As the US appears to be heading into another dreaded winter wave of COVID-19 infections, the World Health Organization is looking further ahead—and finding hope for the end of the global health emergency.

In a press conference on Wednesday in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that discussion of the criteria for declaring the end of the pandemic would begin in January, when the agency's Emergency Committee will meet.

"We’re hopeful that at some point next year, we will be able to say that COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency," Tedros said.

But he added plenty of caveats. "Of course, this virus will not go away. It’s here to stay, and all countries will need to learn to manage it alongside other respiratory illnesses including influenza and RSV, both of which are now circulating intensely in many countries."

He also noted looming challenges, such as the health burden of post-COVID and long-COVID conditions, which are poorly understood and treated but rising. On Wednesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an analysis finding that long COVID began appearing on death certificates this year. The condition was listed as a cause of death for 3,544 people, 0.3 percent of COVID-19 deaths. Experts say the number is likely an undercount, and deaths and disabilities from post-COVID conditions will rise in coming years.

Challenges near and far

Vaccine inequity still remains a critical problem. Only 1 in 5 people in low-income countries have been vaccinated, Tedros noted. And there remain significant weaknesses and gaps in surveillance of new SARS-CoV-2 variants, which leaves the world vulnerable to being blindsided by another omicron-like variant rise.

Still, there's reason to be hopeful. At this point last year, omicron began its rampage and killed 50,000 people each week. Last week, fewer than 10,000 people died of COVID-19 globally.

"That’s still 10,000 too many," Tedros said, "and there is still a lot that all countries can do to save lives. But we have come a long way."

The optimism may be dulled in the US (and elsewhere), however, as experts warn that COVID-19 transmission is on the rise as the country heads into end-of-year holidays. The rise is also alongside unusual waves of other respiratory illnesses, namely RSV and flu, which are already overwhelming hospitals around the country and hitting children particularly hard.

According to data tracking by The New York Times, reported COVID-19 cases are up 55 percent in the last two weeks, and hospitalizations, which typically lag case rises, are up 22 percent. Meanwhile, Americans have largely eschewed updated COVID-19 boosters, which revive protection and target the more recent BA.5 and BA.4 omicron subvariants. According to CDC data, only 13.5 percent of eligible Americans have rolled up their sleeve for the updated bivalent booster, including only 34 percent of people age 65 and older, who are at greater risk of severe disease.

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Elon Musk has offloaded another tranche of Tesla stock, worth almost $3.6 billion, in a move that risks further irritating already frustrated shareholders in the electric vehicle group.

The billionaire, who took over the social media company in October, has sold four tranches of shares worth a total of almost $23 billion since announcing his takeover of Twitter.

It is the third sale since declaring in April there would be “no further TSLA sales” to support the deal.

This latest sell-off, which according to a filing took place between Monday and Wednesday this week, amounted to 22 million shares in the electric vehicle group.

No reason was given for the sale. Musk could not be reached for comment on Wednesday evening.

Musk arranged to finance the Twitter purchase with $12.7 billion of bank debt and also announced $7 billion of equity commitments from other investors this year, implying he would be on the hook for more than $24 billion of the purchase price.

On Tuesday, Musk tweeted: “At risk of stating obvious, beware of debt in turbulent macroeconomic conditions, especially when Fed keeps raising rates.”

The sale comes as investors displayed frustration over Tesla’s future under the stewardship of what some consider to be a highly distracted chief executive.

Tesla’s share price is down 61 percent since the start of the year, underperforming rival car groups such as Ford or General Motors.

“Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO,” wrote Leo KoGuan, a major Tesla shareholder, on Twitter.

“Are we merely Elon’s foolish bag holders?” he added in another post. “An executioner, Tim Cook-like is needed, not Elon.”

But such proclamations are overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the management of the volatile social network.

On Wednesday, Twitter suspended an account that had been sharing publicly available data on the movements of Musk’s private jet. The existence of the account had previously been cited by Musk as evidence that he would not put his own interests ahead of his supposed “free speech” principles in running Twitter.

Musk said on Wednesday that the account was putting his family at risk, announcing a change in Twitter policy regarding the disclosure of locations.

“Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation,” Musk wrote on Twitter, referencing the phrase typically used to describe the malicious publishing of a person's private details, such as a home address.

The falling Tesla share price has been severe enough to see Musk lose his coveted position as the world’s richest man, falling to the number two spot behind luxury magnate Bernard Arnault, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranking.

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Mesoamerica’s ancient Maya cities never cease to amaze visitors. However, an unexpected danger lurks under the soil’s surface: mercury pollution. Researchers have found in a review article published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science that this pollution is not modern: it is the result of the Maya’s widespread usage of mercury and mercury-containing products between 250 and 1100 CE. There are areas where the pollution is so severe that it might pose a health risk to unsuspecting archaeologists today.

Lead author Dr. Duncan Cook, an associate professor of Geography at the Australian Catholic University, said: “Mercury pollution in the environment is usually found in contemporary urban areas and industrial landscapes. Discovering mercury buried deep in soils and sediments in ancient Maya cities is difficult to explain until we begin to consider the archeology of the region which tells us that the Maya were using mercury for centuries.”

Ancient anthropogenic pollution

For the first time, Cook and colleagues here reviewed all data on mercury concentrations in soil and sediments at archeological sites across the ancient Maya world. They demonstrate that mercury pollution is detectable everywhere except at Chan b’i at sites from the Classical Period for which measurements are available, including Chunchumil in modern-day Mexico, Marco Gonzales, and Actuncan in Belize, La Corona, Tikal, Petén Itzá, Piedras Negras, and Cancuén in Guatemala, Palmarejo in Honduras, and Cerén, a Mesoamerican “Pompeii.”

Concentrations vary from 0.016 ppm at Actuncan to an astounding 17.16 ppm in Tikal. For comparison, the Toxic Effect Threshold (TET) for mercury in sediments is defined as 1 ppm.

Heavy users of mercury

What caused this prehistoric mercury pollution? The authors highlight that sealed vessels filled with ‘elemental’ (ie, liquid) mercury have been found at several Maya sites, for example, Quiriqua in Guatemala, El Paraíso in Honduras, and the former multi-ethnic megacity Teotihuacan in Central Mexico. Elsewhere in the Maya region, archeologists have found objects painted with mercury-containing paints, mainly made from the mineral cinnabar.

The authors conclude that the ancient Maya frequently used cinnabar and mercury-containing paints and powders for decoration. This mercury could then have leached from patios, floor areas, walls, and ceramics, and subsequently spread into the soil and water.

“For the Maya, objects could contain ch’ulel, or soul-force, which resided in blood. Hence, the brilliant red pigment of cinnabar was an invaluable and sacred substance, but unbeknownst to them it was also deadly and its legacy persists in soils and sediments around ancient Maya sites,” said co-author Dr. Nicholas Dunning, a professor at the University of Cincinnati.

As mercury is rare in the limestone that underlies much of the Maya region, they speculate that elemental mercury and cinnabar found at Maya sites could have been originally mined from known deposits on the northern and southern confines of the ancient Maya world, and imported to the cities by traders.

Health hazards and the ‘Mayacene’

All this mercury would have posed a health hazard for the ancient Maya: for example, the effects of chronic mercury poisoning include damage to the central nervous system, kidneys, and liver, and cause tremors, impaired vision and hearing, paralysis, and mental health problems. It’s perhaps significant that one of the last Maya rulers of Tikal, Dark Sun, who ruled around 810 CE, is depicted in frescoes as pathologically obese. Obesity is a known effect of metabolic syndrome, which can be caused by chronic mercury poisoning.

More research is needed to determine whether mercury exposure played a role in larger sociocultural changes and trends in the Maya world, such as those towards the end of the Classic Period.

Co-author Dr. Tim Beach, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said: “We conclude that even the ancient Maya, who barely used metals, caused mercury concentrations to be greatly elevated in their environment. This result is yet more evidence that just like we live today in the ‘Anthropocene’, there also was a ‘Maya anthropocene’ or ‘Mayacene’. Metal contamination seems to have been an effect of human activity throughout history.”

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Researchers have discovered that salen can effectively bind a number of proteins of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. CoV-2’s Scientists utilized molecular docking to reveal that salen binds to the non-structural protein nsp14, which prevents the virus from being destroyed. The discovery may aid in the development of novel drugs and coronavirus infection treatments. The study’s findings were recently published in the journal Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds.

“Our study focused on a well-known compound, salen. We tried to assess the potential activity of this compound against a series of proteins of the SARS-CoV-2, which cause the COVID-19 disease. We found out that salen can potentially interact with the studied proteins, and the best results were obtained for the non-structural protein nsp14, which protects the virus from destruction,” says Damir Safin, Research Engineer at the Organic Synthesis Laboratory of Ural Federal University.

According to scientists, salen – the substance in the photo – is relatively simple and inexpensive to synthesize. Credit: Ural Federal University / Damir Safin

 

The term “salen” refers to a tetradentate Schiff base derived from salicylaldehyde and ethylenediamine. Salen and its derivatives are key ligands in a wide range of practical applications. This is an organic substance that has the ability to coordinate certain metals and keep them stable in various oxidation states. Metal complex compounds of salen derivatives are also used as catalysts.

Two “fluid” hydrogen atoms of hydroxyl groups are found in salen. Each of these hydrogen atoms has the ability to move to a nitrogen atom, therefore changing the shape of the molecule. This process is known as tautomerization, and the participants are tautomers or tautomeric forms.

“We’ve explored the potential interaction of various tautomers salen with SARS-CoV-2 proteins to identify the most preferred tautomeric form of the studied molecule in terms of the effectiveness in interaction with proteins. Of course, our research is only the first step towards understanding how salen can be used in the fight against COVID-19, much remains to be explored. However, the results we obtained inspire a certain optimism,” adds Damir Safin.

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Mountain landscapes all over the globe are at risk of becoming more dangerous to populations around them as a result of climate change, while their accelerated evolution may bring additional environmental risks to surrounding regions.

This is according to a scientist from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who underscores the sensitivity of mountains to global climate change in a new recent study recently published in the journal PeerJ. Professor Jasper Knight of Wits University’s School of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies demonstrates how complex mountain systems react to climate change in a variety of very different and occasionally unexpected ways, and how these responses can impact mountain landscapes and communities.

“Worldwide, mountain glaciers are in retreat because of global warming and this is causing impacts on mountain landforms, ecosystems, and people. However, these impacts are highly variable. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) treats all mountains as equally sensitive and responding in the same way to climate change. However, this approach is not correct,” says Knight.

“Mountains with snow and ice work completely differently to low-latitude mountains where snow and ice are generally absent. This determines how they respond to climate and what future patterns of mountain landscape evolution we can expect.”

Around the world, mountain snow and ice provide water for hundreds of millions of people, but this water source is in jeopardy due to shifting weather patterns and shrinking mountain glaciers. Future years will only see a worsening of the water situation in dry continental areas of Asia, North America, South America, and Europe.

The study also demonstrates how climate change will have a detrimental influence on mountain landscapes and human activity. This includes an increased risk of dangers such as avalanches, river floods, landslides, debris flows, and lake outburst floods.

These are exacerbated by glacier retreat and permafrost warming. Alpine ecosystems and endemic species are already threatened with local extinction, and mountain slopes are growing greener as lowland forests move to higher altitudes.

“As snow and ice shrink, mountain land surfaces are getting darker and this dramatically changes their heat balance, meaning they are warming up faster than the areas around them. Therefore, climate change impacts are bigger on mountains than they are anywhere else. This is a real problem, not just for mountains but also for the areas around them,” says Knight.

Mountain communities and cultures are also affected by climate change. Transhumance – moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle – and traditional agriculture is dying out as grazing areas shrink and as water becomes scarcer. Tourism, mining, urbanization, and commercial forestry are also pushing out these traditional practices. Mountain heritage landscapes and indigenous cultures and knowledge are not adequately studied or valued.

The new research shows that mountains should be considered and protected as integrated biophysical and socioecological systems, where people as well as physical landscapes are important. This may help safeguard these environments against future change.

“Despite not having significant snow or ice, African mountains are also vulnerable. Our work on climate and landscape change and human adaptations in the Maloti–Drakensberg shows how mountains and people are connected together, and these are also threatened. Understanding these connections can help us better protect them against the worst impacts of climate change,” says Knight.

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Billions of people now live in rapidly changing coastal areas that must develop plans to adapt to a future that includes rising seas, crumbing cliffs, and devastating hurricanes. Now they’ll have help from a dedicated satellite scanning the world’s water. 

Early Friday morning, NASA and its international partners plan to launch the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The joint mission, shared with the French, Canadian, and United Kingdom’s space agencies, will survey about 90 percent of the water on Earth—almost everything except the poles—using cloud-penetrating radar in order to create high-resolution maps of oceans, rivers, reservoirs, and lakes.

“The key advance for SWOT is that we’ll be able to simultaneously measure the extent and height of water. Adding that new dimension is critical because it allows us to think about things in terms of changes in volume over time,” said Tamlin Pavelsky, a University of North Carolina researcher and the SWOT team’s hydrology science lead, at a press conference earlier this week.

SWOT will be able to see lakes larger than 15 acres (or about 820 feet by 820 feet) and rivers wider than 330 feet across, Pavelsky said. That means it will survey millions of lakes and track some 1.3 million miles of rivers, many of them lacking on-the-ground data because they are not easily accessible by land. This data will come in handy for a range of applications, like mapping the need for water and its availability for crop irrigation in rural areas; measuring the extent of flooding, such as the recent deluge in Pakistan; and assessing the climate vulnerability of places like the Congo river basin, which is frequently exposed to flash floods and droughts.

The SUV-sized solar-powered spacecraft will collect much of this crucial data through its workhorse instrument, the Ka-band Radar Interferometer. Also known as KaRIn, the instrument sends a radar pulse of 1.5 kilowatts down to the ground and a few milliseconds later detects the reflected signal using two antennas at each end of a 33-foot boom. The slight difference between the signals allows it to triangulate to determine the height of water. With each such measurement, KaRIn images an area about 30 miles on a side with rectangular pixels about 16 by 80 feet. SWOT will orbit over each part of the planet and repeat its imaging there every 21 days during its three-year mission, seeing how the spread of water is changing over time.

In 2000, NASA flew radar antennas on the space shuttle Endeavour to map the topography of land, but that was only an 11-day mission. SWOT’s KaRIn will considerably improve on the concept. “This instrument will be able to measure the height of water with centimeter accuracy. To think we can improve accuracy by a factor of 100, and from a distance of almost 900 kilometers away from the surface, is kind of incredible,” says Daniel Esteban-Fernandez, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer who helped develop KaRIn.

SWOT could turn out to be a major improvement over measurements by previous satellites. “Instead of a ‘pencil beam’ moving along the Earth’s surface from a satellite, it’s a wide swath. It’ll provide a lot more information, a lot more spatial resolution, and hopefully better coverage up close to the coasts,” says Steve Nerem, a University of colourado scientist who uses satellite data to study sea-level rise and is not involved with SWOT. And KaRIn’s swath-mapping technology is a brand-new technique, he says. “It’s never been tested from orbit before, so it’s kind of an experiment. We’re looking forward to the data.”

SWOT has other instruments in its toolkit too, including a radar altimeter to fill in the gaps between the swaths of data KaRIn collects, a microwave radiometer to measure the amount of water vapor between SWOT and the Earth’s surface, and an array of mirrors for laser-tracking measurements from the ground.

New satellite data is important because the future of sea-level rise, floods, and droughts may be worse than some experts previously forecast. “Within our satellite record, we’ve seen sea-level rise along US coastlines going up fast over the past three decades,” says Ben Hamlington, a sea-level rise scientist at JPL on the SWOT science team. The rate of sea-level rise is in fact accelerating, especially on the Gulf and East coasts of the United States. “The trajectory we’re on is pointing us to the higher end of model projections,” he says, a point he made in a study last month in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. 

Hamlington sees SWOT as a boon for mapping rising sea waters and for researchers studying ocean currents and eddies, which affect how much atmospheric heat and carbon oceans absorb. The satellite will also aid scientists who model storm surges—that is, when ocean water flows onto land.

The new spacecraft’s data will have some synergy with many other Earth-observing satellites already in orbit. Those include NASA’s Grace-FO, which probes underground water via gravity fluctuations, NASA’s IceSat-2, which surveys ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice, and commercial flood-mapping satellites that use synthetic aperture radar to see through clouds. It also follows other altimeter-equipped satellites, like the US-European Jason-3, the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, China’s Haiyang satellites, and the Indian-French Saral spacecraft.

Data from these satellites has already shown that some degree of sea-level rise, extreme floods, storms, and droughts are already baked into our future. But we’re not doomed to climate catastrophes, Hamlington argues, because we can use this data to fend off the most extreme projected outcomes, like those that cause rapid glacier or ice sheet melt. “Reducing emissions takes some of the higher projections of sea-level rise off the table,” he says. “Since catastrophic ice sheet loss will only occur under very warm futures, if we can limit warming going forward, we can avoid worst-case scenarios.”

A New NASA Satellite Will Map Earth’s Rising Seas

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It’s the year 2050, and humanity has made huge progress in decarbonizing. That’s thanks in large part to the negligible price of solar and wind power, which was cratering even back in 2022. Yet the fossil fuel industry hasn’t just doubled down on making plastics from oil and gas—instead, as the World Economic Forum warned would happen, it has tripled production from 2016 levels. In 2050, humans are churning out trillions of pounds of plastic a year, and in the process emitting the greenhouse gas equivalent of over 600 coal-fired power plants. Three decades from now, we’ve stopped using so much oil and gas as fuel, yet way more of them as plastic.

Back here in 2022, people are trying to head off that nightmare scenario with a much-hyped concept called “bio-based plastics.” The backbones of traditional plastics are chains of carbon derived from fossil fuels. Bioplastics instead use carbon extracted from crops like corn or sugarcane, which is then mixed with other chemicals, like plasticizers, found in traditional plastics. Growing those plants pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, and locks it inside the bioplastic—if it is used for a permanent purpose, like building materials, rather than single-use cups and bags.

At least, that’s the theory. In reality, bio-based plastics are problematic for a variety of reasons. It would take an astounding amount of land and water to grow enough plants to replace traditional plastics—plus energy is needed to produce and ship it all. Bioplastics can be loaded with the same toxic additives that make a plastic plastic, and still splinter into micro-sized bits that corrupt the land, sea, and air. And switching to bioplastics could give the industry an excuse to keep producing exponentially more polymers under the guise of “eco-friendliness,” when scientists and environmentalists agree that the only way to stop the crisis is to just stop producing so much damn plastic, whatever its source of carbon.

But let’s say there was a large-scale shift to bioplastics—what would that mean for future emissions? That’s what a new paper in the journal Nature set out to estimate, finding that if a slew of variables were to align—and that’s a very theoretical if—bioplastics could go carbon-negative.

The modeling considered four scenarios for how plastics production—and the life cycle of those products—might unfold through the year 2100, modeling even further out than those earlier predictions about production through 2050. The first scenario is a baseline, in which business continues as usual. The second adds a tax on CO2 emissions, which would make it more expensive to produce fossil-fuel plastics, encouraging a shift toward bio-based plastics and reducing emissions through the end of the century. (It would also incentivize using more renewable energy to produce plastic.) The third assumes the development of a more circular economy for plastics, making them more easily reused or recycled, reducing both emissions and demand. And the last scenario imagines a circular bio-economy, in which much more plastic has its roots in plants, and is used over and over.

“Here, we combine all of these: We have the CO2 price in place, we have circular economy strategies, but additionally we kind of push more biomass into the sector by giving it a certain subsidy,” says the study’s lead author, Paul Stegmann, who's now at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research but did the work while at Utrecht University, in cooperation with PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. If all three conditions are met, he says, it is enough to push emissions into the negative.

In this version of the future, people would still have to grow lots of crops to make bioplastics, but those plastics would be used—and reused—many times. “You basically put it into the system and keep it as long as possible,” says Stegmann.

To be clear, this is a hypothetical scenario, not a prediction for where the plastics industry is actually headed. Many pieces would have to fall together in just the right way for it to work. For one, Stegmann and his colleagues note in their paper, “a fully circular plastics sector will be impossible as long as plastic demand keeps growing.” 

Plastics companies will happily meet that demand by ramping up production, says Steven Feit, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, which did the emissions report showing what would happen if plastics manufacturing grew through the year 2050. “The pivot to petrochemicals has been the plan for years now for the broader fossil fuel industry,” he says. “It's understood that plastics, as well as nitrogen fertilizers, are the two real pillars of petrochemicals, which are the engine of growth for fossil fuels.”

And as long as the plastics industry keeps producing exponentially more of it, there’s no incentive to keep the stuff in circulation. It’s just so cheap to manufacture, which is why recycling straight-up doesn’t work in its current form. (Among the many reasons why scientists are calling for negotiators of a new treaty to add a cap on production is that it would increase the price and demand for recycled plastic.) Another wrinkle is that plastic can only be recycled once or twice before it becomes too degraded. Some products, like multilayered pouches, have become increasingly complicated to recycle, so wealthy nations have been shipping them all to economically developing countries to deal with. Which is about as far from a circular economy as you can get.

Another issue is the space needed to grow the feedstock crops. “It increases the already huge pressure on land use,” says Jānis Brizga, an environmental economist at the University of Latvia, who studies bio-based plastics but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “Land use change has been one of the main drivers for biodiversity loss—we're just pushing out all the other species.”

In 2020, Brizga published a paper calculating how much land it would take to grow enough plants for bioplastics to replace all the traditional plastics used in packaging. The answer: At a minimum, an area bigger than France, requiring 60 percent more water than the European Union’s annual freshwater withdrawal. (The new paper didn’t consider land use or water, but Stegmann says that could be an avenue for future research.)

It would also take a whole lot of chemicals to keep those plants healthy. “Many of these crops are produced in intensive agricultural systems that use a lot of pesticides and herbicides and synthetic chemicals,” Brizga says. “Most of them are also very, very dependent on fossil fuels.”

And from a human health perspective, we don’t even want to keep plastics circulating around us. A growing body of evidence links their component chemicals to health problems: One study linked phthalates (a plasticizer chemical) to 100,000 early deaths each year in the US, and the researchers were being conservative with that estimate. Microplastics are showing up in people’s blood, breast milk, lungs, guts, and even newborns’ first feces, because we’re absolutely surrounded by plastic products—clothing, carpeting, couches, bottles, bags. 

It’s also not clear what kind of climate effect the plastics will have after they’re produced. Early research on microplastics suggests that they release significant amounts of methane—an extremely potent greenhouse gas—as they break down in the environment. Even if a circular bioplastics economy attempts to keep carbon and methane locked up by turning plastics into long-term building materials or landfilling whatever can’t be used again, nobody knows for sure if it will work. We need more research on how plastics off-gas their carbon under different conditions.

The more plastic we produce, the more corrupted the environment grows—it’s already poisoning organisms and destabilizing ecosystems. “I fear that by the time we get enough answers to all of our questions, it will be too late,” says Kim Warner, senior scientist at the advocacy group Oceana, who wasn’t involved in the new paper. “The train will have already left the station, for what it's doing to the atmosphere and the oceans and carbon and health and everything else.”

Bio-Based Plastics Aim to Capture Carbon. But at What Cost?

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The benefits of random acts of kindness are both physical and emotional. On a physical level, showing kindness to someone can boost the body’s natural “feel-good” hormones like serotonin, endorphins, and dopamine. This can lead to decreased stress, increased self-esteem, and improved relationships. On an emotional level, random acts of kindness can help us to find joy and fulfilment in our lives. It can remind us of the importance of relationships, encourage us to be grateful for what we have, and help us to recognise the goodness of others.

Random acts of kindness can also help to create a more positive and connected community. By making kind gestures towards others, we can create a sense of togetherness and goodwill that can foster collaboration and support. Random acts of kindness can also have a ripple effect, as studies have shown that when people observe kindness they are more likely to carry out their own acts of kindness.

Random acts of kindness can also be used to build bridges between people of different backgrounds. By engaging in small acts of kindness we can imbue our communities with a sense of respect and inclusivity that may have been lacking before. This can help to reduce social isolation, create a more tolerant and open-minded society, and encourage people to see each other for who they are on the inside rather than on the outside.

Finally, random acts of kindness can remind us of our shared humanity. No matter what our economic, religious, or political differences may be, we are all capable of showing kindness and compassion towards each other. By engaging in random acts of kindness, we can remind ourselves that no matter our differences, we are all capable of goodness and can work together to make the world a better place.

Random acts of kindness are a powerful force in our lives, capable of creating lasting and meaningful changes in the lives of both the giver and the receiver. Whether it’s a small gesture like smiling at a stranger or a bigger one like volunteering your time to a local charity, showing kindness is an act that can benefit us all. So, go out and show someone a little kindness today – you never know the impact it could have.

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Rishi Rajpopat, 27, decoded a rule taught by Panini, a master of the ancient Sanskrit language who lived around 2,500 years ago.

Sanskrit is only spoken in India by an estimated 25,000 people out of a population of more than one billion, the university said.

Mr Rajpopat said he had "a eureka moment in Cambridge" after spending nine months "getting nowhere".

"I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer - swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating," he said.

"Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and, within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns starting emerging, and it all started to make sense."

He said he "would spend hours in the library including in the middle of the night", but still needed to work for another two-and-a-half years on the problem.

The student used a page from an 18th Century copy of a Panini Sanskrit text to help prove his theory

Sanskrit, although not widely spoken, is the sacred language of Hinduism and has been used in India's science, philosophy, poetry and other secular literature over the centuries.

Panini's grammar, known as the Astadhyayi, relied on a system that functioned like an algorithm to turn the base and suffix of a word into grammatically correct words and sentences.

However, two or more of Panini's rules often apply simultaneously, resulting in conflicts.

Panini taught a "metarule", which is traditionally interpreted by scholars as meaning "in the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the rule that comes later in the grammar's serial order wins".

However, this often led to grammatically incorrect results.

Mr Rajpopat rejected the traditional interpretation of the metarule. Instead, he argued that Panini meant that between rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word respectively, Panini wanted us to choose the rule applicable to the right side.

Employing this interpretation, he found the Panini's "language machine" produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.

"I hope this discovery will infuse students in India with confidence, pride and hope that they too can achieve great things," said Mr Rajpopat, from India.

His supervisor at Cambridge, professor of Sanskrit Vincenzo Vergiani, said: "He has found an extraordinarily elegant solution to a problem which has perplexed scholars for centuries.

"This discovery will revolutionise the study of Sanskrit at a time when interest in the language is on the rise."

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Scientists discover a new supergroup of rare single-celled predators

Intermittent fasting diets have become popular in recent years as an effective weight loss method. With intermittent fasting, you only eat during a specific window of time. Fasting for a certain number of hours each day or eating just one meal a couple of days a week can help your body burn fat. Research shows intermittent fasting can lower your risk of diabetes and heart disease.

"Type 2 diabetes is not necessarily a permanent, lifelong disease. Diabetes remission is possible if patients lose weight by changing their diet and exercise habits," said Dongbo Liu, Ph.D., of Hunan Agricultural University in Changsha, China.

"Our research shows an intermittent fasting, Chinese Medical Nutrition Therapy (CMNT), can lead to diabetes remission in people with type 2 diabetes, and these findings could have a major impact on the over 537 million adults worldwide who suffer from the disease."

The researchers conducted a 3-month intermittent fasting diet intervention among 36 people with diabetes and found almost 90% of participants, including those who took blood sugar-lowering agents and insulin, reduced their diabetes medication intake after intermittent fasting. Fifty-five percent of these people experienced diabetes remission, discontinued their diabetes medication and maintained it for at least one year.

The study challenges the conventional view that diabetes remission can only be achieved in those with a shorter diabetes duration (0-6 years).

Sixty-five percent of the study participants who achieved diabetes remission had a diabetes duration of more than 6 years (6-11 years).

"Diabetes medications are costly and a barrier for many patients who are trying to effectively manage their diabetes. Our study saw medication costs decrease by 77% in people with diabetes after intermittent fasting," Liu said.

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Diplodocus may have been one cool dinosaur—thanks to its skin

The newest models of Tesla's electric vehicles are now Steam-powered. And by that, of course, we mean the vehicles' central consoles can now access and play thousands of titles from Valve's popular Steam gaming platform.

The new addition, part of Tesla's 2022.44.25.1 "holiday update," is currently only available on the high-end "new" Model S and X vehicles Tesla released in 2022, each of which includes 16GB of onboard RAM (though CEO and founder Elon Musk promised in a tweet that a "retrofit" will be available for older models). The release notes for the update suggest that those vehicles should be able to run any game that has been Verified by Valve for play on the company's Steam Deck handheld.

The list of Verified games currently includes over 6,000 titles that run on the Deck through SteamOS, most using a compatibility layer to get Windows-coded games running on the Arch Linux-based system. We imagine the even more expansive list of games listed as "Playable" on Steam Deck will also work in these Teslas, though users may run into some specific interface headaches with such titles.

Deck-verified games currently target a steady 30 fps minimum on the Steam Deck's 7-inch, 1280×800-resolution screen. The 2022 Teslas' 17-inch central console, on the other hand, can support up to a 2200×1300 resolution. Thus, individual game settings may need to be tweaked a bit to get the most out of the "10 teraflops of compute power" AMD boasts for Tesla's Ryzen APUs.

Tesla's new Steam integration supports wireless Bluetooth controllers and even mouse/keyboard setups, Musk tweeted Tuesday night. Users can also download their cloud saves to the car to pick up games played on other devices.

The journey to a gaming car

Full-fledged Steam support in Teslas is the biggest step in a long journey that started when Musk put out a call to game developers for Tesla-based ports back in 2018. Since then, Tesla's center console display has added support for a few dozen individually ported games, starting with Cuphead in 2019 and running through high-end titles like The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 (the latter of which was used to show off Steam support in a promotional tweet).

Back in February, though, Musk indicated a change in Tesla's game porting strategy, saying the company was "working through the general case of making Steam games work on a Tesla vs specific titles." Musk said in July that the company was "making progress with Steam integration," leading to Tuesday's Steam support update on late-model Teslas.

Last year, a Tesla update added a controversial feature that let supported games run even while the car was in motion. That move sparked a wide-ranging investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which caused Tesla to backtrack and once again limit gameplay to when the vehicle is parked.

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Rivers are critical corridors that connect cities and ecosystems alike. When drought develops, water levels fall, making river navigation harder and more expensive.

In 2022, water levels in some of the world’s largest rivers, including the Rhine in Europe and the Yangtze in China, fell to historically low levels. The Mississippi River fell so low in Memphis, Tennessee, in mid-October that barges were unable to float, requiring dredging and special water releases from upstream reservoirs to keep channels navigable.

Conditions on the lower Mississippi may be easing somewhat, thanks to early winter rains. But as Earth scientists at the University of Memphis, we see this year’s dramatic plunge in water levels as a preview of a climate-altered future.

River barges are an efficient way to transport bulk commodities, such as grain shipments, and heavy equipment over long distances. But that’s true only for normal water conditions. Increased swings between extreme lows and highs on the Mississippi River, driven by climate change, mean that typical water conditions are no longer the norm, and that river transport is likely to face more backups in the future.

A huge decrease in volume

The 2022 flash drought occurred within a long-term trend in which annual minimum water levels on the lower Mississippi River have declined over the past century. In other words, yearly lows are getting lower.

 

There are two primary causes for these extreme lows. First, construction of locks, dams, and levees for flood management starting in the 1930s has impounded a growing share of the river’s flow upstream and decreased variations in the river’s flow.

 

This has unintentionally made low-water events more severe.

 

Second, the 2022 flash drought affected different areas than previous extreme low-water events. In past years, hot and dry flash drought weather was centered over tributaries of the Missouri and Ohio rivers, which flow into the Mississippi. This caused less water to reach the lower Mississippi River. In 2022 soil moisture levels were normal in the tributaries, but a flash drought developed in the central US over the Mississippi River itself, increasing evaporation and reducing lower Mississippi River water levels.

 

The idea that the main stem of a large river like the Mississippi can experience low water even when its major tributaries are flowing at normal levels goes against conventional thinking about hydrologic drought. This year’s historic event in the Mississippi River watershed is evidence that climate change is altering large rivers as high temperatures increase evaporation and make soil more “thirsty.”

 

Barge backups

 

The Mississippi River is a key waterway for moving grain by barge from farm states to domestic and export markets. Barges are the least expensive and most sustainable option for commercial shipping.

 

A single hopper barge can carry as much dry cargo as 16 rail cars or 70 trucks. About 92 percent of US agricultural exports, including soybeans, corn, and wheat, move through the Mississippi River Basin.

 

Low water levels reduce the navigable portions of the river that are deep enough for barges. On October 7, 2022, over 2,000 barges were backed up at various points along the Mississippi because of river closures. Low water levels disrupted shipments both north and south.

 

Shipping costs rise during harvest season, when demand for barge transportation is higher. Barge rates can fluctuate significantly depending on market supply and demand, the size of the barge fleet, and other factors.

 

Navigation restrictions on the Mississippi due to low water levels have steeply increased the weekly cost of transporting grain by barge. The average rate of shipping by barge skyrocketed from around US$11-$12 per ton in the summer of 2022 to over $71 per ton in October 2022. In November it declined to an average of $27.25 per ton—still more than double the typical rate.

 

Enlarge / A barge passing through lock on the Mississippi River.

Steve Liss / Getty Images

Preparing for more water lows

Warmer atmospheric temperatures have the potential to evaporate more water, causing drought, and to hold more water, causing extreme rainfall. Prehistoric river records in North America indicate that warmer temperatures 1,000 years ago made precipitation patterns more variable, with significant droughts punctuated by extreme floods—conditions similar to those we are seeing now on the lower Mississippi.

 

Over the past 100 years, year-to-year changes from very dry to very wet in the Mississippi River Valley have become more frequent. We expect this trend to continue as global temperatures continue to rise because of climate change.

 

Companies that ship grain will search for shipping alternatives, and repeated dredging may be necessary to keep the river navigable. This will make shipping more expensive, with higher costs passed on to consumers.

 

Low water levels on the river also allow salt water to creep north from the Gulf of Mexico, which could contaminate drinking water supplies in southern Louisiana. To prevent this, the Army Corps of Engineers is building an underwater levee to block salt water, which is denser and sinks below fresh water, from moving upstream.

 

Through the 20th century, river engineering on the Mississippi was driven by the need to reduce flooding. Flood mitigation will still be important in the future, but the risk of low-water events will also increase. As the US enters a new era of hydrologic extremes, we believe it is critical to understand how watersheds and large rivers respond to climate change, so that industries and communities can better prepare for the future.

 

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As the pandemic locked the world down in 2020, carbon dioxide emissions fell by 17 percent. But the global emission of methane—which is 80 times as potent a greenhouse gas yet disappears from the atmosphere much quicker—went up, even though industrial processes, like oil and gas extraction, slowed. 

The likely culprit is in fact sneakier and more ominous than the scenario of scientists missing a massive pipeline leak somewhere. Writing today in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers found that humanity’s methane emissions did indeed fall in 2020, but nature’s didn’t: Wetlands belched up significantly more of the gas compared to 2019. In fact, it was the highest methane growth rate since atmospheric measurements began in the early 1980s. That may be a hint of a potential climatic feedback loop, which could release even more methane as the world warms. And ironically, due to quirks of chemistry, civilization’s reduced emissions during the first year of the pandemic also ended up exacerbating the problem of atmospheric methane. 

Methane is a perfectly natural thing to have up in the sky, as plenty of environmental processes produce the gas. As the climate rapidly warms, frozen soil in the far north that’s known as permafrost can thaw, allowing microbes buried within it to munch on organic material and release methane as a byproduct. Wetlands absorb carbon from the atmosphere as plants grow, then release methane as those plants die and decay. Wildfires also burp up methane as they chew through vegetation.

In the human realm, the fossil fuel industry is a major source of methane. Decaying food waste also releases the gas, as a wetland would. And let’s not forget cow burps: The bovine stomach acts like a fermentation vat, in which microbes process plant cellulose and expel methane. 

The authors of this new paper tallied up humanity’s methane emissions in 2020 by gathering data like agricultural productivity and fossil fuel production. They found that anthropogenic methane emissions decreased by 1.2 trillion grams (a teragram, in scientific parlance) between 2019 and 2020, as the world locked down and the economy staggered.

The researchers also knew that Siberia suffered unprecedented heat in 2020, potentially thawing permafrost, and that northern wetlands had been exceptionally hot and wet. “If you have a warmer temperature in the northern hemisphere, then you will get more methane produced by the microbes in wetlands,” says Shushi Peng, an atmospheric scientist at Peking University in Beijing and the paper’s lead author. “If you get a wetter climate, then the wetlands will expand.” In essence, you grow a natural methane factory.

Using models, the team estimated how much of the gas was coming off those landscapes: As humanity’s methane emissions decreased, wetland emissions increased by 6 teragrams, mostly from Siberia, boreal North America, and the northern tropics. That accounts for about half of the rise in atmospheric methane in 2020. 

The story of the other half is more ironic. When we burn fossil fuels, they produce CO2, but also nitrogen oxide, or NOx. As NOx enters the atmosphere, it produces a molecule known as the hydroxyl radical (OH), which breaks down methane. All told, OH removes about 85 percent of annual methane emissions. “During the lockdown, the emission of NOx was decreasing,” says Peng. “So the OH of the atmosphere—the methane sink—could be slowed down.” 

That is, as we polluted less—heavy industry spun down, flights got canceled, people stopped commuting—we also produced less of the pollutant that normally breaks down methane. It’s a second unfortunate and surprising consequence of cutting pollution: Burning fossil fuels also produces aerosols that bounce some of the sun’s energy back into space, somewhat cooling the climate. While it’s imperative that we decarbonize as quickly as possible, cutting out the beneficial effects of NOx and aerosols has some unintended—and twisted—side effects.

“Burning less fossil fuels will cause there to be less OH radicals in the atmosphere, which will cause methane concentrations to go up,” says Earth scientist George Allen of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, who penned an accompanying commentary on the paper but wasn’t involved in the research. “So that’s going to cut back on the effectiveness of measures to fight global warming.” 

This makes it all the more urgent for humanity to take drastic steps to reduce both methane and CO2 emissions, especially considering the alarming degradation of northern lands as the planet warms. The growth of emissions from nature also lends more urgency to the fight to preserve those lands. People are, for instance, draining soggy peatlands and setting them on fire to convert them to farmland, which turns them from carbon sinks into carbon sources. And because the Arctic is warming more than four times faster than the rest of the planet, human development can encroach farther north, churning up carbon sequestered in the soil as people build roads and housing. All of that only exacerbates the problem.

That sort of degradation is blurring the line between human sources of methane and natural ones. “While some sectors are clearly anthropogenic—industry, transportation, landfill, and waste—other ‘natural’ sectors such as polluted waterways and wetlands can be low, moderately, or highly impacted by humans, which in turn can enhance ‘natural’ methane emissions,” says Judith Rosentreter, a senior research fellow at Southern Cross University who studies methane emissions but wasn’t involved in the new research.

Meanwhile, the Arctic region is greening, thanks to new vegetation, which darkens the landscape and further warms the soil. Permafrost—which covers 25 percent of the northern hemisphere’s land surface—is thawing so rapidly that it’s gouging holes in the earth, known as thermokarst, which fill with water and provide the ideal conditions for methane-belching microbes. 

“There’s a lot of organic carbon locked in there—it’s like a frozen compost heap in your own garden,” says Torsten Sachs of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “There is a lot of talk and a lot of speculation and a lot of modeling of how much greenhouse gasses are going to come out of these thawing and warming permafrost areas. But as long as you don’t have any real on-the-ground data, you can’t really prove it.” 

Sachs has been doing exactly that, venturing into the Siberian tundra for months on end to collect data. In a paper he recently published in Nature Climate Change, he found that methane production every June and July has been rising 2 percent per year since 2004. Interestingly, while this corresponds with significantly higher atmospheric temperatures in the region, it doesn’t seem to correspond with permafrost thaw. Instead, the extra methane may come from wetlands sitting on top of permafrost. 

This is the extreme complexity scientists are scrambling to better understand. While the new paper’s modeling can tease apart the methane emitted by humans and nature, on-the-ground data is also necessary to fully understand the dynamics. The ultimate concern is that out-of-control carbon emissions could be initiating climatic feedback loops: We burn fossil fuels, which warms the planet, which thaws permafrost and forms bigger methane-emitting wetlands. That will have serious consequences for the rest of the planet.

Scientists can’t yet say, though, whether we’re already witnessing a feedback loop. This new study focused on 2020, so researchers will need to keep collecting methane data for consecutive years and pinpoint the source of those emissions. But methane emissions were even higher in 2021. “The idea that the warming is feeding the warming is definitely something to be concerned about,” says James France, senior international methane scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. “That is very difficult to mitigate. So it really reinforces the idea that we have to double down and really focus on mitigation on the areas that we can control.”

The Grim Origins of an Ominous Methane Surge

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Subaru warns Ascent owners to park outside due to fire risk

Space debris expert: Orbits will be lost—and people will die—later this decade

Amid what appears to be an explosive outbreak of COVID-19, China on Wednesday said it would no longer report asymptomatic cases because they've become "impossible" to track after an end to mandatory testing.

The now-voluntary testing policy is part of an abrupt pivot away from the country's strict zero-COVID policy that drew widespread protests in recent weeks.

After years of keeping SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks largely at bay with various restrictions, mandatory isolations, quarantines, lockdowns, and extensive testing, China last week significantly eased its unpopular policy. The State Council announced on December 7 that residents would no longer be required to undergo frequent PCR tests for COVID-19. It also dropped the requirement to use digital health passes—personal QR codes that tracked an individual's movements and COVID-19 test results—for access to buildings and public transportation. And for the first time during the pandemic, the government also allowed people with mild or asymptomatic infections to isolate at home rather than in centralized facilities, which residents often criticized for being unsanitary and overcrowded.

The dramatic reversals came in response to large-scale protests and discontent. But the abrupt changes amid rising cases have only worsened concerns that the pandemic will now savagely rip through China's vulnerable population, which is largely devoid of protection from past infection and is vaccinated only with domestic vaccines that are thought to offer less protection than the mRNA vaccines used in much of the rest of the world.

Uncounted

Without centralized testing, people in China are now relying on at-home rapid tests for the first time during the pandemic. But there is no centralized way to report results. The only case numbers reported now are from people with symptoms who have confirmed cases after being tested in government facilities.

As such, China reported only 2,249 confirmed domestic infections Wednesday, bringing the nation’s official total case count during the pandemic to 369,918. The government also reported 5,235 deaths, though there are reports that China has changed the way it is counting deaths, potentially not including deaths involving underlying conditions.

The true number of cases is likely to be many times higher, though any firm estimates are impossible to come by. Journalists in Beijing report empty streets, shuttered shops, and restaurants only offering takeout. Social media platforms are filled with anecdotes of mass infection and people staying in to dodge an infection themselves.

CNN spoke to a community worker who said that 21 of the 24 workers in her Beijing neighborhood committee office had been out sick in recent days. The Associated Press reported that some hospitals are struggling to remain staffed because so many employees are out sick. The AP noted that the only places in Beijing that appeared to be bustling were some fever clinics and pharmacies, where COVID tests and cold and flu medications were running low.

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YouTube has announced a plan to crack down on spam and abusive content in comments and livestream chats. Of course, YouTube will be doing this with bots, which will now have the power to issue timeouts to users and instantly remove comments that are deemed abusive.

YouTube's post says, "We’ve been working on improving our automated detection systems and machine learning models to identify and remove spam. In fact, we’ve removed over 1.1 billion spammy comments in the first six months of 2022." It later adds, "We’ve improved our spambot detection to keep bots out of live chats."

When YouTube removes a message, the company says it will warn the poster that the message has been removed. The company adds, "If a user continues to leave multiple abusive comments, they may receive a timeout and be temporarily unable to comment for up to 24 hours."

Comment moderation on YouTube often seems like an impossible task, to the point that many pages just turn off comments completely because they don't want to deal with it. Live chat moderation is especially tough, since even if you spot an offending message quickly after it is posted, the live, scrolling nature of chat means the damage is probably already done.

Bots are a scalable way to tackle this problem, but Google's history of automated moderation with YouTube and the Play Store is pretty rough. We've seen the company mark a horror channel as "for kids" because it included animation. It banned a video player from Google Play because subtitle files use the extension ".ass"—which is also a naughty word. The Play Store regularly bans chat apps, Reddit apps, and podcast apps because, like a browser, they can access user-generated content, and sometimes that content is objectionable.

It does not appear that YouTube is involving channel owners in any of these moderation decisions. Note that the post says YouTube will warn the poster (not the channel owner) of automated content removal and that if users disagree with the automated comment removal, they can "submit feedback" to YouTube. The "submit feedback" link on many Google products is a black hole suggestion box and not any kind of comment moderation queue, so it sounds like there will be no one that responds to a moderation dispute. YouTube says this automatic content moderation will only delete comments that violate the community guidelines—a list of pretty basic content bans—so hopefully it will stick to that.

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The new bill which is introduced by Republican senator Tom Cotton and backed by lawmakers such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer aims to "severely sanction" Huawei and other Chinese 5G producers that engage in economic espionage against the U.S.

In a statement on Tuesday, senator Tom Cotton said:

"We've made great strides in recent years at home and abroad in combating Huawei's malign attempts to dominate 5G and steal Americans' data. We cannot allow Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party to have access to Americans' personal data and our country's most sensitive defense systems."

 

According to the bill, these companies would be added to the Treasury Department's Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List, effectively freezing them out of the U.S. financial system. The bill seeks to punish these "untrustworthy" Chinese companies for their actions against the U.S.

The ban of Huawei from buying any material from U.S. suppliers marked the start of the 'trade war' between the U.S. and China back in 2019. In the past, U.S. lawmakers have attempted to limit Huawei's access to U.S. banks, including by proposing a similar bill in 2020 during former President Donald Trump's time in office.

China's Foreign Ministry has criticized the U.S. for "generalizing the concept of national security" and "abusing state power to suppress Chinese enterprises" in response to the introduction of the bill.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, stated to Reuters that China will "firmly safeguard" the rights and interests of Chinese companies in response to the proposed legislation.

The United States is not the only country that has restricted Huawei products. The U.K. banned the installation of Huawei equipments and from outsourcing service management from the Chinese company last year.

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The Milky Way, our cosmic home, contains between 100 and 400 billion stars. The galaxy is thought to have formed 13.6 billion years ago, originating from a rotating cloud of gas composed of hydrogen and helium. The gas then accumulated over billions of years in a rotating disk, where stars like our sun were created.

The research team presents their findings on the stars in the outer regions of the galactic disk in a new study that was recently published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The data revealed that a mysterious ripple was causing stars all around the galaxy to oscillate at different speeds. 

“We can see that these stars wobble and move up and down at different speeds. When the dwarf galaxy Sagittarius passed the Milky Way, it created wave motions in our galaxy, a little bit like when a stone is dropped into a pond”, Paul McMillan, the astronomy researcher at Lund Observatory who led the study, explains.

The research team was able to explore a far larger area of the Milky Way’s disk than was previously possible thanks to data from the European space telescope Gaia. The researchers have begun to put together a complicated puzzle by measuring the strength of the ripples in different parts of the disc, providing clues about Sagittarius’ history and orbit around our home galaxy.

“At the moment, Sagittarius is slowly being torn apart, but 1-2 billion years ago it was significantly larger, probably around 20 percent of the mass of the Milky Way’s disk,” says Paul McMillan.

The researchers were surprised by how much of the Milky Way they could study using the data from Gaia. To date, the telescope, which has been in operation since 2013, has measured the movement across the sky of approximately two billion stars and the movement towards or away from us of 33 million.

“With this new discovery, we can study the Milky Way in the same way that geologists draw conclusions about the structure of the Earth from the seismic waves that travel through it. This type of “galactic seismology” will teach us a lot about our home galaxy and its evolution,” Paul McMillan concludes.

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With AI then seemingly able to do many of our jobs better and quicker than we ever could and other aspects of our human rights being put into the hands of advanced algorithms, it is not hyperbole to ask, do we need to be scared of AI, and what is being done to make sure things don’t get out of hand? Today, we are going to look at some of the different laws that are being drafted for this exact reason and why they are important.

The EU AI Act

The EU AI Act is important as it marks the first attempt to create a fully horizontal law that will regulate all uses of AI. It works on risk-based criteria and categorizes applications of AI into three risk levels. The first category includes applications and systems that pose an unacceptable risk, such as social scoring by the government, which is banned. The second category includes high-risk applications, such as a CV-scanning tool that ranks job applicants, which are subject to legal requirements. The third category includes applications that are not explicitly banned or listed as high-risk, which are largely unregulated.

The EU AI Act is currently being debated by the EU and if passed will likely come into force in 2023 or 2024. If this does happen there will then be a 24-36 month grace period before the main requirements will come into force. If you’re wondering whether this will matter to you if you live outside of the EU, you need to think back to GDPR. The sheer size and value of the European market, among other things, makes the EU a regulatory superpower meaning international companies that have dealings there will almost certainly follow the law.

The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights

You might have got it from the language used, but the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights is a US initiative. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released a blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights that outlines five principles to guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems in the age of artificial intelligence. The principles, which are designed to protect the rights of the American public, include ensuring that AI systems are fair, transparent, and accountable; protecting privacy and civil liberties; promoting access to the benefits of AI; encouraging collaboration and innovation; and ensuring that AI systems are sustainable and safe. The blueprint is accompanied by a handbook for incorporating these principles into policy and practice.

It is good news to see The White House discussing these types of issues, and with this type of language, but it is very basic stuff, and on top of that it is not binding legislation. In this light then, it could be seen as an educational tool designed to raise awareness of the issue without moving too far to take binding action in the way that EU AI Act will.

Other examples of AI laws and regulations

There is no doubt that the EU AI Act is the biggest player in this field, but even that falls short in many regards as EU regulators try to shy away from the US innovates and the EU regulates cliché. A risk-based framework does have its merits, but human rights and harms-based approaches would better protect everyday citizens from the cold algorithmic logic that may not even be fully trained or aware of the individual intricacies of their lives. It is heartening to see then that there is a plethora of national regulations on the table in a wide variety of countries including Canada, China, the UK, Brazil, and more. As to whether these will take up the yolk of human rights and protect from AI-based abuses remains to be seen. Therefore, when it comes to asking if we should be scared of AI in the face of so many risks as we seek to unleash its mind-blowing potential, the answer is: maybe.

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New Zealand already prohibits the sale of tobacco products to those under 18, but the new amendments to the law effectively set a moving age limit that will permanently outlaw tobacco sales to the country’s youngest and future generations. Those born before 2009, who are 18 or older, will still be permitted to purchase tobacco.

“This bill will create generational change, and it will leave a legacy of better health for our youth,” Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said Tuesday.

Under the new changes, retailers who sell tobacco to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009 — those around 13 years old or younger today — will face fines of up to 150,000 New Zealand dollars, or around $96,000. The ban will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2027, when those born in 2009 will start turning 18.

The legislation also overhauls several existing tobacco laws by reducing the number of retailers authorized to sell tobacco in New Zealand to 600 and imposing stricter nicotine limits in smoked tobacco products.

“Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives and the health system will be $5 billion better off from not needing to treat the illnesses caused by smoking, such as numerous types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, amputations,” Verrall said in a press release.

The ban comes as other countries weigh similar proposals to curb tobacco use. Ireland and Wales have set similar goals to render their countries smoke-free within the decade.

In March, Denmark unveiled a proposal to ban tobacco sales to those born after 2010, but European Union laws prevented it from enacting the ban. Bhutan passed a sweeping ban on tobacco products in 2010, but an underground market began flourishing there and the government temporarily lifted its ban during the first year of the pandemic.

New Zealand’s bill passed through its parliament 76-43 with support from left-leaning parties, including the leading Labour Party. Members of the right-leaning New Zealand National and ACT New Zealand voted against the ban.

 One ACT leader called the new measures “nanny-state prohibition” during Tuesday’s parliamentary session.

The new laws come as New Zealand’s government nears a self-imposed deadline for a decade-long commitment to eliminating smoking, which began after a 2010 inquiry by the Māori Affairs Committee. The committee, which examines issues affecting the country’s Indigenous population, reported on tobacco’s health effects and its disproportionately severe toll on the Māori population. In 2011, the government pledged to reduce smoking to under 5 percent of the population by 2025.

 Smoking rates have steadily declined in New Zealand since then, according to a report issued by the Health Ministry. Eight percent of adults in the country smoke daily, according to New Zealand’s latest health survey, though smoking rates among the Māori population remain higher, at 19.9 percent.

Tuesday’s legislation follows years of annual tax hikes on tobacco products and mandates to display health warnings on tobacco packaging, while alternatives like vaping have risen in popularity. Still, data showed New Zealand would fall short of its goal without more drastic measures, said Nick Wilson, who studies tobacco control at New Zealand’s University of Otago.

“Progress was occurring, but it wasn’t fast enough,” Wilson said.

Wilson said several factors might aid New Zealand in enforcing its ban: The country lacks a large domestic tobacco-growing base and, as an island nation, can more easily guard its borders against illicit imports.

The generational ban on tobacco sales also may not be the most important part of the new laws, Wilson added. Clinical trials suggest that restricting nicotine levels in tobacco products will be more effective at reducing smoking rates, Wilson said. Less nicotine can make smoking less satisfying to some, and that “dramatically improves the quit rate,” he said.

If New Zealand’s bid to go smoke-free is successful, it may have to tackle the most popular alternative next: vaping. Underage vaping has increased in recent years and is also prevalent among Māori teenagers, advocacy group Action for Smokefree 2025 found in November.

“If New Zealand’s done well on tobacco control generally, it’s taken a pretty laissez-faire approach up to recently regarding vaping,” Wilson said. “Maybe there needs to a vaping endgame for New Zealand as well.”

Rachel Pannett contributed to this report.

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Since the Covid variant omicron emerged in late 2021, it has rapidly evolved into multiple subvariants. One subvariant, BF.7, has recently been identified as the main variant spreading in Beijing, and is contributing to a wider surge of Covid infections in China.

But what is this new variant, and should we be worried? Although reports from China about this variant’s characteristics are concerning, it doesn’t appear to be growing too much elsewhere in the world. Here’s what we know.

BF.7, short for BA.5.2.1.7, is a sub-lineage of the omicron variant BA.5.

Reports from China indicate BF.7 has the strongest infection ability out of the omicron subvariants in the country, being quicker to transmit than other variants, having a shorter incubation period, and with greater capacity to infect people who have had a previous Covid infection, or been vaccinated, or both.

To put this into context, BF.7 is believed to have an R0, or basic reproduction number, of 10 to 18.6. This means an infected person will transmit the virus to an average of 10 to 18.6 other people. Research has shown omicron has an average R0 of 5.08.

The high transmission rate of BF.7, taken with the risk of hidden spread due to the many asymptomatic carriers, is understood to be causing significant difficulty in controlling the epidemic in China.

Covid testing in Chengdu. Image: Screengrab / BBC News

The symptoms of an infection with BF.7 are similar to those associated with other omicron subvariants, primarily upper respiratory symptoms.

Patients may have a fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose and fatigue, among other symptoms. A minority of people can also experience gastrointestinal symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea.

BF.7 may well cause more serious illness in people with weaker immune systems.

BF.7’s mutations

As omicron has evolved, we’ve seen the emergence of new subvariants better able to escape immunity from vaccination or prior infection. BF.7 is no different.

BF.7 carries a specific mutation, R346T, in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 (a protein on the surface of the virus that allows it to attach to and infect our cells). This mutation, which we also see in BF.7’s “parent” variant BA.5, has been linked with enhancing the capacity of the virus to escape neutralizing antibodies generated by vaccines or previous infection.

A recent study examined the neutralization of BF.7 in sera (a component of blood that should contain antibodies) from triple-vaccinated healthcare workers, as well as patients infected during the omicron BA.1 and BA.5 waves of the pandemic. BF.7 was resistant to neutralization, driven partly by the R346T mutation.

BF.7 around the world

BF.7 has been detected in several other countries around the world including India, the US, the UK and several European countries such as Belgium, Germany, France and Denmark.

Despite BF.7’s immune-evasive characteristics, and worrying signs about its growth in China, the variant seems to be remaining fairly steady elsewhere. For example, in the US it was estimated to account for 5.7% of infections up to December 10, down from 6.6% the week prior.

Covid patients try to get admitted to a hospital in Beijing. Photo: Screenshot, Weibo

While the UK Health Security Agency identified BF.7 as one of the most concerning variants in terms of both growth and neutralization data in a technical briefing published in October (it accounted for over 7% of cases at that time), the most recent briefing says BF.7 has been de-escalated due to reduced incidence and low growth rates in the UK.

We don’t know exactly why the situation looks different in China. BF.7’s high R0 might be due in part to a low level of immunity in the Chinese population from previous infection, and possibly vaccination too.

We should, of course, be cautious about the data from China as it’s based on reports, not peer-reviewed evidence yet.

Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 three years ago, the virus has continued to evolve, acquiring genetic mutations more rapidly than expected.

The emergence of BF.7 and other new variants is concerning. But vaccination is still the best weapon we have to fight Covid. And the recent approval by the UK drugs regulator of bivalent boosters, which target omicron alongside the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, is very promising.

Manal Mohammed is Senior Lecturer of Medical Microbiology, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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