The NFL crafted its 2020 in such a way where they could adjust it, based on how the coronavirus develops.

Underwater Photographer of the Year celebrates photography beneath the surface of the ocean, lakes and rivers.More than 5,500 underwater pictures were entered in 13 categories by underwater photographers from 70 countries around the world.Scroll down to see the winning images.

Five nations witness an upward trajectory in new Covid-19 cases while Iran might be seeing a second wave

They will help the elderly residents buy medicines, vegetables, groceries and obtain travel passes if necessary

Stranded workers say they don’t want to wait in shelters till they get a train or be quarantined once they get home

When it comes to brains, is bigger better? Can the tiny brain of a newly hatched spiderling handle problems as adeptly as the brain of a larger adult spider?

The post Tiny, new brains prove just as adept as large, mature brains among tropical orb-web spiders appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. Approximately 160 million light years from Earth, the pair is the nearest known such phenomenon.

The post Newly discovered supermassive black holes are just 160 million light years from Earth appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

For the first time, researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Migratory Bird Center analyzed how songbirds are affected by both general noise and the acoustics of hard human-made surfaces in urban areas.

The post Urban songbirds adjust melodies to adapt to life in the big city, Smithsonian scientists find appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A new study has unveiled how the tiny hummingbird adapts to flying in heavy rain.

The post Video shows how hummingbirds adjust flight in heavy rain appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Cheeseburgers. Ice cream. French fries. These are a few of the culprits, doctors warn us, responsible for atherosclerosis, a disease commonly known as hardening of […]

The post Ancient mummies reveal atherosclerosis is very likely just a part of aging appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The new island visible in the satellite photograph is the top of a giant shield volcano located on the rift axis in the Red Sea where the continental plates of Africa and Arabia are pulling apart.

The post A hot new island has just surfaced in the Red Sea. What’s going on? Smithsonian scientists explain. appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Black holes sound wildly complicated. After all, there are all sorts of bizarre things going on: intense gravity, the warping of the fabric of space, the distortion of time itself. But when it comes to describing black holes, it comes down to just two numbers: the mass of the black hole and its spin. That’s right. Everything you physically need to describe a black hole is found in just these two numbers.

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Meet Smithsonian scientist Justin Touchon, a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Justin's work focuses on developmental ecology and reproductive plasticity of the hourglass treefrog (Dendropsophus ebraccatus) and red-eyed treefrog (Agalychnis callidryas). Justin and his advisor, Karen Warkentin, were the first to have witnessed the frogs laying eggs in water, in addition to doing so on land -- something with major implications for the evolutionary biology of similar creatures.

The post Meet Our Scientist: Justin Touchon, Frog Follower at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The post With the recent hatching of two Cuban crocodiles, the National Zoo just got a little snappier! appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys guideline for protecting the public from a toxic form of mercury is justifiable based on the latest scientific evidence, some children of women who consume large amounts of fish and seafood during pregnancy may be at special risk of neurological problems.

Legal responses to juvenile offending should be grounded in scientific knowledge about adolescent development and tailored to an individual offenders needs and social environment, says a new report from the National Research Council.

One of the nation’s largest surveys of crime victims is likely undercounting incidences of rape and sexual assault, making it difficult to ensure that adequate law enforcement resources and support services are available for victims, says a new report by the National Research Council.

Cognitive training, blood pressure management for people with hypertension, and increased physical activity all show modest but inconclusive evidence that they can help prevent cognitive decline and dementia, but there is insufficient evidence to support a public health campaign encouraging their adoption, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Every year in the United States, nearly 250,000 youths are tried, sentenced, or incarcerated as adults.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seen in February, has been released from the hospital after treatment for a gallbladder condition.; Credit: Patrick Semansky/AP

After being treated on Tuesday for a gallbladder infection at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was discharged on Wednesday.

"She is doing well and glad to be home," according to a Supreme Court press release.

The court said over the next few weeks Ginsburg will return to Johns Hopkins Hospital for follow-up outpatient visits, and for a nonsurgical procedure to remove the gallstone.

Ginsburg, 87, participated in a virtual Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday from her hospital room. The justices and lawyers held unique oral argument sessions by phone all week because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last year Ginsburg underwent three weeks of radiation for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas, and in December she was operated on for lung cancer.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court is no stranger to controversy, but it still gets higher marks in public opinion polls than the other branches of government. Now though, for the first time in memory, the court is not just split along ideological lines, but along political lines as well: All the conservatives are Republican appointees, all the liberals Democratic appointees. That division could put the court in the crosshairs of public opinion if it is forced to make decisions that affect the 2020 election.

Chief Justice John Roberts has worked hard to persuade the public that the justices are fair-minded legal umpires--not politicians in robes. That image got pretty scuffed up earlier this month when the conservative court majority shot down accommodations for the coronavirus that would have allowed six more days for absentee ballots to be received in Wisconsin's election for 500 school board seats, over 100 judicial seats, and thousands of other state and local positions.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the COVID-19 pandemic had become a public health crisis. Encouraged by local officials, about a million more voters than usual requested absentee ballots, and local officials were unable to keep up with the surge. To mitigate that problem, the lower courts allowed an extra six days for election officials to receive completed absentee ballots.

But the day before the election, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court ruling by a 5-to-4 vote. The result was that tens of thousands of people who had not yet even received their absentee ballots were forced to, as the dissenters put it, choose between their health and their right to vote.

The TV footage of people wearing masks waiting for hours to vote at the very few precincts that were open amid the pandemic was, to say the least, not a good look. Health officials in Milwaukee have since identified six voters and one poll worker who appear to have contracted the virus during the election.

The majority opinion was unsigned, so no one knows who the principal author was. But we do know some things.

First, the emergency appeal in the case came through the justice assigned to that region of the country, Brett Kavanaugh. Typically, when a justice refers a case to the full court, he or she writes a memo about the issues, likely with a recommendation. Kavanaugh almost certainly did that. But other justices would then chime in. And in a voting case, Chief Justice Roberts assuredly would have played a pivotal role.

"John Roberts' fingerprints are on this as chief justice and as someone who has owned this area of the law," says Joan Biskupic, a Supreme Court biographer and CNN legal analyst who is the author of a critically acclaimed biography about Roberts.

Indeed, Roberts was invested in voting-rights law as far back as 1982 when he was a staffer in the Reagan administration. Back then, he led the effort to narrow the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. When that failed, President Reagan signed the broad extension of the law, rejecting advice to veto it. But years later, on the Supreme Court, Roberts wrote the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, gutting a key provision of that law.

So, it was no surprise when the conservative majority refused to make even a modest accommodation to the pandemic. What was surprising was the tone of the opinion. Critics of the opinion, including some Roberts defenders, called the language "callous," "cynical," and "unfortunate."

In fact, the word "pandemic" appears not once in the court's unsigned opinion. Rather, the majority sought to portray the issue before the court as a "narrow, technical question." The majority said the lower court had overstepped the Supreme Court's established rule that courts should "ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election."

The dissenters replied that the court's treatment of the current situation as ordinary "boggles the mind." Writing for the dissenters, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opined that "a voter cannot deliver...a ballot she has not yet received. Yet tens of thousands of voters who timely requested absentee ballots" are being asked to do just that.

"I do think there's something to this idea that we need to stick with the rules even in the context of an emergency," says law professor Rick Hasen, an election expert at the University of California, Irvine.

He and others see the legal question before the court as a close call, but say the decision was, at the very least, tone deaf in light of the reality of a pandemic.

Hasen says that the court could have recognized "the inhumanity of making people vote in this way," but that instead the tone of the opinion was "really dismissive of the entire threat facing these voters."

Chief Justice Roberts has, on some occasions tried to bridge the two wings of the court, in a couple of big cases siding with the court's liberals, or sometimes trying to fashion a compromise. But as Hasen observes, "there really is not any case I can think of involving elections where Roberts has forged a larger consensus."

Roberts must have anticipated at least some of the outcry over the Wisconsin decision. He is, after all, an astute political observer.

But as any student of the court knows, Roberts is a reliable, and often leading member of the conservative majority when it comes to a whole host of issues involving campaigns, voting and elections. That includes decisions he has written striking down laws aimed at limiting the role of big money in campaigns and decisions upholding partisan gerrymanders. Moreover voting rights in particular "is an area of the law where John Roberts has not been deterred by anticipated public criticism," says Biskupic, his biographer.

For the chief, says Biskupic, "It's not just voting rights. It's a broader overlay of representation" in his decisions, a pattern that "often will favor Republicans, but more fundamentally, it seems to favor entrenched powers, the status quo in many states, against ordinary citizens. And we certainly saw that in Wisconsin."

Uncertainties around COVID-19 remain, with states facing decisions about when to reopen and what size of public gatherings are safe. As November inches closer, those decisions could affect the 2020 election. Who gets to vote, when, and how, are unanswered questions and states are surely exploring different plans to keep voters safe. But Roberts' Supreme Court may be the ultimate arbiter of what changes and accommodations to voting are allowed.

The majority opinion "tried to tell the public that this was a very small decision," says Biskupic. "But as the dissent pointed out, it laid down a very serious marker about how voters will be accommodated in the middle of the coronavirus crisis."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Attorney General William Barris pictured at a coronavirus task force meeting at the White House on March 23. The Justice Department is looking to crack down on coronavirus-related fraud.; Credit: Alex Brandon/AP

The coronavirus pandemic has brought out the good side of many Americans, but certainly not all Americans. Officials say that fraud related to COVID-19 — like hoarding equipment, price gouging and hawking fake treatments — are spreading as the country wrestles with the outbreak.

"It's a perfect ecosystem for somebody like a fraudster to operate in," said Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and the head of the Justice Department's COVID-19 price gouging and hoarding task force.

"People want to believe that there's a magic pill that they can take or that if they buy a certain kind of mask or a certain kind of protective gear that it's going to protect them and their families," he said. "That creates opportunities for the types of people that prey upon scared people. They prey upon their fear."

A month ago, Attorney General William Barr instructed federal prosecutors around the country to aggressively investigate and prosecute scams and other crimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. He also created the price gouging and hoarding task force and put Carpenito in charge of it.

From that perch, Carpenito has one of the best views of virus-related crime nationwide.

"Instead of seeing that tremendous support from all aspects of society, we're still seeing that sliver, that that dark underbelly, that small percentage of folks who instead of putting the interests of the country and support for those medical professionals that are putting themselves at risk in the forefront, they're finding ways to try and take advantage of this situation and illegally profiteer from it," he said. "And it's despicable."

The most prevalent kind of fraud that federal authorities are seeing at this point, he and others say, is tied to personal protective equipment like N95 masks, gloves or face shields.

In one notable case, prosecutors brought charges against a Georgia man, Christopher Parris, for allegedly trying to sell $750 million worth of masks and other protective equipment to the Department of Veterans Affairs but with a sizable advance payment.

The problem, prosecutors say, is the masks and other items didn't exist, at least not in the quantities Parris was offering.

Steven Merrill, the head of the FBI's financial crimes section, says the bureau refers to these sorts of operations as advance-fee schemes.

"We're getting many complaints that different entities are entering into these agreements, paying money upfront, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, and may or may not get any masks or other PPE ordered at all," Merrill said. "So our guidance to the public is to please be wary of these frauds and solicitations."

Other problems, such as hoarding and price gouging, can arise even when the medical gear does exist.

The FBI is trying to identify individuals who are stockpiling protective equipment and trying to sell it at exorbitant markups, sometimes 40 to 70 times the value, Merrill said.

A few weeks ago, the FBI seized nearly 1 million respirator masks, gloves and other medical gear from a Brooklyn man who was allegedly stockpiling them and selling them to nurses and doctors at what officials say was around a 700% markup.

The man, Baruch Feldheim, has been charged with lying to the FBI about price gouging. He's also been charged with allegedly assaulting a federal officer after he coughed on agents and claimed he had COVID-19.

The confiscated items, meanwhile, have been distributed to medical workers in the New York area.

Carpenito said the Justice Department has more than 100 investigations open into price gouging. It has hundreds more, he said, into other crimes tied to the pandemic, including fake treatments and cures.

In one case out of California, prosecutors charged a man who was allegedly soliciting large investments for what he claimed was a cure for COVID-19.

"He was doing so by broadcasting this scheme via, notably, YouTube, where had thousands of hits and views," Merrill said.

In a separate case out of Florida last week, the Justice Department got a court order to stop a Florida church from selling on its website an industrial bleach that was being marketed as a miracle treatment for the virus.

To be clear, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no cure at this point for the virus.

More than a month into this crisis, there's no sense COVID-related crime is going to slow down.

In fact, Carpenito and Merrill say that with the massive $2 trillion economic relief package beginning to be doled out, they expect to see even more fraud in the weeks and months ahead.

"What we're worried about is that not only do we have these existing conditions, but we are awaiting — like everybody in the country — the arrival of $2 trillion to hit the streets," Merrill said. "And anytime there's that much money out there, you can just multiply the amount of frauds that are going to take place. So we're preparing for many more complaints to come in and new schemes to arrive on a daily basis."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. in 2018.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent non-surgical treatment Tuesday for a benign gallbladder condition, according to a press release from the Supreme Court. She plans to participate in oral arguments from the hospital on Wednesday, according to the release.

In pain on Monday, Ginsburg went to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington after hearing the first-ever Supreme Court teleconference of oral arguments. At Sibley, she was diagnosed with acute cholecystitis, a condition in which a gallstone migrates to the cystic duct. She nonetheless participated in arguments from home on Tuesday, but was in enough pain that she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment of the infected duct later Tuesday.

Doctors not involved in Ginsburg's care said non-surgical treatment typically involves antibiotics and insertion of a tube to drain the infected duct.

Friends said the justice was in good spirits on Tuesday night, and watching the Metropolitan Opera on her iPad.

Ginsburg's emergency treatment coincides with the U.S. Supreme Court's historic live-streaming of its oral arguments in which the justices are participating by telephone because of the coronavirus. According to the court statement, Ginsburg, 87, is "resting comfortably" and plans to participate in oral arguments again on Wednesday when the court considers an important birth control case.

She is expected to remain in the hospital for another day or two.

Last year, Ginsburg completed three weeks of radiation treatment after a cancerous tumor was discovered on her pancreas. It was the fourth time in 20 years that she had been treated for cancer, and the second time in a year. In December 2019, she was operated on for lung cancer.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /Dani Pendergast for NPR

Friday, March 13, was the last time Alexandra Sullivan saw her fellow yearbook staffers in person.

"We were trying to get as many pictures of people as possible 'cause we knew we wouldn't be able to take any more," Sullivan, 18, says.

Like most U.S. public school students, Sullivan is learning from home now. And much like her lessons, her work on the yearbook continues.

Sullivan is the yearbook profiles editor at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. She's one of 10 seniors who were also on staff two years ago, when a gunman opened fire at their school. Back then, she and her classmates had to adapt to an unimaginable tragedy. Now, they have to adapt again – this time, to the pandemic.

"This book has to get done and we'll do whatever we have to do to finish it," she says, "which is exactly how we approached the '18 book."

Senior Caitlynn Tibbetts, the yearbook's co-editor-in-chief, was also on staff when the shooting happened. She says there's a collective grief among seniors over what their class — which has already lost so much — is losing now. They won't be able to dance together at prom, or walk across the stage at graduation.

"This class especially has gotten screwed over so much through the past four years," Tibbetts, 18, says. "The last two months were supposed to be the best, and they were supposed to make up for everything that we've been through. And it's really hard on us to kind of just watch it all disappear."

Amid all the uncertainty, she says, one thing is clear: The yearbook must get done, and it must get to students.

High school yearbooks are like time capsules. They record theater productions, which teams went to state finals, who was voted most likely to succeed.

And when a news event makes history – leaving a mark on students and society – it's the yearbook's job to document it. At Stoneman Douglas, that's meant changing plans just weeks before the yearbook is due.

Yearbook advisor Sarah Lerner says, "Having done one under unthinkable circumstances before, I hate to say that we're kind of, you know, used to it, but, for the seniors on staff, we are."

Two years ago, after the shooting, the yearbook staff pivoted to include remembrances of the victims. Tibbetts and Sullivan stepped up to help write them, and anything else that was needed at the last minute, while other yearbook staffers took time to attend funerals.

This year, they're making room for two new spreads about the pandemic.

"One of them is more of a factual-based one, how it's affected our community, including businesses," Tibbetts explains. "The other spread is focused on the effect it's had on us personally, both with online schooling and especially with seniors."

Logistically, putting the yearbook together and writing the new sections has been a challenge. Unlike 2018, they can't be in the same room with each other to finish the design.

"We have to social distance and our parents wouldn't let us go out," Tibbetts says.

They mainly rely on a group chat with everyone on the staff. "It can get hectic," Tibbetts says, "especially when it's all happening at like 12 a.m."

Lerner and her students missed the original deadline to finish the book, on April 6. But the printer, Walsworth, says the company is being flexible with Stoneman Douglas and other yearbook staffs across the country. Lerner says she's aiming to get the book in by the end of April.

Once the printed copies come back, more than 1,200 books will somehow have to be distributed to students. Lerner has some ideas for how to do that safely.

However, there's one important yearbook tradition they may not be able to save.

"We may not actually get to sign books this year," Lerner says. And that's been hard to accept.

"As a teacher, I really like to get my students to sign my book, you know, and I like to sign theirs and I like to see the kids carrying them around at school."

Lerner says she's sad that might not happen this year. But at least this time, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School aren't on their own.

"Unlike the 2018 books, this situation is not unique to us," she says. "So there's comfort in knowing that all staffs are going through the same issue. It's not just us."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

As you rush to buy something for your mom, con artists will be trying to make a dent in your wallet. Here are some common types of fraud to look out for not only this Mother's Day.

The post Scams to watch out for not just this Mother’s Day appeared first on WeLiveSecurity

Companies that adopt the environmental management system ISO 14000, designed to help reduce businesses’ environmental impacts, generally back this up with sincere investment in environmentally-friendly practices, research suggests. Researchers found that adoption of the ISO 14000 was not ‘greenwash’, but reflected a move towards more sustainable practices in both European and North American companies.

Using commercial seed mixtures to replant European grasslands tends to produce a smaller range of species than originally grew on the land. New research has identified several methods that successfully reproduce the original range of species, such as transferring of fresh hay or soil that contains seeds.

Conventional municipal waste-water treatment processes are based on aeration, which is energy intensive. Now, researchers have developed an alternative waste-water treatment process. In addition to avoiding the use of aeration in favour of filtration/biofiltration and encapsulated denitrification (the application of capsules containing nitrifiers, which convert ammonium into nitrate), the process also uses waste biosolids to generate electrical energy. The process has been tested in a pilot facility and found to require just 15% of the energy required for conventional approaches. Moreover, the process is energy positive, as the biosolids are able to generate more than enough energy to power the treatment plant. If this technology could be scaled up to the municipal level, it could significantly reduce the energy use and environmental impacts of waste-water treatment.

For some it was the realisation of the impossible dream, for others it was the sheer determination to return to the top. Meet 10 mums who are combining parenthood with a career as an elite athlete. Just don’t call them Super Mums.

The New York Times Thanksgiving helpline is open – on Twitter. Live help is available for those who tweet #AskNYT.

Armed with a husky voice and a $10 mask, BatDad has a cult following on Twitter Vine.

Most middle-aged women do not give up sex as they age, especially if sex is important to them.

The latest black hole discovery opens a whole new universe of not-so-big black holes.

The melt-off from the world's ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers over eight years of the past decade would have been enough to cover the United States in about 1

We know sea levels will rise, and by just looking at the Southeast region, it's easier to see how sea level rise will affect wildlife and culture.

Parents may be teaching babies to use food as a comfort, which leads to obesity later in life, studies show. But as a parent, I'm not buying it.

Roughly a third of all scanned mummies contained no body inside.

Artifacts uncovered at the bottom of Lake Titicaca show this religion pre-dated the Incas by 500 years.

Research is finding that probiotics might be useful in treating high blood pressure, anxiety, eczema and other maladies.