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Submission + - Wood Burning Is Reintroducing Lead Pollution Into the Air, Scientists Find (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wood heating is reintroducing lead into the air of local communities and homes, a systematic investigation by academics has found. Overwhelming evidence of lead’s neurotoxicity meant the metal was banned as an additive in petrol more than 25 years ago. The research by academics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst began by analysing samples of particle pollution from five suburban and rural towns in the north-east US. They looked for tiny particles of potassium that are given off when wood is burned and also particles containing lead. Samples from seven winters revealed associations between potassium and lead. When there were more wood burning particles in a daily sample, there was more lead in the air, with clear straight-line relationships in four of the five towns.

The project was extended to 22 other towns across the US. The relationships between lead and potassium varied from place to place, being strongest in the Rocky Mountains. By factoring in the effects of temperature, moderate to strong associations in their analysis strengthened the conclusion that the extra lead came from wood burning. The lead concentrations were less than the US legal limits, but any exposure to the metal is harmful. [...] Although less than legal limits, lead particles are routinely measured in UK cities in winter when people are also burning wood. This is normally attributed to waste wood covered with old lead paint, but the Umass Amherst study suggests the metal is coming from the wood itself. This means that any wood burning could increase exposure in neighborhoods and at home.

Submission + - Bill To Block Publishers From Killing Online Games Advances In California (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A bill focused on maintaining long-term playable access to online games has passed out of the California Assembly’s appropriations committee, setting up a floor vote by the full legislative body. The advancement is a major win for Stop Killing Games‘ grassroots game preservation movement and comes over the objections of industry lobbyists at the Entertainment Software Association. California’s Protect Our Games Act, as currently written, would require digital game publishers who cut off support for an online game to either provide a full refund to players or offer an updated version of the game “that enables its continued use independent of services controlled by the operator.” The act would also require publishers to notify players 60 days before the cessation of “services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game.”

As currently amended, the act would not apply to completely free games and games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription. Any other game offered for sale in California on or after January 1, 2027, would be subject to the law if it passes. [...] In a formal statement of support for the bill sent to the California legislature, SKG wrote that “there is no other medium in which a product can be marketed and sold to a consumer and then ripped away without notice As live service games rise in popularity for game developers and gamers alike, end-of-life procedures are essential tools to ensure prolonged access to the games consumers pay to enjoy.”

The Entertainment Software Association, which helps represent the interests of major game publishers, publicly told the California Assembly last month that the bill misrepresents how modern game distribution actually works. “Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote. The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance. The ESA also said the bill would impose unreasonable expectations on publishers regarding licensing rights for music or IP rights, which are often negotiated on a time-limited basis. “A legal requirement to keep games playable indefinitely could place publishers in an impossible position—forcing them to renegotiate licenses indefinitely or alter games in ways that may not be legally or technically feasible,” they wrote.

Submission + - Longevity Escape Velocity Achieved Within Three Years (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by frdmfghtr
frdmfghtr writes: Popular Mechanics has a story about the rate at which lifespans are being extended by medical technology will surpass actual aging.

From the article:
"There's a controversial idea floating around the futurist community of "longevity escape velocity." It sounds super sci-fi, but it's basi-
cally the idea that as our life extension technology gets better, our life expectancy could increase by more than we age over a set period of time. For example, as medical innovations continue to move forward, we would still age a year over the span of a year. But our life expectancy would go up by, say, a year and two months, meaning we would functionally get two months of life back."

Submission + - Families of Tumbler Ridge mass shooting victims sue OpenAI (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by newbie_fantod
newbie_fantod writes: Families of the victims of the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting in British Columbia are suing OpenAI over it's failure to report the shooter as a rusk to police authorities.
OpenAI had flagged the shooter as a risk and banned her from the platform a month before the shooting which killed 6 children and 2 adults. The shooter had a history of repeated mental health issues with local RCMP which had resulted in earlier firearms confiscation.

Submission + - Two-thirds of babies watch screens — some for eight hours a day (thetimes.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: More than two-thirds of babies under two use screens, a report has found, and some are exposed for up to eight hours a day.

Nearly a third of newborns were found to be watching screens for more than three hours a day, while almost 20 per cent of infants of four to 11 months used screens for more than an hour a day.

The report comes after the government issued guidance that children under two do not use screens at all, apart from communal activities such as video-calling relatives.

Submission + - Should schools get rid of homework? Some educators are saying yes (npr.org)

Submitted by Tony Isaac
Tony Isaac writes: Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade.

Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.

Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.

Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.

Submission + - No sex please, we're on Mars! Inside the simulated red planet mission (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: No sex, no alcohol, no daylight, no fruit or vegetables, and no eye contact with your captors for 100 days.

It might sound like a hellish prison sentence, but these are the conditions for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) latest experiment to learn how humans cope in social isolation, before a mission to Mars.

On Thursday, six participants entered a sealed, simulated space station in Cologne, Germany, and will not be allowed out until August – unless something goes seriously wrong.

The trial – named Solis100 – is hoping to answer the question: What happens to a small team of humans who spend months isolated in a confined environment, without friends or family, under strict rules, cut off from the outside world?

Submission + - Sun sets on Japanese pacifism with lifting of military trade ban (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Japan has lifted a post-war ban on weapons exports as it moves away from a pacifist stance that has defined its defence policy since the end of the Second World War.

Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s prime minister, announced the plans after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, writing on X that the change was necessary given the “increasingly challenging security environment”.

Submission + - Government Workers Say They're Getting Inundated With Religion (wired.com)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: Federal workers across multiple U.S. agencies are complaining that Christianity is flooding into their workplaces in ways they've never seen before—and they feel powerless to speak up.

It started after President Trump returned to office and signed an executive order in February 2025 creating a White House Faith Office and similar offices inside federal agencies. Since then, religion has crept into everyday government life in a big way...Secretary Brooke Rollins sent an agency-wide Easter email titled "He has risen!" with explicitly Christian messaging. One employee called it "grotesque" and suspected AI wrote it. A formal complaint was filed with the Office of Special Counsel.

Department of Labor hosts monthly worship services with pastors and political figures. One speaker, Alveda King, said she was "more concerned about" nonreligious employees—a comment that rattled staffers who felt it implied atheists were going to hell.

Health and Human Services, under vaccine denier RFK Jr., expanded funding for faith-based addiction treatment and gave workers the afternoon off for Good Friday.

Department of Defense has seen the most dramatic shift, with Secretary Pete Hegseth hosting monthly prayer services featuring high-profile Christian nationalist figures like Doug Wilson, who has advocated for a theocracy and argued women shouldn't vote. Hegseth himself has called the U.S. war with Iran a "holy war."
Employees are afraid to push back—only 22.5% of federal workers in 2025 say they could report wrongdoing without retaliation, down from nearly 72% in 2024.

The government's position: these events are voluntary and legally permitted. A public policy professor quoted in the piece put it plainly: "The Trump administration has opened a new chapter in the integration of Christianity into the daily work of government."

Submission + - Fructose Isn't Just Sugar. It Acts More Like a Hormone (scienceblog.com) 1

Submitted by smazsyr
smazsyr writes: A new review says we've had fructose wrong for decades. The nine authors, led by Richard Johnson at the University of Colorado Anschutz, argue that fructose is not just a calorie. It is a signal. It tells the liver to make fat, hold on to water, and brace for a famine that never comes. The old story made sense for a bear fattening up on autumn berries. It makes less sense for a person drinking soda in March. The review reframes the WHO's sugar guideline. It is not really a warning about calories. It is a warning about a hormone-like molecule we have been dosing ourselves with, several times a day, for most of a century.

Comment Re:Charging Batteries (Score 3, Informative) 43

by ForkInMe (#66095224) Attached to: Rivian's Illinois Factory Will Run On Recycled EV Batteries
Power companies will also bill you a surcharge/Kw/hr based upon your peak energy usage over a 5 or 10 minute window during peak hours - and that surcharge lasts for 6 months or more. One 10 minute burst of power because you started everything up at once can cost you 10's of thousands of dollars more than if you just started up a bit slower. Probably more for a large factory like this.

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