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Dozens of doctors and nurses silently lined the hospital hallway in tribute: For a history-making two months, a pig’s kidney worked normally inside the brain-dead man on the gurney rolling past them.

The dramatic experiment came to an end Wednesday as surgeons at NYU Langone Health removed the pig kidney and returned the donated body of Maurice “Mo” Miller to his family for cremation.

It marked the longest a genetically modified pig kidney has ever functioned inside a human, albeit a deceased one. And by pushing the boundaries of research with the dead, the scientists learned critical lessons they’re preparing to share with the Food and Drug Administration -– in hopes of eventually testing pig kidneys in the living.

“It’s a combination of excitement and relief,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, the transplant surgeon who led the experiment, told The Associated Press. “Two months is a lot to have a pig kidney in this good a condition. That gives you a lot of confidence” for next attempts.

Baby boomers anticipate that 47% of pre-retirement earnings will be replaced by Social Security, according to results of an annual survey from the Nationwide Retirement Institute. But the reality for someone making what the Social Security Administration considers the average wage in recent years, about $60,000, is more like 37%, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. And the percentage drops as household income rises.

Alternate: https://archive.ph/Hx1PM

More than 1 in 4 car shoppers in Texas and Wyoming have committed to paying more than $1,000 a month, and experts say it is due to the high volume of large truck purchases in those states, according to a report by auto site Edmunds.

More than 1 in 5 shoppers in seven other states — Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Utah — are also forking over more than $1,000 for their vehicles each month.

Nearly two dozen cattle died in Nebraska, more than 100 Missouri nursing home residents were evacuated and an ice cream shop in Iowa was forced to close as record-shattering heat engulfs more than 20 states.

Warning: This lengthy article contains disturbing language and details of graphic evidence.

Expectant parents could soon have another new option this fall to protect their newborns from RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, the most common cause of hospitalization in American infants, after the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday that it has widened its approval for Pfizer's Abrysvo vaccine to include expectant mothers.

Pregnant women would receive immunity from the shot during pregnancy then pass that along to their baby before birth, offering protection in the infant's earliest months of life.

The summertime gas price spike has been driven by a combination of easing recession fears, production cuts by Russia and Saudi Arabia and extreme heat that has knocked offline some refinery activity.

The historic heatwaves could cause even more trouble by potentially setting the stage for powerful hurricanes.

Five people are confirmed dead in the Tampa Bay area due to a rare, flesh-eating bacteria in the waters.

According to Florida Health, Vibrio vulnificus is a bacterium that naturally occurs in warm, brackish seawater and requires salt.

3 deaths attributed to the bacteria were also reported in New York and Connecticut. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vibrio-vulnificus-3-dead-rare-bacterial-infection-new-york-connecticut/

Messi may be coming into the final on an absolute tear (nine goals and an assist in six matches) but the defending Major League Soccer MVP, Hany Mukhtar, has been playing at an elite level for his team as well (two goals and six assists in six matches).

The two players may not have to come into direct contact much on the pitch, but their gravitational pulls as the most dangerous attacks for their teams will largely determine who ultimately wins on Saturday night.

Americans’ credit card balances rose briskly in the second quarter, hitting a sobering milestone of more than $1 trillion, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported this month. Credit cards are the most prevalent type of household debt, New York Fed researchers wrote in a blog post, and saw the biggest increase of all debt types. More than two-thirds of Americans had a credit card in the second quarter, up from 59 percent roughly a decade earlier, the researchers found. And, they noted, card balances were more than 16 percent higher in the second three months of this year compared with a year earlier.

Alternate: https://archive.ph/5bdz1 (NYT)

Alternate: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/credit-card-debt-hits-new-high/

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.09% in the week ending August 17, up from 6.96% the week before. Rates have been above 6.5% since the end of May and climbing higher since mid-July. This week’s average rate is the highest the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage has been since April 2002 when it was 7.13%.