tuned by an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm. Online parameter adaptation is performed using Neural Networks and ANFIS. The designed controller showed promising results compared t…

Controlled Yet Natural: A Hybrid BDI-LLM Conversational Agent for Child Helpline Training
Mohammed Al Owayyed, Adarsh Denga, Willem-Paul Brinkman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16784

Controlled Yet Natural: A Hybrid BDI-LLM Conversational Agent for Child Helpline Training
Child helpline training often relies on human-led roleplay, which is both time- and resource-consuming. To address this, rule-based interactive agent simulations have been proposed to provide a structured training experience for new counsellors. However, these agents might suffer from limited language understanding and response variety. To overcome these limitations, we present a hybrid interactive agent that integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) into a rule-based Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI…

Yet another useless import. Every time we import plants from overseas we open ourselves up to quarantine breaches.
Australian flower growers want shoppers to know where their blooms originate
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-22/tas

Australian flower growers want shoppers to know where their blooms originate
About half of Australia's cut flowers are imported, but there is no requirement to add a label informing consumers of their origin.

I wondered what the Ceauşescus were up to these days. https://sfba.social/@skykiss/115420725296644745

♾️🇺🇦 Vote Midterms (@skykiss@sfba.social)
Attached: 1 image Demolition of East Wing—traditionally the First Lady’s domain—has already begun, despite this lack of approval. The illegal ballroom expects to exceed $250 MILLION. The obscene gold ballroom that dwarfs the core of the white house itself. The re-making of a nation's identity. The controversy illegal construction lacks formal approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees federal construction projects in Washington, DC Look at how ugly this is. …

"I want to frame the technology more like an instrument, and get away from GenAI as an intelligence, an ideology, a tool, a crutch, or a weapon.”
"Thinking of AI as an instrument recenters the focus on practice. Instruments require a performance that relies on technique—the horn makes the sound, but how and what you blow into it matters.“
I think this talk offers a differentiated take on AI in how to deal with it in a way that is not all-in and over-consuming.