If you are a researcher and want to know more about the people driving innovation and change, then look no further than these six impressive women.

In all industries, there are the movers and shakers whose work often leads to the evolution of what is possible and the reimagining of what could be. The field of research, perhaps more than most, embraces those who are of a curious mind and have a vision for the future – think of people like Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin and Alice Ball.

In the 20th century, these women were at the forefront of the research space and their work has gone on to impact the lives of people today as much as it did when first shared.

But who are the movers and shakers of today? Who are the women driving the research answering life’s most pressing questions?

Yvonne Buckley

Yvonne Buckley is a professor of zoology at Trinity College Dublin. She was also the founding co-chair of the All-Island Climate and Biodiversity Research Network, the senior editor of Journal of Ecology, a member of the National Carbon Budgets Working Group and a member of both the Royal Irish Academy and Academia Europaea. She leads a team of researchers, post-docs, PhD and undergraduate students aiming to better understand the fundamental drivers of animal and plant population processes. 

The discoveries she is a part of are often used to provide support for environmental decisions in the areas of biodiversity conservation, invasive species management and habitat restoration. Earlier this year, she was the recipient of the 2026 Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in the Environmental Sciences, Geography and Geosciences in recognition of her outstanding contributions to science, research and scholarship.

Emer McGrath

Prof Emer McGrath is an associate professor in the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at the University of Galway. She is also an adjunct associate professor at UT Health San Antonio, a consultant neurologist at Galway University Hospital, an investigator for the Framingham heart study and a research collaborator at the Boston University School of Medicine.

Her main focus at the moment is research around dementia risk factors and identifying biomarkers of the illness before the patient suffers memory loss and irreversible brain damage, which can make treatment significantly more complicated. 

Ieva Plikusienė

Ieva Plikusienė is a professor and senior researcher in the Faculty of Chemistry and Geosciences and the Faculty of Medicine at Vilnius University. Her area of research focuses primarily on the development of advanced biosensing systems, designed to detect early warning signs of illness in the human body. The aim of her work is to help source the best candidates for drug design and detect important cancer, viral or bacterial biomarkers.

In recognition of her contributions to the research and medtech spaces, Plikusienė was recently awarded the prestigious André Mischke Award from the Young Academy of Europe.

Sarah Gilbert

Prof Sarah Gilbert is a professor of vaccinology at the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford. Her chief research interest is the development of viral vectored vaccines that work by inducing strong and protective T- and B-cell responses. She has led work on influenza vaccine development as well as vaccines for different emerging pathogens, including MERS and Lassa virus. She is in frequent collaboration with colleagues working in the Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility and Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine at Oxford. 

In 2020, she was named the Oxford project leader for ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, a vaccine against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. If you are interested in vaccinology and related fields, such as future pandemic prevention, Gilbert’s career trajectory could offer some inspiration. 

Friederike Otto

Prof Friederike Otto is a renowned researcher and scientist operating at the intersection of climate science and environmental policy at Imperial College London.

She is the lead of World Weather Attribution (WWA), which is an international effort to analyse and communicate the impact of climate change on extreme weather events. She studies how major weather events, such as droughts, heat waves and storms, are intensified and made more frequent by changes in the climate. She is also interested in the merging of science, law and policy, and aims to better understand how scientific evidence can be used in legislation, litigation and more informal governance for resilient societies.

She has authored numerous reports, was recognised for her co-founding of WWA on the Time 100 list as one of the world’s most influential individuals, is the author of two non-fiction books – ‘Angry Weather’ and ‘Climate InJustice’ – and has had her work featured extensively in global media, including in The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Times of India and the BBC, among others. 

Abeba Birhane

A cognitive scientist researching AI accountability, Prof Abeba Birhane is a principal investigator for the Artificial Intelligence Accountability Lab and assistant professor of AI in the school of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. Her work ranges from the systematic examination of AI ecology and governance structures, to the execution of algorithmic audits. Also central to her research are goals of challenging and dismantling societal and historical inequalities and power asymmetries, holding responsible bodies accountable, and paving the way for a future marked by equitable AI systems that work for everyone. 

She has contributed to several peer and non-peer reviewed journals, and is a driving force in continued research into AI, ethics and the long-term, societal implications of the technology. She has also been the recipient of several awards and commendations, including a mention on the Time 100 most influential persons in AI 2023 list, and the Distinguished Paper Award 2024 at the IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning.

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How old is the seven-segment display? Surely it is a product of the 1970s. After all, calculators started showing up, and the height of junior high humor was plugging 7734 into your calculator and showing it to someone upside down. Of course, for it to go mainstream, maybe they really originated in the 1960s, but no earlier than that, right? Actually, no. Sure, the LED seven-segment display had to wait for LEDs. But the actual idea is much older than that.

The concept of building numbers from a small set of reusable segments predates LED displays by decades. In fact, the basic idea appears in patents from the early 1900s and may have roots in even older mechanical signs and printing techniques.

The history isn’t entirely straightforward. Unlike vacuum tubes or transistors, segmented displays evolved gradually through a series of practical ideas rather than one defining invention.

Blacking out the Eight

While looking into the history of segmented displays, I was reminded of something I’d seen years ago in retail stores: reusable price tags printed with rows of eights.

Rather than printing every possible price, the clerk simply used a marker to black out portions of each figure, transforming an 8 into whatever digit was needed. Cover a few strokes, and the eight becomes a three. Remove a different set, and it becomes a zero or a five. It was, in essence, a manual segmented display.

Finding the exact origin of these price tags is akin to finding out where Romans bought sponges. They were inexpensive commercial supplies, not the sort of products that historians carefully documented. My recollection is from the middle of the twentieth century, but the underlying concept is almost certainly older.

Everything New is Old Again

George Mason’s 1898 21-segment display used 21 lamps and a complicated switch to display any digit or letter in a very stylish font. You can see a modern recreation of these ancient displays in the video below. While this is the basic idea, certainly, it is more ambitious than a simple 7-segment display.

I couldn’t determine that Mason’s displays were ever used for anything.

You could argue that an early 1903 invention by Carl Kinsley to draw characters telegraphically using six pens was an even better precursor, but using magnets to draw with pens on tapes hardly seems to qualify as a display, although figure 12 in the patent clearly shows the formation of numbers and even letters with this arrangement.

Digits of Patent

The direct parent of modern segmented digit displays appeared in the early 1900s (filed 1908; granted in 1910). Technically, this was an 8-segment display because it had a bar dedicated to forming a proper four, with the top-left part slanted. But removing that one segment is just an optimization. It may or may not have been the first, but by 1910, seven-segment displays were in use and not just curiosities on a workbench or dreams in a patent application.

Even for lit-up displays, the first implementations weren’t LEDs. Early displays used incandescent lamps or neon-filled tubes. By the 1930s and 1940s, segmented neon or incandescent indicators were appearing in industrial equipment and counters, instead of the common columns of ten neon bulbs, pointers, or rotating wheels.

Then, too, there were different approaches. Nixie tubes used individual character forms that lit up. Decatrons could count with ten different glowing points, each representing a digit.

Enter the LED

The real explosion came in the late 1960s when practical LED displays arrived. Suddenly, segmented displays could be compact, rugged, inexpensive, and operate at low voltages. Calculators, clocks, frequency counters, digital multimeters, and every imaginable piece of consumer electronics adopted them almost overnight.

Of course, it wasn’t just LEDs. Numitrons used seven tiny incandescent filaments. Vacuum fluorescent displays used segments with phosphor that glowed when excited. LCDs adopted the same pattern, blocking or passing light to produce the segments. But the key idea was something that lights up, arranged in seven segments.

Early LED displays often had all the diodes on a single die to reduce cost. That made them very tiny. It wasn’t unusual to see displays with magnifying bubbles to make it easier to read.

The important point isn’t whether they used exactly seven segments. Many didn’t. Some divided the numerals differently or used additional pieces to produce more attractive typography. The insight was the same: begin with the most complex digit and selectively remove strokes to create all the others.

Why Seven?

One of the reasons seven segments became the standard is that they strike a perfect balance (although not everyone agrees, as you can see in the video below). With fewer than seven elements, several decimal digits become difficult to distinguish. Adding more segments certainly improves appearance, but every additional segment increases wiring, decoding logic, manufacturing cost, and the number of possible failure points. Seven is the right number for — um — numbers. But what about letters?

You can make some compromises to show some letters. For example, old computers would display hex digits using seven segments, but the A would be uppercase and the B would be lowercase. You also had to light the top segment for the 6 to make it look different from a B. But you only need A-F for hex. If you need, say, the letter S, there’s no real way to make it not look like a 5 with 7 segments. But sometimes, the letters you can make are good enough.

There were also 8- and 9-segment displays that could do better with letters and special characters. You can increase the segments further to get more glyphs.

The Union Jack

The solution for full letter displays was to add more segments. Despite Mason, you didn’t really need 21. By the 1970s, fourteen-segment and sixteen-segment displays had become common in instruments, telephones, calculators, and video cassette recorders. Their pattern of diagonals and crossbars earned them the nickname “Union Jack” display because the arrangement resembles the British flag. These are also sometimes called starburst displays. You occasionally see 16-segment displays, too.

Even Today

Today, you have a plethora of options for adding alphanumeric screens to just about anything. Yet, you still see 7-segment displays hanging around.

The seven-segment display isn’t successful because it’s beautiful. It isn’t even especially flexible. It’s successful because it’s close to the minimum solution that works. It delivers readable numbers with very little hardware, whether the technology behind it is incandescent bulbs, neon, vacuum fluorescence, LEDs, LCDs, or even ink on a printed price tag.

Perhaps that’s why it has survived every technological transition for more than a hundred years. Good engineering ideas often outlive the technologies that first bring them to life.

And once you start looking for segmented displays, you’ll notice they’ve been hiding in plain sight for much longer than the digital age.

Featured image: [Arduino Enigma]’s marvelous Seven Segment Art Installation

If you just need a reliable Windows laptop for everyday use, this Lenovo deal is a genuinely good price – it’s an easy recommendation for remote and hybrid workers, and for my money, it ticks all the boxes for general business work.

So, right now, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i has dropped to £499 (was £599) at Argos. For an all-rounder business laptop, this one of the best budget picks around for under £500.

Inside, the machine is equipped with an efficient Intel Core i5 13420H processor and 16GB RAM, so essential office tasks, photo editing, browsing, and streaming won’t be a problem – no slowdowns or sluggishness here.

This is a budget-friendly configuration built around Intel’s Core i5-13420H, an 8-core, 12-thread chip from the 13th-gen Raptor Lake-H family, with four performance cores boosting up to 4.6GHz and four efficiency cores.

The 15.3in WUXGA (1920×1200) IPS panel uses a 16:10 aspect ratio, which gives you a bit more vertical space for documents and browsing than the more common 16:9 laptops in this price range. It’s rated at 300 nits with an anti-glare coating, with decent contrast and color accuracy (provided you calibrate it). That makes it ideal for creating images for, say, your work’s social media pages, though I wouldn’t recommend it for colour-critical tasks required by creative professionals.

16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD is a sensible balance for this price point — enough headroom for normal multitasking across browser tabs, office apps, and streaming without feeling cramped. The laptop weighs 1.59kg and measures 17.9mm thick, with Lenovo quoting up to 14.5 hours of battery life, though real-world use — especially on the Intel variant — will likely fall short of that figure.

Also consider

As a current high school student, the first thing I noticed about chemistry was that it was not only hard because of math or vocabulary. It was hard because so much of it was invisible.

In class, I could write a chemical formula. I could memorize that a molecule had a certain shape or that a reaction moved in a certain direction. But much of chemistry did not feel like something I could touch, move, test, or explore. The most important parts happened in a way I would never see.

A Two-Dimensional Perspective

Chemistry is a subject built on relationships. Atoms connect, electrons move, bonds form, molecules bend, acids and bases shift equilibrium, gases respond to pressure and temperature, and reactions balance because matter must be conserved. When those ideas stay flat on a page, students memorize answers without understanding the system behind them.

As a rising 12th-grade student at Suitland High School in Prince George’s County, Maryland, I set out to build a solution because I wanted a serious chemistry workspace students like me could use. I wanted something visual and interactive that could run on school devices without complicated setup — without the need for students to create accounts, download resources, or collect student data. I also wanted something that could open in a browser and allow students to begin learning right away.

Atomency started from a simple question: What would chemistry look like if students could build, manipulate and test ideas instead of only reading about them?

I began by building a workspace where students could create molecules and see structure-based information. From there, I added VSEPR-style analysis so students could connect formulas to molecular geometry instead of treating shapes as something to memorize from a chart. Then I kept expanding it: I incorporated reaction simulations, nuclear decay tools, kinetics tool, acid–base and pH tools, gas-law models and assignment workflows to help teachers bring the platform into the classroom.

I built all of this independently while still being a high school student. That meant I was not just designing a product in theory; I was building from inside the problem. I knew what it felt like to sit in a classroom and need a better way to see what was happening. I knew what it felt like when a concept almost made sense, but the missing piece was the ability to interact with it.

A Three-Dimensional Solution

Students usually receive educational tools instead of imagining or creating them. But students notice things adults can miss. We notice when a website is too slow on a school Chromebook. We notice when a platform requires an account before we can try it. We notice when a tool looks impressive in a presentation but does not align with the way a classroom actually works.

Access shaped how I built Atomency. A chemistry platform should not require expensive software or perfect devices. It should not require students to provide personal information. It should not assume all students have tutors, can pay to access resources, and have personal laptops powerful enough to run advanced programs. If a tool is meant to help students, it should reflect students’ reality.

For me, that reality was a public school classroom where students needed more ways to understand chemistry. Chemistry can become a gatekeeping subject. If students fall behind early, later topics become harder because everything builds on earlier ideas. Atomic structure connects to bonding. Bonding connects to molecular geometry. Geometry connects to polarity. Reactions connect to stoichiometry and equilibrium. Once one link in that chain breaks, the whole subject can start to feel impossible.

I wanted Atomency to help repair those links by making the relationships clearer. Instead of only telling students that a molecule has a certain shape, the platform can help them see how structure connects to geometry. Instead of only practicing reaction-balancing in steps, students can work with reactions as systems. Instead of treating acids, bases, gases, kinetics and nuclear decay as separate units, students can see chemistry as a connected field where patterns repeat in different forms.

Early usage showed me that students and teachers were looking for a platform like this. Atomency’s aggregate GoatCounter analytics indicated 25,162 visits from Feb. 24 to May 24, 2026, with strong engagement in the builder and simulations, the molecular workspace where students can create molecules and see structure-based information. This mattered to me not because it made the platform look popular but because it showed that people were using the parts of the platform that matched the original reason I built it: to give students a place to experiment with chemistry visually.

Atomency has been featured by Eric Curts in Control Alt Achieve and mentioned by Middle School Matters. My AP Chemistry teacher, Dr. Glenn Soltes, described the platform as having meaningful instructional potential. These moments helped me understand that the platform was not just something I made for myself. Other educators could see value in it too.

Still, the biggest lesson I learned was that students should be taken seriously as designers of learning environments. We are close to the problems because we experience them every day. When students say a tool is confusing, inaccessible, slow or disconnected from the way they learn, that feedback is not a complaint. It is design information.

Educational technology should not only be built for students but also with students and by students. That does not mean every student must become a software developer. It means schools and education companies should recognize that students have insight, creativity and lived experiences that can improve tools inside real classrooms.

I built Atomency because I needed a better way to learn chemistry. But as the platform grew, it became about something larger than my own classroom. It became a way to ask what happens when a student is trusted not only as a learner but also as a builder.

Chemistry became easier for me to understand when I could make it visible. Maybe school technology can become better when student experience becomes more visible too.

Friendly home robots have been the dream of sci-fi for a long time. Docile, helpful machines that do your laundry, take out the trash, maybe make dinner, and clean up afterward too. But if robots are going to do all that, they’re going to need some hands to make all that happen.

1X, a Norwegian-American robotics company, today revealed details about the five-finger hands attached to its soft, helpful robot companion, Neo.

The hands are built with actuators designed to replicate how tendons in the arms move human hands. 1X says this gives Neo’s hands 25 degrees of freedom of movement, which is just a little less than the 27 degrees of freedom human hands usually have. Cameras and AI smarts help sort out the broader context of what the fingers are trying to grab. It’s a dexterous mix that gives the Neo bot a very broad range of motion. 1X says the hands can grip odd shapes and detect when something is slipping out of its grip. The fingers can also move extremely quickly and hyperextend in directions human digits can’t. They also have an IP68 waterproof rating, meaning the robot can wash its own hands.

It’s a range that the engineers have aimed to dial in to align with what a human can actually do. Jonathan Terfurth, 1X’s director of actuators and hands, says the range of motion might even be better than a human’s, enabling it to open doors, lift heavy objects, and even plug itself in when its battery starts to die.

“You want to be able to operate with a human who has never worked or interfaced with a robot, and you still want it to be safe and compliant and soft,” Terfurth says. “Range of motion can be a bit extreme, but we try to be very close to what humans can do so that we can live in the world.”

Together, this is part of a growing ChatGPT-esque moment for robotics, where bots have gone from clumsy claw machines to capable handlers, able to gently carry fragile objects and become increasingly helpful for managing menial daily tasks and boring office chores.

The humanoid robot market tends to be dominated by tough, hulking Terminators meant to be paraded out for some defense industry contract or another. 1X is taking a different tack for its robot. The Neo is a soft, supple robot wrapped in a 3D lattice shell. Its design is inspired by characters like Baymax, the affable robot from the Disney movie Big Hero 6. In limited quantities, early access pricing is $20,000 or $500 per month to have it in your home, though the lump sum will prioritize delivery for 2026.

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab is giving Rush’s classic 1974 to 1985 studio run the audiophile treatment with a multi-year reissue campaign on UltraDisc One-Step vinyl, 45RPM 2LP sets, and Hybrid SACD, beginning this summer with Fly By Night and A Farewell to Kings. I have not stopped grinning since seeing Grace Under Pressure, Moving Pictures, and Power Windows on the schedule. Take my money, MoFi. Take it now.

Rush fans have spent decades arguing over pressing variations, bass pedals, drum fills, Ayn Rand references, and whether Signals still gets treated unfairly because the keyboards started ordering bottle service. Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab has now handed them fresh material to debate for the next 30 years.

By the time the arguments over these new editions are finally settled, Geddy and Lerxst may well be reunited with the Professor somewhere beyond the drum riser — or, more appropriately, in some old-school basement in Willowdale, Ontario, where the amps are too loud, the time signatures are suspicious, and nobody has any interest in playing it safe.

This is not the entire Rush catalog, and it does not include the band’s later Atlantic-era albums. The series focuses on the first decade-plus of Rush’s recorded evolution, from the bluesy hard rock of Rush and Fly By Night to the widescreen progressive architecture of 2112, A Farewell to Kings, Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, Signals, Grace Under Pressure, and Power Windows.

According to the announcement, most titles in the series will be released as UltraDisc One-Step vinyl sets, while every title in the campaign will receive a numbered Hybrid SACD edition. The first wave begins in summer 2026 with Fly By Night and A Farewell to Kings, followed by Rush in fall 2026. The remaining titles are scheduled to roll out through 2028.

The timing is not exactly subtle, and that is the obvious part. Rush are back in the public conversation in a way many fans probably never expected after the final R40 show at the Forum in Los Angeles on August 1, 2015, and Neil Peart’s death in January 2020. The Fifty Something tour is not Rush trying to pretend nothing changed. It is Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson stepping back onto the stage together after 11 years, carrying the music forward while honoring the friend, lyricist, drummer, and impossible standard who made the whole thing feel larger than rock music.

The tour is presently on a short interruption after Geddy Lee was diagnosed with laryngitis and bronchitis, forcing the postponement of two Fort Worth shows originally scheduled for June 30 and July 2. Those concerts have been rescheduled for July 11 and July 13, with the tour currently listed to continue in Chicago on July 16.

That makes the MoFi announcement feel less like a random catalog exercise and more like a very calculated moment. Rush are selling tickets, reintroducing their music to arena audiences, honoring Neil Peart’s legacy, and bringing Anika Nilles into one of the most intimidating drum chairs in rock history. At the same time, MoFi is preparing premium physical editions for the exact period of the catalog most likely to send Rush collectors into pre-order behavior normally associated with emergency storm preparation.

Pricing and Formats

MoFi’s current product listings confirm the pricing for the initial releases.

Fly By Night is listed as a numbered 180g 45RPM 2LP set priced at $59.99, with the numbered Hybrid SACD priced at $34.99.

A Farewell to Kings is getting the deluxe treatment first, with MoFi listing it as a limited UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set priced at $125. The Hybrid SACD edition is listed at $34.99.

The 1974 debut Rush, scheduled for fall 2026, is listed as a numbered 180g 45RPM 2LP set at $59.99, with the Hybrid SACD priced at $34.99.

That gives buyers a fairly clear pricing structure for the first wave: standard 45RPM 2LP editions at $59.99, Hybrid SACDs at $34.99, and UltraDisc One-Step titles at $125 when the album receives that treatment. Future title pricing has not yet been fully confirmed by MoFi, so assuming every later One-Step title will remain at the same price would be a little too enthusiastic, even for Rush fans who can count in 7/8 before coffee.

The Mastering Chain Matters

There is another important detail here: MoFi is being specific about the mastering chain on the listed vinyl titles. The Fly By Night 45RPM vinyl page lists the source chain as “1/4” / 15 IPS analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe.” The Rush debut vinyl listing specifies “1/4” / 15 IPS Dolby A analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe.”

That means these are not AAA vinyl reissues. They are sourced from analog master tapes with a DSD 256 step in the chain before the analog console and lacquer cutting. For some collectors, that will be a deal-breaker. For others, it will be less important than the quality of the tapes, mastering choices, pressing quality, and whether Geddy Lee’s bass finally gets the scale and articulation it deserves without turning the upper midrange into a dental procedure.

MoFi also says A Farewell to Kings was mastered at its California studio from tape boxes marked with both “master” and “safety copy,” pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and limited to 5,000 numbered copies in the UltraDisc One-Step 45RPM 2LP box set configuration.

Why These Albums Matter

The 1974 to 1985 window is the logical Rush era for this kind of treatment. It captures the band’s most dramatic transformation: the raw bar-band thunder of Rush, the arrival of Neil Peart on Fly By Night, the growing ambition of Caress of Steel, the breakthrough scale of 2112, the fantasy and architecture of A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres, the leaner precision of Permanent Waves, and the commercial and sonic peak of Moving Pictures.

Then things get more complicated, which is usually where Rush became more interesting. Signals, Grace Under Pressure, and Power Windows pushed the band deeper into synthesizers, sequencers, colder textures, and more layered production. Some listeners still want to pretend that was some kind of betrayal. They are wrong, but at least they are persistent.

For MoFi, those albums present different challenges. The earlier titles need weight, separation, and better organization without sanding off the urgency. The later albums need clarity and space without making the production sound sterile. Rush records are not supposed to sound polite. They need precision, but they also need velocity.

2026 Rush Audiophile Reissue Schedule

• Fly By Night (1975): 45RPM 2LP and Hybrid SACD, coming summer 2026
• A Farewell to Kings (1977): UltraDisc One-Step 2LP and Hybrid SACD, coming summer 2026
• Rush (1974): 45RPM 2LP and Hybrid SACD, coming fall 2026

2027 to 2028 Rush Audiophile Reissues

• Caress of Steel (1975): 45RPM 2LP and Hybrid SACD
• 2112 (1976): UltraDisc One-Step and Hybrid SACD
• Hemispheres (1978): UltraDisc One-Step and Hybrid SACD
• Permanent Waves (1980): UltraDisc One-Step and Hybrid SACD
• Moving Pictures (1981): UltraDisc One-Step and Hybrid SACD
• Signals (1982): UltraDisc One-Step and Hybrid SACD
• Grace Under Pressure (1984): 45RPM 2LP and Hybrid SACD
• Power Windows (1985): 45RPM 2LP and Hybrid SACD

The Bottom Line

The MoFi Rush series arrives at exactly the right moment. Rush are back on the road, the Fifty Something tour has reignited interest in the band’s catalog, and the presence of Anika Nilles has added a new chapter to a story many fans assumed had ended with Neil Peart’s final performance.

The audiophile angle also makes sense. Rush records are built on musicianship, density, movement, and tiny details that disappear quickly when the mastering gets too compressed, too bright, or too polite. If MoFi gets this right, the series could become one of the most important rock reissue campaigns of the next few years.

It will not be inexpensive. The SACDs are the most accessible path at $34.99 each, while the 45RPM 2LP sets are priced at $59.99 and the One-Step titles begin at $125. But this is Rush, not a forgotten soft-rock side quest from 1978. The audience is there, the tour has put the band back in the spotlight, and the catalog deserves serious treatment.

Just remember: all titles are getting Hybrid SACD editions, but not every album is getting the UltraDisc One-Step treatment. That difference matters. So does the DSD 256 step in the vinyl mastering chain. Rush fans notice details. Our review copies are expected shortly.

Where to pre-order: mofi.com

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