NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2023--

SAN JOSE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 13, 2023--

While the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program last month, a separate and significant change to the federal student loan system is moving ahead.

Mozambique’s government approved a strategy to reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels that it estimates will cost

Veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg announced on Tuesday he was deactivating his X (formerly known as Twitter) account, saying Elon Musk’s takeover of the site turned it into a “cesspool.” Mr Mossberg is a well-respected name and expert in the US tech writing industry, who also co-founded media sites such as Recode and AllThingsD. He announced his boycotting of X on Meta’s new platform Threads, saying his reasons revolve around business tycoon Mr Musk’s threats to sue the Anti-Defemation League (ADL). Mr Musk is threatening to sue the ADL for around $22bn, claiming that the Jewish civil rights group is “destroying” his platform’s value by accusing him of antisemitism. Mr Mossberg cut back his usage of X after Mr Musk bought back controversial figures accounts when he took over ownership of Twitter. Among others, Mr Musk restored the accounts of media personality Andrew Tate, who has been charged over rape and human trafficking claims, as well as Rep Majorie Taylor Greene, who is known for spreading conspiracy theories. “Under Elon Musk, Twitter has not only decided to stop blocking bigots and liars and pro- insurrectionists, it has actively welcomed them, with apparent support from Mr. Musk. I had already cut my participation there by 90%. But Musk’s latest move, to threaten to ban and sue the ADL – to the delight of antisemites and other haters – is the last straw for me,” Mr Mossberg wrote on Threads. He continued on to say he will only be found on Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. “They have their own drawbacks. (I even boycotted Meta for awhile pre-pandemic over privacy issues). But none comes close to the cesspool of Twitter under Musk, which, IMO, is steadily approaching the level of Truth Social,” he wrote. Mr Mossberg famously quit Facebook back in 2018 “because my own values and the policies and actions of Facebook have diverged to the point where I’m no longer comfortable here”. This time, Mr Mossberg has quit X over fears that “antisemites and other haters” will revel in Mr Musk’s decision to ban and sue the ADL. “It is profoundly disturbing that Elon Musk spent the weekend engaging with a highly toxic, anti-Semitic campaign on his platform,” ADL CEO Johnathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “But to be clear, the real issue is neither ADL nor the threat of a frivolous lawsuit. This urgent matter is the safety of the Jewish people in the face of increasing, intensifying antisemitism.” While there has yet to be a lawsuit filed, Mr Musk took to X to promote the hashtag #BantheADL, which inevitably became popular amongst the far-right X community. Before retiring from journalism back in 2017, Mr Mossberg wrote for The Wall Street Journal for over twenty years. His admired status makes his leave from X ten times louder in the media industry. Read More Elon Musk vows to sue ADL for calling him antisemitic after he promoted antisemitic campaign on X Why is Elon Musk obsessed with the letter X? Elon Musk calls Burning Man ‘best art on Earth’ amid chaos that saw thousands stranded and one dead SpaceX launch of Starship rocket on hold amid ‘mishap investigation’ Why is Elon Musk obsessed with the letter X? Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition

SHANGHAI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 8, 2023--

FC 24 Centurions Crafting Upgrade SBC and Centurions Crafting Upgrade Completionist Milestone objective are now live in Ultimate Team. Here's how to complete both efficiently.

Diablo 4 Nightmare Dungeon Tier List for June 2023 including best dungeons to run for Solo Experience Farming, Glyph Leveling, Group Farming and High Tier Pushing.

CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 14, 2023--

A white dwarf star is undergoing the process of turning into a “cosmic diamond” as it begins to crystalise. The lullaby “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” talks about stars in the sky looking like diamonds, but for one specific type of star, that observation is truer than for others. Astronomers have observed that when a specific type of dead star starts to cool, it begins to crystalise and harden. An international team of astronomers, led by Alexander Venner of the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, have explained in a new paper Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society how a white dwarf star around 104 light-years away is doing just that. They noticed that the star, composed primarily of carbon and metallic oxygen, has a temperature-mass profile that suggests its centre is hardening into a dense “cosmic diamond” made of crystallised carbon and oxygen. The study explained: "In this work we present the discovery of a new Sirius-like quadruple system at 32 parsecs distance, composed of a crystallizing white dwarf companion to the previously known triple HD 190412.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It continued: “By virtue of its association with these main sequence companions, this is the first crystallizing white dwarf whose total age can be externally constrained, a fact that we make use of by attempting to empirically measure a cooling delay caused by core crystallization in the white dwarf.” All stars eventually die out when they run out of energy. Of those that have a mass of less than around eight times that of the Sun, the vast majority will form a white dwarf star. The matter of a white dwarf star is highly compressed and as they gradually cool, they evolve into a black dwarf star when they lose heat and crystalise. Scientists’ calculations estimate the process takes around a quadrillion years (one million billion years) to complete, though the signs that the process is occurring can be identified by experts. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Google is adding more Indian languages to its services and seeking ways to make its Android smartphones cheaper,

Alcohol addiction ruins millions of lives every year, but scientists may have found a cure for this terrible affliction. A new treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been trialled in monkeys with impressive results and, if these translate to human trials, the impact could be monumental. A team of neuroscientists and physiologists from across the US tested a new type of gene therapy to see if they could directly target the underlying brain circuitry associated with sustained heavy drinking. As they noted, in the journal Nature Medicine, people suffering from AUD commonly return to alcohol use even if they attempt to quit. This is largely to do with what’s known as mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signalling – meaning how the central nervous system circuit communicates the feelgood neurotransmitter dopamine. A protein called glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is key to keeping these neurons in this reward circuitry functioning. However, experts have found that levels of GDNF are reduced in people with AUD during periods of alcohol abstinence, most notably in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as IFLScience notes. Therefore, the researchers decided to test whether using gene therapy to deliver more GDNF to the VTA could help reinforce this crucial dopaminergic signalling and prevent patients from suffering an alcoholic relapse. The team of scientists explained how alcohol consumption in non-addicts prompts the release of dopamine, creating a pleasurable buzz feeling, but chronic alcohol use causes the brain to adapt and stop releasing so much dopamine. “So when people are addicted to alcohol, they don’t really feel more pleasure in drinking,” Dr Kathleen Grant, a senior co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It seems that they’re drinking more because they feel a need to maintain an intoxicated state.” For their research, Dr Grant and her colleagues used eight rhesus macaque monkeys, who were exposed to increasing concentrations of alcohol over four 30-day “induction” periods. The monkeys then had free access to alcohol and water for 21 hours a day for six months, during which they developed heavy drinking behaviours. This was then followed by a 12-week abstinence phase, with the GDNF treatment performed four weeks in for half of the subjects. The gene therapy was delivered using a a viral vector containing a copy of the human GDNF gene injected directly into the primate’s VTA, according to IFLScience. And the results were truly jaw-dropping. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Dr Grant said. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.” The most exciting aspect of their findings is the suggestion that gene therapy could offer a permanent solution for people with the most severe cases of AUD. This will be a welcome glimmer of hope to many, given that some 29.5 million people were diagnosed with AUD in the US alone in 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Of these 29.5 million sufferers, almost a million (894,000) were aged between 12 and 17. It’ll likely be some time before we know for sure whether the gene therapy can be rolled out in humans, but it’s an important first step in tackling this devastating disorder. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.