At the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a wildlife preserve in central Kenya, lions and cheetahs mingle with zebras and elephants across many miles of savannah – grasslands with "whistling thorn" acacia trees dotting the landscape here and there. Twenty years ago, the savanna was littered with them. Then came invasive big-headed ants that killed native ants — and left the acacia trees vulnerable.

"For a long time, the number of rats in New York City was unknown, and a common urban legend declared there were up to five times as many rats as people. However, a 2023 study estimates that there are approximately 3 million rats in New York, which is close to a third of New York's human population"

In 1981, Wes Craven would ultimately find inspiration from an unlikely source: a string of bizarre, sleep-related deaths.

_"Malignant hyperthermia is a severe reaction to particular anesthetic drugs that are often used during surgery and other invasive procedures.

If given these drugs, people at risk of malignant hyperthermia may experience a rapid increase in heart rate and body temperature (hyperthermia), abnormally fast breathing, muscle rigidity, breakdown of muscle fibers (rhabdomyolysis), and increased acid levels in the blood and other tissues (acidosis). Without prompt treatment and cessation of the drugs, the body's reaction can cause multiple organs to be unable to function, including the heart (cardiac arrest) and kidneys (renal failure), and it can cause a blood clotting abnormality called disseminated intravascular coagulation.

People at increased risk of this disorder are said to have malignant hyperthermia susceptibility. Affected individuals may never know they have the condition unless they have a severe reaction to anesthesia during a surgical procedure or they undergo testing (for instance, if susceptibility is suspected because a family member had a severe reaction). Malignant hyperthermia may not occur every time anesthesia is used. Many individuals who develop a severe reaction have previously been exposed to a triggering drug and not had a reaction.

Affected individuals may be at increased risk for "awake" malignant hyperthermia, in which the severe reaction occurs in response to physical activity, often while sick, rather than in reaction to exposure to a triggering drug."_

The scariest part to me is that you may not even know you have this condition, successfully complete a surgery, and then later you die from the reaction. This fact did not help my anesthesia and surgery fears!

Get your Cute Girlfriend

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61066473

New research in a population from Singapore suggests that individuals who drink coffee and tea appear to have a lower risk of Parkinson's disease, even if they are genetically predisposed to it.

Charlies (iasip) MOM??

Why YSK: In many places it can take years for a case to come to trial. Judges have to make a decision in such cases to determine whether an accused person should be jailed in the interim. In recent years many jurisdictions have adopted algorithmic tools that essentially create a “risk profile” which assigns a value. Threshold values are used to classify the scores (for example “High Risk”). Some models include iterative algorithms (machine learning) and some do not.

The use of these models in pretrial assessments can have some major consequences. As you might know—aggregate data cannot be used to make sound predictions about individuals. What aggregate data allows you to do is model trends, correlations, and averages across groups.

We often use these profiles to help us make predictions on behalf of individuals. This is what “risk factors” in the medical sciences are usually doing. If 80% of people who are vegetarian and weigh 120 lbs have bone density issues later in life I might want to look at interventions to reduce that risk even if I could potentially fall into the 20% who have no issue.

While this seems acceptable with the intent to protect my health, I would be quite unhappy if a similarly accurate model was used to determine whether or not the state considers me a risk prior to trial. Now if I fall in the 20% I may turn out to be innocent and held against my will. Courts use similar tools to decide whether a child should be removed from a home prior to CPS investigation.

Now add in the fact that these models are fed existing criminal justice data which is often flawed and almost always contains a racial bias.

One familiar example is that black people are arrested at higher rates than other groups due to well documented racial bias in both policing policies and police themselves. A pretrial risk assessment tool that takes prior arrests into account will obviously perpetuate this bias.

Someone from the ACLU recently gave a presentation on this topic and I had never heard of it! Thought others might be interested as well.

"Roman texts convey little meaningful information about Indian political dynasties and offer even less about the practical operations of Indo-Roman trade. A series of Egyptian documents has recently revolutionised understanding of the logistical and political requirements for moving bulk goods from India across the Sahara and down the Nile to the Mediterranean market. One of these records, the so-called Muziris Papyrus, is a second-century loan contract between a Roman financier and a merchant in Muziris, on the southwest coast of India. The agreement concerns a large cargo shipment to Alexandria that left India on the Hermapollon, which sailed to Myos Hormos on the Red Sea. Weighing more than 250 tons, the freight included 140 tons of pepper, 80 boxes of spikenard, and 167 elephant tusks. It was then transported by camel across the Sahara to the Nile port of Coptos before making the ten-day voyage downriver to Alexandria. Loading and unloading the vessels in itself would have been an onerous task, while the overland desert journey would have required scores of camels and camel drivers, an equally demanding and expensive operation. The value of the cargo, some 6,911,852 drachmas – worth between 23 and 28 metric tons of silver – more than defrayed the transportation costs. If 120 or so vessels were unloading in Egypt annually, the ancient Sahara must have teemed with desert caravans and river flotillas ladened with the products of Mediterranean–Indian Ocean exchange."

However Sakata managed to last until the director said cut.

Ford Motor Co. has filed for a patent on technology that could remotely shut down your radio or air conditioning, lock you out of your vehicle, or prompt it to ceaselessly beep if you miss car payments. Ford said it has no plans to use the technology, contained in just one of the many patents filed by the auto-making giant.

Still, it emerges at a troubling time for car owners. Loan delinquencies have been steadily ticking back up from their pandemic lull. Cox Automotive data showed severely delinquent auto loans in January hitting their highest point since 2006. The use of technology to aid repossessions isn’t new, but the patent application is wide-ranging, even proposing the idea that an autonomous vehicle could drive itself to a “more convenient” location to be collected by a tow truck.

Bugles Across America reveals secret about military funerals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narwhal#Tusk

The most conspicuous characteristic of the male narwhal is a single long tusk, which is in fact a canine tooth that projects from the left side of the upper jaw, through the lip and forms a left-handed helical spiral. The tusk grows throughout life, reaching a length of about 1.5 to 3.1 m (4.9 to 10.2 ft). It is hollow and weighs around 10 kg (22 lb). About one in 500 males has two tusks, occurring when the right canine also grows out through the lip. Only about 15 per cent of females grow a tusk, which typically is smaller than a male tusk, with a less noticeable spiral. Collected in 1684, there is only one known case of a female growing a second tusk.

Scientists have long speculated on the biological function of the tusk. Proposed functions include use of the tusk as a weapon, for opening breathing holes in sea ice, in feeding, as an acoustic organ and as a secondary sex character. The leading theory has long been that the narwhal tusk serves as a secondary sex character of males, for nonviolent assessment of hierarchical status on the basis of relative tusk size. However, detailed analysis reveals that the tusk is a highly innervated sensory organ with millions of nerve endings connecting seawater stimuli in the external ocean environment with the brain. The rubbing of tusks together by male narwhals is thought to be a method of communicating information about characteristics of the water each has travelled through, rather than the previously assumed posturing display of aggressive male-to-male rivalry. In August 2016, drone videos of narwhals surface-feeding in Tremblay Sound, Nunavut showed that the tusk was used to tap and stun small Arctic cod, making them easier to catch for feeding. The tusk cannot serve a critical function for the animal's survival, as females — which generally do not have tusks — typically live longer than males. Therefore, the general scientific consensus is that the narwhal tusk is a sexual trait, much like the antlers of a stag, the mane of a lion, or the feathers of a peacock.

Direct gaze - that is, eye contact with another person - causes the subcortical system to overload, and the parts of the brain that deal with arousal and calming are failing to strike a balance. The end result is that direct eye contact triggers a physiological response which makes it physically uncomfortable to maintain eye contact.

The Toba eruption (sometimes called the Toba supereruption or the Youngest Toba eruption) was a supervolcano eruption that occurred around 74,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of Earth's largest known explosive eruptions. The Toba catastrophe theory holds that this event caused a severe global volcanic winter of six to ten years and contributed to a 1,000-year-long cooling episode, leading to a genetic bottleneck in humans.A number of genetic studies have revealed that 50,000 years ago, the human ancestor population greatly expanded from only a few thousand individuals. Science journalist Ann Gibbons has posited that the low population size was caused by the Toba eruption. Geologist Michael R. Rampino of New York University and volcanologist Stephen Self of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa have supported her suggestion. In 1998, the bottleneck theory was further developed by anthropologist Stanley...

This is absolutely the coolest thing I learned today!

Katherine Johnston and Euler's method