From Italy and the World

CNN  —  Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion is best known for its attention-grabbing tactics. Activists have blocked roads and bridges, glued themselves to trains, smashed bank windows and sprayed fake blood over buildings. But in two words headlining a New Year’s Eve statement, the group signaled a radical change. “We…

CNN  —  Iran on Saturday hanged two young men, one a karate champion, the other a volunteer children’s coach. This brings the total number of people known to have been executed in connection with the protests that have swept the country since September to four. Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed…

CNN  —  Now that a House speaker has been selected following a dayslong stalemate and members have finally been sworn in, the chamber can look toward picking back up business and organizing GOP-led committees. Every new Congress must pass a new set of House rules, and doing so will be…

Tokyo CNN  —  An airplane flown by budget carrier Jetstar made an emergency landing in central Japan on Saturday after authorities received an apparent bomb threat from an international caller, public broadcaster NHK reported, citing police sources. Tokyo’s Narita airport received the call at 6:20 a.m. Japan time from a…

CNN  —  It was New Year’s Eve, one of the most cherished holidays in Russia. The recruits in President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine – hundreds of them mobilized just months ago – were billeted in makeshift barracks, a vocational school in the occupied city of Makiivka, in the Donetsk…

CNN  —  The Los Angeles Dodgers have officially cut ties with pitcher Trevor Bauer, the team announced Friday. The former Cy Young award winner was previously suspended by Major League Baseball for violating the league’s joint domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse policy, but was reinstated last month when…

Scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) today reported that an inflammatory trigger like one present during viral infections is elevated in Alzheimer’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare brain disorder. “We have identified a new trigger of brain inflammation…

Eukaryotic cells — the ones that make up most life as we know it, including all animals, plants and fungi — are highly structured objects. These cells assemble and maintain their own smaller, internal bits: the membrane-bound organelles like nuclei, which store genetic information, or mitochondria, which produce chemical energy.…

Plastics are ubiquitous in our society, found in packaging and bottles as well as making up more than 18% of solid waste in landfills. Many of these plastics also make their way into the oceans, where they take up to hundreds of years to break down into pieces that can…

A new USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology study challenges existing ideas of how buildup of a protein called amyloid beta (Aβ) in the brain is related to Alzheimer’s disease. While buildup of amyloid protein has been associated with Alzheimer’s-related neurodegeneration, little is known about how the protein relates to…

CNN  —  In a dramatic shift, Kevin McCarthy has so far managed to flip 15 votes on Friday in his bid to become the next House speaker, though the California Republican is still short of the support needed to win. The House has voted to adjourn until 10 p.m. ET.…

CNN  —  Weeks after Hawaii’s Mauna Loa erupted for the first time in decades, neighboring volcano Kilauea is showing activity again after a brief pause, according to officials. Kilauea – which had stopped erupting last month for the first time since September 2021 amid Mauna Loa’s own lava eruption and…

The length of a specific generation can tell us a lot about the biology and social organization of humans. Now, researchers at Indiana University can determine the average age that women and men had children throughout human evolutionary history with a new method they developed using DNA mutations. The researchers…

New research has uncovered that pollen preserved in 250 million year old rocks contain compounds that function like sunscreen, these are produced by plants to protect them from harmful ultraviolet (UV-B) radiation. The findings suggests that a pulse of UV-B played an important part in the end Permian mass extinction…

A research team led by Tao Sun, associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Virginia, has made new discoveries that can expand additive manufacturing in aerospace and other industries that rely on strong metal parts. Their peer-reviewed paper was published Jan. 6, 2023, in Science Magazine:…

Get more exercise. Eat right. Make new friends. As we compile our lists of resolutions aimed at improving physical and mental health in 2023, new CU Boulder research suggests one addition could have a powerful impact: Gardening. Funded by the American Cancer Society, the first-ever, randomized, controlled trial of community…

A research study led by researchers with the Center for Earth Observation and Modeling at the University of Oklahoma analyzed time series satellite images from 2000 to 2021, revealing the vital role of Indigenous territories and protected areas in forest conservation in the Brazilian Amazon. The study results, recently published…

Using samples from an almost century-old, ongoing survey of marine plankton, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine suggest that rising levels of humanmade chemicals found in parts of the world’s oceans might be used to monitor the impact of human activity on ecosystem health, and may…

As anyone who has ever attended a cocktail party can tell you, shedding inhibitions makes you more talkative and possibly more prone to divulging secrets. Fungi, it turns out, are no different from humans in this respect. Using an approach that simultaneously modifies multiple sites in fungal genomes, Rice University…

Inexpensive iron salts are a key to simplifying the manufacture of essential precursors for drugs and other chemicals, according to scientists at Rice University. They’ve refined the process of producing diazides, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. Iron salts along with processes called radical ligand transfer…

With a new design, lithium-sulfur batteries could reach their full potential. Batteries are everywhere in daily life, from cell phones and smart watches to the increasing number of electric vehicles. Most of these devices use well-known batteries”>lithium-ion battery technology. And while lithium-ion batteries have come a long way since they…

The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia. Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome’s famed Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is…

CNN  —  For much of the Western world, Christmas is celebrated on December 25, according to the Gregorian calendar. Yet in a distinction that dates back centuries, Orthodox Christians follow the Julian calendar and mark the festival on January 7 instead. Orthodox Christmas – and the long-standing rift between the…

CNN  —  The man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students in November had thoroughly cleaned the interior and exterior of his car and was also seen wearing surgical gloves multiple times before being apprehended, a law enforcement source tells CNN. Bryan Kohberger, 28, is currently the sole suspect…

Russia Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov speaks during a World Affairs event at the Fairmont Hotel on November 29, 2017 in San Francisco, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Russia’s ambassador to the United States has criticized Washington for its reaction to Moscow’s proposal for a 36-hour unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine.…

This study, conducted from 2015-19 in the Thunder Basin National Grassland, may be the first to specifically examine the multispecies impacts of a wide-scale plague outbreak, which reduced the area covered by prairie dog colonies from nearly 25,000 acres to only about 125 acres in the study area. The 2017…