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Satellite imagery shows the extent of the massive amount of work that has been done in the past year to restore more than 20 million square feet of runways and other World War II-era infrastructure at historic North Field on the U.S. island of Tinian in the Western Pacific. The airfield was originally established as a launchpad for B-29 bomber raids on Imperial Japan, including the ones that saw atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The facility has been refurbished to again offer a critical power projection node with its original grid-like layout presenting targeting challenges for a modern opponent, all of which could be especially valuable in a future high-end fight in the region against China.

A series of satellite images of North Field taken between Dec. 3, 2023, and Jan. 29, 2025, by Planet Labs starkly illustrates just how extensive the reconstitution of the derelict airfield has become. The images, as can seen below, show the progressive clearing of the previously overgrown runways, taxiways, and other infrastructure.

The New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

The new guidance follows President Trump’s demand that the Health and Human Services Department align with his executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports.

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It says a lot about America’s fast fading legacy media establishment leaders that they’ve decided to use up the last shreds of their credibility to glorify censorship.

This dynamic is exactly what’s been playing out following Vice President JD Vance’s speech in Munich, Germany, on Friday. In that speech, he excoriated European governments for, among other things, retreating from the principle of free speech.

Vance pointed to specific examples where Western European governments trampled on free speech rights, like how the Germans have raided the homes of people who expressed “anti-feminist” commentary on the internet or how British authorities arrested a man for praying at an abortion clinic.

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A bill that could help Indiana absorb nearly three-dozen Illinois counties breezed through committee Monday — although a border shakeup appears unlikely.

Republican House Speaker Todd Huston’s proposal would create an Indiana-Illinois Boundary Adjustment Commission tasked with exploring the secession and transfer of counties that have already voted to leave the state of Illinois.

Huston said House Bill 1008, part of the majority caucus’ priority agenda, seeks to show disgruntled Illinois residents that Indiana “welcomes” those counties “to consider joining our state.”

Odd how you never find ‘secession movements’ seeking to leave a Red State for a Blue State.

Actually, it’s not odd at all.

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U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman is now in port in Greece for repairs following a collision with the cargo ship M/V Besiktas-M this past week. The service is continuing to assess the full extent of damage to the flattop, which is in the middle of a deployment that has already included combat operations in and around the Red Sea.

The Navy announced yesterday that Truman had arrived at Naval Support Activity (NSA) Souda Bay in Greece for what it has described as an Emergent Repair Availability (ERAV). The carrier had made a port stop in Souda Bay just days before the collision, which occurred on Feb. 12 in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Egypt as it was about to enter the Suez Canal. The incident remains under investigation.

The photographs are better than one normally sees in such news reports.

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If Florence Stoker had had her way, I wouldn’t be writing this post. Bram Stoker’s widow tried to destroy all copies of the 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, and she was very nearly successful. She did have her reasons.

The film is very clearly a rip-off of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. It’s a great novel, using the epistolary (letter writing) format very well. Not only can it still give a reader chills, it’s quite surprisingly a Christian story. Count Dracula as a character is still easily one of the most widely recognized characters in fiction.

Fred Saberhagen did a wonderful series of novels using Dracula as the protagonist.

German screenwriter Henrik Galeen and director F.W. Murnau made no effort to hide the fact that they were using the Stoker novel as a blueprint for their story. Not only is it a vampire story, but such plot elements as a real estate agent going to a foreign land, a death ship, and a Transylvanian count whose nemesis is a scholarly doctor are clear steals.

They did change names, such as Dracula becoming Orlock, but even the original credits acknowledge the debt to Stoker. They never officially sought permission or made payment to the Stoker estate. It was a naive but costly mistake.

Florence brought the filmmakers to court (I assume a German court), which ruled that all copies of the film were to be destroyed. Fortunately for cinematic history, not everyone followed the court order, and some copies survived. It is a black and white, silent film that holds up as a great work. The German Expressionist set design and cinematography are beautiful and unsettling. The villain, played by the mysterious actor Max Schreck, is hideous and imposing. (Another film worth watching is Shadow of the Vampire, a Gothic drama about the making of Nosferatu that theorizes that Schreck really was a vampire.) And the tale leads to a thrilling, sunlit conclusion.

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President Donald Trump is calling for the reversal of several Biden-era green energy regulations on household appliances.

Trump announced in a Tuesday post on Truth Social that he was directing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Secretary Lee Zeldin to begin reversing water standard regulations on household appliances including sinks, dishwashers, showers and washing machines. Trump’s announcement comes after he has enacted a slew of executive actions since returning to the White House aimed at overturning many Biden-era green energy policies.

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After saying it would run out of funds by March, California’s last-resort fire insurance provider will impose a special charge of $1 billion on insurance companies — which will in turn pass the costs along to homeowners — the first such move in more than three decades.

The state Insurance Department today approved a request from the provider, the FAIR Plan, to impose the charge and ensure it stays solvent as it covers claims from victims of the Los Angeles County fires, the department said in an order by Commissioner Ricardo Lara.

Most California home and fire insurance customers will see temporary fees added to their insurance bills as part of the charge, known as an assessment — marking the first time insurance companies will have imposed an assessment directly on customers.

The FAIR Plan is a pool of insurers required by law to provide fire insurance to property owners who can’t find insurance elsewhere. Its customer base has grown dramatically in the past several years as insurance companies have increasingly refused to write or renew policies in the state, citing increased risk of wildfires. It now has more than 451,000 policies.

Many LA fire victims have insurance through the FAIR Plan. Residents of the Pacific Palisades, where thousands of structures burned last month, held 85% more FAIR Plan policies in September than they had a year prior.

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The New York Stock Exchange, part of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE: ICE), a leading global provider of technology and data, today announced plans to launch NYSE Texas, a fully electronic equities exchange, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Pending the effectiveness of regulatory filings, NYSE Chicago will reincorporate in Texas and be renamed NYSE Texas, offering companies the opportunity to list their securities on NYSE Texas.

“As the state with the largest number of NYSE listings, representing over $3.7 trillion in market value for our community, Texas is a market leader in fostering a pro-business atmosphere,” said Lynn Martin, President, NYSE Group. “We are delighted to expand our presence in the Lone Star State, which plays a key role in driving our U.S. economy forward.”

Building on the NYSE’s 230 years of experience as the world’s leading exchange operator, the launch of NYSE Texas will provide public companies with a listing and trading venue centered within the vibrant economy of the southwestern U.S. With this launch, NYSE Texas will deliver a listing exchange to companies incorporated both in Texas and around the world that are attracted to Texas’ growing population, strong economy and business-friendly regulatory agenda. The NYSE plans to make regulatory and corporate filings to effect the reincorporation in the near term.

Everybody’s moving from blue states to red states.

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Human capital—encompassing cognitive skills and personality traits—is critical for labor market success, yet the personality component remains difficult to measure at scale. Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and comprehensive LinkedIn microdata, we extract the Big 5 personality traits from facial images of 96,000 MBA graduates, and demonstrate that this novel “Photo Big 5” predicts school rank, compensation, job seniority, industry choice, job transitions, and career advancement. Using administrative records from top-tier MBA programs, we find that the Photo Big 5 exhibits only modest correlations with cognitive measures like GPA and standardized test scores, yet offers comparable incremental predictive power for labor outcomes. Unlike traditional survey-based personality measures, the Photo Big 5 is readily accessible and potentially less susceptible to manipulation, making it suitable for wide adoption in academic research and hiring processes. However, its use in labor market screening raises ethical concerns regarding statistical discrimination and individual autonomy.

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“Exterior damage of USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) viewed from a ship’s rigid-hull inflatable boat following a collision with merchant vessel Besiktas-M, Feb. 12, while operating in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt. USS Harry S. Truman, the flagship of the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (HSTCSG), is on a scheduled deployment in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations supporting U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa to defend U.S., Allied and partner interests.”

The picture, a full uncropped version of which is seen below, shows multiple large tears through a sponson on the starboard side of the stern end of the ship near one of the aircraft elevators. Whether there is damage elsewhere on the ship is unknown.

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The origins of COVID-19 remain uncertain despite extensive research. A new study published in Advances in Biomarker Sciences and Technology (ABST) takes an AI-driven approach to analyze DNA methylation patterns at 865,859 CpG sites in blood samples from early COVID-19 patients.

Led by Zhengjun Zhang from the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Statistics, the study used max-logistic intelligence to identify strong genetic links. The findings suggest that COVID-19 may have resulted from the natural fusion of two rare infectious diseases — glanders and Sennetsu fever — combined with common human illnesses.

Which, of course, doesn’t speak to whether it arose naturally or by means of ‘gain of function’ research by ill-intentioned people.

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Scientists have uncovered a new way that cells control their genes — and it may rewrite our understanding of “epigenetics.”

Epigenetics is a form of DNA modification that doesn’t affect the DNA sequence itself. Instead, it describes when chemical groups attach to specific genes, thus switching those genes on or off, or else changing the 3D shape of chromosomes.

Now, in a study published Jan. 17 in the journal Cell, scientists have uncovered a whole new method of gene regulation that involves epigenetic tweaks made to both DNA and its molecular cousin RNA, at the same time.

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Killer whales (Orcinus orca) have been documented to prey on white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), in some cases causing localised shark displacement and triggering ecological cascades. Notably, a series of such predation events have been reported from South Africa over the last decade, with killer whales specifically targeting sharks’ liver. However, observations of these interactions are rare, and knowledge of their frequency across the world’s oceans remains limited. In October 2023, a 4.7?m (total length) white shark carcass washed ashore in southeastern Australia, coinciding with reports from citizen scientists of killer whales hunting a large, unidentified prey item in the area. Visual inspection of the carcass revealed that the liver, digestive, and reproductive organs were missing, and the presence of four distinctive bite wounds, one of which was characteristic of killer whale liver extraction as seen in South Africa. Genomic analyses performed on swabs taken from the bite wounds confirmed the presence of killer whale DNA in the major bite area, while the other bites were embedded with genetic material from the scavenging broadnose sevengill shark (Notorynchus cepedianus). These results provide confirmed evidence of killer whale predation on white sharks in Australia and the likely selective consumption of the liver, suggesting predations of this nature are more globally prevalent than currently assumed.

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After Oklahoma approved a request by the Catholic Church to open a charter school in 2023, lawsuits quickly followed. Courts at both the state and federal levels ruled against the church, finding that a publicly funded school promoting religion would be unconstitutional.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up the case, signaling that the justices are willing to consider overturning a longstanding legal precedent protecting the separation of church and state. If the court allows St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to become the first government-funded religious school in the country, the consequences for religious education — including for Jewish schools — could be far-reaching.

The school’s backers argue that charter schools should be allowed to teach religion because they are not technically government institutions. They also contend that as long as a state permits charter schools — and nearly all states do — excluding only religious ones violates the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.

In St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, the fate of the school will be decided by a court whose conservative supermajority has steadily expanded religion’s role in public life. The court previously ruled in favor of a public high school football coach who wanted to pray with students on the field, and has allowed government voucher funding for religious schools.

New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

When Dr. C. Michael Gibson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, goes to heart disease meetings, he can’t help noticing a change.

“We will sit around at dinner and halfway through the meal, we will simultaneously push our plates away,” Dr. Gibson said. “We look at each other and laugh and say, ‘You, too?’”

They share what is becoming an open secret: They tried for years to control their weight but are now taking the new obesity drugs manufactured by Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

Dr. Robert Califf, the former chief of the Food and Drug Administration, says he hardly recognizes his colleagues. So many are now so thin.

“Looking good,” he says he tells his fellow cardiologists at conferences and meetings.

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Two states advanced proposals this week to amend their constitutions to require citizenship for voting.

The South Dakota Senate voted 33-2 on Tuesday for an amendment banning noncitizen voting.

Two days later, the Kansas House of Representatives voted 90-28 for a similar amendment to its state’s constitution.

Newsweek, a Voice of the Crust.

Delaware has long been considered a business-friendly state due to its corporate tax advantages, and is home to multiple large companies. However, backlash against the First State has intensified after Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s record-breaking $56 billion compensation package was excessive.

Musk, who has become increasingly influential in both the political and corporate world, urged companies to pull out of the Democratic-led state. In February 2024, he announced that SpaceX was relocating its incorporation from Delaware to Texas, following Tesla’s corporate move from California to Texas in 2021.

The Register.

Scientists analyzing samples from asteroid Bennu have found something remarkable: Despite being a cold, lifeless rubble pile that formed around 65 million years ago, it holds a rich inventory of organic molecules – key ingredients for life.

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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced a bill with 10 other Senate Republicans that would allow victims of migrant crime in sanctuary cities and/or states to file suit against those jurisdictions.

Tillis introduced S 185, Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act of 2025, on Jan. 23.

“For far too long, we have watched local jurisdictions in North Carolina and across the country ignore the lawful notification and detainer requests made by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents and instead release dangerous criminals back into their communities, putting innocent lives at risk,” Tillis said in a release. “I am committed to working with President [Donald] Trump to end illegal immigration and fight sanctuary cities that prioritize reckless, lawless policies over public safety.”

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Despite the Biden-Harris administration’s “whole of government” attempt to increase unionization, the percentage of American workers belonging to unions notched down each of the past four years of their administration.

Marking yet another record low, 9.9% of American workers belonged to unions in 2023. This follows a steady decline from 13.4% at the turn of the century in 2000, and from a high of about 33.5% in the mid-1950s.

While the media reports have documented new unionization efforts—including some successes—in recent years, those newly-unionized jobs haven’t been enough to replace unionized job losses and other workers choosing to ditch their unions.

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Is fruit good for you or bad for you? Why is everybody bad-mouthing High Fructose Corn Syrup?

I am currently doing a ketogenic diet, and I move fruit, so I had Questions. This podcast gave me answers.

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President Donald Trump’s weekend tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and China. He stated that these tariffs are necessary to “protect” Americans from “illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl,” asserting that this “extraordinary threat constitutes a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.”

By 10:23 ET, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum capitulated to Trump’s tariffs and decided to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops immediately to the Mexico-US border to halt the flow of fentanyl and illegal aliens.

Financial markets bounced on Sheinbaum’s headlines after a gloomy red morning across equities, currencies, bonds, and crypto.

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Trump signed an Executive Order to build an Iron Dome for America, which aims to defend the homeland “against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks.”

And about fucking time, too.

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Homeschool families in Virginia celebrated a victory Thursday after the Virginia state Senate backed away from a bill that threatened religious exemptions for homeschoolers.

SB 1031 sought to get rid of an exemption that permits families in the state to homeschool their children because of their religious convictions. After initially voting to pass the bill, the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee acted on a motion to reconsider and voted 13-2 to pass by indefinitely on the bill, meaning the bill will not go to the Senate floor unless the committee takes the bill up again.

This comes after Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, said he would veto the bill in a statement to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

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First Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago following the presidential election. Then, he appointed UFC CEO Dana White (Trump’s friend) to the company’s board, dismantled its woke fact-checking system, and now is reportedly mulling over relocating Meta’s legal residence from Delaware to Texas—a state that has positioned itself as a pro-business alternative to heavily-regulated blue states run by the radical left.

Wall Street Journal report reveals that Meta has been discussing a potential move to reincorporate outside of Delaware. Sources familiar with the matter said Texas had been heavily considered for the company’s new legal domicile but noted there would be no changes to its corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

But tomorrow may rain, so I’ll follow the sun….

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The Treasury Department withdrew the United States from a global climate alliance that was launched to push the financial sector to adopt green mandates.

The so-called Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System was originally created to pressure banks and financial institutions to meet sweeping global climate targets, many of which have been set during United Nations summits. The Treasury Department said late Thursday that the alliance’s mission doesn’t align with the Trump administration’s “priorities to grow the U.S. economy and American jobs.”

The announcement is part of the Trump administration’s move to exit what it considers to be harmful global climate agreements. And it is the latest signal to the international community that the United States under Trump’s leadership will seek to prioritize domestic energy production over commitments to bolster green energy and fight global warming.

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Teach them how to learn, not what to learn.

That’s the key concept for classical education, which is enjoying a national resurgence, with Florida leading the way.

Classical education advocates hope their movement will expand from private religious and chartered learning institutions to struggling public schools.

Although What To Learn is important. It doesn’t much matter knowing how to learn if one doesn’t actually make the effort.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Amazon has recently made several major internal changes, including removing statements advocating for LGBTQ rights and racial equity from its public listing of corporate policies. This is a bold move for the second-largest employer in the world, which also just announced a documentary with First Lady Melania Trump.

The deletion of previous statements pledging to commit to “equity for Black people” and “LGBTQ+ rights” were removed from a page on the company’s website in December, as were any mentions of the word “transgender,” according to The Washington Post.

Take the red pill, Jeff!

Reuters.

Good. Let him spend his money rather than stick the taxpayers with it.

LiveScience.

Human populations that left Africa evolved quickly whereas Neanderthals stayed the same, according to an analysis of blood group systems.

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Follow The Science! Until it changes….

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A clandestine tunnel discovered on the US-Mexico border allowing entry from Ciudad Juarez into the Texan city of El Paso will be sealed by Mexican authorities, an army official said Saturday, adding that its construction was under investigation.

Discovered on January 10 by US and Mexican security agencies, the tunnel measures approximately 300 meters (1,000 feet) in length on the Mexican side and is equipped with lighting, ventilation and is reinforced to prevent collapses.

Hidden in a storm sewer system operating between both cities, its access is about 1.8 meters high and 1.2 meters wide (6 feet high and 4 feet wide), making for easy passage of people or contraband, said General Jose Lemus, commander of Ciudad Juarez’s military garrison, which is guarding the tunnel.

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research team led by scientists at Northwestern University has developed the first-ever two-dimensional mechanically interlocked material with high flexibility and strength. In the future, this could be used to develop lightweight yet high-performance body armor and other such tough materials, a press release said.

It was in the 1980s that Fraser Stoddart, then a chemist at Northwestern University, first introduced the concept of mechanical bonds. Stoddart then expanded the role of these bonds into molecular machines by enabling functions like switching, rotating, contracting, and expanding in multiple ways and using them to develop interlocked structures, which also won him the Nobel Prize in 2016.

Researchers have been working on developing mechanically interlocked molecules with polymers for decades but have failed. “In organic chemistry, it is pretty straightforward to form so-called “medium-sized rings” that are 5-8 atoms around. But such rings are too small to thread another molecule through them,” explained William Dichtel, a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University in an email to Interesting Engineering.

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At TU Graz, a pioneering research group is leveraging artificial intelligence to drastically enhance the way nanostructures are constructed.

They aim to develop a self-learning AI system that can autonomously position molecules with unprecedented precision, potentially revolutionizing the creation of complex molecular structures and quantum corrals for advanced electronics.

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This is one of the most interesting things that was demonstrated at CES this year. Evidently it doesn’t vent to the outside; it just cleans the air and dumps it back into your kitchen.

It’s unclear how effective it would be — JennAir is the poster child for failed potential in this space — but I love that people are thinking about ways to solve the Kitchen Stink problem.

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The Nuwa Pen utilizes three tiny cameras to capture what you write – on paper! – and save your notes in an accompanying app. I demoed the game-changing device at CES 2025.

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2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the iconic Terminator franchise, which has captivated audiences with its thrilling storyline and futuristic concepts. One intriguing question that often arises when watching these films is: How does a time-traveling robot, like the Terminator, never have to worry about running out of battery power during its mission?

Maybe in the future depicted in the movie, they possess advanced technology that allows them to operate with remarkable efficiency and longevity.

The future is now. On January 8, Betavolt Technology, the Beijing-based start-up, announced the successful development of the world’s first micro-atomic energy battery. In a press conference, company CEO Zhang Wei revealed they have created an innovative new power source that combines nickel-63 isotope decay and China’s first diamond semiconductor module. This integration allows the battery to be dramatically miniaturized while maintaining low production costs.

At just 15x15x5 mm, smaller than a coin, the BB100 battery produces 100 microwatts of energy safely and stably for 50 years without recharging. The nuclear battery generates power every second and minute, producing 8.64 joules of energy per day and 3,153 joules of energy per year. The modular design means multiple batteries can be connected to deliver higher output. The stable, zero-emission energy could help power AI and autonomous technologies driving China’s next revolution.

SciTechDaily.

Transitioning to a green economy demands significantly more critical metals—such as copper, rare earth elements, and cobalt—than current supplies can meet. To address this shortage, it is essential to discover new metal resources formed through different geological processes in previously unexplored regions.

New research published on January 8, 2025, in Nature, led by Dr. Chunfei Chen during his postdoctoral work with the Earth Evolution research group at Macquarie University, sheds light on where and how critical metals likely accumulate. The study identifies the margins of ancient continental cores as promising locations for these metal deposits and explains the geological mechanisms behind their formation.

“These cores are the thickest, bowl-shaped, parts of tectonic plates. Melts that form below their centers will flow upwards and outwards towards the edges, so that volcanic activity is common around their edges,” says Chen.

WIRED, a Voice of the Crust.

The recent spate of discoveries has both compounded the mystery of superconductivity and heightened the optimism. “It seems to be, in materials, that superconductivity is everywhere,” said Matthew Yankowitz, a physicist at the University of Washington.

The discoveries stem from a recent revolution in materials science: All three new instances of superconductivity arise in devices assembled from flat sheets of atoms. These materials display unprecedented flexibility; at the touch of a button, physicists can switch them between conducting, insulating, and more exotic behaviors—a modern form of alchemy that has supercharged the hunt for superconductivity.

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Transgenic mice with increased amyloid-? (A?) production show several aspects of Alzheimer’s disease, including A? deposition and memory impairment. By repeatedly treating these A?-forming mice with scanning ultrasound, Leinenga and Götz now demonstrate that A? is removed and memory is restored as revealed by improvement in three memory tasks. These improvements were achieved without the use of any therapeutic agent, and the scanning ultrasound treatment did not induce any apparent damage to the mouse brain. The authors then showed that scanning ultrasound activated resident microglial cells that took up A? into their lysosomes. These findings suggest that repeated scanning ultrasound may be a noninvasive method with potential for treating Alzheimer’s disease.

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At the heart of this effort is the tokamak reactor design, which uses magnetic fields to confine plasma and maintain the necessary conditions for fusion. A critical challenge has been managing the plasma edge instabilities, but recent breakthroughs in understanding how energetic particles interact with these instabilities suggest promising methods for improving reactor performance.

Yeah, well, call me when it starts pumping electricity into the grid.

Actually, don’t call me until I can put one in my back yard.

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Greater torque and power. Lower cost and weight.

It will be interessting to see whether these things work out in practice. If they do, it could be huge.

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The House of Representatives has passed the Laken Riley Act with a vote of 264–159. Almost all Republicans and 48 Democrats united to push the bill through the lower chamber of Congress.

The legislation requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants who have committed certain crimes, such as theft, burglary, or shoplifting.

It also allows states to sue the federal government for injunctive relief over “certain immigration-related decisions or alleged failures” if they resulted in harm to that state.

These can include the failure to detain an individual who has already been ordered to be deported, or neglecting to fulfill vetting requirements for immigrants seeking to enter the United States.

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There’s electricity in the air over at the University of Massachusetts Amherst — both the literal and metaphorical varieties.

A team of engineers at the institution have discovered a method of successfully harvesting energy from air humidity in a predictable and continuous manner, and they say the technology can be scaled up and applied broadly. They published their findings last month [January 2023] in the journal Advanced Materials.

“This is very exciting,” lead author Xiaomeng Liu said in a UMass Amherst news release. “We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air.”

FreeThink.

Tiny “biobots” made from human windpipe cells encouraged damaged neural tissue to repair itself in a lab experiment — potentially foreshadowing a future in which creations like this patrol our bodies, healing damage, delivering drugs, and more.

The background: In a study published in 2020, researchers at Tufts University and the University of Vermont (UVM) harvested and incubated skin cells from frog embryos until they were tiny balls.

They then sculpted the spheres into specific shapes — dictated by an algorithm — and added layers of cardiac stem cells to them in precise locations.

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In September, Canon shipped the first commercial version of a technology that could one day upend the making of the most advanced silicon chips. Called nanoimprint lithography (NIL), it’s capable of patterning circuit features as small as 14 nanometers—enabling logic chips on par with Intel, AMD, and Nvidia processors now in mass production.

The NIL system offers advantages that may challenge the US $150 million machines that dominate today’s advanced chipmaking today, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography scanners. If Canon is correct, its machines will eventually deliver EUV-quality chips at a fraction of the cost.

The company’s approach is entirely different to EUV systems, which are made exclusively by Netherlands-based ASML. The Dutch company uses a complex process that starts with kilowatt-class lasers to blasting molten droplets of tin into a plasma that glows with a 13.5 nanometer wavelength. This light is then steered through a vacuum chamber by specialized optics and bounced off a patterned mask onto a silicon wafer to fix the pattern onto the wafer.

In contrast, Canon’s system, which was shipped to Defense Department-backed R&D consortium the Texas Institute for Electronics, seems almost comically simple. Put simply, it stamps the circuit pattern onto the wafer.

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What if a clinician could 3D print something through your skin, constructing an implant or replacement organ underneath layers of tissue? The world of medicine would be transformed: a host of surgical procedures, which come with a variety of risks, could be performed without ever lifting a scalpel.

A collaborative, NIH-funded team is working to make this Star Trek-like fiction a reality. Their work, published today in Science, outlines a method to print biocompatible structures through thick, multi-layered tissues. The principle? Focused ultrasound, combined with a novel ultrasound-sensitive ink.

“Focused ultrasound has been used for decades to treat a wide variety of conditions, underscoring its safety and utility as a clinical tool,” said Randy King, Ph.D., a program director in the Division of Applied Science & Technology at NIBIB. “This potential new application, built on years of technology advancements, could set the stage for something previously thought impossible: through-tissue 3D ultrasound printing.”

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When a pregnant woman had her blood sampled back in 1972, doctors discovered it was mysteriously missing a surface molecule found on all other known red blood cells at the time.

After 50 years, this strange molecular absence finally led to researchers from the UK and Israel describing a new blood group system in humans. In September, the team published their paper on the discovery.

“It represents a huge achievement, and the culmination of a long team effort, to finally establish this new blood group system and be able to offer the best care to rare, but important, patients,” UK National Health Service hematologist Louise Tilley said, after nearly 20 years of personally researching this bloody quirk.

While we’re all more familiar with the ABO blood group system and the rhesus factor (that’s the plus or minus part), humans actually have many different blood group systems based on the wide variety of cell-surface proteins and sugars that coat our blood cells.

Our bodies use these antigen molecules, amongst their other purposes, as identification markers to separate ‘self’ from potentially harmful not-selves.