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Like hungry locusts, humans can easily be tricked into overeating

Like hungry locusts, humans can easily be tricked into overeating

Tim Vernimmen writes: This story starts in an unusual place for an article about human nutrition: a cramped, humid and hot room somewhere in the Zoology building of the University of Oxford in England, filled with a couple hundred migratory locusts, each in its own plastic box. It was there, in the late 1980s, that entomologists Stephen Simpson and David Raubenheimer began working together on a curious job: rearing these notoriously voracious insects, to try and find out whether they…

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How close are we to reading minds? A new study decodes language and meaning from brain scans

How close are we to reading minds? A new study decodes language and meaning from brain scans

Shutterstock By Christina Maher, University of Sydney The technology to decode our thoughts is drawing ever closer. Neuroscientists at the University of Texas have for the first time decoded data from non-invasive brain scans and used them to reconstruct language and meaning from stories that people hear, see or even imagine. In a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, Alexander Huth and colleagues successfully recovered the gist of language and sometimes exact phrases from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain…

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The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

Rebecca Wragg Sykes writes: Sometime between 135,000-50,000 years ago, hands slick with animal blood carried more than 35 huge horned heads into a small, dark, winding cave. Tiny fires were lit amidst a boulder-jumbled floor, and the flame-illuminated chamber echoed to dull pounding, cracking and squelching sounds as the skulls of bison, wild cattle, red deer and rhinoceros were smashed open. This isn’t the gory beginning of an ice age horror novel, but the setting for a fascinating Neanderthal mystery….

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‘The Godfather of AI’ leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

‘The Godfather of AI’ leaves Google and warns of danger ahead

The New York Times reports: Geoffrey Hinton was an artificial intelligence pioneer. In 2012, Dr. Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto created technology that became the intellectual foundation for the A.I. systems that the tech industry’s biggest companies believe is a key to their future. On Monday, however, he officially joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative…

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Advice to Biden on how to handle House Republicans’ demands for raising the debt ceiling

Advice to Biden on how to handle House Republicans’ demands for raising the debt ceiling

Robert Reich writes: If House Republicans refuse to raise the limit on the amount of money America may repay on what it owes — the deceptively named “debt limit” — they might force the United States to default, pushing interest rates into the stratosphere and shaking the world economy. President Biden rightfully says that raising the so-called debt ceiling should not be negotiable. After all, Democrats joined Republicans during the Trump administration to raise it three times, even as Trump…

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Supreme Court to hear major case on limiting the power of federal government, a long-term goal of legal conservatives

Supreme Court to hear major case on limiting the power of federal government, a long-term goal of legal conservatives

CNN reports: The Supreme Court agreed Monday to reconsider long held precedent and decide whether to significantly scale back on the power of federal agencies in a case that can impact everything from how the government addresses everything from climate change to public health to immigration. Conservative justices have long sought to rein in regulatory authority, arguing that Washington has too much control over American businesses and individual lives. The justices have been incrementally diminishing federal power but the new…

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The Ukrainian counteroffensive

The Ukrainian counteroffensive

Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg write: In March 1774, Prince Grigory Potemkin, the favorite general and sometime lover of Catherine the Great, took control of the anarchic southern frontier of her empire, a region previously ruled by the Mongol Khans, the Cossack hosts, and the Ottoman Turks, among others. As viceroy, Potemkin waged war and founded cities, among them Kherson, the first home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In 1783, he annexed Crimea and became an avatar of imperial glory….

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Chemical plants in China and U.S. emit climate super-pollutant that’s 273 times more potent than CO2

Chemical plants in China and U.S. emit climate super-pollutant that’s 273 times more potent than CO2

Inside Climate News reports: Twelve chemical plants in China and the United States emit a potent climate pollutant with collective emissions equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 31 million automobiles, according to a report published on Thursday by Global Efficiency Intelligence, an industrial decarbonization research and consulting firm based in Tampa. The emissions, which also deplete the earth’s protective ozone layer, could be effectively eliminated at little cost, the report’s authors conclude. The 11 Chinese plants and one U.S….

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Global epidemic of type 2 diabetes driven by consumption of refined carbohydrates

Global epidemic of type 2 diabetes driven by consumption of refined carbohydrates

Science Alert reports: Over the last forty years or so, the number of people with diabetes has jumped from around 100 million to more than 500 million, with matching rises in associated health problems like obesity and cardiovascular disease risk. It’s a significant health problem that is getting worse, which is why researchers are investigating the underlying issues behind the trend. One of those issues is likely to be diet, according to a new study into type 2 diabetes – which accounts for 95…

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How a human smell receptor works is finally revealed

How a human smell receptor works is finally revealed

Wynne Parry writes: For the first time, researchers have determined how a human olfactory receptor captures an airborne scent molecule, the pivotal chemical event that triggers our sense of smell. Whether it evokes roses or vanilla, cigarettes or gasoline, every scent starts with free-floating odor molecules that latch onto receptors in the nose. Multitudes of such unions produce the perception of the smells we love, loathe or tolerate. Researchers therefore want to know in granular detail how smell sensors detect…

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How Scalia Law School became a key ‘friend of the court’

How Scalia Law School became a key ‘friend of the court’

The New York Times reports: In the fall of 2017, an administrator at George Mason University’s law school circulated a confidential memo about a prospective hire. Just months earlier, Neil M. Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge from Colorado, had won confirmation to the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Antonin Scalia, the conservative icon for whom the school was named. For President Donald J. Trump, bringing Judge Gorsuch to Washington was the first step toward fulfilling a…

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This Supreme Court is slow to issue rulings — glacially slow

This Supreme Court is slow to issue rulings — glacially slow

NBC News reports: Back in 1923, the Supreme Court had issued 157 rulings by May 1 in a term that started the previous fall. On the same date a century later, the current justices, facing a firestorm of scrutiny on multiple fronts, have disposed of just 15 cases, fueling speculation about why they are falling behind. In fact, the court has decided fewer cases at this point of the term — which begins each October and ends in June —…

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It’s time to restore the distinction between disinformation and plain old lying

It’s time to restore the distinction between disinformation and plain old lying

Monika Richter writes: In 2014, Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine drove me to enter the field of disinformation research. Humiliated by the PR failure of its 2008 invasion of Georgia, the Kremlin had been quietly growing its global media influence and information strategy, in an effort that initially attracted little attention from the United States or other Western countries. With Ukraine, Putin was ready: Russia launched a massive disinformation campaign to justify the annexation of Crimea, undermine Western support for Ukraine, and engineer distrust…

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Black voting rights under threat in GOP supermajority states, lawmakers say

Black voting rights under threat in GOP supermajority states, lawmakers say

The Washington Post reports: State Rep. Yvonne Hayes Hinson was standing in front of the Florida House of Representatives, recounting being spat on for sitting at Whites-only lunch counters during the civil rights movement. The 75-year-old was trying to impress on her Republican colleagues how hard she and others had fought for voting rights and how a plan to eliminate a congressional seat held by a Black Democrat would again seriously diminish the political power of Black Floridians. When she…

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