Musings

The measles virus has been around for thousands of years, and is one of the most contagious diseases known to man. Its outbreaks have been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Take a deep-dive into the disease and the science behind it with Seeker's SICK Opinion: Are booster shots needed for measles? Don't stop where the ink does.

By Yale University The image is a snapshot of numerical modeling of the moon formation by a giant impact. Proto-Earth is at the center; red points indicate materials from the ocean of magma on a proto-Earth; blue points indicate the impactor materials. Credit: Hosono, Karato, Makino & Saitoh For more than a century, scientists have squabbled over how the Earth's moon formed. But researchers at Yale and in Japan say they may have the answer. Read more at Phys.org Opinion: A big caveat is that we have only sampled the surface of the Moon. Saying the whole thing is made of the same material seems a bit naïve. Don't stop where the ink does.

By International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) Acceleration as a function of radius in NGC 4455, one of the studied galaxies. Credit: Di Paolo et al. modified from survey SDSS9. As fascinating as it is mysterious, dark matter is one of the greatest enigmas of astrophysics and cosmology. It is thought to account for 90 percent of the matter in the universe, but its existence has been demonstrated only indirectly, and has recently been called into question. New research conducted by SISSA removes the recent doubts on the presence of dark matter within galaxies, disproving the empirical relations in support of alternative theories. The study, published in the Astrophysical Journal, also offers new insights into understanding the nature of dark matter and its relationship with ordinary matter. Read more at Phys.org

By Princeton University Credit: CC0 Public Domain Clear behavioral rules posted prominently on online discussions can markedly increase participation while cutting harassment, new research from Princeton University has found. Read more at Phys.org

By CARLY CASSELLA (NoSystem images/iStock) Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyalitis (ME), is a debilitating and misunderstood disease, more accurately defined by what it isn't than what it is. With no known cause, few unique symptoms and little else for doctors to go by, reliable and consistent diagnosis is difficult to achieve. A simple blood test could change all of that, and researchers at Stanford think they might have stumbled upon just the right test. In a pilot study of 40 people, the team was able to pick out each and every one of the 20 participants with CFS, based solely on how their immune cells responded to stress. Read more at Science Alert

By Laurie Barth Image credits : Pexels, via Pixabay. CC0. Solve your future problems faster by logging the most useful things you've already learned. Read more at Opensource.com Opinion: No, don't log the things you have learned. Log everything you do. That includes hopeful ideas that don't work out, the false starts, the dead ends. The main purpose of an engineering journal is to prove you have done the work. Not only does this to support claims of patent, it improves your learning. You learn a lot more from your mistakes. Nobody goes directly from point A to B. It is the bad ideas that prove a journal is real. Any journal that contains only the good stuff is useless. Don't stop where the ink does.

By Jillian C. York and Corynne McSherry Social media platforms regularly engage in “content moderation”—the depublication, downranking, and sometimes outright censorship of information and/or user accounts from social media and other digital platforms, usually based on an alleged violation of a platform’s “community standards” policy. In recent years, this practice has become a matter of intense public interest. Not coincidentally, thanks to growing pressure from governments and some segments of the public to restrict various types of speech, it has also become more pervasive and aggressive, as companies struggle to self-regulate in the hope of avoiding legal mandates. Read more at Electronic Frontier Foundation

By Zi-Ann Lum Adrian Wyld/CP. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on April 29, 2019 in Ottawa. OTTAWA — New Democrats want the federal government to take back the $12 million pledged to Loblaw Co. to help the grocery retailer upgrade its fridges to higher efficiency models. Read more at Huffington Post

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, and European Council President Donald Tusk signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement in 2016. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters) The ECJ's judges said that the mechanism to resolve disputes between investors and states in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, which critics say unfairly favor multinationals, is in line with EU law. Read more at CBC News

An Elections Canada investigation revealed that between 2004 and 2009, 18 former SNC-Lavalin employees, directors and some spouses contributed nearly $110,000 to the federal Liberals. (Christinne Muschi/Reuters) Former attorney general of Quebec denies involvement in scheme that broke Canadian election law. Read more at CBC News

By JACINTA BOWLER (Apollo 15/NASA) On the Moon right now, there lies an aluminium sculpture of an astronaut with a beautiful message. Called the Fallen Astronaut, it was placed there by Apollo 15 commander David Scott on 1 August 1971 to commemorate all the humans who have died advancing space exploration. The little figurine lies next to a plaque listing the 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who had died to date. Read more at Science Alert

By MICHELLE STARR (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology) In the bewildering quagmire that is the gas between the stars, the Hubble Space Telescope has identified evidence of ionised buckminsterfullerene, the carbon molecule known colloquially as "buckyballs". Read more at Science Alert

By Alan Formy-Duval (Community Moderator) Image by : opensource.com Linux has come a long way since 1991. These events mark its evolution. Read more at Opensource.com

Opinion: There is a new method for recycling plastics. New type of plastic is a recycling dream Don't stop where the ink does. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

1/137 is a universal constant that determines how stars burn, how chemical reactions happen, and if it were off by just a few percentage points—all of this might not even be here. But what happens if it shifts? Read more at Seeker Opinion: Since alpha depends on the charge of an electron and General Relativity tells us that charge changes with time dilation, of course the measurement of alpha would change. But the local value of alpha would remain constant. Don't stop where the ink does. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

By Kelly Wang The Anhei tokamak is the first facility in the world to generate 100 million degrees Celsius (212 million Fahrenheit) A ground-breaking fusion reactor built by Chinese scientists is underscoring Beijing's determination to be at the core of clean energy technology, as it eyes a fully-functioning plant by 2050. Read more at Phys.org

By Sigal Samuel Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are all mired in controversy over it. A woman holds a tablet featuring biometric 3D facial recognition software. Getty Images A teenager is suing Apple for $1 billion. The lawsuit, filed Monday, hinges on the alleged use of an increasingly popular — and controversial — technology: facial recognition. The tech can identify an individual by analyzing their facial features in images, in videos, or in real time. Read more at Vox

By Ernesto The US Government has published its list of the largest piracy websites and other "notorious markets." This year's overview includes usual suspects such as The Pirate Bay, FMovies, and Uploaded, but several gaming-related sites and even hosting companies are mentioned as well. The USTR hopes that by highlighting the threats, platform operators or foreign authorities will take action. Read more at TorrentFreak Opinion: It must be true: the lobbyists said so. Don't stop where the ink does. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

By Ernesto After admitting to several criminal acts, Prenda Law attorneys John Steele and Paul Hansmeier will be sentenced a few weeks from now. In addition to prison sentences, the court may order the two to pay restitution. To facilitate this process, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Minnesota is inviting victims of the fraudulent anti-piracy lawyers to come forward. Read more at TorrentFreak

By Medical University of South Carolina Dr. Mohamed Khalaf (left) in a discussion with colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina. Credit: Sarah Pack, Medical University of South Carolina Peppermint can help with the difficulty swallowing and non-cardiac chest pain experienced by some patients with disorders of the esophagus, report investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Digestive Diseases & Sciences. Of the 38 patients enrolled in the MUSC pilot study, 63 percent overall reported improvement of symptoms. Patients were recruited from the Esophageal Disorders Clinic at the MUSC Health Digestive Disease Center. Read more at Medical Xpress

By Susan Lloyd Swail, Senior Manager, Livable Communities The last time people were priced out of the housing market was in the early 90’s. Back then, the options were limited to owning a home or renting an apartment, with some condos thrown in. Ontario’s Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe has greatly increased the mix of housing supply, but didn’t solve affordability for people as a limited supply of rental and low-income housing was been built. The majority of new rental units being built are luxury units and many of the houses are over 2000 sq ft and are consequently unaffordable. What most people need, whether they buy or rent, are affordable places, such as townhomes, laneway housing, shared housing and non-luxury apartments. Read more at Environmental Defence OPINION: Things necessary for life cannot be in a "free" market. Such necessaries as food, water, shelter, clothing, health care, prescription drugs. Don't stop where the ink does. CC

By Kelsey Scarfone, Program Manager, Water In February, we raised the alarm that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) appeared to be the next environmental law in the Ontario government’s anti-environmental cross hairs. The discussion paper from earlier this year which aimed at finding “efficiencies for business,” has evolved into a proposal which reads like a sprawl developer’s wish list. Read more at Environmental Defence

By Eliza Barclay and Umair Irfan Extinction Rebellion skillfully used civil disobedience to sound the alarm on the climate emergency. Climate activists blocked Waterloo Bridge on April 16 as part of the Extinction Rebellion movement in London. Amer Ghazzal / Barcroft Media via Getty Images The coordinated direct actions across the city were organized by Extinction Rebellion, a movement founded last year to demand a more aggressive climate target from the British government: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. Read more at Vox

By Shahid Buttar Put simply, privacy is a public value that enables freedom of expression. Without it, our democracy stands at risk, as do communities that have long confronted bias and discrimination. Read more at Electronic Frontier Foundation

By Anand Ram · CBC Japan, France have learned how enshrining protections in law can have unintended consequences A man holds a copy of the 'Labour Code - Code du Travail' while taking part in a nationwide day of protest against labour reforms in Bordeaux, France, on March 9, 2016. The next year, France enshrined the 'right to disconnect' into law, so that employees don't have to deal with work emails during off hours. (Nicolas Tucat/AFP/Getty Images) Leaving aside the personal and human toll, stressed-out workers cost countries a lot of time and money. The U.K.'s Health and Safety Executive said more than 11 million days were lost to work-stress, anxiety and depression in 2015-2016. In 2012, the German labour minister said stress leave and early retirement from worker burnout was costing the country up to $10 billion a year. But even when governments act, it's not clear policy alone can solve the problem. Read more at CBC News

Getting a photo of a polar bear might seem harmless, but it can be anything but Carrie Barry Dyson snapped this picture from safe inside her cabin in Batteau, Labrador. She says the bear gave her quite a scare. (Submitted by Carrie Barry Dyson) A picture of a nearby polar bear is impressive, but it can also be dangerous to get. That's why wildlife enforcement officers are discouraging the public from stopping for a snap if they see one of the big white bears in the wild. There have been multiple polar bear sightings across Newfoundland and Labrador, from Carmanville to Cartwright, already this spring. It can be tempting to prove you've seen one of the bears in person, but Colin Carroll with the province's Department of Land Resources said a photo isn't worth the risk. Read more at CBC News

Relive the final scene from "The Dragon and the Wolf."

Today's Pope Fights covers the history and aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation.

By Liz Fuller-Wright, Princeton University Neither the continents nor the oceans have always looked the way they do now. These “paleomaps” show how the continents and oceans appeared before (top) and during (bottom) “the collision that changed the world,” when the landmass that is now the Indian subcontinent rammed northward into Asia, closing the Tethys Sea and building the Himalayas. Global ocean levels were higher then, creating salty shallow seas (pale blue) that covered much of North Africa and parts of each of the continents. A team of Princeton researchers, using samples gathered at the three starred locations, created an unprecedented record of ocean nitrogen and oxygen levels from 70 million years ago through 30 million years ago that shows a major shift in ocean chemistry after the India-Asia collision. Another shift came 35 million years ago, when Antarctica began accumulating ice and global sea levels fell. Credit: Images created by Emma Kast, Princeton University, us

By MICHELLE STARR (ESA/NASA/Hubble) The latest measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe is in, and it has confirmed with more certainty than ever that we have a real dilly of a pickle on our hands. Once again, the result has shown that the Universe is expanding much faster than it should be based on the conditions just after the Big Bang. Read more at Science Alert The universe is not expanding. It's our measurement of its size that is increasing. Don't stop where the ink does. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

By DAVID NIELD The fabella bone is the small one to the lower right. (Imperial College London) A bone once thought to be almost lost to evolution and rare in modern humans is making a strange comeback. Known as the fabella bone, this knee bone was once very rare in human beings, but is now three times more common in human knees than it was a hundred years ago. Read more at Science Alert

By CARLY CASSELLA (Guernsey Press /SWNS.COM) For five nights, the skies above Jean Dean's home were dark and clear. Here in her backyard, on the remote Channel Island of Guernsey, the 60-year-old grandmother and retired oceanographer was taking part in a star-gazing course. Read more at Science Alert

By MICHELLE STARR (Krista Trinder/NASA Goddard) The mysterious purple skyglow named STEVE was unmasked last year. Physicists proved that STEVE was not a new kind of aurora - in fact, it's not any kind of aurora at all. But that still left one big, gaping question: What exactly is it? Read more at Science Alert

By University of Aberdeen Credit: CC0 Public Domain New research has, for the first time, provided guidance on the amount of antibiotics that can safely be prescribed without generating resistant superbugs. Read more at Medical Xpress

By Medical Research Council The Medical Research Council (MRC)-funded study, published today in the journal Cell, is the first to identify insulin as a primary signal that helps communicate the timing of meals to the cellular clocks located across our body, commonly known as the body clock. Credit: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology New research has found it is not just what you eat, but when you eat that is important, knowledge which could improve the health of shift workers and people suffering from jet lag. Read more at Medical Xpress

By Max Planck Society The amacrine cell CT1 from the Drosophila brain works with its subunits like 1400 individual cells Credit: © MPI of Neurobiology / Meier CT1 is different. In general, a nerve cell receives input from a number of presynaptic cells, processes the signals, and passes its output to downstream cells. In the cell CT1, however, each of the approximately 1400 cell areas works like a separate neuron. This allows CT1 to access information from all facets of the fly's complex eye and to contribute locally to the calculation of motion direction. Using a computer model of the cell, Alexander Borst and Matthias Meier from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology show that CT1 is reaching biophysical limits. Read more at Medical Xpress

By Yale University Credit: CC0 Public Domain Exposure to violence does not change the ability to learn who is likely to do harm, but it does damage the ability to place trust in "good people," psychologists at Yale and University of Oxford report April 26 in the journal Nature Communications. Read more at Medical Xpress

By Ed Cara Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images) Cannabidiol—the ingredient of cannabis that doesn’t make you high, commonly called CBD—might be the angel to THC’s devil, a new study of people’s brains suggests. The research found that 17 people who smoked cannabis with mostly THC had worse brain function in certain regions than those who smoked cannabis with roughly equal levels of THC and CBD. Read more at Gizmodo

By Ed Cara Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images) The U.S. is in the middle of the worst outbreak of measles since the disease was eradicated from the country in 2000. But while the majority of victims are children whose parents decided not to vaccinate them or people who have chosen to go unvaccinated, even some people who got the measles vaccine as children might still be at real risk, depending on their age. Read more at Gizmodo

By Jesse Firempong UPDATE: The City of Toronto’s Environment and Infrastructure Committee passed the motion on pursuing compensation for the cost of climate change to the city. In response, Greenpeace Canada Staff Lawyer Priyanka Vittal said: “The powerful testimonies delivered here today by Toronto youth, lawyers, residents and environmental experts leave no doubt that Torontonians want to see stronger climate action from City Hall. We’re happy to see Council take this first step in gathering the information needed to make sure that regular people aren’t on the hook for mounting climate-related costs. Protecting residents while holding polluters to account for their role in creating the climate crisis must be at the foundation of a just transition away from fossil fuels.” Read more at Greenpeace Canada

Probably many have already heard about the growing opposition of these two operating systems. The most popular Windows is gradually losing ground in the face of free software — GNU / Linux. Is this justified? Read more at DarkDuck

Gogs is a self-hosted open source git server written in Go. It includes a repository file editor, project issue tracking, and a built-in wiki. Gogs is a lightweight application and can be installed on low-powered systems. If you are searching for an alternative to Gitlab with much smaller memory footprint and you don’t need all the bells and whistles that Gitlab offers then you should definitely try Gogs. Read more at Linuxize

By George Dvorsky Emperor penguins near the Halley VI Research Station in Antarctica. Image: BAS One of Antarctica’s largest emperor penguin colonies is all but gone following three unprecedented years in which the penguins weren’t able to raise chicks. Read more at Gizmodo

By Yessenia Funes Seaweed lover!! Photo: Brage B. Hansen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean is home to majestic creatures like polar bears, Arctic foxes, and reindeer. Today, their icy home is melting, and that’s disrupting life in some strange ways. For instance, a new study suggests it’s causing reindeer to eat more seaweed. Read more at Earther Gizmodo

By Bob Yirka , Tech Xplore Left: The person without a patch is successfully detected. Right: The person holding the patch is ignored. Credit: arXiv:1904.08653 [cs.CV] A trio of researchers at the University of KU Leuven in Belgium has found that it is possible to confuse an AI system by printing a certain picture and holding it against their body as the AI system tries to identify them as a human being. Simen Thys, Wiebe Van Ranst and Toon Goedemé have written a paper describing their efforts and have uploaded it to the arXiv preprint server. They have also posted a video on YouTube showing what they accomplished. Read more at Tech Xplore

By Timothy B. Lee An old software joke explains Elon Musk's implausible autonomy timeline. On Monday, Tesla held a major event to show off the company's impressive progress toward full self-driving technology. The company demonstrated a new neural network computer that seems to be competitive with industry leader Nvidia. And Tesla explained how it leverages its vast fleet of customer-owned vehicles to collect data that helps the company train its neural networks. Read more at Ars Technica "At this point, the cars will be 'feature complete,' in Musk's terminology, but will still need a human driver to monitor the vehicle and intervene in the case of a malfunction." Humans cannot react fast enough to intervene in time. Such statements are fake news, lies told to comfort the public. Don't stop where the ink does. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

By Scott K. Johnson These plastics can easily be disassembled to chemical building blocks. Recycling sounds great in principle (because it is), but a frustrating number of devils lurk in the details. For example, while some materials like aluminum can readily be melted down and turned right back into new aluminum cans, recovered plastics tend to be lower quality than “virgin” material. That’s because recycled plastic retains some of its previous properties—like Lego bricks that can’t be separated. The next plastic you make won’t be exactly the same type, and the recycled material won’t fit perfectly into its new spot. Read more at Ars Technica