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A New Technique Can Create Treatment Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria In Under A Week And Adapt To Antibiotic Resistance

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

A New Technique Can Create Treatment Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria In Under A Week And Adapt To Antibiotic Resistance

Kristen Eller, University of Colorado Boulder The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea A new technique my colleagues and I developed that can kill deadly, multidrug-resistant bacteria in real time could be used to generate targeted therapies that replace traditional, increasingly ineffective antibiotics. Bacteria follow the same basic genetic process that all organisms do: DNA, which contains instructions on how an organism will look and function, is copied into an intermediate form called RNA that can be translated into proteins and other molecules the organism can use. PNAs can be introduced to interrupt the process in which DNA is converted into protein or other useful biological molecules necessary for life. Kristen Eller, CC BY-ND The techniqu...

5 Essential Reads On Police Violence Against Black Men: As The Derek Chauvin Trial Begins In George Floyd Murder Case

2Apr

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VIDEO REELS

5 Essential Reads On Police Violence Against Black Men: As The Derek Chauvin Trial Begins In George Floyd Murder Case

The trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is underway in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chauvin, who is white, is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter in connection with the death of George Floyd, who was Black, during an arrest last May. For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, Floyd – handcuffed and face down on the pavement – said repeatedly that he could not breathe, while other officers looked on. A video of Floyd’s agonizing death soon went viral, triggering last summer’s unprecedented wave of mass protests against police violence and racism. Chauvin’s murder trial is expected to last up to four weeks. These five stories offer expert analysis and key background on police violence, Derek Chauvin’s record and racism in U.S. law ...

Freedom Of The Press: Why Lawsuits Against The Media May Not Hurt

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS

Freedom Of The Press: Why Lawsuits Against The Media May Not Hurt

Free speech advocates have long believed that suing a news organization threatens free speech. Democracy needs a press to be free to report, without fear or favor, the facts as it sees them. But two recent legal actions against news organizations indicate that the First Amendment provides sufficient free speech protection, even when punishing lawsuits are filed against the press. Falsehoods have flooded public discourse in recent years through outlets including talk radio, cable TV channels and social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram. The proliferation of these falsehoods has seemingly normalized the practice of spreading lies. Earlier this year Smartmatic, a little-known voter technology firm, sued cable channel Fox News for US$2.7 billion alleging defamat...

The Latest Country To Struggle Against Foreign Influence On Journalism, Australia Fighting Facebook

19Feb

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

The Latest Country To Struggle Against Foreign Influence On Journalism, Australia Fighting Facebook

Facebook has barred Australians from finding or sharing news on its platform, in response to an Australian government proposal to require social media networks to pay journalism organizations for their content. The move is already reducing online readership of Australian news sites. Similar to what happened when Facebook suspended Donald Trump’s account in January, the fight with Australia is again raising debate around social media networks’ enormous control over people’s access to information. Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, says his country “will not be intimidated” by an American tech company. My research in the history of international media politics has shown that a handful of rich countries have long exerted undue influence over how the rest of the world gets its news....

Prejudice May Make Donors Less Generous Against People With Darker Skin

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

Prejudice May Make Donors Less Generous Against People With Darker Skin

U.S. donors are inclined to give less generously to charities in developing countries when they believe those funds will help people with darker skin. That’s what I found out when I measured the implicit skin-tone bias of 750 people who completed an online survey. The donors who harbored more implicit bias against darker skin were less likely to give more than US$10 to the charity than those who were less prejudiced. How I did my work I recruited the participants through a virtual labor market known as Amazon MTurk. They were asked about their age, income and education, and other characteristics. Then I assessed their bias toward light skin or dark skin by relying on a variant of the Implicit Association Test, a common research tool for this purpose. Finally, I asked how much money they a...

Defending the 2020 election against hacking: 5 questions answered

4Apr

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CYBERCRIME

Defending the 2020 election against hacking: 5 questions answered

Journalist Bob Woodward reports in his new book, “Rage,” that the NSA and CIA have classified evidence that the Russian intelligence services placed malware in the election registration systems of at least two Florida counties in 2016, and that the malware was sophisticated and could erase voters. This appears to confirm earlier reports. Meanwhile, Russian intelligence agents and other foreign players are already at work interfering in the 2020 presidential election. Douglas W. Jones, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Iowa and coauthor of the book “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?,” describes the vulnerabilities of the U.S. election system in light of this news. 1. Though Woodward reports there was no evidence the election registration system malware had bee...

CRISPR can help combat the troubling immune response against gene therapy

4Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

LIFESTYLE

CRISPR can help combat the troubling immune response against gene therapy

One of the major challenges facing gene therapy - a way to treat disease by replacing a patient’s defective genes with healthy ones - is that it is difficult to safely deliver therapeutic genes to patients without the immune system destroying the gene, and the vehicle carrying it, which can trigger life-threatening widespread inflammation. Three decades ago researchers thought that gene therapy would be the ultimate treatment for genetically inherited diseases like hemophilia, sickle cell anemia and genetic diseases of metabolism. But the technology couldn’t dodge the immune response. Since then, researchers have been looking for ways to perfect the technology and control immune responses to the gene or the vehicle. However, many of the strategies tested so far have not been completely s...

Low-wage essential workers get less protection against coronavirus – and less information about how it spreads

4Apr

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COVID-19, WORK

Low-wage essential workers get less protection against coronavirus – and less information about how it spreads

Low-wage essential workers are more likely to face dangerous working conditions and food insecurity than high-wage workers, even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research provides some of the first data on the safety of essential workers during the pandemic. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 is not the “great equalizer,” as Andrew Cuomo once called it. In fact, inequality is getting worse. We found that across income levels, roughly two-thirds of essential workers were unable to practice social distancing. Low-wage essential workers include grocery clerks, home health aides and delivery drivers, while high-wage workers include nurses, doctors and managers. However, low-wage workers were two to three times more likely than high-wage workers – workers earning over US$40/hour – ...

Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data

22Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data

The claim that COVID-19 and its associated medical and social responses do not discriminate belies the history of how pandemics work and who is most impacted by them. States of emergency show that citizenship privileges some, is partial for others and disappears others. In our early analysis of national media coverage, those experts sharing the grim statistics of infections and deaths, those front-line workers seen as risking their lives and those who have lost loved ones are predominantly white. Black, Indigenous and racialized people, and many whose lives have been further imperilled by this pandemic, remain virtually disappeared from the Canadian landscape. That makes collective care for members across our communities untenable. We take pause and reflect on how this will impact Black ...

Terrorists, militants and criminal gangs join the fight against the coronavirus

13Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

Terrorists, militants and criminal gangs join the fight against the coronavirus

The favelas of Rio de Janeiro are a toxic mix of tight quarters, few if any health services and little clean water for residents to wash their hands. In these conditions ripe for the spread of the coronavirus, the Brazilian national government has yet to impose a curfew – but the criminal gangs who rule the favelas have. Gang members have been driving around their communities announcing to residents: “We’re imposing a curfew because nobody is taking this seriously. Whoever is in the street screwing around or going for a walk will receive a corrective and serve as an example.” This curfew is part of a growing phenomenon across the globe, where criminal gangs, insurgents and terrorist groups are mounting efforts against the pandemic. What are they doing? In Lebanon, the militant group Hez...