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A beach-cleaning robot called BeBot is sifting through sand in South Florida, extracting cigarette butts, plastic debris, and other trash too small for traditional systems to collect.

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A police officer “ambushed” Ashli Babbitt and fatally shot her during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to the Babbitt family attorney.

The lawyer, Terry Roberts, is preparing a wrongful death lawsuit seeking more than $10 million in damages against the Capitol Police and the officer who fired the shot that killed Babbitt, RealClear Investigations reported.

Roberts told RealClear Investigations he has gathered evidence indicating the Capitol Police plainclothes lieutenant remained silent before shooting Babbitt. That, despite the officer’s attorney saying his client screamed warnings for Babbitt to stop before opening fire as she attempted to breach a barricaded door inside the Capitol Building.

Roberts said the police officer not only failed to warn Babbitt, he “ambushed” her from the side where she could not see he had taken up position in a hall doorway and had drawn his weapon.

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“The present Democratic Party has left me,” Gaston County sheriff Alan Cloninger said in a Wednesday statement. Cloninger, who calls himself a “conservative Democrat, as my father and family have always been,” said the party he grew up in “no longer exists.”

Cloninger, who announced he is retiring at the end of his term, specifically criticized the national Democratic Party for demeaning police officers, who “protect the people and in return are given no respect,” which he called “wrong and unjustified.”

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Immune responses to pathogens involve many cells and proteins of the immune system. Early during an infection, these responses are non-specific, meaning that although they are directed at the pathogen, they are not specific to it. This is called innate immunity. Within a few days, adaptive immunity takes over; this immunity is specific to the invading pathogen. Adaptive immune responses include antibodies. A major goal of antibodies is to bind to the pathogen and prevent it from infecting, or entering, a cell. Antibodies that prevent entry into cells are called neutralizing antibodies. Many vaccines work by inducing neutralizing antibodies. However, not all antibody responses are created equal. Sometimes antibodies do not prevent cell entry and, on rare occasions, they may actually increase the ability of a virus to enter cells and cause a worsening of disease through a mechanism called antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).

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This March, a study published in JAMA put the egg back on the hot seat. It found that the amount of cholesterol in a bit less than two large eggs a day was associated with an increase in a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease and death by 17 percent and 18 percent, respectively. The risks grow with every additional half egg. It was a really large study, too — with nearly 30,000 participants — which suggests it should be fairly reliable.

So which is it? Is the egg good or bad? And, while we are on the subject, when so much of what we are told about diet, health, and weight loss is inconsistent and contradictory, can we believe any of it?

Quite frankly, probably not. Nutrition research tends to be unreliable because nearly all of it is based on observational studies, which are imprecise, have no controls, and don’t follow an experimental method. As nutrition-research critics Edward Archer and Carl Lavie have put it, “’Nutrition’ is now a degenerating research paradigm in which scientifically illiterate methods, meaningless data, and consensus-driven censorship dominate the empirical landscape.”

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No one likes to use bug spray. It smells bad, can cause respiratory troubles if you inhale it, and can damage your clothing. But getting mosquito bites can be even worse because the annoying insects also transmit diseases.

You probably know you’re better off covering up your skin, but mosquitoes can bite through lots of clothing. Now, there is another option. Researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh have created insecticide-free, mosquito-resistant clothing and tested it with actual bugs to confirm that it is bite-proof.

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So-called thermoelectric generators turn waste heat into electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions, providing what seems like a free lunch. But despite helping power the Mars rovers, the high cost of these devices has prevented their widespread use. Now, researchers have found a way to make cheap thermoelectrics that work just as well as the pricey kind. The work could pave the way for a new generation of greener car engines, industrial furnaces, and other energy-generating devices.

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By inserting a gene found in humans and animals into potato and rice plants, an international team of scientists increased the amount of food they grew by 50% in real world tests — and it also boosted photosynthesis and made them more resistant to drought.

Cue outrage (and lawsuits) by Eco-Nazis.

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Great … if it works.

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Gradient, a San Francisco-based startup, is designing an alternative that can help tackle the challenges of traditional air conditioners—and that doubles as an efficient heater when it’s cold. When it’s used both for heating and cooling, the device can shrink the carbon footprint of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) by 75%. As the grid shifts to renewable energy, that footprint could essentially be eliminated completely, so turning on the AC doesn’t have the ironic effect of making future heat waves more likely through global warming.

Both heating and cooling, customized to each room. No massively expensive and fragile central furnace/compressor system, no ducts snaking through your attic needing to be cleaned. If one craps out, it only affects that room, and can be replaced for the cost of one unit.

I’m in.

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According to Real Clear Politics, a “perfect storm” is brewing in California that could dramatically turn liberal Governor Gavin Newsom out of office in a recall election. But on the networks, you wouldn’t know that the polls have tightened yet again. ABC, CBS and NBC on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning ignored a brand new Los Angeles Times/UC Berkeley poll showing the “yes to recall” sentiment has risen to its highest level.

Fox News on Wednesday covered the big news as host Bill Hemmer explained, “It is getting very interesting in California. New poll shows the radio host Larry Elder emerging as the Republican frontrunner in a race to recall the Democratic governor Gavin Newsom and strong support for ousting the Democrat. Here are the numbers: Forty seven percent of likely voters back the effort. Fifty percent are against it.”

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In a new study in pigs, a close model for human hearts, the therapy led to new cell growth and enhanced cardiac function after a heart attack.

Well, if I’m ever a pig, I’ll keep that in mind.

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Able to leap small buildings in a single bound….

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Well. There it is.

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Cue protests and lawsuits by eco-Nazis.

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For the first time, researchers appear to have effectively treated a genetic disorder by directly injecting a CRISPR therapy into patients’ bloodstreams — overcoming one of the biggest hurdles to curing diseases with the gene editing technology.

The therapy appears to be astonishingly effective, editing nearly every cell in the liver to stop a disease-causing mutation.

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The urgency to remember a dangerous experience requires the brain to make a series of potentially dangerous moves: Neurons and other brain cells snap open their DNA in numerous locations — more than previously realized, according to a new study — to provide quick access to genetic instructions for the mechanisms of memory storage.

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Hah! Coffee drinkers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your brains!

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The Thales Gemalto Biometric Sensor Payment card (BSPC), the company explained, replaces the traditional PIN with an on-card fingerprint sensor and requires no modifications to existing point-of-sale (POS) payment terminals. Banks signing up to use it, though, will need to implement a procedure for enrolling users’ fingerprints onto the card’s secure element.

Thales claimed to have implemented the card with banks worldwide, boasting of 30 months of live trials and 10,000 users across nine countries including the UK. “Over 80 per cent of users interviewed confirmed they love it and feel it’s more convenient and provides greater security,” Frédéric Martinez, product line manager for biometric and advanced payment at Thales, told The Register.

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Rampaging cyber hoods will be using compromised machinery and systems to kill humans by 2025, according to cheerfully optimistic new predictions from research company Gartner.

The warning around what Gartner calls “operational technology (OT) environments” – which it described as “hardware and software that detects or causes a change, through the direct monitoring and/or control of industrial equipment, assets, processes and events”, so basically industry and infrastructure with moving parts – comes following an increase in assaults on such systems, frequently in connection to ransomware attacks or simple state-sponsored hooliganism.

While such attacks can be dangerous, any threat they currently pose is typically a secondary effect of the avarice of the perpetrators: a ransomware attacker shutting down a water company is not usually trying to cause customers of the affected company to die from dehydration, for example. They just want to inconvenience everyone enough for the company to pay up. There have been exceptions.

But Gartner then suggested that attempts to deliberately hurt humans will be the next logical step.

(Reminder that The Register, although a tech tabloid, is still a tabloid.)

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Its cloud seeding operations are part of an ongoing mission to generate precipitation in the Middle East country, which has an average rainfall of just four inches.

The enhanced rain is created using drone technology that unleashes electrical charges into clouds in order for them to clump together and form precipitation.

We have the technology.

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Brock Commons defies a century of high-rise construction norms. Since the dawn of the skyscraper age, cement, concrete and steel have molded our vertical urban realms. But the environmental consequences of these materials has led some in the construction industry back to wood, a material that’s more sustainable and, with each technological leap, an increasingly viable option for large-scale projects.

A very interesting idea.

You first.

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Because, as you know, the cupboard is pretty bare when it comes to pasta shapes.

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To date, there are no effective antidotes against most virus infections. An interdisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now developed a new approach: they engulf and neutralize viruses with nano-capsules tailored from genetic material using the DNA origami method. The strategy has already been tested against hepatitis and adeno-associated viruses in cell cultures. It may also prove successful against coronaviruses.

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Researchers at Yale have discovered that psilocybin — the magic in magic mushrooms — can increase connections between nerve cells in the brains of mice.

Mice get all the best stuff.

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People once folded their correspondence in intricate ways, known as “letterlocking,” to keep out snoops. A fancy new imaging technique sees right through it.

We have the technology.

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Researchers at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) have developed a way to make lab-grown chocolate — adding a sweet treat to the lengthening list of lab-grown foods.

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We have the technology.

This reminds me of the efforts to use lasers to play vinyl records.

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An oral cholera vaccine grown in genetically modified rice has passed its first human trial — and while it’s not the first cholera vaccine, it could be the easiest to distribute in places that need one the most.

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A significant event in the history of technology happened yesterday, and it passed so quietly that we almost missed it. The last few remaining NTSC transmitters in the USA finally came off air, marking the end of over seven decades of continuous 525-line American analogue TV broadcasts. We’ve previously reported on the output of these channels, largely the so-called “FrankenFM” stations left over after the 2009 digital switchover whose sound carrier lay at the bottom of the FM dial as radio stations, and noted their impending demise. We’ve even reported on some of the intricacies of the NTSC system, but we’ve never taken a look at what will replace these last few FrankenFM stations.

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Sure, why not. I’m thinking of jumping in myself. (Oh, wait, that would be moving to California? Never mind….)

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A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that regulations setting a minimum age of 21 for handgun purchases from licensed dealers violates the Second American rights of those citizens.

The three-judge panel in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered the ruling in a split vote 2-1, with an appointee of former President Donald Trump writing the majority opinion, arguing the laws relegated “either the Second Amendment or 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status,” CNN reported.

“Looking through this historical lens to the text and structure of the Constitution reveals that 18- to 20-year-olds have Second Amendment rights,” Judge Julius N. Richardson wrote. “Virtually every other constitutional right applies whatever the age. And the Second Amendment is no different.”

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Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have built an inflammatory-aging clock that’s more accurate than the number of candles on your birthday cake in predicting how strong your immune system is, how soon you’ll become frail or whether you have unseen cardiovascular problems that could become clinical headaches a few years down the road.

In the process, the scientists fingered a bloodborne substance whose abundance may accelerate cardiovascular aging.

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The air-fryer method produces a beautifully cooked potato with crispy skin and a fluffy interior.

We have the technology.

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“The main rate-limiting factor holding back global demining efforts is not the actual removal of buried landmines,” researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in Microbial Biotechnology last October, “but rather pinpointing their exact locations.”

Current landmine detection methods mostly require people to be put in harm’s way, the authors say, but they have a possible solution: glowing bacteria.

In the presence of a telltale explosive chemical, these genetically modified E. coli become like “a miniature firefly,” Hebrew University microbiologist Shimshon Belkin told the New York Times’ Elizabeth Landau.

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A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China has developed a micro-fiber based metafabric that provides wearers with daytime radiative cooling. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes making their fabric and their test results.

Arabs and Texans will be glad.

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University of California, Berkeley, chemists have discovered a way to simplify the removal of toxic metals. like mercury and boron. during desalination to produce clean water, while at the same time potentially capturing valuable metals, such as gold.

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We have the technology.

Check it out.

An amazing resource.

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As always, mice get all of the best stuff.

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The report details use of the NetWire malware, traces its installation to a specific email from February 2016, and offers evidence of extensive communication with a command-and-control server. It also identifies 14 documents that were delivered to a hidden folder by NetWire. That folder was later moved from a volume created by NetWire onto the laptop’s main Windows volume.

The documents are emails to and from Gadling, many of which detail planned operations, discuss funding those operations, identify “soft targets” to be targeted, and mention other activists who can assist in these endeavours.

Arsenal’s report states that none of the 14 documents “were ever interacted with in any legitimate way on Mr. Gadling’s computer, either in their original location on the tertiary volume or in their current location on the Windows volume.”

Nor could the firm find any evidence that the documents were ever opened!

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Cue Eco-Nazi demonstrations.

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Incorporating nanomaterials into traditional cement improves water and fracture resistance.

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Scientists have invented a product that can encourage tooth enamel to grow back, which means we could finally have a game-changing way to treat dental cavities.

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It won’t do anything about Biden, because he’s a pain in the ass, not the back.

Pity.

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West Virginian lawmakers have eliminated the sales tax on all small firearms and ammunition and are also offering weapon manufacturers tax credits in hopes of sparking an economic boom, according to local news WOWK.

…

Already, one bullet manufacturer, Ranger Scientific, recently announced it would be building an ammo plant in the state because of the new law. The new plant will provide 400 jobs to residents in Montgomery.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that cow stomachs can break down plastic.

Nor will you ever hear this news from the Narrative Media.

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The therapy appears to be astonishingly effective, editing nearly every cell in the liver to stop a disease-causing mutation.

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Amongst the changes that “lockdowns” and “new normality” have brought, there is a revalorization of digital interactions as valuable and meaningful. Ironically, what was once regarded as isolationist or a poor substitute for “real life” (an expression used as an interchangeable semantic proxy for “in-person”) experiences, has become the glue that holds the social fabric together.

Connecting in and through digital spaces has been a staple of 2020: from work or formal education moving to online alternatives, to recreational uses of video platforms. In these virtual spaces, human ingenuity has found new testing grounds to deal with the challenges presented by the pandemic. It can be a thoughtful provocation to say that since lockdowns started, we might have been living in a proto-version of the Metaverse.

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It is not only the first time in 2,000 years that the area — described as the “heart” of the building — has been open; since the underground levels, or “hypogea,” were where gladiators and animals waited before going into combat, this is the first time in the monument’s history that the public has ever been allowed in.
Now, tourists will be able to walk through the passageways on a wooden platform and admire the corridors and archways which interconnected the hypogea between the rooms where gladiators and animals waited, before entering the elevators which would catapult them onto the arena.