News Feeds

Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered system to track tiny devices that monitor markers of disease in the gut. Devices using the novel system may help at-risk individuals monitor their gastrointestinal (GI) tract health at home, without the need for invasive tests in hospital settings.

Researchers have demonstrated a new method that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and computer simulations to train robotic exoskeletons to autonomously help users save energy while walking, running and climbing stairs.

Researchers have demonstrated a new method that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and computer simulations to train robotic exoskeletons to autonomously help users save energy while walking, running and climbing stairs.

In the largest study yet of working-from-home professionals, economists reveal that employees who work from home two days a week are just as productive, likely to get promoted, and far less prone to quit.

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) will be held in Chicago from August 19-22, and fortunately I’ll be out of town then.  It may be even more violent than the infamous 1968 DNC, since this time we’ll have domestic protestors, including the vocal pro-Palestinian ones, along with sundry other protesters and, as CNN reports, there seem to be credible threats that outside terrorist groups may try to incite lone-wolf violence:

Federal and local authorities have been closely following the threat stream from both domestic and foreign extremist groups. A recent joint intelligence bulletin from the National Counterterrorism Center, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warned that groups, including al Qaeda and ISIS, continue to generate propaganda urging followers to conduct “lone wolf” attacks on US soil using basic methods such as gunfire in crowded places or vehicles in ramming attacks. The bulletin cites an al Qaeda online propaganda article that highlighted the “increased division between the American people, between the right and the left, and between the Republicans and their supporters, and the Democrats and their supporters,” which could increase the impact of any attack.

“I think everyone has a sense that the threats are real. This is not an academic exercise that we’re running through. We are planning for real-world possibilities,” said Jeff Burnside, the Secret Service coordinator for the Democratic convention.

Oy! Or perhaps I shouldn’t say that, as it marks me for a Zionist, and a lot of the rancor seems to be directed at them (see tweets and article below).

The only certainty now is that there will be protests, and that the convention will nominate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris no matter what.

At any rate, two reporters for the Free Press have published a new article in which they embedded themselves among activists, and what they found wasn’t pretty.   In the FP’s daily newsletter, however, Bari Weiss adds that the protesters have a goal beyond supporting Palestine and Hamas:

Are we going to become a country in which journalists are regularly surrounded and threatened for doing their jobs? Are we going to become a place in which marauding bands of masked young people harass Jews visiting a memorial for the 364 Israelis murdered at a music festival? Because that happened yesterday too. Are we going to become a place where it is normal for people to get on the subway and declare: “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.” Yes, also yesterday. Or where police and security guards are regularly assaulted in the course of doing their jobs? (See this from UCLA last night.)

My point here is that anyone trying to convince you that this is about a faraway war, or that the anger in our streets is mostly because Benjamin Netanyahu is the current Israeli prime minister—anyone who insists this is a Jewish issue—is deluding you and themselves. So are those who comfort themselves by insisting that this will pass by like some idiot wind. It will not.

This is about a choice we face. A choice about what kind of country we want to be—and what kind of country we are at risk of becoming. The only way to understand that is to listen to what these protesters say they want. And what they are shouting for—what they openly desire—is not peace, but terror.

I added some of Weiss’s introduction because recently we’ve discussed the notion that some protesters, unwittingly or not, are trying to dismantle “Western values”—the values of an Enlightenment-informed liberal democracy—in favor of authoritarianism. But I also added those three paragraphs because they link to the tweets I’ve put below.

Click below to read (or find the article archived here).

Excerpts from Reingold and Lake’s piece are indented:

In 1968, the Democratic Convention in Chicago was a bloodbath, with 600 arrests in one street battle that was broadcast all over the world. And the group that met here last Saturday, in the local headquarters of the Teamsters Union, wants to repeat history when Joe Biden is named the presidential nominee at the DNC this August. They oppose the president they call “Genocide Joe” for backing Israel in its war against Hamas.

“If we don’t get a permit, are we still going to march?” Iosbaker asked the crowd, who responded with a chorus of “Yeah!”

“Are we still gonna march within sight and sound? Are we gonna let Genocide Joe come here and not hear us and see us? No! From Chicago to Palestine, protesting is not a crime.”

Well, yes, protesting is sometimes a crime, as the “Marshal Training Guide” below admits. It’s a crime when it incites predictable and imminent violence, or when it violates the “time, place, and manner” restrictions that the city will impose on demonstrators (the venue for the DNC is the United Center, Chicago’s big indoor arena where the local hockey and basketball teams play).

Here’s the meeting that Reingold and Lake attended:

Over a single day, the “March on DNC 2024” conference gathered 75 organizations to discuss how they plan to disrupt the convention. Speakers told the crowd how to flood the streets without getting arrested, how to spot members of the Secret Service, and how to say “Death to America” in Farsi. At one point, when news of Iran’s attack on Israel spread throughout the room, the crowd erupted in cheers.

. . . The event attracted some unsavory characters. Four speakers have had their homes raided by the FBI for their alleged ties to terrorist groups, and one attendee, Jesse Nevel, was federally charged for “working on behalf of the Russian government.” One “anarchist” distributed his homemade magazine that included drawings of machetes and the essay “In Defense of Looting.”

You can see Olivia Reingold talking about the meeting in this interview, which has some video of the speakers.

The FP article has a photo of the machetes, which does worry me a tad, but it’s just one guy. What worries me more, as it worries the local politicians and Democrats, is that the city isn’t prepared for the protests, and you know how unruly and, worse, unlawful some pro-Palestinian protestors can get. Remember the encampments?

The prospect that the convention could devolve into the kind of anarchy actively being plotted at this conference has Chicago Democrats worried, several party insiders told The Free Press. Four politicians said they fear the city—and especially the administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson—aren’t prepared for the protests.

I’m pretty sure that’s true. On the local NBC News last night, a reporter said that the cops were going to take it easy on the demonstrators, and intervene only if there was violence, even if there was unlawful protesting. But I’m not sure whether the local cops are even trained to deal with violence, or how to avoid getting provoked into becoming violent. As I’ve reported, they simply refused to intervene in taking down the University of Chicago’s encampment, leaving the job to the campus cops (who, fortunately, did a good job, and nobody got hurt). But Mayor Brandon Johnson seems out of his depth.

A bit more on the conference:

Back at the conference, about a hundred activists are passing around a clipboard with a sign-up “to supervise and protect organized disruption that’s happening on the streets.” These “marshals,” as they are called by the activists, provide medical care, scurry up and down a procession to deliver information, and lure police into confrontations, said Sief Salameh, a member of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network. (On October 7, the network published a press release describing the terrorist attacks by Hamas as “self-defense operations.”)

Salameh says he aims to have one marshal for every five hundred protesters, who will help the crowd take over the street. A private link to a “Marshal Training Guide” was given to the group, offering techniques for blocking traffic during an “unpermitted march,” including forming a “line between cops and marchers” and bringing “vocal attention to violent, harassing cops (i.e., shout ‘shame, shame’ while pointing at cops).”

I’m glad that the “Marshal training guide” doesn’t encourage violence, but it does seem to promote “unpermitted marches”, like blocking traffic. Well, if that’s the worst that could happen, it’s not terrible. But I’m expecting more than simply blocking traffic: I’m expecting violence and property damage.  The article does give a photo of a group of protesters planning the August action, Of course they’re all wearing masks, and that’s not a sign of covid protection, but a sign of cowardice:

(from the FP) A group of activists at the “March on DNC 2024” conference pose for a photo while chanting “education is a right, not just for the rich and white.” (Photo by Olivia Reingold)

This doesn’t bode well, and you can bet that none of these activists will be barefaced in August.

Below are two tweets mentioned by Weiss in her introduction and one I found on Reingold’s Twitter site:

First, here’s reporter Reingold (a “Zionist,” no doubt) getting harassed and “kiffiyehed” at a protest in New York City. Surrounding opponents with kiffiyehs and flags also happened on our campus during the Encampment. It’s almost certainly illegal, as it’s restricting movement and threatening, but if there were cops there, they didn’t do squat,  Reingold has guts, and the protesters are unhinged, probably desperately looking to dispel their anger by harassing other people, including a reporter who wasn’t the least threatening. (She was there to interview the protesters.)

The Free Press reporter @Olivia_Reingold filed a police report after an anti-Israel mob swarmed her at a protest Monday in Union Square. While shouting “blood on your hands” and “genocide supporter,” they restricted her movement and blew air horns in her ears. One even grabbed… pic.twitter.com/991j0sMrmQ

— The Free Press (@TheFP) June 11, 2024

Another tweet by Reingold about how she was identified as a “Zionist”, marking herself as a target:

It was a man in a Hezbollah headscarf who pointed at me, shouting “she’s a Zionist! Zionist scum!” that got the entire rally to turn on me.

No one asked me what I stand for (a two state solution). They just took his word for it. https://t.co/cjAYxKchJE

— Olivia Reingold (@Olivia_Reingold) June 11, 2024

This one may cross the boundary into non-protected speech, as it seems to be a threat that could incite imminent violence. But no “Zionists” got out, and since “Zionists” has become the polite synonym for “Jew”, and this is in New York, you can bet that there were Jews on the car who didn’t raise their hand. Surely they feared getting beat up. One constitutional scholar I hard of said that this is not protected speech because a reasonable person would feel threatened and coerced by the words about Zionists, and that kind of speech is not protected by the First Amendment.

The mindless mob on a NYC subway car: “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.”

That’s an explicit threat @NYPDnews @NYCMayor pic.twitter.com/zmDpsx2hYN

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) June 11, 2024

I’m just glad I’ll be out of town.

Tiny diamonds and quantum sensors can be used to measure conditions inside cells or living organisms, potentially offering a way to detect diseases or study biology in minute detail

How could we tell the difference between an ordinary black hole and one connected to a tunnel through space-time?

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “maniacs,” makes its point in the last frame.  There’s good reasons for the assumption.

What are “ultraprocessed foods” and are they a health risk? One would think there is reason for concern, given all the hyped headlines, but as is often the case the data is somewhat complicated. The complexity begins with the fact that there is no agreed-upon operational definition of “ultraprocessed food” (UPF). Processed food generally refers to food products that are already prepared […]

The post Ultraprocessed Foods first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Faster-than-light warp drives are theoretically possible to build, and if aliens are using them, we should be able to detect the gravitational waves produced when one goes wrong

Scientists have identified a new species of pterosaur from a 100-million-year-old fossil in Australia, which appears to have had a massive tongue to push prey down its throat

A small trial has found that electrical stimulation of arm muscles while people do physiotherapy exercises leads to more improvement

Many astronomy-interested people know of the Hyades and the Pleiades. They’re star clusters in the Taurus constellation. They’re two out of a handful of star clusters that are visible to the unaided eye under dark sky conditions.

It turns out that these clusters, along with more than 150 other nearby clusters, all originated in only three massive star-forming regions.

Open star clusters like Hyades and Pleiades contain hundreds of stars that are loosely bound together by mutual gravitation. They have fewer stars than globular clusters and aren’t as tightly packed. They also aren’t spherical like globulars; instead, they follow the galactic plane. They’re usually found in the Milky Way’s spiral arms rather than the halo where globulars reside.

Eventually, open clusters lose their gravitational bond with one another and are called stellar associations. They still move through space together and are then known as a moving group. Their movement allows astronomers to understand their origins.

In a new research article in Nature, a team of researchers traced the origins of 155 young star clusters within about 3,500 light years from the Sun. The article is titled “Most nearby young star clusters formed in three massive complexes.” The authors are from institutions in Austria, Germany, and the United States.

“Young star clusters are excellent for exploring the history and structure of the Milky Way. By studying their movements in the past and thus their origin, we also gain important insights into the formation and evolution of our galaxy,” says João Alves from the University of Vienna, co-author of the study.

The researchers used Gaia data and spectroscopic observations of star clusters to trace their histories back over 60 million years. They uncovered three families of star clusters, each one associated with one of three star-formation regions. “This indicates that the young star clusters originate from only three very active and massive star-forming regions,” says Alves.

The researchers began with a sample of 272 clusters. They found that between 30 and 50 million years ago, almost 60% of their trajectories converged in three locations. This showed that “a large fraction of clusters in the solar neighbourhood share common origins.”

The three families of clusters are named after their most prominent members: Collinder 135 (Cr135), Messier 6 (M6), and Alpha Persei (?Per). The clusters contain 39, 34, and 82 clusters, respectively. Collectively, they contain 57% of the 272 clusters in the sample and 59% of the 48,514 stars in the sample.

This figure from the research shows the all-sky positions of the clusters’ stars along with some optical images of some of their members. The Alpha Persei members are more spread across the sky because they’re closest to the Sun. (Interactive Version Here.)Image Credit: Swiggum et al. 2024.

“These findings offer a clearer understanding of how young star clusters in our galactic neighbourhood are interconnected, much like members of a family or ‘bloodlines’,” says lead author Cameron Swiggum, a doctoral student at the University of Vienna. “By examining the 3D movements and past positions of these star clusters, we can identify their common origins and locate the regions in our galaxy where the first stars in these respective star clusters formed up to 40 million years ago.”

The team’s research uncovered more than just the history of star clusters. They also worked out that over 200 supernova explosions must have occurred in the three star-forming regions to eject all of these clusters. But supernova explosions are extraordinarily powerful and 200 of them release enough energy to shape their environment on a grand scale.

The authors say that these explosions created a gigantic bubble in the ISM. “This could explain the formation of a superbubble, a giant bubble of gas and dust with a diameter of 3,000 light-years around the Cr135 family,” Swiggum said in a press release.

Our Solar System is also inside one of these bubbles, called the Local Bubble. Inside the bubble the gas is thinner and hotter than outside it. “The Local Bubble is probably also linked to the history of one of the three star cluster families,” adds Swiggum. “And it has likely left traces on Earth, as suggested by measurements of iron isotopes (60Fe) in the Earth’s crust.”

This figure from the research shows three star cluster families and other local features on a dust map. The dust is shown in grey, and two prominent dust features, the Vela Molecular Ridge and the Radcliffe Wave, are labelled. The Sun is the yellow dot, and the Local Bubble is shown in blue. (Interactive Version Here.) Image Credit: Swiggum et al. 2024.

It’s a truism to say that finding connections between things creates meaning. The stars in the sky aren’t just “there.” There’s a long story to be told by unravelling what we see as static. This research is another example of the powerful Gaia spacecraft’s ability to find relationships between stars and weave an evidence-based tale of their histories. And we’re somewhere in the middle of it all.

“We can practically turn the sky into a time machine that allows us to trace the history of our home galaxy,” says João Alves. “By deciphering the genealogy of star clusters, we also learn more about our own galactic ancestry.”

The post The Nearby Star Clusters Come from Only Three Places appeared first on Universe Today.

Clouds of gas in a distant galaxy are being pushed faster and faster -- at more than 10,000 miles per second -- out among neighboring stars by blasts of radiation from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. It's a discovery that helps illuminate the way active black holes can continuously shape their galaxies by spurring on or snuffing out the development of new stars.

By combining forefront X-ray observations with state-of-the-art supercomputer simulations of the buildup of galaxies over cosmic history, researchers have provided the best modeling to date of the growth of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of galaxies.

An artificial intelligence-powered virtual teammate with a female voice boosts participation and productivity among women on teams dominated by men, according to new research.

Inspired by the material that makes up oyster and abalone shells, engineers have created a new cement composite that is 17 times more crack-resistant than standard cement and 19 times more able to stretch and deform without breaking. The findings could eventually help increase the crack resistance of a wide range of brittle ceramic materials from concrete to porcelain.

Researchers have demonstrated miniature soft hydraulic actuators that can be used to control the deformation and motion of soft robots that are less than a millimeter thick. The researchers have also demonstrated that this technique works with shape memory materials, allowing users to repeatedly lock the soft robots into a desired shape and return to the original shape as needed.

Researchers have demonstrated miniature soft hydraulic actuators that can be used to control the deformation and motion of soft robots that are less than a millimeter thick. The researchers have also demonstrated that this technique works with shape memory materials, allowing users to repeatedly lock the soft robots into a desired shape and return to the original shape as needed.

As space travel becomes more frequent, a new biomarker tool was developed by an international team of researchers to help improve the growing field of aerospace medicine and the health of astronauts.