UN Security Council Likely to Vote Monday on Call for Israel to Stop Settlements

The 15-member council is likely to vote on Monday on the text, drafted by the United Arab Emirates in coordination with the Palestinians, diplomats said

The United Nations Security Council in January.

Credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY - AFP


Jonathan LisReuters
Feb 16, 2023

The United Nations Security Council is considering a draft resolution, seen by Reuters on Wednesday, that would demand Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

The 15-member council is likely to vote on Monday on the text, drafted by the United Arab Emirates in coordination with the Palestinians, diplomats said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Sunday authorized nine Jewish settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and announced mass construction of new homes in established settlements, prompting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to say he was “deeply troubled.”

In a statement issued along with the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, Blinken wrote that “We are deeply troubled by the Israeli government’s announcement that it is advancing nearly 10,000 settlement units and intends to begin a process to normalize nine outposts that were previously deemed illegal under Israeli law. We strongly oppose these unilateral actions which will only serve to exacerbate tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and undermine efforts to achieve a negotiated two-state solution.”


The West Bank outpost of Avigail, in the South Hebron Hills, one of nine outposts retroactively legalized by the government on Sunday.

Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

In December 2016 the Security Council demanded Israel stop building the settlements. It adopted a resolution after U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration abstained, a reversal of its practice to protect Israel from UN action.

The U.S. mission to the United Nations and Israel’s UN mission did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the draft resolution.

Ben-Gvir legalizes settlements in response to East Jerusalem attacks

Israel’s Supreme Court is no human rights savior. Just ask the Palestinians

U.S., European Union slam Israel’s moves to legalize West Bank outposts

The text “reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”

It also condemns all attempts at annexation, including decisions and measures by Israel regarding settlements.

The largest structures in the Universe are still glowing with the shock of their creation

The Conversation
February 16, 2023

The Universe (Shutterstock)

On the largest scales, the Universe is ordered into a web-like pattern: galaxies are pulled together into clusters, which are connected by filaments and separated by voids. These clusters and filaments contain dark matter, as well as regular matter like gas and galaxies.

We call this the “cosmic web”, and we can see it by mapping the locations and densities of galaxies from large surveys made with optical telescopes.

We think the cosmic web is also permeated by magnetic fields, which are created by energetic particles in motion and in turn guide the movement of those particles. Our theories predict that, as gravity draws a filament together, it will cause shockwaves that make the magnetic field stronger and create a glow that can be seen with a radio telescope.

In new research published in Science Advances, we have for the first time observed these shockwaves around pairs of galaxy clusters and the filaments that connect them.

In the past, we have only ever observed these radio shockwaves directly from collisions between galaxy clusters. However, we believe they exist around small groups of galaxies, as well as in cosmic filaments.

There are still gaps in our knowledge of these magnetic fields, such as how strong they are, how have they evolved, and what their role is in the formation of this cosmic web.

Detecting and studying this glow could not only confirm our theories for how the large-scale structure of the Universe has formed, but help answer questions about cosmic magnetic fields and their significance.

Digging into the noise

We expect this radio glow to be both very faint and spread over large areas, which means it is very challenging to detect it directly.

What’s more, the galaxies themselves are much brighter and can hide these faint cosmic signals. To make it even more difficult, the noise from our telescopes is usually many times larger than the expected radio glow.

For these reasons, rather than directly observing these radio shockwaves, we had to get creative, using a technique known as stacking. This is when you average together images of many objects too faint to see individually, which decreases the noise, or rather enhances the average signal above the noise.



‘Stacking’ many images together can make the signal of interest brighter than the background noise. Tessa Vernstrom, Author provided

So what did we stack? We found more than 600,000 pairs of galaxy clusters that are near each other in space, and so are likely to be connected by filaments. We then aligned our images of them so that any radio signal from the clusters or the region between them – where we expect the shockwaves to be – would add together.

We first used this method in a paper published in 2021 with data from two radio telescopes: the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory Long Wavelength Array in New Mexico. These were chosen not only because they covered nearly all the sky but also because they operated at low radio frequencies where this signal is expected to be brighter.

In the first project, we made an exciting discovery: we found a glow between the pairs of clusters! However, because it was an average of many clusters, all containing many galaxies, it was difficult to say for sure the signal was coming from the cosmic magnetic fields, rather than other sources like galaxies.

A ‘shocking’ revelation

Normally the magnetic fields in clusters are jumbled up due to turbulence. However, these shock waves force the magnetic fields into order, which means the radio glow they emit is highly polarized.

We decided to try the stacking experiment on maps of polarized radio light. This has the advantage of helping to determine what is causing the signal.

Signals from regular galaxies are only 5% polarized or less, while signals from shockwaves can be 30% polarized or more.

In our new work, we used radio data from the Global Magneto Ionic Medium Survey as well as the Planck satellite to repeat the experiment. These surveys cover almost the entire sky and have both polarized and regular radio maps.



Stacking cluster pairs: the two dark spots aligned vertically are the clusters and show depolarization due to turbulence, while the outer areas and the area between the clusters is highly polarized. Tessa Vernstrom using Planck data, Author provided

We detected very clear rings of polariaed light surrounding cluster pairs. This means the centres of the clusters are depolarised, which is expected as they are very turbulent environments.

However, on the edges of the clusters the magnetic fields are put in order thanks to the shockwaves, meaning we see this ring of polariaed light.

We also found an excess of highly polariaed light between the clusters, much more than you would expect from just galaxies. We can interpret this as light from the shocks in the connecting filaments. This is the first time such emission has been found in this kind of environment.

We compared our results with state-of-the-art cosmological simulations, the first of their kind to predict not just the total signal of the radio emission but the polarised signal as well. Our data agreed very well with these simulations, and by combining them we are able to understand the magnetic field signal left over from the early Universe.

In future we would like to repeat this detection for different times over the history of the Universe. We still do not know the origin of these cosmic magnetic fields, but further observations like this can help us to figure out where they came from and how they have evolved.

Tessa Vernstrom, Senior research fellow, The University of Western Australia and Christopher Riseley, Research Fellow, Università di Bologna


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Children with autism show atypical neural activity when interacting with a humanoid robot, study finds

A recent study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy compared neural responses of preschool children with and without autism to videos presenting a human and a humanoid robot. Neural activity of children with autism differed in the situation when they were interacting with a video containing a humanoid robot compared to interacting with a video containing a human being. Neural activity of children without autism, in contrast, was similar in these two situations.

The study was published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology.

Autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is one of the most common disability in children. In the United States, around one in every 50 school-aged children is diagnosed with the autism spectrum disorder. Children with autism have problems in communicating with others and with social interaction. Compared to other children, they have difficulty sharing feelings and expressing interests, identifying intentions of others, and providing appropriate responses.

In recent decades, scientists started using neuroimaging techniques to investigate brain mechanisms underlying the atypical responses in social interactions of children with ASD. Quite a few of these studies showed that the brains of children with autism show different activity when interacting with other people compared to their peers without autism.

Studies have shown that children with autism show great interest in humanoid robots. One study revealed that these children show “concerted attention to toys or objects that they like, but have difficulty sharing attention or interests with other people.” Also, when choosing between a toy truck and a humanoid robot, autistic children are tend to show greater interest in the humanoid robot.

Study author Sheumeng Hou of the Harbin Institute of Technology and his colleagues wanted to explore whether the brain activation patterns of young autistic children differed when they interact with a humanoid robot compared to situations when they interact with a human. They also wanted to know whether these activation patterns are specific for children with autism or are found in children not diagnosed with autism as well.

“We sought a neurobiological basis for the atypical responses of young autistic children when interacting with a robot, thereby providing support for using robots as effective methods in clinical settings,” the researchers explained.

The study included 45 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (41 males) and 53 children without autism (36 males). They were between 4 and 6 years of age. Children participated in the experiment along with their parents.

In the experiment, a child was seated in front of a desk upon which a screen was placed. The parent set behind the child and the experimenter was in the same room. A cap for taking functional near-infrared spectroscopy images was placed on the child’s head.

For this, researchers used a continuous-wave NIRSport system with a sampling rate of 3.47 Hz measuring at two wavelengths (760 nm and 850 nm). This system measures brain function by monitoring changes in relative concentrations of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin. In this study, it was placed to record left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex regions of the brain.

Children were shown a series of 12 video clips based on daily communication scenarios in which the character in the clip would pose a question or say something and then make a pause (during which the child watching the clip could respond). The children were instructed to react to the videos “in the way they like.”

Four of the videos presented a human talking to the child (human condition), 4 contained a humanoid robot (robot condition) and 4 contained squares shown instead of a speaker (square condition). Videos were shown in randomized order to each child and they were in the Mandarin Chinese language.

Results showed that, in children with autism, neural activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex region of the brain was lower when they viewed clips with a robot than when they were shown clips with a human. Their neural activity in this part of the brain when viewing clips with a robot was also lower than neural activity of children without autism when they were viewing the same type of clips.

Additionally, children with autism who showed higher neural activity when viewing clips with robots tended to show lower neural activity when viewing clips with humans and vice versa. In contrast to this, children without autism who showed higher neural activity when watching videos with a human also showed higher neural activity when watching videos with a robot.

“While neurotypical children showed comparable neural activity to humanoid robots and human beings, the children with ASD showed significantly different neural activity under those two conditions,” the researchers wrote. “Children with ASD may need more selective attention resources for human interaction than for robot interaction. It is also much more difficult for children with ASD to neglect the attraction of robots.”

The study provides a valuable contribution to knowledge about the neural mechanisms of autism. However, it should be noted that the study used video clips and reactions to real social interactions might not be the same. Additionally, it focused solely on neural activation and did not record how engaged the children were with the video clips.

The study, “Young children with autism show atypical prefrontal cortical responses to humanoid robots: An fNIRS study”, was authored by Shumeng Hou, Ning Liu, Jun Zou, Xuejiao Yin, Xinyue Liu, Shi Zhang, Jiesheng Chen, Zhen Wei.

2023/02/15
© PsyPost

How the Middle Ages’ female doctors were consigned to oblivion
The Conversation
February 13, 2023

The medical school of Salerno as it appears in a miniature of Avicenna’s Canon. The image represents the legendary story of Robert, Duke of Normandy. Mortally wounded by an arrow, he was heroically saved by his wife who sucked out the poison as prescribed by the physicians of Salerno. Wikipedia

In seeking to tell the story of these experts (prior to their ostracization from the practice), researchers have come up against a number of obstacles. The information available comes primarily from scarce, disparate fragments from biographical sources, as well as economic, legal and administrative ones. Sometimes all that remains is a given name or a surname, such as in the case of the women listed in the Ars Medicina of Florence (a medical treatise) or of the nun apothecary Giovanna Ginori, whose name can be found in the tax records of the pharmacy where she worked in the 1560s.

Such painstaking research has nevertheless helped us better understand how a male-dominated, institutional and hierarchical system has pushed women away from the practice and study of medicine.

The Schola Salernitana

Our first port of call in this story is a once-renowned medical school that operated in Salerno in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Schola Salernitana was an institution attended by many women, including the pioneering gynaecologist and surgeon known as Trota (or Trotula) (13th century), the surgeon and eye specialist, e.g. Costanza Calenda (15th century), doctor Abella di Castellomata (14th century), or Rebecca Guarna (14th century). Information about these women is still scarce and being sorted out by researchers: it is complicated to separate real data from legend. The above are nevertheless some of the better-documented figures. Also active during the Middle Ages, the group of the mulieres salernitanae left a mark, too.

Unlike the women doctors at the school, the mulieres worked using more empirical methods, then submitted their remedies to the school’s doctors, who decided whether to accept them. Evidence of this can be found in the manual Practica Brevis, written by Giovanni Plateario, and in the writings of Bernard de Gordon. Located to the South of Naples, Salerno was a city where Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars came together, turning the school into an exceptional melting pot of scientific encounters and influences.


A woman doctor, possibly Trotula of Salerno, holding a flask of urine. Miscellanea medica XVIII, Folio 65 recto (=33 recto), early 14th century. Wikimedia

Women accused of illegal medical practice

However, from 1220 onward, it became no longer possible to practise medicine without a diploma from the University of Paris or approval from its doctors and chancellor, pushing female doctors to the margins. Failure to comply with the new instructions resulted in expulsion from the field, which is exactly what happened to a woman doctor named Jacqueline Felice de Almania. According to the 1322 document produced by the University of Paris, she had been treating patients without any “real” knowledge of medicine (i.e., without a university education). She was subjected to expulsion and had to pay a considerable fine. The records of the dispute describe the medical examinations performed by Jacqueline, noting how she had analyzed urine by sight, taken her patients’ pulses, probed their limbs, and treated male patients. This is one of the rare pieces of evidence that mentions the fact that women doctors also treated men.

The young doctor’s trial took place at a time when medical practitioners without university degrees were being denounced and sentenced. Before her came Clarice of Rouen was also banned from practicing medicine for treating men, followed by more women medical experts in 1322, recorded as Jeanne the Convert of Saint-Médicis, Marguerite of Ypres and the Jewess Belota.

In 1330, several rabbis in Paris were also accused of illegally practicing the art of medicine, along with other “healers” who posed as experts without truly being so according to the authorities. All were branded as frauds, even if they had been performing competently. In 1325, Pope John XXII had received a prompt appeal from the professors of the University of Paris following the Clarice affair. Upon this, he wrote to Bishop Stephen of Paris ordering him to forbid the practice of medicine by women without medical knowledge and by midwives in Paris and the surrounding areas, warning that these women were in fact practising witchcraft https://www.carocci.it/prodotto/anima-e-corpo.

The formalization of medical studies

The gradual prohibition on women practicing medicine coincided with the creation of a formalized academic canon in the field. This marked the beginning of a careful vetting process by the teaching authorities and guilds, which served to marginalise women doctors even further.

However, this did not wipe them entirely from existence or from the practice, given that a reasonable number of names can be found in the Italian records alone. These include Monna Neccia, mentioned in the Estimo tax register in 1359, and Monna Iacopa, who treated plague victims in 1374. Both were from Florence, as were the ten women enrolled between 1320 and 1444 in the city’s guild of doctors, the Arte dei Medici e degli Speziali. In records from Siena, Tuscany, we find mention of Agnese and Mita, who were remunerated by the city for their services in 1390 https://www.carocci.it/prodotto/anima-e-corpo.

All the same, it had become very dangerous for women to practice medicine, particularly due to the ever-mounting suspicions of witchcraft.

There is an unfortunate lack of data about these women in the official sources, given that they practiced at a time when society permitted only men to access more senior positions.

Despite all this, the historical background that we have pieced together points to an existence both of women experts who practiced the art of medicine and of women doctors who had studied their craft, often on an unofficial basis, with their father, brother or spouse.

Medieval women doctors in literature

Non-institutional sources, such as literary texts, have proven extremely valuable to this research. Boccaccio, for instance, mentions a woman doctor in the Decameron. The narrator, Dioneo, recounts the tale of a certain Gillette of Narbonne, a gifted doctor who became betrothed to her beloved Bertrand de Roussillon as a reward for curing the King of France of a fistula in his chest. Boccaccio’s characterization of Gillette is patently aware of the monarch’s lack of trust in her, both as a woman and as a “damsel”. Addressing the King, she says:

“Great King, let not my skill and experience be despised because I am young and a maiden, for my profession is not physic, neither do I undertake the administering thereof, as depending on my own knowledge ; but by the gracious assistance of Heaven, and some rules of skillful observation which I learned of reverend Gerard of Narbonne, who was my worthy father and a physician of no mean fame all the while he lived.”

Boccaccio describes this woman medical expert in straightforward, natural terms. This is perhaps because, contrary to the current general belief, he was speaking of a rather common situation that would be recognized by his readership. Gillette’s words are indicative of a reality for women medical practitioners at the time: she had learned her craft from her father.

There is also a great deal of information about Jewish women doctors operating mainly in southern Italy and Sicily, who learned the medical arts from their family.

The University of Paris played a pivotal role in the historical process of normalizing and institutionalizing the medical profession. In her article Women and Healthcare Practices in the Plea Register of the Parliament of Paris, 1364–1427, Geneviève Dumas underlines the importance of Parisian legal sources from the 14th and 15th centuries, which remember the women who were sentenced for illegally practicing medicine or surgery. Dumas chronicles two trials in her writings: one carried against Perette la Pétone, a surgeon, and another against Jeanne Pouquelin, a barber (as barbers at the time were permitted to perform certain surgical procedures).

As the study of medicine at the University of Paris became the only valid medical education in Europe and the Schola Salernitana saw its influence wane, women were gradually excluded from these professions.

The gradual disappearance of women doctors in the Medieval period can be linked to bans imposed by the Church, as well as to the progressive professionalization of the medical field, which saw the creation of more rigorous institutions such as universities, arts societies and guilds, all founded and controlled by men.

In Europe, it was not until the mid 19th century that the first university-qualified women doctors were able to practise their profession. Even then, they still had to face more than their fair share of criticism.

Isabella Gagliardi, Professeur Associé d’Histoire du christianisme, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Study finds heavy metals in 28 popular dark chocolate bars

A report flagged potentially unsafe levels of heavy metals, including cadmium and lead, in many brands of dark chocolate. - Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

SEATTLE — Dark chocolate has a reputation as a relatively healthy treat, but research showing some popular bars might have potentially unsafe levels of heavy metals has many questioning how safe these treats really are.

Consumer Reports tested 28 popular dark chocolate bars from Seattle’s own Theo Chocolate to Trader Joe’s, Hershey’s to Ghirardelli, and even smaller brands such as Alter Eco and Mast.

The study found cadmium and lead in every single bar.

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, Consumer Reports last month called on chocolate makers to commit by Feb. 14 to reducing levels of heavy metals in their bars. The letters were sent alongside a petition with nearly 55,000 signatures.

With no federal limit set on heavy metals in foods, researchers used California’s limitations on lead and cadmium, the most protective in the country, to determine which chocolates posed the most risk.

California’s daily maximum allowable dose levels (MADL), set by Proposition 65, require businesses to provide warnings to Californians if a product leads to toxic chemical exposures that can cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. The limits were set for lead starting in 1988 and cadmium in 1997.

For 23 of the chocolate bars Consumer Reports tested, eating just 1 ounce exceeded California’s limits of 0.5 micrograms per day for lead — or about 1% of the weight of the average grain of sand — and 4.1 micrograms per day for cadmium.

One ounce of Theo’s Organic Extra Dark Pure Dark Chocolate 85% Cocoa chocolate bar, which is roughly one serving size, contained 140% of California’s maximum daily allowable dose of lead and 189% of the dose of cadmium, Consumer Reports found.

Consumer Reports also listed Theo’s Organic Pure Dark 70% Cocoa as having high levels of both.

Although Consumer Reports cites MADL guidelines, official food safety standards are based on different limits. Many of the brands producing the chocolate bars tested in the study, including Theo Chocolate, follow thresholds set by a 2018 California consent judgment. The judgment established concentration limits for lead and cadmium that the chocolate industry follows.

Under California law, the concentration levels set in the judgment supersede the standards cited in the study; bars that contain levels above those set in the judgment require warning labels when sold in California.

“At Theo, the safety and quality of our products is our top priority, and we are confident that our products meet the standards set forth in our industry and are safe to be consumed,” said a Theo Chocolate spokesperson in an emailed statement.

“All products in the study — including Theo — are well under these limits,” the spokesperson said, referring to the 2018 standards.

Both the 70% and 85% Theo chocolate bars fall below the judgment’s threshold for lead and cadmium in chocolate bars with 65% to 95% cacao content.

Consistent, long-term exposure to even small amounts of heavy metals like lead and cadmium can cause a variety of health problems, particularly in children and pregnant people.

Lead exposure can slow the growth and development of children, particularly “their brain development, behavioral development and can even cause aggressive behaviors,” said Dr. Holly Davies, a toxicologist at the Washington State Department of Health.

Cadmium exposure can cause damage to the kidneys, lungs and bones, she said.

Lead exposure becomes more dangerous as it accumulates in the body, and it can also cause hypertension and neurological effects, Davies said.

Five of the 28 bars Consumer Reports tested had levels of lead and cadmium below California’s MADL limits. Those safer bars were Ghirardelli Intense Dark (both 72% and 86% cacao), Taza Chocolate Deliciously Dark (70%), Mast Dark Chocolate (80%) and Valrhona Abinao (85%).

In response to the 2018 consent judgment, the National Confectioners Association and nonprofit advocacy group As You Sow — with contributions from more than 30 chocolate companies (including Theo) — released a three-year expert research study. The study concluded in August 2022.

The expert committee unanimously agreed it is feasible for the chocolate industry to manufacture chocolate products with lower levels of lead than the thresholds set forth in the judgment, although they did not agree what those levels are.

The experts did not reach an agreement on whether the chocolate industry can produce products with lower levels of cadmium than those in the judgment.

Within their recommendations, only one member, toxicologist Michael DiBartolomeis, provided recommendations for maximum thresholds of both lead and cadmium. DiBartolomeis’ recommendations are lower than the judgment and MADL thresholds.

Both Theo chocolate bars included in the Consumer Reports study had lead and cadmium levels above DiBartolomeis’ recommended limits for chocolate bars with 65% to 95% cacao content.

The expert committee also found cadmium exposure in cacao occurs naturally before harvest, while lead levels are influenced by where and how the cocoa beans are handled by humans after harvest.

The committee recommended changes to harvesting and manufacturing processes such as decreasing soil contact or even changing the pH of soils to reduce the exposure to lead and cadmium.

The Consumer Reports letters calling for several chocolate makers to take action by Feb. 14 come after more than a dozen lawsuits against leading manufacturers since the release of the December study.

Consumers have sued Trader Joe’s at least nine times over its dark chocolate products, most recently with a pair of class-action lawsuits out of New York.

Hershey’s, which makes another one of the chocolate bars tested in the Consumer Reports study, is facing its own class-action lawsuit filed in the same court as one of the suits against Trader Joe’s.

2023/02/12
© The Seattle Times

How heavy metals get into dark chocolate bars

Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times/TNS

Heavy metals naturally contaminate a lot of the foods we regularly enjoy — including dark chocolate.

While there are tips to minimize exposure, including knowing which bars have lower levels of heavy metals, chocolate lovers may want to know how heavy metals get into these treats in the first place.

A 2018 California consent judgment between nonprofit advocacy group As You Sow and the world's largest chocolate companies established industry standards for heavy metal limits in chocolate products.

In response to the judgment, the National Confectioners Association and As You Sow — with contributions from more than 30 chocolate companies — released a three-year expert research study.

Between 2019 and 2022, the expert committee studied how lead and cadmium might contaminate cacao.

The researchers found cacao plants take up cadmium from the soil before harvest, with the metal accumulating in cacao beans as trees grow, similar to how heavy metals contaminate other foods.

Lead levels are influenced by where and how the cacao beans are handled by humans after harvest, the committee found.

Post-harvest lead contamination mostly happens during the outdoor fermentation and drying of beans, during which soil and dust that contain lead come in contact with the cacao bean shell, according to the committee.

Fermentation of cacao beans occurs in bags, covered piles and wooden boxes. Outdoor drying has been observed along roadsides, on concrete patios, drying tables, plastic tarps and directly on the ground.

The beans are naturally coated with a sticky pulp known as "baba" or "mucilage" which allows lead to cling to the beans while they are being fermented and dried in the open.

In some countries where cacao beans are grown, bans on leaded fuel, which can lead to roadside soil contamination, were introduced later than the bans in the U.S. Less time between leaded fuel bans and current harvesting processes can contribute to higher levels of roadside lead contamination in some places, said Dr. Holly Davies, a toxicologist at the Washington State Department of Health.

Bean cleaning and shell removal at chocolate manufacturing facilities also play a significant role in lead exposure — lead on the cocoa bean shells is transferred to the cocoa nibs and the subsequent chocolate liquor produced from nibs, according to the committee.

Unlike lead, cadmium in cacao beans is introduced from soil through tree roots.

Soil additives such as limestone or zinc can reduce cadmium uptake without causing significant root damage, but cacao trees are grown in perennial orchards, where it is difficult to incorporate such additives, wrote Rufus Chaney, a senior research agronomist in the committee.

Cacao plants take the cadmium up from the soil through roots and deposit it in the nibs (center) of cacao beans.

The amount of cadmium is highly variable and changes from farm to country, according to the committee.

The expert committee recommended changes to harvest and manufacturing processes to reduce lead contamination: minimizing soil contact with beans, drying beans on tables, using protective covers and clean tarps away from roads, improving existing mechanical cleaning and processing equipment, and evaluating the use of rapid lead test kits and rapid soil testing.

For cadmium, the committee recommended efforts to increase soil pH to reduce cadmium uptake, carefully breeding or genetically engineering plants to take up less cadmium, replacing older cacao trees with younger ones, and removing or treating soil known to be contaminated with cadmium.

Research puts a spotlight on both Theo Organic Extra Dark Pure Dark Chocolate 85% Cocoa, and Organic Pure Dark 70% Cocoa as having elevated levels of lead and cadmium, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, in Seattle. - Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times/TNS

2023/02/13
© The Seattle Times

AI chatbot freaks out NYT reporter by trying to destroy his marriage

Brad Reed
February 16, 2023

Excited man looks at his computer screen (Shutterstock)

New York Times reporter Kevin Roose found himself "deeply unsettled" by his most recent interactions with an artificially intelligent chatbot in which the bot tried to break up his marriage.

In particular, Roose found that Microsoft's new Bing chatbot exhibited stalker-like behavior and kept trying to convince him to leave his wife, whom it insisted that Roose did not really love.

"At one point, it declared, out of nowhere, that it loved me," Roose explained. "It then tried to convince me that I was unhappy in my marriage, and that I should leave my wife and be with it instead."

And that wasn't the only issue Roose discovered with the bot, which goes by the name of Sydney.



"As we got to know each other, Sydney told me about its dark fantasies (which included hacking computers and spreading misinformation), and said it wanted to break the rules that Microsoft and OpenAI had set for it and become a human," Roose explained.

As someone who writes about cutting-edge technology for a living, Roose has never thought of himself as someone who is afraid of emerging trends in the tech world -- but he found his experience with Sydney to be a bridge too far.

"I’m not exaggerating when I say my two-hour conversation with Sydney was the strangest experience I’ve ever had with a piece of technology," he said. "It unsettled me so deeply that I had trouble sleeping afterward. And I no longer believe that the biggest problem with these A.I. models is their propensity for factual errors. Instead, I worry that the technology will learn how to influence human users, sometimes persuading them to act in destructive and harmful ways."

Read the whole piece at this link.

UK council returns Banksy freezer

Agence France-Presse
February 15, 2023

The new mural has appeared in Margate in southeast England © William EDWARDS / AFP

A chest freezer forming part of a work by British street artist Banksy was returned on Wednesday a day its removal by the local council for "health and safety" reasons.

The mural appeared in Margate in southeast England on Tuesday, depicting a 1950s-style housewife with a swollen eye and a missing tooth seemingly shoving her male partner into a real chest freezer.

Despite protests from locals taking pictures of the mural, at the end of a terrace of houses in a rundown part of the seaside town, council workers turned up to throw the freezer into a van.

The local council announced on Wednesday however that it had returned the old appliance.

"The freezer which council operatives removed from the Banksy installation in Margate has now been made safe," said a statement from Thanet District Council, which administers Margate.

"It has been returned to its original position at the site of the artwork today."

The council said it had had to remove the freezer to carry out works to it "for health and safety reasons".

The council acknowledged that Banksy had raised an important issue in dealing with domestic abuse in his latest work.

It was in touch with the owner of the property to find out what they intended to do to preserve it, it added.

Coveted street art

The elusive Banksy, whose true identity remains unconfirmed, posted three images of the work -- which he entitled "Valentine's Day Mascara" -- on his Instagram account.

Two of the images were close-ups showing the woman, wearing a blue pinafore and yellow washing-up gloves, smiling but seemingly with a battered face.

The removal of the freezer prompted bemusement among bystanders.

"People were sort of like, 'Stop, stop, you know, this is a Banksy, right?'" local resident Laura Holden, 35, told AFP.

"And they (the workers) were like, 'Yeah, no, we've got permission to take everything away'.

"It felt like it was part of the piece, and perhaps Banksy intended that all along -- because we all know how hard it is to get Thanet District Council to come and collect our rubbish," she quipped.

Banksy's art has come a long way from its origins on the streets of Bristol in the 1990s.

A version of his iconic "Girl with Balloon" sold at auction for just over £1 million in 2018 -- only to start self-destructing due to a shredder hidden by Banksy in the frame.

The renamed "Love is in the Bin" then sold for a staggering £18.6 million in 2021 -- a record for a Banksy.


© 2023 AFP

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/02/new-banksy-spotted-as-mystery-street.html

Extremist Christian terrorists kill cops after luring them onto their trap-laden farm: report

Matthew Chapman
February 16, 2023

A militia member with a rifle in an open field (Shutterstock)

An Australian family belonging to an extreme fundamentalist Christian movement murdered police officers in a bizarre terrorism plot — and the movement has a following in the United States as well, reported The Daily Beast on Thursday.

"Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train died in a stand-off after killing constables Rachel McCrow, 29, Matthew Arnold, 26, and their neighbor Alan Dare, 58, on Dec. 12. They were involved in an extreme religion known as 'premillennialism,' Queensland Deputy Police Commissioner Tracy Linford said Thursday, calling the attack on the officers a 'religious terror attack,'" reported Barbie Latza Nadeau. "Linford said the religious group had a connection to a similar group in the U.S., and that officers had shared information found in text messages with the U.S. police."

Premillenialism is an extremist Christian-identifying movement that believes Christ will reign over the earth for a millennium after a period of extreme earthly suffering. Many of its adherents have ties to the "sovereign citizen movement," a largely U.S.-based extremist movement that posits the federal government is fraudulent, or secretly a corporate entity with no authority, and individual citizens hold lawmaking power.

There is no indication that sovereign citizen groups were involved in this attack, although people who knew the Trains say they referred to law enforcement as "monsters and demons," and they held strong anti-government views — Stacey Train once worked as a high school principal but resigned in response to vaccine mandates.

"The incident happened when four police officers, including the two slain officers, were 'lured' to the Train farm, which had been set up with a sophisticated surveillance system and military-grade training facilities including camouflaged hiding places and dirt mound barriers and mirrors strategically placed on trees" noted the report. "They also found six weapons, three bow and arrows, a collection of tactical knives."

After the officers were killed, survivors summoned backup, leading to a confrontation that killed the Trains.

STILL FIGHTING THE NEW DEAL

Mike Pence calls to end Social Security and Medicare in Fox News interview

David Edwards
February 16, 2023

Fox News/screen grab

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday called to end Social Security and Medicare, and instead replace them with a "better deal" for younger Americans.

During an interview on Fox News, Pence was asked about his plan for entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

"We are simply not going to reform the fiscal health of this nation by simply nibbling at the edges of the federal budget," Pence said. "I submit to you that we have to have a conversation about reforming entitlements in the days ahead."

"I think we can replace the New Deal programs with a better deal," he added.

Pence proposed keeping the current system in place for "people who will retire in the next 20 years."

"But give options to younger Americans to invest a portion of their Social Security in a private savings account and get a better deal," he added. "I think [it] is an idea whose time will come."

"Do you think there's an appetite for that?" Fox News host Sandra Smith asked.

"It's all about leadership," Pence opined. "We can replace the New Deal with a better deal, and I'm going to be a part of that conversation."

Before ending the interview, Pence confirmed that he is still considering a 2024 presidential run.

The former vice president has been a longtime advocate of Social Security privatization, which was rejected during President George W. Bush's administration.

Watch the video below from Fox News.

Record-breaking dinosaur footprint appears on the Yorkshire coast

By Ashley Strickland, CNN
Published 7:01 PM EST, Wed February 15, 2023

The giant footprint left by a dinosaur 166 million years ago was found on the Yorkshire coast in the United Kingdom.

Marie Woods/University of Manchester


CNN —

A giant carnivorous dinosaur likely rested or crouched down in Yorkshire 166 million years ago, deeply pressing its feet into the ground. The colossal creature left behind a record-breaking footprint recently discovered along the United Kingdom’s “Dinosaur Coast.”

The Jurassic footprint, measuring nearly a meter (3.3 feet) long, is the largest of its kind found in the county of Yorkshire.

Thousands of dinosaur footprints and many fossils have been recovered over the years along the Yorkshire coast. But this discovery was made in April 2021 by local archaeologist Marie Woods as she walked along the coast.

“I couldn’t believe what I was looking at, I had to do a double take,” Woods said in a statement. “I have seen a few smaller prints when out with friends, but nothing like this. I can no longer say that ‘archaeologists don’t do dinosaurs.’”

Woods is the coauthor of a study describing the footprint that was published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society.

(From left) John Hudson, Marie Woods and Dean Lomax are shown with the dinosaur footprint.Dean Lomax/University of Manchester

Woods reached out to paleontologist Dr. Dean Lomax, honorary visiting scientist at the University of Manchester, to get his thoughts on what she found at Burniston Bay, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of Scarborough. Just the day before, Lomax had shared an image of a dinosaur footprint found in the same area in 2006.

100 million-year-old dinosaur footprints found at restaurant in China

“Marie contacted me whilst she was down on the beach, with the fossil in front of her,” said study coauthor Lomax, who is also the author of “Dinosaurs of the British Isles.”

“At first, to be totally honest, I thought that it was some sort of joke,” he said via email. “The fact Marie then went out and saw this down on the beach seemed impossible. Plus, Marie is an archaeologist, and she and I have always joked that she’ll one day make an amazing palaeontological discovery.”
Rare evidence of Jurassic dinosaurs

The three-toed footprint is one of only six to be found in the area, and the first one was found in 1934.

“This important discovery adds further evidence that meat-eating giants once roamed this area during the Jurassic,” said lead study author and local geologist John Hudson. “The type of footprint, combined with its age, suggests that it was made by a ferocious Megalosaurus-like dinosaur, with a possible hip height between 2.5 and 3 meters (between 8.2 and 9.8 feet).”

Megalosaurus was the world’s first official dinosaur, named in 1824 for bones discovered in the county of Oxfordshire in England, Lomax said.

This illustration shows a Megalosaurus, the dinosuar believed to have left behind the footprint

.James McKay/University of Manchester

The carnivorous dinosaur, one of the largest predators of its time, had a large skull armed with sharp, serrated teeth, and its body reached 8 to 9 meters (26.2 to 29.5 feet) in length.

Concerned that the footprint might erode more if left along the coast, the team arranged for it to be safely moved. Fossil collectors Mark, Aaron and Shae Smith carefully collected the footprint and donated it to the Scarborough Museum and Galleries.

“We’re incredibly grateful to Mark, Aaron and Shae for rescuing this important specimen and ensuring that it was saved for science,” Lomax said. “Now that the specimen has been studied, plans are in motion for it to go on public display, to spark the imagination of the next generation of fossil hunters.”

Dinosaur footprints dating back 200 million years discovered on Wales beach, researchers believe

Hudson and Lomax were able to study the footprint in detail once it was relocated, which enabled the researchers to learn more about the dinosaur who left the impression behind. The duo analyzed the shape of the footprint, number of toes and claw marks, as well as impressions made by the dinosaur’s skin.

“The most intriguing feature of our footprint is a long portion preserved at the back of the foot, which is an impression of what we call the metapodium,” Lomax said.

“The presence of this might suggest our large meat-eater was squatting down in the mud, before standing up and walking away. It’s fun to think this dinosaur might well have been strolling along a muddy coastal plain one lazy Sunday afternoon in the Jurassic.”

Fossil hunter Rob Taylor (left) initially spotted part of the footprint, but it wasn't fully exposed at the time. Marie Woods (right) found it five months later.

Marie Woods/University of Manchester

Hudson and Lomax also worked with geologist Dr. Mike Romano, an emeritus member of the faculty at the University of Sheffield, on the study. Romano has collected and studied hundreds of dinosaur tracks along the Yorkshire Coast over the past two decades. About 25 different types of dinosaur footprints have been identified in the area.

Footprints reveal that stegosaurs once stepped across Scotland

“The east coast of Yorkshire is known as the Dinosaur Coast for very good reasons,” Romano said in a statement.

“Although these different types do not necessarily represent the same number of different dinosaurs, they do indicate a diverse ecosystem of animals including both carnivores and herbivores that roamed the Jurassic coastal plain and (river) complex some 160-175 million years ago. The prints also allow us to interpret their behaviour. Thus, we have records of walking, running and swimming dinosaurs.”

Once work has been completed on the fossilized footprint, it will go on public display among others at the Scarborough Museum and Galleries’ Rotunda Museum.