December 12, 2022 - The 4 Simple Habit Hacks of the Ultra-Rich. They Know Something You Don't

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The 4 Simple Habit Hacks of the Ultra-Rich. They Know Something You Don't One simple truth: good goal-setting is the death of a habit. Continued here

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Is my RAT actually working? How to tell if your COVID test can detect Omicron Thea van de Mortel teaches into the Griffith University Master of Infection Prevention and Control program. You’ve tested negative for COVID using a rapid antigen test (RAT), but are a close contact of a positive family member and have symptoms. So you might be wondering if you’re really COVID-negative or if the test is working as well as it should. Continued here

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How to Upgrade Your YouTube Recording Setup You don’t need much to get started on YouTube. A free video editor, maybe a webcam and a microphone, and you’re good to go. However, if you’re ready to step up your game a bit, there’s always more gear to add to your arsenal. Before you drop thousands on equipment, let’s talk about what gear will actually help (and when you can get more out of what you already have). Update December 2022: We added information on more cameras, additional advice for sound-dampening panels and headphones, and extra storage options for high-resolution recording. Continued here

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How many Australians are going hungry? We don't know for sure, and that's a big part of the problem Katherine is a member of the Nutrition Society of Australia and is affiliated with the Australian Right to Food Coalition. Fiona McKay is affiliated with the Public Health Association of Australia (Victoria Branch) Continued here

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A new study shows NZ’s young minorities feel racism differently – wealth or being able to ‘pass’ as white makes a difference Racism in Aotearoa New Zealand has been increasingly under the spotlight in recent years. The 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks amplified conversations about racial equality that continued in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests. Recently, the government and other agencies have explicitly prioritised efforts to address racism. In 2022, the government launched the National Action Plan Against Racism, which is committed to progressively eliminating racism in all its forms. Continued here

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Antifragility: How to use suffering to get stronger What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That old adage roughly sums up the idea of antifragility, a term coined by the statistician and writer Nassim Taleb. The term refers to how systems tend to become stronger after being exposed to stressors, shocks, and mistakes. The same applies to humans. Although suffering for its own sake isn’t necessarily good, experiencing — and overcoming — stress and difficulty tends to make us stronger people in the long run. We shouldn’t always shy away from that which makes us uncomfortable. Continued here

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How to Use Android's New Distraction-Free Reading Mode Google's latest update available for Android adds something that plenty of users have requested over the years: a distraction-free reading mode for web articles. As also implemented by apps such as Instapaper and Pocket, viewing something in reading mode means you just get the text and the key graphics. All the other parts of a webpage, from the menus to the ads, are carefully hidden away. Continued here

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'We are only passing through': stories about memory, mortality and the effort of being alive Chris Flynn’s Here Be Leviathans is a collection of short stories that seems quirky and light-hearted, propelled by its creative use of perspective. Each story is established from a surprising vantage point and so the world as Flynn imagines it becomes topsy-turvy – anything at all might be alive and sentient. Animals, chairs, boats, you name it. Review: Here Be Leviathans – Chris Flynn (UQP) and The Tower – Carol Lefevre (Spinifex) Continued here

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The 14 Best Portable Chargers for All of Your Devices If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Portable devices have a Murphy’s law-like ability to run out of power at the least convenient moment: as you step on the bus, right in the middle of an important meeting, or just as you get comfortable on the couch and press Play. If you keep a battery-powered portable charger handy, all those situations are a thing of the past. Continued here

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Robert Burns Ellisland Farm Robert Burns is lovingly considered the National Poet of Scotland. He wrote many original poems and also adapted folk stories. Burns is most famously known for his poem, Auld Lang Syne—sung throughout Scotland and the world. Born in Alloway, Burns lived across Scotland, but in 1788, moved to Ellisland Farm. This was his last home before moving to Dumfries where he passed.  Continued here

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Did physicists make a wormhole in the lab? Not quite, but a new experiment hints at the future of quantum simulations Soon after the news broke, physicists and experts in quantum computing expressed scepticism that a wormhole had in fact been created. Media coverage was chaotic. Outlets reported that physicists had created a theoretical wormhole, a holographic wormhole or perhaps a small, crummy wormhole, and that Google’s quantum computer suggests wormholes are real. Other outlets soberly offered the news that no, physicists didn’t make a wormhole at all. Continued here

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'I want people to be afraid of the women I dress': the celebrated – and often controversial – designs of Alexander McQueen Peter McNeil will lead a tour for Academy Travel to view the McQueen exhibition in February 2023. Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse was first conceived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Continued here

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Apple will let its employees talk about discrimination and abuse Apple will no longer bar employees from speaking out about workplace harassment and discrimination issues, as first reported by the Financial Times. The company shared the news following a review of Apple’s non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), which previously excluded language surrounding the discussion of working conditions. Apple shareholders voted to approve the independent review in March after the company failed to make the suggested changes to its concealment clauses last year. The initiative had the backing of Nia Impact Captial, the Transparency in Employment Agreements (TEA) coalition, and Ifeoma Ozoma, the co-sponsor of the Silenced No More Act that’s supposed to protect workers who speak out about workplace harassment and discrimination. Continued here S31 'An arts engagement that's changed their life': the magic of arts and health In 2007, a life-changing encounter at South Australia’s Flinders Medical Centre became the catalyst and symbol for a national arts and health movement. A young woman, Becky Corlett, was being transported through the hospital where an artist-in-residence, Rebecca Cambrell, was painting a mural. Becky had suffered a stroke and cardiac failure. She had stopped eating and was non-responsive even to family. When Becky passed the mural, however, she made a noise of interest. Continued here � S9 The Truth About Blockchain Blockchain promises to solve this problem. The technology behind bitcoin, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions safely, permanently, and very efficiently. For instance, while the transfer of a share of stock can now take up to a week, with blockchain it could happen in seconds. Blockchain could slash the cost of transactions and eliminate intermediaries like lawyers and bankers, and that could transform the economy. But, like the adoption of more internet technologies, blockchain’s adoption will require broad coordination and will take years. In this article the authors describe the path that blockchain is likely to follow and explain how firms should think about investments in it. Continued here S17 What do workers want? 5 key takeaways from the first citizens’ assembly on workplace democracy Simon Pek served as the Steering Committee Lead for the Ontario Assembly on Workplace Democracy. Rafael Gomez is Director of The Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources (CIRHR) at the University of Toronto, which sponsored OAWD. Rafael Gomez also Chaired the steering committee of the OAWD. Continued here S18 NFTs in the art world: A revolution or ripoff? Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital objects that represent something else, such as a work of art, a video or even a tweet. They certify the existence and the ownership of this item through a data recording on a blockchain (a distributed ledger technology). Since the emergence of NFTs in 2016, many artists have experimented with this new digital device to market their creations. NFTs are most often bought and resold via auction sites, where payments are made in cryptocurrency (such as ether currency). It is this notion of a certificate registered on a blockchain that distinguishes an NFT from a standard digital work. Continued here S32 Thousands more Australians died in 2022 than expected. COVID was behind the majority of them Last month, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released a report of mortality statistics. It showed that from January to July 2022, there were 17% more deaths (16,375) than the average expected for these months. This historical average is based on an average of the deaths for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021. They did not include 2020 in the baseline for 2022 data because it included periods where numbers of deaths were significantly lower than expected. The difference between the expected number of deaths based on historical data, and the actual number, is called “excess deaths”. Continued here S69 TerraCycle (B): A Million Tradeoffs ^ IMD706 Buy books, tools, case studies, and articles on leadership, strategy, innovation, and other business and management topics Continued here S19 Forget net-zero: to halt global heating, aim for net-negative In the fight against climate change, the lever every policymaker has been focusing on has been the reduction in (net) emissions. Curbing the rate at which greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere clearly remains a priority. Yet every serious scientific analysis – in particular the latest IPCC report – agrees that a substantial amount of CO2 must be removed from the atmosphere via negative-emission technologies if we want to have a reasonable chance of limiting the temperature increase by the end of the century to 1.5 to 2C above pre-industrial levels. Research currently underway at the EDHEC Risk Climate Impact Institute adds a new dimension to the optimal-policy debate. When William D. Nordhaus’s dynamic integrated climate economy model is modified to incorporate the latest climate physics and allow for negative emissions, the policy recommendations are clear: substantial carbon removal is an important component of an optimal policy, not just a tool to remain within an aspirational temperature target. This result does not rely on a “hail Mary” discovery that will allow us to remove carbon at close-to-no cost; rather, it is based on the conservative estimates of the marginal costs of removal presented in the latest IPCC report. Continued here S35 What matters most? Six priorities for CEOs in turbulent times If an executive had fallen asleep in 2019 and just woke up, she wouldn’t recognize the business world of November 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic rewrote the rules, and now a new and potent disruption seems to arrive every other day. You know the list of issues; we won’t go through them here. Suffice to say that managing complex organizations is much harder today than it was just a few years ago. And the hardest task of all for CEOs is to decide what needs to be done now and what can wait. In short, what matters most today? Just as we did last year, we’ve spoken with hundreds of leaders this year and found six priorities that feature prominently on CEO agendas worldwide. They’re the moves leaders are taking to shore up defenses and gain ground on rivals—which is very different from the purely defensive agenda that many companies are following. Continued here S16 Delgamuukw 25 years on: How Canada has undermined the landmark decision on Indigenous land rights This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Delgamuukw case on Aboriginal title. In 1997, the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Nations brought the watershed case before the Supreme Court, yet a countrywide battle remains over implementation of the Delgamuukw decision involving all First nations. The Nations sought a declaration of ownership and jurisdiction over their lands. The Supreme Court agreed that Indigenous Peoples held a unique property right to their land that was held as a collective interest by a nation. Continued here S70 Thailand in May and June of 1997 ^ 398131 Buy books, tools, case studies, and articles on leadership, strategy, innovation, and other business and management topics Continued here S36 NASA's Artemis I Mission Successfully Returns from the Moon After a 26-day journey that took it to lunar orbit and back, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday afternoon, paving the way for future astronaut voyages to Earth’s satellite Fifty years ago today humans landed on the lunar surface for the last time during NASA’s Apollo 17 mission. And now, after a journey of 1.4 million miles, NASA’s Orion spacecraft is safely back on Earth—marking the completion of the agency’s Artemis I mission and the first step toward returning humans to the moon. Continued here S25 'I thought crypto exchanges were safe': the lesson in FTX's collapse A deputy principal of a high school in Queensland, over the past year he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying cryptocurrencies, borrowing money using his home as equity. But now all his assets, valued at A$600,000, were stuck in an account he couldn’t access. Continued here S6 'We Knew How Underground It Was': The Birth Of Melbourne’s Rave Scene Although three decades have passed, “the 90s” has maintained a firm grip on the collective consciousness. The revered decade has become shorthand for “cool”. And maybe everything was cooler back then. It must have been, because the world refuses to relinquish 90s nostalgia. Continued here S53 A kilonova following a long-duration gamma-ray burst at 350 Mpc - Nature Nature volume 612, pages 223-227 (2022)Cite this article Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are divided into two populations1,2; long GRBs that derive from the core collapse of massive stars (for example, ref. 3) and short GRBs that form in the merger of two compact objects4,5. Although it is common to divide the two populations at a gamma-ray duration of 2 s, classification based on duration does not always map to the progenitor. Notably, GRBs with short (≲2 s) spikes of prompt gamma-ray emission followed by prolonged, spectrally softer extended emission (EE-SGRBs) have been suggested to arise from compact object mergers6,7,8. Compact object mergers are of great astrophysical importance as the only confirmed site of rapid neutron capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis, observed in the form of so-called kilonovae9,10,11,12,13,14. Here we report the discovery of a possible kilonova associated with the nearby (350 Mpc), minute-duration GRB 211211A. The kilonova implies that the progenitor is a compact object merger, suggesting that GRBs with long, complex light curves can be spawned from merger events. The kilonova of GRB 211211A has a similar luminosity, duration and colour to that which accompanied the gravitational wave (GW)-detected binary neutron star (BNS) merger GW170817 (ref. 4). Further searches for GW signals coincident with long GRBs are a promising route for future multi-messenger astronomy. Continued here S13 Morocco at the World Cup: 6 driving forces behind a history-making win History was made by Morocco, the first African and first Arab team to advance to a semi-final at the men’s football World Cup. The Atlas Lions, endowed with impeccable organisation and defensive will, creative midfield passing, speedy offence and the rousing racket of its fans, broke the elusive World Cup glass ceiling against Portugal to face France in the final four in Qatar. Continued here S68 Bill Cummings: The Cummings Way ^ 619038 Buy books, tools, case studies, and articles on leadership, strategy, innovation, and other business and management topics Continued here S10 Do Rewards Really Create Loyalty? Customer rewards have been reviled in the business press as cheap promotional devices, short-term fads, giving something for nothing. Yet they’ve been around for more than a decade, and more companies, not fewer, are jumping on the bandwagon. From airlines offering frequent flier deals to telecommunications companies lowering their fees to get more volume, organizations are spending millions of dollars developing and implementing rewards programs. Continued here S67 Edward Lewis: Essence Magazine ^ 318115 Essence, the first magazine aimed at African-American women, was created by four, young, Black entrepreneurs in the aftermath of massive racial and political upheaval in the United States in 1968. The venture was a financial, branding and cultural success. By 2005, the company was sold to Time Warner, Inc, the largest magazine publisher in the world at that time, for the highest price ever paid for a single-title magazine company. However, there is still debate about whether the last remaining co-founder, Edward Lewis, jeopardized the iconic Black brand by selling it to a white-owned company. Continued here S54 Gigaelectronvolt emission from a compact binary merger - Nature Nature volume 612, pages 236-239 (2022)Cite this article An energetic γ-ray burst (GRB), GRB 211211A, was observed on 11 December 20211,2. Despite its long duration, typically associated with bursts produced by the collapse of massive stars, the observation of an optical-infrared kilonova points to a compact binary merger origin3. Here we report observations of a significant (more than five sigma) transient-like emission in the high-energy γ-rays of GRB 211211A (more than 0.1 gigaelectronvolts) starting 103 seconds after the burst. After an initial phase with a roughly constant flux (about 5 × 10−10 erg per second per square centimetre) lasting about 2 × 104 seconds, the flux started decreasing and soon went undetected. Our detailed modelling of public and dedicated multi-wavelength observations demonstrates that gigaelectronvolt emission from GRB 211211A is in excess with respect to the flux predicted by the state-of-the-art afterglow model at such late time. We explore the possibility that the gigaelectronvolt excess is inverse Compton emission owing to the interaction of a late-time, low-power jet with an external source of photons, and find that kilonova emission can provide the seed photons. Our results open perspectives for observing binary neutron star mergers. Continued here S52 A signalling pathway for transcriptional regulation of sleep amount in mice - Nature Nature (2022)Cite this article In mice and humans, sleep quantity is governed by genetic factors and exhibits age-dependent variation1,2,3. However, the core molecular pathways and effector mechanisms that regulate sleep duration in mammals remain unclear. Here, we characterize a major signalling pathway for the transcriptional regulation of sleep in mice using adeno-associated virus-mediated somatic genetics analysis4. Chimeric knockout of LKB1 kinase—an activator of AMPK-related protein kinase SIK35,6,7—in adult mouse brain markedly reduces the amount and delta power—a measure of sleep depth—of non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREMS). Downstream of the LKB1-SIK3 pathway, gain or loss-of-function of the histone deacetylases HDAC4 and HDAC5 in adult brain neurons causes bidirectional changes of NREMS amount and delta power. Moreover, phosphorylation of HDAC4 and HDAC5 is associated with increased sleep need, and HDAC4 specifically regulates NREMS amount in posterior hypothalamus. Genetic and transcriptomic studies reveal that HDAC4 cooperates with CREB in both transcriptional and sleep regulation. These findings introduce the concept of signalling pathways targeting transcription modulators to regulate daily sleep amount and demonstrate the power of somatic genetics in mouse sleep research. Continued here S61 Oldest DNA reveals 2-million-year-old ecosystem DNA recovered from ancient permafrost has been used to reconstruct what an ecosystem might have looked like two million years ago. Their work suggests that Northern Greenland was much warmer than the frozen desert it is today, with a rich ecosystem of plants and animals. Why low levels of ‘good’ cholesterol don’t predict heart disease risk in Black people, and how firework displays affect the flights of geese. Continued here S11 Test Marketing in New Product Development To every marketing executive, the necessity and value of test marketing are often murky issues. The problem is partly that new products aren’t developed and put through their paces in a systematic enough way to let marketing men know when a test market is really in order. Compounding this difficulty is that the goals of test marketing are sometimes unclear and that the information, once gathered, is often improperly used. This article is an attempt to lay bare the bones of the issue. Beginning with an overview of sound new product development, it clarifies when a test market should be done, what its aims should be, and to what uses it should be put. Relying for many of their judgments on quoted first-person interview material with marketing executives, the authors finish with a postscript on how technological innovation can aid in test marketing. Continued here S23 'There's a lot of places where you can’t be seen': how bullying can be invisible to adults School bullying is a huge and distressing problem. In 2015, 43% of Australian year 8 students experienced bullying each month. A 2022 Mission Australia survey of Australians between 15 and 19 found 47% were “extremely” or “somewhat” concerned about bullying. The picture is similar overseas. In 2020, the World Health Organization reported one in three students around the world aged 11-15 years suffered bullying in the preceding month. Continued here S7 Gwen Stefani on Launching a Beauty Line in Your 50s: "It Can Be Quite Scary" “Everyone was saying, ‘Don’t do it, Gwen! Just go sail away to Oklahoma and make out with Blake. Don’t work anymore.’" “That emotion that they had — that, ‘I didn’t know if I could feel or look like this’; makeup is so much giving. Not only to yourself, but also when you share that.”  Continued here S64 NASA’s Orion spacecraft prepares for blazing return to Earth NASA’s Orion capsule is on a path back to Earth, slated to splash down off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, on 11 December.Credit: NASA/Liam Yanulis Over the past three weeks, NASA’s Orion capsule has flown to the Moon and most of the way back, in a near-flawless test of a new spaceship. It now faces its biggest challenge since launching atop a massive rocket as part of the Artemis I mission — surviving a fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on 11 December. In the process, it will test a re-entry manoeuvre that has never been used by a passenger spacecraft. Continued here S48 The Race to Make Alternative Lobster Bait This article is republished from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com. Imagine you’ve got a lobster in front of you, bright red and softly steaming. There’s a fish in that picture, too, though you can’t see it—the fish that was tucked into a trap to lure in the lobster that could end up on your dinner plate. Continued here S65 Leading as a First-Time, First-Generation Manager While there’s extensive research on the glass ceiling and how to break it, there’s less talk about its close relative, the “concrete wall” — a set of obstacles that keep BIPOC professionals, especially women, from securing high-level positions. So, what happens when you finally chip away at the wall and move into a managerial position for the first time? What should you do if you’re the first person in your family to navigate this new opportunity? Continued here S63 Can the world save a million species from extinction? Indonesia’s bleeding toad (Leptophryne cruentata) is critically endangered.Credit: Pepew Fegley/Shutterstock One-quarter of all plant and animal species are threatened with extinction owing to factors such as climate change and pollution. Starting this week, negotiators and ministers from more than 190 countries are meeting at a United Nations biodiversity summit called COP15 in Montreal, Canada, to address the emergency. Continued here S30 Indonesia's climate target still got the worst rating despite being "more ambitious" This is the lowest possible rating on CAT’s scale. The rating means that “if all countries in the world followed Indonesia’s target, the global temperature would rise by 4℃,” said Anindita Hapsari, a member of the CAT Country Assessment Team from the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), in a public discussion in Jakarta on December 6. CAT recently released its analysis on Indonesia’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) for 2022. Continued here S47 Australian Standing Stones The Australian Standing Stones are an array of 38 standing stones that represent Celtic nations and are the Australian national monument to commemorate the involvement of the Celtic races in the building of the Australian nation. The first stone was raised in 1991. During the ceremony, emblems from the Celtic nations were placed on the site and it was officially opened in February 1992.  Continued here S3 The developer who unlocked 90Hz on the Pixel 6A needs help finishing the project Remember that Pixel 6A mod that unlocks a 90Hz refresh rate? Well, the developer behind it, Nathan Brooke (aka Lunarixus), just made the changes public in hopes that other developers can finish off the tweak. In a post on Twitter, Brooke includes a link to the project on GitHub and says that he just doesn’t have enough time to work on it. The mod activates a seemingly untapped 90Hz refresh rate on the budget-friendly Pixel 6A, which would otherwise ship with a 6.1-inch OLED display running at 60Hz. While The Verge’s senior editor, Sean Hollister, confirmed that the mod does work, there are a few caveats. Continued here S24 Genetic research confirms your dog's breed influences its personality — but so do you Over thousands of years of firm friendship between humans and dogs, we have successfully created about 350 different breeds. We’ve relied on terriers for hunting, sheepdogs for herding, and all for companionship – but how much are dog personalities defined by their breed? Their findings ultimately suggest the type of breed does indeed explain many aspects of a dog’s unique personality. Continued here S21 Boxing empowered me to express my trauma – now, I help other abuse survivors do the same, combining it with creative writing The first time I got punched in the face in a training session I cried afterwards in my car. It wasn’t so much that it hurt: it was the shock. I froze, but I was encouraged to punch back. Boxing brought up buried emotion deep inside of me. As much as it didn’t seem very tough to shed tears, the process felt part of my healing journey. Continued here S49 Podcast: Medfield State Hospital In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit an abandoned hospital outside Boston, Massachusetts, that was originally conceived as a place to help people with mental health issues. But it wound up doing more harm than good. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their stories. Join us daily, Monday through Thursday, to explore a new wonder with cofounder Dylan Thuras and a neighborhood of Atlas Obscura reporters. Continued here S66 Why do some dogs chase squirrels? Study finds genetic links to canine quirks Researchers have pinpointed genetic variants linked to different dog behaviours.Credit: Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Is your dog scared by a plastic bag flapping in the wind? When a stranger comes to the door, does it bark, hide or look for you? Does it chase squirrels? Continued here S8 19 Gifts That Gen Z Won't Hate (According To A 25-Year-Old) Just because Gen Z is known for their pro-thrift, anti-consumption ethos doesn’t mean they don’t want a few shiny gifts under the tree just like the rest of us. Continued here S41 FDA approves US's first fecal transplant therapy Afirst-of-its-kind product containing human fecal matter has just been approved by the FDA for the treatment of potentially life-threatening bacterial imbalances in the gut.  The challenge: The trillions of microbes that live in your gastrointestinal tract, known collectively as your “gut microbiome,” play an important role in your health, helping your body digest food, produce vitamins, and ward off infections. Continued here S58 Mosquito meals and mysterious ant ‘milk’ Blood from a mosquito’s most recent meal contains antibodies from the person or animal the insect feasted on.Credit: Claude Nuridsany & Marie Perennou/SPL Blood-sucking mosquitoes have their uses. An innovative approach that analyses their last blood meals can reveal evidence of infection in the people or animals that the flying insects feasted on. Continued here S12 When did humans first start to speak? How language evolved in Africa Research carried out for this study indicates that the first speech sounds were uttered about 70,000 years ago, and not hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, as is sometimes claimed in the literature. The transformation of Homo sapiens (modern humans) from a “non-speaking” to a “speaking” species happened at about the same time as our hunter-gatherer ancestors migrated out of Africa. Continued here S2 Elon Musk’s $8 Twitter Blue subscription is coming back with phone number verification and a higher price on iOS Twitter’s relaunching its Blue subscription on Monday, one month after abandoning a chaotic first attempt that spurred hoax accounts and general mayhem. As reported previously, the subscription will cost $8 per month to purchase on the web or $11 per month via the iOS App Store to make up for the up to 30 percent commission Apple takes off of in-app purchases. This time, anyone paying for Blue who wants to display a “verified” checkmark on their profile will need to register a phone number first, and changing your “handle, display name or profile photo” will remove the label until your account is reviewed again. Continued here S14 'Polycrisis' may be a buzzword, but it could help us tackle the world's woes Commentators increasingly warn that the world is tightly bound in a “polycrisis,” a tangled knot of crises spanning global systems. But if we have any hope of escaping it, we must think more carefully about what polycrisis really means. It’s a bad sign when there’s a struggle to even name the world’s ongoing crises and words like disaster, catastrophe or emergency just won’t suffice. Experts are scrambling to coin new terms for humanity’s many problems. Continued here S5 The Witcher: Blood Origin isn’t witcher-y enough to stand out There’s one very important thing missing from The Witcher: Blood Origin: Geralt of Rivia. Of course, it makes sense that the iconic character isn’t in the new four-episode prequel series, given that it takes place more than 1,000 years before he was born, at a time when witchers (and the monsters they love to hunt) don’t even exist. But that doesn’t make his absence felt any less. Because without the lovably gruff Geralt, or at least an equivalent character to keep the story grounded, there isn’t all that much to differentiate The Witcher from all of the other epic fantasy series out there, of which there is no shortage this year in particular. Blood Origin does explain some pivotal moments in the franchise’s history, outlining the key moments that shaped the Continent, as it’s known. The problem is that it’s just not that much fun to watch. The show takes place 1,200 years before the events of the original Witcher series, at a time when elves are the dominant force in the world. They don’t have much competition. While dwarves share the land, neither humans nor monsters do, and so elves — who are scarce in Geralt’s time — are spread across multiple kingdoms and clans, each with their own customs and beliefs and many of whom war amongst each other. That is until a few ambitious elves set a plan in place to unite everyone (by force) under a supreme leader. This sets off a chain reaction that leads to all kinds of pivotal events in Witcher lore, including the creation of the monster hunters and an event called the “conjunction of the spheres,” in which the worlds of elves, humans, and monsters are forced together, creating the Continent as we know it. Continued here S4 Returnal is coming to PC, but you’ll need 32GB of RAM to play comfortably If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. Sony’s Returnal is the latest PlayStation exclusive to make the jump to PC, but it comes with a hefty RAM recommendation (via WccfTech). While you’ll need a minimum of 16GB of RAM in your rig just to get it in a playable state, Returnal’s Steam listing recommends at least 32GB to get the most out of its gameplay and graphics. Continued here S56 The institutions forging the strongest innovation links The 2022 Nature Index Innovation supplement ranks the top 500 institutions in the Nature Index by a normalized metric on patent influence. The first three charts here show the top institutions in three sectors on this metric. The last chart shows the leading academic–corporate collaborations in the Nature Index. Academic institutions with the highest score for patent influence tend to be universities specializing in certain areas of science, such as The Rockefeller University in the United States, which focuses mainly on the medical and biological sciences. Continued here S55 Genetic diversity fuels gene discovery for tobacco and alcohol use - Nature Carousel with three slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate three slides at a time, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump three slides at a time. Nature (2022)Cite this article Continued here S57 Dinosaurs bashed each other with built-in tail clubs Zuul crurivastator had both armoured plating and a sledgehammer-like tail weapon. Credit: Royal Ontario Museum The ankylosaurid dinosaurs had stiff tails ending in massive bony knobs, which were long thought to be defensive weapons for warding off tyrannosaurs and other predators. But today’s most impressive animal weapons — antlers in the deer family, horns in the sheep family — are used mainly for battles with members of the same species over mates. Continued here S15 Beyond vaccine hesitancy: Understanding systemic barriers to getting vaccinated The term “vaccine hesitancy” was in wide use years before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The term focuses on individual-level attitudes toward vaccines. Throughout the pandemic, much popular and scholarly discussion about COVID-19 transmission focused on individual-level decisions, making it easy to blame the unvaccinated. By focusing on individual decisions, it is easy to overlook other reasons for suboptimal vaccine uptake. These include politicization, distrust of the health system due to systemic racism, social inequities, and barriers to access and acceptance. Continued here S62 Author Correction: Decade-long leukaemia remissions with persistence of CD4+ CAR T cells - Nature Nature (2022)Cite this article Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04390-6 Published online 2 February 2022 Continued here S46 5 Must-Read Football (or Soccer) Stories All eyes are on the World Cup matches in Qatar, but we’re here to remind you that soccer (or football, if you prefer) is a world that transcends the pitch. From the story of an openly gay Brazilian referee who became an icon on and off the field, to the tales of the archaeologists who are hunting for the origins of the modern game, here are some of our favorite Atlas Obscura stories about the beautiful game. Porto Alegre has two soccer teams—Sport Club Internacional and Grêmio Foot-Ball Porto Alegrense—and one of the best-known rivalries in Brazilian sports. So when a bridge built near Inter’s stadium appeared to celebrate the team’s crushing defeat in the 2010 Club World Cup, the conspiracy theories emerged. Was a Grêmio fan behind it? Continued here S20 Tradition and innovation: how we are documenting sign language in a Gurindji community in northern Australia Some people are surprised when they first hear about Australian Indigenous sign languages. While the broader community is increasingly aware of the richness of First Nations spoken languages, sign has generally been below the radar until recently. Yet sign languages are widespread, culturally valued and of great antiquity. Continued here S51 The Twisty History of Montreal's Outdoor Staircases When it comes to weather, winters in Montreal, Canada, are often brutal. By December, temperatures plummet below freezing and snow falls regularly. Streets frost over, while dagger-like icicles form along railings and rooftops. Although sidewalks can be slippery, there’s one type of local attribute that’s considered particularly precarious during winter months. Many Montrealers live on the upper stories of plexes—residential buildings with individual units stacked one on top of another, typically as duplexes and triplexes. It’s not the buildings themselves that are a cold-weather concern; it’s their defining feature that can be especially harrowing when it comes to snow and ice: external iron staircases that twist, turn, and climb steeply up the facade of each structure. Some consider them “deathtraps,” though they’re as much a part of the city’s fabric as Cirque du Soleil and bagels. Continued here S43 The science of placebos is fueling quackery For several decades now, many scientists, including me, have been working hard to reveal the full power and scope of the placebo effect — the amazing ability of a simple sugar pill or other non-pharmaceutical “fake intervention” to improve someone’s quality of life. This research has been crucial to giving scientific credibility to a powerful psychological effect. But the advances of science have also backfired, spawning an alternative industry that preys on the vulnerable. The placebo effect describes how the mere belief and expectation of receiving a drug may produce a benefit, such as a reduction in pain. Albeit strange at first sight, the placebo effect is based on profound and fascinating mechanisms in the human brain, and highlights the power of attention given to a patient by a caregiver. As a neuroscientist, I have been working on understanding these mechanisms for 30 years, alongside other researchers around the world who specialize in everything from biochemistry to physiology, genetics to brain imaging. What has emerged is an understanding of how the mere expectation of a therapeutic benefit can activate a variety of chemicals in the human brain, such as pain-relieving opioids and cannabinoids, as well as pleasure-enhancing dopamine. Placebos, a doctor’s words and drugs can all share some common mechanisms of action. Continued here S42 How democracy got its strange and turbulent start in ancient Athens Excerpted from The Harvest of War: Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis: The Epic Battles that Saved Democracy, written by Stephen P. Kershaw and published by Pegasus Books. As winter was turning into spring in the year they called ‘The Archonship of Hybrillides’ (490 bce), the free, native-born, adult, male Athenians did something utterly extraordinary. They went to the polls to elect their annual military officers and civilian magistrates for the next year. Hardly anyone else anywhere in the ancient world had a democratic political process like this, and the outcome of the election is sometimes felt to have determined the entire history of the Western world. Continued here S59 Oldest-ever DNA shows mastodons roamed Greenland 2 million years ago The northern tip of Greenland was once home to mastodons, reindeer and lush forests, reveal 2-million-year-old DNA sequences.Galen Rowell/Mountain Light/Alamy The northeastern tip of Greenland is a lonely, barren place, home to the odd hare and musk ox, and few plants. Two-million-year-old DNA sequences — the oldest ever obtained — recovered from frozen soil suggest that the region was once home to mastodons and reindeer that roamed a forested ecosystem unlike any now found on Earth. Continued here S60 Overcoming the obstacles to invention Turning cutting-edge basic science into new technologies, medicines and other inventions that benefit our daily lives — while simultaneously bringing commercial rewards — is the foundation of a knowledge economy. Conventional wisdom dictates that the success of this strategy depends on strong public and private investment in research and development, excellent higher and technical education, and an openness to the exchange of ideas and people across borders. Some of these building blocks of innovation have come under severe strain during the past 15 years, first from the aftermath of the 2009 global recession, then a rise in geopolitical tensions and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and economic impact of the war in Ukraine. In this supplement, we look at how countries and research institutions have been responding to these challenges to build the innovation economies that are set to thrive in the rest of the twenty-first century. It includes a focus on the emergency response to the pandemic and what lessons this might provide in the future for quickly bridging the gap between basic science and its application; a discussion on the importance of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in modern innovation; and an analysis of innovation in China, where there are still ambitions to forge a stronger link between blue-sky research and commercial success. Continued here S45 What Causes Alzheimer's? Scientists Are Rethinking the Answer. | Quanta Magazine Scientists have long held onto the idea that sticky blobs of proteins sitting between brain cells are the cause of Alzheimer's disease. Now, however, many are turning their attention to deeper dysfunctions happening within cells. It's often subtle at first. A lost phone. A forgotten word. A missed appointment. By the time a person walks into a doctor's office, worried about signs of forgetfulness or failing cognition, the changes to their brain have been long underway — changes that we don't yet know how to stop or reverse. Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, has no cure. Continued here S44 Here’s why NASA’s Artemis I mission is so rare, and so remarkable The first step of a journey is often the most difficult one. So it is worth pausing a moment to celebrate that NASA just took the essential first step on the path toward establishing a permanent presence in deep space. Continued here Contributors Dharmendra Kumar Priya Ranjan Powered by Blogger.