Earthquake in Turkey exposes gap between seismic knowledge and action

The US is reportedly examining the possibility that the Chinese spy balloon was pushed off course by strong winds when it entered US airspace, having tracked it since its launch days earlier.

Of the four flying objects shot down by the US in recent weeks, only the first has been attributed to Chinese surveillance efforts. The balloon took off from China’s Hainan island, before travelling on a path which appeared to go over Guam, according to the Washington Post on Tuesday. It then took an “unexpected” turn to the north, the report said, citing anonymous US officials. After it entered Canadian airspace, strong winds blew it south over the border, the Post reported.

The deviation has prompted analysts to explore whether China meant for it to enter US airspace. US officials remain adamant the balloon’s purpose was surveillance.

The possibility emerged as the White House said on Tuesday that preliminary evidence suggested the three latest objects detected were “benign” and not involved in a broader Chinese spy balloon program.

US authorities “haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of [China’s] spy balloon program or that they were definitely involved in external intelligence,” national security council spokesperson John Kirby said.

The saga has caused further deterioration of fragile China-US relations and prompted urgent reassessments of security and surveillance by US allies, including Japan. Tokyo’s defence ministry announced late on Tuesday that a new analysis of unidentified aerial objects that flew over Japan’s airspace in recent years “strongly” suggests they were Chinese spy balloons.

“After further analysis of specific balloon-shaped flying objects previously identified in Japanese airspace, including those in November 2019, June 2020 and September 2021, we have concluded that the balloons are strongly presumed to be unmanned reconnaissance balloons flown by China,” the ministry said in a statement.

It said it had “strongly demanded China’s government confirm the facts” of the incident and “that such a situation not occur again in the future.”

“Violations of airspace by foreign unmanned reconnaissance balloons and other means are totally unacceptable,” it added.

Japan said last week it was re-analysing a series of incidents involving unidentified aerial objects in light of the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the United States after crossing over US territory.

US officials have claimed that China has a “fleet” of surveillance balloons of different shapes and sizes, which it have been deployed over five continents.

China insists the balloon was a “civilian airship used for research”, US officials said debris confirmed it was designed for surveillance.

“We’re not alone in this,” US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said last week. “We’ve already shared information with dozens of countries around the world both from Washington and through our embassies. We’re doing so because the United States was not the only target of this broader programme which has violated the sovereignty of countries across five continents.”

Japanese officials confirmed that they were among those with whom the US had been exchanging data.

In the wake of the incident, the US military adjusted radar settings to detect smaller objects and discovered three more unidentified craft that President Joe Biden ordered shot down – one over Alaska, another over Canada and the third over Lake Huron off Michigan.

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An increase in the pace at which sea levels are rising threatens “a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale”, the UN secretary general has warned.

The climate crisis is causing sea levels to rise faster than for 3,000 years, bringing a “torrent of trouble” to almost a billion people, from London to Los Angeles and Bangkok to Buenos Aires, António Guterres said on Tuesday. Some nations could cease to exist, drowned under the waves, he said.

Addressing the UN security council, Guterres said slashing carbon emissions, addressing problems such as poverty that worsen the impact of the rising seas on communities and developing new international laws to protect those made homeless – and even stateless – were all needed. He said sea level rise was a threat-multiplier which, by damaging lives, economies and infrastructure, had “dramatic implications” for global peace and security.

A flooded residential area in Sindh, Pakistan, last month. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Significant sea level rise is already inevitable with current levels of global heating, but the consequences of failing to tackle the problem are “unthinkable”. Guterres said: “Low-lying communities and entire countries could disappear for ever. We would witness a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale. And we would see ever fiercer competition for fresh water, land and other resources.

“People’s human rights do not disappear because their homes do,” he said. “Yes, this means international refugee law.”

The International Law Commission is assessing the legal situation. In 2020, the UN human rights committee ruled that it was unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis.

A new compilation of data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that sea levels are rising fast and the global ocean has warmed faster over the past century than at any time in the past 11,000 years. Sea levels rise as warmer water expands and ice caps and glaciers melt.

Prof Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary general, said: “Sea level rise imposes risks to economies, livelihoods, settlements, health, wellbeing, food and water security and cultural values in the near to long term.”

Floods in Makassar City, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, on Monday. Photograph: Moh Niaz Sharief/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

Guterres said: “Even if global heating is miraculously limited to 1.5C, there will still be a sizeable sea level rise.” A sea level rise of about 50cm by 2100 is likely, but the WMO said there would be a 2-3 metre rise over the next 2,000 years if heating were limited to 1.5C, and 2-6m if it were limited to 2C. A UN report in October said there was “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place”. Current national targets, if met, would mean a 2.4C rise in temperature.

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Higher wheat output could help the world's second-biggest producer of the grain in replenishing depleted inventories and bringing down prices from record levels.

India, also the world's second-biggest consumer of wheat, banned exports in May 2022 after a sharp, sudden rise in temperatures clipped output, even as exports picked up to meet the global shortfall triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

India's wheat output fell to 107.74 million tonnes in 2022 from 109.59 million tonnes a year earlier, data released by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare showed.

The country grows only one wheat crop in a year, with planting in October and November, and harvesting from March.

Despite the expected rise in output, India is considering extending a ban on wheat exports as it seeks to replenish state reserves and bring down domestic prices, government sources said last week.

India's rapeseed production in 2023 could jump 7.1% from a year earlier to a record 12.8 million tonnes, the government said.

A rise in rapeseed output could help the world's biggest edible oil importer reduce overseas purchases of palm oil, soyoil and sunflower oil.

The country's rice production from winter-sown crop could rise to 22.76 million tonnes from 18.47 million tonnes a year earlier, according to the government.

India is the world's biggest exporter of rice.

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How to see without eyes or a protein that senses light

They, a travel agent and a nurse, talked to TODAY about how their lives were upended when the global health crisis struck in early 2020 and if life is getting back to normal for them as Singapore marks a milestone to live with Covid-19 for good, just as it does with endemic diseases such as influenza.

Last week, the Government’s task force for Covid-19 announced that the country’s Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (Dorscon) is lowered from yellow to green and that the task force is standing down.

It signals the official end of Singapore's three-year battle with Covid-19.

Dorscon at green indicates that the disease is mild, or severe but is not easily spread, and causes little disruption to daily life.

The Government also lifted the mask-wearing regulation for people taking public transport starting from yesterday (February 13). Masks must be worn only in patient-facing healthcare settings.

‘We can do this, we must do this’

During the thick of the pandemic, Mashithah Mansor often felt like she was running 10 marathons daily.

The 45-year-old nurse clinician from Changi General Hospital tends to patients who need emergency medical attention and intensive acute care at its medical intensive care unit.

“I recall attending to long emergencies, which required me to be in full personal protective equipment gear. After a few hours, when I get to finally ‘de-gown’, I couldn’t even feel my face and was extremely thirsty from the heat.

“But it was just a quick stand-down before we attended to another emergency call. By the end of the shift, it felt like I ran a marathon 10 times over.”

Mashithah said that the hospital team began preparing for a pandemic as soon as news came in 2020 of the coronavirus being detected.

“After the initial shock (of hearing the news of the virus), those feelings were soon replaced with a sense of duty. It felt like we were gearing up to ‘fight a battle’, but instead of war machinery, we wore our masks, protective suits and a powered air-purifying respirator to face an unseen ‘enemy’.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘We can do this, we must do this and we have to do this. And we will’,” she said.

Now with Singapore back to green for Dorscon, Mashithah said that it feels surreal, like seeing light at “the end of the tunnel”.

During the height of the outbreak, like most healthcare workers, Mashithah was worried that her long exposure in a healthcare facility would risk her contracting the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus causing Covid-19, and infecting her family members, particularly her two young children.

To cope with this anxiety and channel her thoughts elsewhere, she picked up sketching and acrylic painting as a way to capture her experiences through drawings, and shared them with healthcare colleagues who could relate to the drawings.

She also received support and encouragement from her family members, especially her mother, whom she describes as her pillar of strength.

“My mother took over the care of my children. She had to learn how to move with technology and guide my children through their learning. She supported me to the fullest, and would try not to contact me at work unless necessary, for she knew that we were already handling so much at work.”

Mashithah’s mother and aunt also supported her colleagues who could not return to their home countries and see their families, by preparing food for them and even housing one of her junior nurse colleagues who was stranded in Singapore due to border closures.

Now, even though the mask restrictions have been lifted except in certain healthcare settings, Ms Mashithah said that she still continues to wear them when she goes out, especially in indoor spaces, to reduce her chances of contracting Covid-19.

‘Psychological support was really important’

When Singapore's partial lockdown for Covid-19 began in April 2020, Toh Thiam Wei’s travel company had to stop operations immediately for an unknown length of time.

This was when people had to stay home and non-essential businesses and activities came to a halt.

The 41-year-old founder and chief tour guide of Indie Singapore Tours, a Singapore-based travel company, said: “It was a very uncertain time. My wife and I calculated our finances to see how long we could last on our savings before I may have to get a new job altogether.

“It was still a difficult decision to consider because there’s a lot of emotional baggage that we have to work through, since we have built up this business together over the last four to five years.”

Toh and his wife, who have no children, could not earn income during the lockdown, but they managed to tide through with their savings and the occasional payouts that they received from the government.

He added that his wife was his main motivation, helping him to persevere through the lockdown.

“My wife was very supportive of me, but at the same time, she was also practical and critical of our circumstances, whether we had enough to go through the lockdown based on our finances. The psychological support was really important for me at that time,” he recalled.

Soon after the lockdown was over in about two months, Mr Toh’s travel company saw a gradual growth in domestic demand, which reached its peak when the Government launched the SingapoRediscover vouchers in July 2020 to boost spending here on eligible attractions, hotels and tours affected by the pandemic.

Now that the Covid-19 situation here is stable and back to the green stage of Dorscon, Mr Toh is hopeful that demand for his tours will continue to grow and attract visitors, particularly from overseas.

Away from baby at home

Dr Gabriel Yee, 35, remembered that he could not spend much time with his newborn child at the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak.

During the first month of the semi-lockdown in April 2020, he moved out of his home to isolate himself from his family to protect them, in case he got infected by the coronavirus. At the time, it was his wife, who had just given birth to their second child then, and their two-year-old son in the household.

The nature of the virus was still unclear then and he was not sure whether he could contract it from public areas such as when taking public transport.

Dr Yee, who has been working at Bright Vision Community Hospital, which is part of the Singhealth Community Hospitals grouping, moved to an accommodation closer to the hospital.

Bright Vision Community Hospital, located in Yio Chu Kang, looks after patients recently released from hospitals who need post-acute continuing care, rehabilitative care and palliative care.

However, it had to temporarily transform into a Covid-19 hospital isolation facility, helping to care for Covid-19 patients during the pandemic.

Dr Yee also wanted to be nearer to the hospital in case he was called for work, since he had volunteered to do night shifts for two weeks in a row in the first month of the lockdown.

“I told my family I would probably not get home for the first month because I wouldn’t know where I may get the disease, like in public transport areas.

“I was lucky to have a helper (domestic worker) and my mother-in-law to be there for my wife.”

On top of working longer hours and seeing patients from morning to night, Dr Yee said that he also had back-to-back meetings about the Covid-19 developments.

This, along with not being able to travel, were some of the Covid-19 experiences that he would not wish to go through again, he added.

He also said that it was difficult to see some of his colleagues missing crucial years of their family members’ lives because they could not return to their home countries such as Myanmar and the Philippines.

Dr Yee is glad that the Dorscon is now at the green level and also grateful to patients who entrusted their lives to the hospital’s staff members.

“I hope we continue to be kind to each other and to healthcare workers. We should not make unreasonable demands on healthcare workers, like demanding that nurses make and serve Milo,” he said of the hot chocolate-milk drink that is commonly served in hospital wards.

Husband had heart attack

Zainon Mohamed, a 54-year-old taxi driver, said that her family’s household income suffered during the partial lockdown period because she and her husband, a private-hire car driver, had “no passengers”.

The circumstances worsened when her husband contracted Covid-19 and had a heart attack during that same period, forcing him to be out of work for 70 days.

To cope with the income loss, Zainon applied for various financial aid from mosques and social services.

She found work doing Covid-19 nasal swab tests and used her taxi to do food deliveries, which earned her about S$50 a day.

As the sole breadwinner that period, Zainon had to support her young daughter and elderly mother who has been partially bedridden due to a stroke.

“The pandemic, especially the lockdown period, was really difficult for me because I had to support my family. We had to scrimp and save every cent we had,” she said.

“Though I am glad that we are back to normalcy, my family is still scared to spend on non-essential things now since our income is just recovering and we are still in the midst of inflation and there is the Goods and Services Tax increase.”

Despite the hardships, she was heartened by people she met while doing food deliveries.

“I was doing door-to-door food delivery during the Ramadan fasting month. Some of the customers I delivered food to, nearing the time for breaking the fast, had water on standby with snacks like chocolate bars or dates at their doors. They even added little notes wishing me a happy break-fast,” she recounted.

Zainon has returned to full-time work as a taxi driver and is hoping now that she gets more passengers and can earn as much as she did before Covid-19.

“I still haven’t recovered my daily taxi-driver earnings to pre-Covid levels. I need to work about eight hours now to earn what I did when I worked six hours before the pandemic.”

Zainon also said that she is still going to wear a mask when driving because she has asthma and wants to give herself added protection. ― TODAY

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The mind-boggling drama of aerial objects recently spotted in North American airspace continues to unfold, as the US recovers the first Chinese balloon it shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday February 4. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has also launched efforts to recover and study the other three objects recently shot down over the US and Canada. 

“Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure”, the US Northern Command reportedly said in a statement regarding the first object shot down near South Carolina. 

The high-altitude balloon was substantial in size when inflated, measuring "200 feet [60 meters] tall with a jetliner size payload," Assistant Secretary of Defense Melissa Dalton told senators during a hearing last week. 

Senior State Department officials noted that the debris featured "multiple antennas" that were "likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications."

Another picture of the aerial object shot down off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., Feb. 5, 2023. Image credit: US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson

The US maintains that this first object to be shot down was a “spy balloon belonging to the People’s Republic of China.” They have suggested that the object did not pose a physical threat to the US, but was likely “for intelligence collection that’s connected to the People’s Liberation Army.”

They have since stated they believe Chinese spy balloons are most likely circulating in airspace globally. Beijing denies this, arguing that the ballon was simply a weather-tracking instrument that was blown off course. 

After the first balloon was downed on February 4, three more aerial objects have been shot down after entering North American airspace. A flying object described as a type of airship was brought down over the remote northern coast of Alaska on February 10, while a smaller balloon was shot down over Canada’s Yukon on February 11, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed. 

On Sunday February 12, a fourth aerial object was shot down by an air-to-air missile launched by F-16 fighter jets over Michigan’s Lake Huron. 

While the first spy balloon is now in the hands of US authorities, it sounds like they’re having trouble locating the other three. 

“The objects in Alaska and Canada are in pretty remote terrain – ice, wilderness, all of that – making it difficult to find them in winter weather.  And the object over Lake Huron now lies in what is probably very deep water,” John Kirby, a retired rear admiral in the United States Navy serving as Coordinator for Strategic Communications, told a press conference on February 13. 

Earlier on Monday, there was wild speculation after US authorities rejected to rule out that the fourth object over Lake Huron was an alien. Speaking at a press conference, General Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and US Northern Command, was asked whether there was any chance the aircraft was an extraterrestrial. He replied: “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point,” according to the Associated Press.

The White House has since said there's no indication the recent takedowns involved aliens. 

Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre laughed off the suggestion at the press conference on February 13, saying: "I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no – again, no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity – [laughter] – with these recent takedowns. Again, there is no indication of aliens or [extra]terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns."

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A skull belonging to a Byzantine-era woman in central Italy displays signs of having been surgically fiddled with on at least two separate occasions. Reporting the find in a new study, researchers say the unenviable patient probably underwent a series of trepanations in order to treat a “systemic pathological condition,” although they can’t say exactly what was wrong with her or if the surgeries had any positive effect.

The cranium was recovered from the Lombard necropolis of Castel Trosino, which acted as a burial ground between the sixth and eighth centuries. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, the site became a strategic Byzantine stronghold and was inhabited by some of the wealthiest Lombard families.

Excavations at Castel Trosino have turned up lavish grave goods including gold and fine jewelry, yet the study authors say their surprising new discovery represents “the first evidence of a cross-shaped bone modification on a living subject.” 

Apparently made using a sharp-edged metal scraping tool, the cross contains a rounded area of well-healed bone at its center. According to the researchers, such healing usually takes around six months to occur after an injury, suggesting the woman survived the procedure.

However, a second set of “V-shaped marks” show no such healing, which means the woman probably died very soon after this second operation. Whether or not she perished as a direct result of this cranial surgery is unclear, though.

"We found that the woman had survived several surgeries, having undergone long-term surgical therapy, which consisted of a series of successive drillings,” explained study author Ileana Micarelli in a statement. “The last surgery seems to have taken place shortly before the death of the individual,” adds co-author Giorgio Manzi.

That skull scrapings of this sort had never previously been seen at the site led the researchers to question their origin and purpose. For instance, noting that ritualistic trepanation was practiced by the Avar people who inhabited the Carpathian basin during the same historical period, the study authors wondered whether the marks displayed on the woman’s skull may have been symbolic in nature. However, this hypothesis was eventually dismissed as there is no archaeological evidence to support ritualistic trepanation at Castel Trosino.

The researchers also considered whether the markings could have been left by a brutal form of judicial punishment known as decalvatio, which involves mutilation by scalping. However, records suggest that this rare and dishonorable penalty was only applied to soldiers who deserted the battlefield or those who traded without a license. Furthermore, the shape and distribution of the woman’s skull markings don’t match those associated with decalvatio, which was therefore dismissed as a possible cause.

A medical explanation was ultimately determined to be the most likely, despite the fact that the researchers found no direct evidence of “trauma, tumor, congenital disorder, or other pathology.”

“However, the presence of porosity on the skull surface and the lesion on the ectocranial surface suggests a systemic pathological condition,” write the study authors. After analyzing texts from the first, seventh and 12th centuries, the researchers note that cross-shaped trepanations were common procedures in antiquity, further supporting the idea that the markings were derived from some sort of surgery.

“This represents one of the few pieces of archeological evidence of a trepanation surgery performed on Early Medieval women paving the path for future research on the rationale behind this dangerous surgical procedure in this period,” conclude the authors.

The study has been published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

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You wait decades for the military to start downing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) then suddenly they're dropping out of the sky like month-old birthday balloons.

The US has downed a fourth flying object this week, taking care to not rule out the possibility of aliens before taking a more sensible approach and denying it was aliens. With all the commotion and speculation (could it be spy balloons?) you may have missed that the objects are not just hovering above the US and Canada. The government of China – who have been blamed for the potential surveillance tools, pretty definitively for the first object, which they say was a weather balloon – claims that they have been dealing with their own UFO.

According to Chinese state-affiliated news outlet Global Times, authorities in East China's Shandong Province have reported an unidentified object near the coastal city of Rizhao. The outlet claims that the authorities were preparing to shoot it out of the sky on Sunday, warning fishing vessels in the area to stay safe.

It is of course possible (perhaps likely) that this is a minor deflection by China after four objects – speculated to be Chinese spy balloons – were found over the US. Or it could be some other innocuous weather balloon, or it could be that China, like the US, has focused a little more attention on smaller objects caught on radar than usual following the discovery of the first balloon in the US.

China is not the only state that uses balloons for surveillance purposes. China has been spotted flying military balloons over Taiwan over the last few years, but the US also has its own balloon projects and was reported in May 2022 to be creating inflatables that could fly between 18.2 and 27.4 kilometers (60,000 and 90,000 feet). According to the International Security Program and Missile Defense Project director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, these balloons could even deliver several payloads.

Balloons, though primitive compared to satellites, are advantageous in that you can launch them silently, director of the RAF Centre for Air and Space Power Studies Dr David Jordan told The Guardian. Satellites are also tracked by whoever you are attempting to spy on, meaning that you can do any activity you like outside of times you know it will be overhead, or even dazzle them with lasers.

There are, of course, obvious disadvantages too.

"They go where the winds take them,” Jordan told The Guardian. “I’m surprised the Chinese would resort to it ... Why not just send a guy in a campervan to drive around?”

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The two boys and three girls were born through cesarean section Sunday, in the pregnancy's 28th week, at the University Hospital in Krakow.

Weighing between 710-1,400 grams (25-49 ounces,) they were all put in incubators and given breathing support, but doctors said they are all doing fine, given their premature birth.

The quintuplets' mother, Dominika Clarke, 37, told a news conference in Krakow Tuesday that she was feeling "much better than I had expected."

"If you have a system, a calm approach and a positive attitude, then it is possible to have a really cool life with such a large bunch of children," Clarke said.

Clarke and her British husband's other children are aged between 10 months and 12 years, and include two pairs of twins.

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If the climate crisis is allowed to deepen, the melting of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets alone could contribute about 1.4 meters (4.5 feet) to global sea level rise, according to a new study. That figure is before we even consider the impact of other contributions to the sea level rise, such as the thermal expansion of ocean water.

It almost goes without saying that this would be catastrophic for many of the world’s coastal communities, which are already starting to feel the sting of sea level rise. 

The global average sea level has risen by about 20 centimeters (7.8 inches) in the past century. In terms of future projections, it can be a tricky thing to calculate as it involves complex interactions between ice sheets, icebergs, oceans, and the atmosphere. One thing that’s often not appreciated in forecasts is the complicated way ice sheets will react to climate change. 

“Computer models that simulate the dynamics of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica often do not account for the fact that ice sheet melting will affect ocean processes, which, in turn, can feed back onto the ice sheet and the atmosphere,” Jun Young Park, first study author and PhD student at the IBS Center for Climate Physics and Pusan National University in South Korea, explained in a statement.

In the new study, the researchers in South Korea used supercomputer simulations to work out how climate change will impact sea level rise by understanding the melting of ice sheets and the fiddly feedback cycles that involves. 

The simulations ran through a number of different scenarios, such as whether the world addresses its fossil fuel use, whether we don't take enough suitable action, or – most disastrously – the burning of fossil fuels is intensified.

The main finding is that there will be an irreversible loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets by 2150 under a high-emission future scenario. Under this pessimistic scenario, the melting of these two giant ice sheets alone will result in 1.4 meters (4.5 feet) of global sea level rise 

Even under a more forgiving scenario where fossil fuels are curbed by the end of this century, ice sheets alone are still likely to contribute to around 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) of sea level rise by 2150. If things stay the same as present, we're perhaps looking at least 100 centimeters (39 inches) of sea level rise from ice sheets melting. 

The study authors argue that the only way to prevent an ice sheet/sea level run-away effect is to reach net-zero carbon emissions before 2060. Many countries have pledged to aim for net-zero by 2050, but there’s tons of skepticism around whether their goals will be achieved or whether countries will sneakily carry on with business as usual. 

“If we miss this emission goal, the ice sheets will disintegrate and melt at an accelerated pace, according to our calculations. If we don’t take any action, retreating ice sheets would continue to increase sea level by at least 100 centimeters within the next 130 years. This would be on top of other contributions, such as the thermal expansion of ocean water” added Professor Axel Timmermann, co-author of the study and Director of the IBS Center for Climate Physics.

The new study was published today in the journal Nature Communications. 

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New research has looked at the vast climate “teleconnections” that span across our planet, potentially linking droughts and driving wildfires around the world.

Teleconnection is the idea in atmospheric science that climate and weather events in geographically distant places can be tightly related. After all, the planet is a vast interconnected system.

A freakishly heavy period of rain, for example, could be linked to another downfall miles upon miles away on a different continent. These cross-continental links are often the product of patterns in sea surface temperature or atmospheric pressure variations that swing from season-to-season or even over decades. 

Two new studies released this year have explored this concept, with one looking at wildfires and the other at record-breaking rainfall events. 

As reported in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, scientists worked out that the devastating deluges of record rainfall in September 2021 that hit both Northwest India and North China were closely linked through teleconnection patterns. 

The rain in this period was 4.1 and 6.2 times standard deviation higher than typical levels in the two regions, respectively, causing a massive amount of damage to infrastructure and human life. It was especially unexpected as the rainy season is generally in July and August, which is typically followed by drier weather. 

The researchers found that the western-flowing upper-tropospheric jet streams in Asia were displaced towards the North Pole as they glided into West Asia. In turn, an anomalous cyclone appeared over India, resulting in abundant water vapor hovering into Northwest India that drove the heavy rainfall there.

Likewise, a high-altitude wind stream over the Eurasian continent also meant the conditions in Northwest India contributed to the heavy rainfall in North China.

"Climate extremes in one region can be related to, or lead to, those in other regions, through atmospheric teleconnection patterns. The more frequent and stronger climate extremes expected under global warming will trigger these atmospheric teleconnections to occur more often, which in turn could induce climate extremes in far-away regions worldwide," Riyu Lu, lead author of the study and a professor at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement. 

A second paper, published in the journal Nature Communications last month, has detailed the teleconnection patterns between wildfires. They measured the amount of land burned around the world between 1982 to 2018 and found distant regions of the world had significant synchronous, or predictably lagged, outbursts of droughts and wildfires. 

In other words, there are parts of the world – such as North Africa, the Sahara, southern Africa, the Andes, and northern Australia – that are more likely to experience harmonized droughts with each other and, in turn, synchronized wildfires. 

All together, the study estimates that these trans-continental weather patterns account for around 53 percent of the planet’s burned area each year.

“They are a kind of complex butterfly effect, in that things that are occurring in one place have many derivatives very far away,” Sergio de Miguel, an ecosystem scientist at Spain’s University of Lleida and the Joint Research Unit CTFC-Agrotecnio in Solsona, told Science News.

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The study analyzed diagrams in Leonardo's now-digitized notebooks, including sketches of triangles that show the relationship between natural motion, directed motion, and the equalization of motion – a recognition that gravity is a kind of acceleration.

In Leonardo's case, this involved thinking about sand pouring from a jar. What the polymath realized was that if the jar was pulled along a horizontal plane at the same speed as the force pulling down the grains, the sand would form the hypotenuse of a triangle. This realization of the change in speed a falling object undergoes over time forms a crucial step on the way to finding the gravitational constant on Earth.

The triangle established by Leonardo. (Gharib et al., Leonardo, 2022)

"About 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci tried to uncover the mystery of gravity and its connection to acceleration through a series of ingenious experiments guided only by his imagination and masterful experimental techniques," write the researchers in their published paper.

This gravitational constant would later be used by Newton to define his laws of motion (including gravity), and by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity. Leonardo knew he had found something, but he wasn't certain quite what it was.

Part of that uncertainty was because Leonardo subscribed to Aristotle's idea of continuous force known as impetus, which fills projectiles and provides them with a drive to move against gravity. The principle of inertia – where objects simply continue to travel in a direction until they're met with an opposing force – had not yet been established in the science of the time.

Running Leonardo's experiments in a modern lab. (Caltech)

Gravity, meanwhile, was explained by Aristotle as a tendency for materials to arrange themselves according to a natural order. In other words, gravity and flying projectiles were explained by two very different theories.

While there were errors in his calculations, recreations of Leonardo's experiments in the lab revealed his algorithm calculated the elusive gravitational constant ("g") to 97 percent accuracy, compared with modern methods and equations.

"By developing a geometrical equivalency approach to demonstrate the laws of motion, Leonardo showed remarkable insight into the dynamics of falling objects by avoiding the need to know the exact value of 'g', as long as we assume that 'g' represents the rate of change of velocity or acceleration," write the researchers.

"If he conducted the experiment that he depicted in his manuscript, then he could have been the first human who knowingly generated a 'g' force effect without being in a free-fall condition."

The researchers were particularly impressed with Leonardo's methods, using what was available to him at the time – primarily geometry – and using that to investigate something unknown. That same innovation can still be applied to science today.

Newton didn't come up with his law of universal gravitation on his own: Galileo recognized the relationship between free fall motion and time in 1604, while Newton himself credits the findings of Bullialdus and Borelli in informing his theories.

As it turns out, Leonardo da Vinci was on the right track too, identifying patterns in the way that objects fall that would later be used to explain the movements of stars and planets – and famously to predict the existence of Neptune.

"We don't know if [Leonardo] did further experiments or probed this question more deeply," says mechanical engineer Morteza Gharib from the California Institute of Technology.

"But the fact that he was grappling with the problems in this way – in the early 1500s – demonstrates just how far ahead his thinking was."

The research has been published in Leonardo.

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Rebecca Kelly and colleagues analyzed data from 110,497 individuals from the UK Biobank who had completed at least two dietary assessments.

The researchers tracked individuals for approximately 9.4 years, and during this time, total cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke combined), heart disease, and stroke occurred in 4,188, 3,138, and 1,124 participants, respectively.

The authors found total carbohydrate intake was not associated with cardiovascular disease outcomes. However, when looking at the types and sources of carbohydrates consumed, they found that higher free sugar intake from foods such as sugary drinks, fruit juice and sweets was associated with increased risk of all cardiovascular disease outcomes. For each 5% higher total energy from free sugars, the associated risk of total cardiovascular disease was 7% higher. The authors found that the risk of heart disease was 6% higher, while the risk of stroke was 10% higher. Additionally, consuming five grams more fiber per day was associated with 4% lower risk of total cardiovascular disease, but this association did not remain significant after accounting for body mass index (BMI).

The authors suggest that replacing free sugars with non-free sugars—mostly those naturally occurring in whole fruits and vegetables—and a higher fiber intake may help protect against cardiovascular disease.

The authors conclude that not all carbohydrates may be associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and that it is important to consider the type and source of carbohydrates consumed when researching cardiovascular health.

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NEW DELHI – India has opened the first stage of an expressway linking its capital New Delhi to its financial centre of Mumbai.

The new eight-lane carriageway – with four lanes in each direction – is 1,386km long.

Once completed, the expressway will cut travel time between the two cities to 12 hours, halving the amount of time needed for the journey by road now.

On Sunday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the expressway’s 246km first stage.

It links New Delhi with the city of Jaipur, a popular tourist destination and the capital of the north-western state of Rajasthan.

Mr Modi said it was a “sign of developing India”, adding that “such investments in railways, highways, subway lines and airports are a key to pushing the country’s growth rate, attracting more investments and creating fresh jobs”.

The entire expressway will cost US$13 billion (S$17.3 billion).

It is part of an infrastructure push for India to catch up with its geopolitical rival, China.

India is the world’s fastest-growing major economy. However, its infrastructure remains far behind that of China’s.

New Delhi is also trying to decouple itself from Beijing’s supply chains and build up its economic capacity, especially after a deadly military clash on their Himalayan frontier in 2020.

To this end, India has accelerated many key projects.

In February, Mr Modi’s government announced an unprecedented 33 per cent increase in infrastructure spending.

The Prime Minister is also expected to open at least a dozen major railways, highways and port projects in the coming months.

‘Geopolitical sweet spot’

India has one of the world’s largest rail networks, but it is badly outdated.

It needs huge investments in both track and rolling stock, with the authorities seeking to tap capital for these investments.

Beijing has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure over many years, and China now boasts an extensive motorway system, gleaming airports and, by far, the world’s largest high-speed rail network.

Professor Harsh V. Pant of King’s College London told AFP that with China “losing some of its lustre”, policymakers in India feel their country “is in a geopolitical and geoeconomic sweet spot which needs to be leveraged with higher infrastructure investments to make it an even more lucrative and attractive economy”.

He added: “China’s economic growth and infrastructure development started a few decades before (India’s) so there is still a lot that it needs to do in terms of matching up to China.” AFP

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Over the weekend, three unidentified objects were discovered and shot down in as many days over Alaska, the Yukon Territory in Canada, and Lake Huron off the coast of Michigan. The government has been mum about what exactly these objects are, fueling the fires of speculation that they could be anything from more Chinese spy balloons to visitors from other planets.

But what are they exactly—and should we be worried about the burgeoning alien vs human wars going down above our heads? Let’s break down a few questions you might have about the UFOs.

The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, U.S. February 4, 2023. RANDALL HILL/REUTERS © Provided by The Daily Beast

How many objects were shot down?

Four objects have been shot down over U.S. airspace since last weekend. The first, of course, was the Chinese spy balloon, downed Feb. 4 by an F-22 fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina. But the identity and origins of that aerial object was clear—a far cry from what we’d see just a week later.

On Feb. 10, an unidentified object was shot over Alaska. The White House noted that it was roughly the size of a small car, and the Pentagon said that it broke into pieces after being shot—which suggests it was likely not a balloon.

Then, on Feb. 11, Canadian President Justin Trudeau announced that another UFO was shot down over the Yukon Territory. This object was cylindrical. Like the others, it’s still a mystery as to what it was exactly.

And finally, on Feb. 12, a UFO was shot over Lake Huron near Michigan. The object flew over Montana on Saturday before reappearing on Sunday flying at roughly 20,000 feet. Intriguingly, the Pentagon said that this object was octagonal shaped and had strings hanging off of it.

What the heck are they?

No one really knows yet. U.S. and Canadian officials are currently working to recover any pieces left of the objects that were shot down. Afterwards, they’ll work on reverse engineering them in order to learn their origins and purpose.

Recovery efforts are being hampered due to extremely low temperatures in Alaska, with the temp dipping to roughly -55 degrees Fahrenheit. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have also warned residents in the Yukon Territory not to approach the debris.

On Feb. 13, the White House announced it would be forming a task force in order to dig into what exactly these objects are and where they came from.

“The president, through his national security adviser, has today directed an interagency team to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risk,” John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, said in a statement.

Is any other country experiencing these UFOs?

Yes. China reported on Feb. 12 that they spotted an object flying over the northern coastal town of Rizhao and are prepared to shoot it down. This comes on the heels of Beijing alleging that the U.S. has sent upwards of 10 spy balloons over China throughout the years—no doubt a bit of retaliatory finger pointing after we shot down their spy balloon last week.

Meanwhile, South America is also experiencing its own UFO issue—Uruguay announced on Feb. 11 that it had seen “flashing lights in the sky” and are planning to potentially scramble jets to deal with it.

Are these UFOs aliens from another planet?

Probably not. National security officials told reporters on Sunday that objects flown over North America weren’t alien visitors. However, General Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the U.S. Air Force’s Northern Command, said at a press briefing that “I haven’t ruled out anything at this point.”

So, there’s a slight chance that they could be aliens from another planet. If that’s the case, don’t expect the government to outright say it anytime soon.

Are these UFOs from China or another country?

Probably yes. Some national security and defense experts have speculated that these new UFOs could be a part of a concerted effort to test out the U.S. military’s response to flying objects. This could help inform future spying efforts—or even warfare.

After all, if you know how quickly we’d respond to something like a balloon, it could give you insights into how we might respond to, say, a fighter jet or an incoming missile.

Why so many now?

There could be a variety of different reasons we’re seeing so many instances of UFOs appear now. In fact, there’s a slight chance that the UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomenon, as the U.S. government officially calls them) that have been reported in the past few weeks aren’t terribly out of the ordinary—especially when you consider the fact that UFOs have been a fairly common occurrence with the military personnel.

Just last month, U.S. national intelligence officials released a new report on UFO sightings—saying that they had reports of 366 UFOs in 2022 alone. On Monday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted that unidentified objects have been flying over the U.S. “for years,” which is part of the reason he helped form Congress’s UAP task force.

So why are we seeing so many of them being publicly acknowledged and shot down by the government now? Part of it is likely due to the fact that tensions are high between China and the U.S. Everyone is on edge ever since the spy balloon was discovered last week. It could be a way for the U.S. to show that it won’t take matters like spycraft lightly.

The U.S. government more broadly has made a more concerted effort in recent years to be transparent about UFO phenomenon. Letting the public know about these sightings and when we take military action on it might be a consequence of that increased transparency.

Part of it could also be attributed to the psychological phenomenon known as the “frequency illusion.” This is a type of cognitive bias that causes people to notice things more after learning about it for the first time. Think of when you learned a new word, for instance, and started hearing it everywhere. We could be seeing a type of frequency illusion being played out on a geopolitical scale.

Whatever the case may be, it’s no doubt unsettling that we’re starting to hear more about UFOs in the air—and them being shot out of the skies.

It’s certainly unsettling too that it doesn’t seem like anyone knows what they are. Then again, we might not be all that comforted if we did know its origins. Think about it: Would you rather these objects be from an adversarial nation with a sizable nuclear arsenal? Or from aliens with a far more technologically superior civilization that we’ve maybe started a war with?

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Nearly three out of five high-school girls in the U.S. who were surveyed reported feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2021, a roughly 60% increase over the past decade, new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

Though both high-school girls and boys reported experiencing mental-health challenges, girls reported record high levels of sexual violence, sadness and suicide risk, the CDC said. In 2021, 57% of high-school girls reported experiencing persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year, compared with 36% in 2011. Thirty percent reported they seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021, up from 19% in 2011.

The CDC found that 29% of high-school boys reported experiences of persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2021 compared with 21% in 2011. Meanwhile, 14% of high-school boys reported to have seriously considered attempting suicide, up from 13% in 2011.

“These data show that the mental-health crisis among young people continues,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of CDC’s division of adolescent and school health.

Federal officials highlighted the problem of mental health among young people, especially girls, in the new data released Monday. The data, gathered from a biennial survey from 2011 to 2021 of ninth- to 12th-graders across the country, add to evidence suggesting the stresses, isolation and loss of the Covid-19 pandemic worsened mental-health issues among young people, many of whom were already struggling.

Girls are particularly vulnerable to anxiety and depression, mental-health experts say, given the higher rates of harassment and discrimination they face compared with boys. They also face career pressures, high beauty standards and the expectation of motherhood, they say.

The CDC, which included 17,232 respondents in its 2021 data, said the report showed ongoing and extreme distress among teens who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning their sexual identity, or another nonheterosexual gender identity. More than half of these students reported recently experiencing poor mental health and 22% reported attempted suicide the past year, the CDC said. The report also showed that persistent sadness or hopelessness worsened across all racial and ethnic groups, and reported suicide attempts increased among Black and white youth.

Among the teenagers surveyed, girls were more likely to experience sexual violence, the CDC found. Eighteen percent of girls in high school said they experienced sexual violence in the past year, compared with 15% in 2017, the first year the CDC began monitoring this trend. Fourteen percent of teenage girls reported being forced to have sex when they did not want to, up from 12% in 2011, the CDC said.

“This is truly alarming,” said Dr. Ethier. “For every 10 teenage girls you know, at least one of them, and probably more, has been raped.”

The U.S. needs to focus on programs that will prevent sexual violence, said Debra Houry, CDC chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science. She referenced programs like Green Dot, which encourages bystanders to take action against sexual harassment and violence, as part of the solution.

Schools should prioritize teaching kids about sexual consent, managing emotions and asking for what they need, the CDC said. In addition, school environments need to be safer and more inclusive for LGBTQ+ students, the agency added. Schools should encourage gender and sexuality alliances, provide safe spaces and people for LGBTQ+ students to go to for support, and ensure enforcement of antiharassment policies, the CDC said.

The CDC also called on schools to take a more active role in improving mental health. Schools are a key pathway to health, behavioral and mental-health services, the agency said, and can provide services directly or refer students to resources in the community.

“This feels uniquely validating—the CDC has caught up to what we’re dealing with,” said Shilpa R. Taufique, a clinical psychologist and director of the Comprehensive Adolescent Rehabilitation and Education Service at Mount Sinai Morningside, a program that works with New York City’s Department of Education to provide therapy and educational support to at-risk youth in an alternative school district. She called on federal agencies to funnel more resources into schools and training of school staff and administrators, in particular.

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SEATTLE — Dark chocolate has a reputation as a relatively healthy treat, but research showing some popular bars might have potentially unsafe levels of heavy metals has many questioning how safe these treats are.

Consumer Reports tested 28 popular dark chocolate bars from Seattle’s own Theo Chocolate to Trader Joe’s, Hershey’s to Ghirardelli, and even smaller brands such as Alter Eco and Mast.

The study found cadmium and lead in every single bar.

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, Consumer Reports last month called on chocolate makers to commit by Feb. 14 to reducing levels of heavy metals in their bars. The letters were sent alongside a petition with nearly 55,000 signatures.

With no federal limit set on heavy metals in foods, researchers used California’s limitations on lead and cadmium, the most protective in the country, to determine which chocolates posed the most risk.

California’s daily maximum allowable dose levels (MADL), set by Proposition 65, require businesses to provide warnings to Californians if a product leads to toxic chemical exposures that can cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. The limits were set for lead starting in 1988 and cadmium in 1997.

For 23 of the chocolate bars Consumer Reports tested, eating just 1 ounce exceeded California’s limits of 0.5 micrograms per day for lead – or about 1% of the weight of the average grain of sand – and 4.1 micrograms per day for cadmium.

One ounce of Theo’s Organic Extra Dark Pure Dark Chocolate 85% Cocoa chocolate bar, which is roughly one serving size, contained 140% of California’s maximum daily allowable dose of lead and 189% of the dose of cadmium, Consumer Reports found.

Consumer Reports also listed Theo’s Organic Pure Dark 70% Cocoa as having high levels of both.

Although Consumer Reports cites MADL guidelines, official food safety standards are based on different limits. Many of the brands producing the chocolate bars tested in the study, including Theo Chocolate, follow thresholds set by a 2018 California consent judgment. The judgment established concentration limits for lead and cadmium that the chocolate industry follows.

Under California law, the concentration levels set in the judgment supersede the standards cited in the study; bars that contain levels above those set in the judgment require warning labels when sold in California.

“At Theo, the safety and quality of our products is our top priority, and we are confident that our products meet the standards outlined in our industry and are safe to be consumed,” said a Theo Chocolate spokesperson in an emailed statement.

“All products in the study – including Theo – are well under these limits,” the spokesperson said, referring to the 2018 standards.

Both the 70% and 85% Theo chocolate bars fall below the judgment’s threshold for lead and cadmium in chocolate bars with 65% to 95% cacao content.

Consistent, long-term exposure to even small amounts of heavy metals like lead and cadmium can cause a variety of health problems, particularly in children and pregnant people.

Lead exposure can slow the growth and development of children, particularly “their brain development, behavioral development and can even cause aggressive behaviors,” said Dr. Holly Davies, a toxicologist at the Washington State Department of Health.

Cadmium exposure can cause damage to the kidneys, lungs, and bones, she said.

Lead exposure becomes more dangerous as it accumulates in the body, and it can also cause hypertension and neurological effects, Davies said.

Five of the 28 bars Consumer Reports tested had levels of lead and cadmium below California’s MADL limits. Those safer bars were Ghirardelli Intense Dark (both 72% and 86% cacao), Taza Chocolate Deliciously Dark (70%), Mast Dark Chocolate (80%), and Valrhona Abinao (85%).

In response to the 2018 consent judgment, the National Confectioners Association and nonprofit advocacy group As You Sow – with contributions from more than 30 chocolate companies (including Theo) – released a three-year expert research study. The study concluded in August 2022.

The expert committee unanimously agreed it is feasible for the chocolate industry to manufacture chocolate products with lower levels of lead than the thresholds outlined in the judgment, although they did not agree on what those levels are.

The experts did not reach an agreement on whether the chocolate industry can produce products with lower levels of cadmium than those in the judgment.

Within their recommendations, only one member, toxicologist Michael DiBartolomeis, provided recommendations for maximum thresholds of both lead and cadmium. DiBartolomeis’ recommendations are lower than the judgment and MADL thresholds.

Both Theo chocolate bars included in the Consumer Reports study had lead and cadmium levels above DiBartolomeis’ recommended limits for chocolate bars with 65% to 95% cacao content.

The expert committee also found cadmium exposure in cacao occurs naturally before harvest, while lead levels are influenced by where and how the cocoa beans are handled by humans after harvest.

The committee recommended changes to harvesting and manufacturing processes such as decreasing soil contact or even changing the pH of soils to reduce exposure to lead and cadmium.

The Consumer Reports letters calling for several chocolate makers to take action by Feb. 14 come after more than a dozen lawsuits against leading manufacturers since the release of the December study.

Consumers have sued Trader Joe’s at least nine times over its dark chocolate products, most recently with a pair of class-action lawsuits out of New York.

Hershey’s, which makes another one of the chocolate bars tested in the Consumer Reports study, is facing its class-action lawsuit filed in the same court as one of the suits against Trader Joe’s.

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Balloons and as yet unidentified flying objects are popping up all over the place at the moment. As well as four (so far) objects being shot down above the US and Canada, China says it is preparing to down one in its air space, while the Uruguayan air force is investigating reports and photos of flashing lights over the Termas de Almirón area.

Prompted by this, the US Naval Institute decided to share its own story of a mysterious aircraft that came the Navy's way in 1945 (though a different account places it in 1941).

According to the US Naval Institute, a captain aboard the USS New York spotted a sphere in the sky, and ordered it to be shot down, believing it to be a "Japanese balloon weapon". 

According to Lanson B. Ditto, who was serving on the ship (actually the USS Langley) at the time, the crew fired about 300 rounds at the object before realizing it was celestial.

“About noon on December 9, 1941 we were steaming south on open seas when a plane was sighted," Ditto said of the incident.  

"We opened fire at what we thought was the altitude of the plane. We had to estimate. We set a fuse to go off at an estimated altitude. We started out at 5,000 feet [1,524 meters] and could see that it was coming up short, so we raised to about 7,500 feet [2,286 meters] and could see that it was short, too. So, we raised it up to the maximum of 10,000 feet [3,048 meters]."

The team still couldn't get a good shot at it, which isn't surprising as they were aiming about 82 million kilometers too low.

"Pretty soon, word came down from the navigator," he added. "It was determined that this was the planet Venus. It turned out that we had fired 300 rounds at the planet Venus."

Ditto went on to sink twice during the war, once on the USS Langley, and survived both.

"Recently, I’ve seen satellite pictures of the planet Venus, and I noticed pockmarks," he reflected later. "So maybe we did hit our target.”

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Many people like to drink dietary supplements for a pre-workout boost. These often contain caffeine, creatine, and other ingredients said to have benefits for exercise performance. Many come in powdered form, designed to be dissolved in liquid before consumption. However, a concerning trend sparked on TikTok and other social media platforms has seen a rise in the so-called “dry scooping” of these powders, and a new study of Canadian adolescents found that 16.9 percent of those surveyed had tried this technique in the preceding 12 months.

What is dry scooping and what are the risks?

Dry scooping literally means eating a scoop of powder without first mixing it into a drink. Those who remember the viral cinnamon challenge – for reference, we’re talking way back in the heady days of the Harlem shake and the ice bucket challenge – will be aware of the concept.

Apart from the unpleasantness of trying to swallow a mouthful of powdery dryness, there are some serious potential health consequences to be aware of. This was highlighted by one mother in 2015 after her four-year-old son tragically died when he accidentally ingested almost an entire container of cinnamon powder. The woman begged people still considering the viral challenge to think again, describing how the cinnamon powder entered her son’s lungs, eventually suffocating him.

Accidental inhalation and choking is a risk when ingesting any powdered substance in large quantity, but some of the ingredients that are specifically found in pre-workout supplements can cause their own set of problems. 

Take, for example, caffeine. The doses of caffeine in these types of products can be very high, and taking the powder without diluting it first means you’re effectively getting all that caffeine in one go. This can lead to rapid heart rate, chest pain, and dizziness, among other symptoms. If not treated in time, caffeine toxicity can be fatal.

The US National Capital Poison Center also notes that pre-workout supplements are not well regulated, and therefore could contain other – potentially toxic – ingredients that are missing from the label.

Essentially, the message is that these products are supposed to be diluted for a reason, and should only be taken per the directions on the packaging. So why the rise in dry scooping in the first place, and how widespread is this trend?

Why are people dry scooping and how common is it?

The main justification for dry scooping is the claim that it allows the pre-workout supplements to be absorbed, and therefore take effect, more quickly than consuming them in the proper way. Speaking to Fatherly, primary care and sports medicine physician Dr Benedict Ifedi pointed out that, while that may be true, it’s not necessarily a good thing.

Aside from the risks we’ve already discussed around consuming large amounts of these ingredients in a short space of time, there isn’t a whole lot of research to suggest that pre-workout supplements are even worth bothering with in the first place.

A 2018 review found that certain pre-workout supplements could be a useful addition to an athlete’s training regimen, but highlighted the paucity of long-term safety studies, and the importance of discussing supplementation with a healthcare provider to ensure there are no interactions with other medications that might need to be taken into account. Another review highlighted the need for better regulation of these products, to try to mitigate the risks associated with fraudulent ingredient labeling. And, as dietician Kate Patton told Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, you may be able to get all the same benefits from a carefully balanced diet.

With all the videos and media coverage warning about the dangers of dry scooping, though, there had not been an attempt by researchers to clarify how widespread the practice might be in different groups. That is, until a new study looked at data from 2,371 young people included in the Canadian Study of Adolescent Health Behaviors.

“To date […] there have been no epidemiological studies investigating the occurrence of dry scooping among young people, leaving significant information unknown,” said lead author Kyle T. Ganson, of the University of Toronto, in a statement.

In total, 16.9 percent of the young people included in the survey reported dry scooping within the previous year. It was significantly more common in those who identified as male (21.8 percent), compared with those identifying as female (14.2 percent), or transgender/gender non-conforming (8 percent).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, dry scooping was more likely to be reported by those who take part in weight training, and those who spend more of their time on social media. “Our data shows that novel dietary phenomena that become popularized on social media and within gym culture can lead to a greater likelihood of engagement,” said Ganson.

The researchers were also concerned about the link they found between dry scooping and clinical symptoms of muscle dysmorphia – a mental health condition in which people become preoccupied with building muscle due to the distorted perception that their bodies are too small. The need to achieve what they consider to be the ideal body may lead them to dangerous practices like dry scooping.

What’s clear from all of this is that more research is needed to better understand how pre-workout supplements may be affecting people over the long term, and how they may be safely incorporated into a fitness regimen. The researchers emphasized the need for better education about the potential harms of dry scooping, as well as greater awareness among health professionals.

“We need health care and mental health care providers to be knowledgeable of these unique dietary practices aimed at increasing performance and musculature, such as dry scooping,” Ganson concluded.

The new study is published in the journal Eating Behaviors.

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The secret lives of neutron stars

 

Despite car enthusiasts' best efforts, the manual transmission’s days are numbered. Blame it on electrification, future autonomous technologies, or the fact that kids these days just don’t care about driving. Whatever helps you cope with this inevitability, the demise of the stick shift is not an "if," it’s a "when."

 

That’s not to say the manual’s death will be quick; plenty of companies continue to offer three-pedal setups. But who will be the final holdout, the last bastion of the DIY gearbox? Will it be a sports car or an out-of-left-field contender? Put on your speculation cap as we explore some potential scenarios.

Option 1: Porsche

Arguably no car company is as committed to stick shifts as Porsche. The German automaker offers six- and seven-speed gearboxes in multiple models across its 718 and 911 car lines and continues to do so despite competitors discontinuing their manual options.

 

Customers definitely appreciate this commitment. Porsche says that when it decided to offer a six-speed manual in the previous 991-generation 911 GT3, the take rate for this transmission was nearly 80 percent. This vested interest is why Porsche decided to keep the manual alive from the get-go with the 992 GT3. Sure, the manual GT3 is a lot slower in the all-important 0-to-60-mph dash than a model equipped with the company’s PDK dual-clutch automatic, but it’s also not nearly as fun.

 

"The number of cars industry-wide with a manual transmission is declining, yet a significant number of Porsche customers are opting for a manual on models where we offer it," Kjell Gruner, president and CEO of Porsche Cars North America, told Ars. "One in three 911 customers choose a manual where it’s an option, and the numbers are even higher for 718. For those drivers, there’s nothing quite like the physical feeling of a perfect three-two downshift heading into a corner. It just feels good."

Option 2: Cheap and cheerful

Porsche is certainly more dedicated to its enthusiast customer base than most companies, but it’s not the only automaker that trumpets the glory of manual driving. From hot hatches to sedans to coupes and roadsters, a number of less-expensive cars could be a final source of salvation for manual holdouts.

 

The Subaru BRZ and Toyota GR86 twins are prime examples. According to Subaru, 71 percent of current BRZ customers opt for the coupe's six-speed manual transmission. "Overall, the take rate has been around 70 percent for most of BRZ’s life," a Subaru spokesperson told Ars.

 

Then there’s the all-time icon of fun, the Mazda MX-5 Miata. The Japanese automaker has long said the Miata will always be a core part of its lineup, and come on, can you imagine a world where a Miata doesn’t offer a stick? Even now, in the roadster’s fourth generation, manual models account for roughly half of all Miata sales.

 

Other small performance cars offer additional possibilities. The Honda Civic Si sedan and Type R hatchback are only offered with a six-speed manual gearbox, and this transmission comes with an automatic rev-matching function to make shifting for yourself slightly easier, too.

The final shift: Which manual transmission will be the last?

Akash Banerjee isn’t sure whether he’s allowed to talk about the BBC documentary India: The Modi Question on his YouTube channel. The documentary examines Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in deadly riots in the West Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, and the government has worked hard to keep Indians from watching it. Screenings at universities have been banned; in one case, students said authorities shut off electricity and the internet to stop it being shown, and clips of the documentary itself have been removed from Twitter and YouTube after the Indian government cited controversial emergency powers.

“The fact is that emergency powers are for something which is a very serious grave security implication that threatens the sovereignty of the nation, the peace of the nation,” says Banerjee, a seasoned journalist who runs The Deshbhakt (“the patriot”), a satirical YouTube channel covering politics and international affairs. Using that, the government has banned a documentary that talks about “something that happened years ago.”

This has left Banerjee, whose channel has nearly 3 million regular viewers, uncertain about where the red lines are. “I don’t know if I make a video on the BBC documentary, can the government pull that off, also citing emergency powers?” Banerjee says. For the time being, he’s self-censoring, holding off on posting anything about a drama that has gripped Indian politics for weeks.

Banerjee’s reluctance to address the controversy reflects the chilling effect of the Indian government’s multidimensional squeeze on the internet. Over the past few years, the administration has handed itself new powers that tighten controls over online content, allowing authorities to legally intercept messages, break encryption, and shut down telecoms networks during moments of political turmoil. In 2021 alone, the government resorted to internet blackouts more than 100 times. Over the past 10 months, the administration has banned over 200 YouTube channels, accusing them of spreading disinformation or threatening national security.

Over the next few months, the government will add yet more legislation that will likely expand its powers. Lawyers, digital rights activists, and journalists say this amounts to an attempt to reshape the Indian internet, creating a less free, less pluralistic space for the country’s 800 million users. It’s a move that could have profound consequences beyond India’s borders, they say, forcing changes at Big Tech companies and setting norms and precedents for how the internet is governed.

“There appear to be continuing attempts to strengthen the government’s control over the digital space—whether to censor content or to shut down the internet,” says Namrata Maheshwari, Asia Pacific policy counsel at Access Now. These proposals “empower the executive to issue rules on a broad range of issues, which could be used to solidify unilateral power.”

The Indian government’s Big Tech battle began with a dispute over farm laws. In late 2020 and early 2021, tens of thousands of farmers marched on Delhi to protest proposed agricultural reforms (which were repealed by the end of 2021). The movement was mirrored online, with farmers and unions using social media platforms—including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—to galvanize support. On Twitter, popular accounts, like that of global music star Rihanna, expressed solidarity with the protesters. Then-CEO Jack Dorsey liked some celebrity posts supporting the farmers.

As the protests swelled, the government asked Twitter to take down accounts that it said were spreading misinformation and issued several legal notices demanding that hundreds of accounts be disabled. Twitter complied in some cases but refused to take action against accounts that belonged to media, journalists, activists, and politicians. “To do so, we believe, would violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law,” Twitter wrote in a blog post.

Around the same time, in February 2021 the government announced the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, a set of laws governing tech platforms. The 2021 IT Rules included a requirement that social media companies appoint three Indian residents as full-time executives. This has been called a “hostage-taking” law designed to ensure that someone local can be held accountable in the event of a dispute. Platforms were given three months to comply and told they would otherwise risk losing their status as intermediaries, rather than publishers of information.

“Almost everyone in the industry, at least in India, thought that the government [would] not go ahead with the three-month deadline,” one person with knowledge of internal discussions within a Western social media platform told WIRED. They spoke anonymously, as they aren’t allowed to talk to the media.

The changes to the rules were so fundamental that the tech platforms expected to get more time. “There also wasn’t enough consultation, and no one in the industry was prepared to make such a fundamental shift in their India operations,” the person said.

But as the deadline inched closer, the government made it clear that it wouldn’t budge. Google and Meta rushed to comply, but Twitter missed the deadline, according to the government, which said the company temporarily lost its intermediary status, making it briefly liable for the content posted on its platform. At least two cases related to content posted on Twitter during that period were filed against Twitter’s India head, Manish Maheshwari, and a lawyer filed a complaint against the company for “spreading communal hatred.”

“You operate in India, you make money in India, you have good ad revenue in India, but if you take the position that I will only be governed by laws of America ... This is plainly not acceptable,” India’s IT minister warned at the time.

Twitter eventually hired the required three directors, and the government said the platform’s intermediary status had been restored. The company later released a transparency report showing that the Indian government had issued nearly 4,000 takedown requests to Twitter between July and December 2021. In May 2021, police raided Twitter’s offices in Delhi and Gurgaon after the company applied a “manipulated media” label to a tweet by a politician from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The government also picked a fight with Meta. The new rules allow the authorities to demand that messaging platforms identify the originator of any message when asked—something that is incompatible with WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp sued the government to challenge the law. The case is still pending.

Others have challenged the 2021 IT Rules and filed petitions against the laws—including online publications The Wire, The News Minute, and The Quint, as well as musician T. M. Krishna.

Social media platforms have dismissed some of the other provisions in the new rules as impractical. One mandates that intermediaries respond to user complaints within 24 hours and resolve them in the next 15 days; it also asks social media platforms to take down certain “contentious” content within 72 hours of reporting. Malicious mass reporting of content is already a common tactic in India.

“If 1,000 people gang up—which is not uncommon in the world of social media—and if they mass-email me, then I will be left with nothing else but to write back replies,” Banerjee says. “If it comes into play, it will be the death knell of many social media channels, especially the smaller ones.”

While the government has said that the 2021 IT Rules were designed to “empower ordinary users of social media” and stop the circulation of dangerous content and financial fraud, Banerjee believes the crackdown is more about reasserting control over the media. Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of online media, with high-profile journalists setting themselves up as independents and more of the national conversation now happening on social media. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite their vocal opposition to the rules, Big Tech companies have limited room to maneuvre. India has around 330 million Facebook users, more than 300 million Instagram users, and close to 25 million Twitter users. It is a huge source of growth and revenue. Meta’s ad revenue in India was more than $2 billion in the year ending 2022.

Indian policymakers know that this scale gives them a considerable amount of sway. And they have banned a major social media platform before. In June 2020, the government ordered networks in India to block TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese-owned apps, after a border standoff. India was TikTok’s largest international market at the time.

“India being such a huge market, nobody wants to affect their business, whether it’s Twitter or Meta,” says Salman Waris, an international technology lawyer and a partner at law firm TechLegis. “They may try to resist in some way on the face of it, but in the background they will end up cooperating, and that is obviously going to dent free speech, both in the country and internationally as well.”

India could set a precedent, Waris says, that other governments could use to “further arm-twist these Big Tech companies.”

Over the next few months, the Indian government will release a draft of the Digital India Act. Although the content hasn’t yet been revealed, news reports say it will attempt to regulate the entire digital world—from social media to the metaverse and OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon—and include provisions on misinformation and online safety for women and children.

As a forerunner to the new law, in January the government proposed an addition to its 2021 IT Rules that would compel platforms to take down any content deemed “fake” by the fact-checking unit of the Press Information Bureau, a government agency that handles press relations. The amendment is currently on hold for consultations with civil society, but if these rules come into play, experts say the government could become the “ultimate authority” on what stays online and what doesn’t.

There are justifiable reasons for wanting to regulate online spaces in India, where hate speech against minority groups and women has proliferated. And the government has a stated ambition to drive growth in Indian tech companies, rather than relying on US giants to supply huge parts of the country’s digital infrastructure. But the way the government is approaching regulation suggests a different motive.

“These are two things that sort of play together—elements of growth and national security,” said Prateek Waghre, policy director at Internet Freedom Foundation. “But a side effect or consequence of this, or what you’re also seeing in subsequent drafts in the rules that are being notified, is also an increase in centralization of authority.”

For Banerjee, there are small and big signs that the public square in India is being constrained by those with power and influence.

In January, another scandal rocked the Indian establishment. The activist short-seller Hindenburg published a report on the industrial conglomerate Adani Group, accusing the company of accounting fraud and stock market manipulation. More than $110 billion has been wiped off the Adani Group’s stock market valuation since the report. The company has denied the allegations and responded using nationalistic language, calling the report a “calculated attack” on India and its growth story. Days after the report came out, a video about Adani Group founder Gautam Adani that Banerjee had posted four months before was suddenly targeted by YouTube on the grounds of “strong profanity”—presumably following a user’s complaints.

“I had called him [Adani] an oligarch,” said Banerjee. “But the video was demonetized, saying it has profanity. Is oligarch a profanity? Then I don’t know.”

Although he’s still posting and has yet to face any serious legal problems, Banerjee says he’s already making preparations for that possibility.

“Any social media person, anyone who is willing to do commentary, I always say they have to have two very good things,” he says. “A good chartered accountant and a good lawyer.”

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A Brazilian man has passed away from injuries he received last month when a concealed handgun he was wearing discharged near an operating MRI machine, shooting him in the abdomen.

The 40-year-old lawyer and vocal supporter of gun ownership is reported to have retained the weapon in spite of verbal and written requests to remove all metal objects prior to accompanying his mother into the scanning room.

Leandro Mathias de Novaes took his mother to the Laboratorio Cura in São Paulo, Brazil, for an MRI ( magnetic resonance imaging) scan on January 16.

Clinical staff are reported to have instructed both de Novaes and his mother to leave all metal items outside of the scanning room as a matter of standard procedure.

"We would like to emphasize that all accident prevention protocols were followed by the Cura team, as is customary in all units," a spokesperson for the facility told The Telegraph.

"Both the patient and his companion were properly instructed regarding the procedures for accessing the examination room and warned about the removal of any and all metallic objects."

The reason for this simple act is fairly straight-forward. To image a body, an MRI uses anywhere from 1.5 to 3.0 (and sometimes more) tesla of magnetism to force the protons in water molecules to point roughly the same direction.

A low-energy pulse of electromagnetism gives the particles a jiggle, which depending on the surrounding materials take varying amounts of time to return to their starting point. This contrast in proton wiggles is then interpreted to provide a detailed picture of your insides.

To give some idea of just how strong that magnetic field is, a fridge magnet is in the range of a few thousandths of a tesla. Some powerful rare-earth magnets can be around a single tesla in strength.

So 3 to 7 tesla isn't Earth-shaking. But it is plenty enough for large ferromagnetic items – those made of material that react relatively uniformly in a strong magnetic field – to be given a good pull.

A freak accident in 2001 caused fatal head injuries in a child when an MRI dislodged a metal oxygen tank from across the room.

In cases of smaller items, as with jewelry for example, the strong magnetic field could create an electric current in the material that potentially conducts enough heat to deliver a nasty localized burn.

Exactly what happened in de Novaes's case might never be known. Tucked away hidden in his waistband, the gun fired when the machine was activated, delivering a wound that would tragically take his life after several weeks at the São Luiz Morumbi Hospital.

As an advocate for gun ownership with thousands of followers on his social media accounts, de Novaes was clearly no stranger when it came to handling a firearm. According to police records, he was licensed to carry it, and the weapon was registered.

Whether it was an issue of complacency or forgetfulness isn't clear, but the incident serves as a tragic reminder of the fact that MRIs and guns simply don't mix – and not the first either.

A 2002 article in the American Journal of Roentgenology recounts an incident of an off-duty police officer attending an outpatient imaging center in New York State, during which a miscommunication led to the patient taking his firearm into the scanning room.

While placing the gun on top of a cabinet about a meter (3 feet) from the machine, the weapon was pulled from his grasp into the scanner, where it discharged into a wall.

Meanwhile, in 2013, an on-duty officer's handgun was pulled from his hand while investigating a late-night report of a burglary at an Illinois MRI clinic, with the firearm remaining stuck to the machine.

In 2018, a man received leg injuries in a Long Island clinic when a handgun in his pocket fired on entering an MRI scanning room.

Though short, this list of dangerous MRI episodes could grow as gun ownership rises in the US, with the possibility of more injuries or even deaths. Several hundred people die each year in the US following the unintentional use of a firearm.

Short of using metal scanners on patients prior to entering an MRI, there is little medical staff can do but tap the sign. 'All metal' means guns too, and not following those rules can sadly have deadly consequences.

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