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Nature, Published online: 03 May 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-01529-5

Green light from US regulatory agency for GSK’s jab caps off a decades-long quest.

An international team of botanists, plant biologists and biochemists, has found an important pathway used by roses to produce their familiar sweet smell. In their study, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group tracked down the pathway that allows binding molecules to produce the chemicals required to create the aroma associated with roses.

Anhingas, water birds with snakelike necks, have turned up in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and far upstate, a sign of shifting ranges for birds from the South.

 Killer

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has some harsh words for Tesla. In a new interview, Wozniak argued that the Elon Musk-led company's self-driving efforts leave a lot to be desired — and are actively making 

 incredibly unsafe to drive.

"And boy, if you want a study of AI gone wrong and taking a lot of claims and trying to kill you every chance it can, get a Tesla," Wozniak told CNN earlier this week during a televised interview, as quoted by Electrek.

While comparing the current AI chatbot discourse to the dangers of self-driving cars might sound a touch disingenuous, the Apple cofounder does make a compelling point: There do appear to be very real risks involved in allowing your Tesla to take over the wheel.

Autopilot Off

Wozniak has long been a critic of Tesla's Autopilot software, arguing that the reality falls far short of Tesla's lofty claims.

Last year, Wozniak recalled the "phantom breaking" issues that were plaguing him while driving his Model S in an interview with Stephen "Steve-O" Glover, causing him to slow down significantly while driving on the interstate.

"This is so dangerous!" he told Glover at the time. "It’s happened to us a hundred times, at least, because we drive so much."

Musk reportedly convinced Wozniak to buy a Model S back in 2013. At the time, Musk told him that the car "would drive itself across the country by the end of 2016," Wozniak told CNN.

"I actually believed those things, and it’s not even close to reality," he added, arguing that the software could end up killing the occupant.

Investigated

Wozniak's off-the-cuff remark does have some truth to it. We've seen numerous fatal collisions involving Tesla's Autopilot feature over the years.

Meanwhile, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced back in 2021 that it was investigating the EV maker over a series of accidents in which Teslas have smashed into pulled-over emergency response vehicles.

Then last year, news emerged that the Justice Department is also investigating more than a dozen crashes involving Autopilot, some fatal. The carmaker eventually confirmed the news to investors in January.

Despite Tesla's controversial marketing and Musk's repeated promises, its vehicles are not able to fully drive themselves in 2023 and require the driver to watch the road and take over at any time — and, as Wozniak has discovered first hand, there's a very good reason for that.

More on Wozniak: Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Is Launching His Own Space Company

The post Steve Wozniak: If You Want to Learn About AI Killing People, "Get a Tesla" appeared first on Futurism.

Job seekers looking to land a role with an altruistic organization may feel too guilty to ask for higher pay, according to a new study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin.

More accurate space-weather predictions and safer satellite navigation through radiation belts could someday result from new insights into "space waves," researchers at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University reported.

Cells have a fascinating feature to neatly organize their interior by using tiny protein machines called molecular motors that generate directed movements. Most of them use a common type of fuel, a kind of chemical energy, called ATP to operate.

Cells have a fascinating feature to neatly organize their interior by using tiny protein machines called molecular motors that generate directed movements. Most of them use a common type of fuel, a kind of chemical energy, called ATP to operate.

The effects of increased nitrogen input and mowing on the resistance and recovery of temperate grassland experiencing a three-year natural drought (from 2015 to 2017) were investigated based on a five-year field manipulative experiment.

Nuclear energy is crucial for producing cleaner energy, but the associated radioactive pollution requires strategic solutions. Cesium (Cs+) is a toxic radionuclide generated from nuclear power plants that demands immobilization and high adsorption methods to prevent environmental pollution.

A look at the science making the rounds in the headlines this week — from a new study on virtual reality sickness to whether there's any science behind the ever-trendy 10,000 step goal and ice baths.

Vi har i årtusinder fremelsket særlige egenskaber ved dyr og planter ved at udvælge og…

The effects of increased nitrogen input and mowing on the resistance and recovery of temperate grassland experiencing a three-year natural drought (from 2015 to 2017) were investigated based on a five-year field manipulative experiment.

UT Southwestern Medical Center stem cell and developmental biologists and colleagues have developed a method to produce bovine blastoids, a crucial step in replicating embryo formation in the lab that could lead to the development of new reproductive technologies for cattle breeding.

Special permission is required to clear forest in Switzerland. Until now, the system has worked well. However, plans to increase wind and solar electricity generation could increase conflicts.

UT Southwestern Medical Center stem cell and developmental biologists and colleagues have developed a method to produce bovine blastoids, a crucial step in replicating embryo formation in the lab that could lead to the development of new reproductive technologies for cattle breeding.

Conservative CEOs are four times more likely than their liberal counterparts to acquire international firms rather than forge new alliances when entering foreign markets, according to new research. The same study finds that these political biases can be moderated by active, independent boards.

A multi-institutional team exploring the physics of collective behavior has developed and measured a model nanomagnetic array in which the behavior can be best understood as that of a set of wiggling strings. The strings, which are composed of connected points of high energy among the lattice, can stretch and shrink, but also reconnect. What makes these strings special is that they are limited to certain endpoints and must connect to those endpoints in particular ways.

With a single letter seemingly etched in the X-ray glow around it, a giant black hole at the center of a massive elliptical galaxy is making a mark on its surroundings.

Geoscientists have detected specific gases being released from fractured rocks in real time after a series of small chemical explosions set underground.

Peter K. Ben Embarek led a contentious international investigation into the origins of the  -19 pandemic.

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Late one recent night, I enlisted GPT-4 to fix my life. I began by soliciting broad-strokes summaries of my journalistic interests and an expedited five-step protocol for breaking in raw-denim jeans (if you know, you know). But after a few rounds, the asks became personal: “How can I tell if I’m overinvested in my career?” and “How do I sum up the volume of my work?” Before I knew it, I’d dredged my reserves of ennui into the early-morning hours, imploring the AI to supply me with maybe-consequential ways of doing—of becoming—better.

 

The answers were sensible enough, delivered in the stiffly efficient prose of a try-hard MBA student—if not quite visionary, just fine. My pursuit of lifestyle advice from a source with dubious qualifications certainly wasn’t earth-shattering either. Consider the success of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop brand, the preponderance of self-help books on the best-sellers list, or the countless online-content creators who spin bullet-point-able dogma on subjects as wide-ranging as time management, parenting, and bowel emptying into audience fealty and riches. The human condition is inconvenient, and Americans appreciate a quick and tidy fix. We don’t need much to cure that which ails us; we just need it now. And no one’s faster than AI. Your next better-living sage could very well be a bot, and you might not even notice the difference.

[Read: Just wait until Trump is a chatbot]

The groundwork for an AI self-help future was laid long ago by cunning humans. A few years back, while I was working as an editor for a personal-development brand, I became aware of what I now recognize as the field’s natural compatibility with machine learning. In less diplomatic terms: I realized how much of the self-help ecosystem relied on the same regurgitated business-bro axioms. I worked alongside writers who had it down to a science: publish stories that target a specific work- or productivity-related challenge that virtually any white-collar worker might face, and provide a handful of precise, actionable tips toward solving it. Articles that followed this format—especially those with headlines that spoke directly to the reader, such as “7 Mindset Shifts That Will Make You Rich, Happy, and Not at All Lonely”—amassed far more clicks and shares than those that diverged.

 

It’s not lost on me that the prospect of practical advice I could apply to my own specific quandaries right away was precisely what sent me to OpenAI’s doorstep too. Never mind that I could have almost certainly arrived at the same information without paying the $21.74 monthly subscription fee for GPT-4; better-living manuals are practically the mortar holding the internet together. Social-media influencers and the crème de la news-outlet crème have both joined the self-help game, proffering solutions for a happier, healthier, more financially fruitful life. The answers to my minor vexations were never more than a search and a click away.

 

As such, personal-development content is easily replicable by clever machines such as ChatGPT and GPT-4. That’s because large language models work, in effect, as probabilistic collage artists. They respond to a user’s prompts by assembling word combinations that have a high likelihood of appearing together in relation to said prompt. The more formulaic a prompt’s associated content—or, charitably, the more frequent and consistent its related wisdom on the internet—the truer to life the response.

 

But I should emphasize that true to life doesn’t necessarily mean accurate, and it definitely doesn’t always mean useful. Despite the new model’s facility with language and problem solving, OpenAI has made clear that GPT-4 is also prone to “hallucinating,” or confidently putting forward false or misleading information. This might matter less in the realm of self-help, where so much is made up anyway. Three years ago, a college student named Liam Porr made headlines after prompting GPT-3 to write a productivity and self-help newsletter that duped tens of thousands of readers. As Porr told the MIT Technology Review, the AI model excels at “making pretty language” but struggles with logic and reason. He deliberately chose self-help for his AI experiment precisely because it’s a popular blog category that demands minimal logical rigor.

[Read: You should ask a chatbot to make you a drink]

This speaks to the nature of self-help, in general, and Americans’ relationship to it, in particular. In her 2021 book, Americanon, the literary journalist Jess McHugh cites 13 best-selling nonfiction books—from The Old Farmer’s Almanac and Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People—that she argues were instrumental in establishing a distinctly American ethos. Each presented a model of self-improvement that married the moment’s societal preoccupations with a life optimized in service of an internalized market rationale. From its infancy as a nation, the U.S. readily latched onto self-help as a capitalist blueprint for being human.

To this day, Americans remain prodigious sellers and consumers of personal-development materials, to the tune of approximately $11.5 billion, a total that accounts for more than a quarter of the global industry and is steadily growing. Echoes of self-help-speak ring throughout the nation’s political culture; lest anyone forget, Donald Trump’s trademark blend of off-kilter optimism and self-delusion is thought to be the legacy of the late Trump-family pastor Norman Vincent Peale, who authored the 1952 self-improvement juggernaut The Power of Positive Thinking.

The unyielding hunger for self-improvement advice, in the U.S. and beyond, can’t be boiled down to a quest for answers. If that were the case, there’d probably be a higher barrier to entry—or at least lower tolerance for the industry’s healthy supply of hacks. Instead, a seemingly bottomless well of viral self-help aphorisms and live, laugh, love placards suggests that the repetition and familiarity of personal-development concepts is, if not central to the genre’s appeal, then not discrediting either. Perhaps there’s an element of ritualistic reassurance in revisiting familiar concepts, with or without updated packaging. Or perhaps the allure is, for some people, in the implicit suggestion that with the right branding, they could become a lifestyle guru too. Maybe Americans’ self-help obsession points not to a nation of lost sheep, but to one of aspiring shepherds.

The extent of AI’s ongoing Goopification will depend on what people demand of the tools at hand. Regardless of whether AI models could or would supplant human oracles, it seems all but certain that they’ll play a role in shaping whatever the next crop of so-called thought leaders comes out with—that is, if they haven’t done so already. If anything’s safe to bet, it’s that as long as human needs continue to evolve in tandem with shifting societal norms, people will seek out actionable guidance for living better and crushing it harder. Why not get that guidance from a bot?

Rings of Power

Saturn's innermost rings are steadily disappearing as they're being sucked up into the planet's upper atmosphere — and scientists are still trying to figure out why, Space.com reports, using the mighty James Webb Space Telescope.

The planet's icy rings are collapsing into the planet as icy rain, succumbing to its intense gravity.

But there's a lot we still don't know about the cosmic vacuuming act. For instance, we have no idea how old the rings are — and it's even possible they're relatively young: some scientists believe Saturn's rings are a mere 100 million years old, meaning that they weren't in the picture while dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth.

Quick Death

Plenty of questions remain, with researchers trying to figure out how long these rings will exist and if they could ever come back.

"We’re still trying to figure out exactly how fast they are eroding," said James O’Donoghue, a JAXA researcher who is hoping to track the rings' demise using the Keck telescope in Hawaii and James Webb, in a statement. "Currently, research suggests the rings will only be part of Saturn for another few hundred million years."

"This may sound like a long time, but in the history of the universe this is a relatively quick death," he added. "We could be very lucky to be around at a time when the rings exist."

To find a more precise answer, O'Donoghue and his team are hoping to make long-term observations to monitor how the trend fluctuates over time.

In and Out

The team suspects the changing Sun's radiation during Saturn's 29.5-year orbit may be influencing how much icy material falls toward the planet's upper atmosphere.

"We suspect that when the rings are edge-on with the sun, the ring rain will slow down," O'Donoghue told Space.com. "And that when they are tilted to face the sun, the ring rain influx will increase."

It's a fascinating conundrum that has puzzled astronomers for years.

"I think it would be fascinating if the life time of the rings was only 100 million years or so and that their age was billions of years," O'Donoghue told Space.com. "Since it means we evolved just in time to see them before they vanished."

More on Saturn: Strange Lines Appear in Saturn's Rings

The post Saturn Is Sucking Up Its Rings appeared first on Futurism.

Ancient teeth preserved bacterial DNA fragments for millennia, and they could become a source of new antibiotics.

For decades, scientists have looked to seaweed as an indicator of the health of coral reefs lying underneath.

For decades, scientists have looked to seaweed as an indicator of the health of coral reefs lying underneath.

Academics at Cardiff University and UCL have sought to gain a greater understanding of young people's experiences of learning about relationships, sex, and sexuality.

Re-analysis of data from NASA's Voyager spacecraft, along with new computer modeling, has led NASA scientists to conclude that four of Uranus' largest moons likely contain an ocean layer between their cores and icy crusts. Their study is the first to detail the evolution of the interior makeup and structure of all five large moons: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, and Miranda. The work suggests four of the moons hold oceans that could be dozens of miles deep.

Archaeologists in Hungary have unearthed a 2,000-year-old collection of medical tools, including forceps and scalpels. They think the tools belonged to a physician from the Roman Empire who had traveled beyond its frontiers to treat patients.

Proteins that act like air traffic controllers, managing the flow of signals in and out of human cells, have been observed for the first time with unprecedented detail using advanced microscopy techniques. New findings could inform the development of better drugs for pain relief, diabetes or heart failure.

A California tribe has signed agreements with state and federal agencies to work together on efforts to return endangered Chinook salmon to their traditional spawning areas upstream of Shasta Dam, a deal that could advance the long-standing goal of tribal leaders to reintroduce fish that were transplanted from California to New Zealand more than a century ago and still thrive there.

Researchers have developed a new tool that tracks the monthly changes in Wikipedia page views for thousands of species. The Species Awareness Index (SAI) is designed to provide a real-time measure of changing interest in biodiversity that can help conservation organizations and science communicators develop effective strategies for protecting wildlife. The study, "Achieving a real-time online monitoring system for conservation culturomics," was published in the journal Conservation Biology.

A California tribe has signed agreements with state and federal agencies to work together on efforts to return endangered Chinook salmon to their traditional spawning areas upstream of Shasta Dam, a deal that could advance the long-standing goal of tribal leaders to reintroduce fish that were transplanted from California to New Zealand more than a century ago and still thrive there.

Greywater Fresh

If you want a refreshing, environmentally-friendly beverage — but don't necessarily want to go all the way to Bill Gates' fecal sludge water route — we might have just the thing.

It's called the Epic OneWater Brew, and it's a kölsch-style beer that, according to the Guardian, is made from recycled wastewater.

Crafted as a collaboration between a San Francisco water recycling company called Epic Cleantec and the Northern California-based beermaker Devil's Canyon Brewing Company, the Epic OneWater Brew was reportedly made from greywater — in short, wastewater from dishes, laundry, and bathroom shower and sinkwater — from a 40-story apartment complex in San Francisco.

"We wanted to do something fun that was going to be an engaging tool to talk to people, to get them excited, but also that showcased the untapped potential of water reuse," Aaron Tartakovsky, Epic Cleantec's co-founder and CEO, told the Guardian.

"Drinkable"

Apparently, the beverage is pretty tasty. Matthew Canton, the Guardian writer who tested the beer, described it as "pleasant," "crisp" and "drinkable," with "no notes of shower or laundry." That's already about ten steps above the might-as-well-be-dishwater that is Keystone Light, so it feels like a win for everyone.

"We wanted to choose a beer that was going to be sort of more universally liked versus some of the more craft beers, like an IPA, that some people like, some people don't," he added, speaking to the choice to create a crowd-pleasing kölsch-style beer.

"I think a lot of people… were skeptical about the project or were hesitant to try it," Tartakovsky told the Guardian, "but I would say 99 percent who came in feeling a little bit apprehensive, once they tried it, got really excited."

If you might be worried at all about the safety of drinking recycled water, Tartakovsky argues that Epic's product might actually be safer for consumers than other beers due to the rigorous testing process that they require.

"A lot of times at a brewery, you turn on the tap and whatever water you get, that's what you brew with," he continued. "In our case, we have so much control over the treatment process that we were actually able to treat to tweak some of the steps to give the brewers a blank canvas."

All in all, the Epic OneWater Brew sounds like a creative way to tackle our ever-worsening water crisis. And if we're all honest with ourselves, most of us could probably say that, when it comes to beer, we've likely had worse.

The post 

 Environmentally Friendly Beer Made From Used Shower Water appeared first on Futurism.

An international team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside, and the Institute of Magnetism in Kyiv, Ukraine, has developed a comprehensive manual for engineering spin dynamics in nanomagnets—an important step toward advancing spintronic and quantum-information technologies.

Researchers have developed a new tool that tracks the monthly changes in Wikipedia page views for thousands of species. The Species Awareness Index (SAI) is designed to provide a real-time measure of changing interest in biodiversity that can help conservation organizations and science communicators develop effective strategies for protecting wildlife. The study, "Achieving a real-time online monitoring system for conservation culturomics," was published in the journal Conservation Biology.

An international team of scientists has imaged and analyzed THz waves that propagate in the form of plasmon polaritons along thin anisotropic semiconductor platelets with wavelengths reduced by up to 65 times compared to THz waves in free space.

 have developed an artificial intelligence system that can create proteins not found in nature using generative diffusion, the same technology behind popular image-creation platforms such as DALL-E and Midjourney.

Storing data in DNA sounds like science fiction, yet it lies in the near future. Experts expect the first DNA data center to be up and running within five to ten years. Data won't be stored as zeros and ones in a hard drive but in the base pairs that make up DNA: AT and CG. Such a data center would take the form of a lab, many times smaller than the ones today.

 — abnormal hypersensitivity to stimuli — is associated with impaired quality of life and is often poorly managed. Estimates suggest that 3 percent to 17 percent of adults suffer from neuropathic pain, including a quarter of people with diabetes and a third of people with HIV. Researchers report that a mechanism involving the enzyme Tiam1 in dorsal horn excitatory neurons of the spinal cord both initiates and maintains neuropathic pain. Moreover, they show that targeting spinal Tiam1 with anti-sense oligonucleotides injected into the cerebrospinal fluid effectively alleviated neuropathic pain hypersensitivity.

 have developed an artificial intelligence system that can create proteins not found in nature using generative diffusion, the same technology behind popular image-creation platforms such as DALL-E and Midjourney.

Storing data in DNA sounds like science fiction, yet it lies in the near future. Experts expect the first DNA data center to be up and running within five to ten years. Data won't be stored as zeros and ones in a hard drive but in the base pairs that make up DNA: AT and CG. Such a data center would take the form of a lab, many times smaller than the ones today.

A series of centipede-inspired robots with different numbers of legs show that the more legs a robot has, the better it is at moving across unpredictable ground

The crop-devastating swarms that locusts form are driven in part by the insects' tricks to avoid being cannibalised – they move around and produce a pheromone to deter other locusts from eating them

Researchers pieced together the genomes of two unknown species of green sulphur bacteria from DNA fragments found in ancient calcified tooth plaque

It is well understood that in the labor market there exist wage gaps between men and women, and in general, women have had to fight to break the "glass ceiling" to get to upper management in the workplace. The causes of the gender gap may be multiple factors from discrimination to ability difference, and it is not easy to separate one from the other.

Adding long-chain fatty acids can thicken cell membranes and alter the activity of a key enzyme, as LMU scientists have demonstrated in cell cultures.

Recently, the research group led by Prof. Liu Changsong from Institute of Solid State Physics (ISSP), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) developed a set of software for simulating the evolution of displacement damage in polycrystalline metals at across time and space scales, which was named object kinetic Monte Carlo-lattice kinetic Monte Carlo (OKMC-LKMC) hybridization simulation software.

Adding long-chain fatty acids can thicken cell membranes and alter the activity of a key enzyme, as LMU scientists have demonstrated in cell cultures.

Dendrobium chrysotoxum is an epiphytic orchid species that grows on tree trunks or as a lithophyte on rocks. It is of great ornamental and medicinal importance. The over-exploitation of D. chrysotoxum from the wild continues to pose a serious threat to the orchid's survival.

Dendrobium chrysotoxum is an epiphytic orchid species that grows on tree trunks or as a lithophyte on rocks. It is of great ornamental and medicinal importance. The over-exploitation of D. chrysotoxum from the wild continues to pose a serious threat to the orchid's survival.

A research team led by Prof. Gao Xiaoming at the Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (AIOFM), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recently proposed a new dual-wavelength Faraday rotation spectroscopy (FRS) sensor in the two-component simultaneous detection of nitrogen oxides.

Astronomers have spotted a bright flash of light from a Jupiter-size world being consumed by its own star in a preview of Earth’s likely fate.

The number of people facing acute food insecurity shot up for the fourth year in a row in 2022

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The rise of Ozempic “Everybody looks so great. When I look around this room, I can’t help but wonder: Is Ozempic right for me?” Jimmy Kimmel joked during his Oscars monologue earlier this year.  Ozempic, or Wegovy, or Mounjaro, has become quite popular in the last year. A drug primarily used for treating type 2 […]

Researchers discover a unique two-component molecular motor that uses a kind of renewable chemical energy to pull vesicles toward membrane-bound organelles.

For decades, scientists have used the amount of seaweed at the ocean's surface as a proxy for the health of coral reefs below. However, a new global study of more than 1,200 marine locations over a 16-year period reveals that this approach has been misleading — and may even have hidden signs of reef stress.

Genome editing is used to modify the genes of living organisms to elicit certain traits, such as climate-resilient crops or treating human disease at the genetic level. It has become increasingly popular in agriculture, medicine and basic science research over the past decade, and will continue to be relevant and utilized well into the future. Given this prevalence, researchers at the University of California San Diego have started an outreach program that introduces genome-editing technologies to high school students.

An artificial intelligence system enables robots to conduct autonomous scientific experiments—as many as 10,000 per day—potentially driving a drastic leap forward in the pace of discovery in areas from medicine to agriculture to environmental science.

The hospitality sector was undoubtedly hugely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but new research has now shown the knock-on effect that had on other sections of the economy.

Most of the deaths occurred during the early months of the year and mostly among older adults, according to new federal data.

Nature Communications, Published online: 04 May 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38304-z

Multi-enzymatic cascades benefit from precise nanometric organization but achieving this using available scaffolds is challenging. Here the authors present strategy for organizing multienzymatic systems using a protein scaffold based on TRAP domains, and demonstrate improved catalytic output.

An artificial intelligence system enables robots to conduct autonomous scientific experiments—as many as 10,000 per day—potentially driving a drastic leap forward in the pace of discovery in areas from medicine to agriculture to environmental science.

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The   Fold was revealed in a tweet today. Here’s what we can discern for now.

At the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP in Leuna, Germany, representatives from politics, research and industry opened a novel pilot plant for the mild processing of rapeseed to increase the added-value potential of rapeseed as a raw material. Based on a biorefinery, the plant not only delivers high-grade, pre-raffinate-quality rapeseed oil, but also a high-grade, protein-rich rapeseed kernel concentrate, secondary plant substances dissolved in ethanol and rapeseed hulls, which represent further products. The plant was built as part of the joint research project EthaNa.

If we ever find life on other worlds, it is unlikely to be a powerful message from space. It's certainly possible that an alien civilization specifically sends us a radio message like a scene out of Contact, but the more likely scenario is that we observe some kind of biological signature in an exoplanet's atmosphere, such as oxygen or chlorophyll. But as a recent study released on the arXiv preprint server shows, that could be more difficult than we thought.

Discovery of ‘anti-cannibalism’ pheromone raises possibility of spraying crops with similar chemical as non-toxic insecticide

Locusts are voracious eaters with appetites that extend to members of their own species. Now scientists have discovered an “anti-cannibalism” pheromone used by the insects to protect themselves in dense swarms, which could pave the way for novel pest control strategies.

Scientists said the discovery raises a host of possibilities, including spraying crops with something similar to the protective pheromone as a non-toxic insecticide, or finding a way to reduce its impact among locusts and make them turn on each other more.

Continue reading…

At the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP in Leuna, Germany, representatives from politics, research and industry opened a novel pilot plant for the mild processing of rapeseed to increase the added-value potential of rapeseed as a raw material. Based on a biorefinery, the plant not only delivers high-grade, pre-raffinate-quality rapeseed oil, but also a high-grade, protein-rich rapeseed kernel concentrate, secondary plant substances dissolved in ethanol and rapeseed hulls, which represent further products. The plant was built as part of the joint research project EthaNa.

Nature, Published online: 04 May 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-01557-1

Garry Cooper’s sustainability business has grown to help thousands of people conduct more efficient research.

Nature, Published online: 04 May 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-01517-9

The most popular repository for sharing SARS-CoV-2 sequence data has come under increasing scrutiny. Scientists and funders around the world must now consider what lies ahead for the open sharing of genome data.

In red and blue states, Democrats are consolidating their hold on the most economically productive places.

Metropolitan areas won by President Joe Biden in 2020 generated more of the total economic output than metros won by Donald Trump in 35 of the 50 states, according to new research by Brookings Metro provided exclusively to The Atlantic. Biden-won metros contributed the most to the GDP not only in all 25 states that he carried but also in 10 states won by Trump, including Texas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Utah, Ohio, and even Florida, Brookings found. Almost all of the states in which Trump-won metros accounted for the most economic output rank in the bottom half of all states for the total amount of national GDP produced within their borders.

[From the March 2017 issue: Red state, blue city]

Biden’s dominance was pronounced in the highest-output metro areas. Biden won 43 of the 50 metros, regardless of what state they were in, that generated the absolute most economic output; remarkably, he won every metro area that ranked No. 1 through 24 on that list of the most-productive places.

The Democrats’ ascendance in the most-prosperous metropolitan regions underscores how geographic and economic dynamics now reinforce the fundamental fault line in American politics between the people and places most comfortable with how the U.S. is changing and those who feel alienated or marginalized by those changes.

Just as Democrats now perform best among the voters most accepting of the demographic and cultural currents remaking 21st-century America, they have established a decisive advantage in diverse, well-educated metropolitan areas. Those places have become the locus of the emerging information economy in industries such as computing, communications, and advanced biotechnology.

And just as Republicans have relied primarily on the voters who feel most alienated and threatened by cultural and demographic change, their party has grown stronger in preponderantly white, blue-collar, midsize and smaller metro areas, as well as rural communities. Those are all places that generally have shared little in the transition to the information economy and remain much more reliant on the powerhouse industries of the 20th century: agriculture, fossil-fuel extraction, and manufacturing.

Neither party is entirely comfortable with this stark new political alignment. Much of Biden’s economic agenda, with its emphasis on creating jobs that do not require a college degree, is centered on courting working-class voters by channeling more investment and employment to communities that feel excluded from the information age’s opportunities. And some Republican strategists continue to worry about the party’s eroding position in the economically innovative white-collar suburbs of major metropolitan areas.

Yet the underlying economic forces widening this political divide will be difficult for either side to reverse, Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro, told me. The places benefiting from the new opportunities in information-based industries, he said, tend to be racially diverse, densely populated, well educated, cosmopolitan, supported by prestigious institutions of higher education, and tolerant of diverse lifestyles. And the information age’s tendency to concentrate its benefits in a relatively small circle of “superstar cities” that fit that profile has hardly peaked. From 2010 to 2020, Muro said, the share of the nation’s total economic output generated by the 50 most-productive metropolitan areas increased from 62 to 64 percent, a significant jump in such a short span. “We are still in the midst of that massive shift, though there’s plenty of uncertainty right now,” Muro told me. “These are long cycles of economic history.”

The trajectory is toward greater conflict between the diverse, big places that have transitioned the furthest toward the information-age economy and the usually less diverse and smaller places that have not. Across GOP-controlled states, Republicans are using statewide power rooted in their dominance of nonmetropolitan areas to pass an aggressive agenda preempting authority from their largest cities across a wide range of issues and imposing cultural values largely rejected in those big cities; several are also now targeting public universities with laws banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and proposals to eliminate tenure for professors.

This sweeping offensive is especially striking because, as the Brookings data show, even many red states now rely on blue-leaning metro areas as their principal drivers of economic growth. Texas, for instance, is one of the places where Republicans are pursuing the most aggressive preemption agenda, but the metros won by Biden there in 2020 account for nearly three-fourths of the state’s total economic output.

[Read: An unprecedented divide between red and blue America]

“State antagonism toward cities is not sustainable,” says Amy Liu, the interim president of the Brookings Institution. “By handicapping local problem solving or attacking local institutions and employers, state lawmakers are undermining the very actors they need to build a thriving regional economy.”

At The Atlantic’s request, Muro and the senior research assistant Yang You of the Brookings Metro program calculated the share of state GDP generated across the 50 states in the metropolitan areas won by Biden and Trump in 2020. (The calculation was based on 2020 data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. In federal statistics, 46 metropolitan areas extend across state lines—for instance, the New York metropolitan area also includes parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Brookings disaggregated the economic and political results along state boundaries to ensure that each was apportioned to the correct total.)

The analysis showed that the metros Biden carried generated 50 percent or more of state economic output in 28 states, and a plurality of state output in seven others. States where Biden-won metros accounted for the highest share of economic output included reliably blue states: His metros generated at least 90 percent of state economic output in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, Connecticut, New York, and Maryland. But the Biden-won metros also generated at least 80 percent of the total economic output in Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, as well as two-thirds in Michigan and almost exactly half in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—all key swing states. And the metros he carried generated at least half of total output in several Republican states, including Texas, Iowa, and Missouri.

 

 

The metropolitan areas Trump carried accounted for the most economic output in only 15 states. Twelve of the states where Trump metros accounted for the most economic activity ranked in the bottom half of all states for total output; the only exceptions were Indiana, Tennessee, and Louisiana. By contrast, Biden dominated the most productive states: His metros generated more of the output than the Trump metros in 22 of the 25 highest-producing states. As striking: Biden metros generated at least half of total output in 12 of the 15 most productive states and 19 of the top 25.

All of these results reflect the emphatic blue tilt of the largest and most economically productive metro areas. In 37 states, Biden won the single metro that generated the largest economic output. The results in the 50 metros that contributed the most to the national GDP regardless of their state were even more decisive: Biden, as noted above, not only carried 43 of them—and won the two dozen largest—but carried more of the highest-performing metros in red states than Trump did. The list of high-performing red-state metro areas that Biden carried included all four of the largest in Texas—Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio.

“The states that are most invested in the knowledge economy are overwhelmingly Democratic; large metros [in almost every state] are essentially universally Democratic; and affluent voters in these large metro areas are now overwhelmingly Democratic too,” Jacob Hacker, a Yale political scientist, told me. “The basic story seems to be that where you are seeing rapid economic growth, where the nation’s GDP is produced, you are seeing an ongoing shift toward the Democratic Party.”

Biden also won 28 of the next 50 metros that generated the most economic output, giving him 71 of the 100 largest overall, Brookings found. After the top 100, the switch flipped: Trump won 62 of the next 100 metros ranked by their total output, and 143 of the final 184 metros with the smallest economic output.

To understand these patterns better, the Brookings Metro analysis took an especially close look at the demographic and economic characteristics of metro areas in eight of the most politically competitive states, as well as the two mega-states in each party’s column: California and New York for the Democrats, and Texas and Florida for the Republicans.

[Read: America is growing apart, possibly for good]

Those results fill in the picture of a broad-based separation between the Democratic- and Republican-leaning places. Across those 12 states, Biden won about three-fifths of the metros with a population of at least 250,000; Trump won about three-fourths of those that are smaller. In these states, Biden won about three-fourths of the metros with more college graduates than average and Trump won about two-thirds of those with fewer college grads than average. Biden likewise won almost two-thirds of these states’ metros that are more racially diverse than average, and Trump won two-thirds of those that are less diverse. Biden predominated in the metros with the largest share of workers participating in digital industries, and Trump won 17 of the 20 metros with the largest share of workers engaged in manufacturing.

Despite their economic success, many of the largest blue-leaning metros, especially since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, have faced undeniable turbulence in the form of high housing costs, widespread homelessness, persistent economic inequality, downtown business centers weakened by the rise of remote work, and, in many cases, increasing crime. Some of the very largest metros “may be seeing new headwinds,” Muro said, but if employers look beyond them, the beneficiaries are less likely to be the smaller Trump-leaning places than the blue cities just outside the highest rung of economic activity, such as Denver, Atlanta, and Phoenix. Brookings’s analysis has found that even amid all of the pandemic’s disruption, the elevated share of total national economic output generated by the 50 largest metros remained constant from 2019 through 2021. Though trends can always change, Muro said, “it is hard to imagine a massive unrolling” of the concentration of economic opportunity that has characterized the digital era.

Lower taxes and especially less-expensive housing costs have helped many red-state metros remain competitive with those in blue states as the economy evolves, but a sustained conservative attack on red states’ most prosperous places could threaten that record. “The biggest worry is that the culture wars, the attack on the urban core, the attack on the self-governing of cities can have the unintended effect of pitting urban areas against their suburbs and rural neighbors when the modern economy is regional and we need all of these actors to work together,” Amy Liu of Brookings said.

This economic configuration has big implications for national politics. Hacker believes that over time, ceding so much ground in the most economically vibrant places “is not a sustainable position for the Republican Party to be in.” While the party is “benefiting from the undertow” of backlash against the overlapping economic and social transformations reconfiguring U.S. society, he added, “the places that are becoming bluer are growing faster; they are bigger … and they are also, as Republicans lament, setting the tone” for the emphasis on diversity and cultural liberalism now embraced by most big public and private institutions.

Still, Hacker noted, the GOP’s “structural advantages” in the electoral system—particularly the bias in the Senate and Electoral College toward small states least affected by these changes—may allow the party to offset for years the advantages that Democrats are reaping from “economic and demographic change.” The result could be a sustained standoff between a Republican political coalition centered on the smaller places that reflect what America has been and a Democratic party grounded in the economically preeminent large metros forging the nation’s future.

At about 3 a.m. Moscow time on May 3, a pair of drones appeared to explode on or near a dome at 

. The explosions were caught on camera from several angles and seemed to cause little damage. Videos of the strikes aired on Russian state television and rapidly made the rounds on the internet. Things only got weirder from there.

The Kremlin quickly put out a statement accusing Ukraine of attempting to assassinate President Vladimir Putin and vowing retaliation. Ukraine vehemently denied responsibility for the strikes, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters to “take anything coming out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt.” Online, some observers fretted that the strikes had crossed a potential nuclear red line. Others, such as retired General Mark Hertling at the Institute for the Study of War and the Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols, concluded that the attack was most likely a false-flag operation. Still others speculated that the small drones could have been launched by Russian partisans or Ukrainian special-operations teams inside Russia.

False flag, special op, or fizzled attack—it may not be possible to get to the bottom of who launched the drones and why anytime soon. But the incident and the reactions it has elicited from the war’s major players reveal just how important long-range drones have become in this conflict.

The U.S. has supplied Ukraine with many weapons systems, but it has steadfastly refused to provide those with longer range, most notably the missiles known as ATACMs. There is reportedly concern over how Russia would react if U.S.- produced munitions were to land in Russia proper (though territories occupied by Russia are fair game). The Ukrainians, however, don’t want to allow Russian territory to be a haven from which to attack, but they need long-range munitions if they are to hold targets inside Russia at risk. Their solution has been to repurpose old military drones and cheap off-the-shelf commercial drones as long-range munitions, filling the role of conventional cruise missiles.

[Phillips Payson O’Brien: The West must give Ukraine the weapons it needs]

In 2022, Ukraine was already using off-the-shelf drones to attack Russian oil infrastructure hundreds of miles from the front. Ukraine managed to strike Russian airfields hosting the bombers that were attempting to take down the Ukrainian power grid over the winter using repurposed Cold War reconnaissance drones. The wreckage of several Ukrainian drones has reportedly been found in the vicinity of Moscow since the beginning of 2023.  

More recently, Russia has accused Ukraine of using small, piston-engine propeller drones to strike at fuel-storage areas deep within Crimea and on the Russian side of the Kerch Strait, nearly 200 miles from the front lines. Ukraine did not deny that those explosions were caused by drones—rather, it stated that the resulting fires were part of its shaping operations prior to the expected spring offensive.

Using low-tech drones to hit and significantly damage targets far from the front lines and inside Russia allows Ukraine to thin out Russian air defenses. Russia’s large, modern surface-to-air missiles, such as the S-400, can weigh 5,000 pounds or more and travel at nearly 3,000 miles an hour. They aren’t meant for shooting down cheap drones that sound like passing lawn mowers. Using surface-to-air missiles for this purpose is a bad trade from a financial standpoint as well—akin to killing a fly by smashing it with a Fabergé egg.

Short- and medium-range systems (like the Pantsir) are better suited to the task but cover a much smaller area, meaning that Russia would need many of them to defend a large region. This is where the tyranny of mathematics kicks in: For every mile of additional range that Ukrainian drones have, the amount of Russian territory they threaten increases by roughly the square of the range. For Ukraine, a linear increase in drone capability means an exponential increase in difficulty for Russia in defending against it.

Russia has a finite number of defensive systems, and a finite number of people to crew them. The country can’t hope to defend all of its crucial assets if Ukraine has drones with the range and accuracy to hit them. The drones Ukraine is using now have a limited payload, meaning they are mainly good against targets that are relatively soft and susceptible to damage, such as fuel tanks, or aircraft parked in the open.

So why would Ukraine even hypothetically want to strike at a target like the Kremlin, causing little if any damage? Such an attack might induce Russia to move scarce air-defense resources around to better protect targets that Russia would be embarrassed to see hit. For example, in 1987, a German teenager in a Cessna penetrated Soviet airspace and landed in Red Square. The incident led to a mass reorganization of Soviet anti-air defenses. In World War II, the Doolittle Raid caused Japan to pull back some of its interceptor aircraft from the front lines to protect the home islands. Today, Ukraine could use long-range drones to try to get Russia to spread out its air defenses, which would in turn make it easier for other drones to get through.

[From the June 2023 issue: The counteroffensive]

For its part, Russia might be tempted to stage a false-flag drone attack to discourage the United States or NATO from trusting Ukraine with long-range missiles or the components to build them. The Russian theory of victory seems to revolve around persuading other countries to withhold military aid so that it can grind Ukraine down through attritional warfare until Ukraine sues for peace under terms favorable to the Kremlin. Convincing the West that Ukraine cannot be trusted with long-range weapons would support this effort.

What both parties know is that on the modern battlefield, range is of the essence. The war fundamentally changed when Ukraine acquired HIMARS that extended its reach to 50 miles. Cheap drones, such as the Ukrainian UJ-22 and the Iranian-made and Russian-operated Shahed-136, have played a major part in the conflict and will continue to do so.

The ability to reliably strike far behind the front lines will be crucial to Ukraine’s stated goal of retaking Crimea “without a fight.” Ukraine will need to sever Russia’s access to the peninsula by both land and sea. The former requires success in the spring ground offensive. The latter calls for Ukraine to reach Russian ships attempting to offload cargo in Crimean ports such as Sevastopol, and the most plausible way to achieve this reach of 200 miles and more is by means of cheap, disposable drones.

Ukraine has already used uncrewed surface vehicles to attack ships in and around the harbor. It may also be able to overwhelm Russian air defenses with large numbers of drones, or to approach from angles that limit the effectiveness of air defenses: Ukraine has already made several successful attacks with aerial drones into Sevastopol.

Ukraine doesn’t have the warheads to sink large ships, but it can use the drones it has to  target those carrying fuel, or to attack dockside equipment (such as cranes, forklifts, and trains meant to carry cargo away from the docks) necessary for unloading ships and getting materials where they are needed. Just preventing the ships’ cargo from going ashore or leaving the docks would go a long way toward stymieing Russia’s efforts to defend Crimea.

The spring offensive is likely drawing near, and it could easily determine the outcome of the war. Ukraine doesn’t seem to be hiding its long-term goals regarding Crimea either, and those will require long-range weapons to systematically isolate the peninsula and make retaining it untenable. Without long-range munitions forthcoming from NATO, Ukraine seems to be relying on indigenously produced, cheap, plentiful, easily manufactured drones to set the conditions for victory. Russia’s reaction to the attack on the dome at the Kremlin may reflect its willingness to do whatever is necessary to prevent Ukraine from acquiring long-range capabilities. But cheap drones are available to almost any state actor—and if Ukraine can successfully use them to thwart some of the world’s most advanced ground-based air defenses, the implications will travel far beyond this war.

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Super Powers

Betelgeuse is one of the most visible and iconic stars visible on Earth — and with scientists predicting that it'll go supernova sometime soon, astronomy Twitter naturally has jokes.

In 2019, Betelgeuse became noticeably dimmer, which led to stargazers and scientists alike wondering whether the old red giant was about to go supernova.

Last year, the Hubble Space Telescope — remember that guy? — heightened the drama when it captured unprecedented images of Betelgeuse blowing its top but not going full kaboom. Ever since, speculation about when the star will complete its journey to supernova has roiled scientific circles.

Overall, astronomers predict that the famous star, which is still super-bright in its spot as the shoulder of Orion, will go supernova within the next 100,000 years. That's a long time for us puny humans, but the blink of an eye in cosmic terms — especially because the operative word is "within," meaning it could technically blow up tomorrow.

Naturally, scientists on Twitter are cracking jokes about the situation.

"Betelgeuse better explode soon," University of Chicago astrophysicist Sanjana Curtis joked, "or I’ll blow it up myself."

NASA planetary scientist Daria Pidhorodetska, meanwhile, quipped that she's "checking the betelgeuse status account" — a very fun update account a la "Liza Minelli outlives" — "in the middle of a packed bar."

Webb Comics

Betelgeuse's imminent demise is such a meme at this point that someone resurfaced a 2016 XKCD comic about it — and a quick perusal of the web comic's site found that it's far from the only one about the red giant.

 

While those itching to see the star explode represent the dominant class of astronomy Twitter, there are still some who aren't ready to say goodbye.

"Am I a bad astronomer for not wanting Betelgeuse to blow up because Orion is my favorite constellation due to its gorgeous symmetry and beauty?" Middlebury College physicist Eilat Glikman tweeted. "I don’t want it to change!"

More on stars: Grim Images Show Helpless Star Disappearing Into Black Hole

The post Scientists Are Breathlessly Waiting For Betelgeuse to Explode appeared first on Futurism.

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Sucks

Twitter was in ablaze this week when in response to the ongoing Writer's Guild strike, a guy decided to let the people know that writing work doesn't matter anymore, actually. ChatGPT can just do it.

"Oh no. A writer's strike. Whatever shall we do," tweeted a user who goes by the moniker "powerbottomdad1." "If only there was some kind of machine that could endlessly pump out textual content so we didn't have to rely on these flaky humans."

Unsurprisingly, this unceremonious tweet from powerbottomdad1 — who's notably followed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — struck a chord with folks who value human labor and creative processes. (Also, asking to be compensated fairly for your work when it's purchased by and viewed on streaming platforms isn't really being "flaky," but we digress.)

"Based on this person's username I'm inclined to believe they're trolling *however* this opinion is mega common amongst ppl in tech," tweeted another. "I'm confused as to what type of ideal world this argument is fighting for."

Points Made

Gotta say: all of these angered netizens have a point.

On its face, of course, there's the sheer callousness of the comment, which doesn't exactly offer much sympathy to folks who might lose their jobs to automation. Even Goldman Sachs tried to soften the blow when they estimated that about 300 million jobs stand to go the way of the AI in the not-so-distant future.

Also, as another user suggested, referring to creative writing as "textual content" is wildly depressing.

Even if a robot can churn out a passable script — already a far-fetched assumption with today's tech — a lot of folks seem to have forgotten that humans aren't robots, and the creative process isn't just about making as much content as possible. Or it shouldn't be, at least. When it is, we get things like Netflix's "The Gray Man" and Amazon Studios' "Citadel." And given the fact that these machines are taught to mimic human stories by mixing and regurgitating machine-free human work, plagiarism is definitely a concern when it comes to replacing human scriptwriters, too.

Sadly, though, considering that the strikers' demands regarding protection from AI demands were struck down, the studios just may go down this road.

More on automation: IBM Replacing 7,800 Human Jobs with AI, Including Human Resources

The post Fury Erupts at Suggestion of Using ChatGPT to Replace Striking Writers appeared first on Futurism.

Nature, Published online: 04 May 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-01537-5

Results suggest the amyloid-targeting drug candidate slows cognitive decline in some people, but questions remain over its potential side effects.

Humans have bred for desirable plant and animal traits for millennia by selecting and crossing their offspring. Now, researchers at the University of Copenhagen are taking a natural shortcut to promote beneficial changes using a special bacterium that can transfer its genes into plants.

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated a prototype lidar system that uses quantum detection technology to acquire 3D images while submerged underwater. The high sensitivity of this system could allow it to capture detailed information even in extremely low-light conditions found underwater.

Europe's latest weather satellite, the Meteosat Third Generation Imager, has just delivered its first view of Earth—revealing conditions over Europe, Africa and the Atlantic in remarkable detail.

Scientists from four research institutes in the Science City Hamburg Bahrenfeld have joined forces to develop a ground-breaking experimental setup. Their new Spitrobot greatly simplifies observing changes in proteins as they carry out their functions. This makes time-resolved crystallography accessible for non-specialist research groups, as samples can now be prepared in standard labs and processed by automated established high-throughput methods elsewhere. The device will accelerate fundamental research in health and disease. The team has now presented the concept behind the Spitrobot in Nature Communications.

 at the University of Toronto have developed an artificial intelligence system that can create proteins not found in nature using generative diffusion, the same technology behind popular image-creation platforms such as DALL-E and Midjourney.

The young star TW Hydrae is playing "shadow puppets" with scientists observing it with NASA's  .

Black irises have been spotted in gannets that test positive for bird flu antibodies, suggesting they are an indicator that the seabirds have survived an   with the virus

A thought experiment that’s dividing mathematicians can help illuminate how belief shapes rational decisions

Scientists from four research institutes in the Science City Hamburg Bahrenfeld have joined forces to develop a ground-breaking experimental setup. Their new Spitrobot greatly simplifies observing changes in proteins as they carry out their functions. This makes time-resolved crystallography accessible for non-specialist research groups, as samples can now be prepared in standard labs and processed by automated established high-throughput methods elsewhere. The device will accelerate fundamental research in health and disease. The team has now presented the concept behind the Spitrobot in Nature Communications.

 at the University of Toronto have developed an artificial intelligence system that can create proteins not found in nature using generative diffusion, the same technology behind popular image-creation platforms such as DALL-E and Midjourney.

The Beatles famously sang, 'Money can't buy me love,' but married couples who manage their finances together may love each other longer, according to new research.

Researchers have exposed roundworms (a well-established model organism in biological research) to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of drugs used for treating depression and anxiety. Surprisingly, this treatment improved the quality of aging females' egg cells.

What is long 

? What are its symptoms? Can it be treated? Is it dangerous? Researchers have some answers, but it remains one of the pandemic’s great mysteries.

Three years in, scientists still aren’t quite sure why some people get stuck with the syndrome and its cluster of debilitating symptoms long after their COVID-19 

 has cleared, while others breeze through and quickly return to a normal life.

In part, that’s because long COVID is so hard to pin down. For some patients, the main symptom is fatigue; for others, heart and respiratory problems. Still others may have frequent headaches, trouble sleeping, loss of taste, stomach pain, rash, muscle aches, or changes in menstrual cycles—or maybe a mix of symptoms. One patient may have a few annoying complaints for a couple of weeks, a second seemingly permanent discomfort.

There’s no simple formula for diagnosing patients, no test to tie symptoms to COVID-19, no pill to pop to make everything go away. Scientists and the public can’t even agree on what to call it: take your pick from long COVID, post-COVID conditions, long-haul COVID, post-acute COVID-19, post-acute sequelae of SARS CoV-2 infection, and chronic COVID.

Because it’s so difficult to diagnose, it’s also tough to figure out how many people have had it, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests about 15% of all Americans have suffered from long COVID and that about 6% currently have it.

At the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and its primary teaching hospital, Boston Medical Center (BMC), researchers and clinicians are trying to decode long COVID.

As well as treating patients through the ReCOVer Long COVID Clinic, they’re leading the National Institutes of Health-funded RECOVER (Research COVID to Enhance Recovery) Long COVID Study, an effort to better understand the condition and pioneer new prevention and treatment approaches.

Here, Jai G. Marathe, assistant professor of medicine at Boston University and Boston Medical Center infectious diseases physician, and Fitzgerald Shepherd, assistant professor of general internal medicine and Boston Medical Center hospitalist, break down what they’ve learned about long COVID since starting the study last year:

The post What do we know about long COVID? appeared first on Futurity.

There is a reason that NASA's Opportunity rover explored Mars's Meridiani Planum region for 14 years: The locale could hold crucial hints about the Red Planet's early geology and environment.

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Think tank CSIS just released a digital report on alternative proteins and it’s impacts on global food systems/US nat sec submitted by /u/ok_nutmilk [link] [comments]

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