Last month, The US Food and Drug Administration approved a new blood test for assisting the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Produced by Roche, Elecsys pTau181 measures the concentration of a specific molecule—a phosphorylated form of the tau protein—in the blood. Tau is one of two proteins, the other being amyloid, that become malformed and accumulate in the brains of patients with certain types of dementia. It is believed that the buildup of these proteins interferes with the communication of brain cells, leading to these patients’ symptoms.

The test had already received authorization in July for marketing in Europe and is thus the first early screening system for Alzheimer’s for use in primary care settings approved in the planet’s two major pharmaceutical markets. It is an opener in what should soon become a crowded field, as there are several other tests in advanced stages of testing and approval.

How Do Such Tests Work?

Elecsys pTau181 looks in the blood plasma for a form of the tau protein that has a phosphate group attached, which is often found in elevated amounts in Alzheimer’s patients. This molecule is an indirect marker of the plaques of amyloid and neurofibrillary tangles of tau observed in the brains of patients with the disease.

Some other tests have also been approved, though not for early screening. These assess other biomarkers that relate to these two proteins. One test, called Lumipulse and made by the Japanese company Fujirebio, looks at the ratio between another form of phosphorylated tau (pTau217) and a key protein fragment that forms amyloid plaques (amyloid beta peptide 1-42).

The bottom line is that these tests offer clues to the probable presence of amyloidosis in the brain, which then needs to be diagnosed with greater accuracy using more invasive tests, such as a PET (positron emission tomography) scan and cerebrospinal fluid analysis by lumbar puncture, considered the clinical gold standard for diagnosing amyloid pathology in living patients. Even these, however, come with some degree of uncertainty; true diagnostic certainty can only be had with a post-mortem dissection of the brain.

Why Approve These Tests Now?

In the past, confirmation of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis was not that important, as there were no drugs or therapies that could alter the course of the disease. But with the approval of new Alzheimer’s monoclonal antibody treatments, the landscape has changed in the past few years.

To use these medicines, you need a way to confirm which patients can benefit. And since the drugs ideally yield the best results when used early on in the disease’s progression, a relatively inexpensive and minimally invasive diagnostic test will be extremely useful. Subjecting all elderly people with suspected symptoms of cognitive decline to PET scans and cerebrospinal fluid sampling is impractical, so this is where blood testing for Alzheimer’s comes in.

Just How Useful Are These Tests?

Elecsys pTau181 is the first test to be approved for use as a community-screening tool. The idea is for it to be administered at the primary care level—so, for instance, by a primary care physician or general practitioner. The test has been shown to have a good “negative predictive value”—that is, it is effective at accurately indicating who does not have amyloid disease. In settings where the overall prevalence of amyloid disease is low, a negative result from this test is 97.9 percent reliable. This makes it useful for selecting which patients to put forward for further testing.

The results are similar to those of other tests that have already been approved in recent months, such as Lumipulse from Japan’s Fujirebio, which in trials has shown a negative predictive value of about 97 percent.

However, there is an important limitation to note: for all blood tests for Alzheimer’s, there tends to be a relatively large proportion of patients (15-30 percent is a common estimate) who fall into a gray area of uncertainty, in which the levels of identified biomarkers do not allow for either a positive or a negative answer.

A Stanford analysis shows that strategic investment in burying power lines could shorten blackouts during extreme weather, enhancing energy reliability for millions of U.S. households.

As hurricanes intensify, wildfires spread, and winter storm patterns shift, the combination of extreme weather events and aging grid infrastructure threatens to make energy less reliable for tens of millions of U.S. households.

Experts say burying power lines underground can harden the electrical system against threats from wind, ice, falling trees, and other weather-related hazards. Yet undergrounding power lines remains expensive and unevenly implemented. One obstacle has been a lack of information about where investments in undergrounding by utilities and communities could make the biggest difference for reliable power supplies.

In a recent study posted to the arXiv preprint server, Stanford University researchers led by Associate Professor Ram Rajagopal combined previously non-public and siloed datasets to reveal how the distribution of power lines above and below ground has changed since the 1990s. By combining these data with power outage records, the team modeled how having more power lines underground during recent extreme weather events could have shortened outages.

Patchy progress on burying power lines since 1990

Dense metropolitan areas on the East Coast, parts of southern Florida, and a few southwestern growth hubs were among the first to underground at least a quarter of their power line mileage. The overwhelming majority of power lines remained overhead in most U.S. counties in 1990.

By 2020, some fast-growing suburbs in southeastern and Sunbelt states showed modest increases in undergrounding. For most counties nationwide, however, the median percentage of power lines buried underground remained well below 15%. Large swaths of the Rockies, Midwest, and Gulf Coast showed virtually no change.

Where outages last the longest

Each year, tens of millions of Americans experience power outages. While households on average lose electricity for about four hours over the course of a year, some outages last a day or even weeks. Many of these longer outages are linked to extreme weather events.

New England’s 2017 ‘bomb cyclone’

A nor’easter or “bomb cyclone” that struck Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire in October 2017 left people without power on average for 27.3 hours per home. The Stanford analysis found that burying an additional 25% of overhead power lines could have cut annual outage totals by 10.8 hours.

California’s 2019 wildfire shutoffs

Amid dry conditions and strong winds in 2019, more than 3 million Californians lost power when utilities preemptively shut down equipment in high-fire-risk areas. The Stanford analysis found that undergrounding an additional 25% of overhead power lines would have cut annual outage totals in the affected area to roughly eight hours from 10.5 hours.

Texas’s 2021 deep freeze

In February 2021, unusually cold temperatures in Texas left 4.5 million homes and businesses without power for just over 19 hours. The researchers found having 25% more power lines underground during this event also could have shortened average outage times by 2.5 hours.

Explore the data

You can view more analysis from the Stanford researchers and explore county-level undergrounding and outage patterns in an interactive project developed by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability in collaboration with TechSoup. The researchers have made their 2020 data on the proportion of underground distribution power lines publicly available through Stanford’s Data Commons for Sustainability.

In an upgrade that spans network planning to management, and marking a “significant evolution” in its ecosystem, Omada has embarked on a software refresh designed to enable to plan smarter networks that can be deployed faster and managed with greater precision and confidence.

The upgrades from TP-Link Systems business solution brand includes enhancements to Omada Network 6.0, Omada App 5.0, Wi-Fi Navi App V1.5 and a new Omada Design Hub. These upgrades are designed to deliver a smarter, more integrated experience for MSPs, system integrators (SIs) and installers as well as everyday users. With end-to-end tools for planning, deployment and management, Omada claimed that it can empower businesses to build high performance networks with greater speed, precision and reliability.

At the heart of the upgrades is Omada Network 6.0, described as a major refit designed to simplify and supercharge network operations. Listed as being built for professionals who are managing complex deployments, it offers a new interface and enhanced interactions to make troubleshooting faster, monitoring more precise and configuration more intuitive.

The redesigned dashboard features a five-tab layout – including overview, topology, Wi-Fi, client and traffic – to deliver better visual insights, while the newly designed interface and menus are aimed at making configuration and management experience smoother. New visualisations, such as AP density maps and heatmaps, are intended to help IT teams understand user behaviour and deployment performance at a glance.

The company said its “standout addition” is the multi-level health scoring system available in the cloud-based controller. It is engineered automatically evaluates the status of devices, clients, WLANs and sites, enabling simplified monitoring and early detection of issues across multiple layers.

Smart Topology has also been upgraded with real-time VLAN visibility and disconnected device tracking. Customisable filters make it easier to locate faults and streamline troubleshooting. Enhanced client recognition now identifies device type, brand and models automatically, while the new device and client page visualises activity timelines and event history for full lifecycle management.

Omada claims that network configuration is faster than ever with a simple three step VLAN setup and centralised bulk port management across switches. These improvements set out to eliminate guesswork and reduce configuration time from hours to minutes, especially in large-scale deployments.

Integrated with Omada’s core solution, the Omada Design Hub is a free, cloud-based network planner, offering AI-powered precision during each stage of deployment. Design Hub helps to “simulate, visualise and deliver tailored solutions” in use cases such as designing for offices, homes, hotels or schools.

Users can now upload floor plans, auto-detect walls and instantly generate Wi-Fi heatmaps. The platform supports auto AP placement and cabling, including cross-floor connections, and one-click proposal exports with topology maps, device lists and simulation results. It supports users to personalise reports for clients, speeding up communication and delivery.

Bulk adjustments, editable equipment lists with pricing, and real-time topology tools have been updated to make planning faster and more accurate. Adaptive spatial models and signal strength calculations ensure reliable coverage and installation-ready designs.

Meanwhile, the Omada Wi-Fi Navi App V1.5, a free networking troubleshooting tools, expands its toolkit for installers and administrators. New features include Wi-Fi Integrated Test, Walking Test, IP/Port Scanners, Public IP Lookup, and Bandwidth/PoE calculators. It also includes iPerf2 support and improved scanning for deployment validation and on-site issue resolution.