After a controversially styled fourth-generation Prius, the new car looks much more cohesive.

Toyota

 

This week, Toyota revealed the 2023 Prius hybrid. It's the company's fifth-generation Prius, and when it goes on sale, it will be the most efficient Prius yet, with an estimated 57 mpg (4.1 L/100 km), according to Toyota.

 

First seen on US roads in 2000, the Prius soon became a byword for environmentally conscious driving, marked by distinctive styling that was hard to mistake for anything else on the road. In the intervening decades, Toyota has sold millions, although many fewer now than during the nameplate's heyday in the early teens.

 

In part, that might have been due to the Prius' highly efficient Atkinson Cycle powertrain making its way into other Toyotas. The powertrain still offered nearly as impressive fuel economy, sometimes paired with a small traction battery as a "regular" hybrid and sometimes paired with a larger one as a plug-in hybrid (or Prime, in Toyota-speak).

 

It would have been easy for Toyota to give up on the Prius and just continue to build efficient hybrids that look like its regular cars, but instead, it developed a fifth-generation model using a version of its TNGA-C platform.

 

The shape is immediately recognizable as a Prius, but, to these eyes, it's far more successfully styled than the outgoing model, which still looks to me like two different cars got into a transporter accident. But the new Prius will be 2 inches (50 mm) lower and an inch (25 mm) wider than the old model.

 

Under the hood, you'll find a slightly larger engine, a 2.0 L four-cylinder engine that still uses the Atkinson cycle. Battery capacity has been increased by 15 percent, and the traction battery has been relocated from underneath the cargo area to below the rear seat, bringing it within the wheelbase for better weight distribution and handling.

 

The bigger engine means total power output has gone up to 194 hp (145 kW) for front-wheel drive variants and 196 hp (146 kW) for all-wheel drive versions. Toyota's press release notes that the FWD 2023 Prius has dropped its 0–60 mph time from 9.8 seconds to 7.2 seconds, so the new car will be quicker in traffic.

 

But people don't buy Priuses because they want fast acceleration or sporty handling. Fuel efficiency is the aim of the game, and Toyota has managed to make the new car even better than the current one—at least by 1 mpg.

 

Sadly, we'll have to wait until later this year to find out exactly when the new Prius is coming to these shores, as well as how much it might cost.

 

The next Toyota Prius has been revealed, and it’s even more efficient

General Motors says it will stop burning cash on electric vehicles by 2025

JWST just spotted two unusually bright galaxies from the very early universe

The corals found off the coast of Sharm el-Sheikh, part of the 4,000km Red Sea network of corals that has 200 species of coral just off Egypt alone, are considered by scientists to be more resilient to global heating than reefs found elsewhere in the world, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which has suffered four mass bleaching events in the past six years. Bleaching occurs when coral becomes so heat-stressed it expels its symbiotic algae which gives it color, turning it ghostly white and putting it at risk of death.

About 2.5m years ago, sea levels fell and the Red Sea was cut off from the Indian Ocean, making it very hot and salty. Corals that have endured here were the ones able to withstand high levels of heat. The Red Sea could be the last place where significant corals are left clinging on as the world barrels towards climate breakdown.

But even here, there are signs of stress. As Simon Donner, a climate scientist and coral reef expert at the University of British Columbia, took a break from the Cop negotiations by snorkeling on the southern tip of the Sharm El-Sheikh peninsula, he spotted signs of disease and possible heat-related damage to corals that closely hug the shoreline.

“As you go in towards the shore, there’s very little living coral,” Donner said as he surveyed the shelf of dull white corals that stretched towards a beach thronged with mostly Russian and Italian tourists. “The living corals are small in size and there’s a lot of dead area on the reef.”

Large resorts dot the Sharm el-Sheikh coastline and tourists trampling on corals, along with pollution discharged directly into the water from hotels and other developments, has degraded these reefs. Donner said these localized impacts do play a role – he gets more questions about the harms of wearing sunscreen when diving near corals than anything else – but that the climate crisis is the overwhelming cause of coral decline.

“It’s a little bit of tourism, but it’s mostly climate change,” he said. “If we can reduce the direct human impacts, reefs have a better chances of surviving climate change. But if we don’t do something about greenhouse gas emissions, it’s not going to make a difference.”

Most of the universe of coral reefs, and their benefits, lies far from the curious eyes of tourists at all-inclusive resorts. More than half a billion people worldwide rely upon reefs as vital habitat for the fish they catch, with numerous coastal communities shielded from powerful coastal storms by the barrier of reef structures. Despite covering a small fraction of the ocean, about a quarter of all marine life, including the colorful fish that flit around the patchy reefs around Sharm el-Sheikh, are found around coral habitat.

Some remote, sheltered corals might remain in far reaches of the oceans if the temperature rise is constrained, but we are heading for a largely coral-less world. Donner pondered this as he emerged from the crystalline water to dry off, change and join the thousands of other delegates at the Cop27 talks. “The decisions that are being made inside that conference centre are going to determine the future of an ecosystem right off the coast here,” he said.

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An oil tanker owned by an Israeli billionaire was hit by a suicide drone off the coast of Oman on November 15. 

Israeli government experts believe the drone that struck the tanker was an Iranian Shahed-136 and suspicion immediately fell on Tehran as the likely perpetrator. 

Initial reports say no one was injured and, while the drone punched a hole in the ship, no oil leak was reported. This is lucky since the drone has an 80-kilogram (177-pound) warhead that can exact considerable damage.

It is not the first time the Iranians have targeted Israeli-owned oil tankers but it is the first time Tehran has used a drone instead of a missile or limpet mine.

The stock version of the Shahed drone is not known to be capable of hitting moving objects as it has no camera, radar or other onboard sensor. 

How, then, did the drone identify and strike the Israeli tanker? Is there reason to be concerned about the future of safe transit in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea or other sensitive areas including the Black Sea and the Mediterranean?

The Shahed-136 has been sold by Iran to Russia, apparently in the thousands, and is being used primarily against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.

The drone itself is made up mainly of Western electronics (mostly American) mounted on five custom circuit boards, and has a Mado (originally German) MD-550 four-cylinder gasoline engine claimed to be made in Iran but may be produced in China.  

When the Russians got the Shahed-136 from Iran, they replaced the drone’s accuracy-challenged inertial navigation system with a Russian GLONASS satellite navigation system. Russia renamed the modified Shahed-136 the Geran-2. 

There is reason to believe that the drone that struck the Israeli-owned oil tanker was a modified Shahed-136, suggesting that the improvements made by the Russians have been incorporated into Iranian production.

Iran still has outstanding orders from Russia for more Shahed-136 drones, to be deployed in the war in Ukraine.

The Iranian Shahed-136 loitering drone has been deployed by Russia in Ukraine. Image: Tayeb Mezahdia / Pixabay

The Israeli-owned tanker was hit by a drone fired around 240 kilometers from shore, meaning that, at minimum, the location of the tanker exceeds the range of the original Iranian Shahed-136 drone, which before Russia modified it, was between 170 and 200 kilometers. 

Because the Shahed has no camera or other sensor to locate targets, it must be programmed before launch with target coordinates. 

The Russian modifications made it possible to work over a longer distance using the same engine. Russia says the Geran-2 range is now 1,800 to 2,500 kilometers.

At the same time, the modifications probably also made it possible to program the drone while it’s in flight. That means coordinates could be sent to the Shahed-136 from a nearby aircraft, drone or ground station command post.

Even so, without a way to steer the drone, the Russians say that the Shahed-Geran is only capable of hitting fixed targets since the drone cannot see the target and adjust its flight path. How, then, can it hit a moving oil tanker?

A modern ship, commercial or military, is equipped with an automatic identification system (AIS). AIS broadcasts the ship’s identification, position, course and speed. An AIS transponder transmits updates every few seconds.

The transponder provides real-time vessel position and carries out automatic calculations enabling ships at sea to avoid collisions. AIS is designed to prevent accidents and, in the worst cases, to provide urgent location information for rescue operators. AIS is used around the world today.

If thShahede -Geran is capable of receiving real-time targeting information, as opposed to updated information on fixed targets, its flight path may be adjusted against a moving ship at sea. Since almost anyone can receive AIS information, the missing ingredient is to feed that information from the AIS into the drone. 

If the Russians already extended the drone’s range, then they likely have put in a receiver to update target information sent from either a ground location or another drone. It is this capability that the Iranians, and perhaps also the Russians, are exploiting.

The Shahed-136 costs approximately US$20,000. Modifying it with GLONASS and a receiver for AIS data should add only a few thousand dollars to the cost. Thus a modified Shahed-136 would be a cheap weapon against an oil tanker. New oil tankers cost over $100 million, not counting the oil being hauled.  Even old tankers that are still efficient are pricey.

It would make sense that both the Iranians and Russians are exploiting AIS. The Russians could use the modified Shaheds in the Black Sea against commercial and military ships. 

Given Ukraine’s long-range missile capabilities that allow it to hit Russian warships, a suicide drone in Russian hands has significant advantages and will likely be seen over the Black Sea in the future.

Ukraine has used the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to devastating effect on Russian targets. Image: Facebook

Similarly, the Iranians could use modified Shahed drones in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, perhaps with the help from their militant Hezbollah and Hamas proxies, to threaten Israeli commercial and military naval assets.

Shahed-136 drones are hard to intercept. They have a small radar signature and hardly any heat (infrared) signature. Commercial ships have almost no defenses against drones. Even a military ship would need to have capable air defenses and an ultra-alert crew.

There is reason for concern about Iran’s drones, and Washington and NATO, as well as the Gulf States and Israel, need to pay closer attention and take action to deal with the emerging threat of cheap suicide drones at sea.

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THE TECHNOLOGY THAT will carry humanity toward a sustainable future is already here, says Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, but heavy-handed regulators and outdated infrastructure are standing in the way of progress. The key to addressing the problem, he suggests, is to take a lesson from the history books.

At WIRED Impact earlier this November, Jackson asked the audience to imagine a scenario in which the early innovators of the internet era—figures like Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web—were not given the freedom to experiment. The ramifications for the pace of development would have been severe, he says, and yet “this is the reality for renewable energy today.”

To illustrate the gravity of the problem, Jackson pointed to the obstacles faced by sustainable energy projects in the United Kingdom. Although constructing a wind energy facility takes only two to six months, connecting a new farm to the grid can take seven years, due to the abundance of red tape—a situation Jackson describes as “disastrous.” “We’re talking about a revolution that’s probably more important than the internet, one that will save our planet,” he says. “But it’s being held back by the enormous amounts of central planning.”

The issue is partly that regulators do not understand the degree of change required to meet climate targets, Jackson claims (the UK has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050). This means that those at the forefront of renewable energy development have not been given the freedom to explore all available options.

It is clear the UK power grid is “broadly not fit for purpose—neither the infrastructure nor governance,” he says. “We need to give access to the market to all technologies that are going to transform energy.”

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Riding the coattails of last year's Great Resignation, employees are demanding more out of their employers than ever. But according to an external survey conducted by Amazon, younger workers don't feel their employers are delivering, with 74% saying they are likely to quit their job in the next year - due to a lack of development opportunities.

In a survey of 3,000 US professionals conducted by Amazon and Workplace Intelligence, 64% of employees said they feared losing their job due to new skills requirements for which they have not been equipped. A further 58% of employees said they were worried that their skills had gone stale since the pandemic, while 70% reported feeling unprepared for the future of work.

As a result, around two-thirds of employees said it was "extremely" or "somewhat" likely they'll leave their employer within the next year because there aren't enough opportunities for skills development (64%) or career advancement (66%), or because there's no way for them to transition to a different job or a new career path (65%).

Millennial and Gen Z workers are particularly motivated to quit their jobs due to a lack of skills development opportunities, with three-quarters of those surveyed by Amazon planning to do so.

Learning new skills and developing existing ones has become a priority for employees in the two years since the pandemic, Amazon found.

Looking ahead to 2023, 89% of employees said they were highly motivated to advance their skills, with 80% of employees attributing this newfound motivation to the pandemic. Likewise, 88% said they are already finding ways to improve their skills.

Higher pay (59%), better work-life balance (48%), and an increased sense of purpose (41%) were identified as the main motivators behind employees wanting to polish their skills. But employees also identified their employers as the main roadblock to accessing better learning and development opportunities.

According to the survey, employees want their employers to provide them with opportunities to further their education and participate in networking activities. But only 51% of respondents said their employers provide college tuition, while just 55% reported having access to networking opportunities.

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Broccoli, along with many other plants and microorganisms, release gases to aid in the removal of toxins. These gases, according to scientists, might provide strong evidence that there is life on other planets.

These gases are created when organisms combine an undesirable chemical element with three hydrogen atoms and a carbon atom. This process, known as methylation, may convert potential toxins into gases that float away into the atmosphere safely. These gases would be suggestive of life someplace on the planet if they were found in the atmosphere of another planet using telescopes.

“Methylation is so widespread on Earth, we expect life anywhere else to perform it,” said Michaela Leung, a University of California, Riverside (UCR) planetary scientist. “Most cells have mechanisms for expelling harmful substances.”

Methyl bromide, one methylated gas, offers a number of benefits over other gases that are often targeted in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Leung conducted a study that examined and quantified these benefits, which was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal. For example, methyl bromide remains in the atmosphere for a shorter time than traditional biosignature gases.

Along with broccoli and other vegetables in the brassica family, algal mats also produce methyl bromide. Credit: CA Water Quality Monitoring Council

 

“If you find it, the odds are good it was made not so long ago — and that whatever made it is still producing it,” Leung said.

Another benefit is that methyl bromide is more likely to have been produced by something living than a gas like methane, which may be produced by microbes. However, it could also be a byproduct of a volcanic eruption or other geologic processes.

“There are limited ways to create this gas through non-biological means, so it is more indicative of life if you find it,” Leung said.

In addition, methyl bromide absorbs light near a “cousin” biosignature, methyl chloride, which makes both of them, and the presence of life, easier to find.

Though methyl bromide is extremely common on Earth, it is not easily detectable in our atmosphere because of the intensity of our sun’s UV light. Ultraviolet radiation starts chemical reactions that break up water molecules in the atmosphere, splitting them into products that destroy the gas.

However, the study determined methyl bromide would be more easily detectable around an M dwarf star than it is in this solar system or ones like it. M dwarfs are smaller and cooler than our sun, and they produce less of the type of UV radiation that leads to the breakup of water.

“An M dwarf host star increases the concentration and detectability of methyl bromide by four orders of magnitude compared to the sun,” Leung said.

This is a benefit for astronomers because M dwarfs are more than 10 times as common than stars like our sun and will be the first targets in upcoming searches for life on exoplanets.

For these reasons, researchers are optimistic that astrobiologists will begin to consider methyl bromide in future missions, and in their planning for the capabilities of telescopes set to launch in the coming decades.

Though the James Webb Space Telescope isn’t particularly optimized to detect Earth-like planetary atmospheres around other stars, some extremely large ground-based telescopes coming online at the end of the decade will be. And they will be better suited to analyze the composition of those planets’ atmospheres.

The UCR research team is set to investigate the potential for other methylated gases to serve as targets in the search for extraterrestrial life since this group of gases is especially closely associated with life and only life.

“We believe methyl bromide is one of many gases commonly made by organisms on Earth that may provide compelling evidence of life from afar,” said Eddie Schwieterman, UCR astrobiologist, study co-author, and leader of Leung’s research group. “This one is just the tip of the iceberg.”

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Are unhappy individuals just more realistic in their assessments of how much control they really have over their life, whilst others see the world through rose-colored lenses and falsely believe they have more control than they actually do?

That is the general idea of the “depressive realism” theory, which has been prevalent in science and popular culture for more than forty years.

The issue is that it’s just untrue, according to a recent study.

“It’s an idea that exerts enough appeal that lots of people seem to believe it, but the evidence just isn’t there to sustain it,” says Professor Don Moore, the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair in Leadership and Communication at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and co-author of the study, in press at the journal Collabra:Psychology. “The good news is you don’t have to be depressed to understand how much control you have.”

Depressive realism

The idea of depressive realism originated from a 1979 experiment in which college students were asked to guess how much influence they had over whether a light would turn green when a button was pressed. The original study indicated that depressed students were better at recognizing when they had no influence over the lights, but non-depressed students tended to overestimate their amount of control.

As part of a larger effort to rebuild confidence in scientific research, which is heavily ingrained in both the fabric of the scientific community and wider society, Moore and his colleagues set out to attempt to replicate those findings. Researchers are reviewing foundational research in order to strengthen the most fundamental scientific principles: Can the research, and its findings, be replicated?

Why test the theory of depressive realism in particular? Its decades-long infusion into science, culture, and even potential mental health treatment policy makes it important, Moore says. The original study, for instance, was cited more than 2,000 times in subsequent studies or research, according to Google Scholar.

“At the top of the list of reasons why we ought to revisit this particular article is its widespread acceptance in both the scholarly and popular literature,” says Moore, who studies overconfidence, confidence, and decision-making. “That means a lot of people are building theories or policies premised on this effect being true. If it’s not, it’s really important to establish that.”

Replicating the original study

Moore co-authored the study with the University of California Berkeley psychology professor Sheri Johnson and former undergraduate student researcher Karin Garrett, BA 21, along with University of Miami doctoral student Amelia Dev, BA 17.

The authors studied two groups of participants, whom they screened for depression via a questionnaire. The first group of 248 participants came from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an online service that provides paid survey-takers and study participants from a range of backgrounds, in this case all over 18 years old. The second group was made up of 134 college students who participated in return for college credit.

The researchers added or used more modern and robust measurements for the study. For example, they added a mechanism to measure bias, and experimentally varied the amount of control participants actually had.

Participants performed a task similar to that in the 1979 study. In 40 rounds, each chose whether to press a button, after which a lightbulb or a black box appeared. Each was told to figure out whether pushing (or not pushing) the button impacted whether the light came on. After the rounds, each reported how much control they had over the light.

Both the online groups and college student groups were split into three experimental conditions. Each condition experienced different relationships between the button and the light during the 40 rounds. The participants in the first two conditions had no actual control over the light’s appearance, yet saw it illuminate one-quarter or three-quarters of the time, respectively. Participants in the third condition had some control, seeing the light three-quarters of the time after pushing the button.

The researchers were unable to replicate the original study’s results. In fact, people in the online group with a higher level of depression overestimated their control—a direct contradiction to the original study. That finding may be driven by anxiety rather than depression, the researchers note, an observation Moore says merits further study.

In the college student group, depression levels had little impact on their view of their control, the authors found.

Researchers also tested for overconfidence. Study participants were asked to estimate their scores on an intelligence test. Depression had no impact there, either.

Results undermine the theory

The results, Moore says, undermined his belief in depressive realism.

“The study does not suggest that there are benefits to being depressed, so no one should seek depression as a cure to their cognitive biases,” Moore says.

Imagine, for example, a manager hiring someone who is depressed because they believe—based on the original study—that the person is less likely to be overconfident and will have better judgment. That would be a mistake, Moore says.

While depression may not improve judgment, the issue of how to accurately gauge our level of control in various situations has broader implications throughout life, Moore says.

“We live with a great deal of uncertainty about how much control we have—over our careers, our health, our body weight, our friendships, or our happiness,” says Moore. “What actions can we take that really matter? If we want to make good choices in life, it’s very helpful to know what we control and what we don’t.”

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The pattern of temperature change in the world’s oceans may not be a sign of an impending abrupt climate change event, as depicted in the film “The Day After Tomorrow,” according to a new study from researchers at the University of Miami’s (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.

In order to explore a pattern of temperature change in a region of water in the subpolar North Atlantic known as a warming hole that has been cooling over the last century, the UM Rosenstiel School researchers utilized a cutting-edge climate model. According to scientists, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which carries energy to the North Atlantic, has been thought to be the cause of this cooling. 

“However, our study shows the warming hole during the past century is unlikely due to a slowdown of the AMOC. Instead, the warming hole is actually a consequence of human-driven changes in the atmosphere” said Chengfei He, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the Rosenstiel School. “Our findings suggest that this warming hole will not result in an abrupt climate change event lethal to humans as depicted in Hollywood movies.”

Geological records, like the Greenland ice core, have shown that the majority of sudden climate changes in Earth’s history were caused by a slowdown of the AMOC. “The warming hole is believed as a fingerprint of the AMOC in the present day. Its appearance suggests the AMOC may not be stable. Our results do not support this idea,” said Amy Clement, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the Rosenstiel School, and a co-author of the study.

The researchers utilized a climate model that is a digital Earth that can recreate previous climate changes and predict future climate change. He and his coauthors ran the model with a motionless ocean to see how the North Atlantic temperature reacts to changes in the atmosphere caused by greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions. Because the ocean has no circulation, every change in ocean surface temperature is determined by the atmospheric conditions above.

Under global warming, the atmospheric westerlies shift northward and enhance the local wind over the subpolar North Atlantic and result in the warming hole.

“This cooling trend is partially compensated by the warming due to the rise of greenhouse gases and the damping effect in sea surface temperatures,” according to the authors. This study advances our ability to attribute patterns of change in the ocean to different factors, and hence improves our ability to anticipate how the ocean will change in the future.

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According to new research, airway inflammation and emphysema are more common in marijuana smokers than cigarette smokers. Investigators said the difference may be due to the way that marijuana is smoked and the fact that marijuana smoke enters the lungs unfiltered. The research study was published on November 15 in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Marijuana is the most-commonly smoked substance after tobacco and one of the most widely used psychoactive substances in the world. Amid the legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada and many states in the U.S., its use has increased substantially in recent years. With the growing use, there is an urgent need for information on marijuana’s effects on the lungs, something that is currently lacking.

“We know what cigarettes do to the lungs,” said study author Giselle Revah, M.D., a cardiothoracic radiologist and assistant professor at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada. “There are well-researched and established findings of cigarette smoking on the lungs. Marijuana we know very little about.”

To find out more, Dr. Revah and colleagues compared chest CT results from 56 marijuana smokers with those of 57 non-smoking controls and 33 tobacco-only smokers.

Three-quarters of the marijuana smokers had emphysema, a lung disease that causes difficulty with breathing, compared with 67% of the tobacco-only smokers. Only 5% of the non-smokers had emphysema. Paraseptal emphysema, which damages the tiny ducts that connect to the air sacs in the lungs, was the predominant emphysema subtype in marijuana smokers compared to the tobacco-only group.

Airway changes in a 66-year-old male marijuana and tobacco smoker. Contrast-enhanced (A) axial and (B) coronal CT images show cylindrical bronchiectasis and bronchial wall thickening (arrowheads) in multiple lung lobes bilaterally in a background of paraseptal (arrows) and centrilobular emphysema. Credit: Radiological Society of North America

 

Airway inflammation was also more common in marijuana smokers than non-smokers and tobacco-only smokers. The same was true for gynecomastia, a condition of enlarged male breast tissue due to a hormone imbalance. Gynecomastia was found in 38% of the marijuana smokers, compared with just 11% of the tobacco-only smokers and 16% of the controls.

The researchers found similar results among age-matched subgroups, where the rates of emphysema and airway inflammation were again higher in the marijuana smokers than the tobacco-only smokers.

There was no difference in coronary artery calcification between age-matched marijuana and tobacco-only groups.

According to Dr. Revah, the results were surprising, especially considering that the patients in the tobacco-only group had an extensive smoking history.

Pulmonary emphysema in (A, marijuana and (C, D) tobacco smokers. (A) Axial and (B) coronal CT images in a 44-year-old male marijuana smoker show paraseptal emphysema (arrowheads) in bilateral upper lobes. (C) Axial and (D) coronal CT images in a 66-year-old female tobacco smoker with centrilobular emphysema represented by areas of centrilobular lucency (arrowheads). Credit: Radiological Society of North America

 

“The fact that our marijuana smokers—some of whom also smoked tobacco—had additional findings of airway inflammation/chronic bronchitis suggests that marijuana has additional synergistic effects on the lungs above tobacco,” she said. “In addition, our results were still significant when we compared the non-age-matched groups, including younger patients who smoked marijuana and who presumably had less lifetime exposure to cigarette smoke.”

There are likely several factors that contribute to the differences between the two groups. Marijuana is smoked unfiltered, Dr. Revah noted, while tobacco cigarettes are usually filtered. This results in more particulates reaching the airways from smoking marijuana.

In addition, marijuana is inhaled with a longer breath hold and puff volume than tobacco smoke.

“It has been suggested that smoking a marijuana joint deposits four times more particulates in the lung than an average tobacco cigarette,” Dr. Revah said. “These particulates are likely airway irritants.”

The higher incidence of emphysema may also be due to the way that marijuana is smoked. Full inhalation with a sustained Valsalva maneuver, an attempt at exhalation against a closed airway, may lead to trauma and peripheral airspace changes.

More research is needed, Dr. Revah said, with larger groups of people and more data on how much and how often people are smoking. Future research could also look at the impact of different inhalation techniques, such as through a bong, a joint, or a pipe.

“It would be interesting to see if the inhalation method makes a difference,” Dr. Revah said.

For more on this research, see Emphysema More Common in Marijuana Smokers Than Cigarette Smokers.

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According to a recent study of tens of thousands of students and their teachers, girls are often awarded more favorable grades than males with the same academic abilities.

This prejudice against boys may spell the difference between passing and failing classes like math. The Italian researchers caution that it may also have larger repercussions on matters like college admission, career choice, and income.

Their research, which was published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education, is the first to show that the issue is systemic and exists in a range of educational settings regardless of the characteristics of the teachers.

Gender disparities in educational achievement are common around the globe. Nevertheless, the extent of the difference varies depending on how achievement is measured.

Girls often outperform males in the humanities, languages, and reading abilities when the results of standardized tests, which have a set scoring system, are employed, while boys score better in math. However, when teachers give grades, females outperform males across the board.

The University of Trento researchers started by comparing the grades almost 40,000 students received on their classroom exams with the scores they obtained on nearly 40,000 standardized language and arithmetic tests in order to determine how teachers’ evaluations tend to favor females.

The 38,957 pupils were in the tenth grade, making them between 15 and 16 years old. The national standardized tests were set and scored anonymously, but the classroom exams were set and graded non-anonymously by their teachers.

In line with previous studies, the girls performed better than the boys in the standardized tests of language, while the boys were ahead at maths.

The teachers, however, put the girls in front in both subjects. The girls’ average grade in language was 6.6 (out of 10), with compares with 6.2 for the boys. In maths, the average grade for the girls was 6.3, while the boys averaged 5.9, which is below the pass mark of 6.

The analysis also showed that when a boy and a girl were similarly competent at a subject, the girl would typically receive a higher grade. The researchers then looked at whether factors, such as the type of school and the size and gender make-up of classes, were driving the gender grade gap.

They also investigated whether the characteristics of teachers themselves, such as how senior or experienced they were and whether they were male or female, helped explain girls’ more generous grades.

Only two factors were found to have an effect – and only in maths. The gender gap in maths grades was greater when classes were bigger. Girls were also graded as being further ahead of boys in technical and academic schools than they were in vocational schools.

None of the other factors had any significant effect in reducing the gender grading gap. Taken overall, the results show for the first time that higher grading of girls is systemic – rather than stemming from one particular failing, it is embedded in the whole school system.

The study’s authors say it’s possible that, in reading, teachers unconsciously reward students exhibiting traditionally female behavior, such as quietness and neatness, which make teaching easier for the teachers. Another theory is that inflated grades in mathematics are a way of trying to encourage girls, who are often seen as weaker in this subject.

The study’s authors conclude that bias against boys in Italian schools is considerable and could have long-term consequences.

“There is a strong correlation between having higher grades and desirable educational outcomes, such as gaining admission to good colleges or having a lower probability of dropping out of school,” says researcher Ilaria Lievore, a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology. “Consequently, higher grades are also correlated with other outcomes, such as having higher earnings, a better job, or even higher life satisfaction.”

She adds that although other European countries also grade girls more generously than boys, the reasons for this could differ from place to place and won’t necessarily mirror those in Italy.

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According to new research, cat and dog owners could significantly reduce the environmental impact of their pets’ diets by feeding them dry food rather than wet food.

Dog and cat owners could significantly reduce the environmental impact of their pets’ diets by feeding them dry food (consisting of kibble or biscuits) rather than wet food with higher water content. This is according to a study of Brazilian pets that will be published today (November 17) in the journal Scientific Reports. The findings highlight how pet owners can provide their animals with sufficient nutrients and calories while feeding them more sustainably.

Worldwide, the population of pet cats and dogs is growing substantially. Currently, the USA is estimated to have 76.8 million dogs and 58.4 million cats, while Brazil has 52.2 million dogs and China has 53.1 million cats. However, the environmental impact of pet diets is unclear.

Marcio Brunetto and colleagues evaluated the environmental impacts – including greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and water usage – of 618 diets for dogs and 320 diets for cats in Brazil. The authors investigated commercial wet diets and dry diets found on the websites of three major Brazilian pet food retailers. These were also compared to homemade diets – either food produced by companies, or food cooked by owners at home using recipes provided by companies. Additionally, the authors assessed the nutritional and calorific makeup of the different diets.

For all variables, wet diets for cats and dogs had the greatest environmental impact, particularly compared to dry diets. Homemade diets tended to have intermediary environmental impacts, although water usage in homemade cat diets was similar to dry diets. The authors estimate that a ten-kilogram (22-pound) dog consuming on average 534 calories per day would be responsible for 828.37 kilograms of CO2 per year when fed a dry diet compared to 6,541 kilograms of CO2 per year for a wet diet – an almost seven-fold increase (689%).

Dry diets provided the highest amount of energy per gram, while wet diets and homemade diets provided higher amounts of protein. In wet diets, almost twice as much energy was provided by animal ingredients compared to dry diets (45.42% versus 89.27%), which may contribute to their greater environmental impact.

These results highlight the extensive environmental impacts of pet foods, the need to make them more sustainable, and an indication of how this may be achieved.

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According to a recent study from the British Antarctic Survey, rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere will cause a long-term drop in air density at high altitudes. This reduced density will lessen the drag on objects orbiting between 90 and 500 km in the upper atmosphere, prolonging the lifespan of space debris and increasing the possibility of debris collisions with satellites.

Collisions might result in serious issues if satellites, which cost billions of dollars, are destroyed since society is becoming more and more reliant on satellites for navigation systems, mobile communications, and monitoring Earth. 

The study, which was recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, offers the first realistic estimate of climate change in the upper atmosphere over the next 50 years. Although several studies have examined the changes that would occur in the lower and middle atmosphere, there has been far less research into situations that occur at higher altitudes.

A Scientific Reports study found that there were about 5,000 active and defunct satellites in low Earth orbit — up to 2,000km altitude — as of March 2021, and this number had increased by 50% over the previous two years. There are various companies planning to add thousands more in the next decade. Once decommissioned, satellites continue to orbit but gradually slow due to atmospheric drag, lowering their orbital altitude until they burn up in the lower atmosphere. Current guidelines set by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee advise that satellite operators make sure that decommissioned satellites deorbit within 25 years but the reduced atmospheric density will introduce errors in planning and calculations.

In contrast to the lower atmosphere, the middle and upper atmosphere has been cooling. This leads to a decline in density with practical implications for the drag on objects such as derelict satellites and space mission-related debris at those altitudes.

With reduced drag the lifetime of these objects is extended, objects remain in orbit for longer and there is a greater risk of collision with active satellites as well as with other space debris.

Ingrid Cnossen, a NERC independent research fellow at the British Antarctic Survey, used a global model of the whole atmosphere up to 500 km altitude to simulate changes in the upper atmosphere up to 2070. She compared her projections to the last 50 years of data and found that even under a moderate future emissions scenario the predicted average cooling and decline in upper atmosphere density is about twice as strong as has been seen in the past.

Cnossen says: “The changes we saw between the climate in the upper atmosphere over the last 50 years and our predictions for the next 50 are a result of CO2 emissions. It is increasingly important to understand and predict how climate change will impact these regions, particularly for the satellite industry and the policymakers who are involved with setting standards for that industry.”

She continues, “Space debris is becoming a rapidly growing problem for satellite operators due to the risk of collisions, which the long-term decline in upper atmosphere density is making even worse. I hope this work will help to guide appropriate action to control the space pollution problem and ensure that the upper atmosphere remains a useable resource into the future.”

There are over 30,000 trackable debris pieces in low Earth orbit larger than 10 cm in diameter and 1 million debris objects greater than 1 cm according to the European Space Agency.

The ionosphere – the charged part of the upper atmosphere – is also expected to change, in part as a result of increasing CO2 concentrations but also because of changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Understanding the distribution of electrons in the ionosphere is important to correct for errors that they introduce into satellite-based sea level measurements used for climate monitoring. The largest changes in electron count are found to be expected over South America, the southern Atlantic Ocean, and western Africa. The study recommends that further studies monitor these changes and build up a picture in order to control for effects on satellite-based data applications.

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An astronomer who was blocked on Twitter for tweeting a picture of a meteor that was deemed to have breached guidelines on intimate content has had her account restored.

Mary McIntyre’s account was locked three months ago after she tweeted a video of a meteor passing through the night sky over her Oxfordshire home. She initially received a 12-hour ban after being told that the clip contained “intimate” content that had been shared without a participant’s consent.

“It was not offensive or pornographic at all,” said McIntyre. “It was just a meteor.”

Here is the #IonizationTrail from the #Perseid #Fireball at 01:37 BST / 00:37 UT 13/08/22 from #Oxfordshire. Visually it was epic! Canon 1100D 18-55mm lens 8sec ISO-800 f/3.5. Video is made from the fireball + 7 subsequent images #Perseids2022 #PerseidsMeteorShower pic.twitter.com/jSw3OTSw15

    — Mary McIntyre FRAS (she/her) (@Spicey_Spiney) August 13, 2022

Her account was unlocked on Thursday after the BBC highlighted her situation and fellow users tweeted the platform’s support team.

McIntyre said that after the initial ban expired, Twitter offered to reinstate her access if she deleted the tweet and agreed that she had broken the guidelines on intimate images. She refused, having done nothing in breach of the guidelines, as she was concerned about repercussions for her role doing outreach work with children.

“It is sad that it has taken the story blowing up like this to get my account back,” she said.

Her account still contains the meteor video, which she presumes was wrongly flagged by Twitter’s automated moderation systems. “I don’t see how a human moderator could have been offended by it so I presume it was artificial intelligence,” she said.

Last year the owner of a digital photo gallery in Chichester had some of his pictures temporarily blocked by Facebook because they were said to contain “overtly sexual” content, including a cow standing in a field and an office building. Facebook apologised and reinstated the images, which had been picked up by moderation systems when the gallery owner attempted to use them as adverts.

McIntyre said she had not expected to have access returned in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter last month, which has been followed by thousands of layoffs at the company. About 50% of Twitter’s staff have been axed and the company’s head of trust and safety has resigned, shortly after tweeting that 15% of trust and safety workers at the business had been fired.

Twitter has been contacted for comment.

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A cosmic hourglass: Webb captures image of protostar swathed in dark clouds

Laser-driven fusion’s internal energies not matching up with predictions

City birds are changing their tune

The CEO of Samsung Electronics met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and announced a US$850 million investment to manufacture semiconductor components in Thai Nguyen province on August 5, 2022.

The investment will make Vietnam one of only four countries – alongside South Korea, China and the United States – that produce semiconductors for the world’s largest memory chipmaker. Vietnam’s selection over more developed locations speaks volumes about the country’s rising importance in the semiconductor value chain.

Vietnam is not a newcomer to the semiconductor industry. The country’s first semiconductor plant, Z181, was established in 1979 to produce and export semiconductor components to the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing trade embargo put an end to the country’s first attempt at developing semiconductor capability. Yet the desire to enter the global semiconductor value chain lives on. For Vietnamese leaders, semiconductors represent both economic opportunities and national security interests.

Entry into the semiconductor value chain means tapping into a global market forecasted to reach US$1.4 trillion by 2029 with a 12% compounded annual growth rate. It also strengthens local skills and expertise, fosters the development of associated high-tech industries and raises the domestic value-added in electronics production.

Semiconductors are also a matter of national security. Dependence on imported chips makes the country’s critical infrastructure vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and hidden malware risks. The sweeping US chip export ban on China raises concerns in Vietnam as to whether its political differences from the West may lead to a similar fate in the future.

Hanoi has adopted a two-pronged strategy to reduce its vulnerability to these external threats. It maintains diplomatic neutrality amid geopolitical conflicts while gradually strengthening domestic capability in all three stages of the semiconductor value chain — chip design, front-end fabrication and back-end assembly and testing.

Vietnam’s industrial and technology policies have always granted the highest incentives for high-tech projects, including corporate income tax reduction and sales tax and land rent exemption.

Workers at an electronics factory in Vietnam. Photo: Facebook

In 2020, as tech firms continued to exit China, Vietnam established a special working group to court high-tech investments by offering customized incentives beyond those specified by existing laws. Different Vietnamese prime ministers have met with executives of global tech giants to encourage investment in semiconductors.

Generous incentives are not the only reason multinationals are pouring billions of dollars into Vietnam’s semiconductor ecosystem. One advantage of Vietnam over its regional neighbors is its pool of young engineering talent at a relatively lower cost. 

Over 40% of Vietnamese college and university graduates are majoring in science and engineering, and Vietnam has been among the top 10 countries with the most engineering graduates.

As the risks of putting all one’s eggs in the China basket increase, semiconductor companies find Vietnam a promising option for their “China Plus One” strategy. The country’s northern manufacturing cluster is only a 12-hour drive away from Shenzhen, China’s manufacturing hub. That ensures minimal supply chain disruptions for those looking to diversify.

Vietnam also boasts one of the most open economies in the world, with 15 free trade agreements, an ever-improving business environment and a relatively stable government with clear socio-economic development plans. The country’s geopolitical neutrality is another plus for tech companies searching for a low-risk location to produce and export.

Vietnam’s semiconductor scene is evolving quickly across all stages of the value chain. Synopsys — a leader in chip design software — is shifting its investment and engineering training from China to Vietnam. The South Korean tech giant, Amkor Technology, signed a deal in 2021 to establish a $1.6 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant in Bac Ninh province.

Intel recently channeled an additional $475 million into its assembly and test plant in Vietnam that produces core processors. Local tech corporations have similarly launched their own lines of low-end semiconductors for a wide range of applications. Such projects are laying the foundation for even more investments to come.

The next step for Vietnam is to go beyond attracting foreign direct investment to integrating multinationals into its economy. Weaknesses in the country’s investment climate — including backward infrastructure, weak intellectual property rights enforcement, cumbersome procedures, underdeveloped supplier networks and a shortage of local skills — must be addressed urgently.

Vietnam should leverage foreign investors’ resources and expertise to catalyze improvements in its semiconductor ecosystem. The recent chip design training agreement between Synopsys and Saigon Hi-Tech Park is a welcome step in this direction.

Vietnam is cranking out engineering graduates to serve its burgeoning semiconductor industry. Image: Facebook

Another example is Samsung’s domestic supplier development program — jointly organized with the Ministry of Industry and Trade — enabling many domestic suppliers to become internationally competitive.

What Vietnam should not do is try picking winners to gain sovereign capability in semiconductors. Protecting local — especially state-owned — enterprises from foreign competition while subsidizing their operations only perpetuates the inefficient use of domestic resources.

The policy should focus on creating a business environment that enables all potential winners, foreign and local, to thrive.

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China may start developing so-called “cross-medium” weapons that are capable of traveling through different domains in one attack to bypass and defeat missile defenses.

This week, The Eurasian Times reported that Chinese researchers from Harbin Engineering University had unveiled two cross-medium prototype submarine drones that can both swim and fly.

The drones, named Longbow 1 and Longbow 2, can each carry a 1-kilogram payload and dive to 100 meters underwater. Longbow 1 is a fixed-wing drone while Longbow 2 features a folding wing design, the Eurasian Times report said.

Tests conducted at Longfengshan Reservoir in Wuchang in October had the flying submarine drones navigate underwater for 40 seconds, after which they surfaced and flew entirely autonomously, the same report said.

The researchers claimed to have achieved several technical solutions to allow the drones to overcome the challenges of operating in air and water, including the use of carbon fiber composites to replace metal and weight reduction measures.

They also noted that the Longbow 2’s folding wing design was intended to improve cross-medium ability but presented flight stability issues, necessitating nine design modifications to achieve stable flight.

The Longbow drones are just some of the cross-medium weapons China has developed. This September, Asia Times reported on China’s anti-ship supersonic missile-torpedo, a cross-medium weapon that can fly at Mach 2.5 for 200 kilometers, enter a sea-skimming mode for 20 kilometers, and then at the final 10 kilometers to its target shift into supercavitating torpedo mode traveling at 100 meters per second.

Its designers claim that no defense can counter such a cross-medium attack, as the weapon can change course or crash-dive up to 100 meters to evade shipboard defenses.

The Longbow 1’s design. Image: Harbin Engineering University

Professor Ji Wangfeng of China’s Naval Aviation University said in the Eurasian Times report that cross-medium weapons are the cheapest and most effective means of destroying a carrier battlegroup’s defenses.

He and his colleagues note that the multilayered defenses of modern warships can shoot down at least half of incoming drones, planes and missiles, but a cross-medium weapon can evade these defenses by diving when detected by radar and surfacing when picked up on sonar.

Ji adds that just a handful of such weapons can confuse or even overwhelm a warship’s computer. He and his team also note that a cross-medium weapon launched from 100 kilometers away has a 100% survival rate if it can fly at more than 150 kilometers per hour.

In addition to providing a new means to evade enemy air defenses, cross-medium weapons may be feasible to overcome the technical, operational and strategic limits of cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons.

Cruise missiles such as the US Tomahawk rely on substantial standoff range, nap-of-earth flight and high subsonic speed to fly below enemy radar and penetrate air defenses. Yet, despite those formidable features, multiple strategies exist to defend against cruise missile attacks.

Carlo Kopp notes two broad strategies to deal with cruise missile threats in Air Power Australia: denial of launch and counterforce strategy and interception of launched cruise missiles.

Kopp notes these strategies are based on the idea that cruise missile warfare functions on “use them or lose them” logic, firing off as many missiles as possible early in a conflict before defenders could destroy them on the ground and overwhelm enemy defenses.

He notes that a denial of launch or counterforce strategy requires effective targeting and strike capability. In contrast, an interception strategy needs a multilayered air defense system with land, sea and air assets.

Kopp notes that land-based surface-to-air missiles (SAM) for terminal defense are a poor option because expensive and powerful radars are required, and the systems have limited detection ranges. He notes that placing SAMs on warships increases costs but gives a mobility advantage.

Kopp mentions the need for an anti-submarine task force that includes aircraft and naval assets to defeat submarine-launched cruise missiles. However, he notes that maintaining such a task force is inherently expensive.

Against air-launched cruise missiles, Kopp mentions a two-zone scheme in which the first layer consisting of air superiority fighters and airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) shoot down enemy aircraft before they can launch their cruise missiles, with a second layer shooting down any missiles that might get through.

In recent years, hypersonic weapons have become the must-have weapons for major world powers, promising to penetrate any existing or future planned missile defense system by flying at Mach 5 or faster.

However, hypersonic weapons face feasibility and technical challenges. In a June 2022 Sandboxx article, Alex Hollings argues that cost, no clear advantage over existing missiles and unclear strategic value potentially make hypersonic weapons more hype than actual military value.

Hollings notes that one round of the US Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRWH) costs about US$40 million per missile, or half the price of a new advanced F-35A fighter.

The author argued that hypersonic weapons don’t do anything conventional missiles already do, saying that large numbers of low-cost weapons can prove just as effective as a low volume of high-cost weapons.

Hollings also says maneuvering hypersonic weapons may be slower than conventional ballistic missiles, as changing direction increases air friction and distance. In contrast, ballistic missiles fly straight to their targets.

He also argues that hypersonic weapons do not add any strategic deterrent value, noting that if existing missile defenses could not stop a full-scale missile attack involving hundreds of older ballistic missiles, then it makes no economic sense to launch the same attack using much costlier hypersonic weapons.

Apart from cost and strategic issues, hypersonic weapons also face technical problems. In a Flight Global article, Garrett Reim notes hypersonic weapons must overcome issues such as thermal protection, communication, positioning, navigation, maneuverability, integration, aerodynamics and a faster kill chain.

Reim notes that hypersonic missile surfaces can reach up to 2,200 degrees Celsius in flight, with the internal electronics of hypersonic weapons also generating significant amounts of heat. Hypersonic weapons require exotic materials and high-level manufacturing to prevent burning up during flight.

He also notes the formation of an external plasma layer on hypersonic weapons during flight, which can block out radar and communication signals, eliminating any option to abort missions or redirect to other targets.

Reim also mentions that conventionally-tipped hypersonic weapons require precise maneuverability and timing to know where the target is. Apart from that, he says hypersonic weapons should be able to withstand the extreme physical stresses of hypersonic flight.

An artist’s red-hot rendition of Lockheed Martin’s ‘Common-Hypersonic Glide Body.’ Credit: Flight Global.

He adds that making all missile parts fit and work together requires a systems approach to designing hypersonic weapons. In connection with this, Reim also mentions the need to fine-tune hypersonic weapon aerodynamics, which may be a lengthy and costly process.

Moreover, Reim notes that battlespace networks must be adapted for hypersonic weapons as their extreme speed requires multiple types of military equipment to share information quickly over a new battle network, raising interoperability concerns.

Cross-medium weapons will thus require novel strategies to defend against and may ultimately be more economical than hypersonic weapons to breach enemy air defenses.

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"Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade," Musk wrote in the all-staff email.

The email's subject line was, "A Fork in the Road."

"lf you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes on the link below," Musk wrote. "Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday) will receive three months of severance. Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful."

The email, sent late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, was first reported by The Washington Post and later by CNN. A screenshot of the email was posted on Twitter by CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan.

Musk: Twitter to be “more engineering-driven”

Musk's email said Twitter under his ownership "will also be much more engineering-driven. Design and product management will still be very important and report to me, but those writing great code will constitute the majority of our team and have the greatest sway. At its heart, Twitter is a software and servers company, so I think this makes sense."

Musk previously laid off about half of Twitter's staff, roughly 3,700 employees. Some employees filed a class-action lawsuit alleging the Musk-led company violated the federal and state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification laws, which require 60 days' advance written notice before a mass layoff.

In another move that could trim Twitter's ranks, Musk banned remote work despite previous management letting employees work from anywhere. Twitter also laid off about 5,000 contractors, and Musk fired some employees who posted tweets or Slack messages that were critical of him.

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