Don’t hear much about it anymore. I asked AI

Quote: While the volunteer computing aspect of SETI@home is currently in a hibernation phase, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is ongoing through other initiatives, including the COSMIC project and the SETI Institute.
Elaboration:
SETI@home:
This project, which used volunteer computers to analyze radio telescope data, stopped distributing new tasks in March 2020 to focus on analyzing the accumulated data. The team has indicated that they may eventually resume volunteer computing with data from other telescopes.

One thing that puzzles me is this: Why does SETI scan the heavens looking for ET when they could just check out the neighborhood for evidence of intelligent signals emanating from UAP’s? Seems like SETI doesn’t believe aliens are flitting about the Earth in their orbs, tic tacs, cigar shapes, triangles, saucers, glowing plasma blobs and whatever. SETI doesn’t seem to be able to pick up signals from those alien craft yet they’re right outside the window, on a daily basis.

What’s going on? Why visual vs scientific instrument detection? What for? Wasn’t the Pentagon’s first release of US Navy pilots suspicious UFO encounters same year (2020) as SETI stopping to analyze its accumulated data? Govt conspiracy to allow release of UFO/UAP files/documents to hide the fact SETI did find evidence of ET out there and they need to translate it. You know, just in case.

New study warns excessive cinnamon intake may reduce effectiveness of prescription drugs
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellnes...cle-851927

INTRO: Researchers at the University of Mississippi investigated how cinnamaldehyde, cinnamon's main active compound, behaves in the body. Their findings suggest that while cinnamon is safe in small doses, higher concentrations could affect how some medicines are metabolized, potentially reducing their effectiveness.

According to a study published in the journal Food Chemistry, cinnamaldehyde activates receptors that may accelerate the breakdown of certain medications. The process can lead to medications being eliminated from the body faster than intended. "We know that cinnamaldehyde has the potential to activate these receptors, which can create the risk of drug interactions," said Bill Gurley, a principal scientist at the University of Mississippi's National Center for Natural Products Research and one of the study's authors. "This is something that can happen, but until we conduct a clinical study, we don't know exactly what will happen."

The researchers emphasize the importance of consulting healthcare providers before using cinnamon as a dietary supplement, especially for individuals with chronic health conditions.... (MORE - details)

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Substance use accelerates brain aging through distinct molecular pathways, groundbreaking study reveals
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1081839

EXCERPTS: In a comprehensive Genomic Press Interview, researchers from UTHealth Houston have uncovered crucial evidence that substance use disorders (SUDs) accelerate biological aging in the brain through distinct molecular mechanisms...

[...] One of the study's most significant findings was that different substances appear to accelerate brain aging through distinct biological pathways.

In alcohol use disorder, researchers found altered expression of genes involved in protein phosphorylation, signal transduction, and glutamatergic synapse function. For opioid use disorder, transcriptional regulation, neurodevelopment, and immune-inflammatory processes emerged as key drivers of accelerated aging. Stimulant use disorder showed distinct patterns related to oxidative stress, hypoxia responses, and cell adhesion pathways.

Dr. Walss-Bass emphasizes the importance of these findings: "We've discovered that accelerated aging in substance use disorders is not a uniform process. Each substance appears to hijack the brain's natural aging rhythm through unique molecular mechanisms, though some pathways are shared across different substance types."

Despite the differences between substances, the research identified some common biological mechanisms across all SUDs. Neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial dysfunction appeared to play crucial roles in accelerated aging regardless of the specific substance used.

"Our integrative analysis suggests that mitochondrial function, the powerhouse of the cell, is central to maintaining cellular energy homeostasis and regulating oxidative stress responses," notes Dr. Gabriel Fries, co-corresponding author of the study. "When substance use disrupts these processes, it can accelerate the biological aging of neural tissue."

The findings have profound implications for public health, addiction medicine, and treatment approaches. If substance use induces premature biological aging, it should be viewed not merely as a behavioral choice but as an accelerant of neurodegeneration.... (MORE - missing details, no ads)

RELATED (BBC): Industrial waste turning into rock 'in decades'
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Industrial waste is turning to rock in just decades, research reveals
https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_1173682_en.html

PRESS RELEASE: An aluminium tab from a drinks can found encased in a new form of rock on the Cumbrian coastline has helped provide scientists with a shocking new insight into the impact of human activity on the Earth’s natural processes and materials. Researchers from the University of Glasgow have found that slag, an industrial waste product produced by the steel industry, is turning into solid rock in as little as 35 years.

The finding challenges centuries of understanding of the planet’s geological processes, where research has shown that rock forms naturally over millions of years. The researchers have documented for the first time a new ‘rapid anthropoclastic rock cycle’, which mimics natural rock cycles but involves human material over accelerated timescales. They believe the cycle is likely to be underway at similar industrial sites around the globe.

The team warn that the rapid and unplanned-for development of rock around industrial waste sites could have negative impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as coastal management and land planning. In a paper published in the journal Geology, the researchers explain how detailed analysis of a two-kilometre stretch of slag deposit, at Derwent Howe in West Cumbria led to their discovery of a new Earth system cycle.

Derwent Howe was home to iron and steel-making foundries during the 19th and 20th centuries, and its coast accumulated 27 million cubic metres of furnace slag over the course of its industrial history. The slag deposits have formed cliffs of waste material which are being eroded by coastal waves and tides. The team noticed intriguing irregular formations in the cliffs, and began to make detailed observations at 13 sites across the foreshore.

Lab tests using electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy helped them to determine that Derwent Howe’s slag materials contain deposits of calcium, iron, and magnesium, and manganese. These elements are highly chemically reactive, which is key to causing the accelerated process of rock formation.

When the slag is eroded by the sea, it exposes the material to seawater and air, which interacts with the slag’s reactive elements to create natural cements including calcite, goethite, and brucite. These cements are the same materials that bind together natural sedimentary rocks, but the chemical reactions cause the process to happen much faster than we have assumed for similar material in a natural rock cycle.

Dr Amanda Owen of the University of Glasgow’s School of Geographical and Earth Sciences is the paper’s corresponding author. Dr Owen said: "For a couple of hundred years, we've understood the rock cycle as a natural process that takes thousands to millions of years.

"What's remarkable here is that we've found these human-made materials being incorporated into natural systems and becoming lithified – essentially turning into rock – over the course of decades instead. It challenges our understanding of how a rock is formed, and suggests that the waste material we’ve produced in creating the modern world is going to have an irreversible impact on our future.”

The team’s laboratory analysis was bolstered by the surprising uncovering of modern materials trapped within some of their samples, which helped them deduce how long the lithification of the slag had taken.

"We were able to date this process with remarkable precision," said Dr John MacDonald, a co-author of the study. "We found both a King George V coin from 1934 and an aluminium can tab with a design that we realised couldn't have been manufactured before 1989 embedded in the material.

“This gives us a maximum timeframe of 35 years for this rock formation, well within the course of a single human lifetime. This is an example in microcosm of how all the activity we’re undertaking at the Earth's surface will eventually end up in the geological record as rock, but this process is happening with remarkable, unprecedented speed.”

Dr David Brown, the paper’s third co-author, said: “Slag contains all the elements it needs to turn into rock when it is exposed to seawater and air, so I think it’s very likely that this same phenomenon is happening at any similar slag deposit along a relatively exposed coastline with some wave action anywhere in the world. "Steel slag waste is a global phenomenon, and as we've documented, when alkaline mine wastes are exposed to water and air, there is potential for cementation of loose material."

The findings represent the first fully documented and dated example of the complete rapid anthropoclastic rock cycle occurring on land. In the paper, the team note that a similar process had previously been observed in the Gorrondatxe coastal system near Bilbao, Spain. However, researchers there were unable to determine how long the process had been underway due to the waste being deposited in the sea before being returned to the beach.

Dr Owen added: “When waste material is first deposited, it’s loose and can be moved around as required. What our finding shows is that we don’t have as much time as we thought to find somewhere to put it where it will have minimal impact on the environment – instead, we may have a matter of just decades before it turns into rock, which is much more difficult to manage.

“On coasts like Derwent Howe, the process of lithification has turned a sandy beach into a rocky platform very, very quickly. That rapid appearance of rock could fundamentally affect the ecosystems above and below the water, as well as change the way that coastlines respond to the challenges of rising sea levels and more extreme weather as our planet warms. Currently, none of this is accounted for in our models of erosion of land management, which are key to helping us try to adapt to climate change.

“We’re currently seeking additional funding to help support further research at other slag deposit sites across Europe, which will help to deepen our understanding of this new rapid anthropoclastic rock cycle.”

The team’s paper, titled ‘Evidence for a rapid anthropoclastic rock cycle’, is published in Geology. The research was supported by funding from the Geological Society (London).

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-new...10519.html

RELEASE: Britain will exclude foreign sex offenders from asylum protections, the government said on Monday in its latest effort to strengthen border security.

Facing public anger at the number of asylum-seeking migrants coming to Britain and the cost of housing them, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government has sought to deter illegal migration and speed up removal of those denied refugee status.

The government's Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which is passing through parliament, will be amended to deny refugee status to any foreign national with a criminal conviction that qualifies them for the sex offenders register. "Sex offenders who pose a risk to the community should not be allowed to benefit from refugee protections in the UK," interior minister Yvette Cooper said in the statement.

The government also said it would introduce new targets to speed up parts of the asylum decision-making system, and begin using AI to help caseworkers make decisions by improving access to country-specific advice and summarising interviews.

Britain had 90,686 asylum cases awaiting an initial decision at the end of 2024. The government said in January that it had met its target to deliver the highest rate of removals since 2018, having removed 16,400 people.

Western countries, from France and Germany to the United States, have been grappling with a surge in the number of people fleeing war and persecution, with the global refugee population having tripled in the last decade.

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/donald-trump...ey-3666293

INTRO: It wasn’t just Canada’s capital-L Liberal Party lustily cheering the election of Mark Carney over his right-wing opponent, Pierre Poilievre, overnight. For this is a rare moment of elation for Donald Trump foes inside and outside of Canada.

The dapper former Bank of England governor has taken a party which had fallen out of favour with voters after three terms and in the economic doldrums to a resounding victory on the wings of anti-Trump indignation. He did so by confronting the arrogance of his mighty neighbour, in a campaign opposing the US President on tariffs – and squaring up to a repeated riff, bordering on threat, to make Canada a part of the US.

Carney – whom I have known in several of his incarnations from politics to bank governor (once in Canada, once in the UK) and climate finance guru – defies his technocratic image by being an encyclopaedic fan of The Clash. He also played the Canadian rap classic “Time to Win” at rallies.

In a period when many G7 countries have opted to play for time with the US President or, as with Keir Starmer’s government, bank on avoiding conflicts with a turbulent White House in the hope of leveraging advantages in the end, Carney opted for forthright fightback, underlining his country’s sovereignty, in several speeches. This approach gladdened a lot of hearts in Europe, too: ditch conflict-avoidance and lay out a firm, rather than squelchy, subservience.

In a quirk of political history, however, it was also Trump wot helped win it for the Liberals, who saw off a charismatic rival, Pierre Poilievre of Canada’s Conservatives, who lost his own seat in Carleton, Ontario.

Poilievre had appeared as the coming man in the age of noisy populists who channeled public resentment at out of touch elites, but found himself undermined by Trump’s barrage of social posts about Canada’s shortcomings and status. He ended up brusquely asking a US President he often resembled in style and tone to “stay out of our election”.

Relations between America and Canada are always sensitive to the relative might and size of the US. The combination of the recent tariff splurge and a campaign by Trump – partly teasing but relentless and disrespectful in the eyes of many Canadians – for them to join the US as a “cherished” 51st state sparked a backlash. This gave Carney the platform he needed to escape the pigeonhole of being too closely associated with high finance and connect with the ire of voters stirred up by tariffs and taunts... (MORE - details)

Yet another policy that will raise food prices.
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Food Companies Race to Replace Artificial Colors With Natural Alternatives
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/nu...ternatives

KEY POINTS: U.S. officials want food companies to stop using artificial dyes by next year. Switching to natural colors will take time and cost much more. Some companies are already phasing out synthetic colors in snacks and cereals.

INTRO: The push to remove artificial colors from U.S. foods is gaining speed, but making the change won't be easy — or quick. Last week, U.S. health officials directed food companies to voluntarily phase out petroleum-based synthetic dyes by the end of 2026.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called these dyes "poisonous compounds" that could harm children's health and development, according to The Associated Press. This move follows mounting public pressure that resulted in a ban on the dye Red 3, which has been linked to cancer risks in lab animals. Artificial dyes are common in such foods as cereals, candy and sports drinks.

At Sensient Technologies, one of the world’s largest dyemakers, scientists are working hard to find natural alternatives.... (MORE - details)

RELATED (scivillage): What the science says about food additives, as RFK Jr. circles overhead

https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/american...nd-saucer/#

EXCERPTS: In Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO, David J. Halperin, a distinguished historian of religion who has published studies of the prophet Ezekiel, Merkavah mysticism, and other Jewish visionary experiences, seeks to explain the long-smoldering American fascination with aliens through the lenses of religious studies and Jungian psychology. In doing so, he aims to build what he calls a bridge between “reported existence and postulated cause” for a series of famous UFO cases and motifs, including Roswell.

Although Halperin is not the first scholar of religious studies to tackle UFOs, the subject is more personal for him than most...

[...] In Intimate Alien, Halperin argues reasonably enough that UFOs emerge from the gap between “stimulus and perception.” Real physical phenomena—stars, planes, weather balloons, drones—trigger transcendent visions as they are filtered through a complex interplay of cultural archetypes and personal psychology. The witnesses really do see something, and the contents of the individual and collective unconscious are real too, but we are not visited by extraterrestrial spacecraft, and no earthlings were actually kidnapped or harmed in the making of these experiences.

In 1958, Carl Jung himself took something like this approach. In Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, Jung argued forcefully for the significance of UFOs to the modern psyche. Flying saucers were mandala-shaped myths, hovering projections of our cosmic anxieties (according to Jung, the circular mandala was a universal symbol of the self). This tack is at the core of Halperin’s psychosocial approach. “I don’t believe, nor do I debunk,” he writes, proposing a “third way” that treats UFO encounters with the same gravity one would accord other myths that emerge from the collective unconscious.

As one would expect, given his personal biography and academic method, Halperin approaches UFO narratives with great respect. And yet he ends up debunking every UFO encounter he writes about. “Did it really happen?” is the least interesting question about a UFO account for Halperin, but he invariably concludes that it didn’t.

In this Halperin differs from the famous French ufologist Jacques Vallée and others influenced by him, including Halperin’s more sensationalist colleague in religious studies Diana Pasulka, who have pointed to the many mystical experiences and premodern legends that are strikingly similar to alien encounters. Where Halperin sees this as evidence of a long-existent psychological phenomenon, these scholars tend to suggest that visitations from another realm are a perennial feature of human experience, whose origins only came to be represented (or recognized) as extraterrestrial in the latter half of the twentieth century... (MORE - missing details)

https://aeon.co/essays/no-schrodingers-c...-same-time

EXCERPTS: What happened next is rather fascinating. While researching Einstein’s special theory of relativity for a book she was writing sometime in 1972, the American science fiction author Ursula Le Guin came across a reference to Schrödinger’s cat. As the philosopher Robert Crease put it in a 2024 article, she was instantly ‘entranced by the implied uncertainties and appreciated the fantastic nature of Schrödinger’s image...’

[...] In her short story ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ (1974), Le Guin presents Bohm’s version of the paradox involving the photon, half-silvered mirror and gun. In a dialogue between the nameless narrator and a dog called Rover, Le Guin wrote:

‘… We cannot predict the behaviour of the photon, and thus, once it has behaved, we cannot predict the state of the system it has determined. We cannot predict it! God plays dice with the world! So it is beautifully demonstrated that if you desire certainty, any certainty, you must create it yourself!’

‘How?’

‘By lifting the lid of the box, of course,’ Rover said …

The floodgates opened. From this point onwards, Schrödinger’s cat makes regular appearances in fiction. Not just science fiction, but a broad range of short stories and novels, films, plays, television shows, poems, and music. Developments taking place in physics in the early 1980s simultaneously drove burgeoning interest in popular non-fiction, such as John Gribbin’s In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat (1984).

The cat’s cultural appeal lies in the ‘what if’ questions it provokes. It encourages us to ponder the consequences of our very human choices...

[...] So, when we talk about the cat being in a superposition of life and death, this doesn’t mean that the cat is literally alive and dead at the same time. In truth, we don’t know what the state of the cat really is, nor how to describe its real physical situation, because we can’t say for certain when the radioactive atom will decay, or whether the photon will be transmitted or reflected. But if we represent this system as a superposition, we know we will make predictions that will prove to be consistent with experiment. Most physicists, at least those who can be bothered to think about these things, adopt this view. This might be why they’re not often invited to parties.

It follows from this that it doesn’t matter precisely where in the chain of events we declare that the weirdness stops. It doesn’t matter where we place a ‘Heisenberg cut’, named for the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (of uncertainty principle fame), the point at which we stop using quantum mechanics and switch to more familiar theories of physics published more than 300 years ago by Isaac Newton. This is the point at which we assume the wavefunction collapses, and we replace the and of the quantum superposition with the or of actual outcomes.

[...] We are faced with a choice. We can recognise that quantum mechanics – with all its weirdness – is a purely symbolic framework for predicting the probabilistic outcomes of our experiments. It is indeed a calculational trick, not to be taken literally, which allows us some ability to get a handle on an otherwise unfathomable atomic and subatomic world.

Or we can recognise (with Einstein and Schrödinger) that quantum theory is at the very least incomplete, and deeply unsatisfactory. A theory capable of fathoming the atomic and subatomic world ought to be possible, if only we have the will to look for it, and the wit to find it... (MORE - missing details)