A Nebraska mother pleaded guilty on Friday to giving her 17-year-old daughter pills for an abortion last year and to helping her dispose of the 29-week-old fetus.

Jessica Burgess, 42, in a plea agreement admitted providing an abortion to her daughter Celeste after 20 weeks of pregnancy, false reporting, and tampering with human remains, according to the Associated Press. Two of the charges are felonies, one is a misdemeanor.

Burgess last August pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges. As part of the plea agreement, the State of Nebraska dropped two of them: concealing the death of a person, and abortion by a person who is not a licensed physician. She is scheduled to be sentenced in September.

The Burgess case began in April 2022 when a Norfolk Police detective began investigating “concerns” – a tip – that the daughter had a stillbirth and had enlisted the help of her mother to dispose of the fetus.

Norfolk Police detective Ben McBride in an affidavit [PDF] describes obtaining the medical records of the women, interviewing them, and obtaining a search warrant to gain access to the women’s Meta/Facebook account data, based on knowledge of a relevant Facebook Messenger discussion.

The messages obtained discuss taking the pills and plans to burn the fetus.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last August, after the charges were first filed, Meta issued a statement saying that it had responded to valid legal warrants related to the “alleged illegal burning and burial of a stillborn infant.”

“The warrants did not mention abortion at all,” the company said.

[…]

Source: Mom pleads guilty to abortion after Meta gives DMs to cops • The Register

When the blue flame fires up on a gas stove, there’s more than heat coming off the burner. Researchers at Stanford University found that among the pollutants emitted from stoves is benzene, which is linked to cancer.

Levels of benzene can reach higher than those found in secondhand tobacco smoke and the benzene pollution can spread throughout a home, according to the research.

The findings add to a growing body of scientific evidence showing that emissions within the home are more harmful than gas stove owners have been led to believe

[…]

The risks of benzene have long been known. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the chemical is linked to leukemia and other blood cell cancers.

“Benzene forms in flames and other high-temperature environments, such as the flares found in oil fields and refineries. We now know that benzene also forms in the flames of gas stoves in our homes,” said Rob Jackson in a statement. He’s the study’s senior author and a Stanford professor of earth sciences.

With one burner on high or the oven at 350 degrees, the researchers found benzene levels in a house can be worse than average levels for second-hand tobacco smoke. And they found the toxin doesn’t just stay in the kitchen, it can migrate to other places, such as bedrooms.

“Good ventilation helps reduce pollutant concentrations, but we found that exhaust fans were often ineffective at eliminating benzene exposure,” Jackson said. He says this is the first paper to analyze benzene emissions when a stove or oven is in use.

Researchers also tested whether cooking food – pan-frying salmon or bacon – emits benzene but found all the pollution came from the gas and not the food.

[…]

The American Gas Association, which represents natural gas utilities, routinely casts doubt over scientific research showing that burning natural gas in homes can be unhealthy. Last year the powerful trade group criticized a peer-reviewed study showing gas stoves leak benzene even when they are turned off. The AGA offered similar criticism of a 2022 analysis, which showed 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. can be attributed to gas stove use in homes.

[…]

Medical experts are starting to take stands against cooking with gas. Nitrogen dioxide emissions have been the biggest concern, because they can trigger respiratory diseases, like asthma. The American Public Health Association has labeled gas cooking stoves “a public health concern,” and the American Medical Association warns that cooking with gas increases the risk of childhood asthma.

[…]

 

Source: Gas stoves emit benzene, linked to cancer, a new Stanford study shows : NPR

The makers of an app called Sleep Reset claim it can help you get more (and better) sleep without the use of drugs — and they have the study to prove it. A group of researchers from the University of Arizona’s Sleep and Health Research Program, some of whom also serve as the company’s medical advisors, have just published a paper in peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Sleep. The paper details the results of a 12-week program that used Sleep Reset, which apparently increased the average participant’s sleep time by 44 minutes.

Those who were getting less than six hours of sleep a night increased their sleep time by 85 minutes. Some of them likely improved their time because they were able to fall asleep much earlier: The paper says participants who typically lie awake for more than 30 minutes before dozing off managed to reduce that time by 53 percent. And those who usually spend more than an hour trying to fall asleep were able to reduce their time awake by 41 percent. Meanwhile, those’d wake up more than three times overnight found themselves experiencing two fewer nightly awakenings. The researchers also said that nearly half of the participants stopped using sleep aids after completing the program.

The study involved 564 participants (65 percent of whom were female) aged 30 to 60 years old who followed a standardized curriculum for three months. They used Sleep Reset in the way it’s meant to be used in that its sleep coaches gave them personalized recommendations and feedback via text messages within the app. They also used the app’s sleep diary, mindfulness exercises and trackers to monitor their progress. To use Sleep Reset, a user needs to answer a series of questions on what kind of sleep they’re getting and what they’re having trouble with. They’re also asked to state what their goals are, such as whether they’re looking to feel more well-rested or to look more youthful.

[…]

Dr. Michael Grandner, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and Sleep Reset’s Lead Scientific advisor said: “Many popular sleep solutions like Trazadone, Benadryl and Melatonin don’t even have the clinical evidence to increase total sleep time much at all. Ambien and Lunesta are known to increase sleep time by around 30 minutes, but that’s much less than what we’ve seen from Sleep Reset. What’s even better is that Sleep Reset is a non-medication intervention, thus non-habit forming and devoid of troubling side effects.”

Source: Study finds sleep coaching app can help recover an extra hour of rest

The U.S. Supreme Court Court on Thursday significantly curtailed the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the nation’s wetlands and waterways. It was the court’s second decision in a year limiting the ability of the agency to enact anti-pollution regulations and combat climate change. The challenge to the regulations was brought by Michael and Chantell Sackett, who bought property to build their dream house about 500 feet away from Idaho’s Scenic Priest Lake, a 19-mile stretch of clear water that is fed by mountain streams and bordered by state and national parkland. Three days after the Sacketts started excavating their property, the EPA stopped work on the project because the couple had failed to get a permit for disturbing the wetlands on their land. Now a conservative Supreme Court majority has used the Sackett’s case to roll back longstanding rules adopted to carry out the 51-year-old Clean Water Act. While the nine justices agreed that the Sacketts should prevail, they divided 5-to-4 as to how far to go in limiting the EPA’s authority.

Writing for the court majority (PDF), Justice Samuel Alito said that the navigable waters of the United States regulated by the EPA under the statute do not include many previously regulated wetlands. Rather, he said, the CWA extends to only streams, oceans, rivers and lakes, and those wetlands with a “continuous surface connection to those bodies.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by the court’s three liberal members, disputed Alito’s reading of the statute, noting that since 1977 when the CWA was amended to include adjacent wetlands, eight consecutive presidential administrations, Republican and Democratic, have interpreted the law to cover wetlands that the court has now excluded. Kavanaugh said that by narrowing the act to cover only adjoining wetlands, the court’s new test will have quote “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.” In addition to joining Kavanaugh’s opinion, the court’s liberals, signed on to a separate opinion by Justice Elena Kagan. Pointing to the air and water pollution cases, she accused the majority of appointing itself instead of Congress as the national policymaker on the environment. President Biden, in a statement, called the decision “disappointing.” It “upends the legal framework that has protected America’s waters for decades,” he said. “It also defies the science that confirms the critical role of wetlands in safeguarding our nation’s streams, rivers, and lakes from chemicals and pollutants that harm the health and wellbeing of children, families, and communities.”

“I don’t think its an overstatement to say its catastrophic for the Clean Water act,” said Jim Murphy of the National Wildlife Federation. Wetlands play an “enormous role in protecting the nation’s water,” he said. “They’re really the kidneys of water systems and they’re also the sponges. They absorb a lot of water on the landscape. So they’re very important water features and they’re very important to the quality of the water that we drink, swim, fish, boat and recreate in.”

Source: Supreme Court Limits EPA’s Authority Under the Clean Water Act – Slashdot

Engineers from UNSW Sydney have developed a miniature and flexible soft robotic arm which could be used to 3D print biomaterial directly onto organs inside a person’s body.

3D bioprinting is a process whereby biomedical parts are fabricated from so-called bioink to construct natural tissue-like structures.

[…]

Their work has resulted in a tiny flexible 3D bioprinter that has the ability to be inserted into the body just like an endoscope and directly deliver multilayered biomaterials onto the surface of internal organs and tissues.

The proof-of-concept device, known as F3DB, features a highly manoeuvrable swivel head that ‘prints’ the bioink, attached to the end of a long and flexible snake-like robotic arm, all of which can be controlled externally.

The research team say that with further development, and potentially within five to seven years, the technology could be used by medical professionals to access hard-to-reach areas inside the body via small skin incisions or natural orifices.

The research team tested the device inside an artifical colon where it was able to traverse through confined spaces before successfully 3D printing.

Dr Do and his team have tested their device inside an artificial colon, as well as 3D printing a variety of materials with different shapes on the surface of a pig’s kidney.

“Existing 3D bioprinting techniques require biomaterials to be made outside the body and implanting that into a person would usually require large open-field open surgery which increases infection risks,” said Dr Do, a Scientia Senior Lecturer at UNSW’s Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (GSBmE) and Tyree Foundation Institute of Health Engineering (IHealthE).

“Our flexible 3D bioprinter means biomaterials can be directly delivered into the target tissue or organs with a minimally invasive approach.

“This system offers the potential for the precise reconstruction of three-dimensional wounds inside the body, such as gastric wall injuries or damage and disease inside the colon.

“Our prototype is able to 3D print multilayered biomaterials of different sizes and shape through confined and hard-to-reach areas, thanks to its flexible body.

“Our approach also addresses significant limitations in existing 3D bioprinters such as surface mismatches between 3D printed biomaterials and target tissues/organs as well as structural damage during manual handling, transferring, and transportation process.”

[…]

The smallest F3DB prototype produced by the team at UNSW has a similar diameter to commercial therapeutic endoscopes (approximately 11-13mm), which is small enough to be inserted into a human gastrointestinal tract.

[…]

The device features a three-axis printing head directly mounted onto the tip of a soft robotic arm. This printing head, which consists of soft artificial muscles that allow it to move in three directions, works very similarly to conventional desktop 3D printers.

The soft robotic arm can bend and twist due to hydraulics and can be fabricated at any length required. Its stiffness can be finely tuned using different types of elastic tubes and fabrics.

The printing nozzle can be programmed to print pre-determined shapes, or operated manually where more complex or undetermined bioprinting is required. In addition, the team utilised a machine learning-based controller which can aid the printing process.

To further demonstrate the feasibility of the technology, the UNSW team tested the cell viability of living biomaterial after being printed via their system.

Experiments showed the cells were not affected by the process, with the majority of the cells observed to be alive post-printing. The cells then continued to grow for the next seven days, with four times as many cells observed one week after printing.

[…]

The nozzle of the F3DB printing head can be used as a type of electric scalpel to first mark and then cut away cancerous lesions.

Water can also be directed through the nozzle to simultaneously clean any blood and excess tissue from the site, while faster healing can be promoted by the immediate 3D printing of biomaterial directly while the robotic arm is still in place.

The research team demonstrated the way the F3DB could be used in a variety of different ways if developed to be an all-in-one endoscopic surgical tool.

The ability to carry out such multi-functional procedures was demonstrated on a pig’s intestine and the researchers say the results show that the F3DB is a promising candidate for the future development of an all-in-one endoscopic surgical tool.

“Compared to the existing endoscopic surgical tools, the developed F3DB was designed as an all-in-one endoscopic tool that avoids the use of changeable tools which are normally associated with longer procedural time and infection risks,” Mai Thanh Thai said.

Source: 3D bioprinting inside the human body could be possible thanks to new soft robot | UNSW Newsroom

Via Soft Robotic System For In Situ 3D Bioprinting And Endoscopic Surgery | Lifehacker

A new study on the human capacity for cooperation suggests that, deep down, people of diverse cultures are more similar than you might expect. The study, published in Scientific Reports, shows that from the towns of England, Italy, Poland, and Russia to the villages of rural Ecuador, Ghana, Laos, and Aboriginal Australia, at the micro scale of our daily interaction, people everywhere tend to help others when needed.

 

Our reliance on each other for help is constant: The study finds that, in everyday life, someone will signal a need for assistance (e.g., to pass a utensil) once every 2 minutes and 17 seconds on average. Across cultures, these small requests for assistance are complied with seven times more often than they are declined. And on the rare occasions when people do decline, they explain why. This human tendency to help others when needed—and to explain when such help can’t be given—transcends other cultural differences.

[…]

Key findings:

• Small requests for assistance (e.g., to pass a utensil) occur on average once every 2 minutes and 17 seconds in everyday life around the world. Small requests are low-cost decisions about sharing items for everyday use or assisting others with tasks around the house or village. Such decisions are many orders more frequent than high-cost decisions such as sharing the spoils of a successful whale hunt or contributing to the construction of a village road, the sort of decisions that have been found to be significantly influenced by culture.
• The frequency of small requests varies by the type of activity people are engaged in. Small requests are most frequent in task-focused activities (e.g., cooking), with an average of one request per 1 minute and 42 seconds, and least frequent in talk-focused activities (conversation for its own sake), with an average of one request per 7 minutes and 42 seconds.
• Small requests for assistance are complied with, on average, seven times more often than they are declined; six times more often than they are ignored; and nearly three times more often than they are either declined or ignored. This preference for compliance is cross-culturally shared and unaffected by whether the interaction is among family or non-family.
• A cross-cultural preference for compliance with small requests is not predicted by prior research on resource-sharing and cooperation, which instead suggest that culture should cause prosocial behavior to vary in appreciable ways due to local norms, values, and adaptations to the natural, technological, and socio-economic environment. These and other factors could in principle make it easier for people to say “No” to small requests, but this is not what we find.
• Interacting among family or non-family does not have an impact on the frequency of small requests, nor on rates of compliance. This is surprising in light of established theories predicting that relatedness between individuals should increase both the frequency and degree of resource-sharing/cooperation.
• People do sometimes reject or ignore small requests, but a lot less frequently than they comply. The average rates of rejection (10%) and ignoring (11%) are much lower than the average rate of compliance (79%).
• Members of some cultures (e.g., Murrinhpatha speakers of northern Australia) ignore small requests more than others, but only up to about one quarter of the time (26%). A relatively higher tolerance for ignoring small requests may be a culturally evolved solution to dealing with “humbug”—pressure to comply with persistent demands for goods and services. Still, Murrinhpatha speakers regularly comply with small requests (64%) and rarely reject them (10%).
• When people provide assistance, this is done without explanation, but when they decline, they normally give an explicit reason (74% of the time). Theses norms of rationalization suggest that while people decline giving help “conditionally,” that is, only for reason, they give help “unconditionally,” that is, without needing to explain why they are doing it.
• When people decline assistance, they tend to avoid saying “No,” often letting the rejection being inferred solely from the reason they provide for not complying. Saying “No” is never found in more than one third of rejections. The majority of rejections (63%) consist instead of simply giving a reason for non-compliance.

More information: Giovanni Rossi et al, Shared cross-cultural principles underlie human prosocial behavior at the smallest scale, Scientific Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-30580-5

Source: Study shows human tendency to help others is universal

Scientists are finding that the timing of our sleep matters more than we know.

Source: Why fighting the urge to sleep may be bad for our health

Reuters has a deep dive into sleep on their website, lots of interesting information on what happens physiologically to people when they wake and sleep and the importance of having regularity.

Human memory might be even more unreliable than currently thought. In a new study, scientists found that it’s possible for people to form false memories of an event within seconds of it occurring. This almost-immediate misremembering seems to be shaped by our expectations of what should happen, the team says.

[…]

they recruited hundreds of volunteers over a series of four experiments to complete a task: They would look at certain letters and then be asked to recall one highlighted letter right after. However, the scientists used letters that were sometimes reversed in orientation, so the volunteers had to remember whether their selection was mirrored or not (for example, correctly identifying whether they saw c vs ↄ). They also focused on the volunteers who were highly confident about their choices during the task.

Overall, the participants regularly misremembered the letters, but in a specific way. People were generally good at remembering when a typical letter was shown, with their inaccuracy rates hovering around 10%. But they were substantially worse at remembering a mirrored letter, with inaccuracy rates up to 40% in some experiments. And, interestingly enough, their memory got worse the longer they had to wait before recalling it. When they were asked to recall what they saw a half second later, for instance, they were wrong less than 20% of the time, but when they were asked three seconds later, the rate rose as high as 30%.

According to Otten, the findings—published Wednesday in PLOS One—indicate that our memory starts being shaped almost immediately by our preconceptions. People expect to see a regular letter, and don’t get easily fooled into misremembering a mirrored letter. But when the unexpected happens, we might often still default to our missed prediction. This bias doesn’t seem to kick in instantaneously, though, since people’s short-term memory was better when they had to be especially quick on their feet.

“It is only when memory becomes less reliable through the passage of a tiny bit of time, or the addition of extra visual information, that internal expectations about the world start playing a role,” Otten said.

[…]

https://gizmodo.com/false-memories-can-form-within-seconds-study-finds-1850303900

When it comes to estimating the size of demographic groups, Americans rarely get it right. In two recent YouGov polls, we asked respondents to guess the percentage (ranging from 0% to 100%) of American adults who are members of 43 different groups,[…] When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups.

[…]

A parallel pattern emerges when we look at estimates of majority groups: People tend to underestimate rather than overestimate their size relative to their actual share of the adult population.

[…]

The most accurate estimates involved groups whose real proportion fell right around 50%

[…]

Although there is some question-by-question variability, the results from our survey show that inaccurate perceptions of group size are not limited to the types of socially charged group divisions typically explored in similar studies: race, religion, sexuality, education, and income. Americans are equally likely to misestimate the size of less widely discussed groups, such as adults who are left-handed.

[…]

Similar misperceptions are found regarding the proportion of American adults who own a pet, have read a book in the past year, or reside in various cities or states. This suggests that errors in judgment are not due to the specific context surrounding a certain group.

[…]

Source: ​​From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans | YouGov

Is a dog more similar to a chicken or an eagle? Is a penguin noisy? Is a whale friendly?

Psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, say these absurd-sounding questions might help us better understand what’s at the heart of some of society’s most vexing arguments.

Research published online Thursday in the journal Open Mind shows that our concepts about and associations with even the most basic words vary widely. At the same time, people tend to significantly overestimate how many others hold the same conceptual beliefs — the mental groupings we create as shortcuts for understanding similar objects, words or events.

It’s a mismatch that researchers say gets at the heart of the most heated debates, from the courtroom to the dinner table.

“The results offer an explanation for why people talk past each other,” said Celeste Kidd, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the study’s principal investigator. “When people are disagreeing, it may not always be about what they think it is. It could be stemming from something as simple as their concepts not being aligned.”

Simple questions like, “What do you mean?” can go a long way in preventing a dispute from going off the rails, Kidd said. In other words, she said, “Just hash it out.”

[…]

But measuring just how much those concepts vary is a long-standing mystery.

To help understand it a bit better, Kidd’s team recruited more than 2,700 participants for a two-phase project. Participants in the first phase were divided in half and asked to make similarity judgements about whether one animal — a finch, for example — was more similar to one of two other animals, like a whale or a penguin. The other half were asked to make similarity judgments about U.S. politicians, including George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. The researchers chose those two categories because people are more likely to view common animals similarly; they’d have more shared concepts. Politicians, on the other hand, might generate more variability, since people have distinct political beliefs.

But they found significant variability in how people conceptualized even basic animals.

Take penguins. The probability that two people selected at random will share the same concept about penguins is around 12%, Kidd said. That’s because people are disagreeing about whether penguins are heavy, presumably because they haven’t lifted a penguin.

“If people’s concepts are totally aligned, then all of those similarity judgments should be the same,” Kidd said. “If there’s variability in those judgments, that tells us that there’s something compositionally that’s different.”

Researchers also asked participants to guess what percentage of people would agree with their individual responses. Participants tended to believe — often incorrectly — that roughly two-thirds of the population would agree with them. In some examples, participants believed they were in the majority, even when essentially nobody else agreed with them.

It’s a finding befitting of a society of people convinced they’re right, when they’re actually wrong.

Overall, two people picked at random during the study timeframe of 2019-2021 were just as likely to have agreed as disagreed with their answers. And, perhaps unsurprisingly in a polarized society, political words were far less likely to have a single meaning — there was more disagreement — than animal words.

[…]

In a second phase of the project, participants listed 10 single-word adjectives to describe the animals and the politicians. Participants then rated the animals’ and politicians’ features — “Is a finch smart?” was an example of a question they were asked.

Again, researchers found that people differed radically in how they defined basic concepts, like about animals. Most agreed that seals are not feathered, but are slippery. However, they disagreed about whether seals are graceful. And while most people were in agreement that Trump is not humble and is rich, there was significant disagreement about whether he is interesting.

This research is significant, Kidd said, because it further shows how most people we meet will not have the exact same concept of ostensibly clear-cut things, like animals. Their concepts might actually be radically different from each other. The research transcends semantic arguments, too. It could help track how public perceptions of major public policies evolve over time and whether there’s more alignment in concepts or less.

“When people are disagreeing, it may not always be about what they think it is,” Kidd said. “It could be stemming from something as simple as their concepts not being aligned.”

Source: I say dog, you say chicken? New study explores why we disagree so often | Berkeley News

Scientists have created mice with two biological fathers by generating eggs from male cells, a development that opens up radical new possibilities for reproduction.

The advance could ultimately pave the way for treatments for severe forms of infertility, as well as raising the tantalising prospect of same-sex couples being able to have a biological child together in the future.

“This is the first case of making robust mammal oocytes from male cells,” said Katsuhiko Hayashi, who led the work at Kyushu University in Japan and is internationally renowned as a pioneer in the field of lab-grown eggs and sperm.

[…]

The technique could also be applied to treat severe forms of infertility, including women with Turner’s syndrome, in whom one copy of the X chromosome is missing or partly missing, and Hayashi said this application was the primary motivation for the research.

[…]

The study, which has been submitted for publication in a leading journal, relied on a sequence of intricate steps to transform a skin cell, carrying the male XY chromosome combination, into an egg, with the female XX version.

Male skin cells were reprogrammed into a stem cell-like state to create so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The Y-chromosome of these cells was then deleted and replaced by an X chromosome “borrowed” from another cell to produce iPS cells with two identical X chromosomes.

“The trick of this, the biggest trick, is the duplication of the X chromosome,” said Hayashi. “We really tried to establish a system to duplicate the X chromosome.”

Finally, the cells were cultivated in an ovary organoid, a culture system designed to replicate the conditions inside a mouse ovary. When the eggs were fertilised with normal sperm, the scientists obtained about 600 embryos, which were implanted into surrogate mice, resulting in the birth of seven mouse pups. The efficiency of about 1% was lower than the efficiency achieved with normal female-derived eggs, where about 5% of embryos went on to produce a live birth.

The baby mice appeared healthy, had a normal lifespan, and went on to have offspring as adults. “They look OK, they look to be growing normally, they become fathers,” said Hayashi.

He and colleagues are now attempting to replicate the creation of lab-grown eggs using human cells.

[…]

Source: Scientists create mice with two fathers after making eggs from male cells | Genetics | The Guardian

Bruce Campbell may not be appearing in Evil Dead Rise (though the once and forever Ash Williams is producing the movie, which hits theaters in April), but the much-loved horror icon is still finding a way to interact with the masses this spring: “Bruce-O-Rama,” an evening of entertainment hitting up 22 cities nationwide.

A favorite at comic and horror conventions—he’s charming as hell, and he truly appreciates his fans—Campbell’s jaunt starts April 5 in Greenville, South Carolina, hitting venues mostly around the East Coast and Midwest. The event is described by a press release as “a two-part evening of indulgent fun;” it will feature an installment of the Campbell-hosted interactive game show Last Fan Standing, which quizzes the audience on trivia “about the things that really matter: fantasy, horror, sci-fi, superheroes, and gaming.” That tracks. Then, Campbell will introduce “a cult film favorite he’s starred in” (no specific titles mentioned, but you could pick probably any movie on his resume that doesn’t contain the words “Spider-Man” to narrow it down), with a Q&A and “a lively half-hour of anecdotes, insults, and random cash giveaways.”

Check out all the tour dates and ticket info (including VIP tickets that get you a photo with the Chin, and at some locations, the option to get your very own chainsaw autographed by the star) at the event website here.

Source: Bruce Campbell Announces “Bruce-O-Rama” 22-City Tour

Chess experts make more mistakes when air pollution is high, a study has found.

Experts used computer models to analyse the quality of games played and found that with a modest increase in fine particulate matter, the probability that chess players would make an error increased by 2.1 percentage points, and the magnitude of those errors increased by 10.8%.

The paper, published in the journal Management Science, studied the performance of 121 chess players in three seven-round tournaments in Germany in 2017, 2018, and 2019, comprising more than 30,000 chess moves. The researchers compared the actual moves the players made against the optimal moves determined by the powerful chess engine Stockfish.

In the tournament venues, the researchers attached three web-connected air quality sensors to measure carbon dioxide, PM2.5 concentrations, and temperature. Each tournament lasted eight weeks, meaning players faced a variety of air conditions.

[…]

Researchers looked at historical data to see if their findings were replicated, using data from 20 years of games from the first division of the German chess league. After accounting for other causes such as noise, temperature changes and carbon dioxide concentrations, they found air pollution accounted for dips in player performance.

“It’s pure random exposure to air pollution that is driving these people’s performance,” Palacios said. “Against comparable opponents in the same tournament round, being exposed to different levels of air quality makes a difference for move quality and decision quality.”

[…]

Source: Air pollution causes chess players to make more mistakes, study finds | Air pollution | The Guardian

With the rapid pickup of Mastodon and other ActivityPub-powered federated social media, there has been some movement among those in the media to make better use of the platform themselves. For example, most recently, the German news giant Heise announced it was setting up its own Mastodon server, where it will serve up its own content, and also offer accounts to any of the company’s employees, should they choose to use them. Medium, the publication tool, has similarly set up its own Mastodon server as well. At some point, Techdirt is going to do that as well, though we’ve been waiting while a bunch of new developments and platforms are being built before committing to a specific plan.

However, recently, the Financial Times posted a very bizarre article in which it talks about how it had set up a Mastodon server for its FT Alphaville back in November, but has now decided to shut it down because, according to the headline “it was awful.” What’s kinda bizarre is that they clearly set it up without much thought, and admitted as much in their kickoff blog post, admitting they didn’t quite know what to do with it, and asking people if they had any ideas. They also clearly recognized that there are some potential liability questions about running your own social media platform, because they described it this way (note the strikethrough, which is in the original):

If you have a smart idea about how we could use our newfound moderation liability platform, please let us know.

Which is kinda why the reasoning for shutting down the platform… is somewhat incomprehensible. They basically don’t talk about any of the problems with actually running Mastodon. They outline all of the stupid policies in place (mostly in the UK) that make it scary to run a social media network. The “awfulness” seemed to have nothing to do with running the server, and a lot to do with how the UK (and other parts of the world) have really dreadful laws that suck if you want to setup a site that hosts third-party speech.

If anything, the decision to shut it down is a primary lesson in how important Section 230 is if we want social media to survive (and allow for smaller competitors to exist). While they say that running the Mastodon server was “more hassle than it’s worth,” what they really seem to mean is that the UK laws, both existing and those on the way, make it ridiculously burdensome to do this:

The legal side is all that again times a thousand. Take, for instance, the UK Investigatory Powers Act 2016. Diligent people have spent years figuring out how its imprecise wordings apply to media organisations. Do these same conclusions hold for a sort-of-but-not-really decentralised silo of user generated content? Dunno. The only place to find out for sure would be in court, and we’d really rather not.

Seems like the kinda thing that, I don’t know, a publication like the FT might have spoken out about in the years and months prior to the Investigatory Powers Act coming into effect?

Then there’s the defamation liability thing. Which, you know, is a big part of why Section 230 is so important in the US. This one paragraph alone should make it clear why the UK will never become a social media powerhouse:

Do Mastodon server owners wear any responsibility for their users’ defamations? It’s unlikely but, because libel involves judges, not impossible. Again, the value in finding out is outweighed by the cost of finding out.

They name some other laws as well:

What about GDPR? Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedowns? Electronic Commerce Regulations? CAN-SPAM? FTAV treats user data with a combination of disinterest and uninterest, but that’s not enough to guarantee compliance with all relevant global laws and regulations.

And laws to come:

This headline:

And, look, it’s absolutely true that there are legal risks to running a Mastodon instance. EFF has put up a really fantastic legal primer for anyone looking to set up their own Mastodon server. And there are, certainly, some technical and logistical issues in doing it as well. And, basically all that says is that you shouldn’t set up a server on a whim.

But, what this really seems to demonstrate is the importance of good regulations like Section 230 that help make it possible for anyone to set up just such a server, as well as the horrific nature of UK laws like the Investigatory Powers Act and the upcoming Online Safety Bill, and how they make it next to impossible for there to ever be a UK-created social media platform.

But, in some ways, it’s even dumber, because… most of these laws already apply to FT and its website, because the FT… allows comments. Anyone who allows comments on their website already has a kind of social media offering already. And, indeed, some people raised that very point in the comments on this story.

[…]

Source: Financial Times Sets Up Mastodon Server, Realizes Laws Exist (Which It Was Already Subject To), Pulls Down Mastodon Server | Techdirt

I disagree with the conclusion of the article as the writer doesn’t realise that adding more stuff to moderate in different systems is a larger pain in the butt than just having one system to moderate.

A woman who released audio of her rapist’s confession said she wanted to show how “manipulative” abusers can be.

Ellie Wilson, 25, secretly captured Daniel McFarlane admitting to his crimes by setting her phone to record in her handbag.

McFarlane was found guilty of two rape charges and sentenced to five years in prison in July last year.

Ms Wilson said that despite audio and written confessions being used in court, the verdict was not unanimous.

The attacks took place between December 2017 and February 2018 when McFarlane was a medical student at the University of Glasgow.

Since the conviction Ms Wilson, who waived her anonymity, has campaigned on behalf of victims.

Earlier this week Ms Wilson, who was a politics student and champion athlete at the university at the time, released audio on Twitter of a conversation with McFarlane covertly captured the year after the attacks.

In the recording she asks him: “Do you not get how awful it makes me feel when you say ‘I haven’t raped you’ when you have?”

McFarlane replies: “Ellie, we have already established that I have. The people that I need to believe me, believe me. I will tell them the truth one day, but not today.”

When asked how he feels about what he has done, he says: “I feel good knowing I am not in prison.”

The tweet has been viewed by more than 200,000 people.

Ms Wilson told BBC Scotland’s The Nine she had released the clip because many people wondered what evidence she had to secure a rape conviction.

She said the reaction had been “overwhelmingly positive” although a small minority had been very unkind.

And even with the recording of the confession being posted online some people were still saying ‘he didn’t do it’, Ms Wilson said.

In addition to the audio confession, Ms Wilson had text messages that pointed to McFarlane’s guilt yet she said she was still worried that it would not be enough to secure a conviction.

“The verdict was not unanimous,” she said.

“You can literally have a written confession, an audio confession and not everyone on the jury is going to believe you. I think that says a lot about society.”

Ms Wilson has previously said the experience she had in court was appalling.

She said she was subjected to personal attacks by the defence advocate and felt blamed for being assaulted.

[…]

Source: Rape survivor secretly recorded her abuser’s confession – BBC News

People living near airports that service piston-engine aircraft are disproportionately exposed to lead, a dangerous neurotoxin.

A study published this week in PNAS Nexus found that children living near the Reid-Hillview Airport in Santa Clara County, California, had elevated blood lead levels. They’ve pinpointed piston-engine aircrafts at airports like the one in California as a source of lead exposure for children.

Overall blood lead levels in U.S. children have gone down significantly in the last half century. Since the 1970s, policymakers have removed lead from everyday items like pipes, food cans, and vehicle gasoline. But despite those efforts, airports that house and service piston-engine aircraft, which mainly use leaded aviation fuel, continue to pollute the air. These are small, single- or two-propeller airplanes, such as training Cessna airplanes, small commercial aircraft, and the planes commonly seen trailing advertisement banners.

“Lead-formulated aviation gasoline (avgas) is the primary source of lead emissions in the United States today, consumed by over 170,000 piston-engine aircraft,” according to the new paper.

The researchers analyzed 14,000 blood samples, taken from 2011 to 2020 from children under 6 years old living near the California airport, to gauge exposure to lead. They found that blood lead levels increased the closer the children lived to the airport. Blood lead levels were also 2.18 times higher than a health department threshold of 4.5 micrograms per deciliter in children who lived east, or downwind, of the airport, according to the study.

[…]

Source: American Kids Are Being Exposed to Lead From Airports

[…]

The care minister Helen Whately said stopping relatives from visiting loved ones in care homes as a precaution against the spread of Covid-19 showed “a lack of humanity”. Legislation is being planned to give care home residents and hospital patients the legal right to see guests, according to the Times, prompting fury from the care sector.

[…]

While official visiting restrictions in England have been lifted, some care homes and hospitals are refusing to allow visitors or are imposing stringent Covid-19 conditions. One care home has even stopped phone calls between residents and loved ones for fear that handsets could get infected.

[…]

“There are lots of complicated things around the edges, but at the centre there’s this clear message that people should not be separated from those that they love during times of their greatest need.

“And Covid has shown why that needs to be enshrined in law. It’s very easy to sweep away these human rights.”

[…]

Source: Care homes in England ‘risk being vilified’ if forced to allow visitors | Social care | The Guardian