Healthy Rabbit Hole

News: Protesters in Russia's Far East challenge Putin’s authority, demand his resignation. Since July 11, esidents have been demanding the release of the former regional governor, Sergei Furgal, who was arrested two days earlier by masked federal agents on charges of organizing contract killings 15 years ago. Furgal, now in pretrial detention in a Moscow prison, maintains his innocence, and locals are demanding he be released and face the charges in his hometown. NPR 24 July 2020

News: Senior administration officials would not address whether the Trump administration intends to comply with an order to close a U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, China. CNBC 24 July 2020

News: Hagia Sophia hosts first prayer since reopening, 86 years after converting to a museum. Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started the service by reciting from the Quran. Fox News 24 July 2020

News: The magnetic properties of a chromium halide can be tuned by manipulating the non-magnetic atoms in the material, a team, led by Boston College researchers, reports in the most recent edition of Science Advances. Phys.org 24 July 2020

News: US officials and scientists have begun laying the groundwork for a more secure "virtually unhackable" internet based on quantum computing technology. Phys.org 24 July 2020

News: An origin story for a family of oddball meteorites. Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have determined that the parent body of these rare meteorites was indeed a multilayered, differentiated object that likely had a liquid metallic core. This core was substantial enough to generate a magnetic field that may have been as strong as Earth’s magnetic field is today. Phys.org 24 July 2020

News: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged Friday that a significant number of COVID-19 patients do not recover quickly, and instead experience ongoing symptoms, such as fatigue and cough. As many as a third of patients who were never sick enough to be hospitalized are not back to their usual health up to three weeks after their diagnosis, the report found. NBC News 24 July 2020

News: In a new report, Chao Ma and an interdisciplinary team of scientists in China, the Netherlands, and Germany, rationally designed proton-conducting protein constituent materials that exceeded previously reported proteinaceous (consisting of or containing protein) systems. They developed the structures through stepwise exploration of peptide sequences from intrinsically disordered coils to protein-supercharged polypeptide chimeras. The new design paradigm offers potential for bioprotonic device fabrication at the interfaces of artificial and biological systems, the results are published on Science Advances. Phys.org 24 July 2020

News: Historic carbon dioxide decline could hold clues for future climate. A new study led by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) provides a clearer snapshot of conditions during the last ice age—when global ice sheets were at their peak—and could even lead to better models for future climate projections. Phys.org 24 July 2020

News: Second Stimulus Check Confirmed In GOP Proposal, But Not $1,200 Amount Or $75,000 Income Cap. Forbes 24 July 2020

News: Federal court issued a restraining order on federal agents in Portland, Oregon blocking them from attacking or arresting journalists and legal observers at Portland protests. ACLU 23 July 2020

News: Trump cancels Jacksonville portion of Republican convention planned for August due to COVID. USA Today 23 July 2020

News: Near-field light research advances particle manipulation, high resolution microscopy, and more. Phys.org 23 July 2020

News: Florida State University researchers have new insight into the tiny packages that cells use to move molecules, a structure that is key to cellular metabolism, drug delivery and more. Their research uncovered more about the proteins that form the outer structure of those cellular packages. The work was published in the journal Science Advances. Phys.org 23 July 2020

News: Silicon core fishbone waveguide extends frequency comb. Zhang and colleagues, reporting in Advanced Photonics, have shown a way to make a graded index waveguide that allows the width of a frequency comb to be more than doubled (compared to a normal waveguide). Phys.org 23 July 2020

News: Genome-mapping reveals ‘supermutation’ resulting in cryptic coloration in stick insects. Phys.org 23 July 2020

News: New genome-editing technologies developed by researchers in J. Keith Joung’s laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have the potential to help understand disease-associated genetic mutations that are based on C-to-G (cytosine to guanine) single base changes. The new base editors are also designed to minimize unintended (“off-target”) mutations that could potentially cause undesirable side effects. Phys.org 23 July 2020

News: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC that the Republican coronavirus relief plan will extend enhanced unemployment insurance “based on approximately 70% wage replacement.” CNBC 23 July 2020

News: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler tear gassed after speaking with protesters on presence of federal agents. CNN 23 July 2020

News: A former Nazi concentration camp guard was convicted of thousands of counts of being an accessory to murder and given a two-year suspended prison sentence Thursday, a court announced. CNN 23 July 2020

News: Air raids by Afghan security forces against Taliban fighters have killed at least 45 people, including civilians, according to a local official. AlJazeera 23 July 2020

News: China promises to “react with firm countermeasures” in response to US force closing of China’s Houston consulate. 22 July 2020

News: The hurricanes in the Caribbean became more frequent and their force varied noticeably around the same time that classical Mayan culture in Central America suffered its final demise: We can gain these and other insights by looking at the climate archive created under the leadership of geoscientists from Goethe University and now presented in an article in Nature journal’s Scientific Reports on 16 July. Phys.org 22 July 2020

News: Earliest humans stayed at the Americas ‘oldest hotel’ in Mexican cave. A cave in a remote part of Mexico was visited by humans around 30,000 years ago—15,000 years earlier than people were previously thought to have reached the Americas. ainstaking excavations of Chiquihuite Cave, located in a mountainous area in northern Mexico controlled by drugs cartels, uncovered nearly 2000 stone tools from a small section of the high-altitude cave. Phys.org 22 July 2020

News: Diamonds shine a light on hidden currents in graphene. JQI Fellow Ronald Walsworth and Quantum Technology Center (QTC) Postdoctoral Associate Mark Ku, along with colleagues from several other institutions, including Professor Amir Yacoby and Postdoctoral Fellow Tony Zhou at Harvard, have developed a way to use diamonds to see the elusive details of electrical currents. Phys.org 22 July 2020

News: New study shows retreat of East Antarctic ice sheet during previous warm periods. Phys.org 22 July 2020

News: A team of researchers with Oregon State University has confirmed the first active leak of sea-bed methane in Antarctica. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes their trip to Cinder Cones located at McMurdo Sound situated in the Ross Sea, and why they believe it signals very serious repercussions for global warming. Phys.org 22 July 2020