Muon Mystery Deepens with Latest Measurements

S18

Muon Mystery Deepens with Latest Measurements     The latest data from the Muon g−2 experiment corroborates previous results, but clashing theoretical predictions leave physicists without a clear conclusionMuons continue to confound physicists. These unstable subatomic particles are much like familiar electrons, only with 200 times the mass and a fleeting lifetime of just 2.2 microseconds. Unlike electrons, however, muons are at the center of a tangled inquiry into the prevailing theory of particle physics. Continued here

S7

Getting Along: My Coworker Is Sabotaging Me -- and My Boss Won't Help     Working with someone who is set on undermining you can be incredibly frustrating. And it can feel especially defeating if your boss doesn’t intervene when you try to get their support. This is the situation one of our readers finds themselves in. They wrote to our advice columnist, Amy Gallo, looking for help, and Amy shares her research-backed recommendations in this article. Continued here

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S12

Lithium is only as dirty as we make it     It’s rare to see a truly global industrial shift, but we’re seeing one in electric vehicles right now.Fewer than 5% of cars sold in 2020 were electric. The next year, it was 9%. The year after that, 2022, it was up to 14%. Driven by the crushing urgency of climate change, it’s easy to believe the number will clear 50% by the end of the decade, requiring a massive realignment of raw materials and manufacturing capacity. Between now and 2030, we’ll pin down precisely where those materials will come from, how they’ll be mined, where they’ll be processed, and how much money various parties make off the whole process. Continued here

S29

This unique human brain structure may have given us speech     Speech is unique to humans, but we still know very little about its evolutionary origins. According to one long-standing theory, movement of the larynx down into the throat allowed the vocal tract to produce a wider range of sounds; yet, some monkey species can produce human-like vowels without this anatomical feature, while others that do have it cannot. And although researchers have identified variations in language-related genes, it has proven difficult to link these genetic changes to the emergence of speech in our hominin ancestors. Additionally, brain structures and connections thought to be crucial for speech and language are present in nonhuman primates.  Researchers in France have now identified a unique feature of human brain anatomy that may help to explain how speech emerged. Their work, published in the journal Communications Biology, suggests that our ability to produce such complex vocalizations might be due to subtle modifications of a brain structure we share with other primates.   Continued here

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S15

The Mysterious Origins of 'X' in Algebra     The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.Even though x is one of the least-used letters in the English alphabet, it appears throughout American culture – from Stan Lee’s X-Men superheroes to “The X-Files” TV series. The letter x often symbolizes something unknown, with an air of mystery that can be appealing – just look at Elon Musk with SpaceX, Tesla’s Model X, and now X as a new name for Twitter. Continued here

S14

In a Stone Age Community, Women Moved While Men Stayed with Family     In the sixth millennium B.C.E. the first farmers reached Western Europe. Who were these people, how did they live, and what was their family structure like? Some of these questions may now be answerable, thanks to gene and isotope analyses in combination with archaeological observations. By studying the remains of more than 100 dead individuals buried between 4850 and 4500 B.C.E. at the Gurgy “Les Noisats” cemetery in central France, a team of researchers has reconstructed two family trees spanning several generations.“This was quite a journey for all of us,” says senior author Wolfgang Haak, a molecular anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “We were actually quite surprised by a lot of things that we discovered.” Continued here

S30

"Muon g-2" experiment hints that a mystery is bubbling inside the quantum foam     For over half a century, researchers have studied the magnetic properties of an ephemeral subatomic particle called a muon. A recent measurement of this property is one of the most accurate measurements in all of science. However, when scientists compare their empirical result with a theoretical prediction, the two disagree. If this discrepancy is confirmed, it might require physicists to rewrite their theories describing the laws of nature. There’s a lot at stake.The muon is basically a heavier cousin of the familiar electron. Using the laws of quantum mechanics, it is possible to predict the strength of the magnetic field for these kinds of particles. In those calculations, the strength of the magnetic field is described by a dimensionless number called “g,” and it was predicted that g = 2 for electrons and muons. But shortly after the end of World War II, scientists precisely measured g for electrons and found that it was about 0.1% higher (that is, g ≈ 2.002). A measurement for muons gave the same result. What might appear to be a trivial difference is anything but; it led researchers to develop an improved form of quantum mechanics called quantum electrodynamics (QED). Continued here

S31

A fake Tibetan monk and the charlatan who almost saved the world     Charlatans fascinate me. Though mostly incredibly dangerous characters, the unintended consequences of their actions sometimes lead to great things, for which they are often never given credit. Don’t get me wrong, though, few things give me greater pleasure than seeing a charlatan exposed, like the English occultist and High Priest of Wicca Alex Sanders (1926-88), the self-styled “King of the Witches” no less, and also known as Verbius. Sanders was exposed for conning his followers when he took members of the press to Alderley Edge in Cheshire to raise a man from the dead using an ancient summoning. The successful stunt propelled Sanders to fame. However, years later, his ex-wife revealed that, not only did he not resurrect the man, but the summoning itself was just a Swiss roll recipe read backwards. I do sometimes wonder where we’d be without them though. Take Tuesday Lobsang Rampa (1910-81), who has been called the greatest hoaxer that the field of Tibetan studies has ever known. Apparently the son of an aristocrat who worked for the Dalai Lama’s government, Rampa was recognized as an incarnated Tibetan abbot and medical lama. He grew up in Lhasa, where he was looked after by Old Tzu, a seven-foot-tall retired monk policeman, and he later authored many bestselling books including The Third Eye, which sold half a million copies, and Living with the Lama, which was dictated to him by his cat, Mrs. Fifi Greywhiskers.  Continued here

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S20

The World's Oldest Moss Outlived the Dinosaurs, but It May Not Survive Climate Change     The world’s oldest moss has survived Earth’s shifting landscapes for more than 400 years, but climate change is happening faster than it can adaptCLIMATEWIRE | For nearly 400 million years, the world’s oldest moss has survived the shifting landscapes of planet Earth. Continued here

S26

The 21 Best Shows on Max (aka HBO Max) Right Now     Max (previously HBO Max) might be one of the greatest things to come out of the streaming revolution. No, this is not a paid promotion; it’s just simple logic, given that so much of television’s most compelling content of the past 25 years—from The Sopranos and The Wire to Game of Thrones and The Leftovers—originated on the “it’s not just TV” network. So having one hub to find them all (including the aforementioned titles) makes good sense for both the network and binge-watchers looking to maximize their investment. But HBO’s streaming arm has gotten into the original content game too, with highly acclaimed series like Hacks, Station Eleven, and The Staircase (the owl did it!). When you’re done rewatching some of the classics, here are our favorite shows streaming on HBO Max right now. Continued here

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S10

How indigenous conservation protects Canada's environment     Every year, when the frozen streams have melted and greenery emerges after months of winter stillness, Dolcy Meness knows it's time. Packing their truck, she and a colleague set off through the densely forested hills of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg territory, an Algonquin First Nation in the province of Quebec.After a few hours they reach their destination. Parking the truck, they make their way through forest until reaching a narrow stream. Kneeling on its mossy bank, Meness carefully places a small device in the water. Continued here

S23

The Scary Science of Maui's Wildfires     In an eerie echo of 2018's Camp Fire, which sped through the town of Paradise, California, destroying 19,000 buildings and killing 85 people, ferocious wildfires are tearing through Maui, forcing some people to flee into the ocean. Much of the town of Lahaina is now ash, and the death toll stands at 36 so far. Like so many other places around the world, the island of Maui is being swept into the Age of Flames, also known as the Pyrocene. In places where fire is a natural part of the landscape, like California, wildfires now burn with ever greater ferocity, oftentimes spawning their own towering thunderclouds made of smoke, or obliterating ecosystems instead of resetting them for new growth. And where wildfire was once very rare in the landscape, like Maui, residents and governments are struggling to cope with their descent into the firestorm. "Hawaii's ecosystem is not adapted to fire. It is destroyed by fire," says Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization. "So we don't have good fire and bad fire. We have bad fire, period."  Continued here

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S11

The apps were designed for home security. They're being used to watch and harass domestic workers     One day in April, Anjali, a domestic worker employed at three apartments in a housing complex on the outskirts of Delhi, decided to leave work at noon due to a leg injury. She had just left for home when one of her employers — whose apartment she had skipped due to the injury — called her. Anjali, who requested to be identified by a pseudonym over fears she would lose her job, told Rest of World they screamed at her, accusing her of avoiding work.The employer had received a notification about Anjali’s exit from the complex on MyGate, a neighborhood management app used in over 25,000 apartment complexes in India, according to its website. The notification had been sent without any context about why Anjali had left early and without offering her an option to explain herself. Continued here

S9

Artificial intelligence     Artificial intelligence tag Continued here

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S13

Racism in Health: The Roots of the U.S. Black Maternal Mortality Crisis     What is behind the Black maternal mortality crisis, and what needs to change? In this podcast from Nature and Scientific American, leading academics unpack the racism at the heart of the system.Bose: I’m pulling up to one of the last clinics in Georgia where you can still get a medical abortion.  Continued here

S8

Research: Caregiver Employees Bring Unique Value to Companies     There is no lack of data and information about why organizations should offer caregiver-friendly employee policies and benefits. For example, the U.S. lacks the infrastructure to support caregivers, and in fact is the only industrial nation without federal paid parental leave, and many people live in childcare deserts. Given these shortcomings and the fact that 73% of U.S. employees are caregivers, in order to have a productive and sustainable workforce, companies must create the infrastructure to support them. The authors conducted original research to collect stories from caregiver employees and found that they bring unique skillsets that positively impact culture, retention, and ultimately the bottom line. Continued here

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S17

The Gambling Strategy That's Guaranteed to Make Money and Why You Should Never Use It     The Martingale betting strategy has led many gamblers to ruin when the Kelly criterion could have brought them richesBeneath the varnish of flashing lights and free cocktails, casinos stand on a bedrock of mathematics, engineered to slowly bleed their patrons of cash. For years, mathematically inclined minds have tried to turn the tables by harnessing their knowledge of probability and game theory to exploit weaknesses in a rigged system. Continued here

S24

Generative AI Is Making Companies Even More Thirsty for Your Data     Zoom, the company that normalized attending business meetings in your pajama pants, was forced to unmute itself this week to reassure users that it would not use personal data to train artificial intelligence without their consent.A keen-eyed Hacker News user last week noticed that an update to Zoom’s terms and conditions in March appeared to essentially give the company free rein to slurp up voice, video, and other data, and shovel it into machine learning systems. Continued here

S35

SanDisk's silence deafens as high-profile users say Extreme SSDs still broken     SanDisk's silence this week has been deafening. Its portable SSDs are being lambasted as users and tech publications call for them to be pulled. The recent scrutiny of the drives follows problems from this spring when users, including an Ars Technica staff member, saw Extreme-series portable SSDs wipe data and become unmountable. A firmware update was supposed to fix things, but new complaints dispute its effectiveness. SanDisk has stayed mum on recent complaints and hasn't explained what caused the problems. Continued here

S28

What our first "Earth 2.0" image will teach us     If we were an alien species viewing Earth from afar, how would we tell that it’s not only an inhabited world, but a world inhabited by a technologically advanced, intelligent species? From up close, those signatures are unmistakable. Our planet contains continents, oceans, and partial cloud cover, as well as polar icecaps. As the seasons change, the continents change color between green and brown and white, depending on the success of vegetation and/or the cover of ice and snow. The clouds change on a much faster timescale, sometimes covering the continents, sometimes the oceans, and sometimes a bit of both. Meanwhile, the icecaps advance and retreat dependent on our axial tilt’s orientation, providing yet another annual variation in our surface’s properties.There are other signatures of terrestrial life on our world. The carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere changes seasonally, and continues to rise steadily on an annual basis; the atmosphere additionally contains chemical compounds that only exist because they were added there owing to human activity. At night, a small amount of visible light radiation gets emitted from our surface — owing to artificial lighting at night — while a high-enough resolution image, such as the ones taken from low-Earth orbit by the International Space Station, can reveal cities, farms, and other large-scale features on our surface. It’s enough to make us wonder: if we’re lucky enough to discover another similarly “living” planet, what will we see? Continued here

S16

Most Americans Support NASA - But Don't Think It Should Prioritize Sending People To Space     The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.Most Americans (69%) believe it is essential that the United States continue to be a world leader in space. But only a subsection of that group believes NASA should prioritize sending people to the Moon, according to a new report released by the Pew Research Center. The study surveyed over 10,000 U.S. adults on their attitudes toward NASA and their expectations for the space industry over the next few decades. Continued here

S2

Marketing When Budgets Are Down     The general rule of enterprise finance is that marketing budgets drop like a stone at the first sign of trouble and rise like a feather once the environment is more settled. In mid-2023 we’re far from a settled state — projected GDP growth in western markets is depressingly flat, inflation is proving to be rather stubborn, and those disruptions just keep on coming. It’s tough to see a significant increase in marketing budgets in the near term. Gartner’s annual survey of hundreds of CMOs charts the evolution of marketing spending over recent history, offering guidance for how enterprise leaders can deliver results and build the capabilities to fuel growth in a time of less. Continued here

S22

The Newest Threat to Your Attention Span? TikTok 'Dual' Videos     Makieda Mckenzie was scrolling through TikTok when it first dawned on her: People in the internet age are like sharks. Not in the colloquial sense where we might label an especially cunning colleague in the corporate world a shark, but much more literally. Our attentions are captured through bright colors, iridescence, and thrashing. And everyone feels like they must keep swimming.What inspired this thought for Mckenzie wasn't a TikTok video about sharks, or even a reel dissecting attention spans. Instead, it was a three-minute clip of Greta Gerwig's Little Women presented side-by-side with a screen recording of a content creator rolling various glass bottles down a flight of stairs to see which would shatter most quickly. Continued here

S19

Maui's Deadly Wildfires Are a Reminder of Growing Risks     Human exposure to wildfires in the U.S. more than doubled in the past two decades. A climate scientist looks at who is at risk and whyThe following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Continued here

S5

Compassion Fatigue Is Real and It May Be Weighing You Down     If you’re feeling emotionally exhausted from caring for your employees, know that you’re not alone. Your feelings (or lack thereof) are valid. Many managers are finding that their empathy ebbs and flows. This is known as compassion fatigue: a deep physical and emotional exhaustion accompanied by emotional pain. But there are interventions available to help you mitigate the risks of compassion fatigue. Continued here

S25

Teens Hacked Boston Subway Cards to Get Infinite Free Rides--and This Time, Nobody Got Sued     In early August of 2008, almost exactly 15 years ago, the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas was hit with one of the worst scandals in its history. Just before a group of MIT students planned to give a talk at the conference about a method they'd found to get free rides on Boston's subway system—known as the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority—the MBTA sued them and obtained a restraining order to prevent them from speaking. The talk was canceled, but not before the hackers' slides were widely distributed to conference attendees and published online.In the summer of 2021, 15-year-olds Matty Harris and Zachary Bertocchi were riding the Boston subway when Harris told Bertocchi about a Wikipedia article he'd read that mentioned this moment in hacker history. The two teenagers, both students at Medford Vocational Technical High School in Boston, began musing about whether they could replicate the MIT hackers' work, and maybe even get free subway rides. Continued here

S6

Applying for a Job Internally? Here's How to Stand Out.     Managers receive around 10 internal applicants for all open positions, in addition to all the external people vying for the job. If you are applying to a role within your own organization, how can you stand out from the competition? To convince the hiring manager you’re right for the role and stand out from the crowd, you need to craft a strong personal story to tell during your interview. Continued here

S3

Boring Work Doesn't Need to Feel Painful     No matter how much you love your work, or how much meaning it brings you, there are likely a few items on your to-do list that feel, boring and tedious. Use these tips to make small adjustments to your to-do list, and bring more joy into your everyday. Think about a task that you have to do regularly as a part of your job (or home life), and that you find incredibly boring. Next, think about something you really enjoy that you could pair with this activity. For example, can you listen to your favorite music while replying to emails? If you have tedious data entry to do, turn it into a race against the clock to beat your own record or compete with co-workers. The loser buys everyone coffee! Start to consistently pair the boring work with something that makes it more enjoyable. If you do this often enough, you may actually start to look forward to the activity that once felt as if it was sucking the life out of you. Continued here

S32

This breath test can detect liver disease earlier     Every year, around two million people worldwide die of liver disease. While some people inherit the disease, it’s most commonly caused by hepatitis, obesity and alcoholism. These underlying conditions kill liver cells, causing scar tissue to form until eventually the liver cannot function properly. Since 1979, deaths due to liver disease have increased by 400 percent.The sooner the disease is detected, the more effective treatment can be. But once symptoms appear, the liver is already damaged. Around 50 percent of cases are diagnosed only after the disease has reached the final stages, when treatment is largely ineffective.  Continued here

S36

Dealmaster: Save on back-to-school tech from Lenovo, HP, Apple, and more     Moving into a new dorm room or apartment can be stressful. If you're off to college, you'll quickly realize that you'll need to outfit your living space with some essential tech to stay productive. This back-to-school edition of our Dealmaster comes with plenty of savings on tech essentials. Whether you need a new Apple Watch or have your eyes on Samsung's latest foldable phones, we've got you covered, and we'll help you save money, too! From Apple laptops and headphones to HP printers and Eero routers, there's plenty of gear to help you settle into your new abode. Continued here