UK

A striking Amazon warehouse worker says the company treats its robots better than its human staff

Story by bnolan@insider.com (Beatrice Nolan) • 

Amazon warehouse workers in Coventry, UK, are striking over pay. ane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images© ane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images

An Amazon warehouse worker told the BBC the company's robots are treated better than human staff.
More than 300 workers at a UK Amazon warehouse took part in a strike Wednesday, the GMB union said.

A spokesperson for Amazon said a "tiny proportion" of its workforce was involved in the strike.



"I wish we were treated like robots because the robots are treated better than us," Darren Westwood, who works at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry, UK, told BBC Breakfast in an interview that aired Wednesday.

Westwood and another Amazon worker, Garfield Hilton, told the BBC show that Amazon robots could rely on a team of technicians to help them when they broke down, whereas workers didn't receive the same support.

The strike at the Coventry warehouse, called by the GMB union, is the first for Amazon in the UK. The GMB said Wednesday that more than 300 workers walked out. Amazon said there are nearly 2,000 staff at the site.

The strike, over pay, came after Amazon raised hourly wages at the warehouse by 50 pence (60 cents) an hour.

A spokesperson for Amazon told Insider that a "tiny proportion" of its workforce was involved in the industrial action, adding that the company was "proud to offer competitive pay."

Stuart Richards, a GMB senior organizer, said in a statement shared with Insider: "After six months of ignoring all requests to listen to workers' concerns, GMB urges Amazon UK bosses to do the right thing and give workers a proper pay rise."

Westwood and Hilton told the BBC they were constantly monitored at work. Hilton said pausing work for bathroom trips could lead to questions from managers.

"The thing with stopping work is that they want to know why," Hilton said. "So if the time is beyond a couple of minutes they can see it on the system."

A spokesperson for Amazon told the BBC: "Performance is only measured when an employee is at their station and logged in to do their job. If an employee logs out, which they can do at any time, the performance management tool is paused."

Amazon has faced organized walkouts from staff around the world in recent months, with workers citing unfair pay and unsafe practices.

Oregon primate research facility under scrutiny after deaths

Story by The Canadian Press • 

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A state lawmaker in Oregon is using thousands of pages of redacted documents he sought for more than a year to launch legislation demanding more accountability and oversight of a primate research facility with a long history of complaints.



Incidents at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, associated with Oregon’s largest hospital, include one in which two monkeys died after being placed into a scalding cage-washing system. Other animals perished from neglect. Workers have low morale, some have been drinking on the job, and dozens have complained about dysfunctional leadership, the documents show.

The problems at the facility in suburban Portland, Oregon, have surfaced amid a sharp debate between animal rights activists who believe experimenting on animals is unethical and researchers who say the experiments save and improve human lives.

The U.S. moved a small step away from animal testing when Congress passed a bill, signed into law by President Joe Biden in December, that eliminated the requirement that drugs in development undergo testing on animals before being provided in human trials. Advocates want computer modeling and organ chip technology to be used instead, though the Food and Drug Agency Administration can still require animal tests.

“Reasonable people can disagree on whether using animals for medical research is scientifically valid or ethical," Oregon Rep. David Gomberg said in an interview. "But we have to agree that it’s not being done very well here in Oregon.”

After the scalding incident, Gomberg filed a public records request to learn more about the research center. He had to wait for 17 months and pay a $1,000 fee to obtain thousands of pages of redacted internal documents.

The documents revealed that dozens of center employees warned that a leadership culture which cuts corners, deflects responsibility and lacks accountability sets the stage for other tragedies.

Gomberg is now behind a bill in the Oregon Legislature calling for greater transparency, accountability and oversight of the center, which is run by Oregon Health & Science University.

Asked to comment on the issues raised by Gomberg, OHSU sent a statement from Peter Barr-Gillespie, the university’s chief research officer and executive vice president, in which he said faculty and staff at the primate center “understand and embrace the responsibility to provide compassionate and leading-edge veterinary care that comes with the privilege of working with animals.”

“While human error and the unpredictable behavior of undomesticated animals are impossible to completely eliminate, we strive to do everything in our power to employ best practices in engineering, training and supervision to protect against them,” Barr-Gillespie said.

The Oregon facility was cited for more violations between 2014 and 2022 — with 31 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act — than any of the six other primate research centers funded by the National Institutes of Health, according to a Jan. 19 report from InvestigateWest, a Seattle-based investigative journalism nonprofit.

The other NIH-funded centers are run by the University of California-Davis, the University of Washington, Tulane University, the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Emory University.

In their petition, the Oregon employees — whose names were redacted in the version obtained by Gomberg — said they were devastated by the deaths of the two monkeys, named Earthquake and Whimsy, in August 2020. One of the monkeys died from the scalding water after the cage it was in was accidentally placed in an industrial washing machine. The other survived but had to be euthanized because of its injuries.

“Many of us now grapple with doubts about our purposes here and about our investments in our careers. Our love for these animals leaves us torn between a deep sense of responsibility for stewarding these animals’ welfare and a profound uncertainty of (leadership's) willingness to enact meaningful reform,” the employees wrote.

Gomberg said Oregon Health & Science University, or OHSU, has resisted outside scrutiny.

“My focus with this legislation is simply on accountability and transparency and letting the public know exactly what’s going on at this facility,” Gomberg said.

When People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals also sought public records, OHSU unreasonably withheld photos and video, a Multnomah County Circuit Court judge ruled last July.

Furthermore, university police used a contractor — Pennsylvania-based Information Network Associates, which was founded by a former FBI special agent — to provide information on the animal welfare group's activities and political and social views. Judge Andrew Lavin ordered the university to delete the information, saying the practice violated state law that bans police surveillance unrelated to criminal investigations.

In October, OHSU agreed to pay $37,900 to settle a federal fine for Animal Welfare Act violations between 2018 and 2021, including incidents in which a monkey was euthanized after its head got caught between two PVC pipes; voles who died of thirst; gerbils who died of starvation; and the scalding incident.

Barr-Gillespie said appropriate measures are taken to prevent a recurrence of incidents and that animal studies are conducted only when other methods are inadequate or too dangerous for human participants.

Research at the Oregon center has contributed to a compound that promotes the rebuilding of the protective sheath around nerve cells that is damaged in conditions such as multiple sclerosis, identification of a gene that could lead to development of medication to prevent and treat alcoholism and improved understanding of brain injury and repair, among many other advances, Barr-Gillespie said.

Gomberg, though, said "there are systemic problems within the institution that need to be addressed.”

“I haven’t seen anything that indicates to me that there aren’t more problems on the horizon," the lawmaker said.

Andrew Selsky, The Associated Press

PEI volunteers and communty groups say poverty rising as government remains hush on poverty plan progress.

Story by The Canadian Press • 

Catherine Boyles was always taught to look for people in need, that’s why she lept into action upon learning of a man sleeping in a Montague dumpster a tarp over it during a recent snow storm.

Though she had no vehicle herself, she contacted the RCMP who managed to find the man, who was given a place to sleep for the evening in Charlottetown.

Though only living in Montague since 2018, Ms Boyles began to notice some growing issues.

“We have homeless people in this little province of ours and the amount of people struggling is growing, that’s the part that really gets me.”

This motivated her and a friend to start preparing bagged lunches, containing a sandwich and snacks, and handing them out in front of St Mary’s Church in Montague on Thursdays.

As she is using her own money to help others, Ms Boyles is increasingly frustrated with the government’s lack of action. In Montague if it wasn’t for the nonprofit food bank and other citizens like her, people would be left without as there are no government-run support services in the community.

“On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday there are meals available for people, but what about Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, what are these people supposed to do on those days?”

She is also concerned because there is no emergency shelter for people struggling in the community, except during extreme weather events.

The lack of action and progress upsets Ms Boyles and she fears the worst.

“It’s going to take people dying in the street before anything happens.”

In order to reduce poverty in PEI the provincial government crafted a strategy in 2019, which featured a number of initiatives and programs to be completed by 2024.

The Department of Social Development and Housing was tasked with developing the strategy and created the Poverty Reduction Advisory Council to guide the work.

As part of the strategy, the province is responsible for tracking metrics, such as the number of Islanders experiencing poverty, attachment to employment and the number of Islanders with access to affordable housing.

The province is also supposed to track which projects and initiatives related to the plan it has started, is working on and which it has completed.

Despite that, when asked multiple times to provide that information, the Department of Social Development and Housing didn’t respond to The Graphic.

Karla Bernard is the opposition critic for Social Development and Housing and she isn’t surprised the province didn’t provide any information on the plan.

“I can’t get answers either. To me, if government is accomplishing goals you would think it would be something they would be thrilled to share, but this suggests to me the work is not being done at all.”

Ms Bernard said there is an overall lack of information being shared by the King government.

“This is what we tend to find with this government, they will boast about having the most aggressive plans in Canada toward something but in reality they have no idea how they are going to get there.”

“It is extremely infuriating, we have some really aggressive, important goals in the form of legislation, which is law, but then there are no benchmarks on how we are doing towards that goal.”

Ms Bernard said a prime example of the government’s lack of accountability and communication is in its ongoing Senior’s Food Pilot Program running in eastern PEI.

“I’ve been trying to get information on how it’s going, or if it is even still going, because I have no idea,” Ms Bernard said.

The strategy also claims the province looks to meet the federal government’s targets in reducing poverty by 20 per cent by 2020 and 50 per cent by 2030.

Federal Census Data shows PEI met that goal, dropping its poverty rate from 16.5 per cent in 2015 to 8.7 per cent in 2021, but conditions on the ground don’t necessarily reflect that improvement.

Norma Dingwell is the manager of the Southern Kings and Queens Food Bank in Lower Montague. She said there are still many people in need.

“It has grown considerably,” Ms Dingwell said when asked if traffic to the food bank has increased over the year.

“With the price of rent, food, gas, oil, people have to decide if they want to eat or get medicine or pay their rent, it’s not easy.”

Ms Dingwell said the demand at the food bank was always growing, but even more so over the last three months.

The food bank used to serve around 60 families a week, now it sees over 100.

She would love to see the government do more in eastern PEI and for existing supports to become more accessible.

“They say there are supports available all over the internet for struggling people, but if someone doesn’t know how to use the internet or doesn’t have access, the supports can’t help them.”

Ms Dingwell said a prime example of this is with the province’s 211 phone line, which connects Islanders to various types of support services.

“For the longest time, we at the food bank had no idea that the 211 number people can call for support was even available.”

She finds this frustrating because many of the clients at the food bank could have benefited if they had known the phone line had existed sooner.

Overall, Ms Dingwell said the government has a long way to go before all the needs of people in eastern PEI are met.

“We could have a couple of soup kitchens here, we could have a couple of homeless shelters, or shelters for abused or struggling people, we need programs that are accessible for everybody.”

Ms Boyles agrees with Ms Dingwell and went a step farther, saying maybe the politicians need a reality check.

“I think it would be really good if we all went to Dennis King and the other politicians and got them five or six tents and let them spend a night out in the cold woods. Maybe if they knew what that’s like we would see some changes.”

Dylan Desroche, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Eastern Graphic

A new partisan era of American education

Story by Zachary B. Wolf • 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he’s protecting kids from indoctrination and political agendas, but the zeal with which he has pushed expansive efforts to remake the Florida education system also represents an effort to influence young minds.

Changes coming to African American studies course

The College Board, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Advanced Placement program offered across high schools, said it would change a new AP African American studies course that DeSantis said violated a state law to restrict certain lessons about race in schools.

His state’s Department of Education complained the college-level course mentioned Black queer theory and the idea of intersectionality. Read more about why Florida rejected the course.

“Governor DeSantis, are you really trying to lead us into an era akin to communism that provides censorship of free thoughts?” the civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said at a press conference on Wednesday in Florida, where he announced he would sue DeSantis on behalf of three high school students if DeSantis would not negotiate with the College Board about the AP course.

A list of names at colleges and universities

DeSantis recently demanded a list of names of staff and programs related to diversity at public colleges and universities, part of a crackdown on “trendy ideology.”

Separately, he wants details on students who sought gender dysphoria treatment at state universities.

A conservative Christian model for a state school

DeSantis also wants to remake the New College of Florida, a small, public liberal arts school, as a sort of “Hillsdale of the South,” according to Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz.

Hillsdale, as USA Today points out, is a private, conservative Christian college in Michigan.

A new DeSantis appointee to the New College of Florida board of trustees has clashed with board officials over his request to open every meeting with a prayer.

This is a trend

Republicans across the country are focused on education. They want to guard against anything perceived as pushing equity rather than merit.

Virginia’s governor sees a conspiracy in how school districts recognize distinction in a scholarship program based on scores on the PSAT.


Related video: Students, officials plan to sue Florida over rejection of AP African American Studies course (WESH Orlando)   Duration 1:22  View on Watch

WESH  OrlandoFlorida to be sued over rejection of African American Studies course
1:37

CBS NewsFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis sued over rejection of AP African American studies pilot program
5:28

WPTV West Palm Beach, FLProfessor: Teaching African American studies without discussing suffering is tough
1:54

‘Maniacal focus’ on equity

The state attorney general has launched a discrimination investigation into whether the Fairfax County Public Schools system – including Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a nationally recognized Virginia magnet school – discriminated against students by not informing them of recognition under the National Merit Scholarship program.

The students qualified for recognition but did not advance in the competition for a scholarship.

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, according to CNN’s report, claimed these revelations were a result of the “maniacal focus on equal outcomes for all students at all costs.”

“The failure of numerous Fairfax County schools to inform students of their national merit awards could serve as a Virginia human rights violation,” the governor’s office said in a previous statement provided to CNN.

Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent Michelle Reid told CNN the recognitions should have come earlier, but cited a lack of a “division-wide protocol” rather than any kind of mania about equity. Read more about the controversy.

Targeting professors in Texas

Texas officials also have their eyes on the state’s colleges and universities, according to CNN’s Eric Bradner.

“Our public professors are accountable to the taxpayer because you pay their salary,” said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in an inauguration speech. Bradner notes Patrick has pushed to end tenure at Texas public colleges and universities.

“I don’t want teachers in our colleges saying, ‘America is evil and capitalism is bad and socialism is better,’” he said. “And if that means some of those professors that want to teach that don’t come to Texas, I’m OK with that.” Read Bradner’s full report.

Meanwhile, in South Dakota, lawmakers are looking to develop a social studies curriculum based on “American exceptionalism,” propelled by the governor’s desire to put more patriotism in the classroom.

Affirmative action at the Supreme Court

The focus by Republican politicians on issues of race in colleges and the classroom is mirrored by the potential for a court-mandated turnaround in how American students are viewed for admissions.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in October in two separate cases regarding affirmative action and seems poised to say colleges and universities cannot consider race in admissions.

Nine states have already outlawed affirmative action for public universities. Voters in California were the first to do so, and the end result was falling enrollment, in particular among Black students at top public schools in the University of California system and at the University of Michigan. Those states both encouraged the Supreme Court not to outlaw affirmative action.

Florida, which also ended the practice, encouraged the court to throw affirmative action out.

Education was a major focus for Republicans in the recent election. While it clearly worked for DeSantis in Florida and a year earlier for Youngkin in Virginia, the mixed results for Republicans writ large may call the strategy into question as the 2024 election looms.

A new era

I read on the education news website Chalkbeat about a new study that predicts more politics in the classroom as Americans increasingly sort themselves by political ideology.

In the working paper, David Houston, an education policy professor at George Mason University, argues that previous debates over desegregation, prayer and sex education in public schools were divisive but not inherently partisan.

He points to the moderate positions of previous presidents as proof. Then-President George W. Bush worked with then-Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy on education reform in 2001. Former President Barack Obama was praised by Republicans in 2012 for his work on education.

Those stories feel like they’re from a different universe when today’s Republican governors are looking to root out liberal extremism in schools.

Houston argues in his study, which is based on survey data, that the US may be on the cusp of a new and divisive era with “heightened partisan animosity across all aspects of education politics.”

CNN.com

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Sam Bankman-Fried gave $400 million to an obscure crypto-trading firm cofounded by a Jane Street trader just 2 years out of college, report says

Story by psyme@insider.com (Pete Syme) • 

Sam Bankman-Fried. 

Sam Bankman-Fried sent $400 million to Modulo Capital, an obscure crypto trading firm.

One of the founders was once romantically involved with Bankman-Fried, per the New York Times.

Another, the Times said, was just two years out of college.

The founders of an obscure crypto-trading firm given $400 million by Sam Bankman-Fried had close ties to the FTX founder, according to the New York Times.

Modulo Capital was founded in March 2022, before receiving one of Bankman-Fried's largest investments and drawing the attention of investigators.

A spreadsheet shared by the Financial Times in December 2022 showed that Alameda Research, the trading firm cofounded by Bankman-Fried, invested two separate sums in Modulo — $250 million and $150 million.

The $400 million was given in the third and fourth quarters of 2022, documents from lawyers handling FTX's bankruptcy reviewed by Insider show.

One of Modulo's founders, Xiaoyun "Lily" Zhang, used to be romantically involved with Bankman-Fried, according to four people familiar with their relationship who spoke to the Times.

Her cofounder, Duncan Rheingans-Yoo, had only graduated from Harvard two years before SBF's investment, the Times added.

CoinDesk first reported that Modulo's founders used to work at Jane Street Capital, the trading firm where Bankman-Fried began his career, but didn't publish their identities.

Zhang spent a decade at Jane Street, three years of which coincided with SBF's tenure, while Rheingans-Yoo joined in 2020, per the Times.

Modulo operated out of the Albany Resort, the same luxury complex where SBF lived, according to CoinDesk. Bankman-Fried lived in a $30 million penthouse at the resort, but other FTX employees stayed in condos or villas rented by the company.

Court documents reviewed by Insider show that FTX spent $5.8 million at the Albany in nine months up to September 2022. In 2021, one of the resort's founders told Fortune that, in high season, it could cost up to $60,000 a night to stay there.

Lawyers for FTX's new leadership are currently searching for assets which could be used to reimburse customers of the bankrupt exchange.

Federal prosecutors have already seized over $500 million from Bankman-Fried, including $50 million kept in the tiny Farmington State Bank, but they're still searching for more.

Modulo's founders have not been accused of any wrongdoing, but recently hired a criminal defense lawyer who is a former director of enforcement for the CFTC, the Times reported.

Representatives for Modulo and Bankman-Fried did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

NS Paramedic speaks out about strain of ‘hallway medicine’ on front-line workers

Story by Megan King and Rebecca Lau • 

Nova Scotia paramedic Scott Sturgeon is speaking out about the conditions on the front lines of health care.© Megan King/Global News

Nova Scotia paramedic speaks out about working conditions

A Nova Scotia paramedic is speaking out about the conditions those in his profession are facing as paramedics are becoming essential to "hallway medicine" amidst a strained health-care system.

Scott Sturgeon, an advanced care paramedic, has been with Nova Scotia Emergency Health Services for 23 years. In that time, he's seen dramatic changes to the job, including a growing problem with offload delays at the province's emergency rooms.

"I've seen colleagues and done it myself where I've gone in (to the ER) with my first patient on a run of a 12-hour shift and stayed in the hallway with them for 12 hours," he said.

What's even more shocking, he says in some cases, is that he'll "hand off" the patient to a night crew and then "sometimes inherit that very same patient again 12 hours after that."

This form of so-called hallway medicine is leaving paramedics like Sturgeon with what he describes as "moral injury."

"To hear something of an acute nature, of an emergent nature, go out and not have there be any resources, not to be able to do anything about it -- it's difficult for us to handle," he said.

Video: Nova Scotia EHS worker says paramedics’ hands tied amid ER crisis

Not only is it difficult mentally, but physically as well.

Paramedics are being faced with a growing increase in calls, which leaves them no time for personal care.

"When I clear a call, I am assigned to get another call. And my only chance to go to the bathroom even is to stop at a gas station while I'm en route to yet another residence," he said.

"I don't get my lunches, I'm quite often in overtime. It's just a pace that people can't ... they can't keep up."

Earlier this month, the province unveiled a slate of actions they say will improve emergency care, after the stories of two women who died following seven-hour-long waits in ERs shook the province.

Deaths of 2 Nova Scotia women after ER wait shakes trust in system

The health department says it will begin assigning physician assistants and nurse practitioners to provide care in emergency departments.

It will also have teams led by doctors focusing on getting patients out of ambulances and into ERs faster, and will add care providers and patient advocates in waiting rooms.

But there are questions about whether the plan will work if there aren't enough health-care workers.

Their union says it's a problem that has been building for a number of years.

Kevin MacMullin, business manager for International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 727, says there is a shortage of paramedics. There's a global demand for them, he says, and many have retired or left the province for work.

"Our professional paramedics have done an outstanding job in this province. And that's why they're sought after so highly by other provinces. That's why they want them. They're doing an astonishing job under the worst circumstances you could find," said MacMullin.

He believes what's key is more attention paid to employee retention.

"If you don't retain your employees, then you're just playing catch up all the time. And if you retain your employees, give them good benefits, give them good money, they'll spread the word and somebody who has left will probably come back. A lot will probably come back."

Video: Nova Scotia EHS worker says paramedics’ hands tied amid ER crisis

The shortage of family physicians and primary care providers in the province also contributes to the problem.

Sturgeon says being a paramedic is a rewarding job when they do what they're "designed to do": intervene in emergency situations.

"But the reality is that the ambulance is being used by a large portion of the population to fill in gaps for primary care," he said.

"So we're being used kind of like a physician, and we're not physicians ... and we're being asked to do that with regularity."

Meanwhile, Sturgeon says the situation is difficult and currently, rural communities are paying the price.

"As those ambulances are held in offload, the rural communities that normally have an ambulance end up being pulled into our geographical area. Because statistically, that's where the next call is going to be," he explained.

It's a ripple effect that Sturgeon says needs to be addressed with infrastructure and community support to ensure that when the public needs paramedics, they can be there.

- with a file from Karla Renic

Postmedia shuffles editors day after announcing 11 per cent of staff to be laid off

Story by The Canadian Press 


TORONTO — A Postmedia Network Corp. memo obtained by The Canadian Press shows the newspaper publisher has shuffled editors of its Prairies papers a day after it announced 11 per cent of staff would be laid off.


Postmedia shuffles editors day after announcing 11 per cent of staff to be laid off© Provided by The Canadian Press

The memo says Lorne Motley, vice-president of editorial for the west and editor-in-chief for the Calgary Herald and Sun, will become a regional editor-in-chief. The new position will put him in charge of the Calgary Herald and Sun, Edmonton Journal and Sun, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Regina Leader Post and Winnipeg Sun.

Under Motley, Monica Zurowski will serve as a deputy editor in Calgary, while Dave Breakenridge in Edmonton, Ashley Trask in Saskatoon and Mark Hamm in Winnipeg will be managing editors.

Colin McGarrigle, editor-in-chief of the Edmonton Journal, will move to become a managing editor in Regina under Motley.

The memo also shared that Russell Wangersky, editor-in-chief of the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, will leave Postmedia.

Postmedia said it would not comment on internal memos.

The memo comes a day after an audio recording of a Postmedia town hall obtained by The Canadian Press revealed cuts would be made to the company's roster of 650 journalists.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 25, 2023.

The Canadian Press

Groundbreaking new solar panels can generate electricity in the dark

Story by Joshua Hawkins • BGR


Solar power is a promising avenue for clean energy. Unfortunately, solar panels have one major weakness – they can’t generate electricity in the dark. However, this weakness could soon change as scientists at Stanford University have now created a solar panel that works in the dark.

The researchers published their findings on the new type of solar panel in the journal Applied Physics Letters back in April of 2022. While they discovered a way to make solar panels work in the dark, they also discovered that already erected solar panels could be modified to generate power at night, too, saving businesses and homes from having to upgrade to new panels.

The process used to make older solar panels work in the dark is called radiative cooling. When the sun sets, the Earth cools down, releasing heat into the air. This helps to create a temperature difference between the air and the surface of the panels. Then, researchers say that we can install thermoelectric generators onto the panels, allowing us to harness the power generated by radiative cooling.



solar panels on house, transparent solar panels could be build into windows© Provided by BGR

This isn’t the first time we have seen this idea put forward. Back in 2020, researchers with the University of California did something similar with what they called an “anti-solar panel.” Photovoltaic solar panels already take advantage of this radiative cooling to generate electricity after the sun sets, allowing those solar panels to work in the dark.

So why haven’t we heard more about this if it makes solar panels generate electricity even after the sun sets? Well, that’s because it doesn’t generate tons of electricity. Instead, some estimate it only generates around 25 percent of the energy a solar panel can generate in a typical day. But that’s still clean energy that you didn’t have before, so it’s worth harnessing while you can.

Other advancements in solar power have also seen solar panels that don’t need sunlight to generate electricity. You can read more about those in our previous report, but they essentially work by using the same rays of ultraviolet light that fruits and vegetables rely on to create their energy.

Egyptian archaeologists tout rare discoveries unearthed in Luxor

Story by Ahmed Shawkat • 

Egyptian archaeologists inspect mummified remains found in a newly discovered burial site in Luxor's Dra' Abu el-Naga' Necropolis, which they said was the first ever found in the area dating back to ancient Egypt's 13th Dynasty, between 1803 BC and 1649 BC. / Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities© Provided by CBS News

Cairo — Egyptian archaeologists announced Wednesday the discovery of the first burial site in the city of Luxor that dates back to the ancient Egyptian 13th Dynasty. That means the sarcophagi, remains and artifacts found at the site, in Luxor's Dra' Abu el-Naga' Necropolis, date back almost 4,000 years, to sometime between 1803 BC and 1649 BC.

"We have discovered more than a thousand burial sites before in Luxor, but this is the first time we find one from the 13th Dynasty," Dr. Fathy Yaseen, Director General of Antiquities of Upper Egypt, told CBS News about the site, which is more than 50 yards wide and 70 yards long.
4,200-year-old queen's identity among remarkable new finds in Egypt

Among the discoveries in the burial site was a complete sarcophagus made of pink granite, weighing about 11 tons, inscribed with the name of a minister named Ankho, who lived during the reign of King Sobekhotep II during the 13th Dynasty.

There were also some "Ushabtis," small statuettes, made of wood and painted white to imitate limestone, that stuck out to the experts.



Egyptian archaeologists tout rare discoveries unearthed in Luxor© Provided by CBS News

"I've been working in this field for more than 25 years now, and this is the first time I see Ushabtis with scriptures written in Hieratic instead of Hieroglyphs," Yaseen told CBS News. Hieratic was the common written form of ancient Egyptian between the third millennium BC and the mid-first millennium BC.

Related video: Egyptian Crocodile Mummies Discovered By Spanish Archeologists (Cover Media) Duration 1:03  View on Watch

A "complete city" unearthed

Archaeologists also announced this week that they had unearthed a "complete city" dating back to the Roman era in eastern Luxor.

The Egyptian Archaeological Mission said Tuesday that the city is located near the Luxor Temple.

It was described in a statement by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities as "the oldest and most important" residential city on the eastern bank of Luxor. It is believed to be an extension of the city of Thebes.

"It is important because it shows us more about the life of regular Egyptians at this time," Yaseen told CBS News, adding that scientists had "unearthed only the northern part of the city so far."

The discovery includes some residential buildings, workshops and two pigeon towers, used to house pigeons or doves, dating back to the second and third centuries, the statement said.

BIGFOOT, YETI, SASQUATCH ARE RACE MEMORY
Fossils reveal the mysterious primate relatives that lived in the ancient Arctic

Story by Ashley Strickland • CNN

Analysis of fossils found in the far north of Canada has revealed that two previously unknown species of ancient near-primates lived above the Arctic Circle some 52 million years ago, according to new research.

The now-extinct creatures belonged to a part of the primate family tree that branched off before the ancestors of lemurs diverged from the common ancestors of monkeys, apes and humans, said study coauthor Dr. Chris Beard, a distinguished foundation professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and senior curator at the university’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

The two sister species lived on what is now Ellesmere Island in northern Canada. They are the first known primatomorphans, or primate relatives, to have lived in latitudes north of the Arctic Circle, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The two species have been named Ignacius mckennai and Ignacius dawsonae.

“To get an idea of what Ignacius looked like, imagine a cross between a lemur and a squirrel that was about half the size of a domestic cat,” Beard said. “Unlike living primates, Ignacius had eyes on the sides of its head (instead of facing forward like ours) and it had claws on its fingers and toes instead of nails.”

When researchers analyzed the fossil fragments, the jawbones and teeth of Ignacius seemed different from other primatomorphans that lived in North America’s more southerly reaches.

“What I’ve been doing the past couple of years is trying to understand what they were eating, and if they were eating different materials than their middle-latitude counterparts,” said lead study author Kristen Miller, a doctoral student at the University of Kansas’ Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

The Arctic primatomorphans evolved special features in their jaws and teeth to chomp on harder foods, like nuts and seeds, as opposed to their preferred diet of ripe fruit. This physical adaptation was likely because for half of the year, the species lived in the darkness of Arctic winter, when food was much more difficult to find.

“That, we think, is probably the biggest physical challenge of the ancient environment for these animals,” Beard said.

These findings could also be used to understand how animals adapt and evolve amid periods of climate change — as with species facing the human-driven climate crisis today.

Northward bound

Researchers believe the primatomorphans descended from an ancestor species that trekked north from the more southerly regions of North America. Similar fossils have been found across Wyoming, Texas, Montana and Colorado, according to Miller.

“No primate relative has ever been found at such extreme latitudes,” Miller said. “They’re more usually found around the equator in tropical regions. I was able to do a phylogenetic analysis, which helped me understand how the fossils from Ellesmere Island are related to species found in midlatitudes of North America.”

The common ancestor of the two Ignacius species likely reached Ellesmere Island around 51 million years ago, Beard said. At the time, it was a peninsula jutting into the Arctic Sea from adjacent parts of North America.

Ignacius mckennai and Ignacius dawsonae are named in part after two of Beard’s former colleagues and mentors, he explained: the late paleontologists Dr. Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and Dr. Malcolm McKenna of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, both of whom worked extensively on Ellesmere Island.

Greater physical size for survival

During these ancient times, the Arctic Circle was a warmer, more hospitable place for life. Global warming had caused the region to be much warmer and wetter, with a swamplike environment. The warmer temperatures during this period likely encouraged Igancius’ ancestor to venture north.

“Winter temperatures may have gotten as low as freezing for short periods of time, but we know that there were hardly ever any sustained freezing temperatures because crocodilians have been found on Ellesmere Island, and they cannot survive long freezes,” Beard said. “In the summertime, temperatures reached about 70 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Despite the warmer temperatures, the primatomorphans still had to adapt to survive in their unique northern ecosystem. They grew bigger than their southern relatives, who resembled squirrels; such growth commonly happens in mammals living in northern latitudes because it helps them maintain the needed core body temperature, Beard said.

“(The findings) tells us to expect dramatic and dynamic changes to the Arctic ecosystem as it transforms in the face of continued warming,” Beard said. “Some animals that don’t currently live in the Arctic will colonize that region, and some of them will adapt to their new environment in ways that parallel Ignacius. Likewise, we can expect some of the new colonists to diversify in the Arctic, just as Ignacius did.”

 CNN.com