Local politicians and the national lawmakers (from both sides of the aisle) across the US have started introducing rules that ban law enforcement agencies from using facial recognition technology in monitoring citizens.

In just the past few months, San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville, Massachusetts passed laws to ban government use of this controversial technology which can identify people by analyzing pictures or videos. Cambridge, Massachusetts, is also going toward a government ban.

Congress recently held two oversight hearings on the topic and there are at least four pieces of current federal legislation to limit the technology in some way.

And now, Recode has learned that two top lawmakers, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), plan this fall to introduce a new bipartisan bill on facial recognition, according to representatives from both legislators’ offices. The specifics of the bill are still being hashed out, but it could include issuing a pause on the federal government’s acquisition of new facial recognition technology, according to a staffer from Jordan’s office.

Facial recognition is a rare case where regulators are working together — on a bipartisan level, no less — to try to get ahead of technology instead of catching up to it. That’s because this powerful new technology has the potential to infringe on Americans’ civil liberties — no matter their political persuasion — and to have a chilling effect on free speech.

More details of this news at Recode.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: teguhjatipras/ Pixabay)

Marine ecologist Melanie Bergmann studied the effects of climate change on Arctic marine ecosystems a few years ago. Bergmann kept noticing how much plastic litter was appearing in samples and images of the nearby ocean floor. As she and her team ran several analyses, they found tiny pieces of plastic spreading throughout seafloor sediment and ocean waters. These pieces were frozen into layers of sea ice. This is surprising because the Arctic has a relatively little human presence. So this begs the question: how did all these plastic particles get here?

We now know that at least some of it is blowing to the Arctic through the atmosphere and drifting down to the surface. That is the conclusion of a new study of Arctic snow samples conducted by Bergmann, a senior scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, and her colleagues. The work, published Wednesday in Science Advances, also provides more evidence that motes of plastic are likely constantly circulating in the atmosphere, underscoring just how ubiquitous the plastic pollution problem is. It shows “the way [microplastic is] transported around the world, even to the most remote places on earth,” Bergmann says.

Head over at the Scientific American to know more about this topic.

(Image Credit: Mine Tekman/ Alfred Wegener Institute)

Many artifacts from an excavation site at Pompeii were recently uncovered by archaeologists. Among the many artifacts uncovered were “crystals, amber, amethyst, phallic amulets, glass beads, figurines, and a miniature human skull.”

The objects were probably left behind by someone fleeing the famous volcanic eruption in 79 AD—possibly even a sorceress. The various objects will be displayed at the Palastra Grande in Pompeii later this year.

“They are objects of everyday life in the female world and are extraordinary because they tell micro-stories and biographies of the inhabitants of the city who tried to escape the eruption,” Massimo Osanna, general director of the Archaaological Park of Pompeii, said in a statement.

The catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD wiped out several nearby towns and killed thousands of people. The eruption released 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, ejecting many tons of molten rock, pumice, and hot ash over the course of two days. In the first phase, immediately after the eruption, a long column of ash and pumice blanketed the surrounding towns, most notably Pompeii and Herculaneum. By late night or early morning, pyroclastic flows (fast-moving hot ash, lava fragments, and gases) swept through and obliterated what remained, leaving the bodies of the victims frozen in seeming suspended action.

Find out more about this exciting news over at Ars Technica.

(Image Credit: Cesare Abbate/ ANSA)

David Niose’s weight has been creeping up over the years. Eventually, about three years ago, his weight tipped the scale at an unhealthy 208 pounds. His doctor informed him that he was 25 pounds over the high end of his healthy weight range, setting himself up for serious health issues going forward. Clearly, he had to do something.

Rather than turn to the latest popular diet, I decided to take a reason-based approach. That is, instead of following the dictates of some trendy diet prescription—"eat this, don't eat that," etc.—I tried to understand the subject in a more holistic way. Why had my weight crept up over the years? What should I be eating? I looked at the established facts surrounding weight control and healthy eating, and tried to apply rational thinking to my situation. No fads, no miracle diets. The result was not a quick fix to deliver temporary weight loss, but changes in thinking about food and diet that resulted in sensible lifestyle adjustments.

That was in early 2017. Almost immediately I started losing weight slowly but steadily, a couple of pounds or so per week at first, a bit slower as time went on, until I leveled out six months later at about 170. I’ve hovered around that weight for the last two years, weighing in this morning at 168.

What was his secret? Find out on Psychology Today.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: TeroVesalainen/ Pixabay)

Lightning is a usual phenomenon. However, certain parts of the world, such as the North Pole, get far less of it. After all, atmospheric instability is required in order to produce lightning. Atmospheric instability happens when cold, parched air sits atop warmer, wetter air. At very high altitudes, however, the hotter, damper air, tends to not appear.

That’s why it took scientists by surprise when dozens of lightning strikes were detected within 300 nautical miles of the North Pole this past weekend. In fact, it was so unusual that it was highlighted on Twitter by the National Weather Service’s office in Fairbanks, Alaska. A bulletin of theirs said this was “one of the furthest north lightning strikes in Alaska forecaster memory.”

Although plenty of factors needed to come together to produce the lightshow, the specter of climate change lingers over this meteorological mystery. It is possible that a freakishly warm Arctic, a staggering lack of sea ice, and even possibly smoke from unprecedented wildfires within the Arctic Circle, among other things, contributed to this lightning’s unexpected appearance near the top of the world.

“It has been an extraordinary year and an extraordinary summer in the far north,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Weird things are happening in the Arctic, and quirky lightning is yet another peculiarity to add to the growing list.

(Image Credit: O12/ Pixabay)

Long before the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer’s appear, already plaques of amyloid beta proteins and tangles of tau proteins build up in the brain. One of the earliest outward signs of the disease is excessive daytime napping, but the reason behind this is difficult to say. Some explain that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) disrupts sleep-promoting brain regions, while others state that a lack of sleep is what drives cognitive decline.

Researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) have now put forward a new explanation. Analysing postmortem brain tissues from 13 patients with AD and 7 healthy controls, the team suggests that Alzheimer's disease directly attacks brain regions that keep us awake during the day.

"It's remarkable because it's not just a single brain nucleus that's degenerating, but the whole wakefulness-promoting network," says lead author Jun Oh, who researches memory and ageing at UCSF.

"Crucially this means that the brain has no way to compensate because all of these functionally related cell types are being destroyed at the same time."

Head over at Science Alert to know more details about the study.

(Image Credit: Grinberg Lab/ UCSF)

Erika Hayasaki of Technology Review is in the laboratory of Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, a Spaniard worker at the Gene Expression Laboratory San Diego’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Hayasaki sees a black mouse on the screen sprawling on its belly, with its back hunched. It is blinking but motionless. 

Its organs are failing. It appears to be days away from death. It has progeria, a disease of accelerated aging, caused by a genetic mutation. It is only three months old.

Belmonte, however, shows Hayasaki something very hard to believe — he shows Hayasaki the same mouse, lively and active. The mouse was treated with an age-reversal mixture.

“It completely rejuvenates,” Izpisúa Belmonte tells me with a mischievous grin. “If you look inside, obviously, all the organs, all the cells are younger.”

Izpisúa Belmonte, a shrewd and soft-spoken scientist, has access to an inconceivable power. These mice, it seems, have sipped from a fountain of youth. Izpisúa Belmonte can rejuvenate aging, dying animals. He can rewind time. But just as quickly as he blows my mind, he puts a damper on the excitement. So potent was the rejuvenating treatment used on the mice that they either died after three or four days from cell malfunction or developed tumors that killed them later. An overdose of youth, you could call it.

How can he do this? Find out directly on the site.

(Image Credit: Christie Hemm Klok)

We’ve heard some say that if you don’t want a baby girl, do not have sex close to ovulation. This asserts that the sperm with the Y chromosome, the one responsible in making male babies, swim faster. Therefore, you have a better chance of having a daughter if the sperm has to travel a long way to its destination which is the egg. While this tip has no scientific merit whatsoever, scientists have now found a way to make this “true, sort of.”

X and Y chromosomes aren’t just different sizes—the X is about three times longer than the Y—they also contain different genes. In the new study, scientists used these genetic differences to sort “male” mouse sperm from “female” sperm.

They zeroed in on a specific gene, called Toll-like receptor 7/8, which is expressed only in X-chromosome sperm and codes for two receptors on the sperm cell’s tail and midpiece. The scientists incubated mouse sperm in a mixture containing molecules that would bind to the receptors and activate them. The molecules slowed energy production in X-chromosome sperm while not affecting the Y-chromosome sperm at all, the team reports today in PLOS Biology.

To confirm their findings, the researchers staged sperm races. Many of the modified X sperm swam at less than half the speed of the Y sperm. And when researchers used only the faster Y sperm for in vitro fertilization, 90% of the mouse pups were born male. Separating out the slowest sperm produced litters that were 81% female.

Interesting research. What do you think?

(Image Credit: geralt/ Pixabay)

The Curiosity Rover might be adept, but it cannot scale the walls and the polar caps on Mars. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) pushes the capabilities of their rovers as they develop “some far out concepts for climbing robots that could explore hard-to-reach points on other worlds.”

JPL's Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot (LEMUR) was originally designed to do repairs on the International Space Station. And, while that repair program is no longer around, engineers continue to test the robot and use their experiences with LEMUR to derive exploration robots for future missions on Mars or on far-off moons.

In early 2019, LEMUR made it up steep walls during a field test in Death Valley, California. It scaled a cliff using tiny fishhooks embedded in each of its 16 "fingers." While en route, the robot also searched for ancient fossils to simulate searching for life on distant worlds.

Amazing!

(Image Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech)

You can now have your own E.T, or at least just his face, on your own home. Just wrap this perfect replica made by Czech artist Stanislav Dykast in a blanket and you already have E.T just like in the film.

It’s a 1:1 scale resin casting based on the original sculpt done by the late, great artist Carlo Rambaldi for the movie…

Keep in mind that what you can actually buy on his Etsy shop is just the unpainted mask, and you’ll have to paint and complete E.T. yourself if you want it to look as good as what Dykast is showing off in his pictures.

(Image Credit: Stanislav Dykast/ Technabob)

Preliminary data suggest that two Ebola treatments have proven to be effective in preventing death during a clinical trial conducted amidst the deadly ongoing outbreak in Congo.

The trial began in November, with participants randomly given one of four experimental treatments (SN: 3/16/19, p. 9). Data from 499 patients reviewed August 9 suggest that those people taking one of two antibody treatments — mAb114 or REGN-EB3 — had a greater chance of survival than those on the antiviral drug remdesivir or the antibody treatment ZMapp. Researchers reported the trial results in a news release August 12, but these findings have yet to be finalized.

“One thing that won’t change is that those two therapies are better than the other two — that’s for sure,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. The trial now enters a phase with only the two most effective treatments in order to gather more data on their safety and the immune response to each drug. Researchers won’t study enough patients, however, to determine which drug works best.

Head over to Science News to know more about the results of the treatments.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: World Bank/ Vincent Tremeau)

Using a method that could aid in the early detection of non-native species if adopted widely, a team of scientists from the University of Southampton, Bangor University and the National Oceanography Centre were able to discover several artificially introduced species in the coastal waters of southern England.

Led by Luke Holman, a PhD student at the University of Southampton, the researchers collected water and sediments from four marinas around the UK and analyzed the DNA of each sample. This was done in order to determine which species had been present in the ecosystems.

Organisms leave traces of their DNA in water systems through a variety of means, for example fish can lose scales and many species can release sperm or eggs during the spawning season. The team were able to extract this genetic material, known as environmental DNA (eDNA), and compare it to global DNA databases to identify the presence of species.

Luke Holman said "We are enormously excited about the potential for eDNA in the detection of invasive species. This initial work gives us confidence that the technique could be invaluable both for catching invasions early on and also for monitoring the success of eradication efforts."

[...]

If not caught early, invasive species can have devastating effects on the country's native wildlife habitats. For example, Asian date mussels can alter sediment through the thread like cocoons they produce which weave together and change the seafloor from a muddy to a thick, sandy material. This in turn changes the creatures that inhabit the area.

(Image Credit: Luke Holman, University of Southampton)

If average global temperatures increase by as little as 2 degrees, according to a new study by the University of Cincinnati, the Arctic Ocean could have no ice through September each summer — the ice would disappear completely. The said study is published in Nature Communications.

"The target is the sensitivity of sea ice to temperature," said Won Chang, a study co-author and UC assistant professor of mathematics.

"What is the minimum global temperature change that eliminates all arctic sea ice in September? What's the tipping point?"

The study predicted that the Arctic Ocean could be completely ice-free in September with as little as 2 degrees Celsius of temperature change. Limiting warming to 2 degrees is the stated goal of the 2009 Paris Agreement, the international effort to curb carbon emissions to address warming. The Trump Administration withdrew the United States as a participant in 2017.

"Most likely, September Arctic sea ice will effectively disappear between approximately 2 and 2.5 degrees of global warming," the study said. "Yet limiting the warming to 2 degrees (as proposed under the Paris agreement) may not be sufficient to prevent an ice-free Arctic Ocean."

Head over at PHYS.org to know more about the study.

(Image Credit: Michael Miller)

A company called Globe is hoping to persuade guests to sign up for short stays not in hotels, but in people’s homes. There guests can kick back between other commitments, and if the host gives them permission, they can take a shower there or even nap.

It’s at once crazy sounding and intriguing, which is perhaps why the popular accelerator program Y Combinator accepted the company into its most recent class of companies. (It shows off its newest batch of startups next week.) YC was famously early to spy the opportunity that Airbnb could chase, after all. The question is whether Globe, which likens itself to an Airbnb for day breaks, will have anywhere near the same appeal.

Its proposition is certainly similar. Home owner or renter wrings out some extra income by renting out all or part of their home, except that unlike with Airbnb, where the minimum stay is at least one night, with Globe, a host rents out his or her space for smaller increments of time.

See more details over at TechCrunch.

(Image Credit: Pexels/ Pixabay)

The instructions are simple: Radcliffe has to call a toy shop and he needs to start each sentence with the next letter of the alphabet. The execution, however, is a different story entirely — it is very difficult to do. Add to the fact that it would be a whole new level of cringe.

Was Radcliffe able to make it through the last letter of the alphabet? Watch the video and find out.

Via Mashable

(Video Credit: BBC Radio 1/ YouTube)