Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Trump’s witch hunt against his investigators raises national security concerns

Trump’s witch hunt against his investigators raises national security concerns

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: President Trump’s order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that sparked the opening of the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A., including over the possible implications for a person close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia who provided information to the C.I.A. about his involvement in Moscow’s 2016 election interference. The concern about the source, who is believed to be still alive, is one of several…

Read More Read More

Could a lack of humility be at the root of what ails America?

Could a lack of humility be at the root of what ails America?

Comments 0 Comment

What happens when everyone thinks they’re smarter than everyone else? Ljupco Smokovski/Shutterstock.com By Frank T. McAndrew, Knox College There are a lot of reasons behind the political polarization of the country and the deterioration of civic discourse. I wonder if a lack of humility is one of them. In his recent book, “The Death of Expertise,” national security expert Tom Nichols described a type of person each of us probably knows: “They are young and old, rich and poor, some…

Read More Read More

The fast food of coral reefs

The fast food of coral reefs

Comments 0 Comment

Ed Yong writes: Although coral reefs are home to bustling communities of gaudy marine life, half the fishes that live there are hardly ever seen. Aptly known as cryptobenthics—literally “hidden bottom-dwellers”—these species are mostly shorter than two inches and usually hidden in crevices. If you snorkel past, they’ll scurry away. But Simon Brandl of Simon Fraser University has made a career of studying them. And he and his team have now shown that cryptobenthics are a crucial component of healthy…

Read More Read More

Humans are killing off most large wild animals as sixth mass extinction advances

Humans are killing off most large wild animals as sixth mass extinction advances

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: Humanity’s ongoing destruction of wildlife will lead to a shrinking of nature, with the average body size of animals falling by a quarter, a study predicts. The researchers estimate that more than 1,000 larger species of mammals and birds will go extinct in the next century, from rhinos to eagles. They say this could lead to the collapse of ecosystems that humans rely on for food and clean water. Humans have wiped out most large creatures from…

Read More Read More

Why carbon credits for forest preservation may be worse than nothing

Why carbon credits for forest preservation may be worse than nothing

Comments 0 Comment

Lisa Song reports: The state of Acre, on the western edge of Brazil, is so remote, there’s a national joke that it doesn’t exist. But for geochemist Foster Brown, it’s the center of the universe, a place that could help save the world. “This is an example of hope,” he said, as we stood behind his office at the Federal University of Acre, a tropical campus carved into the Amazon rainforest. Brown placed his hand on a spindly trunk, ordering…

Read More Read More

Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too

Young people have led the climate strikes. Now we need adults to join us too

Comments 0 Comment

Greta Thunberg and 46 youth activists write: Tomorrow, schoolchildren and students will be out on the streets again, in huge numbers, in 150 countries, at over 4,000 events, demanding that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5C of global heating. We spent weeks and months preparing for this day. We spent uncountable hours organising and mobilising when we could have just hung out with our friends or studied for school. We don’t feel like we have a…

Read More Read More

I’m an evolutionary biologist – here’s why this ancient fungal fossil discovery is so revealing

I’m an evolutionary biologist – here’s why this ancient fungal fossil discovery is so revealing

Comments 0 Comment

Do fungi like this Penicillium mold, which produces the the antibiotic penicillin, trace their origins to an ancestor that lived a billion years ago? Rattiya Thongdumhyu/Shutterstock.com By Antonis Rokas, Vanderbilt University Biologists don’t call them “the hidden kingdom” for nothing. With an estimated 5 million species, only a mere 100,000 fungi are known to scientists. This kingdom, which includes molds, yeasts, rusts and mushrooms, receives far less attention than plants or animals. This is particularly true for fossils of fungi,…

Read More Read More

Why some Palestinians are backing Trump’s peace push

Why some Palestinians are backing Trump’s peace push

Comments 0 Comment

Politico reports: Some prominent Palestinian activists and politicians are quietly rooting for Jared Kushner as he prepares to unveil the first part of his Middle East peace plan next month. That’s not because they think the plan will resolve their decadeslong conflict with Israel. It’s because they hope it will hasten the onset of a “one-state” solution they are coming to support. The push for one state with equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis has gained steam in recent years…

Read More Read More

How China uses high-tech surveillance to subdue minorities

How China uses high-tech surveillance to subdue minorities

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: A God’s-eye view of Kashgar, an ancient city in western China, flashed onto a wall-size screen, with colorful icons marking police stations, checkpoints and the locations of recent security incidents. At the click of a mouse, a technician explained, the police can pull up live video from any surveillance camera or take a closer look at anyone passing through one of the thousands of checkpoints in the city. To demonstrate, she showed how the system…

Read More Read More

Amazon developing wearable device to detect your emotions

Amazon developing wearable device to detect your emotions

Comments 0 Comment

Bloomberg reports: Amazon.com Inc. is developing a voice-activated wearable device that can recognize human emotions. The wrist-worn gadget is described as a health and wellness product in internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg. It’s a collaboration between Lab126, the hardware development group behind Amazon’s Fire phone and Echo smart speaker, and the Alexa voice software team. Designed to work with a smartphone app, the device has microphones paired with software that can discern the wearer’s emotional state from the sound of…

Read More Read More

Civilisational collapse has a bright past — but a dark future

Civilisational collapse has a bright past — but a dark future

Comments 0 Comment

By Luke Kemp Is the collapse of a civilisation necessarily calamitous? The failure of the Egyptian Old Kingdom towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE was accompanied by riots, tomb-raids and even cannibalism. ‘The whole of Upper Egypt died of hunger and each individual had reached such a state of hunger that he ate his own children,’ runs an account from 2120 BCE about the life of Ankhtifi, a southern provincial governor of Ancient Egypt.  Many of us are…

Read More Read More

Nevada poised to become 15th state to ditch Electoral College

Nevada poised to become 15th state to ditch Electoral College

Comments 0 Comment

NPR reports: President Hillary Clinton? That would have been the result of the 2016 presidential election — if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact were in effect. With a state Senate vote Tuesday, Nevada is close to becoming the latest state to sidestep the Electoral College when it comes to electing presidents. According to the National Popular Vote organization, which oversees efforts to persuade states to join the compact, 14 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to pledge…

Read More Read More

Lax regulations expose Americans to 1,300 chemicals banned by Europe

Lax regulations expose Americans to 1,300 chemicals banned by Europe

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: A brief but telling piece of legislation was put forward in Connecticut in January. Just three lines in length, the bill calls for any cosmetics in the state to “meet the chemical safety standards established by the European Union”. The move, unlikely to be made law, is the latest signal of mounting anguish over the enfeebled regulation of everyday products in the US compared with European countries. Across a span of cosmetics, including makeup, toothpaste and shampoo,…

Read More Read More