181102488
submission
fjo3 writes:
This week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively banned the sale of nearly all wireless routers in the U.S., in yet another example of the government making Americans' consumer decisions for them.
Ninety-six percent of American adults use the internet, and 80 percent of them use wireless routers—devices that transmit a signal throughout your home via radio waves and allow you to get online without plugging into the wall.
In a Monday announcement, the FCC deemed "all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries" potentially unsafe. This followed a national security determination last week, in which members of executive branch agencies concluded that "routers produced in a foreign country, regardless of the nationality of the producer, pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons."
181101344
submission
fjo3 writes:
Negative stereotypes about aging are pervasive. A global survey in 2024 found that 65 percent of health care workers and 80 percent of the general population falsely believed that developing dementia is a normal part of aging.
“The stereotype of an older person is that they’re dependent, that they have cognitive impairment,” said Mark Lachs, co-chief of the division of geriatrics and palliative medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian Hospital and professor of medicine at Cornell’s medical school. While Lachs said that may sometimes be true, “the vast majority of older people don’t have any cognitive impairment. The vast majority of older people do not have a need for assistance.”
In the last couple of decades, there has been more research focused on the positive aspects of getting older. Lachs noted that judgment and wisdom improve with age, as does emotional intelligence and even happiness.
181088388
submission
fjo3 writes:
The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole — it’s the conclusion drawn directly from the Treasury Department’s own consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2025, released last week to near-total media silence. The numbers: $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in total liabilities as of September 30, 2025.
181086698
submission
fjo3 writes:
Walking into his kitchen, Tim Yoder recoiled at a message on his refrigerator door: “Shop Samsung water filters.”
Yoder, a supply-chain manager in Chicago, owns a Samsung Electronics Family Hub fridge. He paid $1,400 for an appliance that came with a 32-inch screen on the door that allows him to control other Samsung gadgets, pull up recipes or stream music.
181086686
submission
fjo3 writes:
Joy Hui Lin, a book researcher living in Paris, was walking through the trendy Le Marais district last summer when two male university students chased her down to ask about her outfit.
Lin wasn’t surprised. It’s common for Instagram accounts to do street photography in the area and she prides herself on her fashion—that day, she was in “a nice sundress and a very big stylish hat,” she tells WIRED.
“It was all very cute until the end of the conversation, when one of them was like, ‘So, these glasses have been recording this whole time.’”
Lin was taken aback at the young man not asking permission to film her—especially as he was now inquiring whether he could share the video online. It felt like a “violation,” Lin says. The man in the glasses, she adds, “didn't seem to understand that it could be very off-putting to record someone first without asking.”
181070776
submission
fjo3 writes:
Juicier steaks could soon be served up after barley was given the go-ahead to become Britain’s first gene-edited crop.
In an effort to fatten up cows and get them to market faster, scientists have altered the DNA of Golden Promise barley to increase its fat content.
It can now be submitted to the Food Standards Agency, which will assess its safety. If accepted, it will be the UK’s first gene-edited crop that can be sold.
181006794
submission
fjo3 writes:
Regulations have made it harder and more expensive to deploy nuclear power in the United States. But in January, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rolled back more than a dozen regulations, including the "aircraft impact assessment." The rule, which was finalized in 2009, required developers of new power plants to demonstrate to the NRC that their reactor core would remain intact in the event of an improbable 9/11-style plane crash.
180996694
submission
fjo3 writes:
Christopher Buck is fermenting a vaccine in his kitchen. You can too.
Specifically, Buck brews and quaffs a hazy beer that induces immunity against the BK virus, also known as human polyomavirus. Buck argues that you have the right to home-brew vaccines as a way to get around the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) yearslong vaccine approval process.
Buck joins the pantheon of pioneeringvaccine self-experimenters. Among them are French physician and Nobel Prize winner Charles Jules Henri Nicolle, who used crushed lice to inoculate himself against typhus; Jonas Salk, who injected himself with his own polio vaccine; and Albert Sabin, who ingested his oral polio vaccine. In 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of researchers associated with Harvard launched the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative. They developed and self-administered a do-it-yourself nasal vaccine months before commercial vaccines against the coronavirus became available. They made their DIY recipe for the COVID-19 vaccine available to anyone.
180921626
submission
fjo3 writes:
President Donald Trump on Friday demanded unconditional surrender from Iran, raising fears of a prolonged war that could wreak havoc on the global oil and gas market. The war has already brought traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route for energy supplies, to a near standstill.
Qatar’s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, told The Financial Times on Friday that crude prices could reach $150 per barrel in the coming weeks if oil tankers were unable to pass through the Strait.
This could “bring down the economies of the world,” Kaabi said.
180921610
submission
fjo3 writes:
Most Americans expect their minds and bodies to slowly fall apart with age. So do most of their doctors. A Yale University study says that expectation is not just wrong for many older adults. It turns out it may be part of what makes it come true.
Researchers found that nearly half of adults 65 and older showed measurable improvement in brain function, physical mobility, or both between their first and final assessments over up to 12 years of follow-up. People who held more positive beliefs about aging were significantly more likely to be in that improving group. That held true even for people who were already healthy and functioning well at the start. A sunnier outlook on getting older turned out to predict genuinely better health down the road.
180921600
submission
fjo3 writes:
The first remote robotic surgery has been hailed as a "milestone" by medics after a surgeon in London operated on a patient with prostate cancer who was some 2,400km away in Gibraltar. The pioneering procedure went "extremely well", with patient Paul Buxton reporting feeling "fantastic" just four days after the surgery.
180921594
submission
fjo3 writes:
Pharmaceutical company Sumitomo Pharma said it received the green light for the manufacture and sale of Amchepry, its Parkinson's disease treatment that transplants stem cells into a patient's brain.
Japan's health ministry also gave the go-ahead to ReHeart, heart muscle sheets developed by medical startup Cuorips that can help form new blood vessels and restore heart function, media reports said.
The treatments could be on the market and rolled out to patients as early as this summer, reports said, citing the health ministry, becoming the world's first commercially available medical products using (iPS) cells.
180905146
submission
fjo3 writes:
Effective January 1, 2027, providers of computer operating systems in California will be required to implement age verification. That's just part of a wave of state and national laws attempting to limit children's access to potentially risky content without considering the perils such laws themselves pose. Now, not a moment too soon, over 400 computer scientists have signed an open letter warning that the rush to protect children from online dangers threatens to introduce new risks including censorship, centralized power, and loss of privacy. They caution that age-verification requirements "might cause more harm than good."
180868400
submission
fjo3 writes:
This untimely light contributes to the loss of insect and bird populations. It disrupts migration, the seasonal patterns of plants and the circadian rhythms of animals ranging from sea turtles to mountain lions. Humans lose sleep because of artificial light, which potentially contributes to obesity and cancer. Light as faint as a full moon has been shown to alter our sleep patterns. Reflect Orbital aspires to produce for its customers the light of up to 1,000 moons by 2028 and 360,000 moons by 2035.Link to Original Source
180837330
submission
fjo3 writes:
Earth's natural 'humming' vibration has experienced a series of unusual spikes in recent weeks, raising questions about whether the phenomenon could influence mood and cognition.
Known as the Schumann Resonance, this vibration is often described as the Earth's 'heartbeat,' a steady electromagnetic rhythm generated by lightning and trapped between the planet's surface and the ionosphere.
