This mesmerizing shot of the perfect alignment of the sun and full moon over Utah's Valley of the Gods last October is raising expectations for next month's total solar eclipse in North America.
This image, a collaboration between photographers Andrew McCarthy and Daniel Stein, shows an annular solar eclipse in which an outer “ring of fire” forms because the moon is too far from Earth to completely cover the sun. I am. The shot is the result of digitally stitching together thousands of images, combining Stein's landscape photography skills with McCarthy's experience capturing images of the sun.
After months of planning, the pair set up cameras and telescopes at carefully selected desert locations to capture the key shots, taking into account weather patterns, eclipse duration, and terrain features. did.
The image was published by Social media March 8th, exactly one month before a total solar eclipse, in which the moon completely covers the sun, will pass over North America. It will blanket much of the continent in darkness or completely, from Canada to the United States and Mexico. The path of the total eclipse will be much wider than the last similar solar eclipse in the region, covering almost 200 kilometers compared to about 115 kilometers in 2017.
“It’s easy to take the sun for granted, but [sun and moon] When combined during a solar eclipse, they are breathtakingly beautiful. I feel that incorporating landscape elements adds a sense of grounding to the images and allows the viewer to connect more deeply with the work,” says Stein.
Starbucks has been actively resisting unionization efforts for over two years, but now they seem willing to engage in negotiations.
In a surprising move, Starbucks and its union released a joint announcement at the end of February, expressing a willingness to make progress on organizing and collective bargaining.
The union representing Starbucks employees announced plans to resume direct negotiations with the company in late April to establish a basic framework agreement involving over 400 unionized stores.
This development has brought hope not only to Starbucks employees but also to workers at companies like Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and REI, who have been struggling to move contract negotiations forward.
The possibility of Starbucks potentially unionizing after years of aggressive anti-union tactics has sparked curiosity about which company may follow suit in the future.
Claire Chan, an REI employee, expressed excitement about the progress, highlighting the persistence required to bring a company like Starbucks to the negotiating table. She described it as a significant step forward.
John Logan, a labor studies professor, remains cautious about Starbucks’ intentions and whether they will truly commit to ending anti-union practices and reaching an initial contract.
The union representative for Starbucks, Michelle Eisen, remains optimistic about the future collaboration between Starbucks and the union, emphasizing the importance of valuing employee input for business success.
Starbucks has offered a settlement to the union following backlash over union-busting allegations, stock price declines, and disruptive strikes, showing a potential shift towards supporting unions.
Legal experts and union representatives see Starbucks’ possible unionization as a significant step that could inspire other companies to consider similar actions.
Overall, the announcement from Starbucks has far-reaching implications for workers’ rights and the future of unionization in major corporations.
A brown male Thomisus guangxicus Spider (center) in a Hoya pandurata flower with a pale amber female just below it.
Wu Shimao
A species of spider discovered in China may have evolved a male-female pair that looks like a flower, allowing it to blend into the background.
“This may be the world's first case of cooperative imitation,” said Shi-Mao Wu of Yunnan University, who observed it with colleagues. Jiang Yun Gao.
Spiders of the family Tomicidae, also known as crab spiders, are ambush predators that usually live on or near flowers.
They are known for their excellent camouflage abilities that prevent them from being detected by prey or predators. Some species can even change color to match the color of the flower they sit on.
Wu and Gao were in the rainforest of southwestern China's Yunnan province when a male crab spider attacked them. Tomysus guanxicus Something caught Mr. Wu's attention.the spider was sitting on the flower Hoya pandurataa plant that lives on ancient tea trees in the forest.
“The first time I observed a male spider, I didn't see a female spider,” Wu said. Only when I got closer did I notice that the male spider was lying on the female's back. “They tricked my eyes really well,” he says.
Researchers hypothesize that the small, dark-colored males mimic pistils (female organs in the center of flowers), while the females mimic fused petals.
Researchers say that only when individual spiders of both sexes come together will the flowers match in appearance.
but, Gabriele Greco A professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences is not convinced. “It's very difficult to determine the nature of the observed behavior,” he says.
In fact, in many spider species it is common for the male to stand over the female during mating. “A simpler explanation might be simple interactions related to courtship and mating,” Greco says.
The social media platform Reddit’s stocks, traded under the symbol RDDT.N, closed the first day of trading in New York with a 48% increase. This suggests that there is renewed investor interest in initial public offerings (IPOs) of promising yet money-losing companies.
Reddit’s shares closed at a value 48% higher than their initial offering price on the first day of trading, valuing the company at over $9 billion. The stock rose to $57.80 per share, a 70% increase, before settling at $50.44 per share by the day’s end.
The IPO price for the San Francisco-based company was $34 per share, giving it a market value of $6.4 billion. The company and its selling shareholders raised $748 million.
Reddit’s highly anticipated IPO had been in the works for over two years. An IPO filing was made secretly in December 2021 but was delayed due to market volatility. The current valuation marks a decrease from 2021 when it was valued at $10 billion in a private funding round.
Reddit’s strong market entry could yield significant gains for its largest shareholder, Advance Publications. The parent company of Condé Nast, which owns magazines like The New Yorker and Vogue, stands to profit up to $1.4 billion from the IPO. Advance purchased Reddit for $10 million just 18 months after its launch.
Reddit’s co-founder and CEO, Steve Huffman, received a compensation package totaling $193 million last year. While the site’s other co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, has been a public figure, he does not appear in the company’s filings with U.S. financial regulators.
Major shareholders of Reddit include Chinese gaming company Tencent with an 11% stake, Fidelity with 9.5%, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman with 8.7%. Reddit was part of the first batch of startups from Y Combinator, where Mr. Altman later served as president.
Reddit’s IPO amid a tech frenzy is expected to give the company a strong market position. However, Julian Klimochko, CEO of Accelerate Financial Technologies, suggests that market performance in the coming weeks will be closely monitored.
“A poor trade by Reddit could impact the IPO market, leading many companies to pause their IPO efforts,” Klimochko stated.
Since its founding in 2005, Reddit has become a cornerstone of social media culture, known for its alien logo on an orange background and its tagline “Front Page of the Internet.”
Reddit hosts over 100,000 online forums called “subreddits” covering a wide range of topics. The platform has been used for various activities, including support groups and interviews, such as the one conducted with Barack Obama in 2012.
Despite its cult status, Reddit has not matched the success of larger rivals like Facebook and Tesla. The company has about 73 million daily unique visitors compared to Facebook’s 2 billion daily logins.
Reddit allocated 8% of its IPO shares to eligible users, moderators, board members, and acquaintances of employees and directors as part of its user appreciation plan. The company is in early stages of monetization and has yet to turn a yearly profit, raising questions about its path to profitability.
“The true test will be after the first earnings report. The results and strategic changes made post-IPO will be crucial,” said Leena Agarwal, director of Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets.
Astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array have observed long-lasting aurora-like radio bursts above sunspots. This discovery could help us better understand the behavior of our own star, as well as distant stars that emit similar radio emissions.
excellent other. We discovered radio bursts above sunspots that are similar to the radio emissions from the aurora borealis on Earth. The pink and purple stripes in this figure represent radio wave radiation, with high frequency radio signals near the sunspots, pink being high frequency and purple being low frequency radio signals. The thin lines represent the magnetic field lines above the sunspot. Sunspots are dark areas at the bottom of the sun. Image credit: Sijie Yu, New Jersey Institute of Technology.
“This sunspot's radio emission represents the first detection of its kind,” said Dr. Shijie Yu, an astronomer at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
“Such radio bursts were detected about 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) above sunspots (relatively cool, dark, magnetically active regions of the Sun) that had previously been observed only on planets and other stars. It was done.”
On other planets like Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, auroras sparkle in the night sky when solar particles get caught up in the planet's magnetic field and are pulled toward the poles where the magnetic field lines converge.
As the particles accelerate toward the poles, they generate powerful radio emissions at frequencies around a few hundred kilohertz that collide with atoms in the atmosphere and emit light as auroras.
The research team's analysis shows that radio bursts on sunspots likely occur in a similar way, when high-energy electrons are captured and accelerated by magnetic fields converging on sunspots. It suggests.
However, unlike Earth's aurora borealis, the radio bursts from sunspots occur at much higher frequencies, from hundreds of thousands of kilohertz to approximately one million kilohertz.
“This is a direct result of the sunspot's magnetic field being thousands of times stronger than Earth's magnetic field,” Yu says.
Similar radio emissions have been previously observed from several types of low-mass stars.
This discovery raises the possibility that auroral-like radio emissions originate from large spots on these stars, in addition to previously proposed polar auroras.
“This discovery excites us as it challenges existing concepts of solar radio phenomena and opens new avenues for exploring magnetic activity both in the Sun and in distant star systems. ” said Dr. Yu.
“NASA's ever-growing heliophysics fleet is well suited to continue investigating the source regions of these radio bursts,” said NASA Goddard Space Flight Center heliophysicist and solar radio researcher. said Dr. Nachimthuk Gopalswamy.
“For example, the Solar Dynamics Observatory continuously monitors the active regions of the Sun, which could be causing this phenomenon.”
In the meantime, the authors plan to review other solar radio bursts to see if any resemble the aurora-like radio bursts they discovered.
“We aim to determine whether some previously recorded solar outbursts may be examples of this newly identified emission,” Dr. Yu said.
of findings appear in the diary natural astronomy.
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S.Yu other. 2024. Long-lasting aurora-like radio emission detected over a sunspot. Nat Astron 8, 50-59; doi: 10.1038/s41550-023-02122-6
Pebanista Yacluna About 16 million years ago, it lived in the Miocene Amazon of Peru.
The ancient dolphin was estimated to be 2.8–3.5 m (9.2–11.5 ft) long, making it the largest freshwater dolphin species. dentate (Dolphins, porpoises, and all other toothed whales) are known.
Such large sizes have also been recorded in other proto-Amazonian inhabitants (i.e. fish and crocodiles) and may be due to the greater availability of resources in the proto-Amazonian ecosystem.
“16 million years ago, the Peruvian Amazon looked very different from what it looks like today,” said Dr. Aldo Benitez Palomino, a paleontologist at the University of Zurich.
“Most of the Amazon plain was covered by large lake and swamp systems called pebas.”
“This landscape included aquatic, semi-aquatic, and terrestrial ecosystems (swamps, floodplains, etc.) and spanned what is now Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil.”
“When the Pebas system began to give way to what is now the Amazon about 10 million years ago, the new habitat caused Pebanista Yaclunaprey disappears, and the giant dolphin is driven to extinction. ”
“This opened up an ecological niche that is used by relatives of today's Amazon river dolphins (genus Delphinus). inia), and with the rise of new cetaceans such as modern dolphins, they were on the brink of extinction in the oceans. ”
Pebanista Yacluna was a member of platanist ideasa group of dolphins that were common in oceans around the world from 24 million to 16 million years ago.
“We discovered that size is not the only thing to note,” said Dr. Aldo Benitez Palomino, a paleontologist at the University of Zurich and the Natural History Museum of the National University of San Marcos. Told.
“With this fossil record excavated in the Amazon, we expected to find a living relative of the Amazon river dolphin, but instead we found the Amazon river dolphin's closest relative. Pebanista Yacluna It is a river dolphin from South Asia. ”
“Pebanista Yacluna and Platanista Both share a highly developed facial crown, a specialized bone structure associated with echolocation, the ability to emit high-frequency sounds and “see” by listening to their echoes, which is useful for hunting. relies heavily on this. ”
“Echolocation and biosonar are even more important for river dolphins because the waters they live in are very murky, which impedes their vision,” said Dr. Gabriel Aguirre Fernandez, a paleontologist at the University of Zurich.
“The elongated snout with many teeth suggests that: Pebanista Yacluna Like other species of river dolphins today, they eat fish. ”
large adult skull Pebanista Yacluna It was discovered in 2018 at an exposed stratigraphic level along the Rio Napo in Loreto, Peru.
“After 20 years of research in South America, we have discovered several giant dolphins in this region, but this is the first of its kind,” said Dr. Marcelo Sánchez Vilagra, a paleontologist at the University of Zurich. .
“We were particularly intrigued by its unique and deep biogeographical history.”
team's paper Published in the Journal on March 20, 2024 scientific progress.
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Aldo Benitez Palomino other. 2024. The largest freshwater toothed whale: A relative of the South Asian river dolphin that lives in the primitive Amazon. scientific progress 10(12); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adk6320
berry Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) The Canadian-grown fruit shows promising health benefits driven by its rich and diverse polyphenol profile and should be considered for further commercial expansion as a bioactive-loaded superfruit.
Sea buckthorn is a deciduous, spiny plant that grows along the coasts of northwestern Europe and in temperate regions of central Asia.
Its fruits and leaves are widely used Sea buckthorn oil has nutritional, medicinal, and functional properties and is rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, vitamins E, B, A, and polyphenols.
The plant was introduced in Canada in the early 2000s following research into the crop's commercial potential by government agencies.
“Sea buckthorn is a unique crop with great potential for use,” said Dr. Renan Danielski. student at the University of Newfoundland.
“Popular in Asia and northwestern Europe, there is an opportunity to replicate this success in North America by leveraging the unique qualities of locally grown varieties.”
Danielski and Professor Fereydoun Shahidi of Memorial University of Newfoundland were motivated by the experimental status and limited commercialization of sea buckthorn in North America to date, and research on the antioxidant properties of Canadian cultivars. We set out to characterize the unique composition of polyphenols, a type of chemical compound.
“Understanding how our varieties compare globally will help us communicate our benefits to consumers and establish our presence in the market,” Professor Shahidi said.
The findings highlight the presence of key polyphenolic compounds in sea buckthorn pomace and seeds, each boasting potential health benefits ranging from cardiovascular protection to anti-inflammatory properties. .
Importantly, geographic factors influence the polyphenol profile of sea buckthorn berries, and researchers found that several different compounds with enhanced bioactivity are present only in sea buckthorn varieties grown in Newfoundland. is that we have identified.
Additionally, sea buckthorn extract has demonstrated promise in vitro It has anti-diabetic and anti-obesity potential, paving the way for further research into its mechanisms and potential therapeutic applications.
“This is a first step toward understanding how sea buckthorn polyphenols can modulate our physiology in beneficial ways,” Danielski said.
“Future research should focus on understanding the mechanisms behind those effects and further experiments using animal models and humans.”
“If these effects are confirmed, in vivoWe can imagine using sea buckthorn polyphenols for therapeutic and pharmacological purposes to help prevent and treat diabetes, obesity, and many other conditions. ”
of result Published in Journal of Food and Agriculture Science.
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Renan Danielski & Fereydoun Shahidi. Phenolic composition and biological activity of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) Fruits and Seeds: Non-Conventional Sources of Natural Antioxidants in North America. Food and Agriculture Science Journal, published online on February 15, 2024. doi: 10.1002/jsfa.13386
Cancer is the leading cause of death in humans, accounting for almost 13% of deaths worldwide. Global Health Observatory by the World Health Organization. Biological males (or those assigned male at birth) account for 56% of cancer-related deaths, while biological females (or those assigned female at birth) account for only 44%.
The researchers showed that these differences between biological sexes are not limited to mortality rates, but are also evident in cancer development, progression, and treatment. For example, in the United States, women have a higher risk of developing breast and thyroid cancers, while men are more likely to develop prostate, colon, and stomach cancers.
Doctors also found that women tend to have colorectal cancer more often on the right side of the body, while men tend to have colorectal cancer more often on the left side of the body. Doctors want to know how biological sex affects different aspects of cancer so they can develop treatments tailored to a patient’s gender.
A team of scientists from Adityunchanagiri Pharmaceutical University in Karnataka state, India recently reviewed research on the role of biological sex in cancer. They explained that because every cell in the human body is controlled by DNA, gender can influence cancer growth at the genetic, molecular, and hormonal levels. Every patient’s biological sex changes the types of hormones and enzymes they produce, as well as the way their bodies respond to and metabolize carcinogens.
Researchers have previously found that men and women have different immune responses to cancer and chemotherapy. Women tend to have stronger immune systems that respond more strongly to cancer than men. The researchers suggested that this discrepancy may explain why fewer women die from cancer.
They also looked at data from doctors treating cancer patients and showed that similar treatments for male and female patients with the same cancer diagnosis resulted in different levels of side effects. For example, female cancer patients experience higher levels of drug-induced toxicity, infection, nausea, and vomiting during treatment than male cancer patients. They found that some anti-cancer treatments can even cause women to develop diabetes.
The researchers concluded that cancer behaves differently in male and female patients. However, despite differences in immune responses and side effects, physicians are still unable to customize immunotherapy treatments for different patients based on their biological sex. They suggested that the typical “one size fits all” approach to cancer treatment could be better tailored to specific cancer patients.
They recommended that drug companies test how new drugs affect male and female cancer patients during clinical trials before the drugs are approved. They suggested that drug companies could use this data to better estimate how much medication male and female patients should take, or for how long. They proposed that treatments tailored to each patient’s biological sex could help doctors treat patients in a more efficient manner with minimal side effects.
Cerebellum of a person suffering from kuru disease
Liberski PP (2013)
Genetic research in a very remote community in Papua New Guinea has revealed new insights into a brain disease that is spread when people eat dead relatives and has killed thousands of people over two decades.
Dotted with mountains, gorges, and fast-flowing rivers, Papua New Guinea’s Eastern Highlands province is extremely isolated from the rest of the world, and it wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century that outsiders realized that about 1 million people lived there.
Some tribes known as the Fore practiced a form of cannibalism called “funeral feasts,” in which they consumed the bodies of their deceased relatives as part of their funeral rites. This could mean they ingested an abnormally folded protein called a prion, which can cause a fatal neurodegenerative condition called kuru associated with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). However, the local people believed that the Kuru phenomenon was caused by witchcraft. At least 2,700 Kuru deaths have been recorded in the eastern highlands.
Simon Mead Researchers at University College London examined the genomes of 943 people representing 68 villages and 21 language groups in the region. Although this region of Papua New Guinea covers just over 11,000 square kilometers, smaller than Jamaica, researchers say the different groups are as genetically different as the peoples of Finland and Spain, some 3,000 kilometers apart.
The study found that not everyone who attended the funeral died from the disease. Mead and his colleagues say it appears communities were beginning to develop a resistance to kuru, which led to tremors, loss of coordination, and, ultimately, death.
The study found that some of the elderly women who survived the feast had mutations in the gene encoding the prion protein, which likely conferred resistance to kuru disease.
By the 1950s, funeral feasts had become illegal, and the kuru epidemic began to subside, but visitors say that the number of women in some villages had dwindled because so many women had died from kuru. It pointed out. Mead said women and children are most susceptible to the disease, likely because they ate the brains of deceased relatives.
However, genetic evidence shows that despite fears of the disease, there was a large influx of women into Fora tribal areas, particularly in areas where the highest levels of kuru were present.
“We believe it is likely that the sexual prejudice caused by Kuru caused single men in Kuru-affected communities to look further afield for wives than usual because they were unable to find potential wives locally. “We will,” Meade said.
He said the team wants to understand what factors confer resistance to prion diseases such as CJD, which caused a severe epidemic in the UK in the 1990s.
“[Our work sets] “This is a site to detect genetic factors that may have helped the Fore people resist kuru,” Mead said. “Such resistance genes may suggest therapeutic targets.”
Ira Debson Researchers from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, say the study provides new insight into the “rich and unique cultural, linguistic and genomic diversity” of the Eastern Highlands region.
“This is a demonstration of how genomics can be used to look almost back in time, reading the genetic signature of past epidemics and understanding how they have shaped today’s populations. It helps.”
Lava erupts from a fissure near Grindavik, Iceland, on March 20th.
Associated Press/Alamy Stock Photo
A recent eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland released a huge plume of sulfur dioxide (SO2) currently floating around Europe. Fortunately, no significant weather or health impacts are expected.
yes2 On March 20 in the EU, the plume moved across Ireland and the United Kingdom towards Scandinavia. Copernicus atmospheric monitoring service I said it today. It is scheduled to arrive in the Baltic states, Poland and Russia on Friday.
A person working at the Blue Lagoon Resort on the Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland was hospitalized March 20, after being exposed to high levels of SO.2 gas. However, the plumes moving over Europe are far above the ground and do not affect the air quality below.
Say, “The plume is at a higher altitude.” Mark Purrington At Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service.
Last November, a gigantic fissure, 15 kilometers long and several kilometers deep, formed under part of the Reykjanes Peninsula. Magma that had been accumulating deeper was poured into it at the fastest rate ever recorded.
On December 18, lava began erupting along part of the fissure. So far it has erupted four times, and the most recent and largest eruption began on March 17th.
“SO plume”2 All of Europe was created at an early stage [of the latest eruption]” Freistein Sigmundson At the University of Iceland in Reykjavik.
Freistein said the eruption continued as of the afternoon of March 21, although the flow slowed from its initial stages. “This eruption is different from previous ones,” he says. “It's longer than last time.”
Some volcanic eruptions release enough SO2 Although it has the potential to affect the global climate, the Icelandic eruption is not on this scale. Parrington said the plume's duration is too short to affect the weather.
Unlike the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, which disrupted air traffic over Europe for about a week, the Reykjanes eruption is of a different type and is not expected to produce large amounts of volcanic ash.
The kidney transplant surgery is the first of its kind in a living person.
Michelle Rose/Massachusetts General Hospital
Surgeons successfully transplanted a pig kidney into a 62-year-old man with end-stage renal disease. Recipient Richard Suleiman is recovering well and is expected to be discharged from the hospital soon, just a few days after surgery.
Is this your first pig kidney transplant?
This is the first time a pig kidney has been transplanted into a living human, marking a major milestone in the field of xenotransplantation, or transplanting animal organs into humans.
“This successful transplant is the culmination of decades of hard work by thousands of scientists and doctors.” Tatsuo Kawai At Massachusetts General Hospital statement. “Our hope is that this transplant approach will provide a lifeline to the millions of patients around the world suffering from kidney failure.”
However, strictly speaking, this is not the first time a kidney has been transplanted from a pig to a human. This surgery has been performed five times in the past, each time on a person declared brain dead and placed on life support. The most recent of these was conducted by Robert Montgomery and colleagues at New York University Langone Health in July 2023. The kidney continued to function for over a month with no signs of rejection or infection.
When was the surgery performed?
Kawai and his colleagues performed the surgery on March 16th. reported that the procedure lasted four hours, and shortly thereafter the kidneys began producing urine and the waste product creatinine. new york times. Suleiman was also able to stop dialysis, which is a further indication that his kidneys are functioning properly.
Where do pig kidneys come from?
The organs were donated by the pharmaceutical company EGenesis. The company breeds pigs that are genetically engineered to carry certain human genes and lack a specific set of pig genes that are harmful to humans. These genetic modifications reduce the chance of transplant rejection, where the immune system attacks the organ and causes it to malfunction. Suleiman is also being given a cocktail of immunosuppressants to further reduce this risk. So far, there are no signs of rejection and Suleiman is able to walk on his own. His doctors hope he will be discharged soon.
What do we know about the recipient?
Suleiman has type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease. He had previously received a human kidney from a donor in December 2018. However, the organ showed signs of malfunctioning after about five years. He started dialysis in May last year, but complications arose, and he needed to go to the hospital every two weeks. This seriously affected his quality of life while awaiting his second transplant.
is more than 100,000 people in the US They are waiting for organ transplants, and 17 of them die every day. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the experimental transplant for Suleiman due to a lack of other treatment options.
“I saw it as a way not only to help me but also to give hope to the thousands of people who need transplants to survive,” Suleiman said in a statement.
Have xenotransplant surgeries involving other organs been performed?
Only two other people received xenotransplants, and both received genetically modified pig hearts. The first, a man named David Bennett, died two months later from complications believed to be caused by a swine virus called porcine cytomegalovirus. So scientists genetically inactivated a virus similar to the pig virus from which Suleiman's kidneys came.
The second recipient, a man named Lawrence Fawcett, died six weeks later from transplant rejection.
On organic farms, conventional farming practices appear to inadvertently cause more pesticides to be used in surrounding fields
Daniel Balderas/Shutterstock
Organic farmers dedicate their working lives to producing food with minimal use of pesticides, but by curbing the use of chemicals on their land, they can unknowingly damage their neighbor’s fence. may be causing a sharp increase in pesticide use.
Ashley Larsen and colleagues from the University of California, Santa Barbara, evaluated land use and pesticide data across 14,000 fields in Kern County, California. It is one of the largest agricultural counties in the state, producing agricultural products such as almonds, grapes, carrots, and pistachios.
The researchers found that when organic farmland is surrounded by conventional agriculture, neighboring farmers appear to increase their use of pesticides, which is associated with a 10 percent increase in organic farmland. Total pesticide use in conventional fields increases by 0.3%. Most of that is due to increased use of pesticides, the researchers found.
This is because more insects, pests or not, are present on organic land and tend to ‘bleed-off’ onto adjacent conventional farmland, leading these farmers to increase their use of pesticides. It is considered. “Pests come and sow the seeds for new outbreaks. [farmers] We will increase the use of pesticides,” Larsen told reporters at a press conference. This effect appears to be strongest when the adjacent field is within 2.5 kilometers of the organic “focal field”.
Conversely, the researchers found that the presence of organic fields was associated with reduced pesticide use in adjacent organic fields, with a 10 percent increase in the area of surrounding organic fields reducing total pesticide use on organic fields by 3%. He pointed out that it is associated with a decrease in the percentage of organic focal field. This may be because larger areas of organic farmland allow for larger and more stable communities of beneficial insects.
Organic agriculture only covers about 2 percent of the world’s land, but in Kern County, about 5.5 percent of the farmed area is organic.
If organic farming occupies a high proportion of agricultural land, perhaps Researchers say that regardless of where organic fields are located, net pesticide use is reduced by more than 20 percent.
However, when relatively small areas of organic cropland are evenly distributed across the landscape, such as in Kern County, net pesticide use may actually be higher than if no organic cropland were present.
“Our simulations suggest that low levels of organic agriculture in the landscape may actually increase net pesticide use,” Larsen said.
However, she said this impact can be completely mitigated by clustering organic farmland to minimize potential pest spillover. “Basically, at the policy level, how do we encourage the spatial clustering of new organic fields to take advantage of the pest control benefits of organic and limit the potential costs of organic to conventional growers?” It might be worth considering.
This could include paying subsidies to farmers to convert more land to organic farming in certain areas, or even creating buffer zones between organic and non-organic land. be.
robert finger Switzerland’s ETH Zurich said the study results demonstrate the need for policymakers to consider land use policy at a “landscape scale” to maximize the environmental benefits of organic farming. “Fundamentally, it’s not enough to think about a single field or a single farm,” he says.
MWhen I was a kid, my parents were somewhat skeptical of video games. When I was a kid, I had a Super Nintendo and his N64, but they only let me play on the weekends, so on Fridays I’d come home from school and munch on Mario 64 with a big pack of Haribo Tongue Fastiks. I was there. My gaming horizons didn’t expand until his teenage years. Around that time, I started making enough money to buy myself a PlayStation 2 and started participating in forums with other geeks whose gaming worlds were much broader than mine.
PlayStation 2 had several features strange game. While the N64 had some success, and I’ve developed a lasting attachment to his Mystical Ninja starring Goemon, it wasn’t as good as the Sony console. There was “Dark Cloud” and “Monster Hunter,” “Ryu ga Gotoku,” “Mojib Ribbon,” “God Hand,” “Okami,” and “Rivit King,” but as far as I know, this is Frolf (Frog Golf). This is the only game about.
And then there was Katamari Damacy, the very epitome of everything weird and wonderful in the PlayStation 2 library, a fun game that celebrates its 20th anniversary this week.
The premise is this. The eccentric king of the universe, who wears Shakespearean purple tights, drinks too much beer and messes up the universe. And you, his little green prince, have to take the sticky ball to Earth. Roll it and collect bigger and bigger objects until they are big enough to replace a moon or a planet. This song is a strong contender for the best theme song in video game history, and also one of his best intro sequences. Behold.
Actually, she’s only 5cm tall. “That body, that physique. Are you really our son?” cries the king. Therefore, he must start small. You’ll need to start with something really small, like rolled up thumbtacks, dice, or empty soy sauce packs. Animals will chase the ball to try to throw it off course, and precious trash will be scattered if it hits something too big to roll. Katamari Damacy is surreal, hilarious, and a lot of fun, winding up cows, cars, people, and eventually buildings, islands, and clouds. It’s only about four hours long, but it leaves a lasting impression on everyone who plays it, simply because the music is haunting. Twenty years later, it still pops into my head from time to time as I wait for the kettle to boil.
Katamari soul. Photo provided by Bandai Namco
Katamari Damacy symbolizes Japanese game development during this era. PS2 technology was good enough for game designers’ more ambitious ideas to start blossoming, and budgets weren’t yet so outrageous as to require multi-million sales. The result is a slew of short, surreal, and often quite broken games. who I really wanted that. You can clearly see the designer’s heart reflected in it. Many of these games were never released to the world. Katamari Damacy itself was never officially released in Europe, but fortunately for curious teenagers in the ’00s, importing the game was relatively easy if you knew how to use the Internet. Thankfully, the PS2’s region lock was easily circumvented. In 2004, getting a copy and putting it to work felt like unearthing an artistic treasure.
Katamari designer Keita Takahashi brought together students from publisher Namco’s design school and programmers from the arcade division to complete the game in less than a year on a budget of £650,000. Takahashi studied sculpture at art school and went on to create some interesting games, but it’s safe to say that none were as interesting as this one.Namco continued make a series without him Many years have passed since he left the company in 2009, but things have never been the same. Recent Katamari Damacy games have felt like self-parody. The reason Katamari Damacy is so loved is precisely because no one has ever seen anything like it before.
No doubt, this is mainly because I am not a teenager anymore, but I hardly ever feel that way now. It feels like you’re playing something you’ve never seen before.If you’re lucky do not have For those who have already experienced it, there is a great remaster of Katamari Damacy on Steam and all consoles called Katamari Damacy Reroll. Happy 20th birthday, beautiful weirdo.
what to play
Dragon’s Dogma 2. Photo: Capcom
dragons dogma 2 ‘ released on Friday and I’m having the time of my life. I’ve been waiting 12 years for a sequel to the weirdest medieval RPG I’ve ever played, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s like Elden Ring meets The Witcher, except it’s pleasantly silly in that it can pick up people and carry them around for hours. For no reason, you find yourself fighting an ogre in the middle of a crowded city where no one is paying attention.
This is the antithesis of the tightly scripted RPGs that currently dominate the genre, and instead allows you to mix and match a bunch of fun systems and experiment with how they collide, giving you a sense of the unexpected. always happens. As I type this, I’m in a haunted castle with a magician who looks like Aladdin Sane-era David Bowie and a retinue of greatsword-wielding warriors straight out of Dark Souls. I’m in the middle of an adventure.
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X, PC Estimated play time: 50+ hours
what to read
Sony’s PlayStation VR headset. Photo: Afro/Rex/Shutterstock
Bloomberg claims that Sony has temporarily suspended production of the product. PSVR2 virtual reality headset, thousands of units remain unsold. Sony has never fully bought into the luxury of this expensive accessory – it’s only released a few games for it since its launch last year – and consumer demand just isn’t there either. It seems that. I’m sorry I said that.
Mutsumi Inomatathe character designer and artist who defined the look of Bandai Namco’s Tales series of role-playing games; died63 years old.
EAstudio is the latest giant publisher to suffer layoffs. 5% reduction in workforce worldwide. Apex Legends developer Respawn was the hardest hit.
“Which Pokemon game for Nintendo Switch would you recommend for my introduction?” 9-and Will my 6-year-old daughters be involved in this series? ”
Luckily, Danny, I just introduced Pokemon to kids my age this year, and now they’re hooked. They get so much joy out of these games and it’s really gratifying. Here he has two good options. The first one Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee!is a remake of the OG Red/Blue Pokemon games that blends old-school combat and collecting with Pokemon Go-style catching, where kids can help catch creatures by simulating throwing Pokeballs at the screen. Masu. (Also, if you played the original version, your kids will think you’re omniscient.)
Other options are pokemon swordand shield, just finished with the kids. It’s simple, cartoonishly beautiful, easy to read, and comes with all the game mod cons that first-generation Pokemon trainers had to do without (which moves are effective against opponents, which (e.g. actually letting you know if a technique is ineffective). (on the battle screen).
If you have any questions for the questions block or anything else you’d like to say about the newsletter, please reply or email pushbuttons@theguardian.com.
‘TToday is the first day of your new life on this pristine and beautiful island. Well then, congratulations! ” says benevolent raccoon landlord Tom Nook minutes into Animal Crossing: New Horizons. (Nook gets a lot of hate online, but there’s no denying he’s very welcoming.) Many players read this comforting message during a time of uncertainty and fear in the real world. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released on Nintendo Switch on March 20, 2020., days before the UK entered its first Covid lockdown.
This was fortuitous timing. When we were all stuck at home, thanks to this game you can plant local fruit, take care of your flowers, see what’s on offer in the shops in town, and play with Tom Nook. I was able to repay a large loan (thankfully interest free) and escape. Chaos and daily death toll. We opened the gates to our island and welcomed friends and strangers into our pristine little world. When real life fell apart, we started anew glasses cat, Sheep in a clown coat and rhinoceros like cake.
Due to the sudden popularity of the game Nintendo Switch sales status surge amid pandemic shortages. new horizons sold 44.79 million units By December 2023 – almost 3.5 times more than any other game in the Animal Crossing series since 2001. This is his second best-selling Switch game to date after Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
“I visited a friend who was far away in real life”…Many people still play this game.
Player April said she and her partner Matthew have spent over 700 hours playing the game, turning their island into a collaborative…
Photographing a solar eclipse takes a little practice
Sebastian Kennerknecht/Minden Pictures/Alamy
Although some people spend years planning trips to see a total solar eclipse, the moment itself lasts only a few minutes at most. A well-taken photo will help you remember the moment years later.
Fortunately, with a little practice, even beginners can capture great images. Learn how to photograph a solar eclipse without any prior experience or fancy camera equipment.
location, location, location
Of course, you can’t photograph a solar eclipse unless you’re in its path. On April 8, everyone in North America will see at least a partial solar eclipse. A partial solar eclipse must be viewed through eclipse glasses and photographed using a solar filter (see details below).
Only those who have entered the path of totality can see the total solar eclipse. Much of the experience will be the same, with partial stages requiring eclipse glasses and eclipse filters, but midway through totality, where the moon completely blocks the sun for several minutes. Only during this period will the eclipse glasses and solar filters come off, allowing you to see and photograph the sun’s corona with the naked eye. This is the shot everyone wants.
How to photograph a total solar eclipse using a smartphone
If you’re in the middle of a totality, forget about handheld video or zooming in on the eclipse sun. The results of using a smartphone will be disappointingly bleak. Instead, focus on taking wide-angle shots that use silhouettes of people and objects to show off their overall beauty.
solar eclipse 2024
On April 8th, a total solar eclipse will pass over Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Our special series covers everything you need to know, from how and when to see a solar eclipse to the strangest solar eclipse experience of all time.
Just before dark, put your phone into wide-angle mode. Focus on something in the middle distance and press and hold your finger on the screen to lock focus. Burst mode allows you to capture images continuously as soon as totality begins. That way, you can catch the “diamond ring,” the last and first beads of sunlight peeking around the moon just before and after totality.
How to photograph a total solar eclipse with a camera
If you have a manual DSLR or mirrorless camera and a variety of lenses, you can choose to shoot wide-angle or close-up of the eclipse. In partial phases, solar filters should be used.
Just before totality, make sure the partially eclipsed Sun is in focus and set your camera to bracketing mode (if you want to take three different exposures of the same image). “Make sure your camera is shooting at a low ISO (200-400) before and after totality to reduce noise,” he says. Mike Mezur, nature photographer. Remember to remove the solar filter during the diamond ring, take a bracket shot during totality, and put the solar filter back on as soon as he sees the second diamond ring at the end of totality.
How to take photos of a partial solar eclipse
To capture impressive shots of a partially eclipsed sun with your smartphone, you need to use a solar filter and keep your smartphone still. The latter can be done by using a tripod and delaying the shutter for a few seconds. There is no problem if you use solar eclipse glasses for the filter. If you have a spare lens, try cutting out one lens and taping it to your phone’s camera lens. Another option is to purchase a smartphone eclipse filter from a company such as: solar snap or business solar.
Smartphones aren’t prone to damage when pointed at the sun, but don’t point your manual camera at a partially chipped sun unless the lens is protected by a solar filter. You can purchase expensive glass solar filters or make your own using inexpensive Baader AstroSolar safety film.
The steps required to take a photo of a partial solar eclipse are a little more involved than taking a standard selfie, but you can practice ahead of time whenever the sun is clearly visible. “Adjust focus and set exposure manually” Karl Heilman, a New York-based photographer who teaches solar eclipse photography workshops. He recommends using an aperture of f/8-11, a shutter speed of 1/800, and ISO 100.
Also, be careful not to spend all your time fiddling with your camera. “As much as you want to photograph the event, put down your camera and take the time to take it in, because this is one of the most amazing things you’ll ever see,” says Mezur.
French mathematician Michel Taragrand has won the 2024 Abel Prize for his work on probability theory and the description of randomness. As soon as he heard the news, new scientist We spoke to Tara Grand to learn more about his mathematical journey.
Alex Wilkins: What does it mean to win an Abel Prize?
Michel Taragran: I think everyone agrees that the Abel Prize is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in mathematics. So this was completely unexpected for me and I never dreamed that I would win this award. And in fact, it is not so easy to do, since there is already a list of people who have received it. And in that list they are true giants of mathematics. And let me tell you, I don’t feel that comfortable sitting with them because it’s clear that their accomplishments are on a completely different scale than mine.
What are your qualities as a mathematician?
I can’t learn mathematics easily. I have to work. It took a lot of time and I have bad memories. I forget things. So I try to work despite my handicap, but my way of working has always been to try to understand simple things really well. Really, really, in detail. And it turned out to be a successful approach.
Why are you attracted to mathematics?
Once you learn mathematics and begin to understand how it works, it is completely fascinating and extremely fascinating. There are all kinds of levels and you are the explorer. First you have to understand what people before you understood, which is quite difficult, and then you start exploring on your own and soon you like it. Of course, it’s also very frustrating. Therefore, you must have the personality to accept frustration.
But my solution is that when I get frustrated with something, I put it aside, and when it’s clear that I’m not going to make any more progress, I put it aside and do something else, and come back to it later. . I used that strategy very efficiently. And the reason it’s successful is the way the human brain functions, things mature when you don’t look at them. The problem I’ve been dealing with for literally 30 years is back again. And in fact, even after 30 years, I was still making progress. That’s what’s amazing.
How did you get started?
Now, that’s a very personal story. First, it helped that his father was a math teacher, and of course that helped. But in reality, the deciding factor is that I was unlucky to be born with a retinal defect. Then, when I was 5 years old, I lost my right eye. When I was 15 years old, I suffered from multiple retinal detachments and was hospitalized for an extended period of time, taking 6 months off from school. It was very traumatic and I lived in constant fear of having another retinal detachment.
I started studying to escape from that. And his father really helped me very much when he knew how difficult it was. When I was in the hospital, my father visited me every day and started talking about simple math to keep my brain functioning. The reason I started studying difficult mathematics and physics was precisely to combat fear. Of course, once you start studying, you’ll get better at it, and once you’re good at it, it’s very attractive.
What is it like to be a professional mathematician?
There’s no one telling me what to do, so I have complete freedom to do whatever I want with my time. Of course, it suited my personality and I was able to fully devote myself to my work.
The U.S. government initiated a significant antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday, alleging that the tech giant impeded competition by limiting access to its software and hardware. The lawsuit challenges Apple’s core products and practices, including iMessage and the interconnectivity of iPhone and Apple Watch.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, asserts that Apple holds monopolistic power in the smartphone market and engages in “pervasive, persistent, and unlawful” conduct to maintain its dominance. It seeks to “free the smartphone market” from Apple’s anti-competitive behavior and claims that the company stifles innovation.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland stated, “Apple’s illegal conduct has helped them remain in power, threatening the free and fair markets essential to our economy.”
The Department of Justice’s case against Apple is a significant legal action against the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. It follows similar antitrust cases targeting major tech firms like Amazon, Meta, and Google, which have faced scrutiny for consolidating power and stifling competition.
Apple denies the allegations, arguing that the lawsuit jeopardizes their core business and principles that set their products apart in a competitive market.
The lawsuit questions whether Apple’s practices of limiting rivals’ access to proprietary features like iMessage and Siri constitute anti-competitive behavior. It investigates whether Apple’s closed ecosystem creates unreasonable barriers for competitors.
The complaint accuses Apple of anti-competitive actions such as blocking innovative apps, restricting third-party digital wallets, and limiting cross-platform messaging. These actions allegedly inhibit competition and increase prices for consumers.
The lawsuit aims to change Apple’s practices and impose fines for their actions. It seeks to prevent Apple from strengthening its monopoly and using its app store and private APIs to hinder cross-platform technology distribution.
Apple, as a dominant force in the smartphone market, has faced criticism for its closed ecosystem. Rival companies view Apple’s features as creating a walled garden that limits consumer choice and competition.
The lawsuit highlights Apple’s clash with startup Beeper, which attempted to enable non-iPhone users to access iMessage. Beeper’s struggles with Apple exemplify the challenges faced by smaller competitors against tech giants.
The legal action against Apple is part of a broader crackdown on anticompetitive behavior by major tech companies. Regulators in both the U.S. and Europe have been investigating and pursuing cases against tech giants to promote fair competition.
European regulators, in particular, have fined Apple for anti-competitive practices. The investigation stemmed from complaints that Apple’s restrictions on its app store harmed other music streaming providers.
Because of global warming, you are already paying more and more for groceries. And rising temperatures will cause food prices to rise significantly over the next decade.
By 2035, rising temperatures alone are expected to increase global food prices by 0.9 to 3.2 percent each year, according to a study conducted in collaboration with the European Central Bank. This would increase the overall inflation rate by 0.3 to 1.2 percentage points.
“We are often shocked and surprised by the magnitude of these effects,” he says. Maximilian Kotz He mentioned discussions he had with economists during his research at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
To find out how this is affecting food prices, Kotz and his colleagues looked at monthly price data for a variety of goods and services for 121 countries from 1996 to 2021 and the exposure to which those countries were exposed. The weather conditions were compared.
Researchers looked at the correlation between food prices and factors such as average monthly temperatures, temperature fluctuations, droughts and extreme rainfall. They found a strong association between average temperature and food prices a month or so later.
Areas north of 40 degrees latitude, such as New York City, Madrid, and Beijing, experienced warmer-than-average winter temperatures, leading to lower food prices. But not just in the summer, temperatures in other parts of the world have always been above average, causing food prices to rise.
Moreover, the impact on prices is long-lasting. “If prices go up based on one of these shocks, they stay high for at least the rest of the period,” Kotz says.
The study didn't look at why prices have increased, but one possible explanation is that extreme heat is reducing yields, he said. “The vines may be dry when the crop should be harvested.”
Kotz said factors such as extreme rainfall had a smaller impact on food prices than average temperatures. This may be because flooding tends to be localized, whereas above-average temperatures can be very widespread.
Other studies have reached similar conclusions, Kotz said. But his team went a step further and investigated how food prices would change based on increases in average temperatures in climate model projections. Under the team's worst-case emissions scenario, global food inflation due to climate change will exceed 4% per year by 2060. However, the team believes the 2035 prediction is more reliable, as many other factors could have changed by then.
“There are a lot of things that could happen that will change the way the economy responds to climate change,” Kotz said. For example, inflationary pressures would be reduced if farmers adapted their practices to better cope with rising temperatures. But so far, he says, there is no sign that farmers are adapting.
“I think these are realistic predictions. They are based on solid empirical evidence.” Matin Kaim At the University of Bonn, Germany. “We need to recognize the fact that climate change poses new and major challenges to food and nutrition security.”
Like the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, the European Central Bank aims to: keep inflation around 2%. Rising food inflation will make achieving this goal even more difficult, Kotz said.
Teens appear to produce chemicals in their sweat that cause body odor, such as urine, musk, and sandalwood. Awareness of these chemicals may lead to more effective odor control measures, such as more effective deodorants.
Because the chemical compounds in sweat are volatile, they easily turn into gases that are perceived as odor. Hormonal changes that occur during puberty are associated with increased body odor.
helen ruth Researchers at Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander University studied how body odor changes from childhood to adolescence.
The team recruited 18 children up to the age of three and 18 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18. They all washed themselves with unscented gel before bed and had cotton pads sewn to the sides of their clothes.
The researchers then extracted the compounds absorbed by the pads and identified them using a technique called mass spectrometry. They then used a process called gas chromatography and trained evaluators to detect the odorous chemicals. “The human nose is used as a detector,” Roos says.
Overall, the body odor-causing chemicals in the two groups were similar, but the chemicals collected from the teens contained higher levels of some carboxylic acids, and the judges described it as “cheap”, “musty” and “earthy”.
The researchers also identified two steroids unique to the teens’ samples, which smelled of “urine and musk” and “sandalwood and musk,” respectively. Chemical differences between teen body odor and toddler body odor may be why toddlers are generally considered to have more pleasant smells, the researchers write.
Ruth says further research into the scents we produce at different ages could help scientists develop more effective odor control measures.
but andreas natsch Swiss fragrance maker Givaudan notes that the study only assessed overnight body odor. “In adults, more pungent odors occur when they are under mental or physical stress,” he says.
A new species of fluffy longhorn beetle discovered in Queensland, Australia
James Tweed
An entomologist camping with his partner in Queensland, Australia, has discovered what could be a candidate for Australia’s, and perhaps the world’s, fluffiest beetle.
This discovery was made by James Tweed Held at the University of Queensland at Binna Burra Lodge in Queensland’s Gold Coast hinterland during the 2021 Christmas period.
Tweed, who usually studies insects on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific, was emerging from his tent when he noticed what he thought was droppings on a common flax-like shrub. Romandra. However, upon closer inspection, it turns out that it is actually a spectacular beetle, 10 millimeters long and covered in magnificent red and black hairs, with the fur on the upper half of its body being particularly dense.
He quickly realized that it was a type of longhorn beetle (a family of about 36,000 described species), but no other comparable species was known. It has been designated as a new genus and species. Excustra arbopilosa, This means “white and hairy, from the camp.”
“There are quite a few hairy beetles out there,” Tweed said. “But this one is really unique in the length and pattern of the hairs. It’s not unusual for beetles to be hairy, but it’s unusual for them to be this hairy.”
It’s unclear why the beetle is so hairy, but one possible explanation is that its hair looks like it’s infected with a fungus, making it unpalatable to predators, Tweed said.
The specimen he collected is now kept as a model specimen in the Australian National Insect Collection, and is the only one found despite numerous searches around the campsite since its discovery.
Tweed said this is likely to be a relatively rare species. “But while it may be common, we haven’t found out where it lives yet. As far as we know, it’s on trees that we haven’t surveyed. It may be living in.”
Noland Arbor can play chess using Neuralink implant
Neuralink
Neuralink, the brain-computer interface company founded by Elon Musk, has revealed the identity of its first patient who says its implant “changed his life.” But experts say it’s not yet clear whether Neuralink has done more than replicate existing research efforts.
Who was Neuralink’s first patient?
Musk announced in January that the first human patient had received a Neuralink implant, but few details were released at the time. We now know from something. Live stream video by company – Who is that person and how will the test be done?
Noland Arbaugh explains in the video that an accident eight years ago dislocated his fourth and fifth vertebrae, leaving him a quadriplegic. He previously controlled the computer with a mouth interface, and is shown moving the cursor with just his thoughts, apparently using a Neuralink implant.
“Once I started imagining the cursor moving, it became intuitive,” Arbaugh says in the video. “Basically, it was like using ‘force’ on the cursor, and I was able to move the cursor anywhere I wanted. I could just look anywhere on the screen and the cursor would move where I wanted it. It was a very wild experience.”
He uses the device for reading, language learning, and computer games such as chess, and claims he uses it for up to eight hours at a time, at which point he needs to charge the device. “It’s not perfect, I’ve run into some problems. But it’s already changed my life,” he says.
What does the implant contain?
Neuralink did not respond to requests for an interview, but its website says the current generation coin-sized implant, called N1, generates neural activity through 1,024 electrodes distributed across 64 threads that extend into the user’s brain. It is said that it records. These are so fine that they must be placed by a surgical robot.
In a livestream video, Arbaugh said he was discharged from the hospital the day after his implant surgery, and that from his perspective the surgery was a relatively simple process.
The implant uses a small battery that is charged through the skin by an inductance charger and communicates wirelessly with an app on your smartphone.
Does this mean the first human trials were successful?
Reinhold Scherrer Researchers at the University of Essex in the UK will decide whether Neuralink’s first human trial was a success because the company “has not released enough information to form an informed opinion” He said it was too early.
“While the video is impressive and there is no doubt that it took a lot of research and development work to get to this stage, it is unclear whether what is being shown is new or groundbreaking,” he said. Masu. “Although control appears to be stable, most of the studies and experiments presented so far are primarily replications of past studies. Replication is good, but major challenges still remain. ”
Who else is working on brain implants?
Neuralink isn’t the only group exploring this idea. A number of academic organizations and commercial startups have already conducted human experiments that have successfully interpreted brain signals and produced some sort of output.
A team at Stanford University in California placed two small sensors just below the surface of the brain of a man who was paralyzed from the neck down. Researchers may be able to interpret the brain signals when a man decides to put pen to paper and translate them into text that can be read on a computer.
When will Neuralink be available and how much will it cost?
It’s too early to tell, as this has a long way to go before it becomes a commercial product, with much testing and certification to come. But Musk has made it clear that he intends to commercialize the technology.of The first product planned was named Telepathy.allows users to take control of their mobile phones and computers.
Data from a study by Gwynyay Maske and colleagues at University College Dublin in Ireland shows that spectator sports are good for kids – good for them.
The data covers major American football, association football (soccer), and rugby union tournaments in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.
The researchers found that, “with a few exceptions,” these popularity contests “continue to increase in number of births and/or fertility 9 (±1) months after notable team wins and/or tournaments.” “It was associated with an increase in the ratio.” .
Sporting events at this level seem to work that way for the winners, but not for the losers, says a study published in the journal Peer J. No joke, the downsides are significant. “Unexpected losses by Premier Soccer League teams were associated with fewer births nine months later.”
celebratory sex
The study of sports viewing begins with the following fascinating sentence: “Major sports tournaments may be associated with increased birth rates nine months later, possibly due to celebratory sex.”
The quartet candidly write about their observations:[Some people] For birthdays, holidays, graduations, proms, new car “run-in” sessions, we planned days and weeks in advance to have “celebratory” sex in a slow, long park… Parking Sex during men and women was primarily a positive sexual and romantic experience for both parties. “
The abstract climax of this study ends with the simple idea that “future research on sex in parked cars in urban settings is recommended.”
Timeliness of time
The eternal question, “What is time?'' staggered onto the stage. The first was the Finnish report on Russia's time zone, and the second was the varied actions of the Kazakh state.
Russia has 11 time zones. Piattyeva and Vasileva tell us that “the existence of multiple time zones indicates the lack of a unified spatiotemporal nature.” And they express ideas that no one has ever been able to articulate clearly. “Bureaucratically, the desire for simultaneity and synchronicity takes the form of meticulously ordering sequences of actions through normative documents.” They argue that there is a hinge to everything. is revealed. “In our analysis, we repeatedly returned to the most difficult question: What is time?”
On its own, the Kazakh government added clarification, surprise, and perhaps confusion to the general timeliness. On March 1, Kazakhstan changed its two time zones to a single time zone nationwide.
period of central asia reported two weeks before the big day that “not all citizens are happy about this, and some claim it will affect their health.” times In an interview with Sultan Turekhanov of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, he warned: In particular, it is a change in the temporal structure parameters of human biological rhythms. ”
The feedback is, above all, a tribute to the audacity of those who dare to play with the temporal structural parameters of the biological rhythms of human tissues.
unread, non-existent
How many studies are there that no one reads…and eventually disappear? And how many studies disappear that no one reads even before they disappear? Both? Rough answer to the question – it's not exactly the same question. – Now it exists.
The first question was answered almost 20 years ago when Lockman I. Mejo of Indiana University Bloomington published a paper (which has not disappeared) called “.The rise of citation analysis”.
Meho writes: “It is a solemn fact that approximately 90% of papers published in academic journals are not cited at all. In fact, 50% of his papers are never read by anyone other than the authors, reviewers, and journal editors. not.”
Martin Paul Eve from Birkbeck, University of London got the second question right. His new research (also not extinct yet) is called “.Poor preservation of digital academic journals: A study of 7 million articles”. The study “evaluated” 7,438,037 academic citations with unique identification codes called DOIs. Now, in the research, we attempted to evaluate. According to Eve's report, 2,056,492 (27.64%) of them appear to be missing.
Eve also said that 32.9 percent of organizations responsible for digitally preserving documents “do not appear to be doing adequate digital preservation.”
Feedback: old ideals: The study should raise more questions than answers.
Mark Abrahams hosted the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Previously, he was working on unusual uses of computers.his website is impossible.com.
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football dial F Widely available every week starting Wednesday Total Sport FM listeners are used to their hosts being white and ungainly, so what happens when the management brings in a young YouTuber? Rory Adefope (below), with Des (Fergus Craig) She plays Lisa, a new employee who pairs up to compete for airtime. The fast-talking, tongue-in-cheek satire of sports radio is spot-on, and every character is a bit ignorant and awful. As the producer says, “Hate equals clicks, views, and ad dollars.” Hannah Verdier
miss me? BBC Sounds, 2 episodes every week Lifelong friends Lily Allen and Mikita Oliver have a wealth of chemicals and materials for their twice-weekly updates. Funny stories, memories from her ’90s involving A-listers, discussion of hot topics, musings on the Princess of Wales are all here, and an insider’s look at how the celebrity world works It also includes a perspective. HV
Rory Adefope. Photo: Julia Kennedy/Observer
smarter than me Wide range of weekly episodes available Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ best podcast with older (and smarter) women is back for season two. Billie Jean King, Patti Smith, and Sally Field are among the sensational subjects who offer pure inspiration this time around. Louis-Dreyfus says it has “brainwashed” her about her own ideas about aging and made her look forward to it. I can see why. HV
unreliable witness Wide range of weekly episodes available Who is Ellie Williams? The 22-year-old was jailed on false rape charges in 2022, but this nuanced podcast proves there’s a lot the public doesn’t know. Sky News home editor Jason Farrell and producer Liz Lane have spoken to her family and friends, who portray her as an intelligent and sociable woman who had shown signs of abuse. HV
strike BBC Sounds, weekly episodes There are many reflections on the miners’ strike, which marks its 40th anniversary, but it is the personal memories that are truly moving. Merthyr Tydfil-born filmmaker Jonny Owen, then 13, explores the divide between miners who went on strike and those who didn’t, and how it divided friendships and communities. talked about. HV
There’s a podcast for that
Danny Robbins, host of the Battersea Poltergeist Podcast. Photo: David Levin/The Guardian
this week, Rachel Aroesti choose the best five paranormal phenomenon Podcasts from a guide to American spiritualism to a BBC investigation finding the truth about 1950s London poltergeists.
ghost story This wonderful podcast by journalist Tristan Redman begins as a vague anecdote about a potentially haunted attic in south-west London and turns into a fascinating, deep, and rather beautiful meditation on memory and the past. We will continue to expand. This series was started by a strange coincidence. As a child, Redman experienced strange occurrences in her bedroom. Years later, he found his wife’s great-grandmother murdered next to her. What follows is an interesting investigation into a very strange murder and a spine-chilling investigation into the possibility of ghosts. Could it be that Redman has lived under the influence of supernatural forces all his adult life? Although his conclusions were by no means definitive, they were revelatory and moving.
battersea poltergeist Danny Robbins is the king of paranormal podcasting in the UK, as host of the BBC’s excellent audio series-turned-TV show Uncanny. But it was actually the 2021 series Battersea Poltergeist that first ignited the comedy writer’s late career. switch. An incredibly thorough investigation into the ghostly events that took place on Wycliffe Road in the 1950s, Robbins pulls out all the stops to uncover the noises and flights that haunted the Hitchings family and made headlines for more than a decade. Provided a reasonable explanation for the object. But no matter how hard he tries, the host can’t completely dismiss the idea that something happened there that can’t be explained scientifically. And by the end of the series, you will too.
ghost church Podcaster and comedian Jamie Loftus (known as co-host of the long-running show “The Bechdel Cast”) is an American spiritualist (a religion adjacent to Christianity defined by the belief that the dead never actually die). ) is a reliable and often hilarious guide to. This charming, funny and heartfelt series. To delve into the shaky underpinnings of spiritualism and its less comical modern aspects, Loftus ventures into Cassadaga, a small, highly insular community in Florida that has dedicated its life to communicating with spirits. I would like to interview mediums. Although she arrived with an open mind, she quickly realized that it would take a preternatural level of seriousness to keep from laughing at all the mind-bogglingly bizarre details. Ta.
radio rental Podcaster Payne Lindsay, who made a name for himself by investigating a series of cold cases, goes on to create a series of gruesome films that revolve around something that isn’t exactly a true crime, but is still incredibly sinister. I turned my attention to the story. After scouring forums for suitably chilling stories, from stories of her girlfriend’s doppelgänger to an evil babysitter that clearly never existed, Lindsay tracks down the posters and reveals the gruesome details of their experiences. I recorded everything. The paranormal is just one possibility in these explanations, but human evil is a far more terrifying possibility, so for once it’s often the preferable option. Oh, and if that gets a little too much, Rainn Wilson (aka Dwight from The Office US) is on hand to break the ice, serving as MC for the whole thing in the guise of video store owner Terry Carnation .
ghost in the suburbs Wellesley, Massachusetts is a real place, but it’s not the poltergeist-filled community this podcast would have you believe. Ghosts in the Burbs does not initially appear to be a work of fiction. Our host is a seemingly real person named Liz Sower, a community member who decided to compile local ghost stories from her neighbors into a (real) blog. However, it soon becomes clear that Sour is actually narrating a sophisticated melodrama about a town plagued by paranormal activity. The tone is pleasant, and Sour and his acquaintances give off a delicious mummy vibe, but it’s also very unsettling. After a while, the host will be able to see ghosts, spirits, and demons. It’s not a skill set that will help you sleep at night.
Why not try it…
After Broad and Market Examines the 2003 murder of Sakia Gunn, a young, black, gay 15-year-old student in downtown Newark. Her murder galvanized LGBTQ+ activism in New Jersey.
in Y is importantnutritionist Alina Kuzmina and expert guests discuss a wide range of health topics, including overeating, work-life balance, and the relationship between mind and body.
Serpentine Podcast: Intimacy We ask how we can expand and evolve our connections with ourselves, others, and the world around us.
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Imagine waiting for your school exam results or having a dental appointment on the horizon. Many believe that preparing for uncertain outcomes by expecting the worst is a good strategy.
This way, you won’t be as shocked if the test results are disappointing or the dentist visit is unpleasant. Hence the phrase “hope for the best and plan for the worst.” But is this approach truly beneficial?
According to psychological research, the answer is no.
One downside of preparing for the worst is that it can lead to feeling sad and anxious before an event. By convincing yourself that something bad will happen, you are setting yourself up for negative emotions.
Thinking positively and expecting things to go well can actually make you feel better before your exam results or dental appointment. But what about when things don’t go as planned?
Unfortunately, research shows that people feel just as bad about disappointing outcomes whether they anticipated them or not. This applies immediately and even after the results are known.
Similar research has found that having negative expectations about a task like public speaking can make you feel worse, not better, right after performing it. The idea of emotional defensiveness doesn’t seem to work well.
These findings are relevant to the debate around trigger warnings, which aim to prepare individuals for emotionally challenging content. However, studies indicate that trigger warnings are not effective in emotional protection.
Concerns about over-optimism and complacency are valid, but optimism can boost motivation. Optimistic individuals tend to put more effort into their studies and typically achieve better grades as a result.
The key is to combine optimism with effort. Simply hoping for the best without taking action is not a sound strategy. Are you thinking positively and putting in the work needed to succeed?
If you have any questions, please email us at: questions@sciencefocus.com or send us a message on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Remember to include your name and location.
Check out our ultimate Interesting Information and more amazing science pages.
If you think a regular tornado is scary, fasten your seatbelts. Scientists have created a tornado so powerful that it resembles a black hole. why? This giant vortex closely mimics a black hole, so it could offer great potential for black hole research.
It was published in the magazine Nature experimental study We created something never seen before: a quantum tornado. Basically, while a normal tornado circulates by tearing apart trees and houses, a quantum tornado circulates atoms and particles.
To make the tornado mimic a black hole, the researchers needed to use helium in a “superfluid” state, meaning it has a low viscosity and can flow without resistance. These properties allow scientists to closely observe how helium interacts with its surroundings.
This led to the discovery that small waves on the liquid surface simulate the gravitational conditions around a rotating black hole.
So how did they do it? First, the team led by the University of Nottingham needed to achieve the right properties for the liquid. This involved cooling several liters of superfluid helium to the lowest possible temperature, below -271°C.
Normally, tiny objects called “quantum vortices” in liquid helium spread apart from each other. But at this new, ultra-low temperature, liquid helium takes on quantum properties and stabilizes.
Helium “quantum tornado” experimental equipment at the black hole laboratory. – Photo credit: Leonardo Solidoro
Using a new cryogenic device, researchers were able to trap tens of thousands of these tiny objects, creating a “vortex” similar to a tornado.
The success of this experiment will allow researchers to compare the interactions inside a simulated black hole with their own theoretical projections, giving scientists a new way to simulate theories of curved spacetime and gravity. Possibilities will be unlocked.
“When we first observed clear signs of black hole physics in our first analog experiments in 2017, it was a discovery of some strange phenomena that are often difficult, if not impossible, to study in other ways.” It was a breakthrough moment for understanding the phenomenon.” Professor Silke Weinfurtneris leading the research at the Black Hole Institute, where this experiment was developed.
“Now, with more sophisticated experiments, we have taken this research to the next level. This may lead to predictions of what will happen.”
When picturing a smoker, the image of a slender and stylish individual like Audrey Hepburn may come to mind. However, recent research indicates that even slim smokers could be harboring unhealthy fat hidden deep within their abdomens.
Despite the common belief that smoking can suppress appetite and the fear of weight gain upon quitting, a new study reveals that smokers are more likely to be underweight. Not only that but smokers also tend to accumulate more harmful deep abdominal fat, known as “visceral fat,” which is linked to increased risks of heart attack, diabetes, and dementia. This type of fat can be challenging to detect, leading to a false sense of fullness even with a flat stomach.
To investigate the relationship between lifelong smoking and belly fat, researchers at the University of Copenhagen utilized a statistical analysis tool called Mendelian randomization. This tool categorizes individuals based on their genetic information to identify causal connections between exposures like smoking and outcomes such as abdominal fat distribution.
The study involved analyzing genetic data from numerous studies on smoking habits and body fat distribution among individuals of European ancestry. By identifying specific genes associated with smoking behaviors and body fat distribution, the researchers were able to determine the impact of smoking on belly fat independent of other influencing factors like alcohol consumption and socio-economic background.
The lead author, Dr. Germán D. Carrasquilla, emphasized the importance of large-scale efforts to prevent and reduce smoking in light of their findings published in the journal Dependence. He believes that reducing smoking prevalence can indirectly decrease the prevalence of abdominal fat and ultimately improve public health outcomes.
Tantalum-180m (180mTa) is a rare isotope of tantalum whose decay has never been observed, and whose lifetime is expected to be about a million times longer than the age of the universe.
Modified Majorana module in assembly glovebox with germanium detector crystal and tantalum sample installed. Image credit: Majorana Collaboration.
Tantalum, a chemical element with symbol Ta and atomic number 73, is a rare, hard, blue-gray, shiny transition metal with excellent corrosion resistance.
It has multiple stable isotopes: 2 stable radioisotopes and 35 artificial radioisotopes.
Tantalum-180, the least abundant isotope, occurs naturally in a long-lived excited state.
In an excited state, the protons or neutrons in the nucleus have a higher energy level than normal.
Although energetically possible, radioactive decay of this excited state in tantalum-180m has never been observed before.
Nuclear physicists from the Majorana collaboration are currently conducting experiments aimed at measuring this decay, which is expected to have a lifetime about a million times longer than the age of the universe.
For the experiment, they Majorana Demonstrator At Sanford Underground Research Facility.
Additionally, a significantly larger amount of tantalum samples were introduced compared to tantalum samples previously used in similar studies.
Over the course of a year, they collected data using a series of high-purity germanium detectors with exceptional energy resolution.
They also developed analytical methods specifically tailored to detect multiple expected decay signatures.
As a result of these combined efforts, we were able to establish unprecedented limits that fall within the range of 10.18 up to 1019 Year.
This level of sensitivity represents the first example in which half-life values predicted from nuclear theory have become achievable.
Although the collapse process has not yet been observed, these advances have significantly enhanced existing limits by one to two orders of magnitude.
Additionally, this advance allowed the Majorana team to ignore certain parameter ranges associated with various potential dark matter particles.
“With a new limit of up to 1.5*1019 “This is the most sensitive search for a single β and electron capture decay achieved to date,” the authors said.
“Across all channels, you can exclude attenuation with T1/2<0.29*10.”18For years. ”
of result appear in the diary physical review letter.
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IJ Arnquist other. (Majorana collaboration).Constraints on collapse 180mTa. Physics.pastor rhett 131 (15): 152501; doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.152501
Humans have a long history of transporting and trading plants, contributing to the evolution of cultivated plants. The cacao tree (Theobroma cacao), whose beans are used to make products such as chocolate, liqueurs, and cocoa butter, is native to the Neotropics of South America. However, little is known about its cultivation and use in these regions. In a new study, archaeologists analyzed ceramic residues from a large sample of pre-Columbian cultures in Central and South America. Their findings reveal that cacao was widely used in South America outside of its Amazonian region, going back 5,000 years.
Recent discoveries have recorded the domestication of cacao trees (Theobroma cacao) inhabited its native Amazon region of Ecuador by at least 5,300 years ago. Lanau other. This study shows that a large-scale landscape of domestication of cacao outside of its native region along the Pacific coast of South America occurred simultaneously during this same early period and later periods. Image credit: Fernando Granier.
The modern cacao tree (its scientific name means “food of the gods”) is one of the world’s most important crops.
Eleven genetic groups are known, including the widely used Criollo and Nacional strains.
Although it is well established that the cacao tree was originally domesticated in the upper Amazon basin, it has not been clear how the use of cacao by other cultures spread throughout Central and South America.
In a new study, AGAP Institute researcher Claire Lanau and colleagues found 352 ceramic remains from 19 pre-Columbian cultures dating back approximately 5,900 to 400 years, spanning Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Belize, and Panama. was analyzed.
Researchers tested ancient cacao’s DNA and the presence of three methylxanthine (mild stimulant) compounds (theobromine, theophylline, and caffeine) present in modern cacao tree lineages to determine the ancient cacao’s DNA. Identified the residue.
The authors also used genetic information from 76 modern cocoa samples to establish the ancient cocoa ancestry present in ceramic products. This could reveal how ancient cocoa strains diversified and spread.
The study results show that cacao was domesticated in the Amazon at least 5,000 years ago, and was soon cultivated extensively along the Pacific coast, with high diversity among ancient lineages likely due to genetic This shows that different populations were bred together.
The presence of cacao genotypes originating from the Peruvian Amazon in the Valdivia coastal region of Ecuador suggests that these cultures have been in contact for many years.
The Peruvian strain was also detected in artifacts from Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
“Taken together, these indicate that cocoa varieties spread widely across countries and were interbred to adapt to new environments as different cultures adopted the use of cocoa,” the researchers said.
“A better understanding of cocoa’s genetic history and diversity may help combat the threats facing modern cocoa varieties, such as disease and climate change.”
a paper The survey results were published in a magazine scientific report.
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C. Lanau other. 2024. Revisiting the history of pre-Columbian cacao cultivation revealed through an archaeogenomic approach. science officer 14, 2972; doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-53010-6
Planetary scientists have long speculated that Venus' potential habitability lies not in its hot surface but in a cloud layer at an altitude of 48 to 60 kilometers, where temperatures match those of Earth's surface. However, it is commonly believed that Venusian clouds cannot support life because their chemical composition is concentrated sulfuric acid, a highly aggressive solvent. In the new study, chemists studied 20 biogenic amino acids across a range of sulfuric acid concentrations and temperatures in the Venus cloud. After four weeks, the researchers found that 19 of the biogenic amino acids tested were either unreactive or chemically modified only in their side chains. Their main discovery is that the amino acid backbone remains intact in concentrated sulfuric acid.
This composite image taken by JAXA's Akatsuki spacecraft shows Venus. Image credit: JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic.
“What is quite surprising is that concentrated sulfuric acid is not a universally hostile solvent for organic chemistry,” said MIT researcher Dr. Janusz Petkowski.
“We found that the building blocks of life on Earth are stable in sulfuric acid, which is very interesting as we consider the possibility of life on Venus,” said Sarah Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. the professor added.
“That doesn't mean life there will be the same as it is here. In fact, we know it's unlikely. But this study suggests that Venus' clouds support the complex chemicals necessary for life. We advance the idea that there is a possibility that
The search for life in Venus' clouds has gained momentum in recent years, spurred by the detection of the controversial molecule phosphine, a molecule thought to be a signature of life, in the planet's atmosphere. There is.
Although the discovery remains debated, the news reignited old questions about whether life could actually exist on Earth's sister planet.
In search of answers, scientists are planning several missions to Venus. That includes the first largely privately-funded mission to Venus, backed by California-based launch company Rocket Lab.
The mission, for which Professor Seeger is the principal scientist, aims to send a spacecraft into the planet's clouds and analyze their chemistry for signs of organic molecules.
Ahead of the mission's launch in January 2025, Professor Seager and his colleagues will test various materials in concentrated sulfuric acid to find out whether debris from life on Earth might be stable in Venus' clouds. I've been testing molecules. The most acidic place on earth.
“People have a perception that concentrated sulfuric acid is a very aggressive solvent that will tear everything apart, but we are finding that this is not necessarily true,” Dr. Petkowski said.
In fact, the authors have previously shown that complex organic molecules, such as some fatty acids and nucleic acids, are surprisingly stable in sulfuric acid.
They are careful to emphasize, as they do in the current paper, that complex organic chemistry is of course not life, but without organic chemistry there is no life.
In other words, if certain molecules can survive in sulfuric acid, Venus' highly acidic clouds are probably habitable, if not necessarily habitable.
In the new study, researchers focused on 20 biogenic amino acids, amino acids that are essential for all life on Earth.
They dissolved each type of amino acid in a vial of sulfuric acid mixed with water at concentrations of 81% and 98%, representing the range found in Venus' clouds.
They then used a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer to analyze the structure of the amino acids in sulfuric acid.
After analyzing each vial several times over a four-week period, they found that the basic molecular structure, or “skeleton,” of 19 of the 20 amino acids was stable and unaltered, even under highly acidic conditions.
“Just because this skeleton was shown to be stable in sulfuric acid does not mean there is life on Venus,” said Dr. Maxwell Seager, a researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
“But if we had shown that this spine was compromised, there would have been no possibility of life as we know it.”
of study Published in this week's magazine astrobiology.
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Maxwell D. Seeger other. Stability of 20 biogenic amino acids in concentrated sulfuric acid: Implications for the habitability of Venusian clouds. astrobiology, published online March 18, 2024. doi: 10.1089/ast.2023.0082
More than 7,000 years ago, Neolithic people used technologically sophisticated boats to navigate the Mediterranean Sea, according to a new study.
The 7,300-year-old canoe Marmotta 1 is on display at the Museum of Civilization in Rome. It is a huge dugout canoe made from an oak trunk, approximately 10.43 meters long, 1.15 meters wide at the stern, and 0.85 meters wide at the bow. Depending on the part of the canoe, the height is 65 to 44 cm. Image credit: Gibaja other., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299765.
Many of Europe's most important civilizations were born along the Mediterranean coast.
The Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians took advantage of the virtually enclosed sea to move quickly between islands along the coast.
At various times in history, the Mediterranean Sea has been a space of travel and a means of communication.
However, one of the major migration phenomena in history occurred during the Neolithic period, when rural societies began to spread around Europe and North Africa.
The beginning of the Neolithic period is recorded in the Near East around 10,000 BC, but communities from that region gradually occupied the entire Mediterranean Sea around 7500-7000 BC, reaching the coast of Portugal around 5400 BC.
In a new study, Dr. Juan Guibaja and colleagues from Spain's National Research Council dug out a tree from La Marmotta, a Neolithic lakeside village near Rome, Italy, between 5700 and 5100 BC. Five dugout canoes that were built were investigated.
Analysis revealed that the canoe was constructed from four types of wood, which is unusual for similar sites, and incorporated advanced construction techniques such as lateral reinforcement.
Three T-shaped wooden objects are also associated with one canoe, each with a series of holes that may have been used to secure ropes tied to sails or other nautical elements. there is.
These features, together with previous reconstruction experiments, indicate that these are seaworthy vessels, a conclusion supported by the presence of stone tools associated with nearby islands.
“These canoes are exceptional examples of prehistoric vessels, and their construction required a well-organized and specialized workforce, as well as a detailed understanding of structural design and wood properties,” the researchers said. said.
“The similarities between these canoes and modern navigation technology support the idea that many major advances in sailing took place during the early Neolithic period.”
“Direct dating of a Neolithic canoe discovered at La Marmotta reveals it to be the oldest in the Mediterranean and provides valuable insight into Neolithic navigation,” the study said. they added.
“Our research reveals the remarkable technological sophistication of early agricultural and pastoral communities, highlighting their woodworking skills and complex shipbuilding.”
JF Gibaha other. 2024. The first Neolithic ship in the Mediterranean: the settlement of La Marmotta (Anguillara Sabazia, Lazio, Italy). PLoS ONE 19 (3): e0299765; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299765
Are there so many people in so many parallel worlds, almost duplicates of you, reading almost duplicate articles of this article? Is consciousness a fundamental property of all matter? The reality is Is it a computer simulation? Dear reader, I can hear you groaning from right here in California.
We tend to reject ideas like this because they sound ridiculous. But some of the world's leading scientists and philosophers support them. why? And assuming you are not an expert, how should you react to this kind of hypothesis?
Things quickly go awry when faced with fundamental questions about the nature of reality. As a philosopher specializing in metaphysics, I argue that strange things are inevitable and that fundamentally strange things will turn out to be true.
That doesn't mean all weird hypotheses are created equal. On the contrary, some strange possibilities are worth taking more seriously than others. The idea of Zorg the Destroyer hidden at the center of the galaxy, pulling protons by invisible threads, would of course be laughed off as some sort of explanation. But even in the absence of direct empirical tests, we can carefully evaluate various seemingly absurd ideas that are worth serious consideration.
The key is to become comfortable weighing competing unreality. Anyone can try this, as long as they don't expect everyone to come to the same conclusion.
First, let me start by clarifying that we are talking here about a tremendously big and scary problem: the foundations of reality and the foundations of our understanding of those foundations. Sho. What is the underlying structure?
Ruins in the Ethiopian lowlands where ancient humans lived 74,000 years ago
John Kappelman
A campsite in what is now Ethiopia may have been used in the years before, during, and after a massive volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago that changed the Earth’s climate.
The eruption of supervolcano Toba on the Indonesian island of Sumatra was the largest eruption on Earth in the past 2 million years. Some researchers believe it may have caused a volcanic winter that lasted several years and wiped out most humans alive at the time, but the magnitude of that effect is debated .
Bones found at Ethiopian ruins suggest people living there had to adapt their diet to survive the dry year or two after the eruption, but the effects were mild It seems like it was.
“It was a pretty lucky discovery,” he says. John Kappelman A team from the University of Texas at Austin discovered the site in 2002. “There’s no question about that.”
Most of the remains of early humans are caves that were inhabited for tens of thousands of years, he says. However, this camp is an outdoor location near the Simfa River, a tributary of the Blue Nile. “Our intuition is that this place has probably been occupied for about five to 10 years,” Kappelman said.
The researchers found thousands of stone fragments from the tool’s manufacture, along with several stone tips believed to be among the oldest arrowheads ever discovered. “We have evidence of archery in the form of these small stone points,” Kappelman says.
Researchers also found ostrich eggshells and numerous animal bones, some with cuts and signs of cooking. Therefore, it is believed that people brought animals back to the site for slaughter and cooking.
The researchers also found volcanic ash in the form of tiny glass shards, known as cryptephra, in the middle of layers of sediment containing stone chips and bones. “They’re just tiny little glass shards,” Kappelman says – and their composition matches other debris from the Toba supereruption.
Isotopic analysis of ostrich shells suggests that the climate became drier after the eruption. This is consistent with a four-fold increase in the amount of fish carcasses identified and a decrease in other types of animal carcasses.
The research team explains that the Shinfa River is seasonal, and during the dry season it dries up to create a water hole. Immediately after the Toba eruption, the dry season was long, making it easier to catch fish in the narrowed water holes. The researchers suggest that this compensated for the decline in terrestrial predators.
Over the next few years, food debris returned to pre-eruption levels and there were no signs of mass mortality, Kappelman said.
Other researchers argue that early humans moved to wetter areas as conditions dried, he says. For this reason, it is also believed that the migration of people from Africa took place during times when the climate was wetter, allowing them to survive in the usually arid region between Africa and Eurasia.
“Our remains show that humans adapted to seasonally dry conditions,” Kappelmann says. He thinks this means that the migration of modern humans from Africa, which may have occurred as recently as 65,000 or 60,000 years ago, may have occurred during a dry period.
However, Kappelman agrees that early migration from Africa by less sophisticated peoples may have been limited to wet periods.
“This is an interesting paper for many reasons: the likely precise link to the Toba supereruption, environmental evidence, survival behaviors including fishing, the possible use of bows and arrows, and the possibility that it facilitated dispersal from Africa. “A certain behavioral adaptation,” says chris stringer At the Natural History Museum in London.
“While each of these proposals will certainly stimulate debate, I think the authors have presented a plausible, if not conclusive, case for each scenario they propose,” he says.
The study also adds to the evidence that the global effects of the Toba supereruption were relatively small and short-lived, Stringer said.
but stanley ambrose One researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign believes that Toba wiped out most humans, but he disagrees. He said the site may represent a much longer period of time than Kappelman’s team thinks, meaning the impact on people could have been much greater. There is.
“Material deposited by humans long before and long after the eruption, perhaps centuries to more than a thousand years ago, was deposited by well-known disturbance processes such as rodent burrowing and cracks forming during desiccation. It could have been juxtaposed with a volcanic ash layer, season,” Ambrose says.
Artist's impression of a planet grazing the surface of a star
K. Miller/R. Hart (California Institute of Technology/IPAC)
It appears that at least one in every 12 stars devours a planet. This is because the star system can easily be destabilized when external objects such as rogueworlds or other stars fly nearby, and the disturbance can shake up the planet's orbit and throw the planet into the star. It is thought that it is.
Huang Liu Researchers from Australia's Monash University investigated how often this happens by observing 91 pairs of stars using some of the world's most powerful telescopes. They selected stars that were most likely to have formed together in a binary. This is because these couples should be formed with the same chemical composition. In doing so, researchers were able to determine whether one of them had swallowed a planet in the past. Doing so would change the planet's composition compared to its binary partner.
They found that about 8 percent of pairs contain one star that has eaten a planet, and show signs of being richer in heavy elements than its twin. Each of these stars appears to have ingested between 1.7 and 8.4 Earth masses of material. This is consistent with previous predictions.
“Our estimates are conservative,” Liu says. “I think the actual percentage may be higher, but it's still probably less than 20% or around 20%.” This can vary depending on where in the galaxy a particular star is born.
Understanding how many stars are eclipsed by planets is a potentially important part of understanding the abundance of life in the universe and our chances of finding it.
“The question is: how many stars and planets behave in ways that are conducive to the development of life?” meridith joyce Member of the research team at the Konkoli Observatory in Hungary. “Knowing how many stars there are and how many host planet stars there are are two parts of the calculation, but we also need to know how many stars are eating those planets.”
Canoes are up to 10 meters long and are made by hollowing out trees.
Gibaja et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0
More than 7,000 years ago, skilled craftsmen built wooden canoes to probably transport people, animals, and goods across the Mediterranean.
Scientists identified five boats with evidence of advanced navigation techniques, such as lateral bracing and towing attachments. The canoe, found in a freshwater lake and inadvertently kept secret for decades, likely enabled trade and transportation between Mediterranean farming communities during the Neolithic period. Niccolo Mazzucco At the University of Pisa, Italy.
Along with the well-preserved village where they were discovered, the canoes “opened a window into the past,” he says.
In 1989, Italian researchers discovered a site buried beneath a lake slightly northwest of Rome, 38 kilometers upstream from the west coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and named it La Marmotta. In addition to several wooden buildings, a dugout canoe made by burning and hollowing out wood was also found.
Despite these discoveries, the language barrier prevented it from becoming internationally famous, and almost all relevant information was only published in Italian, it said. Mario Mineo At the Museum of Roman Civilization in Rome, which took part in the discovery.
Now, Mazzucco, Mineo, and their colleagues have made new observations of these canoes using modern methods and shared their findings in English.
Lasse Sorensen David, from the National Museum of Denmark, who was not involved in the study, said he was unaware of these boats, despite having done extensive research on dugout canoes in Scandinavia.
He is particularly intrigued by a wooden T-shaped device attached to the canoe. Holes drilled in them suggest that they were probably used for ropes, implying that the boat was being towed. That way, Sorensen said, he would have been able to transport “more people, more animals, more goods.” “So these details are very important because they provide evidence of how they were actually able to transport large quantities of goods.”
Using the latest carbon dating techniques, the research team dated each ship to 6,000 BC. The two oldest ships were built in 5620 BC, and the newest in 5045 BC. Carbon dating of one of the T-shaped accessories revealed that it was made around 5470 BC.
The length of the boat is up to 10 meters. Its size suggests it was used at sea, Mazzucco said. Recent tests of replicas of these canoes confirmed that The original would have been seaworthy. Foreign grains, livestock remains, and stones found in the village indicate that the villagers were trading across the Mediterranean region.
To identify the wood used to build the boats, the team cut nine thin wood samples from each canoe. After analyzing them under a microscope, the researchers determined that two of the boats, including the oldest, were made from alder wood, which is lightweight and resistant to splintering and cracking. The newest boats were made of durable and rot-resistant oak, while the other two were made of poplar and beech.
“They probably had a good knowledge of wood types and their properties, so they selected them and used them based on those properties,” Mazzucco says. “They worked with wood with the same knowledge as today's carpenters, just with different tools.”
Artistic restoration of Pebanista Yacuruna in the murky waters of the Peruvian Amazon
Jaime Blanc
The Amazon basin was once home to freshwater dolphins that grew up to 3.5 meters long, making them the largest river dolphin known to science.
Researchers say they made this surprising discovery during a 2018 expedition to Peru Aldo Benitez Palomino at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. When the research team saw the animal's fossilized skull sticking out of the river bank, they immediately knew it was a dolphin. Closer analysis confirms that this giant skull is unlike anything previously discovered.
Researchers named this new species Pebanista Yacluna. The name pays homage to the mythical aquatic people, Yacuruna, who are believed to live in underwater cities in the Amazon basin.
The 16 million-year-old fossils were unearthed in an area that was once covered by a “very large lake, almost like a small ocean in the middle of a jungle,” Benitez Palomino said. He says, based on the small eye sockets and large teeth of ancient dolphins. P. Yacluna It was probably a predator with poor eyesight. They relied heavily on echolocation to find fish. “We realized that it was really living in muddy water because its eyes started to get smaller,” Benitez-Palomino said.
Because the fossil was found in the Amazon basin, researchers expected the fossil's closest living relative to be the modern Amazon river dolphin.Instead, they found P. Yacluna It was more closely related to the river dolphin of South Asia. Like them, this ancient species also has a raised crest on its skull that enhances its echolocation abilities.
P. Yacluna Benitez-Palomino said it may have been driven to extinction amid broader ecological changes. “About 11 to 12 million years ago, this huge wetland system began to drain, making way for what is now the Amazon. At that moment, many species became extinct, which is why this giant dolphin Maybe it was fate.”
Scientists sequenced and analyzed the genome. Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus), with an average weight of about 2 grams, it is one of the world’s smallest mammals. This reference-quality genome is an important resource for studies of mammalian development, metabolism, and body size control.
The Etruscan shrew, also known as the white-toothed pygmy shrew, is recognized as one of the smallest living mammals.
This species weighs 1.2 to 2.7 grams and has a body length of 3.6 to 5.3 cm (1.4 to 2.1 inches), with a very large surface area to volume ratio.
As a result, shrews have very high metabolic rates and must consume approximately 1.5 to 2 times their body weight in food each day.
These unique physiological characteristics make the Etruscan shrew a valuable species to the scientific community, contributing significantly to various research fields such as behavioral science and neuroscience.
“High-quality genome assemblies are essential references to enable accurate high-throughput data analysis,” said computational biologist Dr. Yuri Bukman of the Morgridge Institute.
“This will provide valuable insight into the mechanisms of body size control and metabolic rate and will facilitate comparative biological studies.”
In their research, Dr. Buchmann and his colleagues sequenced and assembled the genome of a male Etruscan shrew using protocols developed by the Vertebrate Genome Project.
“Our new Etruscan shrew genome is the first chromosome-level genome assembly for the order Shrews. lilypotyphra,” they said.
The authors manually inspected the primary assembly and identified 22 chromosomes, including the X and Y sex chromosomes.
They also identified 39,091 genes, 19,819 of which were protein-coding genes.
“We found that the shrew genome has relatively little duplication,” Dr. Buchmann said.
“This result does not necessarily correlate with the smallness of the shrew itself.”
“Although shrews belong to a different mammalian family, some similarly small rodents have a lot of overlapping body segments, and Mus musculus is like the champion in the sense that it has the most overlapping segments. So it’s not a question of size.”
of result It was published in the magazine scientific data.
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YV Buchman other. 2024. Chromosome-level genome assembly of the Etruscan shrew Suncus etruscus. scientific data 11, 176; doi: 10.1038/s41597-024-03011-x
The Biden administration revealed updated vehicle emissions standards on Wednesday, described as the most ambitious effort yet to reduce global warming emissions from passenger vehicles.
While the new regulations relax the original tailpipe limits proposed last year, they will ultimately align more closely with the stringent standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency.
These standards will be enforced in conjunction with the sale of electric vehicles, which must meet the requirements. The auto industry had opposed the EPA’s initial standards, announced in April last year, citing a slowdown in sales growth. The administration, however, remains committed to its ambitious plans to decrease emissions from passenger cars contributing to global warming.
Under the finalized rule, the EPA will mandate that by 2032, 56% of new vehicle sales should be electric vehicles, with at least 13% being plug-in hybrids or partially electric vehicles, along with more fuel-efficient gasoline-powered cars that get higher mileage.
The EPA estimates that these new standards will result in annual savings of $100 billion, over 7 billion tons of avoided global warming carbon emissions over the next three decades, reduced healthcare costs, fewer deaths, and more than $60 billion in healthcare savings, ultimately leading to overall cost savings in fuel, maintenance, and repairs.
On January 2, 2008, exhaust gas blows out of a car’s tailpipe in San Francisco. David Paul Morris/Getty Images File
The EPA rule pertains to model years between 2027 and 2032, covering new emissions from new passenger cars, light trucks, pickup trucks, as well as greenhouse gas emissions like nitrogen oxides and particulate matter that contribute to global warming. It will also significantly reduce other forms of air pollution. The EPA asserts that the rule will help combat the climate crisis by substantially decreasing air pollution while promoting the adoption of cleaner vehicle technologies. The finalization of the rules follows a record increase in sales of clean vehicles, including plug-in hybrids and fully electric vehicles, last year.
The revised rules will push back the strict pollution standards’ implementation from 2027 to 2029 after the auto industry argued against the feasibility of the proposed benchmarks. By 2032, the rules will be bolstered to nearly meet the EPA’s recommended thresholds.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan affirmed to reporters that the final rule will yield pollution reductions equal to or greater than those outlined in the proposal. In addition to addressing carbon pollution, Regan emphasized that the ultimate standard will also lessen other severe air pollutants contributing to heart attacks, respiratory issues, exacerbating asthma, and diminishing lung function.
Regan stressed the critical nature of these new standards for public health, American jobs, the economy, and the planet. The standard is designed to be technology-neutral and performance-based, granting auto and truck manufacturers the flexibility to choose pollution control technology that aligns with their customer needs while meeting environmental and public health objectives.
The adjustments in the regulations seem aimed at addressing the strong industry resistance to the accelerated adoption of electric vehicles and the public’s hesitation to fully embrace new technology. Legal challenges in conservative courts also pose a legitimate threat.
With a conservative majority, the Supreme Court has increasingly restricted the power of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The court has limited the EPA’s ability to combat air and water pollution, further hindering their capability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming.
President Joe Biden has made fighting climate change a central feature of his presidency, with a focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
To achieve these goals, a Democratic president needs cooperation from the auto industry and political backing from auto workers, a crucial voting bloc. The United Auto Workers union, supporting Biden, endorses the transition to electric vehicles but aims to safeguard jobs and ensure that industry pays competitive wages to workers involved in producing EVs and batteries.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre expressed confidence in the EPA’s final rule, stating that the administration understands that achieving such goals takes time and remains committed to climate action.
Michel Taragran won the 2024 Abel Prize, also known as the Nobel Prize of mathematics, for his work on probability theory and the description of randomness. The news came as a surprise to Taragrand. He learned what he thought was his Zoom call within the department. He said: “My brain completely shut down for five seconds. It was an amazing experience. I never expected anything like this.”
Tara GrandBased at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), he has spent much of his 40-year career on extreme characterization of random or stochastic systems. These problems are common in the real world. For example, a bridge builder may need to know the maximum wind strength expected from the local weather.
Such random systems are often very complex and may contain many random variables, but Talagrand’s method of converting these systems into geometric problems allows us to extract useful values. can. “He is a master at getting accurate estimates, and he knows exactly what to add or subtract to get an accurate estimate,” he says. Helge HoldenChairman of the Abel Prize Committee.
Taragrand also developed mathematical tools and equations for systems that are random but exhibit some degree of predictability within that randomness, a statistical principle called concentration of measurements. His equation, known as the Taragrand inequality, can be used for many systems that exhibit concentration of measurements. Asaf Naor At Princeton University, he developed famous algorithmic puzzles such as the Traveling Salesman Problem. “Not only is he a great discoverer in his own right, but he is also an influence. He has provided the world with an amazing collection of insights and tools,” Naor says.
Perhaps inspired by his own work, Taragrand says he views his career as a random process. “It’s really scary when you look at your life and the important things that happened. They were determined by small random influences and there was no plan at all,” he says.
Although many of his works were general, he also had a particular interest in the mathematical basis of spin glasses. Spin glass is an unusual magnetic arrangement in which the atoms of a material can act like tiny magnets, pointing in random directions and exhibiting no apparent order. Repeating crystal structure in ordinary glass.
“This award is definitely well-deserved,” he says Giorgio Parisi from Sapienza University in Rome, Italy, won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on spin glasses. Parisi and his colleagues first proposed a formula to describe these materials, named after Parisi, but it was not proven mathematically until the work of Taragrand and Italian physicist Francesco Guerra. . “It’s one thing to believe that a guess is correct, but it’s another to prove it. I believed it was a very difficult problem to prove,” Parisi says.
It also helped draw the field to the attention of other mathematicians, Parisi said. “This was a great proof and completely changed the game, because it was the starting point for a deeper understanding of the theory.”
For Taragrand, one of the keys to success was persistence. “You can’t learn mathematics easily. You have to work. It takes a lot of time and you have bad memories. You forget things. So despite these handicaps, I have to work. My way of working has always been to try to understand simple things really well.”
LLet’s talk about my piece, Bowie. As his name suggests, he is a beautiful, fair-skinned, slender magician with heavy makeup and big red hair. He is an extradimensional being, and his job is to support my adventures as Arisen, the fate-chosen ruler of this kingdom. That’s when I unknowingly landed the role.
Bowie wasn’t very good at his job. He often forgets to heal me when a harpy or goblin or ogre knocks my lumps off in the field and forces me to say, “Help!” Press the button while being held down by the Minotaur. When he travels to other worlds, he always returns with sour stories of how often he has fallen in battle, and how badly he has suffered at the hands of other Ariens. Anyway, I love Bowie. my pawn. Despite his failures, we have had incredible adventures together.
You might look at the screenshots and videos of this game and think I must be high, but Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the best adventure I’ve had in years. Yes, it’s a bit of a shock. Yes, the information on the screen is confusing and the controls take some getting used to. That’s right, you will always die because you will be caught outside after dark and will encounter a lot of ghosts that will instantly vaporize you. Yes, whoever designed the map needs to talk hard about the concept of color contrast. But give yourself a few hours to play Dragon’s Dogma 2, at least until you reach the capital city of Fermund. Then you will be released immediately. You’ll get carried away, and soon you’ll be on your way to a faraway land, zapping ghosts with a team of fellow pawns to bring them back to the next life.
If I had to describe this game in one word, it would be “more fun than functionality.” What you have to understand is that, in contrast to most of the other very serious fantasy novels out there, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is very silly. It’s a beautiful mess of ideas colliding and connecting, creating some really funny moments. For example, pushing a Cyclops so hard that it tumbles off a cliff, levitating around a haunted castle with skeletons chasing you, or accidentally killing your lover. An errant sword swipe forced her to sneak into the morgue later to revive them with a magic stone (which she didn’t care about). Unless you played the first Dragon’s Dogma 12 years ago, you’ve probably never played anything quite like it.
I can honestly say that I had no idea what was going to happen next. I also don’t know if some of my random daring feats were meant to happen or were just interesting bugs. One time I was sorting out my armory in the town square of Fermundo when I turned around to see a troll standing there, and the townspeople looked at me with obvious surprise. In a tense battle, I defeated it and destroyed half of the market stalls, but then everyone carried on with their work as if nothing had happened. Was that demon supposed to be there? I don’t know, but it was a great story.
Speaking of the story, it’s not the plot that got me here with this game. Hundreds and hundreds of medieval-flavored fantasies! – About the characters, and most importantly, my goal to oust the Queen Regent and her puppet puppets and take back my rightful place on the throne of the kingdom as the chosen Arisen. Everyone speaks in a mesmerizingly stiff, unspecific Middle English syntax (“What must we do, Arisen?”). The word “o” is used interchangeably to mean something, anything, or nothing. I’ve spent very little time following the plot so far. many I grabbed my sword and left the city, following the road forever, picking up random quests along the way.
The world is cruel. You can’t go near water. If you don’t, you’ll be swallowed up by an evil scarlet tentacle called Brine. When it gets dark, you can only see about 1 meter in front of your face, and fear looms over you from the night. Griffins, dragons, and other unconquerable giant beasts roam free, and taking them on won’t hurt most animals, so it’s best to know when to run away. If you don’t remember lantern oil, medicine, and a camping pack, you’ll be totally ruined by night.
Combat is what really drives the game. Whether you’re a warrior, a spearmage, a thief, an archer, or a wizard, work together with your team of hired pawns to engage in truly exciting and dangerous battles like monsters. Hunter or Bloodborne. All of these professions can be switched freely, so if you get tired of close combat, you can try archery or spell casting. Mastering each profession unlocks a huge tree of abilities to keep you fighting, always, and always having fun.
Continue to have fun fighting…Dragon’s Dogma 2. Photo: Capcom
Dragon’s Dogma’s world and enemies are unpredictable, and combat styles vary widely, which can make them inconsistent and unfair at times. A team of pawns makes up for this by essentially making combat much easier and allowing the player to offset any weaknesses his character has. In fact, I love Pawn. They combine the roles of narcotics, heroes, clowns and saviors, and the game is always told by their laments, curses and abuse. It’s a miracle they don’t get too annoyed when they hear one of them say, “That ladder looks sturdy enough to climb on!” I might kick them off of it again.
If this review feels chaotic, that’s because it’s a true reflection of the game. It’s crazy, fun, fantastical chaos, and I honestly love it. Before I started writing this, I had left Arisen and her lovably incompetent pawns on an ancient battlefield patrolled by dragons. We used a few ballista bolts to blow it up, then it flew out and smashed the ballista with its claws. At that point, I realized that I was somewhat outnumbered here and fled to some castle ruins to hide from the creatures. This seemed like a good idea until skeletal warriors rose from the ground, and I realized that this castle was very haunted. I don’t know how to get out of this situation. But I know it will be an adventure.
French regulators have fined Google €250m (£213m) for breaching agreements with media companies regarding online content reproduction.
The competition watchdog in France announced the fine on Wednesday, citing violations related to intellectual property rules concerning news media publishers. Regulators also raised concerns about Google’s AI services.
According to authorities, Google’s AI-powered chatbot Bird (now called Gemini) trained on content from publishers and news agencies without their knowledge. This action led to the fine.
The watchdog stated that the fine was for failing to fulfill commitments made to Google in 2022, accusing Google of not negotiating in good faith with news publishers for compensation for using their content.
As part of the settlement process, Google has agreed not to dispute the facts and is proposing corrective measures to address the shortcomings highlighted by the authorities.
The EU created “neighboring rights” copyright to enable print media to claim compensation for their content usage. France has been at the forefront of this issue, enacting laws to protect publishing rights against tech giants that monetize news content without sharing revenue.
The recent fine is a result of a copyright dispute in France over online content, initiated by complaints from leading news organizations and the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) in 2019.
Google’s AI chatbot Bird was criticized for using content from media outlets without permission, impacting fair negotiations between publishers and Google.
Amid efforts to protect content scraping by AI services without consent, Google has faced fines for not adhering to commitments and fair negotiation practices with publishers.
Google responded by highlighting its agreements with over 280 French news publishers under the European Copyright Directive. The company stated its commitment to constructive cooperation with publishers to connect people with quality content sustainably.
The statement emphasized the need for collaborative efforts with publishers but also expressed challenges in navigating regulatory changes. Despite the fine, Google aims to move forward positively in the content ecosystem.
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