Back in April we took a look at the trailer for Super Farming Boy from developer LemonChili. It took the …

Continue reading "‘Super Farming Boy’ Available for Pre-Order on iOS with 20% Discount, Launch Planned for Next Year"

Earlier this month, Bandai Namco Entertainment and developer Ganbarion revealed Dragon Ball Project:Multi, the franchise’s first 4v4 team based battle …

Continue reading "‘Dragon Ball Project:Multi’ Gets New Character Trailers Showcasing Super Saiyan Goku, Krillin, and Piccolo"

In our tour through retro games available to buy on Switch, we’ve worked our way through the NES, Game Boy, …

Continue reading "The 10 Best Super NES Games on Nintendo Switch, Plus 5 We’d Like to See – SwitchArcade Special"

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for August 30th, 2024. In today’s article, we have a handful …

Continue reading "SwitchArcade Round-Up: ‘Umamusume: Pretty Derby’, ‘Super Dark Deception’, Plus Today’s Other Releases and Sales"

But the streaming gaming revolution "is not going to happen overnight."

ACON last week released a short video to highlight new evidence in the fight to end HIV by 2020. As part of the ENDING HIV platform, the [TREAT EARLY] campaign was ...

The post Video highlights new evidence to support treating HIV early appeared first on Star Observer.

Amazon is closing down Freevee, its free ad-supported video on demand service. This platform was home to original programming as well as more than 100 originals from the Prime Video roster. Freevee will be phased out over the coming weeks, and its content will become available as part of Prime Video. The ad-supported tier of Prime Video is included as part of Amazon's Prime membership for $15 a month.

"To deliver a simpler viewing experience for customers, we have decided to phase out Freevee branding," an Amazon spokesperson told Variety. "There will be no change to the content available for Prime members, and a vast offering of free streaming content will still be accessible for non-Prime members, including select originals from Amazon MGM Studios, a variety of licensed movies and series, and a broad library of FAST channels – all available on Prime Video."

The free viewing platform went through several rebrands since its original launch as IMDb Freedive in January 2019. It entered its final phase as Freevee in April 2022.

A VOLATILE year for our superannuation savings looks likely to end in positive territory as long as global markets don’t crash this week.

Indian pharma and biotech companies are confident that under the new US President Donald Trump, its strengths in high quality generics manufacture and export will continue to command respect. This view is

Bormioli Pharma has announced a partnership with Chiesi, an international, research-focused biopharmaceutical company (Chiesi Group), to supply Carbon Capture PET bottles.

A strange supernova remnant first appeared as a “guest star” seen in 1181 by sky watchers in China and Japan

Long before it orbited Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope starred in a famous Superman comic

Famous people who die at age 27, such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Amy Winehouse, get even more famous because of the mythology surrounding that number—an example of how modern folklore emerges

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has revolutionized healthcare by providing radiation-free, non-invasive 3-D medical images. However, MRI scanners often consume 25 kilowatts or more to power magnets producing magnetic fields up to 1.5 tesla. These requirements typically limits scanners’ use to specialized centers and departments in hospitals.

A University of Hong Kong team has now unveiled a low-power, highly simplified, full-body MRI device. With the help of artificial intelligence, the new scanner only requires a compact 0.05 T magnet and can run off a standard wall power outlet, requiring only 1,800 watts during operation. The researchers say their new AI-enabled machine can produce clear, detailed images on par with those from high-power MRI scanners currently used in clinics, and may one day help greatly improve access to MRI worldwide.

To generate images, MRI applies a magnetic field to align the poles of the body’s protons in the same direction. An MRI scanner then probes the body with radio waves, knocking the protons askew. When the radio waves turn off, the protons return to their original alignment, transmitting radio signals as they do so. MRI scanners receive these signals, converting them into images.

More than 150 million MRI scans are conducted worldwide annually, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. However, despite five decades of development, clinical MRI procedures remain out of reach for more than two-thirds of the world’s population, especially in low- and middle-income countries. For instance, whereas the United States has 40 scanners per million inhabitants, in 2016 there were only 84 MRI units serving West Africa’s population of more than 370 million.

This disparity largely stems from the high costs and specialized settings required for standard MRI scanners. They use powerful superconducting magnets that require a lot of space, power, and specialized infrastructure. They also need rooms shielded from radio interference, further adding to hardware costs, restricting their mobility, and hampering their availability in other medical settings.

Scientists around the globe have already been exploring low-cost MRI scanners that operate at ultra-low-field (ULF) strengths of less than 0.1 T. These devices may consume much less power and prove potentially portable enough for bedside use. Indeed, as the Hong Kong team notes, MRI development initially focused on low fields of about 0.05 T, until the introduction of the first whole-body 1.5 T superconducting scanner by General Electric in 1983.

The new MRI scanner (top left) is smaller than conventional scanners, and does away with bulky RF shielding and superconducting magnetics. The new scanner’s imaging resolution is on par with conventional scanners (bottom).Ed X. Wu/The University of Hong Kong

Current ULF MRI scanners often rely on AI to help reconstruct images from what signals they gather using relatively weak magnetic fields. However, until now, these devices were limited to solely imaging the brain, extremities, or single organs, Udunna Anazodo, an assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University in Montreal who did not take part in the work, notes in a review of the new study.

The Hong Kong team have now developed a whole-body ULF MRI scanner in which patients are placed between two permanent neodymium ferrite boron magnet plates—one above the body and the other below. Although these permanent magnets are far weaker than superconductive magnets, they are low-cost, readily available, and don’t require liquid helium or to be cooled to superconducting temperatures. In addition, the amount of energy ULF MRI scanners deposit into the body is roughly one-thousandth that from conventional scanners, making heat generation during imaging much less of a concern, Anazodo notes in her review. ULF MRI is also much quieter than regular MRI, which may help with pediatric scanning, she adds.

The new machine consists of two units, each roughly the size of a hospital gurney. One unit houses the MRI device, while the other supports the patient’s body as it slides into the scanner.

To account for radio interference from both the outside environment and the ULF MRI’s own electronics, the scientists deployed 10 small sensor coils around the scanner and inside the electronics cabinet to help the machine detect potentially disruptive radio signals. They also employed deep learning AI methods to help reconstruct images even in the presence of strong noise. They say this eliminates the need for shielding against radio waves, making the new device far more portable than conventional MRI.

In tests on 30 healthy volunteers, the device captured detailed images of the brain, spine, abdomen, heart, lung, and extremities. Scanning each of these targets took eight minutes or less for image resolutions of roughly 2 by 2 by 8 cubic millimeters. In Anazodo’s review, she notes the new machine produced image qualities comparable to those of conventional MRI scanners.

“It’s the beginning of a multidisciplinary endeavor to advance an entirely new class of simple, patient-centric and computing-powered point-of-care diagnostic imaging device,” says Ed Wu, a professor and chair of biomedical engineering at the University of Hong Kong.

The researchers used standard off-the-shelf electronics. All in all, they estimate hardware costs at about US $22,000. (According to imaging equipment company Block Imaging in Holt, Michigan, entry-level MRI scanners start at $225,000, and advanced premium machines can cost $500,000 or more.)

The prototype scanner’s magnet assembly is relatively heavy, weighing about 1,300 kilograms. (This is still lightweight compared to a typical clinical MRI scanner, which can weigh up to 17 tons, according to New York University’s Langone Health center.) The scientists note that optimizing the hardware could reduce the magnet assembly’s weight to about 600 kilograms, which would make the entire scanner mobile.

The researchers note their new device is not meant to replace conventional high-magnetic-field MRI. For instance, a 2023 study notes that next-generation MRI scanners using powerful 7 T magnets could yield a resolution of just 0.35 millimeters. Instead, ULF MRI can complement existing MRI by going to places that can’t host standard MRI devices, such as intensive care units and community clinics.

In an email, Anazodo adds this new Hong Kong work is just one of a number of exciting ULF MRI scanners under development. For instance, she notes that Gordon Sarty at the University of Saskatchewan and his colleagues are developing that device that is potentially even lighter, cheaper and more portable than the Hong Kong machine, which they are researching for use in whole-body imaging on the International Space Station.

Wu and his colleagues detailed their findings online 10 May in the journal Science.

This article appears in the July 2024 print issue as “Compact MRI Ditches Superconducting Magnets.”

UPDATE 31 OCTOBER 2024: No. 1 no longer. The would-have-been groundbreaking study published in Nature Communications by Amit Goyal et al. claiming the world’s highest-performing high-temperature superconducting wires yet has been retracted by the authors.

The journal’s editorial statement that now accompanies the paper says that after publication, an error in the calculation of the reported performance was identified. All of the study’s authors agreed with the retraction.

The researchers were first alerted to the issue by Evgeny Talantsev at the Mikheev Institute of Metal Physics in Ekaterinburg, Russia, and Jeffery Tallon at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. In a 2015 study, the two researchers had suggested upper limits for thin-film superconductors, and Tallon notes follow-up papers showed these limits held for more than 100 known superconductors. “The Goyal paper claimed current densities 2.5 times higher, so it was immediately obvious to us that there was a problem here,” he says.

Upon request, Goyal and his colleagues “very kindly agreed to release their raw data and did so quickly,” Tallon says. He and Talantsev discovered a mistake in the conversion of magnetization units.

“Most people who had been in the game for a long time would be fully conversant with the units conversion because the instruments all deliver magnetic data in [centimeter-gram-second] gaussian units, so they always have to be converted to [the International System of Units],” Tallon says. “It has always been a little tricky, but students are asked to take great care and check their numbers against other reports to see if they agree.”

In a statement, Goyal notes he and his colleagues “intend to continue to push the field forward” by continuing to explore ways to enhance wire performance using nanostructural modifications. —Charles Q. Choi

Original article from 17 August, 2024 follows:

Superconductors have for decades spurred dreams of extraordinary technological breakthroughs, but many practical applications for them have remained out of reach. Now a new study reveals what may be the world’s highest-performing high-temperature superconducting wires yet, ones that carry 50 percent as much current as the previous record-holder. Scientists add this advance was achieved without increased costs or complexity to how superconducting wires are currently made.

Superconductors conduct electricity with zero resistance. Classic superconductors work only at super-cold temperatures below 30 degrees Kelvin. In contrast, high-temperature superconductors can operate at temperatures above 77 K, which means they can be cooled to superconductivity using comparatively inexpensive and less burdensome cryogenics built around liquid nitrogen coolant.

Regular electrical conductors all resist electron flow to some degree, resulting in wasted energy. The fact that superconductors conduct electricity without dissipating energy has long lead to dreams of significantly more efficient power grids. In addition, the way in which rivers of electric currents course through them means superconductors can serve as powerful electromagnets, for applications such as maglev trains, better MRI scanners for medicine, doubling the amount of power generated from wind turbines, and nuclear fusion power plants.

“Today, companies around the world are fabricating kilometer-long, high-temperature superconductor wires,” says Amit Goyal, SUNY Distinguished Professor and SUNY Empire Innovation Professor at the University of Buffalo in New York.

However, many large-scale applications for superconductors may stay fantasies until researchers can find a way to fabricate high-temperature superconducting wires in a more cost-effective manner.

In the new research, scientists have created wires that have set new records for the amount of current they can carry at temperatures ranging from 5 K to 77 K. Moreover, fabrication of the new wires requires processes no more complex or costly than those currently used to make high-temperature superconducting wires.

“The performance we have reported in 0.2-micron-thick wires is similar to wires almost 10 times thicker,” Goyal says.

At 4.2 K, the new wires carried 190 million amps per square centimeter without any externally applied magnetic field. This is some 50 percent better than results reported in 2022 and a full 100 percent better than ones detailed in 2021, Goyal and his colleagues note. At 20 K and under an externally applied magnetic field of 20 tesla—the kind of conditions envisioned for fusion applications—the new wires may carry about 9.3 million amps per square centimeter, roughly 5 times greater than present-day commercial high-temperature superconductor wires, they add.

Another factor key to the success of commercial high-temperature superconductor wires is pinning force—the ability to keep magnetic vortices pinned in place within the superconductors that could otherwise interfere with electron flow. (So in that sense higher pinning force values are better here—more conducive to the range of applications expected for such high-capacity, high-temperature superconductors.) The new wires showed record-setting pinning forces of more than 6.4 trillion newtons at 4.3 K under a 7 tesla magnetic field. This is more than twice as much as results previously reported in 2022.

The new wires are based on rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO). The wires use nanometer-sized columns of insulating, non-superconducting barium zirconate at nanometer-scale spacings within the superconductor that can help pin down magnetic vortices, allowing for higher supercurrents.

The researchers made these gains after a few years spent optimizing deposition processes, Goyal says. “We feel that high-temperature superconductor wire performance can still be significantly improved,” he adds. “We have several paths to get to better performance and will continue to explore these routes.”

Based on these results, high-temperature superconductor wire manufacturers “will hopefully further optimize their deposition conditions to improve the performance of their wires,” Goyal says. “Some companies may be able to do this in a short time.”

The hope is that superconductor companies will be able to significantly improve performance without too many changes to present-day manufacturing processes. “If high-temperature superconductor wire manufacturers can even just double the performance of commercial high-temperature superconductor wires while keeping capital equipment costs the same, it could make a transformative impact to the large-scale applications of superconductors,” Goyal says.

The scientists detailed their findings on 7 August in the journal Nature Communications.

This story was updated on 19 August 2024 to correct Amit Goyal’s title and affiliation.

The Pew Charitable Trusts joined dozens of research, health care, and nonprofit stakeholders in urging President-elect Joe Biden to prioritize and strengthen the national response to antibiotic resistance.

Over the past year, COVID-19 has taken a grave toll in lives as well as on medical and health care systems worldwide. The pandemic has laid bare the importance of public health readiness and the myriad consequences when such a crisis strikes an unprepared population.

The resignation drama has helped distract attention from the DMK party's woes in advance of next years Parliamentary elections.

Pending post verification are claims that total $279 million for the March-May 2007 period. The areas of greatest concern to us include costs for helicopter operations ($83 million annually), radar maintenance ($65 million annually) and Joint Staff operations ($5 million annually).

Between August 2006 and July 2007, we received a claim for 26 million USD in barbed wire and pickets. While these items are no doubt helpful in protecting outposts, the claim figures are highly suspect.

Deputy Director Shen acknowledged the message but offered no further comment.

Feb 20, 2023

U.S. President Joe Biden spent five hours in the Ukrainian capital on Monday, meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky and even taking a stroll through the streets of Kyiv – despite the sound of air sirens – to visit The Wall of Remembrance, which displays portraits of the approximately 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers who have died since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The trip was kept under a media blackout until a few hours after Biden’s arrival, with the president’s official schedule only saying he would fly in the evening to Warsaw for a planned visit. The New York Times reported, quoting an anonymous official source, that Biden arrived in Kyiv early this morning after making the same 10-hour long journey from Poland that every world leader visiting Ukraine since the start of the war has.

Nov 6, 2023

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements collaborated with the Salata Institute on Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University to provide financial and logistical support for students to attend the Twenty-Eighth Conference of the Parties (COP-28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP-28 will be held in Dubai, Nov. 30 – Dec. 12, 2023.

Mar 12, 2024

What are the drivers of citizens’ support for electoral gender quotas in transitioning and authoritarian states? Despite extensive research examining public support for women in politics in democracies, we know little about how the public perceives them in less democratic settings. To address this shortcoming, we use original survey data from authoritarian Morocco and transitioning Tunisia – two Arab countries hailed for their progressive gender policies. We argue that in these countries where citizens lack political information, they instead rely on their assessment of the government’s performance to form attitudes toward gender quotas. Furthermore, electoral legitimacy plays an important role in shaping citizens’ support for quotas, which are closely linked to how elections and legislatures operate. The findings offer strong support for our theoretical expectations and uncover important gender differences.

May 7, 2024

If you want to understand why generals support a presidential power grab, then you need to understand the logic that motivates them. Why they leave the barracks — and what we must do to get them to stand down.  

Hotel Transylvania 2 Shop Goodwill Ad

Northwestern Mutual, presenting sponsor of the Rose Bowl Game�, revealed renderings of its Tournament of Roses� Parade float, inspired by Peyton Richardson, a teenage ballerina who is fighting cancer.

A leading consumer testing publication recently tested the top laundry detergent brands in America. Persil ProClean 2in1 didn�t only beat Tide, it beat every single detergent tested.

Aly Raisman Making a PB&J

The Hear the World Foundation wants you to make listening safe in celebration of the World Health Organization�s International Ear Care Day in 2015

PERSPECTIVES :30

Christine Attia lost her fianc� just two years ago after he lost a courageous six-month battle with acute myeloid leukemia. She reminds everyone, while breakthrough therapies are saving lives, work still needs to be done to find cures.

Northwestern Mutual Rose Parade float will support the fight against childhood cancer

Uniting Voices Across Europe to Show Support for Head and Neck Cancer Patients

Sunscreen is FDA regulated as an over the counter drug and thus restricted from schools, playgrounds & practice fields. Give your child the right to bring sunscreen to school with a simple permission slip.

The Wheels Up Pink Plane is the first-ever pink Beechcraft King Air 350i. Proceeds benefit the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai in New York City. Westchester County Airport, White Plains, NY

Healthcare leaders and the public say how they would balance the NHS� books

The Journey Home :60 TV PSA

I illustrate the dramatic difference in perception of the protests between news reports and on-the-scene live-streams

Here are a few organizations that need our support right now: 

Fund Texas Choice. A nonprofit organization funding abortion travel for people in Texas. 

Frontera Fund. Making abortion accessible for people in the Rio Grande Valley. 

Clinic Access Support Network. Providing transportation, lodging, emotional support, and more to those seeking abortion care in Houston, TX. 

Bridge Collective. A full spectrum doula collective, nonprofit organization based in Austin, TX. 

The Afiya Center. An advocacy organization based in Dallas, TX, dedicated to transforming the lives of Black womxn and girls through reproductive justice. 

Texas Equal Access Fund. Providing financial and emotional support to people seeking abortion care in the north, east, and panhandle regions of Texas. 

Lilith Fund. Financial assistance, emotional support, and building community spaces for people who need abortions in Texas — unapologetically, with compassion and conviction. 

West Fund. Working to make abortions accessible and affordable to people in West Texas. 

Thank you to the folks at @FundTexasChoice who helped me compile this list.

An overview on how we’re honoring and supporting Veterans — and helping everyone benefit from their skills.

Sandra Tayler, whom you may know as the editor, publisher, project manager, and so much more behind Schlock Mercenary, is crowdfunding a book called STRUCTURING LIFE TO SUPPORT CREATIVITY.

I can personally vouch for the principles and practices presented in this book, but that’s probably kind of obvious. Sandra has worked with many other people and organizations over the last decade, so this book is far, far more than just (!) the life experience of someone who wrangled a single cartoonist into profitability while managing her own career writing children’s books and short stories.

Follow the links above to read more about the project. It has funded, and just yesterday Sandra crossed the “we get to make an audiobook” stretch goal. The project closes in two days, though, so if you want to throw some momentum into it on the home stretch, now’s the time.

Donald Trump has been reelected president of the United States. Ahead of Kamala Harris’s expected concession speech, we speak to professors Carol Anderson and Michele Goodwin to discuss Harris’s historic campaign — and historic loss. “The Confederacy won,” says Anderson, a professor of African American studies at Emory University. “It paints a picture of what Americans are willing to embrace,” says Goodwin, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown and an expert on healthcare law, who warns of the public health dangers of a second Trump administration and discusses the election’s implications for reproductive rights.

With former U.S. President Donald Trump returning to the White House for a second term, we speak with Pakistani author and columnist Fatima Bhutto. Bhutto is an award-winning author and writes a monthly column for Zeteo on world affairs. She criticizes Kamala Harris’s campaign for relying heavily on celebrity endorsements and vague appeals to “joy” while silencing dissent on Gaza as the Biden administration continues backing Israel. “You don’t need to be a man to practice toxic masculinity, and you don’t need to be white to practice white supremacy,” says Bhutto.

The AAR Maharashtra, in the case of M/s. The Nisarga Consultancy, In Re [Order No. GST-ARA-21 of 2023-24/2024-25/B-55 dated July 31, 2024] ruled that no tax will be leviable on work allotted by Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikar ("MJP") as per of Jal Jeevan Mission ("JJM") which is a mission of Government

Scientists have finally found the compact object at the heart of the famous supernova of 1987, and it’s not a black hole