282 articles from WEDNESDAY 3.6.2020

Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers was captured on video, not once but half a dozen times. As we try to understand why a police officer continued compressing a man’s neck and spine for minutes after he’d lost consciousness, we have footage from security cameras at Cup Foods, where Floyd allegedly paid for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. As we wrestle with the...

Researchers study genetic outcomes of translocating bighorn sheep

Translocation is an important management tool used for nearly 100 years to increase bighorn sheep population numbers in Wyoming and to restore herds to suitable habitat throughout their historical range. Yet, translocation also can alter the underlying genetic diversity of managed wildlife species in both beneficial and detrimental ways.

What Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Donald Trump have in common

President Donald Trump’s threat last week to overturn Section 230—the free speech law that shields social-media platforms from liability for what their users post—may have been empty and unworkable. But the uproar about it, sparked by Twitter’s decision to label two of the president’s tweets as misinformation, immediately tapped into two of the left’s and the right’s favorite...

A promise to restore hearing

For the first time, researchers have used base editing to restore partial hearing to mice with a recessive mutation in the gene TMC1 that causes complete deafness, the first successful example of genome editing to fix a recessive disease-causing mutation.

Pinpointing the origins of Jerusalem's Temple Mount

Integrating radiocarbon dating and microarchaeology techniques has enabled more precise dating of the ancient Wilson's Arch monument at Jerusalem's Temple Mount, according to a study published June 3, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Johanna Regev from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and colleagues.

Data gaps hamper monitoring of heavy metals that threaten Arctic communities

Some Alaskan soils harbor elevated concentrations of heavy metals that can harm human health, but critical data gaps impede understanding of exposure risks for Arctic communities. Clarice Perryman of the University of New Hampshire, Durham, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on June 3, 2020.

Researchers document the first use of maize in Mesoamerica

Almost any grocery store is filled with products made from corn, also known as maize, in every aisle: fresh corn, canned corn, corn cereal, taco shells, tortilla chips, popcorn, corn sweeteners in hundreds of products, corn fillers in pet food, in soaps and cosmetics, and the list goes on.

Researchers discover a system essential for limb formation during embryonic development

Researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) have discovered a system that provides cells with information about their position within developing organs. This system, studied in developing limbs, tells cells what anatomical structure they need to form within the organ. The article, published today in Science Advances, shows that malfunctioning of this system causes...

Space investor Dylan Taylor reserves a spot for payload on Xplore’s first space mission

Seattle-based Xplore says space investor and philanthropist Dylan Taylor plans to reserve payload space on its first mission beyond Earth orbit, on behalf of a nonprofit group he founded. Taylor, the chairman and CEO of Colorado-based Voyager Space Holdings, said in a news release that Xplore's Xcraft multi-mission spacecraft "gives the flexibility needed to design the optimum payload and...

Discovery of ancient super-eruptions indicates the Yellowstone hotspot may be waning

Throughout Earth's long history, volcanic super-eruptions have been some of the most extreme events ever to affect our planet's rugged surface. Surprisingly, even though these explosions eject enormous volumes of material—at least 1,000 times more than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens—and have the potential to alter the planet's climate, relatively few have been documented in the geologic...

Of course technology perpetuates racism. It was designed that way.

Today our country crumbles under the weight of two pandemics: coronavirus and police brutality.  Both wreak physical and psychological violence. Both disproportionately kill and debilitate black and brown people. And both are animated by technology that we design, repurpose, and deploy—whether it’s contact tracing, facial recognition, or social media. We often call on technology to help...

The Guardian view on governing after lockdown: Boris Johnson's grip is weak | Editorial

It is hard for the public to trust a government that prioritises political messaging ahead of deliveryThere is no such thing as a total truce in Westminster, and a partial one rarely lasts long. The period when Labour felt obliged by a sense of duty in a national emergency to provide “constructive” opposition to the government is over. In parliament on Wednesday, Sir Keir Starmer accused Boris...