The US scientists who created the first living robots say the life forms, known as xenobots, can now reproduce -- and in a way not seen in plants and animals. CNN reports: Formed from the stem cells of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which it takes its name, xenobots are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide. The tiny blobs were first unveiled in 2020 after experiments showed that they could move, work together in groups and self-heal. Now the scientists that developed them at the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering said they have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction different from any animal or plant known to science.

[T]hey found that the xenobots, which were initially sphere-shaped and made from around 3,000 cells, could replicate. But it happened rarely and only in specific circumstances. The xenobots used "kinetic replication" -- a process that is known to occur at the molecular level but has never been observed before at the scale of whole cells or organisms [...]. With the help of artificial intelligence, the researchers then tested billions of body shapes to make the xenobots more effective at this type of replication. The supercomputer came up with a C-shape that resembled Pac-Man, the 1980s video game. They found it was able to find tiny stem cells in a petri dish, gather hundreds of them inside its mouth, and a few days later the bundle of cells became new xenobots.

The xenobots are very early technology -- think of a 1940s computer -- and don't yet have any practical applications. However, this combination of molecular biology and artificial intelligence could potentially be used in a host of tasks in the body and the environment, according to the researchers. This may include things like collecting microplastics in the oceans, inspecting root systems and regenerative medicine. While the prospect of self-replicating biotechnology could spark concern, the researchers said that the living machines were entirely contained in a lab and easily extinguished, as they are biodegradable and regulated by ethics experts. "Most people think of robots as made of metals and ceramics but it's not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is act on its own on behalf of people," said Josh Bongard, a computer science professor and robotics expert at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "In that way it's a robot but it's also clearly an organism made from genetically unmodified frog cell."

"The AI didn't program these machines in the way we usually think about writing code. It shaped and sculpted and came up with this Pac-Man shape," Bongard said. "The shape is, in essence, the program. The shape influences how the xenobots behave to amplify this incredibly surprising process."

The Los Angeles Times summarizes the results of a new medical study conducted by Northwestern University researchers on antibody levels protecting against Covid-19 in 974 people. "Those who were immunized against COVID-19 with two doses of an mRNA vaccine and received a booster shot about eight months later saw their levels of neutralizing antibodies skyrocket.

"Among this group of 33 fully vaccinated and boosted people, the median level of these antibodies was 23 times higher one week after the booster shot than it had been just before the tune-up dose." What's more, their median post-booster antibody level was three times higher than was typical for another group of people whose antibodies were measured a few weeks after getting their second dose of vaccine, when they're close to their peak.

And it was 53 times higher than that of a group of 76 unvaccinated people who had recovered from COVID-19 just two to six weeks earlier. Even compared to a group of 73 people who had weathered a bout with COVID-19 and went on to get two doses of an mRNA vaccine, the boosted group's median antibody level was 68% higher.

Study leader Alexis Demonbreun, a cell biologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, said the data demonstrate that no matter how well protected a vaccinated person may think she is, getting a booster shot is likely to increase her neutralizing antibodies — and with it, her immunity — considerably. And because scientists expect large antibody responses to create more durable immunity, the protection afforded by the booster should last longer than the initial two-shot regimen did...

Among their other findings: After receiving two doses of vaccine, people who'd already had an asymptomatic infection were typically no better protected than vaccinated people who had never been infected.

Not a single scientist has applied to a UK government visa scheme for Nobel prize laureates and other award winners since its launch six months ago, New Scientist reported Tuesday. From a report: The scheme has come under criticism from scientists and has been described as "a joke." In May, the government launched a fast-track visa route for award-winners in the fields of science, engineering, the humanities and medicine who want to work in the UK. This prestigious prize route makes it easier for some academics to apply for a Global Talent visa -- it requires only one application, with no need to meet conditions such as a grant from the UK Research and Innovation funding body or a job offer at a UK organisation.

The number of prizes that qualify academics for this route currently stands at over 70, and includes the Turing Award, the L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science International Awards, and various gongs awarded by professional or membership bodies both in the UK and elsewhere. "Winners of these awards have reached the pinnacle of their career and they have so much to offer the UK," said home secretary Priti Patel when the prestigious prize scheme launched in May. "This is exactly what our new point-based immigration system was designed for -- attracting the best and brightest based on the skills and talent they have, not where they've come from." But a freedom of information request by New Scientist has revealed that in the six months since the scheme was launched, no one working in science, engineering, the humanities or medicine has actually applied for a visa through this route.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Elon Musk on Wednesday said SpaceX is "hoping" to launch the first orbital flight test of its mammoth Starship rocket in January, a schedule that depends on testing and regulatory approval. "We'll do a bunch of tests in December and hopefully launch in January," Musk said, speaking at a meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Space Studies Board.

The company's next major step in developing Starship is launching to orbit. First, the company needs a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration for the mission, with the regulator expecting to complete a key environmental assessment by the end of this year. Musk noted that he wasn't sure if Starship would successfully reach orbit on the first try, but emphasized that he is "confident" that the rocket will get to space in 2022. "We intend to have a high flight rate next year," Musk said.

SpaceX aims to launch as many as a dozen Starship test flights next year, he said, to complete the "test flight program" and move to launching "real payloads in 2023." He stressed that creating a mass production line for Starship is crucial to the program's long-term goals, noting that the current "biggest constraint" on rocket manufacturing is how fast the company can build the Raptor engines needed for Starship. "I think, in order for life to become multiplanetary, we'll need maybe 1,000 ships or something like that," Musk said. "The overarching goal of SpaceX has been to advance space technology such that humanity can become a multi-planet species and, ultimately, a spacefaring civilization." SpaceX received a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to develop Starship for delivering astronauts to the moon's surface, but Musk said the company is "not assuming any international collaboration" or external funding for the rocket program. "[Starship] is at least 90% internally funded thus far," Musk said.

Drinking coffee or tea may be linked with a lower risk of stroke and dementia, according to the largest study of its kind. The Guardian reports: Strokes cause 10% of deaths globally, while dementia is one of the world's biggest health challenges -- 130 million are expected to be living with it by 2050. In the research, 365,000 people aged between 50 and 74 were followed for more than a decade. At the start the participants, who were involved in the UK Biobank study, self-reported how much coffee and tea they drank. Over the research period, 5,079 of them developed dementia and 10,053 went on to have at least one stroke.

Researchers found that people who drank two to three cups of coffee or three to five cups of tea a day, or a combination of four to six cups of coffee and tea, had the lowest risk of stroke or dementia. Those who drank two to three cups of coffee and two to three cups of tea daily had a 32% lower risk of stroke. These people had a 28% lower risk of dementia compared with those who did not drink tea or coffee. The research, by Yuan Zhang and colleagues from Tianjin Medical University, China, suggests drinking coffee alone or in combination with tea is also linked with lower risk of post-stroke dementia. "[W]hat generally happened is that the risk of stroke or dementia was lower in people who drank reasonably small amounts of coffee or tea compared to those who drank none at all, but that after a certain level of consumption, the risk started to increase again until it became higher than the risk to people who drank none," said professor Kevin McConway, an emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University who was not involved in the study.

"Once the coffee consumption got up to seven or eight cups a day, the stroke risk was greater than for people who drank no coffee, and quite a lot higher than for those who drank two or three cups a day."

The study has been published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Food and Drug Administration authorized a virtual reality system as a prescription treatment for chronic back pain, the agency announced today. The therapy, called EaseVRx, joins the short list of digital therapeutics cleared by the agency over the past few years. EaseVRx includes a VR headset and a device that amplifies the sound of the user's breath to assist in breathing exercises. It uses principles from cognitive behavior therapy, which aims to help people recognize and understand various thought patterns and emotions. The program addresses pain through relaxation, distraction, and improved awareness of internal signals, the FDA said in its statement.

The FDA authorized EaseVRx based on data from an eight-week study in 179 people with low back pain that had lasted six months or longer. Half used the EaseVRx program and half participated in another, two-dimensional virtual reality program that did not use cognitive behavioral therapy methods. Around two-thirds of participants using EaseVRx said they had more than 30 percent reduction in pain, while only 41 percent of the control group had a similar reduction. The reduced pain lasted for up to three months after the study for people in the EaseVRx group but not for the control group. The VR system could be an alternative option to opioid medications for back pain, Christopher Loftus, acting director of the Office of Neurological and Physical Medicine Devices at the FDA, said in a statement. [...] EaseVRx was developed by the company AppliedVR, which is also testing its platform as a treatment for fibromyalgia pain, burn pains, or pain during childbirth. The clearance for EaseVRx comes around a month after the FDA approved a VR treatment for children with the visual disorder amblyopia, or lazy eye.

Tonight 70 countries around the world set their clocks back an hour — including most of the United States, Canada, the EU and the UK.

Yet "The practice has drawn complaints about its disruptive effects on sleep and schedules," reports UPI, adding that "The American Academy of Medicine has called for an end to Daylight Saving Time, citing growing research that shows its deleterious effects on health and safety." [U.S.] Lawmakers are also increasingly wondering whether Daylight Saving Time is a good idea. At least 350 bills and resolutions have been introduced in every state taking aim at Daylight Saving Time since 2015, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Over the last four years, 19 states have passed similar legislation providing year-round daylight saving time if Congress allowed such changes.

Members of Congress have introduced legislation making changes to Daylight Saving Time, to no avail.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, (Democrat — Rhode Island), said in a video posted to Twitter on Friday that the upcoming switchover was one of his least favorite times of the year since it means darker afternoons. He touted his Sunshine Protection Act that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent.

"We can do a lot better for daylight for everyone who is up in the afternoon," he said.
Also supporting that change is Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio. "We're about to once again do this annual craziness of changing the clock, falling back, springing forward," Newsweek quotes him as saying. "Let's go to permanent daylight saving time. The overwhelming majority of members of Congress approve and support it. Let's get it done. Let's get it passed so that we never have to do this stupid change again."

But currently in America it's the Department of Transportation which is in charge of the practice, reports USA Today, and the Department believes that the practice saves energy, prevents traffic accidents and curbs crime.

So, as the Washington Post reports, "It's that time of the year again. We change the clocks back and we whine about it."

Brown University: At 89-years-old Manfred Steiner is finally what he always wanted to be: a physicist. On September 15, 2021, Steiner successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, "Corrections to the Geometrical Interpretation of Bosonization" in Brown University's Department of Physics with Professor Brad Marston serving as his adviser and Professors James Valles and Antal Jevicki serving as readers. "It's an old dream that starts in my childhood," says Steiner, "I always wanted to become a physicist." To say that Steiner's path to a Ph.D. in physics was not a traditional one would be an understatement. As a young man, Steiner fled the chaos of his birthplace of Vienna as World War II ended and eventually made his way to the United States. Steiner says, "I knew physics was my true passion by the time I graduated high school. But after the war, my uncle and my mother advised me to take up medicine because it would be a better choice in these turbulent after-war years."

Although he excelled at and loved physics, Steiner followed his family's advice. He says, "my uncle was a physician, an ear, nose and throat specialist, and he had taught in the United States for a while. He taught plastic surgery -- showing people how to make noses smaller or how to straighten them out. My family's advice was that medicine was the best path for me. So I reconciled myself, 'they are older and wiser,' and I followed their advice." Steiner went on to earn a medical doctorate in 1955 from the University of Vienna and soon after his graduation he made his way to Washington, D.C. where he finished his initial training in internal medicine. He next began a traineeship in hematology at Tufts University under Dr. William Damashek, who the American Society of Hematology describes as "the preeminent American clinical hematologist of his time." The traineeship included a three-year training in biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry there in 1967.

"According to his bio on Harvard.edu, Mikao John was an erudite scholar: a medical student at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology who'd studied statistics and biochemistry at Yale and published research in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine," reports Futurism: John was also a prolific author of blog posts on Harvard's site... But despite that veneer of academic authenticity, his posts didn't sound much like medical research. nstead, John's recent works carried titles like "KeefX.co: The Cannabis Fintech Company that Provides $1M in Funding a Month," which took the form of an extremely flattering article about a startup that provides financial services to weed businesses, and "Idahome Solar Makes Switching to Solar Power in Idaho a No-Brainer," which praised the "client-first mentality" and "incredible financing program" of a seemingly random solar panel company in Idaho.

As it turns out, there is no Harvard student by the name of Mikao John. Instead, a scammer invented that persona — and, alarmingly, managed to obtain the credentials to insert him into Harvard's web system — in order to sell SEO-friendly backlinks, and the prestige of being hyped up by someone at one of the world's most distinguished universities, to marketing firms with publicity-hungry clients.

The practice of scammers cooking up fake Harvard students to shill brands on the university's site appears to be widespread. In response to questions from Futurism, Harvard removed the Mikao John profile as well as about two dozen similar accounts being used for the same purpose... Swathes of Harvard.edu have become a spammer free-for-all where fake students and other accounts hawk an endless parade of dubious stuff: online casinos, synthetic urine, real estate in Florida, CBD, [42 more examples deleted] and many more incongruous yet trashy brands and services...

Overall, it felt as though if a reporter hadn't been sending numerous emails, the fake students probably would have been allowed to continue posting indefinitely.
Harvard eventually told the reporter that the scammers were signing up for their online classes, then using the email address they received to infiltrate the university's blogging platforms (writing fake posts about everything from bitcoin to concealed carry holsters and even bouncy castles.)

Ironically, Harvard's official motto (first adopted in 1643) is "Veritas" — the Latin word for truth.

A solution to P vs NP could unlock countless computational problems -- or keep them forever out of reach. MIT Technology Review: On Monday, July 19, 2021, in the middle of another strange pandemic summer, a leading computer scientist in the field of complexity theory tweeted out a public service message about an administrative snafu at a journal. He signed off with a very loaded, "Happy Monday." In a parallel universe, it might have been a very happy Monday indeed. A proof had appeared online at the esteemed journal ACM Transactions on Computational Theory, which trades in "outstanding original research exploring the limits of feasible computation." The result purported to solve the problem of all problems -- the Holy Grail of theoretical computer science, worth a $1 million prize and fame rivaling Aristotle's forevermore.

This treasured problem -- known as "P versus NP" -- is considered at once the most important in theoretical computer science and mathematics and completely out of reach. It addresses questions central to the promise, limits, and ambitions of computation, asking:

Why are some problems harder than others?
Which problems can computers realistically solve?
How much time will it take?

And it's a quest with big philosophical and practical payoffs. "Look, this P versus NP question, what can I say?" Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in his memoir of ideas, Quantum Computing Since Democritus. "People like to describe it as 'probably the central unsolved problem of theoretical computer science.' That's a comical understatement. P vs NP is one of the deepest questions that human beings have ever asked." One way to think of this story's protagonists is as follows: "P" represents problems that a computer can handily solve. "NP" represents problems that, once solved, are easy to check -- like jigsaw puzzles, or Sudoku. Many NP problems correspond to some of the most stubborn and urgent problems society faces. The million-dollar question posed by P vs. NP is this: Are these two classes of problems one and the same? Which is to say, could the problems that seem so difficult in fact be solved with an algorithm in a reasonable amount of time, if only the right, devilishly fast algorithm could be found? If so, many hard problems are suddenly solvable. And their algorithmic solutions could bring about societal changes of utopian proportions -- in medicine and engineering and economics, biology and ecology, neuroscience and social science, industry, the arts, even politics and beyond.

For the first time, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient's immune system, a potentially major advance that could eventually help alleviate a dire shortage of human organs for transplant. Reuters reports: The procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City involved use of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger almost immediate rejection. The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off of life support, researchers told Reuters. For three days, the new kidney was attached to her blood vessels and maintained outside her body, giving researchers access to it.

Test results of the transplanted kidney's function "looked pretty normal," said transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the study. The kidney made "the amount of urine that you would expect" from a transplanted human kidney, he said, and there was no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection seen when unmodified pig kidneys are transplanted into non-human primates. The recipient's abnormal creatinine level - an indicator of poor kidney function - returned to normal after the transplant, Montgomery said.

Montgomery's team theorized that knocking out the pig gene for a carbohydrate that triggers rejection - a sugar molecule, or glycan, called alpha-gal - would prevent the problem. The genetically altered pig, dubbed GalSafe, was developed by United Therapeutics Corp's Revivicor unit. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, for use as food for people with a meat allergy and as a potential source of human therapeutics. Other researchers are considering whether GalSafe pigs can be sources of everything from heart valves to skin grafts for human patients.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from People: Doctors around the world are seeing a rise in cases of tic-like behaviors in teen girls, which they believe could be caused by watching TikTok videos about Tourette syndrome. Pediatric hospitals have reported an increase in teen girls coming in after developing tics, sudden twitches or noises that are a common symptom of Tourette syndrome, during the pandemic. The sudden rise is unusual, with tics typically occurring in boys, not girls. Experts in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia studied the patients for months and consulted between hospitals, finding that the common factor between the girls was an interest in watching TikTok videos from influencers who said they have Tourette syndrome, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the outlet, Texas Children's Hospital said they've had around 60 teens come in with tics since March 2020, compared to just one or two a year before then, while at Johns Hopkins University Tourette's Center, the number of patients reporting tic-like behaviors has jumped from 2 to 3% a year to 10 to 20%. And Rush University Medical Center in Chicago had 20 patients with tics over just four months this year, compared to 10 all of last year. Researchers from pediatric hospitals around the world found that referrals for tic-like behaviors soared during the pandemic, especially in girls aged 12 to 25, they wrote in a study published in August in the journal Movement Disorders. Since March 2020, referrals in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and Australia went from 1 to 2% to 20 to 35%. The researchers wrote that they've seen a "similarity between the tics or tic-like behaviors shown on social media and the tic-like behaviors of this group of patients." Another group of doctors say they "believe this to be an example of mass sociogenic illness," where people are copying the behaviors they see in the videos. Doctors recommend therapy to treat kids experiencing these symptoms. They also advise parents to require their teens to "take a social media break or block Tourette videos on their TikTok account," adds the report.

How Natalie Grams, who once abandoned her medical education to study alternative therapies, became Germany's most prominent homeopathy skeptic. From a report: The pseudoscience of homeopathy was invented in Germany in the 18th century by a maverick physician named Samuel Hahnemann. His theory was based on the ancient principle of like cures like -- akin to the mechanism behind vaccines. The remedies Hahnemann developed, meant to help the body heal on its own, originate as substances that with excess exposure (like pollen) can make a patient ill (in this case, with hay fever) -- or kill them: Arsenic is used as a treatment for digestive problems, and the poisonous plant belladonna is meant to counteract pain and swelling. These substances are diluted -- again and again -- and shaken vigorously in a process called "potentization" or "dynamization." The resultant remedies typically contain a billionth, trillionth, orâ...âwellâ...âa zillionth (10 to the minus 60th, if you're counting) of the original substance.

Today, homeopathy is practiced worldwide, particularly in Britain, India, the U.S. -- where there's a monument to Hahnemann on a traffic circle six blocks north of the White House -- and, especially, Germany. Practitioners, however, differ greatly in their approach. Some only prescribe remedies cataloged in homeopathic reference books. Others take a more metaphoric bent, offering treatments that contain a fragment of the Berlin Wall to cure feelings of exclusion and loneliness or a powder exposed to cellphone signals as protection from radiation emitted by mobile handsets. Grams, the daughter of a chemist, first turned to homeopathy in 2002. While she was attending medical school to become a surgeon, a highway accident left her car in the ditch with the windshield shattered. Grams walked away unhurt, but she soon began to suffer from heart palpitations, panic attacks, and fainting spells that doctors couldn't explain. Her roommate suggested she visit a heilpraktiker, a type of German naturopath that offers alternative therapies ranging from acupuncture and massage to reiki and homeopathy.

Homeopaths typically spend a lot of time with patients, asking not just about symptoms but also about emotions, work, and relationships. This is all meant to find the root cause of a patient's suffering and is part of its appeal. The heilpraktiker asked Grams about her feelings and the accident, things she hadnâ(TM)t spoken about with her doctors -- or anyone -- thinking they weren't important in understanding what was wrong. The heilpraktiker prescribed her belladonna globules and recommended she visit a trauma therapist. Steadily, her symptoms fell away. She was healed. Soon after, Grams dropped the idea of becoming a surgeon, opting for a future as a general practitioner while taking night courses in alternative therapies. After completing her medical degree, she began a five-year residency to qualify as a GP. But three years in, Grams abandoned conventional medicine and began an apprenticeship with a homeopath near Heidelberg.

People with mild or moderate hearing loss could soon be able to buy hearing aids without a medical exam or special fitting, under a new rule being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. The agency says 37.5 million American adults have difficulties hearing. From a report: "Today's move by FDA takes us one step closer to the goal of making hearing aids more accessible and affordable for the tens of millions of people who experience mild to moderate hearing loss," Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said as he announced the proposed rule on Tuesday. There is no timeline yet for when consumers might be able to buy an FDA-regulated over-the-counter hearing aid. The proposed rule is now up for 90 days of public comment. The Hearing Loss Association of America, a consumer advocacy group, welcomed the proposal. "This is one step closer to seeing OTC hearing devices on the market," Barbara Kelley, HLAA's executive director said in an email to NPR. "We hope adults will be encouraged to take that important first step toward good hearing health."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: The world's first drone delivery of lungs has gone down in history as a success. Unither Bioelectronique, a bioengineering firm focused on organ transportation, recently completed a "proof-of-concept" flight in which a pair of human lungs were shipped via drone to the transplant site in about six minutes. The lungs were flown from the Toronto Western Hospital to Toronto General Hospital, where Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, surgeon-in-chief of Canada's University Health Network, received the cargo at about 1 a.m. He needed the lungs for a transplant he was performing that very day on a male engineer who'd soon become the first transplant patient to receive his "new" lungs by drone.

Though the circumstances of the trip were urgent, the trip itself was 18 months in the making. Organs have been shipped by drone before, but lungs are particularly sensitive to environmental shifts during transport, with a majority of donated lungs rendered unusable by insufficient oxygenation. In order to make the trip worthwhile, engineers at Unither Bioelectronique had to design a lightweight carbon fiber shipping container that could withstand vibrations and in-flight changes in elevation and barometric pressure. Preparation involved practice flights and drop tests using simulation lung packages. The drone and its container counterpart were fitted with a parachute and an advanced GPS system, as the drone would fly through the air unmanned. "This innovation in the transportation of organs has the potential to significantly increase the transfer efficiency between donors and recipients, especially in congested urban areas," Unither Bioelectronique says of the trip on their website. "Through this project, we have established an important stepping stone for future organ delivery that ultimately will open the door for large-scale adoption of larger fully autonomous, electrically-powered, environmentally-friendly drones... for transplant across trans-continental distances."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The group of chemicals called phthalates, also known as plasticizers, may contribute to the early deaths of 91,000 to 107,000 older adults in the US each year, according to a new study. Adults between 55 and 64 with the highest concentrations of phthalates in their urine were more likely to die of any cause, especially heart disease, than adults with lesser exposure, according to the study published on Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution. The study also estimated that this loss of life could cost the US between $40 billion and $47 billion each year. In the US, three types of phthalates have been restricted or banned in toys, but are less restricted in cosmetics and food packaging materials. Researchers said the study "focuses substantial urgency" in putting further limits on phthalates in food packaging materials and other consumer goods. Phthalates, a group of chemicals most commonly used to make plastic harder to break, can interfere with the function of hormones, and researchers plan to examine what role the chemical plays in hormone regulation and inflammation in the body. "Our research suggests that the toll of this chemical on society is much greater than we first thought," said the study's lead author, Dr Leonardo Trasande. "The evidence is undeniably clear that limiting exposure to toxic phthalates can help safeguard Americans' physical and financial wellbeing." He cautioned that the biological connection between phthalates and early deaths has not been established, so the study does not prove phthalates were the direct cause of these early deaths.

During its next@Acer event today, the company announced three new PCs -- a laptop, a two-in-one, and a tablet -- that will be joining its antimicrobial lineup. Ars Technica reports: Something is considered antimicrobial if it's capable of "destroying or inhibiting the growth of microorganisms, and especially pathogenic microorganisms." That means it fights disease-causing things you can't see. Acer claims its Antimicrobial 360 Design, as it brands the feature, fights germs in two ways. First, high-touch surfaces -- such as the chassis's exterior and hinge, the keyboard, the touchpad, and the fingerprint reader -- are coated with a silver-ion agent. For years, research has pointed to silver ions' ability to fight bacteria. As a more recent report published in ACS Applied Bio Materials explains, "They can readily adsorb to most biomolecules (DNA, membrane protein, enzymes, or intracellular cofactors) in bacteria to inactivate their functions." Acer's silver-ion agent is compliant with regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Biocidal Products Regulation; it can cut the bacteria count to 1,000 after a 99.9 percent reduction, based on the International Organization for Standardization 22196 test protocol. The 22196 standard specifies methods for testing the "antibacterial activity of antibacterial-treated plastics and other non-porous surfaces of products."

The products also use Corning Gorilla Glass coated with the silver-ion product. "This is done via trace amounts of silver ions leaching to the glass surface to eliminate the surface bacteria, while still offering other benefits such as improved durability and improved scratch resistance," Acer said. Acer introduced new antimicrobial PCs to its lineup in 2020 but is still adding to the roster. The company sees its antimicrobial coating expanding even further "across multiple product lines," an Acer spokesperson told Ars.

Doctors should no longer routinely start most people who are at high risk of heart disease on a daily regimen of low-dose aspirin, according to new draft guidelines by a U.S. panel of experts. The New York Times reports: The proposed recommendation is based on mounting evidence that the risk of serious side effects far outweighs the benefit of what was once considered a remarkably cheap weapon in the fight against heart disease. The U.S. panel also plans to retreat from its 2016 recommendation to take baby aspirin for the prevention of colorectal cancer, guidance that was groundbreaking at the time. The panel said more recent data had raised questions about the benefits for cancer, and that more research was needed.

On the use of low-dose or baby aspirin, the recommendation by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force would apply to people younger than 60 who were at high risk of heart disease and for whom a new daily regimen of the mild analgesic might have been a tool to prevent a first heart attack or stroke. The proposed guidelines would not apply to those already taking aspirin or those who have already had a heart attack. The U.S. task force also wants to strongly discourage anyone 60 and older from starting a low-dose aspirin regimen, citing concerns about the age-related heightened risk for life-threatening bleeding. The panel had previously recommended that people in their 60s who were at high risk for cardiovascular disease consult their doctors to make a decision. A low dose is 81 milligrams to 100 milligrams.

The task force proposals follow years of changes in advice by several leading medical organizations and federal agencies, some of which had already recommended limiting the use of low-dose aspirin as a preventive tool against heart disease and stroke. Aspirin inhibits the formation of blood clots that can block arteries, but studies have raised concerns that regular intake increases the risk of bleeding, especially in the digestive tract and the brain, dangers that increase with age. "There's no longer a blanket statement that everybody who's at increased risk for heart disease, even though they never had a heart attack, should be on aspirin," said Dr. Chien-Wen Tseng, a member of the national task force who is the research director of family medicine and community health at the University of Hawaii. "We need to be smarter at matching primary prevention to the people who will benefit the most and have the least risk of harms." Those who are already taking baby aspirin should talk to their doctor.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: At some point in life, you have probably enjoyed a 'flow' state -- when you're so intensely focused on a task or activity, you experience a strong sense of control, a reduced awareness of your environment and yourself, and a minimized sense of the passing of time. It's also possible to experience 'team flow,' such as when playing music together, competing in a sports team, or perhaps gaming. In such a state, we seem to have an intuitive understanding with others as we jointly complete the task at hand. An international team of neuroscientists now thinks they have uncovered the neural states unique to team flow, and it appears that these differ both from the flow states we experience as individuals, and from the neural states typically associated with social interaction.

Researchers found increased beta and gamma brain wave activity in the left middle temporal cortex. This region of the brain is typically associated with information integration and key functions like attention, memory, and awareness, which are "consistent with higher team interactions and enhancing many flow dimensions," the team writes. However, what was unique about team flow, was that participants' neural activity appeared to synchronize. When participants were performing the task as a unit, their brains would mutually align in their neural oscillations (beta and gamma activity), creating a "hyper-cognitive state between the team members." If brains can be functionally connected through inter-brain synchrony, does this mean it is not only our brain that contributes to our consciousness? It's a curious question, but the authors warn it is much too soon to tell. "Based on our findings, we cannot conclude that the high value of integrated information correlates with a modified form of consciousness, for instance, 'team consciousness'," they write. "Its consistency with neural synchrony raises intriguing and empirical questions related to inter-brain synchrony and information integration and altered state of consciousness." The study was published in the journal eNeuro.

"Lebanon's electricity network collapsed on Saturday," reports the Washington Post, "after the two most important power stations ran out of fuel, leaving private generators as the only source of power." The state-owned electricity company has been providing citizens with just a few hours of power a day for months, but the total collapse of the national grid will compound the misery of those who can't afford to run generators and had relied on those few hours. The outage marks the latest milestone in the unraveling of Lebanon, which is undergoing what the World Bank has described as one of the world's three biggest financial collapses of the past 150 years.

The banking system was the first to implode in 2019, triggering a 90 percent slide in the value of the currency that has left the government unable to afford fuel, food and medicine imports while plunging millions of Lebanese into poverty. The electricity grid ground to a halt after the country's two main power stations, Deir Ammar and Zahrani, ran out of diesel fuel, leaving the nationwide network without the minimum amount of power required to sustain it, said Energy Minister Walid Fayyad.

The government is working to secure emergency fuel supplies from other sources, including the army, to bridge the shortfall until a shipment of Iraqi oil due to arrive Saturday night can be offloaded and distributed into the network. At most, he said, the total outage can be expected to last only a couple of days, and he hoped to find a stopgap solution faster. But the collapse is a reminder of the dire state of Lebanon's electricity sector, which has been unable to provide 24-hour power for decades. In recent months, its capacity has been further eroded by the lack of money and by corruption, with smugglers diverting state purchases of fuel to sell at a profit in neighboring Syria.

A recent deal struck with Iraq to supply 80,000 tons of fuel a month still falls short of the minimum amount required to ensure a stable grid and at most will be able to keep the power on for about four hours a day, Fayyad said.