Archive for the 'News You Can Use.' Category
24th November 2024
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The agricultural world is witnessing a remarkable transformation, driven by groundbreaking technology. Among the most fascinating innovations is a farming robot equipped with lasers that can destroy hundreds of thousands of weeds in mere hours. This high-tech solution is not just a marvel of engineering but a timely response to persistent challenges in farming, from labor shortages to the environmental impact of chemical herbicides.
By combining artificial intelligence with precision laser technology, companies like Carbon Robotics are reshaping the way farmers tackle one of agriculture’s most labor-intensive tasks. These futuristic machines offer a glimpse into the potential of sustainable farming, where innovation meets efficiency, paving the way for a healthier and more productive future for agriculture.
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24th November 2024
Associated Press.
Working-class voters helped Republicans make steady election gains this year and expanded a coalition that increasingly includes rank-and-file union members, a political shift spotlighting one of President-elect Donald Trump’s latest Cabinet picks: a GOP congresswoman, who has drawn labor support, to be his labor secretary.
Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer narrowly lost her bid for a second term this month, despite strong backing from union members, a key part of the Democratic base but gravitating in the Trump era toward a Republican Party traditionally allied with business interests.
“Lori’s strong support from both the Business and Labor communities will ensure that the Labor Department can unite Americans of all backgrounds behind our Agenda for unprecedented National Success – Making America Richer, Wealthier, Stronger and more Prosperous than ever before!” Trump said in a statement announcing his choice Friday night.
UPDATE: Trump’s GOP Making Huge Gains With Union Voters
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23rd November 2024
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Or don’t, as the case may be….
When it comes to cameras, size matters, but not in the way you think.
Any time a new smartphone is released, it is easy to drool over the latest, greatest, and biggest features that allow you to take even more stunning selfies composed of even more megapixels. However, in the world of cameras, smaller cameras could end up having a far greater impact on the world at large—and enable a ton of positive applications in society—than the next iPhone camera. Work from researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington is pointing the way.
A team of researchers from both institutions has published work that uses innovative methods and materials to create a “meta-optics” camera that is the size of a single grain of salt.
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20th November 2024
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n the ongoing battle against antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” researchers have uncovered an unexpected vulnerability that could change how we fight these deadly infections – and it all comes down to a microscopic competition for resources.
The discovery comes at a crucial time. Current estimates paint a grim picture: drug-resistant infections already claim over one million lives annually, with deaths projected to nearly double to two million per year by 2050.
However, a team led by researchers at the University of California-San Diego may have found a new way to tackle this crisis without relying on traditional antibiotics. Their research, published in Science Advances, reveals that antibiotic-resistant bacteria have an inherent weakness – one that might explain why these seemingly unstoppable superbugs haven’t completely taken over.
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20th November 2024
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(1) There is such a thing.
Google Scholar, a tool used by researchers around the world, was founded by two researchers. We started Scholar in 2004, physically delivering hard drives to the office (see fact number 2), and two decades later adding new AI features (see fact number 6). To celebrate 20 years of Google Scholar, here are 20 fun facts about its origins, how you can use it and what’s new.
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19th November 2024
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A Georgia appeals court on Monday canceled oral arguments that were scheduled for next month on the appeal of a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue to prosecute the election interference case she brought against President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump and other defendants had asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to hold oral arguments in the case, and the court had set those arguments for Dec. 5. But in a one-line order with no further explanation, the appeals court said that hearing “is hereby canceled until further order of this Court.”
A Fulton County grand jury in August 2023 indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
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19th November 2024
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The effect of dietary cholesterol on cognitive function is debatable. While eggs contain high levels of dietary cholesterol, they provide nutrients beneficial for cognitive function. This study examined the effects of egg consumption on change in cognitive function among 890 ambulatory adults (N = 357 men; N = 533 women) aged ?55 years from the Rancho Bernardo Study who attended clinic visits in 1988–1991 and 1992–1996. Egg intake was obtained in 1988–1991 with a food frequency questionnaire. The Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE), Trails B, and category fluency were administered at both visits to assess cognitive performance. Sex-specific multiple regression analyses tested associations of egg intake with changes in cognitive function after adjustment for confounders. The mean time between visits was 4.1 ± 0.5 years; average ages were 70.1 ± 8.4 in men and 71.5 ± 8.8 in women (p = 0.0163). More men consumed eggs at higher levels than women; while 14% of men and 16.5% of women reported never eating eggs, 7.0% of men and 3.8% of women reported intakes ?5/week (p = 0.0013). In women, after adjustment for covariates, egg consumption was associated with less decline in category fluency (beta = ?0.10, p = 0.0241). Other associations were nonsignificant in women, and no associations were found in men. Results suggest that egg consumption has a small beneficial effect on semantic memory in women. The lack of decline observed in both sexes suggests that egg consumption does not have detrimental effects and may even have a role in the maintenance of cognitive function.
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17th November 2024
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Eco-activists sued the federal government to stop activity they didn’t like, but a bombshell Tuesday ruling in that case from a federal appeals court may end up weakening a regulatory system that has served environmentalists well for years.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in Marin Audubon Society v. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) that the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) does not have the legal authority to issue National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rules.
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14th November 2024
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President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is preparing to eliminate the Biden administration’s $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit as part of its broader tax reform plan, Reuters reported Thursday.
Trump’s energy-policy team, led by oil magnate Harold Hamm and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R.), has held several meetings to discuss repealing the EV subsidy, a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, sources told Reuters.
Trump plans to use savings from ending the tax credit to help fund the extension of his 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025, Reuters reported. With the GOP retaining control of the House, congressional Republicans plan to make broader tax reform a top priority.
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13th November 2024
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Trump Completes Trifecta: Republicans Keep Control of US House
13th November 2024
CNN.
The science is settled … until it’s not.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Standing Desks May Be Bad for Your Health, New Research Finds
12th November 2024
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12th November 2024
SciTechDaily.
A trio of research papers from Stanford Medicine researchers and their international collaborators transforms scientists’ understanding of how small DNA circles — until recently dismissed as inconsequential — are major drivers of many types of human cancers.
The papers, published simultaneously in Nature on Nov. 6, detail the prevalence and prognostic impact of the circles, called ecDNA for extrachromosomal DNA, in nearly 15,000 human cancers; highlight a novel mode of inheritance that overthrows a fundamental law of genetics; and describe an anti-cancer therapy targeting the circles that is already in clinical trials.
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11th November 2024
Forbes.
Moving abroad normally involves months of preparation, but many Americans feel a sense of urgency to leave the U.S. quickly. Here are 3 countries where you can launch a new life starting today.
UPDATE: Record numbers of wealthy Americans are making plans to leave the U.S. after the election (CNBC)
UPDATE: Californians reportedly preparing to flee country pending election results (New York Post)
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10th November 2024
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Law enforcement believe the activity, which makes it harder to then unlock the phones, may be due to a potential update in iOS 18 which tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have not been in contact with a cellular network for some time, according to a document obtained by 404 Media.
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10th November 2024
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Not quite a blowout, but certainly a strong victory.
President Biden won the state of Arizona by less than one-half of 1% in the 2020 election and the results in the key area of Maricopa County were also slim, with Biden beating Trump by 2%.
Before Biden won Arizona in 2020, Republicans had carried the state every year since 1996.
The 2020 election is smelling more and more rotten.
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9th November 2024
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New York City can’t use an unconstitutional, two-century-old “anti-pauper” law to block the state of Texas from offering migrants free bus rides to the city from the southern border, a state judge has ruled.
The court on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Mayor Eric Adams in January against charter bus companies contracted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. It sought to bar them from knowingly dropping off “needy persons,” citing an 1817 state law that criminalized bringing an indigent person into the state “for the purpose of making him a public charge.”
Justice Mary Rosado said in a sternly worded decision that the law is unconstitutional for several reasons.
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9th November 2024
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The sleepers wake.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Soft-on-Crime Policies and Politicians Get Smoked by Voters in Blue California
9th November 2024
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A jury awarded more than $12 million Friday to a woman who lost her job at a Michigan insurance company after declining to get a COVID-19 vaccination.
Much of the award — $10 million — is for punitive damages against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, according to the verdict form.
Lisa Domski, who worked at Blue Cross for more than 30 years, said she was a victim of religious discrimination. The company in 2021 did not grant an exemption from its vaccine policy, despite her insistence that it clashed with her Catholic beliefs.
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8th November 2024
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A federal court upheld four female high school track athletes’ challenge to a Connecticut policy allowing male participation in female sports.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert N. Chatigny, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, ruled in favor of allowing the athletes’ case against the Connecticut Association of Schools to proceed, rejecting the request of state officials to dismiss it.
The athletes—Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, Chelsea Mitchell, and Ashley Nicoletti—all say they lost races to male athletes identifying as female. The women argue allowing biological males to compete in girls sports is unfair and violates federal Title IX, which protects female school sports by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex.
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8th November 2024
New York Post.
The state’s famed “Pennsylvania Dutch” registered to vote in “unprecedented numbers” in response to a January federal raid on a local raw milk farm in Bird in Hand, Pa., a source familiar with the situation told The Post.
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture stormed Amos Miller’s farm Jan. 4 after reports of illnesses in children linked to raw dairy products purchased there, according to the local media outlet Lancaster Farming.
The Amish community saw the move as an overzealous reach by the government and was planning to vote for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose party favors less government intervention.
“That was the impetus for them to say, ‘We need to participate,’ ” the source said of local Amish voters. “This is about neighbors helping neighbors.”
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8th November 2024
New York Post.
President-elect Trump’s overwhelmingly win saw him net 49.6% of the vote in Minnesota’s Blue Earth County, where Walz’s family lived for 20 years before he was elected governor.
Walz’s running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, fell short with about 48.3% of the vote.
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8th November 2024
Politico, a Voice of the Crust.
Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Donald Trump on his U.S. election victory, praising the Republican’s “manly” response to an attempted assassination — and saying he’s “ready” to speak with him.
“I take this opportunity to congratulate him on his election as president of the United States of America,” Putin said on Thursday at the annual meeting of the Valdai Club in Sochi, breaking his silence after initially choosing conspicuously to not send his well-wishes.
Putin confirmed he had yet to talk with Trump in the wake of his victory — but indicated that he’d pick up the phone if the U.S. president-elect called.
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8th November 2024
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Over the course of his presidency, Joe Biden vowed to back Ukraine for as long as it took to defeat Russia. So far, his administration has doled out over $61 billion in military aid to Kyiv, with scores of packages including advanced air defense systems and munitions, millions of artillery shells, hundreds of armored vehicles, and much more. President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed a very different approach to how the U.S. will deal with the nearly three-year-old all-out war, raising concerns that he could abandon Ukraine.
On the campaign trail, Trump lambasted his predecessor’s approach, chiding Biden for providing arms free of charge. Above all else, Trump repeatedly touted his ability to quickly end the conflict, even if it means Ukraine conceding much of the nearly 20 percent of its territory Russia has captured going back to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Moreover, Vice President-elect JD Vance has repeatedly expressed his disdain for the open-ended support to Ukraine, saying it should be greatly dialed back.
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7th November 2024
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Projected President-elect Donald Trump has made a number of sweeping proposals for a second term in office, outlining a wide-ranging agenda that targets federal regulations, taxes, immigration, and social issues.
I suppose Payback looms large in the agenda. It certainly would for me.
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7th November 2024
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Mitochondria are often called the power generators of human cells. They convert nutrients such as glucose and fatty acids that we obtain from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the primary energy source in our cells during metabolism.
At the same time, mitochondria are the core of human immunity, too. Healthy mitochondria effectively regulate immune responses, while mitochondrial dysfunction can damage immune cells, resulting in many chronic diseases and impaired cellular differentiation.
Chen argues that seemingly diverse conditions—including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, allergies, autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, and even various mental illnesses—can be understood through a “unified theory” of mitochondrial imbalance. This means that almost every disease can be traced to mitochondrial imbalance. In other words, in mitochondrial imbalance, there is invariably something wrong with the body’s basic metabolism. This perspective suggests that approximately 90 percent of chronic diseases stem from problems with mitochondrial metabolism.
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6th November 2024
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In perhaps the least surprising outcome of this election cycle, incumbent Democrat George Gascon got a shellacking Tuesday from his opponent, independent Nathan Hochman, in the race for Los Angeles County district attorney, losing by 62% to 38%.
The writing was on the wall for Gascon, as LA voters not only twice unsuccessfully tried to recall him but 74% of primary voters also voted for candidates other than Gascon in April.
It turns out that voters do indeed want a safe county, unburdened by violent crime. Voters correctly blamed Gascon for the tsunami of crime he unleashed through his pro-criminal policies.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Rogue Prosecutor George Gascon Loses Reelection as LA County District Attorney
5th November 2024
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Several left-wing district attorneys could find themselves out of a job after Tuesday’s election as voters voice their frustration with an explosion in crime ripping through their communities, including three California jurisdictions.
With many progressive prosecutors on the ballot this election, polling and fundraising data shows that voters are rejecting soft-on-crime policies across the nation with their ballots and wallets, according to multiple reports.
Crime remains one of the most important issues, with 75% of voters saying crime is very or somewhat important to their decision in the 2024 election, according to a Gallup poll released Oct. 9.
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4th November 2024
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Stanford researchers hope new technique will flip lymphoma protein’s normal action — from preventing cell death to triggering it.
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4th November 2024
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I guess the science really isn’t settled after all.
UCLA chemists have discovered a major flaw in a fundamental rule of organic chemistry that has held for 100 years. They say it’s time to rewrite the textbooks.
Organic molecules, which are primarily made of carbon, have specific shapes and arrangements of atoms. Molecules called olefins contain double bonds, or alkenes, between two carbon atoms. Typically, these atoms and their attached groups lie in the same 3D plane, and deviations from this structure are rare.
The rule being questioned, known as Bredt’s rule, was established in 1924. It asserts that molecules cannot have a double bond at the “bridgehead” position—the junction of a bridged bicyclic molecule—because this position would distort the geometry of the double bond. Bredt’s rule has constrained the design of synthetic molecules by preventing chemists from creating certain structures. Since olefins play a critical role in pharmaceutical research, Bredt’s rule has limited the types of molecules that scientists could envision, potentially holding back innovations in drug discovery.
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4th November 2024
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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.
If you’re eagerly following discoveries from genetics, this year might have seemed a bit more sedated than last year. After all, 2022 saw a Nobel Prize awarded for innovation in ancient DNA, researchers uncovered a Neandertal family from mere bone fragments, and a team carried out a major study of ancient genomes from eastern Africa.
This year saw a lot of research consolidation, with continued progress along well-established lines. This year saw many research studies that are in this category of “filling in the map” of ancient DNA, especially within the last 3000 years. These included ancient DNA genotyping from Scandinavia, Tibet, the east coast of Africa, northwest Africa, the Aegean, and many more. In a preprint released this year, Swapan Mallick and collaborators have described the Allen Ancient DNA Resource, a database that now includes more than 10,000 individuals.
Building out the database of ancient DNA is undeniably valuable. But even more fascinating are the discoveries that allow us to look at biology, social dynamics, and evolution in new ways.
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1st November 2024
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If swing-state Nevada goes for Donald Trump in 2024, a decisive role may be played by a critical but widely under-examined constituency: ex-Californians who fled spiraling West Coast leftism and are now nudging Nevada rightward, Politico reports.
Early voting data from Nevada has already sent Republican hopes of securing the state’s six electoral votes soaring. Through Thursday — the penultimate day of early voting — the number of registered Republicans who’ve cast a ballot exceeds the Democrats’ tally by 47,300, or 5.1 percent. That’s a complete turning of the tables, as it’s usually Democrats who’ve banked a majority of the votes before Election Day. The GOP has built that lead not through the mail, but by a level of Republican in-person turnout that veteran Nevada political reporter and full-on leftist Jon Ralston has called “startling.”
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31st October 2024
Watch it.
Inquiring minds want to know. Maybe.
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31st October 2024
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FOR A MACHINE THAT’S designed to replicate a star, the world’s newest stellarator is a surprisingly humble-looking apparatus. The kitchen-table-size contraption sits atop stacks of bricks in a cinder-block room at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in Princeton, N.J., its parts hand-labeled in marker.
The PPPL team invented this nuclear-fusion reactor, completed last year, using mainly off-the-shelf components. Its core is a glass vacuum chamber surrounded by a 3D-printed nylon shell that anchors 9,920 meticulously placed permanent rare-earth magnets. Sixteen copper-coil electromagnets resembling giant slices of pineapple wrap around the shell crosswise.
The arrangement of magnets forms the defining feature of a stellarator: an entirely external magnetic field that directs charged particles along a spiral path to confine a superheated plasma. Within this enigmatic fourth state of matter, atoms that have been stripped of their electrons collide, their nuclei fusing and releasing energy in the same process that powers the sun and other stars. Researchers hope to capture this energy and use it to produce clean, zero-carbon electricity.
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29th October 2024
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Iran is likely still tallying the costs of the Israeli airstrikes launched on Saturday in retaliation for Tehran’s massive October 1 missile barrage on Israel. Among the targets that Israel appears to have gone after are Iran’s prized Russian-made S-300 air defense systems, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. Putting the Iranian S-300s out of action leaves the door open to follow-up strikes by Israel, including larger-scale direct attacks. As we noted on Saturday, this serves as both a contingent opportunity for the Israel Defense Forces and a deterrent against a response from Iran.
Among the critical Iranian military infrastructure destroyed on Saturday were its three surviving S-300 long-range surface-to-air missile systems. This is the assessment of unnamed U.S. and Israeli officials speaking to the Wall Street Journal. Iran’s only other S-300 system was already hit by Israel earlier this year.
Told ya so.
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28th October 2024
Watch it.
And read the comments — people are getting sick & tired of YouTube hiding and throttling content that doesn’t agree with their Woke agenda.
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27th October 2024
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Few areas of research have captivated scientists more than the search for room-temperature superconductivity. Finding a way to reduce energy loss as electricity travels over transmission lines and across wires would profoundly change society. It would deliver nearly unlimited energy, turbocharge compute speeds, and introduce new and better ways to use computers and other electronics.
Yet assembling the right mix of materials to achieve room temperature superconductivity has eluded researchers for more than a century. Time and time again, physicists have announced breakthroughs that were later found to be irreproducible, in error, or even fraudulent. Consequently, the challenge—getting to superconductivity at temperatures above 0 degrees Kelvin (-273.15 degrees Celsius) at ambient pressure—remains a holy grail of physics and materials science.
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27th October 2024
The Register.
A group of researchers in the UK affiliated with the BSS published a paper this week calling for the permanent abolition of Daylight Saving Time (DST) and adherence to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in large part because modern evidence suggests having that extra hour of sunlight in the evenings is worse for our health than we thought back in the 1970s when the concept was all the rage in Europe.
Not only does GMT more closely align with the natural day/light cycle in the UK, the boffins assert, but decades of research into sleep and circadian rhythms have been produced since DST was enacted that have yet to be considered.
The human circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle our bodies go through, drives a lot about our health beyond sleep. It regulates hormone release, gene expression, metabolism, mood (who isn’t grumpier when waking up in January?), and the like. In short, it’s important. Messing with that rhythm by forcing ourselves out of bed earlier for several months out of the year can have lasting effects, the researchers said.
Speed the day.
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26th October 2024
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The demand for food production is intensifying with a rapidly growing population, yet farmers around the world face unprecedented challenges owing to shifting climatic conditions. Controlled environment and vertical farming have emerged as a potential solution to boost resource use efficiency and food output per unit of land while allowing for cultivation in urban and arid regions, but widespread adoption has been hindered by substantial energy requirements. Recent developments in CO2/CO electrolysis as well as advances in genetic engineering and selective breeding have laid the groundwork for the emergence of electro-ag to substantially reduce the energy needs of vertical farming. Fueled by acetate derived from CO2 using renewable electricity, electro-ag enables the heterotrophic growth of food crops. Unlike traditional controlled environments or conventional farming, electro-ag is not constrained by the same efficiency limitations of photosynthesis. Instead, the efficient metabolic pathways of acetate utilization are harnessed to allow for at least a 4-fold improvement in solar-to-food efficiency, with future efforts potentially leading to an order of magnitude improvement in energy solar-to-food efficiency. If the United States food supply was produced via electro-ag, land usage could be decreased by 88% while substantially streamlining food supply chains by decentralizing food production.
There are many advantages of an electro-ag-based global food system. By improving efficiency and decreasing land usage, a large portion of Earth’s land could be rewilded to restore ecosystems supporting natural carbon sequestration. Additionally, electro-ag systems can be deployed in extreme environments such as deserts, cities, or even on Mars where it is otherwise difficult to grow food. Electro-ag can also help avoid devastating food price spikes by reducing the impact of extreme weather and localizing food production. Electro-ag is poised to revolutionize the realm of food production by offering a sustainable pathway toward a more resilient and equitable food system. Future efforts should seek to further improve the energy efficiency of electro-ag while working toward the production of calorie-dense staple crops to help combat global hunger.
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26th October 2024
The Economist.
Every day seems to bring more exciting news. First the drugs tackled diabetes. Then, with just an injection a week, they took on obesity. Now they are being found to treat cardiovascular and kidney disease, and are being tested for Alzheimer’s and addiction. It is early days yet, but glp-1 receptor agonists have all the makings of one of the most successful classes of drugs in history. As they become cheaper and easier to use, they promise to dramatically improve the lives of more than a billion people—with profound consequences for industry, the economy and society.
If, of course, they can make their way through the government gatekeepers on behalf of Big Pharma.
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26th October 2024
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The long-anticipated Israeli retaliation strike on Iran appears to be underway. U.S. and Iranian media is reporting that Tehran is under attack as videos emerging on social media show explosions in the Iranian capital. The attack is in retaliation for Iran’s massive Oct. 1 missile barrage on Israel.
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25th October 2024
Nature.
DNA has been humanity’s go-to data repository for millennia. Tough and compact, it is so information-dense that just one gram of it can hold enough data for 10 million hours of high-definition video.
But there is always room for improvement.
An innovative method now allows DNA to store information as a binary code — the same strings of 0s and 1s used by standard computers. That could one day be cheaper and faster than encoding information in the sequence of the building blocks that make up DNA, which is the method used by cells and by most efforts to harness DNA for storing artificially generated data.
The method is so straightforward that 60 volunteers from a variety of backgrounds were able to use it to store the text of their choice. Many of them initially didn’t think the technique would work, says Long Qian, a computational synthetic biologist at Peking University in Beijing and an author of the study1 describing the technique.
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24th October 2024
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Sideshows, the stunt-driving parties that rankle Bay Area residents and throttle early-morning commutes on the Bay Bridge, could become harder to pull off due to a new policing tool from tech company Flock Safety.
Officially launching Thursday, and with beta testing already complete, the technology listens for the sound of tire screeches and engine revs and then automatically sends a five-second audio clip to nearby police. The surveillance product is akin to Alexa- or Siri-enabled devices, digesting all nearby audio and waiting for trigger sounds.
Tom Pethtel, an engineering vice president at Flock, told SFGATE that his company has heard a dramatic uptick in complaints about sideshows from law enforcement customers over the past two years. The tech tool is meant to complement Flock’s license plate reader cameras and Raven gunshot microphones, part of the company’s mission to “eliminate crime.”
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23rd October 2024
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A team of pathophysiologists at the University of Milan has found that climbing stairs or walking for short bursts allows people to consume 20% to 60% more energy than if they do the same activity nonstop for the same distance. In their study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group asked volunteers to walk on a treadmill or climb stairs while also monitoring their oxygen intake.
The research team noted that available reported energy expenditures tend to reflect activities that are done at a metabolically steady state, which only becomes established after performing such an activity for a while. They wondered if there might be differences in expenditures if people engaged in start-and-stop-type exercise multiple times. To find out, they recruited 10 volunteers.
The volunteers walked on a treadmill or climbed a short flight of stairs for different lengths of time, ranging from 10 seconds to four minutes. As they did so, they wore a mask to measure their oxygen intake, a means of measuring energy consumption.
I always wanted to be a pathophysiologist. It sounds as if it pays well and doesn’t involve any heavy lifting.
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22nd October 2024
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We have gotten what appears to be our first view of a Mk 41 vertical launch system (VLS) for the Aegis Ashore air defense system that has been installed on the highly strategic American island of Guam in the Pacific. The land-based Mk 41 launchers are one step toward addressing the vulnerabilities of the U.S. military bases on the island to attack — something that China, in particular, has directly referenced in the context of a full-scale conflict in the region. Ultimately, Aegis Ashore on Guam will be just one element in plans to make the island’s airspace the most heavily defended anywhere on Earth.
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Aegis Ashore is primarily designed to engage ballistic threats during the midcourse portion of their flight outside the Earth’s atmophere using SM-3 interceptors. However, the Mk 41 is a modular launcher, meaning that additional anti-missile interceptors, such as the terminal-stage intercept and anti-air SM-6 and the forthcoming Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI), which could also be added. With its ability to take down certain incoming hypersonic threats, as well as other weapons, the GPI could be especially relevant for the defense of Guam. With additional launchers, even dispersed around the island, shorter-ranged missiles, such as the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) Block II and even the latest SM-2s, could feasibly provide protection against air breathing threats, such as cruise missiles and drones. Patriot interceptors are now also now a possibility.
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21st October 2024
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One of the more interesting twists in these last few weeks of the presidential election campaign has been the increasing support of black men for Donald Trump. The trend obviously has the Democrats worried, as evidenced by the blatant pandering of the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” announced last week by the Kamala Harris campaign. I’m not sure that the target demographic is as stupid as Ms. Harris thinks they are, however — young black men usually have a good sense of when they’re being played.
The movement of black men towards Donald Trump really got going after he was arrested, and the famous mug shot was publicized. That’s when the #Niggas4Trump hashtag started trending, and young black vloggers began enthusing over Mr. Trump using boisterous ghetto argot.
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20th October 2024
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Modern high-speed internet uses light to quickly and reliably transmit large amounts of data through fiber-optic cables, but currently, light signals hit a bottleneck when data processing is necessary. For that, they must convert into electrical signals for processing before further transmission.
A device called an all-optical switch could instead use light to control other light signals without the need for electrical conversion, saving both time and energy in fiber-optic communication.
A University of Michigan-led research team demonstrated an ultrafast all-optical switch by pulsing circularly polarized light, which twists like a helix, through an optical cavity lined with an ultrathin semiconductor. The study was recently published in Nature Communications.
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19th October 2024
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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.
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18th October 2024
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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.
This ‘influencer’ has a PhD from Oxford and an MD from Harvard Medical School, if you’re keeping track.
It’s always best to swap actual knowledge of causation for previous dependency on correlation studies.
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17th October 2024
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A new treatment combining ReCET and semaglutide could eliminate the need for insulin in type 2 diabetes, with 86% of participants in a study no longer requiring insulin therapy. The treatment was safe and well-tolerated, and further trials are planned to confirm these results.
Groundbreaking research presented at UEG Week 2024 introduces a promising new treatment approach for type 2 diabetes (T2D) that has the potential to greatly reduce or even eliminate the need for insulin therapy.
This innovative approach, which combines a novel procedure known as ReCET (Re-Cellularization via Electroporation Therapy) with semaglutide, resulted in the elimination of insulin therapy for 86% of patients.
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