Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Sleep deprivation alters connections in the brain, mouse study finds

Sleep deprivation alters connections in the brain, mouse study finds

Science reports: Lack of sleep wreaks havoc on the brain, making us worse learners and disrupting our memory, among other insults. Now, a study in mice suggests some of these effects could stem from changes in how brain cells are connected to one another. In a paper published today in Current Biology, researchers show that just hours of sleep deprivation reduce how many different types of synapses—the places where neurons meet—there are in brain regions associated with learning and memory….

Read More Read More

Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute

Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute

Meron Rapoport writes: After every war in recent decades that Israelis have fought in, there have been public displays of remorse. This has often been criticized as a mentality of “shooting and crying” — but at least the soldiers were crying. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, the hugely successful book “The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk about the Six-Day War” was published, containing testimonies from soldiers trying to grapple with the moral dilemmas they faced during the fighting. After the Sabra…

Read More Read More

Why is the DNC more willing to embrace Republicans than Democratic Palestinians?

Why is the DNC more willing to embrace Republicans than Democratic Palestinians?

  In this special episode of ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’, we’re at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, around the corner from the United Center, at the Palestinian-American owned OUD Coffee and Cafe. Mehdi is joined in this exclusive interview with prominent voices from the Uncommitted Movement – and just moments after it was revealed that the DNC would not be allowing a Palestinian to speak at the convention. Joining ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ are co-chair of the Uncommitted Movement Layla Elabed, who briefly…

Read More Read More

Trump’s businesses rake in millions of dollars from Republican political campaigns – including his own

Trump’s businesses rake in millions of dollars from Republican political campaigns – including his own

CNN reports: Late last year, former President Donald Trump announced his endorsement of car dealership owner Bernie Moreno for Ohio’s Senate seat – elevating an untested candidate who’d never held public office over several other more prominent Republicans. Two days later, Moreno’s campaign spent about $17,000 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and then followed up by spending an additional $79,000 the next month – making him one of the Florida club’s top political spenders. He wasn’t alone. With glitzy Mar-a-Lago fundraisers,…

Read More Read More

Are Republicans losing the culture wars?

Are Republicans losing the culture wars?

Politico reports: Republicans are confronting a decisive moment in the battle over public education: proving they can still win a culture war. School board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty, a conservative vanguard whose members popularized restrictions on classroom library books, are losing elections in Florida and some swing states. Republican leaders who rallied against critical race theory and LGBTQ+ issues recently faced recalls in red pockets of California. And in the presidential race, Democrats are playing offense. This week’s…

Read More Read More

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just incinerated his credibility as an environmentalist

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just incinerated his credibility as an environmentalist

The Washington Post reports: As he suspended his independent presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump on Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talked at length about the “many key issues” on which he claims that he and Trump are aligned. What he did not explain were their profound disagreements in the area that for many years was central to Kennedy’s career and public image: environmental protection. Kennedy had promised to be “the best environmental president in American history.” For decades, as…

Read More Read More

Labor board confirms Amazon drivers are employees, in finding hailed by union

Labor board confirms Amazon drivers are employees, in finding hailed by union

The Washington Post reports: In a loss for Amazon that could force it to meet the Teamsters union at the bargaining table, a regional National Labor Relations Board director said Thursday that the company is a joint employer of some of the thousands of contractor delivery drivers who deliver its packages. The e-commerce giant has previously argued that it should not be responsible for alleged union busting or required to bargain with driver unions, because the drivers who ferry packages…

Read More Read More

How colorful ribbon diagrams became the face of proteins

How colorful ribbon diagrams became the face of proteins

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: Jane Richardson never considered herself an artist. Then, in the late 1970s, the structural biologist found herself in need of some colored pencils, pastels and sketching paper. Richardson, a professor of biochemistry at Duke University, studied proteins, the biomolecules that underpin all the workings of life. At the time, structural biologists were getting better at creating 3D models of proteins’ minuscule atomic structures; she and her husband Dave, with whom she shared a lab, had determined two…

Read More Read More

What Kamala Harris was really saying in her convention speech

What Kamala Harris was really saying in her convention speech

Jeff Greenfield writes: What ultimately separates standout politicians from the rest is an ability to connect with the American people. It sounds obvious, but it’s a far more challenging task than it seems. Kamala Harris proved in her acceptance speech Thursday night that she understood the assignment. She’s already a unique presidential nominee, a biracial woman with a blended family. She’s faced attacks on her identity from Donald Trump and his allies. What Harris did in her acceptance speech was…

Read More Read More

We’re not going back to an America that wasn’t that great

We’re not going back to an America that wasn’t that great

Noah Berlatsky writes: “We’re not going back” is a way to remind people that Trump is old, rich, and that we’ve been there and done that. But it’s also, more subtly, a reminder that Trump represents a reactionary, bigoted American tradition which we should reject. In 2016, Hillary Clinton made the fact that she could be the first woman president a central campaign theme. In 2008, the fact that Obama might be the first Black president was a huge aspect…

Read More Read More

RFK Jr. was my drug dealer

RFK Jr. was my drug dealer

Kurt Andersen writes: The leading third-party candidate for president—an environmental lawyer and activist, a son and nephew of legendary liberal Democratic politicians—just quit the race and announced that he is joining the campaign of the most anti-environment president and presidential nominee in recent history, the leader of a Republican Party he has turned into a right-wing, anti-democratic, protofascist personality cult. I could go on and on and on, cataloging the contradictions and abandonment of principle, all gobsmacking. But Donald Trump…

Read More Read More

Palestinian American lawmaker, Georgia Rep. Ruwa Romman, gives speech the DNC wouldn’t allow on stage

Palestinian American lawmaker, Georgia Rep. Ruwa Romman, gives speech the DNC wouldn’t allow on stage

  Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday after a four-day convention in Chicago where her campaign refused to allow a Palestinian American to take the stage to address Israel’s war on Gaza. We hear Georgia state Representative Ruwa Romman, who was among the list of speakers offered by the Uncommitted National Movement that the Harris campaign rejected, reading the speech she would have given on the convention floor had the DNC and the Harris campaign allowed her…

Read More Read More

Putin is getting rattled

Putin is getting rattled

Serge Schmemann writes: In purely military terms, Ukraine’s surprise incursion of Russia earlier this month is a dubious gamble. Moscow has not diverted forces from its grinding advances on the Donetsk front, a main focus of the current fighting, and the physical cost in dead or captured troops and evacuated citizens does not concern Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. The more significant potential of the invasion lies on the other front — that of information, propaganda, morale, image and competing narratives….

Read More Read More