Will more funding be needed to keep Intel competitive?

On 1 August 2024, Intel announced financial results for the second quarter of 2024. They weren’t pretty; the company’s stock dropped more than 25 percent as it announced an aggressive plan to cut costs, including layoffs that will impact 15 percent of its entire workforce.

Key Points

• A rocket team reports the first successful detection of Earth’s ambipolar electric field: a weak, planet-wide electric field as fundamental as Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields.
• First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the “polar wind,” a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs above Earth’s poles.
• This electric field lifts charged particles in our upper atmosphere to greater heights than they would otherwise reach and may have shaped our planet’s evolution in ways yet to be explored.

The country has ambitious plans for fusion power plants to provide clean, limitless energy. Can they be realized?

Wealthy nations are purchasing vaccines against H5N1 influenza and boosting surveillance, but there are concerns that low-income countries will be left behind.

When H5N1 avian influenza started spreading among dairy cattle across the U.S. this year, regulators warned against consuming unpasteurized milk. What happened? Raw milk sales went up.

Distributors of this unsafe-for-human-consumption product deny H5N1—which has the potential to sicken millions of people—is a danger. Dairy farmers decline to allow disease detectives onto their properties.

Exclusive: Investigation reveals how intelligence agencies tried to derail war crimes prosecution, with Netanyahu ‘obsessed’ with intercepts

"Knowledge of atomic research should not be the private property of any one country but should be shared with the rest of the world for the benefit of mankind."

Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb.

“This disease doesn’t have to be deadly if we just know about it,” McCullick said. “A lot of people could be saved just from the knowledge that needs to get out there.”

First time I heard about it.

Researchers also say more sampling is needed. Almost 50 herds of dairy cattle across 9 US states have had confirmed cases of H5N1, and one infected person has been linked to the outbreak. But the actual numbers are probably much higher, scientists say. “There’s almost certainly been a lot more human cases than just the one,” says Peacock.

BOOK REVIEW

Where should society draw the line on extreme wealth? A fresh account sets out the logic and suggests how to redress inequality.

Highlights:

[...] Therefore, it is in their interest to mate with as many females as possible to increase their chance of passing on genetic material. This is one hypothesized reason for males having two penises instead of one: as each hemipenis is associated with one testis and only one side can be used during mating, having a second hemipenis functions as a "backup" and ensures that mating can continue even if one side were to run out of sperm.

.

The surface of hemipenes is one of the most interesting and unique features, and is often covered in sharp spines and spicules that are organized in formations called rosettes.

.

Hemipenes are usually held inverted within the body, and are everted for reproduction via erectile tissue, much like that in the human penis.