Even humans.

Tanya Frank's son Zach has lived with mental illness since he was a teenager. But after years journeying through the traditional healthcare system, could radical alternatives save him from an endless cycle of hospital stays and drugs?

 

There are nights when I wake up and, in the disorientation of those first conscious moments, I am right back there. Los Angeles, 2009. Winter. Zach has entered my room, perched on the edge of my bed, and begged: "Mum. What is going to happen to me? You must know."

I see him in all his anguish – my younger son in his last teenage year. He has just been discharged from hospital after having what the doctors had called a psychotic break, when he thought that his friends weren't his friends but were out to harm him, that our house was bugged and that helicopters were instruments of surveillance, trained on him. Years before, it would have been called a nervous breakdown. I don't like either term much, but I think the connotations of a nervous breakdown feel more apt. It was this sense of nervousness that I witnessed on the night I first took my boy to the psychiatric hospital.

Continue reading…

A new study explores the interplay between the serotonin system and estradiol in the brain, showing that the central nervous system in patients with   (PMDD) seems to increase serotonin transporter density from the periovulatory phase (when estradiol levels are high) to premenstrual cycle phase (when both estradiol and progesterone are decreasing). The findings have the potential to advance the clinical treatment of PMDD.

I det almindelige omdømme betragtedes havregrød nærmest som en ikke alt for velsmagende medicin. Men det fik Ota-havremøllerne i Nakskov lavet om på, skrev Tidsskrift for Industri i 1924.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36540-x

Crowding effects have long been established as powerful guiding forces in natural assembly processes. Here the authors report a bioinspired approach translating this phenomenon to artificial supramolecular polymers.

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The vast California lake relies on runoff from cropland to avoid disappearing. But as farmers face water cuts due to drought and an ever drier Colorado River, the Salton Sea stands to lose again.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36767-8

To date, studies of topological band theory have mostly dealt with Euclidean space. Here, the authors use classical electric-circuit networks to realize topological insulators in 2D negatively-curved (hyperbolic) space with non-trivial second Chern number.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36853-x

The implementation of Li metal anode with high-voltage Ni/Co rich cathode is plagued by low coulombic efficiency and inferior cycling stability. Here authors propose an anion-enriched interface to facilitate the columnar-structure of Li deposits to solve this issue.

PLUS. Frank Grønbæk har etableret Danmarks første lydstudie, der mixer musik i formatet Dolby Atmos.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36826-0

Long noncoding RNA molecules are RNA transcripts long thought to remain untranslated. In this study, the authors demonstrate that certain lncRNA can be translated into peptides that are immunogenic to CD8+ T cells and promote anti-tumour responses when delivered as vaccine vectors in mice.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36793-6

The energy content of non-aqueous lithium batteries is limited by the electrochemical stability window of the electrolyte solution. Here, the authors report a monofluoride ether-based electrolyte to stabilize high-voltage lithium metal batteries at high current rates and low temperatures.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36631-9

The interplay of migration and adaptation was key in shaping species' responses to Quaternary climate change. Illustrating this, Luqman et al. show that adaptive responses in a plant species emerged from climate-induced range shifts due to heterogenous sieving of adaptive alleles across space and time.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36813-5

Fluorescence imaging in the near-infrared region yields high-quality images that overcome the current depth limitations. Here, the authors report a Tm3 + -based nanoprobe for NIR-IIb/c imaging, providing references to future bioimaging beyond 1700 nm.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36790-9

The inference of clonal architectures in   using single-cell RNA-seq data remains challenging. Here, the authors develop SCEVAN, a variational algorithm for copy number-based clonal structure inference in single-cell RNA-seq data that can characterise evolution and heterogeneity in the tumour and the microenvironment.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36765-w

Tandem pore (K2P) potassium channels set the cellular resting membrane potential in tissues throughout the body. Here, authors show how the composition of phospholipid within the bilayer may directly alter gating in this family of ion channels.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36815-3

The authors present an implementation of mid-infrared single-photon computational imaging with a single-element silicon detector. In addition to unique features of single-pixel simplicity and room-temperature operation, the infrared imager offers a superior sensitivity at the single-photon level.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36752-1

Endosomal escape and subsequent cytosolic delivery of siRNA therapeutics is inefficient, and quantification is difficult. Here the authors report a confocal microscopy-based method to quantify cytosolic delivery of fluorescently labelled siRNA during lipid-mediated delivery.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36729-0

Effective antivirals are critical for combatting  -CoV-2 infections. Here, the authors develop two orally available small molecules, which specifically inhibit the activity of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease and potently block the infectivity and replication of various SARS-CoV-2 strains in cells and mice.

 

 

A rare view.

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An august source.

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Spend your weekend with a cup of warm coffee and our National Magazine Award–nominated articles.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

• People forgot how war actually works.
• Shoppers are stuck in a dupe loop.
• Permission-slip culture is hurting America.

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Yesterday, the American Society of Magazine Editors announced the finalists for this year's National Magazine Awards, and The Atlantic was recognized for a range of work. The magazine received nominations for five individual stories, as well as a nomination for the General Excellence award, a finalist place in the Best Digital Illustration category, and a win in the Best Print Illustration category. (Winners in other nominated categories will be announced in March.)

These nominations highlight a range of exceptional stories, including a rigorous yearslong investigation, two illuminating political profiles, and an unforgettable personal account of fleeing Afghanistan and leaving everything behind. Spend time with this collection of our finalists and winners over the weekend.

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Your Weekend Reads

 

 

I Smuggled My Laptop Past the Taliban So I Could Write This Story

By Bushra Seddique

My escape from Afghanistan (Winner, Best Print Illustration, by Sally Deng)

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The Betrayal

By George Packer

America's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan added moral injury to military failure. But a group of soldiers, veterans, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save Afghan lives and salvage some American honor. (Finalist, Reporting)

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Monuments to the Unthinkable

By Clint Smith

America still can't figure out how to memorialize the sins of our history. What can we learn from Germany? (Finalist, Columns and Essays)

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We Need to Take Away Children

By Caitlin Dickerson

The secret history of the U.S. government's family-separation policy (Finalist, Public Interest)

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Absolute Power

By Graeme Wood

Asked about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Mohammed bin Salman said, "If that's the way we did things, Khashoggi would not even be among the top 1,000 people on the list." (Finalist, Profile Writing)

---

American Rasputin

By Jennifer Senior

Steve Bannon is still scheming. And he's still a threat to democracy. (Finalist, Profile Writing)

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They Called Her 'Black Jet'

By Keisha N. Blain

Joetha Collier, a young Black woman, was killed by a white man in 1971, near the Mississippi town where Emmett Till was murdered. Why isn't her case known nationally today? (Finalist, Best Digital Illustration, by Esiri Essi)

---

Today's News

1. The White House warned that Russia may be planning to give fighter jets to Iran.
2. An independent analysis of EPA data collected in the weeks following the February 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, found elevated levels of nine different air pollutants in the area.
3. Hundreds of warm daily-temperature records were set this week across the eastern U.S., in addition to numerous cold-weather records in western states.

---

Dispatches

• Brooklyn, Everywhere: The removal of a street sign in Brooklyn reveals how history gets erased, Xochitl Gonzalez argues.
• The Books Briefing: Kate Cray asks: How should we teach the story of our country?

Explore all of our newsletters here.

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Evening Read

 

 

The Parent Test Stokes American Parenting's Worst Impulses

By Lydia Kiesling

If you are an American parent, you are mired in contradiction wherever you look: Children are too coddled, a strident Facebook post might shout at you, right before you read an article about the dangers of letting kids go outside alone. It takes a village, you are told, but also, everyone hates it when you bring your toddler on a plane or into a restaurant. You read that modern American parenting is uniquely isolating and expensive, then watch in befuddlement while Congress lets the expanded child tax credit expire.

The Parent Test, a new reality-TV show on ABC, promises to throw confused parents a lifeline and identify "today's most effective parenting style." The show is hosted by Adolph Brown—a clinical psychologist, motivational speaker, and father of eight—and the actor Ali Wentworth, mother of two. It follows 12 families, each embodying a different style of parenting, and assesses each style for its likelihood of producing eventual adults who are "emotionally whole," and able to have "healthy relationships" and "navigate today's world." Each family is filmed doing a series of parenting challenges, and the rest of the parents analyze the footage, voting one style out after every round. In the finale, the families choose one parenting style to rule them all. It's American Gladiators gone domestic, set in a cozy amphitheater. But the battle metaphor ripples outward, painting a lonely picture of American parents fighting for their children's success and safety in a dangerous world while everyone watches, judges, and weighs in.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

• Can a million Chinese people die and nobody know?
• The Supreme Court actually understands the internet.
• Antony Blinken: Zelensky is right to demand that the U.S. "do even more and do it even faster."

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Culture Break

 

 

Read. These books can help you come to terms with death.

Watch. In theaters, Return to Seoul is a story of adoption and belonging that resists easy sentimentality.

On TV, Apple TV+'s Hello Tomorrow! is a show about mistaking hype for progress.

And there's always Titanic, which feels different 25 years after its release.

Listen. Caroline Polachek's new album, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, is pure magic.

---

P.S.

Our final recommendation for the weekend: Take a break from the screen and listen to audio versions of our articles. We've got a selection of stories now available in the Hark app, including my Daily colleague Tom Nichols's exploration of the narcissism of some angry young men and Jennifer Senior's etiquette guide for loved ones dealing with long COVID.

Whichever stories, movies, or books you choose to spend your weekend with, I hope you enjoy them.

— Isabel

Kelli María Korducki contributed to this newsletter.

But the company that created the 30-minute, over-the-counter test has filed for bankruptcy, so the product's eventual availability to consumers remains unclear.

'Antisocial' damselfish are scaring off cleaner fish customers — and this could contribute to coral reef breakdown. Damselfish have been discovered to disrupt 'cleaning services' vital to the health of reefs. And climate change may mean this is only likely to get worse.

Using ensemble learning techniques and longitudinal data from a large naturalistic driving study, researchers have developed a novel, interpretable and highly accurate algorithm for predicting mild cognitive impairment and   in older drivers. Digital markers refer to variables generated from data captured through recording devices in the real-world setting. These data could be processed to measure driving behavior, performance and tempo-spatial pattern in exceptional detail.

Researchers have published a method for 3D-printing an ink that contains calcium carbonate-producing bacteria. The 3D-printed mineralized bio-composite is unprecedentedly strong, light, and environmentally friendly, with a range of applications from art to biomedicine.

Sensing a hug from each other via the internet may be a possibility in the near future. A research team recently developed a wireless, soft e-skin that can both detect and deliver the sense of touch, and form a touch network allowing one-to-multiuser interaction. It offers great potential for enhancing the immersion of distance touch communication.

Researchers create a network of interacting proteins — or interactome — to aid drug discovery.

It was the height of summer 2022 when the calls started coming in. Scores of dead deer suddenly littered rural properties and park preserves, alarming the public and inconveniencing landowners. According to officials at the Urbana Park District, it was Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD), a midge-borne viral illness that pops up in white-tailed deer populations around the state every few years. And when susceptible deer are infected, they die within days. Now, scientists have found gene variants in deer associated with the animals' susceptibility to EHD.

Warming a crystal of the mineral fresnoite, scientists discovered that excitations called phasons carried heat three times farther and faster than phonons, the excitations that usually carry heat through a material.

Researchers create a network of interacting proteins — or interactome — to aid drug discovery.

RNAs can wreak havoc on cells if they aren't removed at the right time. Dis3L2 is a molecular 'machine' that untangles and chews up RNAs, but scientists have been unable to explain how. Biochemists have now pieced together the answer. By shape-shifting, the machine unsheathes a lethal wedge that pries open and chews up RNA molecules, a behavior previously unseen.

Fungal pathogens that cause pine ghost canker are infecting conifer trees in urban forests of Southern California, scientists found.

To eat or to mate — that is the question (and the answer is: moderately hungry mice choose to mate). Researchers show that hungry mice prioritize interacting with members of the opposite sex over eating and drinking when their brains are stimulated with leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone.

Scientists have built and tested for a thousand cycles a lithium-air battery design that could one day be powering cars, domestic airplanes, long-haul trucks and more. Its energy storage capacity greatly surpasses that possible with lithium-ion batteries.

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RNAs can wreak havoc on cells if they aren't removed at the right time. Dis3L2 is a molecular 'machine' that untangles and chews up RNAs, but scientists have been unable to explain how. Biochemists have now pieced together the answer. By shape-shifting, the machine unsheathes a lethal wedge that pries open and chews up RNA molecules, a behavior previously unseen.

Fish Food

In spite of government reassurances, things are starting to look freakier than ever in East Palestine, Ohio, where a new official tally puts the animal death toll at over 43,000 following the catastrophic train derailment there.

As News 5 Cleveland reports, state officials said that more than 43,000 fish and other aquatic animals were found dead in rivers and streams in the waterways surrounding East Palestine where a Norfolk Southern train carrying a bunch of toxic chemicals derailed, resulting in both a chemical spill and a controlled burn of the noxious compounds aboard to avoid explosion.

"Do not feel they've been upfront," local resident John Hammer told CBS News, "not from day one."

Keep Calm

Just last week, the head of the Ohio Department of Agriculture attempted to reassure residents that "there's nothing that we've seen with the livestock that poses any concerns," the Washington Post notes in its reporting on the updated animal death toll.

News 5 Cleveland notes that so far, the government has not reported any land-walking mammal deaths — but folks who live near the disaster site have said that their animals, including chickens, cats, and foxes, have become sick and died in the wake of the derailment.

Residents of the region are understandably concerned about their health and safety in the wake of the derailment in, spite of official reassurances that the one-time evacuation zone is safe.

Distrust in government fortitude following the Norfolk Southern crash is so high, in fact, that many are convinced that an Environmental Protection Agency official who drank the water in East Palestine didn't actually imbibe.

As of right now, it's far too early to say what the long-term effects of the catastrophic accident will be — but if this latest fish death toll is any indication, there's reason to be concerned.

More on the East Palestine derailment: There's a Super Bizarre Coincidence Surrounding the Ohio Train Disaster

The post 

 of Thousands of Animals Died for Miles Around Toxic Spill, Officials Admit appeared first on Futurism.

The suit argues that rules applying to mifepristone unnecessarily limit patients' access to medication abortion.

Biologists use current and historical bird surveys to reveal how land use change has amplified — and in some cases mitigated — the impacts of climate change on bird populations in Los Angeles and the Central Valley over the past century. The study found that urbanization and much hotter and drier conditions in L.A. have driven declines in more than one-third of bird species in the region.

Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for the treatment of severe blood cancers is the only medical intervention that has cured two people living with HIV in the past. An international group of physicians and researchers has now identified another case in which   has been shown to be cured in the same way. The successful healing process of this third patient was for the first time characterized in great detail virologically and immunologically over a time span of ten years.

An object near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy has drawn the interest of scientists because it has evolved dramatically in a relatively short time. A new study suggests that the object, called X7, could be a cloud of dust and gas that was created when two stars collided. The researchers believe it will eventually be drawn toward the black hole and will disintegrate.

Astronomers have discovered a rapidly growing black hole in one of the most extreme galaxies known in the very early Universe. The discovery of the galaxy and the black hole at its center provides new clues on the formation of the very first supermassive black holes.

Getting good sleep can play a role in supporting your heart and overall health — and maybe even how long you live — according to new research.

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Empire State Asteroid

NASA has gotten a close-up look at a mysteriously-shaped asteroid, once identified as a potential danger for colliding with the Earth, as it whizzed by our planet.

The asteroid, dubbed 2011 AG5 and which came within just 1.1 million miles earlier this year, is unusually oblong and shares the same rough proportions as the Empire State Building at 1,600 feet in length and approximately 500 feet in width.

"Of the 1,040 near-Earth objects observed by planetary radar to date, this is one of the most elongated we've seen," said Lance Benner, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, who led the observations, in a statement.

Space Junkie

While the asteroid was first discovered over a decade ago, we've finally been able to get a detailed look at its shape and orbit.

Using the Goldstone Solar System Radar antenna dish at the Deep Space Network's facility in California, astronomers were also able to confirm that the asteroid slowly rotates around its own axis every nine hours.

Astronomers were also able to refine the path the asteroid takes as it orbits the Sun. A full orbit takes roughly 621 days, and it won't make a close pass of Earth until 2040.

The asteroid was once deemed a potential threat.

"Interestingly, shortly after its discovery, 2011 AG5 became a poster-child asteroid when our analysis showed it had a small chance of a future impact," said Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, in the statement.

Fortunately, for now, we can gaze upon the strange Empire State Building in the sky without having to worry about an imminent collision.

"Continued observations of this object ruled out any chance of impact, and these new ranging measurements by the planetary radar team will further refine exactly where it will be far into the future," he added.

More on asteroids: Baby Asteroid Photobombs James Webb On Accident

The post Strangely Shaped Asteroid Whizzes Past Earth appeared first on Futurism.

Officials reported that thousands of fish died within days of the chemical spill caused by a derailed train, potentially due to contamination of local waterways

 

 

A team of astronomers has used some of the most powerful telescopes on (and orbiting) Earth to make a first-of-its-kind observation. They've spotted a pair of dwarf galaxies containing supermassive black holes on a collision course. Then, they did it again. Yes, two pairs of colliding dwarf galaxies, both extremely distant but at different phases of merging. Scientists hope this discovery can help shed light on how large galaxies like the Milky Way came to be.

A dwarf galaxy is one with less than 3 billion solar masses, about one-twentieth of the Milky Way's mass. There are plenty of those drifting around in our corner of the universe, including several orbiting the Milky Way. None of them are about to collide, though. The current scientific consensus holds that the large galaxies common today arose from the merger of smaller ones, but ancient galactic mergers are difficult to observe because of their distance. The team, led by astrophysicist Marko Micic from the University of Alabama, got around that by combining data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, infrared observations from NASA's Wide Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and optical data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).

The orbiting Chandra observatory was particularly valuable in this study as it revealed the black holes, which are becoming more active as the galaxies move toward each other. The disk of super-heated material spiraling toward the event horizon heats up to millions of degrees, causing it to emit X-ray energy. This data pinpointed the colliding dwarf galaxies, and the visible and infrared data showed how the galaxies are interacting as they approach each other.

In the image above, the left composite shows a merger in galaxy cluster Abell 133, about 760 million light-years from Earth. Since the galaxies are in the late stages of merging, it's been given a single name: Mirabilis, after an endangered species of hummingbird. On the right are the dwarf galaxies Elstir and Vinteuil, which are a reference to the Proust novel "In Search of Lost Time." These galaxies are still separate, but a bridge of stars and gas has started to form between them. These objects are located in the Abell 1758S cluster some 3.2 billion light-years away.

With these objects identified, astronomers will be able to conduct follow-up observations that will reveal the processes taking place as they merge. In time, both pairs of galaxies will become larger dwarf galaxies with even bigger central black holes. This could cause more draw more small galaxies toward them, resulting in more mergers. Given the time scales involved, we can't just stare at Elstir and Vinteuil until that happens, but astronomers have other sources of data. The James Webb Space Telescope recently revealed the Sparkler Galaxy, which appears to be a mirror image of a young Milky Way, studded with glowing globular clusters. This, too, could offer insight into how our galaxy evolved over the eons.

Now read:

• Webb Telescope Reveals Unexpected Milky Way-Like Galaxies
• Scientists Discover Massive 'Extra Galactic Structure' Hidden Behind the Milky Way
• Astronomers Spot Dazzling Galactic Collision

Modern birds capable of flight all have a specialized wing structure called the propatagium without which they could not fly. The evolutionary origin of this structure has remained a mystery, but new research suggests it evolved in nonavian dinosaurs. The finding comes from statistical analyses of arm joints preserved in fossils and helps fill some gaps in knowledge about the origin of bird flight.

The meat-eating dinosaurs known as theropods that roamed the ancient Earth ranged in size from the bus-sized T. rex to the smaller, dog-sized Velociraptor. Scientists puzzling over how such wildly different dinosaur sizes evolved recently found — to their surprise — that smaller and larger theropod dinosaurs like these didn't necessarily get that way merely by growing slower or faster.

A new chip called ORBGRAND can decode any code applied to data transmitted over the internet with maximum accuracy and between 10 and 100 times more energy efficiency than other methods.

After a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3, national attention was slow to turn to the crash. That has now changed decisively. In the past 10 days, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, former President Donald Trump, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg have all visited the town. A lively national political debate has also emerged, but it's one that, like the burning rail cars, has produced a lot of heat, but not a great deal of light.

The disaster has become a proxy battle where existing political divides are playing out—and where the failings of both of the contemporary parties are on clear display. The Democratic Party struggles to respond effectively to a crisis with empathy rather than technocratic policy lectures. The Trump-era Republican Party, meanwhile, says all the right things and advocates for all the wrong ones.

The conversation on the right is especially revealing. Some factions of conservative media have accused the mainstream press and Democratic establishment of ignoring the story, though in fact Fox News was just as late as its competitors. Nonetheless, Trump and other MAGA-minded Republicans, like Ohio's newly elected senator, J. D. Vance, have embraced East Palestine as an example of how the Democratic Party has abandoned white working-class areas of the industrial Midwest. Tucker Carlson has gone farther, arguing that the response has been slow because the town is conservative and largely white.

[Read: Could Positive Train Control have prevented the Washington wreck?]

The derailment is a curious type of crisis, because the material effects are so unclear. Unlike some other recent rail catastrophes, no one died in the initial derailment and fire—contrast that with the 47 people who died in a 2013 wreck in Quebec, near the U.S. border. The longer-term environmental effects are still uncertain. State and federal authorities claim that the water is safe to drink and that the chemicals that burned shouldn't have long-term health harms. Many residents, who were evacuated, experienced odors and rashes, and saw the flames, are understandably not convinced.

Both the diagnosis and policy ideas that the MAGA Republicans have advanced offer little hope. Speaking in East Palestine on Wednesday, Trump claimed that the Biden administration had offered assistance only because he had come to visit. "They were intending to do absolutely nothing for you," he said. Vance made a similar charge. But Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, though not close to Trump, said he had declined federal assistance: "Look, the president called me and said, 'Anything you need.' I have not called him back after that conversation. We will not hesitate to do that if we're seeing a problem or anything, but I'm not seeing it." The EPA did eventually move to take over the disaster response, likely in part because of pressure from Trump—but that's different from ignoring the situation.

Vance has offered a more interesting perspective, describing a disaster that "stands at the intersection of corporate power and government power." He's right, and he's also right that many residents of the region don't trust the federal government. But these points run into the fundamental paradox of MAGA, which is the mullet of politics: populist in the front, corporatist in the back. Vance has said he wants to see higher fines for corporations like Norfolk Southern, the railroad whose train crashed. Yet when Trump was in office (as the Biden White House has been eager to point out), his signature initiatives included rolling back environmental regulations, cutting fines to corporate wrongdoers, and reducing government oversight. That even extended to eliminating rules around safety for trains transporting chemicals.

[David A. Graham: The art of the dealer]

Trump has discovered that he can get away with taking actions that don't actually help if he's able to show up and make people feel he's on their side. His ability to do that is one reason that East Palestine twice voted heavily for Trump. Democrats seem incapable of communicating effectively to voters in places like East Palestine, despite having the better arguments about corporate accountability and environmental safety.

And neither party has much to offer after the initial cleanup, though the intense attention on the wreck might help produce some immediate assistance to East Palestine. The town depends on the railroad, which produces some inherent risk even with good safety rules. The prospects for new economic development are dim. Trump peddles resentment, racial and otherwise, as a salve. Biden's enormous stimulus plans may reshape the American economy but are unlikely to make much of a dent in small, depressed towns like East Palestine. "We are here and will stay here for as long as it takes to ensure your safety and to help East Palestine recover and thrive," Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw wrote in a statement over the weekend. That's a promise he probably can't keep. Recovery may be possible, but thriving is remote.

Heavy snow fell in southern California on Friday, as the first blizzard in a generation pounded the Los Angeles area, with heavy rains threatening flooding in other places.

Workers tasked with moving products in the immense U.S. food system are at a high risk of serious  , according to a new Penn State-led study, and pandemic-caused, supply-chain problems have worsened the situation, researchers suggest.

As the Nazi party rose to power in 1930s Germany, anthropologists in both England and the United States struggled to respond to Hitler's theories of pure races, Aryan-Nordic ascendancy, and the threat of racial mixing. Though most anthropologists saw the ideology as "nonsense," there was little consensus in the field on the definition of race and many scholars did not voice their opposition, hoping to keep science and politics separate.

Ancient climates can help us understand the past, but also the future. 23 million years ago, in a time called the Miocene Epoch, Connecticut was around five to six degrees warmer than today and located roughly where Long Island is now. By the end of the Miocene, around five million years ago the earth had gradually cooled, Antarctica was glaciated, and there was some Arctic ice as well.

The boundaries between biology and technology are becoming blurred. Researchers have now successfully grown electrodes in living tissue using the body's molecules as triggers. The result paves the way for the formation of fully integrated electronic circuits in living organisms.

Snakes are cold-blooded animals, or ectothermic, because they get their temperature from their surroundings and cannot generate their own body heat. While this can come in handy, the downside of being a cold-blooded animal is the struggle to survive in cold environments. Incidentally, if the outside temperature rapidly drops, their physical temperature can drop to temperatures that are life-threatening, too. Species that live in habitats where winter months are inhospitable stay safe in the form of hibernation. Although reptilian hibernation is different from mammal hibernation on a physiological level — in fact, it is often referred to by scientists with the term "brumation," instead — it follows almost all the same principles: If it's too cold to prey and mate, you need to rest. "Why waste energy? If you're not able to feed and you're not mating, you might as well take advantage of the fact that you're an ectotherm and that you can get really cold and still survive," says Matt Goode, an assistant research scientist at the University of Arizona School of Natural Resources and the Environment. Read More: These 3 Prehistoric Snakes Are the Stuff of Nightmares Snakes Hibernate According to Their Habitat and Geography Not all species of snakes must go into hibernation — it depends on where they live. Species living in tropical areas don't usually hibernate, according to Goode, although they might have periods of lower activity and dormancy associated with other environmental factors such as droughts or dry seasons. That's the case for anacondas, for instance, who are native to warm, tropical climates. "But in temperate areas, snakes can spend many, many months underground," says Goode. His first research focused on prairie rattlesnakes in Wyoming, where temperatures can drop to 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and the ground can freeze solid 5 feet deep. "Snakes have to get below that," Goode says. "If they don't, they could freeze and not survive through the winter." Tiger rattlesnakes start brumation from late October to early December, while Western diamondback rattlesnakes, which are slightly larger, will go into their dens a little later than that. How do Snakes Hibernate? Since snakes get their warmth from external factors, like sunshine, when temperatures start to drop, they will physiologically experience a drop in their body temperature, too. As colder days become more frequent, snakes will start eating less and will slow their metabolism and heart rate to save up on energy expenditure. They'll move less and stay as still and relaxed as possible, almost grinding their body to a halt. "Because snakes spend so much time completely not moving around, their heart rates go way, way down, and their respiration rates, of course, go way down," says Goode. Read More: Why Do Snakes Eat Themselves? Then, they find a spot to stay safe and warm throughout the cold and take a nap for as long as the frost continues. In fact, they take more of a rest and a nap than a deep slumber, because they might still make appearances outside the den if needed – like basking in the sun to warm up or fight an infection. Their internal storage of glucose will help them spring back into action if needed in case of an emergency. Where do Snakes Hibernate? Snakes usually hibernate in what scientists call a hibernaculum, aka a den. "[A snake is] hiding anywhere that has the ability to buffer those cold temperatures on the outside," says Goode. That is usually in burrows deep underground, under the frost and the portion of the ground that is frozen. But snakes can also hibernate in tree hollows and rotting logs, tree roots, sinkholes, tunnel systems excavated by other animals, railroad embankments, water-filled cisterns, houses, basements and sheds meant for humans. Smaller snakes might like to spend the winter deeper underground than larger snakes in some cases, and some snakes like to return to their den over the years. Oftentimes, these dens can house hundreds, if not thousands, of snakes at the same time throughout the winter — adult snakes and baby snakes alike, sometimes even from different species. In Canada, for example, Goode explains, garter snakes are known to hide out in dens with over 20,000 garter snakes in one spot. "It's a limiting feature of their environment to find that really good place that allows them to get under the ground and avoid freezing," says Goode. It's also helpful to hibernate in large groups because that helps produce heat, since a bunch of snakes intertwine and retain warmth in the group. Scientists Speculate Dens Serve a Social Function, too "There may be some social function to [hibernating in a den] as well," says Goode. He argues that the evolution of snake social systems, for example, might have come from the fact that large groups of snakes are essentially forced together under the ground. "It's not like snakes want to hang out with each other, right," says Goode. "But some species actually, when they emerge from the den, they remain at the den site above ground, and then you'll see social interactions happen." Read More: Almost 4,000 Snakes Rule This Brazilian Island Diamondback rattlesnakes do this, for example. But other snakes, like tiger rattlesnakes, overwinter completely in solitary. They have no interaction with other species or other individuals of their species until later, after they've moved away from the den. Especially for snakes that live in places where it gets frigid for a long time, hibernation becomes a crucial part of their lifecycle. It underlies many of the hormonal mechanisms that later allow them to reproduce successfully (that's why snake breeders will put their snakes in brumation too, even if they don't necessarily need to). For instance, brumation comes as an advantage for ectotherms' longevity. The rattlesnakes Goode studies are long-lived compared to their body size especially because they've evolved to be great at conserving energy. "Being able to go down for extended periods of time like that really allows them to live longer lives and to reproduce more," says Goode. "If we were ectotherms, with our large body sizes, we probably would live to be a couple 100 years old."

Enceladus, the sixth largest of Saturn's moons, is known for spraying out tiny icy silica particles — so many of them that the particles are a key component of the second outermost ring around Saturn. Scientists have not known how that happens or how long the process takes. A study now shows that tidal heating in Enceladus' core creates currents that transport the silica, which is likely released by deep-sea hydrothermal vents, over the course of just a few months.

The boundaries between biology and technology are becoming blurred. Researchers have now successfully grown electrodes in living tissue using the body's molecules as triggers. The result paves the way for the formation of fully integrated electronic circuits in living organisms.

A new method to convert waste plastic to fuel and raw materials promises to help close the carbon cycle at mild temperature and with high yield.

When seen from space, Earth's hemispheres — northern and southern — appear equally bright. For years, the brightness symmetry between hemispheres remained a mystery. In a new study, researchers reveal a strong correlation between storm intensity, cloudiness and the solar energy reflection rate in each hemisphere. They offer a solution to the mystery, alongside an assessment of how climate change might alter the reflection rate in the future.

One of the striking aspects of the quantum world is that a particle, say, an electron, is also a wave, meaning that it exists in many places at the same time. Researchers make use of this property to develop a new type of tool — the quantum twisting microscope (QTM) — that can create novel quantum materials while simultaneously gazing into the most fundamental quantum nature of their electrons.

As air pollution in Stockholm has decreased, so has the lung capacity of children and adolescents has improved, a new study reports. The researchers consider the results important, since the lung health of the young greatly affects the risk of their developing chronic lung diseases later in life.

There's still a long way to go.

Surprise! It turns out that the process to create "biofuels" from plastic waste — a hallmark of 

's "climate-friendly" fuel pledge — would be so toxic, it could literally cause 

.

As The Guardian reports in tandem with ProPublica, records obtained by the news outlets reveal that, per the 

's calculations, pollution from the plastic-derived jet fuel Chevron intends to start making would carry a one-in-four risk of cancer for anyone living near facilities that manufacture it.

Yet for some reason, the EPA signed off on the Chevron project, according to the reporting — and even skipped some key steps that would normally bar this sort of risky chemical from being produced.

Proposed as part of the Biden Administration's response to the global climate crisis, plastic-derived biofuels seem, on their face, to provide both a solution to petroleum's greenhouse gases and a way to tackle the overwhelming plastic waste problem to boot.

But the reality is far darker because, as this investigation and other big ones have found, the process by which plastic is broken down can produce emissions that could actually be worse for the environment than the burning of fossil fuels.

To add insult to injury, Pascagoula, the Mississippi town where Chevron plans to make the plastic-derived fuel — with the permission of the EPA, in spite of the known risks — is home to a primarily Black community. Given the increasingly well-documented realities of environmental racism, experts that the news outlets spoke to have expressed serious misgivings.

The one-in-four risk of cancer from the smoke stack pollution the Chevron facility will carry is, as the joint reporting notes, a whopping 250,000 times higher than what the EPA normally allows when approving new chemicals.

But as records obtained by The Guardian and ProPublica show, the agency not only approved the Chevron jet fuel while being aware of that staggering cancer risk, but also skipped a number of key tests that would normally be undertaken with such a seemingly-toxic chemical.

When asked why those tests weren't done, an EPA spokesperson told the news outlets that the agency "does not believe these additional test results would change the risks identified nor the unreasonable risks finding."

But when the outlets' reporters asked Maria Doa, a veteran EPA official who is now the senior director of chemical policy at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, if the jet fuel should be allowed to be produced, her answer was a resounding "no."

"EPA should not allow these risks in Pascagoula or anywhere," Doa said.

As toxicologist and former National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences director Linda Birnbaum told the news outfits, the move seems like bad news.

"That kind of risk is obscene," Birnbaum said. "You can't let that get out."

More on the environment: A Shocking Amount of US "Recycling" Goes Straight to the Landfill

The post Chevron's Jet Fuel Made From Plastic Very Likely to Cause Cancer, EPA Documents Say appeared first on Futurism.

Adverse childhood experiences in mothers can affect their children's mental and physical health, as researchers report. The study found that maltreatment during a mother's childhood is associated with a higher risk of health problems such as asthma, autism, and depression in the next generation. Early intervention to support affected mothers might help to counter this effect.

When scientists disabled a single regulatory gene in a species of sea anemone, a stinging cell that shoots a venomous miniature harpoon for hunting and self-defense shifted to shoot a sticky thread that entangles prey instead, according to a new study.

Researchers have provided the first experimental evidence that a species of endangered sea star protects kelp forests along North America's Pacific Coast by preying on substantial numbers of kelp-eating urchins.

The movie seems destined for internet infamy but doesn't live up to the promise of its viral trailer.

The antidepressant properties of hallucinogenic drugs may stem from their ability to bind to intracellular serotonin receptors, a study suggests.

Venetian Drought

An unusually dry winter in Europe is causing Venice, Italy's world-famous canals to dry up, as seen in alarming new images — a growing climate crisis rearing its head.

It's been a perfect storm: a winter heatwave, as well as a severe lack of rain and snow, have caused major waterways in Europe to plummet to shockingly low levels.

The timing couldn't be worse, considering the continent had already experienced severe droughts last year.

 

 

Dry Canals

Italy in particular has been hit hard, with its longest river Po bringing in a shocking 61 percent less water than usual at this time of year, CNN reports.

Venice is suffering in a particularly concrete way, with gondolas and other water taxis grinding to a halt due to drying canals.

The UNESCO World Heritage site, which dates back to the fifth century, has in many areas been reduced to a mud pit, to the shock of the city's many visitors.

Photos show long stretches of the city's canals reduced to a puddle, exposing the mud and the adjacent buildings' foundations.

 

 

Not just tourists are affected by the water level drop. The city relies on water ambulances, which use the canals as a way to get around, according to Agence France-Presse.

It's a grimly peculiar situation since Venice is usually dealing with high, not low, water levels, especially between October and January, when it's not uncommon for central parts like the city's main square to be partially submerged.

City officials are now praying for some much-needed rain — roughly 50 days of it — as experts told AFP, to reverse a crisis that has been building since the winter of 2020.

READ MORE: 'Never-ending drought emergency': Italy's iconic Venice canals have dried up [USA Today]

More on droughts: Earth Should Brace Itself For Multi-Decade "Mega-Droughts"

The post Venice Looks Pretty Alarming With Its Canals Drained appeared first on Futurism.

Nature, Published online: 24 February 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00473-8

A committee found that Priyanga Amarasekare broke rules after she alleged discrimination by colleagues. It recommended light sanctions — but the university chancellor issued stronger ones.

Research in Chile's Atacama Desert suggests that the science instruments on the Red Planet aren't capable of detecting signs of long-dead microbial life.

Fossils from New Zealand reveal the existence of a giant petrel with a wicked sharp beak that lived 3 million years ago.

Antarctic bottom water (AABW) covers more than two-thirds of the global ocean bottom, and its formation has recently decreased. However, its long-term variability has not been well understood.

A study led by Dr. Man Zhang (Guangzhou Laboratory, Guangzhou Medical University) has been published in the journal Science China Life Sciences.

A study led by Dr. Man Zhang (Guangzhou Laboratory, Guangzhou Medical University) has been published in the journal Science China Life Sciences.

The Laboratoire Sous-marin Provence Méditerranée (LSPM) lies 40 km off the coast of Toulon, at a depth of 2,450 m, inaccessible even to sunlight. Through this national research platform run by the CNRS in collaboration with Aix-Marseille University (AMU) and IFREMER, scientists will investigate undersea unknowns while scanning the skies for neutrinos. These elementary particles of extraterrestrial origin know few obstacles and can even traverse our planet without bumping into a single atom.

The robotic bee replicants home in on the unsuspecting queen of a hive. But unlike the rebellious replicants in the 1982 sci-fi thriller Blade Runner, these ones are here to work.

On February 24, 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine escalated a dramatic conflict, with devastating effects both in human costs on the ground and international impact. Beyond the immediate reaction of world stock markets, newly published research from five UK-leading finance academics details how the global economy is still enduring the war's consequences a year later.

Quantum entanglement refers to a phenomenon in quantum mechanics in which two or more particles become linked such that the state of each particle cannot be described independently of the others, even when they are separated by a large distance. The principle, referred to by Albert Einstein as "spooky action at a distance," is now utilized in quantum networks to transfer information. The building blocks of these networks—quantum nodes—can generate and measure quantum states.

No matter the US political climate, young, single, and less educated men seemed to be at higher risk for deportation than other undocumented Mexican immigrants from 2001 to 2019, according to a new study.

For the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers analyzed deportation and voluntary return migration data encompassing the administrations of US Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

"Even through the Trump administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric advocated deporting all undocumented immigrants, particularly from Mexico, the characteristics of Mexican immigrants deported during the Trump years were not dramatically different from previous administrations," says lead author Heeju Sohn, assistant professor of sociology at Emory University.

The researchers examined trends in socio-demographic characteristics of undocumented  immigrants from Mexico deported by the US along with those who chose to return to Mexico.

While the study does not predict or offer any absolute probabilities, it provides insight into relative potential risks. On average, each administration annually deported about 893,000 people with the majority of them Mexican citizens.

"Despite each administration's differing approach and rhetoric, who was actually being deported or deciding to leave didn't change all that much," Sohn says. "Just because an undocumented person voluntary leaves the US doesn't always mean they felt they had a choice in that decision either."

Fewer immigrants were deported annually during the Trump administration than under Obama or Bush who had the highest number of deportations. During Obama's first term, there was an increase in deportation of Mexican immigrants with criminal convictions but that percentage decreased in the last two years of his presidency.

While Trump's administration prioritized all undocumented immigrants for deportation, the result shows deportation focused more on young adults and those with less education, groups which already face higher deportation risks.

"Policy makers and the public need to understand the consequences of the immigration policies that are implemented—whether they work or not," says coauthor Anne Pebley, a faculty fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Population Research.

"While the Trump administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies had many negative effects on immigrants and Americans, they did not do what they were apparently intended to in terms of deporting a larger and more diverse group of undocumented immigrants."

The Trump administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric and heightened enforcement didn't appear to motivate a more diverse group of undocumented immigrants to leave voluntarily. Rather, voluntary return migration to Mexico was a trend that began early in the Obama administration after the great recession of 2007-2009, according to the study.

"People who are leaving or being deported do not exist in a vacuum," Sohn says. "You can't isolate them separately from the social and family connections they have interwoven in US society. So, what happens to undocumented people that society has neglected has a direct effect on the well-being of US citizens. We have a duty to not discriminate and there is a need for additional research."

The experiences of undocumented children living in the US is a blind spot in national data; the youngest age group in this study is 18 to 31.

"Moving across countries is a disruptive life event," Sohn says. "This is an age group where people take major steps as adults—finding a partner, having children, or establishing a career. This can have reverberating consequences for the rest of their lives."

For the study, Sohn and colleagues combined deportees' and voluntary returnees' data from both sides of the border—the Migration Survey on the Borders of Mexico-North (EMIF-N) and US Current Population Survey's Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC). It's the first time these two major sets of data were combined for research purposes and studied in a novel way.

"It was critical that we understood the nuances of the data and sampling strategy. We took a lot of time and effort making sure our method accounted for the differences," Sohn says.

"This is part of a bigger desire to make sure the lives of underrepresented groups have adequate representation," she adds. "A lot of the research in social sciences are based on large data sets that don't put much focus on the smaller groups or ones that are harder to measure. I hope getting this important topic published will get visibility to a wider audience."

Additional coauthors are from UCLA and Princeton University. The NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development funded the work.

Source: Emory University

The post Deportation risk hasn't been the same for all undocumented Mexican immigrants appeared first on Futurity.

Nature, Published online: 24 February 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00543-x

Anti-Asian scrutiny has only intensified since the controversial programme ended one year ago, researchers say.

Nature, Published online: 24 February 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00579-z

The agency is considering giving peer reviewers one-time vetoes to push through support for unconventional science.

"Mind the gap."

A short while ago we published a blog post discussing the rate of modernization of our energy supply with updated, superior replacements for fossil fuel combustion. Given the point of the piece it attracted a good deal of attention and careful scrutiny. That review process exposed a material error, now corrected. The sequence of events illustrates the virtues of "peer review" (peers here meaning similar range of general competencies) and especially how owning errors and transparently repairing them is the best way forward. 

More importantly, the experience exposed an editiorial policy hole. We're not going to let this insight go to waste. 

By way of background, our central editiorial policy has been extremely simple: before we publish a new rebuttal or other "just the facts" treatment, we practice an internal review process which is sometimes very arduous and energetic— similar in general features to reviews of academic publications but with the added challenge of everybody being crystal clear on who's saying what. 

Our review convention has worked well for us, for the purpose of creating climate myth rebuttals and other writing serving as a straight conduit for conveying "there's the best we know," sourced in peer reviewed academic literature. 

The Gap:

But we need a bit more policy. Why? Here's the gist:

• Skeptical Science's main purpose is illumination of "here's the best we know" as reflected in academic research findings, by making densely technical reports digestible for a general readership. 

• Given the broad scope of Skeptical Science's view of climate science and climate change, we may also serve a useful role by offering articles including synthesis, putting facts together to help people see and understand larger concepts, emerging progress or lack of it. This follows a general trajectory of improvement in the formal scientific community toward interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects.

• Given the passion needed to contribute energy to our work, it is inhumane to expect Skeptical Science authors to  behave as though we have no thoughts or opinions or contributions of our own to offer. 

• Perhaps most importantly, mixing commentary or opinion with straight delivery of scientific information to our readers— without distinguishing that we're in this mode— will inevitably cost us credibility, whether by error or by losing our usual neutral tone.

How to address these factors, in editorial policy? We need invent nothing new but only emulate what's known to work well elsewhere, farther down the scientific communications food chain where primary producers are found.

Policy outcome:

We'll henceforth be clearly indicating when a blog post is the equivalent of an academic journal's inclusion of commentary or synthesis articles. 

No Desk for You

The rise and fall of the Bean Bag Empire continues. Amid 

's mounting AI war woes — spoiler: it's losing — CNBC now reports that the company has officially commanded its loyal Googlers to start sharing desks.

"Most Googlers will now share a desk with one other Googler," reads the internal memo, according to CNBC. "Through the matching process, they will agree on a basic desk setup and establish norms with their desk partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment."

The decision, per CNBC, is being chalked up to "real estate efficiency" in a hybrid-work world. In a fluid office environment, no one needs all that space — especially not a company that lost a cool $100 billion after its AI screwed up very publicly.

According to CNBC, the model — internally dubbed "Cloud Office Evolution" or "CLOE" and reportedly described in a separate internal document as a company effort to "[combine] the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility" of hybrid work — will be implemented at Google Cloud's five biggest campuses.

Some buildings, that same document reportedly noted, will ultimately be "vacated." Oof.

So 2014

If it's any consolation, CNBC reports that the Googlers were told that deskmates can alternate office days. And this time around, they weren't warned by any managers that there would be "blood on the streets" if productivity doesn't increase. So, you know, small wins.

Still, the change is yet another blow to Googlers everywhere who, until recently, have long enjoyed the cushy perks of the ping-pong-happy, pre-pandemic Silicon Valley work culture — a culture that, in the wake of several high-profile industry layoffs and widespread cost-cutting measures, increasingly feels like a soon-to-be-relic of the tech industry's past.

"Not every cost-cutting measure needs to be word mangled into sounding good for employees," one employee fumed on an internal messaging platform, according to CNBC. "A simple 'We are cutting office space to reduce costs' would make leadership sound more believable."

For the Kids

For its part, Google says the change has everything to do with their Googlers' happiness, actually.

"Our data show Cloud Googlers value guaranteed in-person collaboration when they are in the office," a Google spokesperson told CNBC, "as well as the option to work from home a few days each week."

"With this feedback," they added, "we've developed our new rotational model, combining the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility and focus we've all come to appreciate from remote work, while also allowing us to use our spaces more efficiently."

In any case, at least the Googlers are still better off than their peers at Tesla.

READ MORE: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing [CNBC]

More on Google: Google Denies Using AI to Pick Which Employees to Fire

The post Google Instructs Workers to Share Desks to Cut Costs appeared first on Futurism.

A brief history of New York City alligators.

 

 

We've heard about quantum computers for years, but no one has made one better at crunching numbers than a binary machine. 

's Quantum Engineering team may be on the right track, though. For the first time, the team built a larger quantum computer that didn't become less accurate. In a few years, we might consider this a significant turning point in the quest to make quantum computers useful.

The promise of a practical quantum computer is alluring — a bit of quantum information (a qubit) can encode more data than just 0 or 1 like a traditional binary computer. That means a quantum computer can, in theory, be much more powerful. However, qubits are sensitive to interference, even from light and temperature variations. This leads to higher error rates that make the output of quantum computers untrustworthy. And the more qubits you add, the higher the error rate.

However, Google's quantum engineering team says there may be light at the end of the tunnel. In the latest experiment, engineers have used quantum error correction to reduce the error rate while also making the quantum array larger. Google's engineers group individual qubits in arrays of 49 to form a single logical qubit. In the past, Google worked with groups of 17 qubits, but the new 49-qubit design demonstrated a lower error rate.

According to Google, this is the first time anyone has scaled a logical qubit without increasing the error rate. This could be an important milestone on the way to a practical quantum computer. Google cites potential use cases like modeling new molecules for medical uses, refining battery technology, and designing power-generating fusion reactors.

Creating a larger logical qubit with a lower error rate is a big step in that direction, but the hardware and software that goes into quantum computing must first improve. Google is looking toward upgrades in control electronics and cryogenics to move us in the right direction, and the materials that go into the company's Sycamore 2 quantum chips will be refined. That could get us to a place where quantum computing has real-world uses, and Google says it's already planning for that day. The company is working with government agencies and the larger security community to ensure that internet traffic and Google's cloud services remain secure in a world of robust, scalable quantum computers.

Now read:

• Google Aims to Make Quantum Computing Viable by 2029
• IBM Ships Its First Quantum Computer Outside the United States
• How Does Quantum Computing Work?

The robotic bee replicants home in on the unsuspecting queen of a hive. But unlike the rebellious replicants in the 1982 sci-fi thriller Blade Runner, these ones are here to work.

Satellite-driven crop monitoring has become a main method to derive crop information at local, regional and global scales.

Research into koala numbers before and after cultural burns on the world's second largest sand island has fueled a push to merge Aboriginal knowledge with cutting-edge science to mitigate the dangers of bushfires across Australia.

Conserving nature's biodiversity is one of the great challenges of our time. To develop strategies and effective measures, well-founded scientific analyses, and concrete information for the actors in nature conservation are needed. The field of biodiversity genomics can make an important contribution here: genomic data of species, species communities and entire ecosystems provide insight into characteristics, adaptive abilities, relationships and evolutionary developments.

A massive storm shocks Southern California with cold temperatures, strong winds and abundant moisture, causing extremely rare blizzard conditions and potentially unprecedented snowfalls

A massive storm shocks Southern California with cold temperatures, strong winds and abundant moisture, causing extremely rare blizzard conditions and potentially unprecedented snowfalls

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The discovery of a hidden primordial black hole, which formed just 750 million years after the Big Bang, suggests that it may be the 'tip of the iceberg' of the cosmic monsters hiding in the early universe.

A new analysis of a mummified "mermaid" found in a Japanese temple has revealed exactly what it is made from, and it's not what scientists thought.

Involuntary, fixational eye movements play a bigger role in vision than researchers previously thought, according to a new study.

Our eyes are never at rest. Instead, they remain in motion, even between our voluntary gaze shifts, through fixational eye movements—small, continuous movements that we are not aware of making.

Scientists have long sought to understand how we humans can perceive the world as stable as our eyes are constantly moving.

Past research has suggested that, in the intervals between voluntary gaze shifts, the human visual system builds a picture of a stable world by relying solely on sensory inputs from fixational eye movements.

According to the new study, however, there may be another contributing factor.

The researchers report that the visual system not only receives sensory inputs from fixational eye movements but also possesses knowledge of the motor behavior involved in those movements.

"The human brain has a very precise knowledge of how the eyes move, even if humans are not aware of moving them, and they use this knowledge to infer spatial relations and perceive the world not as blurry but as stable," says Michele Rucci, a professor in the brain and cognitive sciences department and Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester.

The results of the research reveal that spatial representations—that is, the locations of objects in relation to other objects—are based on a combination of sensory and motor activity from both voluntary and involuntary eye movements, which is contrary to the prevailing understanding, Rucci explains.

"It was already clear that the visual system uses sensory and motor knowledge from large voluntary movements, either gaze shifts we perform to look at different parts of a scene, or tracking movements for following moving objects," he says.

"But scientists didn't think smaller, involuntary movements like fixational eye movements could be used to convey information through motor signals."

Instead, the research shows the visual system continually monitors motor activity, even when people believe they are maintaining a steady gaze. The research also shows that vision has computational strategies similar to other senses, such as touch and smell, where motor behavior profoundly affects incoming sensory signals.

The results have important implications in future studies of visual perception and will help in better understanding visual impairments that involve abnormal eye movements.

"Our study unveils that involuntary eye movements, which are widely discarded as motor noise, make major contributions to spatial representations of the world," says Zhetuo Zhao, a PhD student in Rucci's lab and the study's first author. "As we show, studying spatial representations without considering motor activity—as is often done in current neuroscience—is severely limiting."

The study appears in Nature Communications.

Source: University of Rochester

The post Tiny eye motions help us see a steady world appeared first on Futurity.

Genen PAX5 saboterar insulinfrisättningen hos personer med typ 2-diabetes. Nu vill forskare försöka rätta till den med hjälp av gensaxen Crispr/Cas9.

Inlägget Forskare vill klippa till felande gen vid typ2-diabetes dök först upp på forskning.se.

A recent study published in the journal Science China Life Sciences was led by Dr. Nan Qiao (Laboratory of Health Intelligence, Huawei Cloud Computing Technologies), Dr. Hualiang Jiang (Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Dr. Mingyue Zheng (Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences).

Satellite-driven crop monitoring has become a main method to derive crop information at local, regional and global scales.

An unusual form of cesium atom is helping a University of Queensland-led research team unmask unknown particles that make up the universe.

Researchers from Trinity's School of Nursing and Midwifery have found indications that conversion therapy practices take place in Ireland. The research, commissioned by the Irish government will inform plans to ban the practice. Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Roderic O'Gorman recently launched the report.

A CEO's educational achievement is no guarantee of a company's stock market success according to new research.

An increasing number of natural disasters, the rising share of renewable energies and the current gas crisis—these factors are putting a strain on the electricity networks. Experts are increasingly concerned about the stability of the electricity networks and point to an increased risk of large-scale, long-lasting power outages, so-called blackouts. These can have serious consequences for the population: Communication networks, water supply and health care systems could collapse.

Scientific Reports, Published online: 24 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41598-023-30162-5

Comparison of clinicopathological characteristics and survival between symptomatic and asymptomatic 

New research establishes a link between irritable bowel syndrome and mental health challenges, such as anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.

The research highlights the need for health professionals to evaluate and treat associated psychiatric comorbidities in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients to improve their overall health and quality of life.

IBS is a chronic disorder of the stomach and intestines affecting up to 15% of the population. It causes cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, and diarrhea.

For the new study, researchers looked at more than 1.2 million IBS patient hospitalizations from 4,000 US hospitals over a three-year period and found that more than 38% had anxiety and more than 27% had depression. Both figures were double the rate of anxiety and depression found in those without IBS.

The prevalence of psychiatric problems including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, suicidal attempt/ideation, and eating disorders was significantly higher in the IBS patient population when compared to the general adult population.

"One possible explanation is the so-called brain-gut axis," says lead researcher Zahid Ijaz Tarar, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Missouri. "We've long suspected that dysfunction of the brain-gut axis is bidirectional, such that IBS symptoms influence anxiety and depression, and on the other hand, psychiatric factors cause IBS symptoms. Medical professionals need to treat both ends of the axis."

Untreated psychiatric disorders among IBS patients also puts additional strain on health care systems through increased frequency of hospital admissions and longer stays. Chronic diseases like IBS are also known to be associated with stress, work impairment, and associated economic burdens on patients and their families.

"I frequently tell my patients who have IBS, that if they have any type of psychologic stress, it will get expressed in some form or the other," says senior author Yezaz Ghouri, assistant professor of clinical medicine and gastroenterology.

"The mesentery membrane that holds the intestines together has one of the largest collections of nerve cells in the body. When those nerves start firing impulses, that can lead to the state of nervousness in and around the GI tract, resulting in IBS symptoms. The resulting decline in patient quality of life can lead to poor lifestyle choices, such as smoking. Early evaluation and treatment of both IBS and associated psychiatric conditions is essential."

The study appears in the Irish Journal of Medical Science. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest related to the study.

Source: University of Missouri

The post People with IBS face higher rates of anxiety, depression appeared first on Futurity.

Research into koala numbers before and after cultural burns on the world's second largest sand island has fueled a push to merge Aboriginal knowledge with cutting-edge science to mitigate the dangers of bushfires across Australia.

Conserving nature's biodiversity is one of the great challenges of our time. To develop strategies and effective measures, well-founded scientific analyses, and concrete information for the actors in nature conservation are needed. The field of biodiversity genomics can make an important contribution here: genomic data of species, species communities and entire ecosystems provide insight into characteristics, adaptive abilities, relationships and evolutionary developments.

Brazilian Amazon deforestation reached its worst-ever February level in the second month of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's presidential term, provisional data showed Friday.

Setting up a business or going self-employed can give LGBT people a sense of liberation and freedom to be their authentic selves, shows a study of small businesses with LGBT owners.

A massive galaxy cluster in the constellation Cetus dominates the center of this image from the NASA/ESA  . This image is populated with a serene collection of elliptical and spiral galaxies, but galaxies surrounding the central cluster—which is named SPT-CL J0019-2026—appear stretched into bright arcs, as if distorted by a gargantuan magnifying glass.

Algorithms were supposed to remake the American justice system. Championed as dispassionate, computer-driven calculations about risk, crime, and recidivism, their deployment in everything from policing to bail and sentencing to parole was meant to smooth out what are often unequal decisions made by fallible, biased humans.

NASA will launch Israel's first space telescope mission, the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT). ULTRASAT, an ultraviolet observatory with a large field of view, will investigate the secrets of short-duration events in the universe, such as supernova explosions and mergers of neutron stars.

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft entered safe mode on Feb. 16 after encountering an issue with its Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), which measures the spacecraft rate of rotation for use in determining its pointing. The IMU had been powered up in preparation for a minor maneuver targeted to reduce eclipse durations in 2027.

A new study of a fossilized ankylosaur suggests it could have uttered birdlike calls.

At New York State's only sea turtle rehabilitation center, workers are nursing a record number of sick patients back to health.

Big Bounce

Researchers suggest the universe may never actually end, but instead lead to future 

, much like the one believed to have brought the whole mess into being in the first place.

As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, first spotted by LiveScience's Paul Sutter, two theoretical physicists at the University of Portsmouth suggest that dark energy, the mysterious stuff suspected to be behind the accelerating expansion of the universe, may simply switch on and off, a process that could eventually lead to the next Big Bang.

Contract Obligations

There's a lot surrounding our theory of how the universe began that is still not fully understood, including a "singularity" following the Big Bang, which suggests a point of "infinite density where the math breaks down," as Sutter explains, as well as a period of "inflation," a rapid expansion of the universe during its earliest stages.

The authors of the new paper suggest that dark energy may have always been a part of this push-and-pull dynamic, and that the Big Bang was simply one in an infinite line of other Bangs, a theory known as the "Big Bounce" — which effectively means a singularity never had to happen in the first place.

In other words, dark energy could lead to a "Big Crunch," causing the universe to contract and eventually "Bang" again, rinse and repeat.

Making Up Numbers

But the dark energy model comes with some drawbacks. As the researchers admit in their paper, they had to insert an artificial value to explain the current rate of the universe's expansion, as predicted by quantum mechanics.

However, that doesn't mean the research is completely useless.

"Nonetheless, our qualitative analysis serves as a basis for the construction of more realistic models with realistic quantitative behavior," the paper reads.

In short, we still don't know the ultimate fate of our universe, but we might be getting closer to an answer.

READ MORE: Dark energy could lead to a second (and third, and fourth) Big Bang, new research suggests [LiveScience]

More on the Big Bang: Scientists Say Stuff Might Have Been Happening Before the Big Bang

The post More Big Bangs Could Be Coming Up, Scientists Say appeared first on Futurism.

There appears to finally be a cure for 

 — and yes, there is a purchase required.

In an interview with The Atlantic, University of Texas at San Antonio professor and hiccup expert Ali Seifi sings the praises of his patented device, the HiccAway.

While humanity has long been plagued by these phantom spasms, medical science still struggles to explain their cause. We do know, however, what happens to the body when hiccups occur — and it's treating those symptoms that Seifi is after.

The gist goes like this: our diaphragms spasm, which causes both a rapid inhalation of air and a sudden closing of the glottis, which is the medical term for the space between vocal cords — that "hic" sound that accompanies hiccups comes from the glottis, The Atlantic notes — and then the lengthy vagus nerve, which runs from the brain to the chest and diaphragm, makes the spasms repeat.

Seifi's device, which is admittedly a fancy straw that he says provides the exact right amount of pressure to stop hiccups, was created after the neurointensivist (say that five times fast and it may just cure your hiccups) studied existing remedies to see which ones worked best.

"All of the current home remedies have science behind them," the good doctor told The Atlantic. "All of them are valid!"

The $14 HiccAway straw, which has a small hole at the bottom and a larger one at the top, builds on those home remedies by using a physics trick known as Bernoulli's Principle, The Atlantic notes, but in reverse.

"Imagine you have a water hose and you open the faucet," Seifi told the magazine. "If you put half your thumb in front of the hose, the flow stays the same, but by changing the diameter the speed of the fluid changes; it ejects more."

As the patent application for the HiccAway notes, the exact science at play with the magic straw requires a lot of physics and diaphragm pressure language best left to the experts.

"The creator of HiccAway has already figured out all of the details, you just have to use this groundbreaking hiccup treatment to understand that it doesn't matter how it works," the patent application reads, "just that it works."

The product has already picked up some high-profile boosters. Last year, Seifi appeared on "Shark Tank" and convinced Mark Cuban to pony up an investment of $250,000.

Until someone sends us a HiccAway straw to test for ourselves, we'll have to take their word for it — but as with anyone else who's ever suffered a maddening bout of hiccups, we'll try anything.

More on body hacks: Scientists Growing Skin That Can Be Slipped on Like a Glove

The post Scientist Says He's Invented a Cure for Hiccups appeared first on Futurism.

Nature, Published online: 24 February 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00577-1

A machine with a grasp of cause and effect could learn more like a human, through imagination and regret.

A team from Florida State University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has developed a new strategy to build solid-state batteries that are less dependent on specific chemical elements, particularly pricey metals with supply chain issues.

Many of the people watching "The Last of Us" are likely there for the zombies.

The UK's environment secretary Thérèse Coffey has told farmers that she does not support reintroducing wolves or lynx to the English countryside.

Epiphytes are a distinct group in the Earth's carbon cycling ecosystems. Most vascular epiphytes are from the particularly species-rich orchid family (Orchidaceae), with about 70% of Orchidaceae species being epiphytes. Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) is a water-conserving carbon dioxide (CO2) fixation pathway, and Epiphytes with CAM photosynthesis are widespread in vascular plants.

The UK's environment secretary Thérèse Coffey has told farmers that she does not support reintroducing wolves or lynx to the English countryside.

Epiphytes are a distinct group in the Earth's carbon cycling ecosystems. Most vascular epiphytes are from the particularly species-rich orchid family (Orchidaceae), with about 70% of Orchidaceae species being epiphytes. Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM) is a water-conserving carbon dioxide (CO2) fixation pathway, and Epiphytes with CAM photosynthesis are widespread in vascular plants.

The case of David Carrick, a serial rapist and a serving officer in the Metropolitan Police Service, is the latest shocking example of violence against women committed by the police.

Many of the people watching "The Last of Us" are likely there for the zombies.

Researchers from the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have conducted a detailed asteroseismic analysis on an extremely low-mass white dwarf (WD) that exhibits suspected pressure mode (p-mode) pulsations. They not only detect the abundance profiles inside the WD, but also provide theoretical support for the reality of the p-modes.

Teenagers struggling to develop a healthy sense of identity must walk a tightrope, balancing commitment to their family's values with their own exploration of what matters, most psychologists agree.

A groundbreaking technique developed by a JCU researcher could revolutionize how we measure the health of sea turtles and other threatened species.

It was April in 1981 when a party of four camped for two days and nights on the forested slopes of Mount Evermann, the central peak of Socorro, a volcanic island in the Pacific some 400 kilometers southwest of Baja California, Mexico. Their fruitless search confirmed their suspicions: the Socorro dove, an endearingly tame bird unique to the island, had disappeared, eaten by the cats of Spanish colonists, pushed out by grazing sheep and shot from the sky by hunters.

A groundbreaking technique developed by a JCU researcher could revolutionize how we measure the health of sea turtles and other threatened species.

Nature Communications, Published online: 24 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36844-y

Author Correction: Massively parallel interrogation of protein fragment secretability using SECRiFY reveals features influencing secretory system transit

The past few years have seen an intensifying of the ways politics can intervene in education, including the censorship of books. Lawmakers in Texas have made repeated pushes to restrict the books that kids can access in schools. Leaders in other states across the country have done the same, including in Tennessee, where one local school board infamously banned Maus, a graphic novel that brutally—but honestly—depicts the Holocaust. Under Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has passed sweeping laws that limit what schools can teach about topics such as gender, sexuality, and race. In January, the state even opposed a whole course, AP African American Studies. (The class's curriculum has since been revised; Florida has not yet said whether it will actually impose the ban.)

The central issue in many of the recent restrictions is how to teach our country's history. Although memorizing dates and names can lead students to believe that the subject comprises a series of simple facts about clear-cut events, the truth about the past is much more tangled. Textbooks have long been skewed or have contained errors: In his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen analyzes the flaws in a dozen major U.S. history textbooks and provides a sharper retelling of the moments those textbooks distorted. DeSantis also clings to his own version of our past. Take his book, Dreams From Our Founding Fathers, which minimizes the role of slavery in America's founding and idealizes the men who first governed the country. As David Waldstreicher writes, DeSantis seems to advocate for "never bringing up slavery or race except to praise those who ended it."

Florida professors are already beginning to worry about how restrictions on what they can teach might threaten their syllabi, whether they cover the Harlem Renaissance or William Faulkner; at least one professor has canceled two of his courses entirely. What students are—and aren't—taught influences the world in ways that ripple far beyond any one seminar discussion. As the historian Carter G. Woodson put it in his book The Mis-education of the Negro, "There would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom."

​Every Friday in the Books Briefing, we thread together Atlantic stories on books that share similar ideas. Know other book lovers who might like this guide? Forward them this email.

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What We're Reading

 

 

Roger Ressmeyer / Corbis / VCG / Getty

Book bans are targeting the history of oppression

"What these bans are doing is censoring young people's ability to learn about historical and ongoing injustices."

📚 Maus, by Art Spiegelman

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Marion Doss / Flickr

History class and the fictions about race in America

"In history class students typically 'have to memorize what we might call "twigs." We're not teaching the forest—we're not even teaching the trees,' said [James] Loewen, best known for his 1995 book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. 'We are teaching twig history.'"

📚 Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen

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Octavio Jones / Getty; The Atlantic

The forgotten Ron DeSantis book

"His entire reading of American history is enveloped in both unquestioning fealty to the Founders and an insistence that the role of slavery, and race more broadly, in that history does not seriously change anything about how we should understand the birth and development of our country."

📚 Dreams From Our Founding Fathers, by Ron DeSantis

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Tyler Comrie / The Atlantic

'Most important, we must not upset DeSantis'

"DeSantis isn't trying to expunge ideology from education, only ideologies he dislikes, ones that see racism as woven through American institutions or that emphasize diversity, equity, and inclusion instead of merit and color-blindness."

📚 Go Down, Moses, by William Faulkner

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Getty; The Atlantic

The book that exposed anti-Black racism in the classroom

"What does it mean to base the education of Black students on an interpretation of human experience and a set of philosophies and ethics that justified the plunder of Africa and the enslavement of Black people?"

📚 The Mis-education of the Negro, by Carter G. Woodson

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About us: This week's newsletter is written by Kate Cray. The book she's reading next is The Rabbit Hutch, by Tess Gunty.

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