For the first time, scientists have caught a star in the act of swallowing a planet — not just a nibble or bite, but one big gulp. Astronomers on Wednesday reported their observations of what appeared to be a gas giant around the size of Jupiter or bigger being eaten by its star. The sun-like star had been puffing up with old age for eons and finally got so big that it engulfed the close-orbiting planet. It’s a gloomy preview of what will happen to Earth when our sun morphs into a red giant and gobbles the four inner planets. “If it’s any consolation, this will happen in about 5 billion years,” said co-author Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This galactic feast happened between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago near the Aquila constellation when the star was around 10 billion years old. As the planet went down the stellar hatch, there was a swift hot outburst of light, followed by a long-lasting stream of dust shining brightly in cold infrared energy, the researchers said. While there had been previous signs of other stars nibbling at planets and their digestive aftermath, this was the first time the swallow itself was observed, according to the study appearing in the journal Nature. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Kishalay De spotted the luminous outburst in 2020 while reviewing sky scans taken by the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory. It took additional observations and data-crunching to unravel the mystery: Instead of …
Early Results Show Experimental Drug Slows Alzheimer’s, Says Maker
Eli Lilly and Co. said Wednesday its experimental Alzheimer’s drug appeared to slow worsening of the mind-robbing disease in a large study. In the 18-month trial, people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s who received infusions of donanemab showed 35% less decline in thinking skills compared with those given a dummy drug, Lilly announced in a press release. The drug is designed to target and clear away a sticky protein called beta-amyloid that builds up into brain-clogging plaques that are one hallmark of Alzheimer’s. A similar amyloid-targeting drug, Eisai and Biogen’s Leqembi, recently hit the market with similar evidence that it could modestly slow Alzheimer’s — and also some safety concerns, brain swelling or small brain bleeds. Donanemab also comes with that risk. Lilly said in its study, the brain side effects caused the deaths of two participants and a third also died after a serious case. The preliminary study results haven’t been vetted by outside experts. Indianapolis-based Lilly plans to release more details at an international Alzheimer’s meeting this summer and is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug. …
258 Million Needed Urgent Food Aid in 2022: UN
Some 258 million people needed emergency food aid last year because of conflict, economic shocks and climate disasters, a U.N. report said Wednesday, a sharp rise from 193 million the previous year. “More than a quarter of a billion people are now facing acute levels of hunger, and some are on the brink of starvation. That’s unconscionable,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. It was “a stinging indictment of humanity’s failure to make progress… to end hunger, and achieve food security and improved nutrition for all,” he said. More than 40% of those in serious need of food lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Yemen, the U.N. report said. “Conflicts and mass displacement continue to drive global hunger,” Guterres said. “Rising poverty, deepening inequalities, rampant underdevelopment, the climate crisis and natural disasters also contribute to food insecurity.” In 2022, 258 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 58 countries or territories, up from 193 million in 53 countries the previous year, the report said. This overall figure has now increased for the fourth year in a row. …
‘Godfather of AI’ Quits Google to Warn of the Technology’s Dangers
A computer scientist often dubbed “the godfather of artificial intelligence” has quit his job at Google to speak out about the dangers of the technology, U.S. media reported Monday. Geoffrey Hinton, who created a foundation technology for AI systems, told The New York Times that advancements made in the field posed “profound risks to society and humanity”. “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he was quoted as saying in the piece, which was published on Monday. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.” Hinton said that competition between tech giants was pushing companies to release new AI technologies at dangerous speeds, risking jobs and spreading misinformation. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he told The Times. Jobs could be at risk In 2022, Google and OpenAI — the startup behind the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT — started building systems using much larger amounts of data than before. Hinton told The Times he believed these systems were eclipsing human intelligence in some ways because of the amount of data they were analyzing. “Maybe what is going on in these systems is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain,” he told the paper. While AI has been used to support human workers, the rapid expansion of chatbots like ChatGPT could put jobs at risk. AI “takes away the drudge work” but “might take away more than …
US Announces Massive Crackdown on Darknet Fentanyl Trafficking
In a massive global crackdown on fentanyl trafficking on the darknet, U.S. and international law enforcement agencies have arrested nearly 300 suspects and seized a large cache of drugs, cash, virtual currency and weapons, officials announced on Tuesday. The law enforcement action dubbed Operation SpecTor spanned three continents and involved the collaboration of eight countries. It was part of a Justice Department initiative led by the FBI known as JCODE, which aims to dismantle online drug markets. The operation netted 288 arrests, 850 kilograms of drugs, including 64 kilograms of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics, $53.4 million in cash and virtual currencies and 117 firearms. The total number of arrests was the most ever for any JCODE operation and more than double that of the previous operation, officials said. The Justice Department described the takedown as “the largest international law enforcement operation targeting fentanyl and opioid traffickers on the darknet.” “Our message to criminals on the dark web is this: You can try to hide in the furthest reaches of the internet, but the Justice Department will find you and hold you accountable for your crimes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference in Washington. Officials said they collaborated with law enforcement agencies in eight countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Brazil and the United Kingdom. The operation is part of a broader effort by U.S. law enforcement agencies to curb fentanyl trafficking. Last month, the Justice Department announced changes against the Sinaloa Cartel, a notorious drug trafficking …
Loneliness Poses Risks as Deadly as Smoking, US Surgeon General Says
Widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking a dozen cigarettes daily, costing the health industry billions of dollars annually, the U.S. surgeon general said Tuesday in declaring the latest public health epidemic. About half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced loneliness, Dr. Vivek Murthy said in a report from his office. “We now know that loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience. It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing,” Murthy told The Associated Press in an interview. “Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows, and that’s not right. That’s why I issued this advisory to pull back the curtain on a struggle that too many people are experiencing.” The declaration is intended to raise awareness around loneliness but won’t unlock federal funding or programming devoted to combatting the issue. Research shows that Americans, who have become less engaged with worship houses, community organizations and even their own family members in recent decades, have steadily reported an increase in feelings of loneliness. The number of single households has also doubled over the last 60 years. But the crisis deeply worsened when COVID-19 spread, prompting schools and workplaces to shut their doors and sending millions of Americans to isolate at home away from relatives or friends. People culled their friend groups during the coronavirus pandemic and reduced time spent with those friends, the surgeon general’s report finds. Americans spent …
COP28 Chair Urges Tripling of Renewables Capacity by 2030
The president of upcoming U.N. climate talks Sultan Al Jaber on Tuesday called on participants to drastically ramp up their use of renewable energy ahead of the key summit in the United Arab Emirates later this year. The meeting in November needs “ambitious, transparent and accountable commitments from countries and businesses,” Al Jaber said in a speech at the opening of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, a meeting of climate diplomats in Berlin. “We will accelerate delivery in sectors like renewables that must triple capacity by 2030 and double it again by 2040,” he added. The summit chief’s call echoes a key target laid out by the International Energy Agency. Al Jaber had already raised the potential target at a closed-door meeting with G7 leaders in Japan last month. While setting out a goal for faster renewables expansion, Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the UAE’s state oil company, did not call for a complete end to the use of fossil fuels. Rather, the future COP28 chair said the focus must be on removing the emissions such fuels produce. “We must be laser focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero-carbon alternatives,” said Al Jaber. Climate activists have criticized the decision to hold COP28 in the oil-rich UAE and the choice as COP president of Al Jaber, who also serves as the Gulf state’s minister of industry and advanced technology. Climate fund Al Jaber also used his speech to call on developed countries …
Scientists Use Brain Scans and AI to ‘Decode’ Thoughts
Scientists said Monday they have found a way to use brain scans and artificial intelligence modeling to transcribe “the gist” of what people are thinking, in what was described as a step toward mind reading. While the main goal of the language decoder is to help people who have lost the ability to communicate, the U.S. scientists acknowledged that the technology raised questions about “mental privacy.” Aiming to assuage such fears, they ran tests showing that their decoder could not be used on anyone who had not allowed it to be trained on their brain activity over long hours inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Previous research has shown that a brain implant can enable people who can no longer speak or type to spell out words or even sentences. These “brain-computer interfaces” focus on the part of the brain that controls the mouth when it tries to form words. Alexander Huth, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of a new study, said his team’s language decoder “works at a very different level.” “Our system really works at the level of ideas, of semantics, of meaning,” Huth told an online press conference. It is the first system to be able to reconstruct continuous language without an invasive brain implant, according to the study in the journal Nature Neuroscience. ‘Deeper than language’ For the study, three people spent a total of 16 hours inside an fMRI machine listening to spoken narrative stories, mostly podcasts …
Report: One-Third of US Nurses Plan to Quit Profession
Almost a third of the nurses in the United States are considering leaving their profession after the COVID-19 pandemic left them overwhelmed and fatigued, according to a survey. The survey of over 18,000 nurses, conducted in January by AMN Healthcare Services Inc., showed on Monday that 30% of the participants are looking to quit their career, up 7 percentage points over 2021, when the pandemic-triggered wave of resignations began. The survey also showed that 36% of the nurses plan to continue working in the sector but may change workplaces. “This really underscores the continued mental health and well-being challenges the nursing workforce experiences post pandemic,” AMN Healthcare CEO Cary Grace told Reuters in an interview. The survey showed there are various changes needed, with 69% of nurses seeking increased salaries and 63% of them seeking a safer working environment to reduce their stress. This comes at a time that hospital operator and sector bellwether HCA Healthcare Inc. indicated a recovery in the staffing situation. While a shortage of staff in hospitals has been an issue for a couple of years, it gained traction globally in late 2021 and hit a peak early last year following a large number of resignations due to burnout. The staffing crisis drove up costs at hospital operators, while boosting profits at medical staffing providers such as AMN Healthcare. …