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The Good Signal

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Signals worth following

Browse our latest investigations, impact stories, and evidence-based progress updates.

Science & Space
•The Good Signal

JWST finds four black-hole pairs in the infant universe

A Kavli IPMU / University of Tokyo–led team used JWST COSMOS-Web imaging and a pixel-by-pixel color method to find four dual “Little Red Dot” systems — likely rapidly growing black holes — about 12.5–12.8 billion years ago. Two pairs have matching-line spectroscopy at z = 5.822 and 5.464 (separations 1.64 and 7.36 kpc); clustering on kilo-parsec scales runs roughly 20–30× above an extrapolated JWST AGN power law. Published 31 August 2026 in PASJ. These are merger precursors, not confirmed black-hole mergers.

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Science & Technology
•The Good Signal

IBM quantum computer finishes a hard task in 15 minutes

IBM Research and the University of Chicago reported a doped-Clifford sampling experiment on a superconducting processor. The arXiv paper (28 Jul 2026) runs a 64-qubit depth-73 circuit with 314 T gates on 76 physical qubits, posts a 95% lower bound F₂ ≥ 0.349, and collects 1,389 post-selected samples in about 14.5 minutes — roughly 10× lower effective gate error after syndrome post-selection. IBM’s newsroom frames a related “70 logical qubits / ~15 minutes” milestone; treat those as press figures, not the paper’s headline circuit.

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Science & Technology
•The Good Signal

Scientists find a molecular switch that drives Alzheimer’s damage

An IBS–KAIST team reported in Nature on 26 August 2026 that ectopic ERBB4 in excitatory neurons drives Alzheimer’s-like cascade damage in mice. Selective Erbb4 deletion cut amyloid plaque area and number by about half and improved memory tests; analysis of 446 human AD brains linked excitatory-neuron ERBB4 to worse plaques and cognition. This is not a cure and not a human drug yet.

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Science & Technology
•The Good Signal

NIH mapped 9,350 cone cells in living human eyes

National Eye Institute researchers led by Johnny Tam report in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science the largest open database of cone-photoreceptor inner-segment size in living human eyes: 9,350 cones measured in 28 healthy people aged 12 to 84. Cones run from 5.0 µm near the fovea to 7.8 µm farther out. Women’s cones were about 5% larger. This is a reference atlas, not a therapy.

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Health
•The Good Signal

The shingles vaccine is linked to less heart disease

On 26 August 2026 University of Oxford researchers reported in Nature Medicine that adults 60 and older who received the recombinant shingles vaccine (mostly Shingrix) had a 9% lower cardiovascular-disease burden over seven years than matched people who had just received the older live vaccine (mostly Zostavax). The print is 36,460 people in each arm. This is a natural experiment, not a randomized trial, and it is not a comparison with being unvaccinated.

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Health
•The Good Signal

A cancer cell therapy just took 3 people off arthritis drugs

On 27 August 2026 Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin reported in Nature Medicine the first prospective trial of a CD19 CAR T-cell therapy in rheumatoid arthritis. Six people with treatment-refractory, ACPA-positive disease received a single infusion of mivocabtagene autoleucel. Disease activity improved in all six. Three hit DAS28-CRP remission and an ACR70 response, and three were off all RA drugs at last follow-up. This is a six-person Phase 1, not a cure and not an approved RA treatment.

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