December 23, 2022 - Hint of Crack in Standard Model Vanishes in LHC Data

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Hint of Crack in Standard Model Vanishes in LHC Data A once-promising hint of new physics from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, has melted away, quashing one of physicists’ best hopes for a major discovery. The apparent anomaly was an unexpected difference between the behaviour of electrons and that of their more-massive cousins, muons, when they arise from the decay of certain particles. Continued here

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Validating Product-Market Fit in the Real World To test new products, most companies rely on creating “minimum viable products” and testing customer feedback, or conducting focus groups or marketing surveys. There’s another method companies should try: “heat-testing,” or testing consumer reaction to online advertisements. Heat-testing is revolutionary because it takes place in the real world. Unlike focus groups or surveys, which rely on what consumers say, people who click or like an ad are demonstrating actual behavior and interest, which can be a more powerful form of feedback. Continued here

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How to Infuse Liberatory Practices into Work Practices Many companies’ DEI efforts have stalled since they made big commitments in 2020. That’s because traditional talent practices — including recruitment and hiring, performance management, career development, promotion practices, and progressive discipline — were created to support business fundamentals that extract through domination and control. Instead of centering principles of extraction, organizations can embrace practices based in liberatory principles that change the shape of how we work together, moving away from the triangle of oppressive hierarchy and toward a circle of human connection and liberation. The author believes we can use theories of liberation inspired by the ideas and work of Black feminists and other thought leaders of color to find an alternative way of working together so everyone can thrive. Continued here

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Thoughtful and Funny Feedback From Quanta's Audience in 2022 | Quanta Magazine Every Quanta article, video and podcast has its own backstory. By the time it arrives on your screen, our staff has nurtured it through weeks (and sometimes months) of careful work: research, reporting, writing, editing, art direction, animation, filming, recording, fact-checking, copy editing and web production. Then it's my turn. My job is to engage with Quanta's audience and facilitate engagement within our online community. In carrying out this work, I want to know: Who are you? How did you find us? What are you looking to learn and what did you take away from what you found here? On an internet that can at times feel equal parts overwhelming and draining, this digital magazine aims to provide a quiet, information-rich spot where you can consider the immense complexity of our world. I'm here to get our work in front of you using language that helps you know what to expect. And when you tell us what you think, I'm here to listen. Continued here

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A Field at a Crossroads: Genetics and Racial Mythmaking As their research is twisted to fuel racist claims, many geneticists are weighing the societal risks of their work It was around 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon this May, according to court documents, when Payton Gendron gunned down 32-year-old Roberta Drury outside a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York. It is impossible to know exactly what crossed Gendron’s mind in that moment, but if a manifesto published under his name is any indication, he might have noticed Drury’s golden skin and dark curly hair, and intuited that some of her ancestors—maybe 20 generations ago—had called sub-Saharan Africa home. He would have taken this lineage as an indication of her character: The manifesto asserted that people from that part of the world were their own subspecies, hardwired to be violent, psychopathic, and unintelligent; he had come to Buffalo to slay as many of them as he could. Continued here

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Hot or Not? The Best Thermal Cameras for Your Phone If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED You are looking hot today. Literally: With a thermal camera, I can see that you have a body temperature of over 102 degrees Fahrenheit, so you’ve got a fever. Not only that, but I can see where your hot water pipes are in the wall, determine if your electrical cables are overheating, and locate your dog outside on a moonless night. Continued here

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The Biggest Math Breakthroughs in 2022 | Quanta Magazine Video: In 2022, mathematicians solved a centuries-old geometry question, proved the best way to minimize the surface area of clusters of up to five bubbles and proved a sweeping statement about how structure emerges in random sets and graphs. We can think of a mathematician as a kind of archaeologist, painstakingly brushing dust off the hidden structures of the world. But the structures mathematicians reveal are not only durable, but also inevitable. They could never have been any other way. They are also remarkably interconnected: Though each year the mathematical frontier continues to expand as new discoveries are made, the sprawl of subdisciplines also shrinks a little as connections are found between seemingly far-flung domains. Continued here

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How to Construct Buildings That Have a Positive Impact on Climate and Biodiversity Making buildings part of a circular economy that minimizes the waste of materials could yield huge environmental rewards Our built environment—from houses to offices, schools and shops—is not environmentally benign. Buildings and the construction industry are, in fact, the world’s biggest consumer of raw materials and contribute 25–40% of global carbon dioxide emissions (F. Pomponi & A. J. Moncaster Clean. Prod. 143, 710–718; 2017). Making buildings part of a circular economy that minimizes the waste of materials could therefore yield huge environmental rewards. Conversely, failure on this front could have dire consequences. Continued here

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In 4 Words, Neil deGrasse Tyson Reveals the Secret of Success Hang out with people who are smarter than you. Continued here

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The Bittersweet Defeat of Mpox For a few weeks this summer, the world worried that monkeypox might become the next global pandemic. At the peak in early August the US was recording 600 cases a day, and the health authorities’ fumbling response echoed the early days of Covid-19. Vaccines were slow to arrive and in short supply for most of the fall. Testing was bottlenecked. Antiviral drugs, though they existed, were almost unobtainable because they hadn’t been federally authorized for the disease. While most cases were among gay and bisexual men, there were fears that the rarely fatal but often extremely painful infection, which can can take weeks to subside, might spread to the broader population.  Things today look very different, at least for now. By mid-December, mpox, as the World Health Organization has now renamed it, had appeared in 110 countries, but the spread had dramatically slowed. The US, which had recorded 29,740 cases as of December 21—more than a third of the global total—was registering barely a handful each day.  Continued here

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How to Get Better at Asking for Help at Work The hesitance to ask for help can keep us bogged down in more work than is necessary and is a key contributor to feeling constantly overwhelmed at work. In this piece, the author outlines six strategies for unlearning old, unproductive patterns that prevent you from reaching out for assistance when you really need it. Continued here

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To Rebuild Cities After War, Look to the Past The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a human catastrophe on a scale not witnessed in Europe since the Second World War. Civilians have been targeted by the Russian military, which has been purposely destroying Ukrainian cities, displacing large numbers of people. At the time of writing, it’s not clear how long the fighting will continue, but what is certain is that the Ukrainian national government and city mayors are already planning to rebuild their cities in 2023. The key to these reconstruction projects will be in prioritizing the restoration and preservation of cultural heritage.  Successful examples of cities around the world which had to rebuild their physical fabric after a war show why that will be the case. For instance, in 1995, the population of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina chose to start its reconstruction by rebuilding an iconic 16th century bridge which connected communities with diverse cultural heritage and identity. They chose the bridge ahead of their own houses as a sign of reconciliation. The process of restoration was long and painstaking, involving the use of divers to collect the original stones from the riverbed. The bridge was finally opened in 2004, nearly nine years after the end of the war, and today remains an international symbol of reconciliation. Continued here

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The Best Automated Espresso, Latte, & Cappuccino Makers A good latte or cappuccino is like a rich, milky mug of heaven. Just writing about these delicious, warming drinks makes us want one. Sadly, creating the perfect cap or caffe latte at home can be a hassle. Making a barista-worthy espresso is tough enough, but adding the right amount of milk and foam, perfectly heated and combined, is surprisingly daunting. That's why we've put together a list of machines that make excellent milk-based or alternative-milk-based beverages at the touch of a button (or a couple buttons). The machines here differ from the picks in our Best Espresso Machines roundup in a couple of important ways. Here we're gathering machines that make it easier, specifically, to make milk-based or alternative-milk-based drinks. That includes machines with built-in containers for milk, or machines that effectively do the steaming for you. In that way, these machines are automated or semi-automated and are great for anyone who wants a device that specializes in dispensing coffee at the touch of a button.  Continued here

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Accidentally harvested weed alongside spinach caused hallucinations in Australians Testing has identified a toxic weed as the cause of hallucinations in nearly 200 individuals who ate baby spinach in Australia, South China Morning Post reported. The weed known as devil's trumpet or devil's snare was accidentally harvested and packed along with baby spinach at a producer's facility in New South Wales. The mishap came to light after people across four states in Australia reported symptoms of hallucinations after consuming products such as salads and stir-fry mixes that had been sold at multiple brands of retail outlets in the island nation. Food Standards Australia issued a recall for these products with an expiry date of December 28. Continued here

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The 7 Biggest Acquisitions of 2022 Mergers and acquisitions cooled in 2022, but that didn't stop major players such as Adobe, Microsoft, and Salesforce from completing huge deals. Continued here

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What made Ada Lovelace so brilliant Ada Lovelace, known as the first computer programmer, was born on Dec. 10, 1815, more than a century before digital electronic computers were developed.  Lovelace has been hailed as a model for girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). A dozen biographies for young audiences were published for the 200th anniversary of her birth in 2015. And in 2018, The New York Times added hersas one of the first “missing obituaries” of women at the rise of the #MeToo movement.  Continued here

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How Amazon made $200 billion a year in pure profit In 1994, a successful but relatively unknown businessman named Jeff Bezos resigned from his position as senior vice-president of the Wall Street-based hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. when he learned that World Wide Web usage was growing at a staggering annual rate of 2,300%.  Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bezos was convinced that the internet was more than a passing craze. He started looking for a business plan that would “make sense in the context of that growth.” While driving across the U.S. from New York to Seattle, he drew up a list of 20 products that he thought would be easiest to market and sell online. Continued here

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Disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried released on $250 million bail Set to live with his parents, the founder of FTX, the once crazy rich 30 year old Sam Bankman-Fried was arraigned in a Westchester, New York court today. Other former employees of FTX, and floating in Bankman-Fried's orbit have already pled guilty and are cooperating with federal authorities. The federal judge ruled that Bankman-Fried could be freed on $250 million bail, stemming from eight counts of alleged fraud in relation to the collapse of FTX this year. Continued here

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Marico's Chairman on Innovating Across Every Part of the Business When the author launched what would become Marico as a division within his family’s business, Bombay Oil, it was with product innovation: Instead of selling edible oils in bulk to other businesses, it would sell in smaller, branded packages directly to consumers. Eventually the division became a separate entity, which is now one of India’s largest homegrown CPG companies. Its growth has depended on constant innovation—around not just products, packaging, and pricing but also supply chain, talent management, and business models. Over the past decade Marico has branched out into services with its Kaya skin-care spas, pioneered the use of premium hair oils, and added savory oats to Indian diets. Through the Marico Innovation Foundation, Mariwala also promotes innovative thinking outside the company, supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs in their efforts to scale up new ideas. The key to doing that well, he says, is to be ever curious about customer needs, to create a flat hierarchy that rewards risk-taking, to learn from every failure, and to constantly prototype, experiment, refine, and retest. Continued here

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Eight-car Thanksgiving pileup blamed on Tesla "Full Self-Driving" software An eight-car collision on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24) is now being blamed on Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) assistance system. The crash took place in the Bay Area in California on I-80 and left one person hospitalized and eight others with minor injuries. Continued here

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Pigeon Neurons Use Much Less Energy Than Those of Mammals Scientists once thought bigger brains made smarter animals. But birds fly in the face of that logic: with a brain smaller than a walnut, they can develop sophisticated tools and remember where they hid food. Now research published in Current Biology suggests birds can pull this off because their brain neurons use less energy than those of mammals, letting their bodies support a higher proportion of these cells. A 2016 study showed that avian brains are denser than those of many other animals. For example, a macaw’s 20-gram brain holds as many neurons as a squirrel monkey’s 30-gram brain. But neurons drain energy; researchers have found that a human brain uses a fifth of the body’s energy despite being only 2 percent of its mass, notes avian neuroscientist Kaya von Eugen of Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. She and others wondered how birds’ small bodies and energy budgets—based on how much food they consume—can support so many neurons. Continued here

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In a first, scientists produced male and female cells from a single person Scientists created male and female cells with the same genetic code from the same person for the first time. This unique set of cells could provide researchers with valuable insights into how sex chromosomes affect various diseases and their role in early development. In humans, most people have two sex chromosomes, either two X chromosomes (XX) or an X chromosome and a Y chromosome (XY). These sex chromosomes determine an individual's sex and are responsible for the development of female or male biological attributes. Continued here

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Humans can be both geniuses and astonishing jerks. I think I know why As 2022 comes to a close, now is a good time to look back and ask how we, as a species, are doing. After all, this is the season of peace and goodwill to everyone. A quick review shows that this last year, like many of the years before it, was a mixed bag. While we managed to pull off some amazing acts of ingenuity, with some kindness and generosity sprinkled here and there, wars, poverty, and environmental hooliganism kept going strong. Given that this was also the year we created a solar fusion furnace in a lab and sent the most complicated telescope ever built into orbit past the moon, it is not unreasonable to ask what exactly is our problem. How can we have gotten so far, know so much, and still collectively act like such astonishing jerks? Since life first appeared on Earth some 3.5 billion years ago, the planet has been home to an astonishing variety of creatures. First came single-celled critters. While simple-looking from the outside, they were busy inventing a biochemical toolkit of extraordinary sophistication and reach. From photosynthesis to fermentation, the smallest iterations of life on Earth produced some of its most important evolutionary innovations.  Continued here

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How do laser weapons work? What to know about the US Army's latest tool Back in September of 2022, Lockheed Martin unveiled its 300-kW-class electric laser that can be used for tactical purposes. Delivered to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (OUSDR&E), this is the most powerful laser that Lockheed Martin has made. This 300 kW-class laser is ready to be used in U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) demonstration programs, such as the Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) laser weapon system used by the U.S. Army. Continued here

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TikTok cops to running "covert surveillance campaign" on Western journalists Following an internal investigation, TikTok owner ByteDance today confirmed reports from this fall that claimed some of its employees used the popular app to track multiple journalists, including two in the US. The ByteDance employees’ goal? To identify anonymous sources who were leaking information to the media on the company’s ties to the Chinese government, according to The New York Times. Continued here

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Lionel Messi Just Broke the Instagram Record for 'Likes.' Mark Zuckerberg's Reaction Was Eye Opening It's all about Instagram and WhatsApp. Continued here

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Meet the Medical Student Challenging Racial Bias with TikTok Medical influencer Joel Bervell is challenging racism in health care, one TikTok at a time. Joel Bervell: You have the freedom to choose another doctor if you feel like you're not being heard. Continued here

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8 Insights on What It Takes to Expand or Start a New Business Today Your innovation may be the greatest, but many fail because of lack of focus on other business essentials. Continued here

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How to make a low-carbon Christmas dinner There's an unspoken rule that you don't discuss the calorie content of a Christmas feast. It would take a brave host to point out that the average person consumes around 5,200 on the day, by one calculation – more than double the recommended intake – while handing round a plate of roast potatoes. So, perhaps it's not exactly festive to dissect its environmental impact, either. But after a year of headlines about the climate emergency, water shortages, and the global collapse of biodiversity, you might just feel like you can't ignore these things. What if you could deliver a Christmas dinner that's so spectacular, no one even notices that it's also planet-friendly? Continued here

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Ancient Mars did not have atmospheric oxygen, claims new research A new experimental study conducted by Washington University in St. Louis is defeating any hope that scientists have had that atmospheric oxygen once existed on the Red Planet, according to a press release by the institution published on Thursday. The new research is indicating that just because NASA’s Mars rovers found manganese oxides on Mars in 2014 does not mean that oxygen was actually present in the planet’s atmosphere. Continued here

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Indigenous Activists Criticize 'Avatar' Sequel They say the film romanticizes colonization and reduces Indigenous cultures to vague stereotypes With the release of Avatar: The Way of Water, director James Cameron’s mystical world of Pandora is back, 13 years after the first Avatar film premiered. Back, too, are critics worried that the movie romanticizes colonization and paints Indigenous communities around the world with a broad brush. Continued here

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Sleep duration clearly divides adult lifespan into 3 phases A massive new study shows that adult lifespan can be divided into three distinct phases based on sleep duration. The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, also shows a relationship between sleep duration and cognitive performance in later life, and reveals regional differences in the time spent sleeping.  Antoine Coutrot of the University of Lyon and his colleagues analyzed data from more than 730,000 participants across 63 countries that was collected from the Sea Hero Quest project, which uses a cellular phone app to assess spatial navigation abilities.  Continued here

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This 120-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Fossil Had a Mammal Hiding in Its Stomach When a team of scientists reanalyzed a cat-sized dinosaur fossil discovered more than two decades ago, they realized the remains of the predator’s lunch had been hiding undetected in its stomach. Researchers found the foot of a tiny mammal, likely the size of an average mouse, within the dinosaur’s rib cage. This “very rare discovery” is only the second recorded direct evidence of a dinosaur consuming a mammal, they say in a statement. The findings were published Tuesday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Continued here

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Adetayo Bamiduro: Africa's path to clean mobility -- driven by motorcycles A lack of infrastructure in parts of Africa has made unregulated, gas-powered motorcycle taxis widespread -- a system that gets people where they need to be, but heavily pollutes the air and excludes drivers from the formal economy. TED Fellow and entrepreneur Adetayo Bamiduro offers his vision for a cleaner, more equitable future, where an electric motorcycle service helps green Africa's transportation and transform the lives and livelihoods of drivers. Continued here

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What You Need to Know About Launching a Startup Right Out of College In the fall of 2020, when the world was in lockdown, Kris Christmon, a life sciences Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, USA, was surprised to learn that entrepreneurship was a career option for her. When the university announced a competition to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture and environmental sustainability, Christmon decided to give it a shot. Her team pitched an idea around recycling plastics and won the first prize. Continued here

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Ukrainian President Zelensky's Brilliant Public-Speaking Tactic That Inspires His Audiences Relate to your audience by citing people, places, and events they know. Continued here

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In Bad Times, Prepare for the Good Although negative shifts in the economy are stressful, they do eventually end. Continued here

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Do you have a duty to tell people they’re wrong about carrots? | Psyche Ideas is a research fellow at the ArgLab, the Reasoning and Argumentation Lab within the Institute of Philosophy at the NOVA University of Lisbon in Portugal. is a collaborating member of the ArgLab in the Institute of Philosophy at NOVA University of Lisbon in Portugal. Continued here

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The New Era of Biofuels Raises Environmental Concerns To realize the potential of biofuels, the industry needs to pay attention to how feedstock crops change soil carbon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is squeezing global oil supplies and inflation is jacking up prices at the pumps. Although petrol prices have started to fall in recent months, the situation has delivered a powerful reminder of the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. Continued here

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The real reasons we turn on "airplane mode" when we fly We all know the routine by heart: “Please ensure your seats are in the upright position, tray tables stowed, window shades are up, laptops are stored in the overhead bins and electronic devices are set to flight mode”. Now, the first four are reasonable, right? Window shades need to be up so we can see if there’s an emergency, such as fire. Tray tables need to be stowed and seats upright so we can get out of the row quickly. Laptops can become projectiles in an emergency, as the seat back pockets are not strong enough to contain them. Continued here

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Lightweight and energy-dense electric motors to power the first hybrid rocket Things are on course for the most lightweight and energy-dense electric motors ever developed to power Australia's first commercial orbital launch vehicle, the Eris. If the launch is successful, it will be the first rocket ever with hybrid engines to reach Earth's orbit. The advanced electric motors and inverters used in the project are manufactured by UK-based Equipmake in partnership with Australia's Gilmour Space. This partnership marks the foray of the former into the space industry. With expertise in weight reduction techniques, Equipmake was able to meet Gilmour Space’s stringent requirements for power and weight, which becomes a critical factor in space missions. Equipmake and Gilmour Space started working on the project in late 2020.  Continued here

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Overturning Roe and Other Important Reproductive Health Stories of 2022 As the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade reversal put reproduction into the political limelight, Scientific American explored a range of issues related to abortion and reproductive health Reproductive health issues came to political center stage in 2022 with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which ended federal protections on abortion and left the procedure for states to regulate. Almost immediately, getting an abortion became almost impossible in certain parts of the U.S., despite the scientific evidence that this medical treatment is extremely safe and effective. Scientific American explored not only abortion but the interrelated gamut of reproductive health issues. Here, we highlight some of our best writing and reporting on this critical field of contention from 2022. Continued here

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Shrinking Pollinator Populations Could Be Killing 427,000 People Per Year New research explores the relationship between human health and crop loss due to pollination deficits around the world Pollinators like bees, butterflies, bats and moths help farmers grow healthy foods. They support the production of vegetables, fruits, nuts and legumes—but now, when there are fewer pollinators around to help plants reproduce, crop yields are decreasing. Continued here

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All Great Leaders Are Narcissists, but Not All Narcissists Are Great Leaders. Here's Why, According to Science The great but egoistic leaders can rise in the ranks, but that's not the end of their journey. Continued here

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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's top associates plead guilty to US charges Two of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s closest associates have pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to co-operate with US authorities investigating the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan said on Wednesday. Continued here

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Why I Left Venezuela Migration, I like to tell myself, is the opposite of inertia. I left Venezuela on August 28, 2014. President Hugo Chávez had died the year before, bequeathing power over his dictatorship to his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro. Around this time, supermarket shelves were emptying and resourceful Venezuelans were creating WhatsApp groups to tell one another where to find medicine, toilet paper, flour. Street violence was so common that seemingly everyone knew somebody who had been abducted, if only for a few hours, usually for ransom. (For me, this person was my older sister.) One morning, as I drove to a memorial service for a classmate who had been killed by the police the day before, I realized that I had to leave the country. This student had died in a protest that I had also attended, but it was not fear of death that motivated me. It was the feeling that these protests would subside and accomplish nothing. Even though my parents struggled greatly to afford my studies abroad, we agreed that my leaving was worth the expense. In the years that followed my departure, daily life in Venezuela only got worse. And uprooting myself became progressively easier as time passed. My mailing address bounced among the Netherlands, Italy, Uganda, Portugal, and now the United States. I’ve developed an unsentimental readiness to leave cities behind, along with my friends and my books and anything too heavy to carry with me on the plane to the next place. Continued here

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The Biggest Discoveries in Physics in 2022 | Quanta Magazine The year began right as the James Webb Space Telescope was unfurling its sunshield — the giant, nail-bitingly thin and delicate blanket that, once open, would plunge the observatory into frigid shade and open up its view of the infrared universe. Within hours of the ball dropping here in New York City, the sunshield could have caught on a snag, ruining the new telescope and tossing billions of dollars and decades of work into the void. Instead, the sunshield opened perfectly, getting the new year in physics off to an excellent start. JWST soon started to glimpse gorgeous new faces of the cosmos. On July 11, President Biden unveiled the telescope's first public image — a panoramic view of thousands of galaxies various distances away in space and time. Four more instantly iconic images were released the next day. Since then, the telescope's data has been distributed among hundreds of astronomers and cosmologists, and cosmic discoveries and papers are pouring forth. Continued here

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Ukraine’s Fate and America’s Destiny Zelensky’s address to Congress challenged us to remember America’s mission in the world. This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Continued here

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Blu-ray player gathering dust? Turn it into a laser-scanning microscope Blu-rays never quite managed to usurp DVDs entirely. Recent estimates, based on data gathered by Nielsen VideoScan and MediaPlayNews, suggest that as of Q2 2022, DVDs still controlled 51.4 percent of market share compared to 48.6 percent for Blu-rays. And no matter which format has the biggest slice, the physical media pie is shrinking. So, if your Blu-ray player has gone from your home theater centerpiece to a dust-gathering ornament, one clever hacker knows just what to do with it. Continued here

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Billionaires are investing in brain-computer-interface systems. Here's why Earlier this month, we reported that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos- backed foundations ( Gates Frontier and Bezos Expeditions) joined other companies in investing $ 75 million in Synchron, the endovascular brain-computer interface (BCI) company. Meanwhile, it is common knowledge that Elon Musk is behind the industry -leading startup Neuralink. Finally, Peter Thiel, a billionaire cofounder of PayPal, invested last year in an older BCI startup called Utah's Blackrock Neurotech that has announced it hopes to apply for Food and Drug Administration approval soon. What is behind this popular rush to support BCI firms? Continued here

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This Exoplanet Is Doomed to Be Obliterated by a Star More than a decade ago, Kepler-1658b was the first exoplanet discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Now, astronomers say the planet is doomed to meet a fiery fate. It’s been spiraling ever closer to its host star, foreshadowing a fatal collision. This is the first time astronomers have observed an exoplanet inching closer to an evolved, or older star, according to a statement from the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian. Researchers detailed the exoplanet’s impending demise in a study published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Continued here

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This Is What It Looks Like When Twitter Falls Apart Elon Musk now claims that he will step down as Twitter’s CEO, contingent on him finding the right replacement. In just eight weeks, Musk has laid off large chunks of the workforce, asked those who remained to commit to being “extremely hardcore,” unbanned previously suspended accounts, caused advertisers to flee the platform, kicked a number of journalists off the platform and then reinstated them, and polled users about whether or not he should continue as CEO (a majority voted no). David Karpf, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University and a longtime Twitter user, has been studying and thinking about the intersection of the internet and politics for years. When we spoke late last week, he predicted that the Musk drama would continue: “Every time he goes a couple days of getting a little worried that people are getting bored, he has to do something ridiculous.” Continued here

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Scientists can now "see" things without "looking" at them using a new quantum technique A team of scientists has devised a means of using quantum mechanics to "view" objects indirectly. The new method could improve measurements for quantum computers and other systems. It brings together the quantum and classical worlds. We "see" things via the complex interaction of light photons within specialized cells in the retina of our eyes. However, some scientists have speculated that a similar phenomenon could be replicated without photo-absorption or without any light. Continued here S48 Backup Soyuz can't get to ISS before late February Today, NASA held a press briefing to describe the situation on the International Space Station (ISS) in the wake of a major coolant leak from a Soyuz spacecraft that is docked at the station. At the moment, neither NASA nor Roscosmos has a clear picture of its options for using the damaged spacecraft. If it is unusable in its current state, then it will take until February to get a replacement to the ISS. Continued here S9 How Diversity of Thought Can Fit into Your DEI Strategy Fawn Weaver started a distillery using her own money to honor the life of Uncle Nearest, a former enslaved man who was Jack Daniel’s first master distiller. The company took off to become the fastest growing spirits company in the world, winning many awards for its whiskeys. Weaver, a Black woman, also was deeply intentional about building in DEI best practices in from the start, which surprised some people who thought a company with a female, African-American leader wouldn’t have to think as much about DEI. Wrong, Weaver says and she demonstrates the ways the company focuses on inclusion to avoid common pitfalls other companies face when building up their diversity efforts. Weaver focuses not just on demographic diversity, but also diversity of thought, a tricky concept that’s sometimes used as a scapegoat to avoid hard conversations about DEI. Weavers says you need both. Her journey is not over, though, as she continues to work on her company’s diversity, and her industries, partnering with Jack Daniels to build a pipeline of diverse talent in the spirits business. Continued here S35 The 4 fundamental meanings of "nothing" in science The Universe, as we see it today, sure is full of “stuff.” Everything we see, feel, and interact with is made of subatomic particles at the most fundamental level, and they’ve assembled into large structures — humans, planets, stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters — over the Universe’s history. They all obey the same laws of physics, and exist in the context of the same spacetime that everything occupies. All of the things that we see and experience in the Universe today have only been around for a finite amount of time. The Universe didn’t always have galaxies, stars, or atoms, and so they must have arisen at some point. But what did they come from? While the obvious answer might seem to be “something,” that’s not necessarily true; they may have arisen from nothing. What does “nothing” mean to a scientist in that context? Depending on who you ask, you might get one of four different answers. Here’s what they all mean. Continued here S37 Weather forecasts have radically improved. Have you noticed? People routinely make snide jokes about the inaccuracy of weather forecasts. It’s a status quo that irks MIT Professor Emeritus Kerry A. Emanuel and Penn State Professors Richard Alley and Fuqing Zhang, because, as the trio of experts in atmospheric science and geoscience noted in a paper published in the journal Science in 2018, those jokesters “wouldn’t dream of planning an outdoor activity without first checking the weather forecast.” Moreover, the forecasts they mock have drastically improved in accuracy over the past few decades and continue to do so. Continued here S51 LastPass users: Your info and password vault data are now in hackers' hands LastPass, one of the leading password managers, said that hackers obtained a wealth of personal information belonging to its customers as well as encrypted and cryptographically hashed passwords and other data stored in customer vaults. Continued here S46 Driver updates will fix abnormally high power use for AMD's new RX 7900 GPUs AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT GPUs are still fresh, and as with most products based on new architectures, there are some early bugs to work out. Continued here S44 TikTok, blocked? US access may rest on shaky terms of natsec deal China-owned TikTok’s been living rent-free in many American lawmakers’ minds all year. Some lawmakers—who have been monitoring US tensions with China and coping with growing concerns that TikTok in its current form shouldn’t be trusted with millions of Americans’ data—reached a breaking point this December. In the past few weeks, many state and federal agencies introduced and passed various laws, campaigning hard to remove the popular short-video app from US devices. Continued here S67 The History Behind Chance the Rapper's Black Star Line Festival The event is named after an early 20th-century shipping line created by Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey In 1919, Jamaican activist and political leader Marcus Garvey founded the Black Star Line, a shipping line that created economic opportunities for Black workers between North America, the Caribbean and Africa. While the line suffered from a host of problems, it became a symbol of Black economic success.  Continued here S45 Compromised dispatch system helped move taxis to front of the line Two men have been charged with participating in a scheme that raked in big money by using a compromised dispatch system at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to allow paying taxis to move to the front of the line. Continued here S54 The Brutal Alternate World in Which the U.S. Abandoned Ukraine On the shortest day of the year, after 10 months of war, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, finally left his country and came to Washington to thank Americans for their support. He went to the White House, where he appeared at a press conference. He went to Congress, where he handed a Ukrainian flag, signed by the defenders of Bakhmut, to the vice president and House speaker. He congratulated all of us on our first, joint American-Ukrainian victory: “We defeated Russia in the battle for minds of the world.” Nothing about this trip—not the applause, not the flag, not the speech—was inevitable. Zelensky’s very survival was not inevitable. Ukraine’s continued existence as a sovereign state was not inevitable either. Back in February, many considered these things to be improbable. Continued here S58 How the Lessons of ‘Game of Thrones’ Were Lost Were the meaning of life to be divined from any artifact produced in the year 2022, that artifact would be a Negroni Sbagliato. Or rather, it would be the sight of the actors Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, in a now-famous promotional video for HBO’s House of the Dragon, discussing their favorite cocktails. In the dishy tone of someone describing a sex dream, D’Arcy endorses the Negroni Sbagliato, which is like a negroni but, D’Arcy purrs, “with prosecco in it.” Cooke’s eyes widen. “Ooh, stunning,” she blurts, seeming to be actually stunned. Thanks to social media, tens of millions of people have watched this exchange. Many have reenacted it with their friends or harangued bartenders to mix them a bitter spritz. The video’s appeal is both inexplicable and obvious. In these two people's asymmetric interaction—in their syncopation of syllables and pauses, their counterpoint of postures and facial movements—lies an original story, one that can’t be put into words. Yet something familiar gets conveyed: the magic and hilarity of human connection. Continued here S59 How Glass Frogs Weave the World’s Best Invisibility Cloak Glass frogs do not live a life of modesty. With their semitransparent skin—green on the back, clear on the belly—the tree-dwelling, gummy-bear-size amphibians, which are native to the tropics of Central and South America, have little choice but to put their organs on display. Gaze up at certain species from below, and you’ll be treated to an aquarium of innards: a beating heart, a matrix of bones, the shimmering silhouette of the gut. The frog’s see-through stomach is an ingenious ruse. It turns the animal’s underside into a living, light-transmitting window, camouflaging the creature from skyward-gazing birds and snakes. There’s just one problem with the frog’s otherwise convincingly ghostly garb: the latticework of bright-red blood vessels laced throughout its tissues. It’s an especially big issue in the daytime, when the frogs are asleep amid the leaves. As sunlight filters through the trees, casting shadows off whatever it hits below, the frogs’ own blood threatens to betray them. Continued here S50 With voice assistants in trouble, Home Assistant starts a local alternative Are cloud-based voice assistants doomed? That seems like an overly dramatic question to ask if you look at the current state of millions of users of Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple's Siri, but we're not so sure about the future. Google and Amazon have backed away from their voice assistants recently, with Amazon firing a big chunk of the Alexa team due to it losing $10 billion a year. Google isn't quite at the "fire everyone" stage, but it is reportedly less interested in supporting the Assistant on third-party devices, which would be a crippling move given Google's extremely small hardware division. Everyone built these systems assuming a revenue stream would come later, but that revenue never came, and it's starting to seem like the bubble is bursting. Continued here S62 Elusive Yeast That Gave Rise to Lagers Found in Europe for the First Time Students in Ireland discovered the ancestral fungus in the soil on their university’s campus Cheers! Researchers in Ireland have found the mysterious ancestral yeast strain that helped give rise to popular lager-style beers, marking the first time it has been identified in Europe. The find provides another clue to how this fungus traveled around the world. Continued here S56 The Child Tax Credit Was a Little Too Subtle Why doesn’t anyone care about the expanded child tax credit? A $100 billion policy—effective, important, elegantly designed, competently managed, and noncontroversial—is gone, at least for now. And nobody, save for a few politicians and wonks, seems to have noticed or to care. The expanded child tax credit (CTC) provided no-strings-attached cash payments to 39 million families in 2021 and 2022, lifting millions of kids over the poverty line. But Democrats have failed to get a renewal of the program into the $1.7 trillion spending bill making its way through Congress, just as they failed to get it into the Inflation Reduction Act they passed earlier this year. As a general point, the CTC has languished in policy obscurity. Did Democrats crow about it in their recent campaign ads? No. Did it sway many swing voters in the midterms? No. Have large protests pushed for the policy’s reinstatement? No. Many studies suggest, as does common sense, that handing out all that money should have helped Democrats at the polls. Somehow, it did not. Continued here S53 How to Make the Most of Bad Gifts “How to Build a Life” is a column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life. Around the holidays, you can bet on seeing a car commercial in which a self-assured-looking husband takes his blindfolded wife out to the driveway, where she finds a brand-new luxury car with a massive bow on it. He takes off the blindfold; she screams in delight and throws her arms around his neck. He beams with satisfaction. Continued here S52 Some of Our Most-Read Stories of 2022 Ten Atlantic stories from 2022 that you can’t miss—including an investigation into one of the darkest chapters in recent U.S. history, deep explorations of human nature, and more Many of the stories our readers spent the most time with this year spoke to a desire for reflection—about the way we treat one another, our changing relationships with social media, and the meaning of democracy at home and abroad. Continued here Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Followers Blog Archive ►  2024 (51) ►  December (1) ►  October (2) ►  August (2) ►  July (4) ►  June (3) ►  May (5) ►  April (4) ►  March (2) ►  February (10) ►  January (18) ►  2023 (834) ►  December (20) ►  November (54) ►  October (44) ►  September (108) ►  August (91) ►  July (29) ►  June (68) ►  May (104) ►  April (33) ►  March (30) ►  February (99) ►  January (154) ▼  2022 (208) ▼  December (117) January 1, 2023 - This Scientist Fled a Deadly Wil... 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