The Google-owned social media platform will remove any video that attempts to describe well-known vaccines that are approved by federal health officials as being harmful, it said in a blog post first reported by the Washington Post.

That includes content claiming vaccines can cause autism, cancer, infertility, or can allow the recipient of the vaccine to be tracked via microchip.

YouTube previously had banned false information surrounding the coronavirus vaccines in October 2020. The company said it will still allow discussion around vaccine policies, new vaccine trials, and personal accounts of receiving the vaccine.

A YouTube spokesperson also confirmed to Insider that the company will remove the accounts of high-profile anti-vaxxers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, and anti-vaccine activist and author Joseph Mercola.

Kennedy Jr. was one of 12 people that a recent report found to be the most prolific spreaders of COVID-19 disinformation online.

Wednesday's expansion of rules related to vaccine content marks a major change in how the company handles content on its service.

"Developing robust policies takes time," Matt Halprin – YouTube's vice president of global trust and safety – told the Post. "We wanted to launch a policy that is comprehensive, enforceable with consistency and adequately addresses the challenge."

YouTube and other social media companies have long taken a hands-off approach to moderating content.

But pressure has increased from regulators and the general public in recent years, especially amid the pandemic and 2020 presidential election, for platforms to more actively police disinformation on their websites.

Facebook and Twitter have also moved to limit the spread of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation online.

Still, false content has still leaked through – private groups devoted to discussing and taking proven COVID-19 treatments like the horse drug Ivermectin proliferated, Insider reported in early September.

Companies also began cracking down on former President Donald Trump's false statements in 2020, thrusting the topic of social media platforms' content moderation into an ongoing political war.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

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Today, Israeli entrepreneurs are starting their second or third startups. Engineers, operators, and executives who spent the last decade working at global tech companies are leaving the corporate fold to become founders themselves. Venture capitalists from around the world are opening Tel Aviv offices or raising funds dedicated to Israel. The first half of 2021 registered a record capital amount raised by Israeli high-tech companies – $11.9 billion which exceeded the total capital raised in 2020 of $10.3 billion.  Thirty eight deals of over $100 million each accounted for 50% of the total capital raised during this period and only 9.5% of the total number of deals according to a report by IVC Research Center and Meitar Law Offices. 

And Israeli tech companies are becoming massive global companies in record numbers; today there are 71 Israeli-founded unicorns, including private companies Gong, Orca Security, Rapyd and Snyk, while other Israel-born tech companies have gone public at multibillion-dollar valuations, including Hippo, JFrog, Lemonade and Monday.com. Israel is no longer just the birthplace of tech companies that open US headquarters and seek to quickly be acquired, but has become a crucible where mutlibillion-dollar global companies are created and grown. 

Of course, Israel is not alone in creating hugely successful software companies. As I’ve highlighted in the past, global software powerhouses will emerge in many countries. The world is becoming flatter, smart founders can be found everywhere, and software can be created and used by anyone, no matter their location. But Israel stands apart in the sheer number of technology companies created per capita; it’s the worldwide leader in that regard. And most of those startups are enterprise software companies, built by founders who learned coding skills in the military in disciplines such as security, networking, fintech, and communications. As an investor, I’ve never been more excited to invest in Israel than I am today and here are a few reasons why.

Ever-increasing talent pool

Over the last 20 years, Israel has been a center of entrepreneurship, so the country now has a huge cohort of operators, engineers, and executives who have worked at high-growth startups and helped shepherd them from seed to exit. Not only does this growing talent pool help startups hire the experienced employees they need to grow into global companies, it has recently created a whole new crop of founders. First-time founders in Israel are coming from companies such as ironSource, Monte Carlo, and AppsFlyer. 

A flood of capital

It’s no secret Israel is a great place to invest in startups, and has been for two decades. Many US VCs have offices there, and many others invest in Israeli startups from afar. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how many VCs invest in Israel, but some estimates put the number at about 200 homegrown firms, 60 corporate VC firms, and 70 foreign firms. Since 2015, an average of 23 VC firms have set up shop in Israel each year. Of course, there are also dozens of angels, accelerators, and private investors. When I was recently in Israel, I met with many local VCs who told me they’ve never seen so much foreign venture capital chasing Israeli startups. Even more than in the US, investors said competition for deals is fierce and valuations are rising quickly. We also met with several US VCs scouting for deals who told us the same thing. All this capital is not just going to Seed and Series A deals, but also toward later-stage term sheets, allowing already-established Israeli startups to grow quickly and sustainably. With more money in the bank, later-stage startups can hire great talent, expand globally, and chase customers worldwide.

At the crossroads of global tech trends

As I’ve discussed at length, it doesn’t matter today where you start a software company, especially a developer-focused one. Today, every company is transforming into a software company, thus the developers responsible for writing the billions of lines of code to digitize their companies, are in the driver’s seat. They dictate which tools they want to use to do their jobs. And developers want to use community-driven, open source, API-driven, and freemium platforms. They want to collaborate with their peers worldwide to co-create new tools and platforms that make their lives easier. They don’t care whether a tool they use was built in Monte Carlo, Mexico City or Menlo Park. So software companies can be built anywhere, and Israel is arguably a fantastic choice. As we’ve discussed, Israel has a combination of tech talent, entrepreneurial zeal, and access to capital that is common in tech hubs like Silicon Valley, but it also has a unique geographic position. Being a very young and small country, Israel has always been outward-looking; Israeli founders must think about going global from day one. And now that the pandemic has changed the game in how enterprise companies sell their software—gone are the huge developer conferences, urban briefing centers for high-value prospects, and other in-person schmoozing—Israeli companies are well placed to lead in the bottoms-up software sales model that was already gaining steam before the pandemic. 

Israel has led the world in a science-driven pandemic response, vaccinating more of its population faster than any other country. Though every country is facing a continued threat from the pandemic, Israel feels today like a beacon of innovation, hope, and excitement. My firm is betting big on Israeli software companies and we’re certainly not alone.

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A bit of sulfur, a dash of charcoal, a lot of saltpeter and... KABOOM

Scientists test medieval gunpowder recipes with 15th-century cannon replica

Aged 94, Saturnino "Sato" Lopez rises early each day, chops wood and takes long walks in a part of Costa Rica that's a global oddity: like him, people there tend to live a very long time.

Home for Sato is the Nicoya Peninsula, where 1,010 people aged 90 or older live in a so-called "Blue Zone" -- five areas around the world where life expectancy is particularly high.

And these people did not move to the peninsula, located in the northwest of Costa Rica. Rather, they have always lived there.

"At my age, I feel well because the Lord gives me strength to walk at ease. I go out, walk maybe a kilometer (around half a mile), or four kilometers, and I return, no problem," said Lopez.

His house in a village called Dulce Nombre -- Sweet Name -- is a sort of nature refuge.

The village's wood, concrete and stick-and-mud houses are surrounded by vegetation and cicadas drone non-stop. The Covid-19 pandemic has gone easy on this village.

"During the day if I have to sweep the patio, I sweep. If I have to chop wood, I chop, also. A bit of everything," said Lopez.

- Blue Zones -

In the late 20th century, demographer Michel Poulain and a physician named Gianni Pes used a blue marker to highlight on a map the Barbalia region of Sardinia, Italy, where they found people lived a very long time.

In 2005, an American author and National Geographic fellow named Dan Buettner discovered similar characteristics in Loma Linda, California; Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan, and Nicoya.

So what is their secret?

"The main food is rice and beans. A bit of meat, fruit, avocado. That is what you eat. They say this is good food," said Lopez.

His neighbors Clementina Espinoza, 91, and her husband Agustin, 100, follow a similar diet.

Espinoza has outlived six of her 18 children. She walks slowly but steadily, and still tosses corn to her chickens, prepares meals and washes up afterward.

Clementina Espinoza, 91, tends to her garden in Nicoya Ezequiel BECERRA AFP

She exhibits robust energy in a country where the life expectancy is a mere 80. For the world in general it is 72, the World Health Organization says.

"Out in the countryside, life is quieter," said Espinoza, insisting that diet is key. "You are more relaxed and there is not so much danger."

- Having purpose is key -

Having goals is critical to aging well, said Aleyda Obando, who works in the social security administration in Nicoya.

"They thank God for being alive and they make plans, to plant something or go see friends," said Obando. "It is a combination of factors that makes these people last longer."

It also helps to have a social support network, exercise, eat healthy food and minimize stress.

"We grew corn, rice, beans, everything. We grew what we ate," said Clementina. Now, her daughter Maria looks after her.

Agustin, one of 53 people in the area who are 100 or older, is blind now and suffered a stroke. Still, you can tell he likes it when Clementina caresses him.

- Back in the saddle -

Jose Villegas is another centenarian, who lives in the neighboring village of San Juan de Quebrada Honda, with one of his eight daughters.

He is hoping that when he turns 105 on May 4 he can once again ride a horse -- he used to make his living on horseback, herding livestock. But sometimes he has trouble with his legs.

Being 104, he says, "is a big deal because God has given me a lot of life. It was not fantastic but it was not bad, either," said Villegas, sitting in the house he was born in.

"Now, lifestyles have changed. It is not the same as before. Things used to be healthier and people loved each other a little bit more," said Villegas, who became a widower seven years ago and spends his evenings listening to folk music.

Gilbert Brenes, a demographer at the University of Costa Rica, said the Blue Zone's elderly population may peak in the next 20 or 30 years and then decline.

Younger generations have different diets and suffer more from diseases like obesity and diabetes. And fewer and fewer people grow what they eat.

But Saturnino Lopez, a father of nine, remains active.

"My children say to me, 'you no longer work. We have to work to support you.' But I don't like that, because I know what keeps me going," he said, referring to physical activity like cutting wood.

"Even if it is just a couple of blows with the machete, that's enough."

© 2021 AFP

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It seemed too good to be true. Acquired by Yale University and publicized to great fanfare in 1965, the Vinland Map—supposedly dated to mid-15th century Europe—showed part of the coast of North America, seemingly presenting medieval Scandinavians, not Christopher Columbus, as the true “discoverers” of the New World.

The idea wasn’t exactly new. Two short Icelandic sagas relate the story of Viking expeditions to North America, including the construction of short-lived settlements, attempts at trade and ill-fated battles with Indigenous peoples on the continent’s northeastern coast. Archaeological finds made on Newfoundland in the 1960s support these accounts. But this map suggested something more: namely, that knowledge of Western lands was reasonably common in Scandinavia and central Europe, with Vikings, rather than Columbus and his Iberian backers, acting as the harbingers of the colonial age. 

In the modern era, the European discovery of North America became a proxy for conflicts between American Protestants and Catholics, as well as northern Europeans who claimed the pagan Vikings as their ancestors and southern Europeans who touted links to Columbus and the monarchs of Spain. Feted on the front page of the New York Times, the map’s discovery appeared to solidify the idea of a pre-Columbian Norse arrival in the American mindset.

As it turns out, the map was indeed too good to be true. In 1966, just months after it was publicized, scholars pointed out inconsistencies with other medieval sources and raised questions about where the map had supposedly been for the past 500 years. In addition, a study conducted in the early 1970s strongly hinted at problems with the original dating of the map to medieval Europe, though outside researchers challenged that finding with concerns about the small sample of ink that was tested, as well as possible contamination. Debates over the map’s authenticity continued in the succeeding decades, prompting Yale and others to conduct a series of largely inconclusive tests.

Yale publicized the Vinland Map to great fanfare in 1965. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Now, an interdisciplinary research project undertaken by archivists, conservators and conservation scientists has proven that the map is fake once and for all. Far removed from the 1440s, the analysis of metals in the map’s ink revealed that the document was actually forged as early as the 1920s. 

“There is no reasonable doubt here,” says Raymond Clemens, curator of early books and manuscripts at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, which houses the map, in a statement. “This new analysis should put the matter to rest.”

This time around, experts used a technique called X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to examine the ink used across the entirety of the map. Their analysis showed definitively that the ink contained titanium, which only became popular in the 1920s. Scans also revealed a note on the back of the parchment that was intentionally altered to make the document seem more authentic. “It’s powerful evidence that this is a forgery, not an innocent creation by a third party that was co-opted by someone else, although it doesn’t tell us who perpetrated the deception,” says Clemens in the statement.

Medieval texts that mention Vinland, as the Vikings called the region, are an amalgam of both Viking and classical, or ancient Greek and Roman, forms of storytelling. The tales they tell are spectacular: blood feuds among Vikings, magical rituals, battles between First Nations and Vikings, lively mercantile exchanges. In recent years, the stories of Viking voyages to North America have shown up in movies, video games, Japanese manga and anime, and more.

The ink used throughout the map contains traces of titanium, which only became popular in the 1920s. Yale University

A similar wave of Viking nostalgia in the early 20th century may have inspired a forger to create the purportedly medieval map. As Lisa Fagin Davis, executive director of the Medieval Academy of America and an expert on manuscript production, says, “The motivation for manuscript forgeries is generally financial or political. In the case of the Vinland Map, both are quite possible.”

The first record of the map dates to 1957, when a dealer offered it to the British Museum on behalf of Enzo Ferrajoli de Ry, a dealer based in Spain. The British Museum turned the sale down, suspecting the chart was a forgery. Then, in the early 1960s, American dealer Laurence C. Witten III bought the map for $3,500 and offered it to Yale, which declined to purchase it for $300,000. Instead, wealthy alumnus Paul Mellon paid for the map and donated it to the Connecticut university.

In hindsight, this protracted chain of events probably should have set off alarm bells. Witten was secretive from the get-go about who he got the map from and how—likely with good reason. Before the find was announced to the world, in November 1964, the New York Times revealed that Ferrajoli de Ry had been convicted of stealing manuscripts; the reporter questioned the legitimacy of Witten’s relationship with the criminal and thus the manuscripts he’d previously sold to Yale.

Witten recounted the saga in 1989, altering some points of the story and admitting that he bought the map directly from Ferrajoli de Ry without supporting provenance. As the dealer reflected, “Why did I not then and there insist on a pedigree? My reply can only be that thirty years ago there was no compelling reason to do so.” He added that post-war Europe was awash with manuscripts sold off by desperate priests to cover debts and rebuild their churches.

Despite all these potential red flags, curators at Yale worked closely with colleagues at the British Museum to determine the map’s authenticity. They dated it to the 1440s based primarily on the handwriting style and the age of the parchment on which it was written.

1910 photograph of the Kensington Runestone Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

If the map was created in the 1920s, it would have fit within a larger cultural movement that catered to an eager American audience. The forgery closely followed Swedish immigrant Olof Öhman’s 1898 discovery of a carved runestone in Minnesota. Öhman cited the rock as proof that the Vikings had traveled inland from the coast and, coincidentally, built communities in the same area where 19th-century Swedish and Norwegian immigrants were then settling down. Just as with the Vinland Map, scholars were skeptical almost from the start; still, claims about the Kensington Runestone, as it’s known, have persisted for decades, even in the face of quite clear evidence that the artifact is a fake.

As medieval literature expert Dorothy Kim wrote for Time in 2019, 19th-century nationalists looking to create new political and racial myths turned to Viking history as their source material. American poets composed new Viking epics, and, in 1893, a Norwegian captain sailed a replica Viking ship to the Chicago World’s Fair, winning acclaim both in his home country and among Scandinavian immigrants in the United States.

In northern cities, local groups inspired at least in part by anti-Catholic (and, subsequently, anti-Columbus and anti-Italian) sentiment erected Viking statues. By no coincidence, the announcement of Yale’s acquisition of the Vinland Map just so happened to fall the day before Columbus Day in 1965. At times, the myth of Viking America might seem innocuous enough—but the story has always held the potential for exploitation by those seeking to claim the history of North America for white people.

As with almost all versions of nostalgia, false visions of the Vikings grew around a kernel of historical truth. As we explain in our new book, The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, the people of early medieval Scandinavia (popularly called Vikings today) were constant travelers. Around the turn of the first millennium C.E., they raided the coasts of France and England, then traversed the Volga in Russia, moving south to war and trade with the peoples of the Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate.

Not long after the map’s “discovery,” archaeologists uncovered an 11th-century Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, confirming Vikings had travel from Iceland to Greenland to the Canadian coast during that period. Now a Unesco World Heritage Site, the settlement is relatively small but was equipped for long-term occupation, boasting the remains of three dwellings, a forge, and workshops likely used for ship repairs and woodworking.

The Vikings’ presence in North America was short-lived, confined mostly to Nova Scotia and (perhaps) some surrounding regions. After island-hopping across the North Atlantic, the Norse appear to have settled down, trading and fighting with Indigenous tribes. Then, according to the two surviving medieval sagas that mention Vinland, these communities succumbed to infighting and disintegrated.

Reconstruction of Viking boat at the L'Anse aux Meadows settlement Megan Em via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0

In one saga, a woman named Freydís (sister of the famed Leif Eriksson) helps defend the Viking colony by baring her breast and slapping it with a sword to scare off Indigenous rivals. In the other, the same Freydís murders several of her fellow colonists with an axe, causing the settlement to fall apart and the survivors to return to Greenland.

These stories aren’t the ones that inspired the Kensington Runestone or the Vinland Map. Instead, the edges of those tales were worn smooth, washed clean and repurposed in service of early 20th-century politics and culture. Desperate to minimize the role of Spaniards, Italians and Indigenous peoples, some Americans went looking in the past, determined to find themselves. Unsurprisingly, they found what they were looking for—even if it sometimes meant inventing from whole cloth the sources of the story they wanted to tell. 

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The outer limit of the human lifespan has long been hotly debated, with recent studies making the case we could live up to 150 years, or arguing that there is no maximum theoretical age for humans.

The new research, published Wednesday in the Royal Society Open Science journal, wades into the debate by analyzing new data on supercentenarians – people aged 110 or more – and semi-supercentenarians, aged 105 or more.

While the risk of death generally increases throughout our lifetime, the researchers' analysis shows that risk eventually plateaus and remains constant at approximately 50-50.

"Beyond age 110 one can think of living another year as being almost like flipping a fair coin," said Anthony Davison, a professor of statistics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), who led the research.

"If it comes up heads, then you live to your next birthday, and if not, then you will die at some point within the next year," he told AFP.

Based on the data available so far, it seems likely that humans can live until at least 130, but extrapolating from the findings "would imply that there is no limit to the human lifespan," the research concludes.

The conclusions match similar statistical analyses done on datasets of the very elderly.

"But this study strengthens those conclusions and makes them more precise because more data are now available," Davison said.

The first dataset the team studied is newly released material from the International Database on Longevity, which covers more than 1,100 supercentenarians from 13 countries.

The second is from Italy on every person who was at least 105 between January 2009 and December 2015.

'One in a million'

The work involves extrapolating from existing data, but Davison said that was a logical approach.

"Any study of extreme old age, whether statistical or biological, will involve extrapolation," he said.

"We were able to show that if a limit below 130 years exists, we should have been able to detect it by now using the data now available," he added.

Still, just because humans can theoretically reach 130 or beyond, doesn't mean we're likely to see it anytime soon.

For a start, the analysis is based on people who have already achieved the relatively rare feat of making it to well over 100.

And even at age 110, your chances of making it to 130 are "about one in a million... not impossible but very unlikely," said Davison.

He thinks we could see people reaching 130 within the century, as more people make it to supercentenarian status, increasing the chances of one becoming that one in a million.

"But in the absence of major medical and social advances, ages much over this are highly unlikely ever to be observed," he added.

For now, the oldest person on record is Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the confirmed age of 122.

Her true age was the subject of some controversy, with claims of a possible fraud, but in 2019 several experts said a review of the evidence confirmed her age.

Other pretenders to the throne of oldest person ever have a long way to go. The oldest verified living person in the world is Japan's Kane Tanaka, a comparatively youthful 118.

© Agence France-Presse

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Aleksei Burkov was serving a nine-year sentence in U.S. federal prison for a range of cybercrimes, including identity theft and money laundering. The Justice Department had accused Burkov, a Russian national, of running a cyber-forum for the sale of illegal goods and services, as well as a credit card scheme that stole more than $20 million from U.S. consumers.

But his return to Russia is the latest twist in a criminal saga that has spanned multiple countries since Israeli authorities first arrested Burkov in 2015. Russia later charged him in absentia with a number of financial and hacking crimes and sought his arrest through Interpol, Tass reported.

Israel, however, extradited Burkov to the United States in 2019.

The United States does not typically extradite convicted felons to other countries without assurances that they will serve their full sentences. Russia and the United States do not have an extradition treaty.

A spokeswoman for Russia’s Interior Ministry said Tuesday that Burkov had been deported from the United States.

“Today on arrival from New York to Moscow, he was taken into custody by Russian police officers,” Irina Volk said, Tass reported.

Russia has also imprisoned several Americans in a string of recent high-profile cases, further straining relations between the two countries.

Last year, a Russian court sentenced former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan to 16 years of hard labor for espionage — a charge he denied. Another former U.S. Marine, Trevor Reed, was also sentenced to prison last year for allegedly endangering Russian police in a drunken brawl. Reed has dismissed the charges as “clearly political.”

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In 2012, experts began examining Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave complex, to determine its true dimensions and to see whether it contained passages and chambers that had been plugged by sand.

Last month the team, led by Prof Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist who serves as director of the Gibraltar National Museum, came across a gap in the sediment, which they widened and crawled through. It led them to a 13-metre space in the roof of the cave where stalactites hung from the ceiling and broken curtains of rock suggested damage from an ancient earthquake.

“It’s quite a chamber,” Finlayson told the Guardian. “In a way, it’s almost like discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun; you’re going into a space that no one’s been into for 40,000 years. It’s quite sobering, really.”

Scattered across the chamber’s surface were the leg bone of a lynx, vertebrae from a spotted hyena, and the large wing bone of a griffon vulture.

“Something dragged things into there a long time ago,” said Finlayson. “We’ve also found six or seven examples of scratched claw marks on the walls of the cave. You’d normally associate that kind of claw mark with bears – and we do have bear remains in the cave, but they look a bit small to me. I wonder whether that lynx whose femur we found was actually scratching on the walls.”

Although the bones – which showed no cuts or marks consistent with human intervention – are interesting in themselves, the team also found a large dog whelk shell that raises tantalising possibilities.

From the left, the entrances to the Bennett’s, Gorham’s, Vanguard and Hyaena caves, which constitute the four main caves of the Gorham’s complex. Photograph: Clive Finlayson/Gibraltar Museum

“That bit of the cave is probably 20 metres above sea level today, so clearly somebody took it up there some time before 40,000 years ago,” said the professor. “That’s already a hint that people have been up there.”

Elsewhere in the caves, the team has recovered ample evidence of Neanderthal occupation, from hearths and stone tools to the remains of butchered animals including red deer, ibex, seals and dolphins. Four years ago, the researchers came across the milk tooth of a four-year-old Neanderthal child in an area frequented by hyenas.

“We’re still looking there, but there was no occupation by Neanderthals on that level, so we suspect that the hyenas got the kid and killed him or her and dragged her into the back of the cave,” said Finlayson. “We’re looking to see if there’s more of that child left there.”

The team is hopeful that their dig down from the apex of the cave could lead to side chambers and perhaps even the odd burial site.

“One of the things that we’ve found on many levels of this cave is clear evidence of occupation – campfires and so on,” said Finlayson. “I’m speculating now, but what we haven’t found is where they buried their own. Since we’re speculating, a chamber at the back of a cave could be quite suggestive – it’s total speculation, but you’re not going to bury people in your kitchen or in your living room.”

Efforts to explore and excavate further are being planned, but the researchers believe the new area could yield precious clues about the existence and society of these coastal, Mediterranean Neanderthals.

“These caves have been giving us a great deal of information about the behaviour of these people,” said Finlayson. “And, far from the old view of the brutish, ape-like beings, we’re realising that in every respect they were human, and capable of most of the things that modern humans were capable of doing. We even know that they were interchanging genes.”

For the professor, the search is about more than just finding skeletons: it is about finding out who the Neanderthals were, how they lived, how they died, and how they survived.

“I’m proud to say that I’ve done my test, and I’ve got two-point-something percent Neanderthal DNA in me,” he said. “Arguably, they never went extinct because there’s still a little bit of them in us.”

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A government tally reported 852 fatalities over the past 24 hours, a record in Russia since the start of the pandemic.

The new figure brings the country's total deaths from COVID-19 to 205,531—the highest in Europe.

Authorities have been accused of downplaying the severity of the outbreak.

Under a broader definition for deaths linked to the coronavirus, statistics agency Rosstat reported in late August that Russia had seen more than 350,000 fatalities.

Russia, the world's fifth worst-hit country with more than seven million infections, has seen cases climb since last month as vaccinations stall.

Moscow, the epicentre of Russia's outbreak, has experienced a spike over the past week, with authorities warning of rising hospital admissions.

Deputy mayor Anastasia Rakova has said that the highly contagious Delta variant now accounts for all of the cases in the Russian capital.

Authorities face a vaccine-sceptic population, with polls showing that a majority of Russians do not plan to get jabbed.

In Moscow, 52-year-old Olga Samarina said she did not plan to get jabbed as she had never had COVID.

"Why get vaccinated against a disease that doesn't bother me," she told AFP.

The Kremlin initially set a goal of fully inoculating 60 percent of Russia's population by September, but later dropped that target although free jabs have been available since early December.

As of Tuesday, only 28 percent of the population had been fully vaccinated, according to the Gogov website, which tallies COVID data from the regions.

President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that he was self-isolating after dozens of cases were detected in his inner circle.

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A recent rise in cases after the relaxation of some COVID-19 measures has prompted Singapore to pause further reopening. More than 80% of its population has been vaccinated against COVID-19.

From this week, Singapore tightened some COVID-19 curbs such as limiting social gatherings to two people and making work from home a default.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Bengaluru; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel)

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PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A Pittsburgh fitness instructor who survived COVID-19 had the virus resurface months later.

Doctors said the virus attacked his heart and the only way to save him was to give him a new heart.

Derek Stipetich thrived at extreme adventures, skiing and living life to the fullest. He slowed down a bit when diagnosed with COVID-19 last November but described his symptoms as mild.

Later, his family became worried when lingering symptoms progressed.

“The weights that I was regularly using were entirely too heavy for me,” Stipetich said.

His wife and daughters pleaded with him to go back to the doctor.

“Make sure everything is OK with your lungs, go get everything checked,” Stipetich said.

That was January. Doctors told him he was healthy. But in April, Stipetich came down with a cold and couldn’t sleep.

“I would wake up and feel like I was suffocating,” Stipetich said.

His family urged him to go to the hospital, believing he may have COVID-19 again. It turned out Stipetich was very sick and in cardiogenic shock.

“Throughout all these tests, they came back and said, there is nothing more that they can do for me,” Stipetich said.

The news became more terrifying when Stipetich found out his kidneys and liver were failing, and so was his heart.

“His heart had given way to a point that he needed to have his life sustained by a mechanical heart pump,” said Dr. Azam Hadi, an advanced heart failure cardiologist at Allegheny Health Network.

Dr. Hadi was on Stipetich’s team at AGH.

“We were able to turn his shock process around to a point where he recovered his organs except his heart,” the doctor said.

Next, Stipetich and his family would learn he needed a transplant. After eight days of his heart being pumped artificially, a donor heart arrived.

Dr. Hadi said he has seen a lot of COVID-19 heart issues, including death, but this was a first. Doctors believe the virus remained dormant in Stipetich’s body.

“The dormant virus continued to cause inflammation of the heart. And inflammation, in turn, makes the heart weak and get scarred and not able to pump,” Dr. Hadi said.

Recovery hasn’t been easy. Stipetich’s strong body took another hit, as his mobility has been impacted.

But now several months in, Stipetich is gaining energy. And while extreme sports and lifting may not be in his future, Stipetich and his family have a new purpose.

A business Stipetich started prior to his medical ordeal called Pumping Adrenaline Beating All Odds has been turned into a non-profit organization to benefit heart transplant recipients, especially those associated with COVID-19.

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Instead, the museum — which had commissioned Haaning to re-create two of his older pieces that were made with cash — found two empty frames.

The new name for the artwork: “Take the Money and Run.”

Now, the museum in Aalborg, Denmark, is accusing him of breaking their legal agreement and demanding the artist return the 534,000 kroner, the equivalent of over $84,000.

“The work is that I have taken their money,” Haaning said in an interview with Danish radio show “P1 Morgen.”

The 56-year-old resident of Copenhagen gained popularity in the 1990s. He is known for using art as commentary on money, power and marginalized groups, according to the Faurschou Foundation, a Copenhagen-based art museum.

Haaning’s pieces were meant to be part of a new exhibition at the Kunsten Museum about the labor market entitled “Work It Out.” Running from Sept. 28 to Jan. 16, the exhibit features new and existing works from about 20 artists and occupies the majority of the museum.

The museum asked Haaning to re-create his works from 2007 and 2010, which were visual representations of the average annual income for Austrians and Danes, respectively, by displaying the sum in bills affixed to a canvas.

The museum paid him 25,000 kroner — about $3,900 — Haaning told “P1 Morgen,” in addition to fronting the money that would be displayed in the two pieces. But when he realized it would cost him 25,000 kroner alone to fund the project, he decided to change his plans.

“Why do I not make a work that is about my own work situation?” he said.

He said he believes the new artworks are an apt representation of the museum’s exhibit and encourages others to reexamine their work conditions.

Lasse Andersson, the museum director, agrees that Haaning’s work is appropriate for collection but stipulated that his decision to take the money for himself violates their legal agreement.

“I want to give Jens absolutely the right that a work has been created in its own right, which actually comments on the exhibition we have,” Andersson told “P1 Morgen.” “But that is not the agreement we had.”

But Haaning is standing strong, noting that his decision is what makes the empty frames works of art.

“It’s not theft,” Haaning said. “It is a breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work.”

Haaning has until Jan. 14 to return the funds, according to Andersson. But the museum director doesn’t want to wait.

“Jens should not have the money because it is not part of the agreement,” Andersson said.

Despite Haaning’s alleged breach of his agreement, Kunsten Museum is still displaying the works he sent them last week.

“It’s a comment on how we all work and it’s probably also a comment on the value of what he creates,” Andersson told Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. “So there are lots of layers that we think are interesting.”

Source

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said the advice applied to counterfeit medicine made to look like real Oxycontin, Vicodin, Xanax, or Adderall.

Fake pills are widely available on social media and e-commerce platforms.

"Counterfeit pills that contain these dangerous and extremely addictive drugs are more lethal and more accessible than ever before," said DEA administrator Anne Milgram in a statement.

"In fact, DEA lab analyses reveal that two out of every five fake pills with fentanyl contain a potentially lethal dose."

The rare public advisory – the first since 2015 – comes as US drug overdose deaths soared to 93,000 last year, the highest ever level.

Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid most commonly found in counterfeit pills, is the primary driver of the rise, the DEA said.

Overdoses involving methamphetamine, increasingly found to be pressed into counterfeit tablets, are another factor.

More than 9.5 million counterfeit pills were seized so far this year, more than the last two years combined.

The vast majority were produced in Mexico, with China supplying chemicals for manufacturing fentanyl in Mexico.

Source

A major flaw in much scientific and academic career advice is survivorship bias. This is a common logical error, involving drawing conclusions based on those who have ‘survived’ a process — and are thus more visible than those who did not. In the case of science careers advice, the bias arises because those who manage to stick to their chosen career path are there to advise the next generation of researchers on how to stay in their field.

As two postdoctoral researchers in ecology (D.H.B., D.R.) and a lecturer in learning and teaching (E.K.), we have seen many examples of worthy but ‘unsuccessful’ colleagues who left their research field against their wishes. On the flipside, the positions we hold in our respective fields are, to some extent, the result of many chance events that we experienced.

Some of our success came from hard work, grit and good judgement. But much of it came from decisions, luck and circumstances that never make it into careers advice. For example, job opportunities for D.R. and her friends have come about through having drinks with senior scientists, and D.R. was invited to publish her first book Does It Fart? thanks to a completely unplanned Twitter hashtag. Chance or serendipitous experiences such as these are impossible to replicate, yet are key to many people’s ability to stay in their chosen career.

Conversely, E.K. had to leave her original field, English literature, because she could not afford to stay in the insecure, low-paid teaching roles that were available. It is therefore important to know not only why some people ‘succeeded’, but also what pushed many more away. Assuming that all aspiring scientists and academics enjoy similar circumstances to those of their colleagues who have ‘survived’ can only damage the prospects of the next generation, and will lead to professions with much less diverse staff than could have been the case.

Over the years, numerous senior researchers have assumed that we would be able to go without pay for an extended period during our research, even while living in one of the world’s most expensive cities. Sometimes we’ve had to argue our case and explain why we couldn’t afford to do so; sometimes we’ve simply had to find other jobs. Anyone who is able to work without pay is not only financially secure but is also unlikely to have other demands such as caring responsibilities — and those who think unpaid work is straightforward are likely to share these circumstances.

For these reasons, survivorship bias in career advice becomes self-perpetuating. Those who survived and thrived because of privilege assume that those hoping to follow in their footsteps are in similar financial and social situations; conversely, those who lack that privilege are less likely to make it to a position from which they can give less biased advice.

As the coronavirus pandemic has blurred the boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘life’, the issue of balance has become even more prominent. The closest many senior researchers come to fostering work–life balance is in offering the common advice to ‘take a break’: perhaps between contracts, over holiday periods, or even by simply not working on weekends. Survivorship bias plays out here as well, because this advice assumes that recipients can afford to take time off despite the pressure to publish or to keep one’s head above water financially. D.R. took a six-month break between handing in her PhD and beginning her postdoc, but this was feasible only because of having savings, thanks to publishing that book about farts — a privileged position that most PhD students cannot easily replicate.

Survivorship bias: during the Second World War, the bullet holes on aircraft that returned marked out the areas that were not crucial to the planes’ integrity.Credit: Martin Grandjean (vector), McGeddon (picture), Cameron Moll (concept) (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Although survivorship bias makes intuitive sense to most academics, its influence in careers advice is rarely considered. Studies that look at career outcomes of current scientists might even conclude that career setbacks are beneficial, without acknowledging that those setbacks lead many others to leave their field altogether1. Some researchers will encounter barriers and setbacks beyond anything we have experienced, for example active discrimination, harassment or severe financial distress, and leave their fields as a result. It is important to understand what the advice that our communities pass on is rooted in, and that none of us can be truly representative of all aspiring scientists. Every scientist has their own barriers to overcome, but let’s beware of extrapolating that, because something was not an issue for us, it is therefore not seriously problematic for those around us.

During the pandemic and its aftermath, relying on conventional thinking and others’ biased experience is more dangerous than ever, especially due to the documented ethnic-, class- and gender-based disparities of COVID-19 in our communities2,3,4.

Those of us who are senior enough to be giving advice and setting expectations can enhance the quality and inclusivity of our working environments by asking our students and colleagues about the barriers they face, with a view to understanding the factors that might exclude people from career progression. Those around you might well have had to deal with hardships and circumstances that are different from yours: so when involved in mentoring conversations, make time to ask which ways forward would work for them, rather than just recommending your own path. The fact that you overcame a barrier does not preclude it unfairly excluding many others.

Seeking further mentorship and support from others whose background is similar to yours, and who have faced similar barriers in their career, can be particularly helpful in this regard. Frank but sensitive conversations around these issues might feel awkward, but in helping us better understand how to support one another, they could be key to reducing inequities in scientific careers.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02634-z

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged.

References

1.  Wang, Y., Jones, B. F. & Wang, D. Nature Commun. 10, 4331 (2019).

2.  Blundell, R., Dias, M. C., Joyce, R. & Xu, X. Fiscal Stud. 41, 291–319 (2020).

3.  Gemelas, J., Davison, J., Keltner, C. & Ing, S. J. Racial Ethn. Health Disparities https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-021-00963-3 (2021).

4.  Malisch, J. L. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117, 15378–15381 (2020).

Source

The report, published today, concludes that enforcement action under Australia’s existing competition laws alone is not sufficient to address the competition issues in the sector, and that the ACCC should be given powers to develop specific rules in response.

Ad tech services facilitate complex transactions for the selling and buying of advertising space on websites or apps, resulting in the ads that are displayed to consumers.

The report finds that Google has a dominant position in key parts of the ad tech supply chain and estimates that more than 90 per cent of ad impressions traded via the ad tech supply chain passed through at least one Google service in 2020.

Google’s dominance in the ad tech supply chain is underpinned by multiple factors including its access to consumer and other data, access to exclusive inventory and integration across its ad tech services. Key acquisitions by Google, including of DoubleClick in 2007, AdMob in 2009, as well as YouTube in 2006 have helped Google entrench its position in ad tech.

The report finds that Google has used its position to preference its own services and shield them from competition. For example, Google prevents rival ad tech services from accessing ads on YouTube, providing its own ad tech services with an important advantage.

Google has also refused to participate in publisher-led header bidding, an industry innovation aimed at increasing competition for publishers’ inventory, and previously allowed its services to have a ‘last look’ opportunity to outbid rivals.

“Google has used its vertically integrated position to operate its ad tech services in a way that has, over time, led to a less competitive ad tech industry. This conduct has helped Google to establish and entrench its dominant position in the ad tech supply chain,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said.

“Google’s activities across the supply chain also mean that, in a single transaction, Google can act on behalf of both the advertiser (the buyer) and the publisher (the seller) and operate the ad exchange connecting these two parties. As the interests of these parties do not align, this creates conflicts of interest for Google which can harm both advertisers and publishers.”

Ad tech services perform an important role in the digital economy, helping Australian businesses reach consumers and publishers fund online content.

The report estimates that, in Australia, at least 27 per cent of advertiser spend on ads sold via the ad tech supply chain was retained by ad tech providers in 2020.

“We are concerned that the lack of competition has likely led to higher ad tech fees. An inefficient ad tech industry means higher costs for both publishers and advertisers, which is likely to reduce the quality or quantity of online content and ultimately results in consumers paying more for advertised goods”, Mr Sims said.

“The ACCC is considering specific allegations against Google under existing competition laws. However new regulatory solutions are needed to address Google’s dominance and to restore competition to the ad tech sector for the benefit of businesses and consumers. We recommend rules be considered to manage conflicts of interest, prevent anti-competitive self-preferencing, and ensure rival ad tech providers can compete on their merits.”

“We have identified systemic competition concerns relating to conduct over many years and multiple ad tech services, including conduct that harms rivals. Investigation and enforcement proceedings under general competition laws are not well suited to deal with these sorts of broad concerns, and can take too long if anti-competitive harm is to be prevented,” Mr Sims said.

“Many of the concerns we identified in the ad tech supply chain are similar to concerns in other digital platform markets, such as online search, social media and app marketplaces. These markets are also dominated by one or two key providers, which benefit from vertical integration, leading to significant competition concerns. In many cases these are compounded by a lack of transparency.”

Sector-specific regulation, such as that proposed in this report, is not new. Other industries, such as telecommunications, have specific rules which can address particular competition and transparency concerns identified in those sectors.

“How the recommendations in this Report should be given effect, including the legal framework for the proposed rules and powers will be considered as part of a broader ACCC report due in September 2022,” Mr Sims said.

That report will also look at whether the proposed rules for ad tech need to form part of a broader regulatory scheme to address common competition and consumer concerns we have identified in digital platform markets. Consultation on that report will commence in the first quarter of 2022 and will take into account overseas legislative proposals to deal with these issues.

“We are also engaging very closely with our international counterparts who are at different stages of introducing similar rules to deal with these issues,” Mr Sims said.

Google’s access to data has contributed to its dominance in ad tech

Google has access to a large volume and range of first-party data gathered through its customer-facing services, such as Search, Maps and YouTube. The extent to which Google uses its first-party data to advantage its ad tech businesses is not clear and is a source of confusion among industry stakeholders.

“We recommend that Google makes clear how it uses its data through clear public statements in its terms and conditions and other material it uses to sell its services,” Mr Sims said.

The report also recommends that under the proposed new sector-specific rules, the ACCC be given the power to develop and implement special measures to address competition issues caused by an ad tech provider’s data advantage, such as data separation or data access requirements to address the competition risks that may arise from the use of first party data.

Need for greater transparency of the ad tech supply chain

The ACCC also found that the pricing and the operation of ad tech services lack transparency. The complexity of the supply chain contributes to this lack of transparency and can make it difficult for advertisers and publishers to understand how the supply chain is operating and detect misconduct.

It recommends the industry establish standards, requiring ad tech providers to publish average fees and take rates to enable ad tech customer to easily compare fees and take rates across different ad tech providers and services. It also recommends an industry standard to enable full and independent verification of the services advertisers use in the supply chain.

The report also identified specific transparency issues with Google’s publisher services, and recommends that Google should be required to provide publishers with information about the operation and outcomes of its publisher ad server auctions.

“If Google fails to provide sufficient information, or the industry’s voluntary standards do not achieve transparency, then new requirements should be able to be put in place to address this,” Mr Sims said.

Notes to editors

Ad tech services are used in the buying and selling of digital display advertising through open display channels. They involve the automated use of complex algorithms and systems to trade digital ads on websites and apps in a matter of milliseconds.

Digital display advertisements include the images or videos that appear before or alongside content viewed online. This inquiry considers the ad tech services that deliver digital display advertising to consumers, and associated advertising agency services.

Display ads can appear as banners, pop-ups and videos. They can be traded through open display channels (which relies on ad tech to facilitate the buying and selling of ads) or via closed (or owned and operated channels), such as when publishers sell ads directly to advertisers using their own systems. Open display channels are the focus of this report.

Size of digital advertising channels in Australia

Source: ACCC analysis of data obtained from ad tech providers and provided by IAB Australia

Examples of situations where individuals may view targeted display advertising include:

• Image or video ads shown while viewing a website in a browser on a desktop or mobile device;
• Image or video advertising integrated into the content of a mobile app;
• Videos shown during the ‘ad breaks’ in the ‘catch-up’ video streaming services of major commercial television networks.

Generally, when a consumer visits a publisher’s website or app, its publisher side services send out a request to many advertisers through their advertiser-side services, asking for bids from advertisers who would like to show an ad to the consumer. The advertiser-side services and publisher-side services then run a series of automated processes, including auctions, to select a winning ad which is then sent to the publisher.

The inquiry has examined four key ad tech services: advertiser ad servers, demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms and publisher ad servers.

Background

On 10 February 2020, the Treasurer signed a Ministerial Direction requiring the ACCC to hold a public inquiry into markets for the supply of ad tech services and ad agency services.

The inquiry started in March 2020 with the release of an issues paper, and an interim report was released in January 2021.

The ACCC’s Digital Platforms Branch is also conducting a separate five-year inquiry into markets for the supply of digital platform services. Under that inquiry, reports are provided to the Treasurer every six months.

Release number: 

149/21

ACCC Infocentre: 
Use this form to make a general enquiry.

Media enquiries: 
Media Team - 1300 138 917, media@accc.gov.au

Source

What you need to know

• Microsoft is among the most hated brands in the world, according to a recent report.

• The report analyzed over one million tweets to assess people's negativity towards different brands.

• Microsoft is the most hated tech brand in 22 countries, according to the report.

Microsoft made headlines with its Surface hardware event last week. Next week the tech giant will launch Windows 11. But not everyone is a fan of the Redmond-based tech giant. According to a recent report by RAVE Reviews, Microsoft is one of the most-hated brands in the world.

RAVE Reviews used the research tool SentiStrength to review over one million brand-related tweets. These tweets were used to calculate a hate rate based on the percentage of negative tweets. RAVE Reviews then split brands into categories and broke down results based on location.

According to the analyzed tweets, people in the U.S. hate Microsoft more than Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Microsoft saw a negative-tweet percentage of 41.57% in the U.S. The story internationally isn't much better for Microsoft. It is the most hated tech brand in 22 countries around the world, according to the report.

Source: RAVE Reviews

We're not sure what Microsoft did to earn a 50% negative-tweet rate in Finland. The company may want to reach out to its PR people in nearby Norway, in which Microsoft only earned a 35.29% negative-tweet rate.

How much stock you put into these figures depends on how much you value people's comments on Twitter. The methodology of the report by RAVE Reviews led to some surprising results for several brands. It claims that LEGO is the second most hated brand in the U.S. The study may be skewed by negative tweets of people complaining about stepping on LEGO pieces.

Source

Why Robots Can’t Sew Your T-Shirt

(May require free registration to view)

The record-setting high-speed train went into service on this day 40 years ago.

Every year, the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine (European Heritage Days) weekend in September offers visitors a chance to visit numerous monuments all over Europe. Among the attractions in Paris this year was an orange-colored electric train with a name that has become a byword for speed and cutting-edge technology: the TGV. Thousands of enthusiasts flocked to the Gare de Lyon station to see the inaugural TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse), which was launched 40 years ago in September 1981.

 

Jacques Ruiz, one of the two drivers who piloted the first train 40 years ago, was at the Gare de Lyon station during the European Heritage Days weekend. “What impressed me most about the TGV was its aerodynamic design. The other locomotives, which looked like cubes, did not have such a shape. Of course, the power and the comfort of the air-conditioned cabin were impressive, too. It was exciting to drive this new train,” the 79-year-old said.

 

The first train was flagged off by the then French President François Mitterrand on September 22, 1981, and the first Paris-Lyon line was opened to the public five days later.

Built for speed

The first TGV, with a maximum speed of 260 km/hour, reduced the travel time between Paris and Lyon by one hour (from 3 hrs 40 minutes to 2 hrs 40 minutes). The present-day TGV, which reaches a maximum speed of 320 km/h, covers the same distance in just under two hours.

 

As the TGV network spread across France in the ensuing years, the travel times between other cities also dropped significantly. “This made it possible to do a return trip between French cities on the same day (Paris-Marseille in three hours, Paris-Bordeaux in two hours, Paris-Lille in one hour),” said François Vielliard, of the French railways (SNCF). “The TGV shrunk France as well as a few other European countries.”

 

The launch of the TGV service was a major public event in France.

 

The first TGV at the Gare de Lyon.

 

Visitors queue to see the driver's cabin of the first TGV.

 

The TGV established a new record of 380 km/h in February 1981.

 

The present-day TGV still shares many features with the first.

 

The TGV helped inspire other high-speed rail, like the Eurostar.

 

The success of the TGV in France led to the development of high-speed lines in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and the UK, bringing Europe closer. For example, the travel time between Paris and London is 2 hours and 15 minutes, Paris to Zurich is 4 hours, Paris-Brussels 1 hr 30 minutes and Paris-Frankfurt 3 hours 45 minutes.

According to Eric Alexandre, who is an engineer and a driver at SNCF, the other distinctive aspect of the TGV is its affordability. “The TGV was meant for everyone and not just the rich.”

The speed, comfort, and affordability made the trains popular in no time. By the end of the 1980s, the high-speed trains ferried an average of 50,000 passengers per day that went up to 90,000 during the peak. In 10 years, they witnessed a jump of 70 percent in passenger traffic, from 10 million to 17 million. As of today, the TGVs have carried more than 3 billion passengers. Currently, between 650 and 700 TGVs run every day serving around 230 destinations in France and Europe.

The TGV has several speed records to its name. On February 26, 1981, it reached 380 km/h; a decade later, on May 18, 1990, it clocked 515.3 km/h. And on April 3, 2007, it reached its highest speed of 574.8 km/h.

Past and future

According to Vielliard, the TGV’s big breakthrough was its design. “The way the bogies [assemblies that hold the train’s wheels] are coupled makes the train aerodynamic and extremely stable,” he said.

For Ruiz, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first TGV was extra special. “This TGV, built in 1978, was supposed to last 20 years. But it has lasted 40 years.” Though the first TGV isn’t in active service anymore, it can still run at a speed of 100 km/hr.

The seeds of the TGV were sown in the 1960s, when SNCF began research on creating high-speed links between cities. “It was crucial for SNCF because the railway is an important segment of the transport network. In the 1960s, the motorway network and domestic aviation were being developed. A high-speed rail network was therefore absolutely necessary in order to ensure the relevance of railways for long-distance travel,” Vielliard says.

The TGV has evolved a lot during the past 40 years in terms of speed, passenger-carrying capacity, and design. The next big change will occur in 2024 with the launch of TGV M, which is loaded with innovations, including improved aerodynamics and 20 percent less power consumption.

The train that shrunk France… and Western Europe

Summary

• Petrol stations run dry in major British cities
• Trucker shortage strains British economy
• Germany's Scholz: we told UK not to Brexit
• Health workers should get priority, medics union says

LONDON, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Gas station pumps ran dry in British cities on Monday and vendors rationed sales as a shortage of truckers strained supply chains to breaking point.

A post-Brexit shortage of lorry drivers as the COVID-19 pandemic eases has sown chaos through British supply chains in everything from food to fuel, raising the spectre of disruptions and price rises in the runup to Christmas.

Drivers queued for hours to fill their cars at petrol stations that were still selling fuel, albeit often rationed. There were also calls for National Health Service (NHS) workers to be given priority to keep hospitals open.

"As pumps run dry, there is a real risk that NHS staff won't be able to do their jobs, and provide vital services and care to people who urgently need it," said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the British Medical Association's council chair.

Pumps across British cities were either closed or had signs saying fuel was unavailable on Monday, Reuters reporters said, with some limiting the amount of fuel each customer could buy.

The Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), which represents independent fuel retailers which now account for 65% of all UK forecourts, said members had reported that 50% to 90% of pumps were dry in some areas.

"We need some calm," Gordon Balmer, executive director of the PRA, told Reuters. "Please don't panic buy: if people drain the network then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) said it had seen higher than usual demand for fuel across its British network and that some sites were running low on some grades of fuel.

Environment Secretary George Eustice said there was no shortage of fuel. He urged people to stop panic buying and said there were no plans to get the army to drive trucks, though the Ministry of Defence would help with trucker testing.

Hauliers, gas stations and retailers said there were no quick fixes, however, as the shortfall of truck drivers - estimated to be around 100,000 - was so acute, and because transporting fuel demands additional training and licensing.

  View three (4) photos at the source page. >

POLISH DRIVERS?

For months, supermarkets, processors and farmers have warned that a shortage of heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers was straining supply chains to breaking point - making it harder to get goods onto shelves.

The government on Sunday announced a plan to issue temporary visas for 5,000 foreign truck drivers.

But Andrzej Dobrowolski, a 44-year-old Pole who owns a construction and transportation firm in Britain, said many drivers would laugh at such a proposal.

"Boris Johnson is inviting the drivers back and they are laughing," Dobrowolski said. "They are saying: why should they quit their companies in Poland or Bulgaria or Romania or anywhere in the EU for four months?"

"What the British don't understand is that it's not just the money that's important," he said. "Their offer is at least three years out of date."

Amid warnings of a dire winter ahead, some politicians in the European Union linked the supply chain stress to the 2016 Brexit referendum and Britain's subsequent decision to seek a distant relationship with the bloc.

"The free movement of labour is part of the European Union, and we tried very hard to convince the British not to leave the Union," said Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrat candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor.

"They decided differently. I hope they will manage the problems coming from that," Scholz said.

British ministers have insisted that Brexit is nothing to do with the current trucker shortage, though around 25,000 truckers returned to Europe before Brexit. Britain was also unable to test 40,000 drivers during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Source

This spring, at a meeting of Syracuse University’s quark physics group, Ivan Polyakov announced that he had uncovered the fingerprints of a semi-mythical particle.

“We said, ‘This is impossible. What mistake are you making?’” recalled Sheldon Stone, the group’s leader.

Polyakov went away and double-checked his analysis of data from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment, which the Syracuse group is part of. The evidence held. It showed that a particular set of four fundamental particles called quarks can form a tight clique, contrary to the belief of most theorists. The LHCb collaboration reported the discovery of the composite particle, dubbed the double-charm tetraquark, at a conference in July and in two papers posted earlier this month that are now undergoing peer review.

The unexpected discovery of the double-charm tetraquark highlights an uncomfortable truth. While physicists know the exact equation that defines the strong force — the fundamental force that binds quarks together to make the protons and neutrons in the hearts of atoms, as well as other composite particles like tetraquarks — they can rarely solve this strange, endlessly iterative equation, so they struggle to predict the strong force’s effects.

The tetraquark now presents theorists with a solid target against which to test their mathematical machinery for approximating the strong force. Honing their approximations represents physicists’ main hope for understanding how quarks behave inside and outside atoms — and for teasing apart the effects of quarks from subtle signs of new fundamental particles that physicists are pursuing.

Quark Cartoon

The bizarre thing about quarks is that physicists can approach them at two levels of complexity. In the 1960s, grappling with a zoo of newly discovered composite particles, they developed the cartoonish “quark model,” which simply says that quarks glom together in complementary sets of three to make the proton, the neutron and other so-called baryons, while pairs of quarks make up various types of “meson” particles.

Gradually, though, a deeper theory known as quantum chromodynamics (QCD) emerged. It painted the proton as a seething mass of quarks roped together by tangled strings of “gluon” particles, the carriers of the strong force. Experiments have confirmed many aspects of QCD, but no known mathematical techniques can systematically unravel the theory’s central equation.

Somehow, the quark model can stand in for the far more complicated truth, at least when it comes to the menagerie of baryons and mesons discovered in the 20th century. But the model failed to anticipate the fleeting tetraquarks and five-quark “pentaquarks” that started showing up in the 2000s. These exotic particles surely stem from QCD, but for nearly 20 years, theorists have been stumped as to how.

“We just don’t know the pattern yet, which is embarrassing,” said Eric Braaten, a particle theorist at Ohio State University.

The newest tetraquark sharpens the mystery. 

It showed up in the debris of roughly 200 collisions at the LHCb experiment, where protons smash into each other 40 million times each second, giving quarks uncountable opportunities to cavort in all the ways nature permits. Quarks come in six “flavors” of different masses, with heavier quarks appearing more rarely. Each of those 200-odd collisions generated enough energy to make two charm-flavored quarks, which weigh more than the lightweight quarks that comprise protons, but less than the gigantic “beauty” quarks that are LHCb’s main quarry. The middleweight charm quarks also got close enough to attract each other and rope in two lightweight antiquarks. Polyakov’s analysis suggested that the four quarks banded together for a glorious 12 sextillionths of a second before an energy fluctuation conjured up two extra quarks and the group disintegrated into three mesons.

For a tetraquark, that’s an eternity. Previous tetraquarks have contained quarks paired with their equally massive opposing antiquarks, and they tended to puff into nothingness thousands of times faster. The new tetraquark’s formation and subsequent stability surprised Stone’s group, who expected charm quarks to attract each other even more weakly than the quark-antiquark pairs that bind more ephemeral tetraquarks. It’s a fresh clue to the strong force enigma.

Quark Rules of Thumb

One of the few theorists to foresee why two charm quarks might mingle was Jean-Marc Richard, now at the Institute of Physics of the 2 Infinities in Lyon, France. In 1982, he and two colleagues studied a simple quark model and initially found that four quarks would rather form two pairs — mesons. A quark pair can tango much as a proton and electron can. But add two more, and the newcomers tend to get in the way, weakening the attraction and dooming the collective particle.

But the theorists also noticed a loophole: Lopsided quartets can stick together, if the larger pair is heavy enough to not take much notice of the lighter pair. The question was, how skewed would the masses have to be?

Further analysis by Richard and a colleague predicted that it’s not necessary to go all the way to the most gargantuan quarks; a pair of middleweight charm quarks could anchor a tetraquark. But alternative extensions of the quark model predicted different tipping points, and the existence of the double-charm tetraquark remained doubtful. “There were more guesses that it would not exist than there were that it would exist,” Braaten said.

The same was true of “lattice QCD” computer simulations, a powerful approach to approximating QCD. These simulations capture the richness of the theory by analyzing quarks and gluons interacting at points on a fine grid instead of throughout a smooth space. All lattice QCD simulations agreed that the heaviest quarks could make tetraquarks. But when researchers swapped in charm quarks, most simulations found that double-charm tetraquarks couldn’t form.

Now the LHCb experiment has made a definitive ruling: Charm quarks can bind a tetraquark together. (Only barely, though — the physicists calculate that if the composite particle had just one-hundredth of a percent more mass, two mesons would win out instead.) Now theorists have a new benchmark for their models.

For lattice QCD practitioners, the new tetraquark highlights the problem that key details about the midsize quarks may be getting lost between their lattice points. Lightweight quarks can zip around enough to allow their movement to be captured even against a coarse grid. And researchers can deal with heavy, more stationary quarks by pinning them to one spot. But charm quarks inhabit an awkward middle ground, and researchers think they’ll need to zoom in to better discern their behavior. “We need, most likely, a finer lattice,” said Pedro Bicudo, a lattice QCD specialist at the University of Lisbon in Portugal.

More capable lattice QCD simulations will have far-reaching benefits. Particle physicists’ main goal in experiments like LHCb is to find signs of new fundamental particles, such as those that might make up the universe’s dark matter. To do so, they must be able to distinguish the dance of charm quarks and their kin from other, more novel influences.

“Anywhere the charm quark is important, this [discovery] will spread there,” Bicudo said.

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According to the American Heart Association, about 1 of every 2 of U.S. adults has high blood pressure, or hypertension. More than one in three adults with high blood pressure might not know they have it. High blood pressure is defined as having a systolic pressure (the top number in a reading) of 130 mm Hg or higher, or a diastolic pressure (the bottom number) of 80 mm Hg or higher.

"Most hypertension is diagnosed and treated based on blood pressure measurements taken in a doctor's office, even though the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the American Heart Association recommend that blood pressure measurements be taken outside of the clinical setting to confirm the diagnosis before starting treatment," said lead study author Beverly Green, M.D., M.P.H., senior investigator and family physician at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute and Kaiser Permanente Washington in Seattle. "It is the standard that blood pressure monitoring should be done either using home blood pressure monitoring or 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring prior to diagnosing hypertension."

24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring devices, worn day and night to take continuous blood pressure readings, are generally considered the "gold standard" for out-of-office measurement to determine a diagnosis of high blood pressure. However, blood pressure measured on a home device, with a traditional blood pressure arm cuff, can be a more practical and convenient approach.

Green and colleagues studied adherence and acceptability of different blood pressure measuring methods among 510 adults who had elevated blood pressure yet had not been diagnosed with high blood pressure. They were participants in the Blood Pressure Checks for Diagnosing Hypertension (BP-CHECK) trial. Participants in the study were an average age of 59 years old; 75% were non-Hispanic white, 7% African American, 6% Asian, 5% Hispanic white and 7% other; half were male; and the average blood pressure was 150/88 mm Hg. None of the participants were taking blood pressure-lowering medications.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups for determining a new diagnosis of hypertension: clinic measurements, home monitoring or kiosk blood pressure monitoring.

Those in the group for clinic measurements were asked to return to the clinic for at least one additional blood  pressure check, as is routine in diagnosing hypertension in clinical practice. The home group received home blood pressure machines, were trained to use them and were asked to take their blood pressure twice a day with two measurements each time, for five days, for a total of 20 measurements. The kiosk group was asked to take their blood pressure at a kiosk in their clinic or at a nearby pharmacy on three separate days, with three measurements each time, for a total of nine measurements. All participants were asked to complete their group-assigned diagnostic regimens within 3 weeks, and then to complete 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. Researchers compared adherence to and the acceptability among each diagnostic method.

They measured adherence to monitoring by noting the percent of individuals in each group who completed their assigned measurement method as instructed. They measured acceptability with questionnaires.

Researchers found:

• Overall acceptability was highest for the at-home group, followed by the clinic and kiosk groups. 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring was the least acceptable option.

• Participants were least likely to adhere to the monitoring regimen in the kiosk group. Adherence was more than 90% among those in the home testing group; more than 87% in the clinic group; nearly 68% in the kiosk group; and 91% for 24-hour ambulatory monitoring among all participants.

"Home blood pressure monitoring was the most preferred option because it was convenient, easy to do, did not disturb their daily personal or work routine as much, and was perceived as accurate," Green said. "Participants reported that ambulatory blood pressure monitoring disturbed daily and work activities, disrupted sleep and was uncomfortable."

When asked which diagnostic testing regimen they would prefer, more than half chose home blood pressure monitoring, especially if they were assigned to the home group, where almost 80% preferred home monitoring.

Green suggests health care professionals routinely offer home blood pressure monitoring to their patients with elevated blood pressure. This might involve providing home blood pressure monitors, training patients and collecting and averaging several days of blood pressure readings.

The American Heart Association is striving to improve blood pressure control rates in historically under-resourced communities across the country by providing training, technical assistance and resources to community health centers for proper blood pressure measurement and management. In addition, collaborations with community-based organizations provide blood pressure education, monitoring and management information and resources to their neighbors. The Association is also marketing directly to communities to raise awareness about the importance of self-blood pressure monitoring, and working with a health care professional on a plan for blood pressure control.

"Health care professionals should work toward relying less on in-clinic visits to diagnose hypertension and supporting their patients in taking their blood pressure measurements at home," Green said. "Home blood pressure monitoring is empowering and improves our ability to identify and treat hypertension, and to prevent strokes, heart attacks, heart failure and cardiovascular death."

A study limitation is that participants were mainly white, which is not representative of all people who have high blood pressure. According to American Heart Association statistics, about 50% of white and Hispanic men and 40% of white and Hispanic women have high blood pressure, while 58% of Black men and women have it.

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The Complex Truth About ‘Junk DNA’

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Meng, who is in house arrest while on bail, will admit to some improprieties and in return, prosecutors will postpone and eventually drop bank and wire fraud charges, according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Meng remotely appeared at a federal court on Friday afternoon, with the Justice Department saying in a filing it will submit a "resolution" to the charges against her.

Prosecutors claimed that Meng misled banks in 2013 about Huawei's connections to Iran. She denied the charges, for which she had faced up to 30 years in prison.

Meng's detainment caused an international incident. Two Canadians were apprehended in China within days of Meng's arrest. The WSJ reports the deal with Meng could prompt China to release Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.

Officials from the Trump administration are said to have offered Meng a similar deal last year, but she reportedly refused to admit to any wrongdoing. Biden admin officials reopened the talks in recent weeks, according to reports, and with Meng seemingly seeking a reunion with her family, she may have been more open to a compromise. A judge in Vancouver was expected to rule on Meng's possible extradition to the US later this year, following almost two years of hearings.

Huawei and its subsidiaries are still facing charges in the US, including conspiracy to steal trade secrets and racketeering conspiracy. The company is not said to be part of Meng's deal and it will reportedly keep fighting the charges.

The US and Huawei have been at loggerheads for several years. American officials have lobbied allies to avoid using the company's 5G telecoms gear due to national security concerns, though Huawei has insisted that its equipment is safe. US sanctions against the company led Google to block Huawei from Android updates, prompting its switch to HarmonyOS 2 (which is a fork of Android) on phones and tablets.

Update 9/24 1:22PM ET: Noted that the Justice Department has agreed to resolve the charges in a court filing.

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