Cocaine buffet
Elephants cannot sue to get out of the zoo, court rules
Why Is Homeowners Insurance Getting So Expensive?
Microplastics block blood flow in the brain, mouse study reveals
A pioneering new treatment promises to tackle a wider range of cancers, with fewer side-effects than conventional radiotherapy. It also takes less than a second. In a series of vast underground caverns on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland, experiments are taking place which may one day lead to new generation of radiotherapy machines. The hope is that these devices could make it possible to cure complex brain tumours, eliminate cancers that have metastasised to distant organs, and generally limit the toll which cancer treatment exerts on the human body. The home of these experiments is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (Cern), best known to the world as the particle physics hub that developed the Large Hadron Collider, a 27 kilometre (16.7 mile)-long ring of superconducting magnets capable of accelerating particles to near the speed of light. […] in recent years, the centre’s unique expertise in accelerating high-energy particles has found a new niche – the world of cancer radiotherapy. […] By delivering radiation at ultra-high dose rates, with exposures of less than a second, they showed that it was possible to destroy tumours in rodents while sparing healthy tissue. […] Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio, US, is planning an early stage trial in children with metastatic cancer that has spread to their chest bones. Meanwhile, oncologists at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland are conducting a Phase 2 trial — where the details are finessed, including the optimum dose, how effective the treatment is and if there are any side effects – for patients with localised skin cancer.
Millions of women in the UK – including 69% of 18-24-year-olds – have used smartphone apps that track their periods. Many also tell them their “fertile window”: the days when they are most and least likely to get pregnant. But the quality of the data used to make these predictions varies drastically and is often limited and unreliable — inside the wild west of smartphone fertility apps
NFTs and memecoins are collectibles, not securities, according to White House crypto czar David Sacks […] The classification differences have vast regulatory implications. […] There is already a legal definition of “collectible” under U.S. tax code […] Sacks’ comments “suggests a viewpoint that it would not be appropriate to regulate these things the way we regulate securities.”
Trump’s new meme-coin sparks anger in crypto world
Earth’s Largest Organism Slowly Being Eaten, Scientist Says — This single genetic individual weighs around 6,000 tons (13.2 million pounds). By mass, it is the largest single organism on Earth. […] Pando has been around for thousands of years, potentially up to 14,000 years, despite most stems only living for about 130 years.
Some 50 years later, “the poem turned up again” and lo, it made more sense, “all but two lines of it.” The working and thinking we do in a lifetime equips us, but even toward the end of life, we’ll never be perfectly equipped, so we might as well get comfortable with partial understanding. [NY Times]
16 life lessons, and nine magic words
Rob Pruitt, Cocaine buffet, 1998 (Pruitt installed a 16-foot mirror with a line of real cocaine running down the center, in which visitors were welcome to partake.)
