Surprising hidden order unites prime numbers and crystal-like materials

Surprising hidden order unites prime numbers and crystal-like materials

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Princeton University reports: The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are similar to those found in the positions of atoms inside certain crystal-like materials. The researchers found a surprising similarity between the sequence of primes over long stretches of the number line and the pattern that results from shining X-rays on a material to reveal the inner arrangement…

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Republican lawmakers ignored scientists’ warnings on rising sea levels in North Carolina

Republican lawmakers ignored scientists’ warnings on rising sea levels in North Carolina

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The Washington Post reports: The coastal and marine geologist once felt his state valued his work. North Carolina was a leader in coastal management, said Stanley Riggs, a distinguished professor of geology at East Carolina University. It heeded the advice of a “tremendous team of scientists” studying the origins and evolution of the Eastern Seaboard, of which the Tar Heel State has a particularly broad swath. As a result, lawmakers adopted policies in the 1970s and 1980s to safeguard the…

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The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the coming Mueller report

The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the coming Mueller report

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Stephen Bates, Jack Goldsmith, and Benjamin Wittes write: According to countless media accounts and President Trump’s own lawyers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is writing some kind of report on allegations of presidential obstruction of justice. Exactly what sort of report this may be is unclear. But to the extent that Mueller is contemplating a referral to Congress of possible impeachment material, he has two historical models of such documents to draw on. One, the so-called Starr Report, is famous and…

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Patrick Leahy: Brett Kavanaugh misled the Senate under oath. I cannot support his nomination

Patrick Leahy: Brett Kavanaugh misled the Senate under oath. I cannot support his nomination

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Sen. Patrick Leahy writes: Last week, I uncovered new evidence that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh misled the Senate during his earlier hearings for the D.C. Circuit Court by minimizing and even denying his involvement in Bush-era controversies. I gave him the opportunity to correct his testimony at his hearing last week; he chose instead to double down. I make no claim that Kavanaugh is a bad person. But when his prior confirmation to our nation’s “second highest court”…

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The Oslo accords are dead, but there is still a path to peace

The Oslo accords are dead, but there is still a path to peace

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Daniel Levy writes: Twenty-five years ago, U.S. President Bill Clinton presided over a famous handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on the South Lawn of the White House as they signed the Oslo Accords. Those accords, initiated at secret Norwegian-hosted talks between Israeli academics and PLO officials, set an agenda and a five-year timetable for a full peace deal that would initially allow limited Palestinian self-governance in parts of the occupied territories…

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How Trump has sunk the hopes of refugees

How Trump has sunk the hopes of refugees

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Ishaan Tharoor writes: Historically, the United States has been the most welcoming nation on the planet for refugees. Since the adoption of the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act, it has taken in around 3 million of the more than 4 million refugees who have been resettled around the world. But President Trump has made the denigration of refugees a core theme of his presidency, and his administration has all but barred the gates to foreigners seeking refuge in America. According to…

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Hungary serves as a warning on the populist threat to democracy

Hungary serves as a warning on the populist threat to democracy

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Zack Beauchamp writes: Over the course of his eight years in power, Prime Minister Orbán has chipped away at the foundations of Hungarian democracy. It has been replaced with an authoritarian regime that wields a cynical interpretation of the law as a weapon; the country is governed by rules like the border journalism permits, regulations that can seem reasonable on their face but actually serve to undermine essential democratic freedoms. Elections there are free, in the sense that the vote…

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Russians planned cyber attack on lab testing Salisbury nerve agent, Swiss say

Russians planned cyber attack on lab testing Salisbury nerve agent, Swiss say

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The New York Times reports: Two Russian spies caught in the Netherlands and expelled had been plotting cyber sabotage of a Swiss defense laboratory analyzing the nerve agent used to poison a former Russian agent in Britain, Swiss officials said Friday. The story — first reported by the Dutch newspaper NRC and the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, and confirmed by Swiss officials — adds a new dimension to the charges by Western governments that the Kremlin is waging a sophisticated and…

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Michael Avenatti: The case for indicting Trump

Michael Avenatti: The case for indicting Trump

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Michael Avenatti writes: Sol Wachtler, a former chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, once famously remarked that grand juries were so easily swayed that they would “indict a ham sandwich” if a prosecutor requested it. Many times, there is truth to this. But an indictment does not end the process of determining guilt or innocence. It begins it. Following indictment, criminal defendants can question the validity of the charges, the methods used to acquire the evidence…

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Palestinians still live under apartheid in Israel, 25 years after the Oslo accord

Palestinians still live under apartheid in Israel, 25 years after the Oslo accord

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Avi Shlaim writes: Twenty-five years ago today the Oslo accord was signed by Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat in the Rose Garden of the White House, with Bill Clinton acting as an enthusiastic master of ceremonies. Despite its many shortcomings, the accord represented a historic compromise between the Jewish and the Palestinian national liberation movements, and it was clinched with a hesitant handshake between the two leaders. Mutual rejection was replaced by mutual recognition. Gaza…

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The Skripal suspects’ ‘sightseeing’ trip to Salisbury

The Skripal suspects’ ‘sightseeing’ trip to Salisbury

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Luke Harding writes: The two men were dressed inconspicuously in jeans, fleece jackets and trainers as they boarded the flight from Moscow to Gatwick. Their names, according to their Russian passports, were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Both were around 40 years old. Neither looked suspicious. The plane trundled down the icy runway. In Moscow the temperatures had fallen below -10C, not unusual for early March. In Britain it had been snowing. The pair had brought woolly hats. They had…

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France’s Macron admits to military’s systematic use of torture in Algeria war

France’s Macron admits to military’s systematic use of torture in Algeria war

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The Washington Post reports: France will formally acknowledge the French military’s systemic use of torture in the Algerian War in the 1950s and 1960s, an unprecedented step forward in grappling with its long-suppressed legacy of colonial crimes. President Emmanuel Macron announced his watershed decision in the context of a call for clarity on the fate of Maurice Audin, a Communist mathematician and anti-colonial activist who was tortured by the French army and forcibly disappeared in 1957, during Algeria’s bloody struggle…

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The first animal genus defined purely by genetic characters represents a new era for classifying animals

The first animal genus defined purely by genetic characters represents a new era for classifying animals

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Charlie Wood writes: The world’s simplest known animal is so poorly understood that it doesn’t even have a common name. Formally called Trichoplax adhaerens for the way it adheres to glassware, the amorphous blob isn’t much to look at. At just a few millimeters across, the creature resembles a squashed sandwich in which the top layer protects, the bottom layer crawls, and the slimy stuffing sticks it all together. With no organs and just a handful of cell types, the…

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Hurricane Florence reminds us that ignoring the science of climate change is dangerous

Hurricane Florence reminds us that ignoring the science of climate change is dangerous

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Kristina Dahl writes: After enduring three major hurricanes — Harvey, Maria, and Irma — in a few short weeks last fall, our nation is once again watching a monster storm churn its way toward our coastline. This time, the Carolina coast (which has not had a strike from a Category 4 storm since 1989) is in the bull’s-eye of Florence, which is predicted to bring life-threatening surge and damaging winds to the coast before stalling and dumping feet of rain…

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