The numerical citations in the paragraphs I refer to.

Have you tried searching the literature?

See the first three paragraphs in the ‘Introduction’ section of the City and Environment Interactions paper.

Excerpt from the linked summary^1 about research published in City and Environment Interactions:^2

>First author Dr Jamie Kelly, who conducted the research while based at UCL Geography before moving to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said: “We were surprised to find how pervasive the contribution of agricultural emissions of ammonia to particulate pollution really is.

>“Particulate pollution across the UK is dominated by aerosols formed from rural agricultural emissions of ammonia. This influence extended from rural areas to mid-sized cities like Leicester, large cities like Birmingham and, for the UK, anomalously large cities like London.

>“This is because ammonia and aerosol particles can stay suspended in the atmosphere for days to a few weeks and so be transported long distances.”

>This kind of fine particulate pollution can have serious health effects, with estimates saying it may contribute to between 29,000 and 99,000 additional premature deaths each year in the UK.

> 

>The team ran multiple simulations with different pollution sources turned on and off, to see how each source contributed to the spread of particulate pollution.

>They found that UK agriculture contributed 38% of the particulate pollution in Leicester and 32% in Birmingham. Even in large cities like London, agriculture contributed 25% of the city’s pollution.

>Cities only contributed between about 13-24% to their own pollution, mostly from traffic, energy production, industry, and furnaces in commercial and residential locations.

>Senior author Dr Eloise Marais (UCL Geography) said: “Our work has identified that addressing urban air pollution doesn’t only require local solutions like ultra-low emission or clean air zones, but also national-scale measures that reduce ammonia emissions from rural agriculture.

>“Such actions have potentially large health benefits, as the fine particulate matter pollution formed from ammonia is a leading global health risk.”

^1 University College London, 31 Mar. 2023, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/mar/farms-found-be-biggest-particulate-pollution-source-citie

^2 Jamie M. Kelly et al. Diagnosing domestic and transboundary sources of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in UK cities using GEOS-Chem. City and Environment Interactions 18, 100100 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cacint.2023.100100

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Stephanie Dutchen, about research published in Nature:^2

> “We believe we have developed the first technology to design an organism that can’t be infected by any known virus,” said the study’s first author, Akos Nyerges, research fellow in genetics in the lab of George Church in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

>The work also provides the first built-in safety measure that prevents modified genetic material from being incorporated into natural cells, he said.

>“We can’t say it’s fully virus-resistant, but so far, based on extensive laboratory experiments and computational analysis, we haven’t found a virus that can break it,” Nyerges said.

>The authors said their work suggests a general method for making any organism immune to viruses and preventing gene flow into and out of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

>Such biocontainment strategies are of increasing interest as groups explore the safe deployment of GMOs for growing crops, reducing disease spread, generating biofuels, and removing pollutants from open environments.

> 

>The work incorporates two separate safeguards.

>The first protects against horizontal gene transfer, a constantly occurring phenomenon in which snippets of genetic code and their accompanying traits, such as antibiotic resistance, get transferred from one organism to another.

>For the second fail-safe, the team designed the bacteria themselves to be unable to live outside a controlled environment.

>Therefore, no humans or other creatures are at risk of getting infected by “superbacteria,” Nyerges emphasized.

^1 Stephanie Dutchen, Harvard Medical School, 15 Mar. 2023, https://hms.harvard.edu/news/designing-more-useful-bacteria

^2 Nyerges, A., Vinke, S., Flynn, R. et al. A swapped genetic code prevents viral infections and gene transfer. Nature 615, 720–727 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05824-z

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Vanessa Thomas:

>Like a tornado siren for life-threatening storms in America’s heartland, a new computer model that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and NASA satellite data could sound the alarm for dangerous space weather.

>The model uses AI to analyze spacecraft measurements of the solar wind (an unrelenting stream of material from the Sun) and predict where an impending solar storm will strike, anywhere on Earth, with 30 minutes of advance warning.

>This could provide just enough time to prepare for these storms and prevent severe impacts on power grids and other critical infrastructure.

>For example, a destructive solar storm in 1989 caused electrical blackouts across Quebec for 12 hours, plunging millions of Canadians into the dark and closing schools and businesses.

>The most intense solar storm on record, the Carrington Event in 1859, sparked fires at telegraph stations and prevented messages from being sent.

>If the Carrington Event happened today, it would have even more severe impacts, such as widespread electrical disruptions, persistent blackouts, and interruptions to global communications. Such technological chaos could cripple economies and endanger the safety and livelihoods of people worldwide.

>In addition, the risk of geomagnetic storms and devastating effects on our society is presently increasing as we approach the next “solar maximum” – a peak in the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle – which is expected to arrive sometime in 2025.

^1 Vanessa Thomas for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Cente, 30 Mar. 2023, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/sun/nasa-enabled-ai-predictions-may-give-time-to-prepare-for-solar-storms/

FCA’s Matthew Long wrote last month that the U.K. regulator “continue to see poor financial crime controls in some payments and e-money firms.”

That same regulator just put Revolut on notice that the company may be in breach of rules that state: “All adverts and promotions for financial services must be fair, clear and not misleading.”

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Sean Hollister, about an allegation that Google may have trained Bard with ChatGPT data, sometime before yesterday:

>Google’s Bard hasn’t exactly had an impressive debut — and The Information is reporting that the company is so interested in changing the fortunes of its AI chatbots, it’s forcing its DeepMind division to help the Google Brain team beat OpenAI with a new initiative called Gemini.

>The Information’s report also contains the potentially staggering thirdhand allegation that Google stooped so low as to train Bard using data from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, scraped from a website called ShareGPT. A former Google AI researcher reportedly spoke out against using that data, according to the publication.

>But Google is firmly and clearly denying the data is used: “Bard is not trained on any data from ShareGPT or ChatGPT,” spokesperson Chris Pappas tells The Verge.

>Pappas declined to answer whether Google had ever used ChatGPT data to train Bard in the past. “Unfortunately, all I can share is our statement from yesterday,” he says.

>According to The Information’s reporting, a Google AI engineer named Jacob Devlin left Google to immediately join its rival OpenAI after attempting to warn Google not to use that ChatGPT data because it would violate OpenAI’s terms of service, and that its answers would look too similar.

^1 Sean Hollister for The Verge/Vox Media, 30 Mar. 2023, https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/29/23662621/google-bard-chatgpt-sharegpt-training-denies

^2 Alphabet’s Google and DeepMind pause grudges, join forces to chase OpenAI, Jon Victor and Amir Efrati for The Information, 29 Mar. 2023, https://www.theinformation.com/articles/alphabets-google-and-deepmind-pause-grudges-join-forces-to-chase-openai

Congratulations on this exciting discovery, and thank you for sharing!

How did MeerKAT admin respond when they heard about what you observed?

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Bianca Chan and Paige Hagy:

>When Mary Ann Miller saw the Hindenburg report estimate that roughly 40% to 75% of Cash App accounts reviewed by former employees [of Block, formerly known as Square] were fake or involved fraud, she told Insider she wasn't shocked at all.

>Miller is a 30-year fraud expert who has worked at and with banks, fintechs, and neobanks.

>Miller said that fintechs, by and large, have conflicting objectives when it comes to balancing growth and risk management.

>"One is to grow, grow, grow," Miller said of fintechs' competing priorities. "And then you have the risk teams that probably don't have the voice that they need at the table."

>Signing up and getting approved for a fintech is oftentimes quicker and easier than getting an account at a traditional bank.

>A speedy sign-up process can also help expedite growth, which is always a key consideration for a startup early on.

> 

>For many consumer-facing fintechs, the number of users has often translated into the company's growth, and therefore its value, several sources told Insider.

>But it's a double-edged sword, since fraudsters and other bad actors can also onboard with ease, according to several analysts, venture capitalists, founders, and fraud experts who spoke with Insider.

>"I don't think there's an investor on the street who was not aware that Cash App is relatively widely used for illicit activities," [a fintech] analyst told Insider. "At the end of the day, I don't think anyone is shocked by any of that."

>The fact that Cash App offers peer-to-peer payments exacerbates the fraud issue, according to McKenna, the chief fraud strategist at Point Predictive, an anti-fraud software company.

>"It makes the money movement that much faster," he said.

>Fintechs were also singled out for facilitating fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program, when an 18-month-long investigation by the House Subcommittee called out fintechs for having little to no fraud prevention efforts in place to stop obvious and preventable fraud.

^1 Bianca Chan and Paige Hagy for Insider/Axel Springer, 29 Mar. 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/fintech-fraud-problems-payments-cash-app-venmo-zelle-2023-3

Excerpt from the linked content based on a Reuters interview:^1

>Alphabet's Google Cloud has accused Microsoft of anti-competitive cloud computing practices and criticised imminent deals with European cloud vendors, saying these do not solve broader concerns about its licensing terms.

>Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery urged EU antitrust regulators to take a closer look at the issue.

>Google Cloud's first public comments on Microsoft and its EU deals underscores the rivalry between the two U.S. tech giants in the multi-billion-dollar cloud computing business where Google trails market leader Amazon and second-ranked Microsoft.

>"Microsoft definitely has a very anti-competitive posture in cloud. They are leveraging a lot of their dominance in the on-premise business as well as Office 365 and Windows to tie Azure and the rest of cloud services and make it hard for customers to have a choice," Zavery told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday.

^1 Reuters, via the Hindustan Times/Birla fam, 30 Mar. 2023, https://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/microsoft-has-a-very-anti-competitive-posture-in-cloud-accuses-google-101680159944029.html

Excerpt from the linked summary^1 about an aggregate measure of financial misreporting:^2

>False information on balance sheets has “real economic effects because it represents misinformation on which firms base their investment, hiring, and production decisions,” Dr. Beneish and his co-authors—David Farber of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis and Matthew Glendening and Kenneth Shaw, both of the University of Missouri—wrote in December.

>Messod D. Beneish, a professor of accounting at Indiana University who developed the M-Score in the 1990s, and several co-authors have calculated an aggregate score for nearly 2,000 companies.

>The M-Score is calculated from eight ratios on a company’s balance sheet, all numbers that public companies report quarterly, and comparing the ratios to earnings statements from a year earlier.

>The “M” is for manipulation, and uses a company’s financial statements to determine whether it is engaging in manipulation.

>“We think this is a measure of misinformation in the economy,” said Dr. Beneish. The new aggregate measure was published in a December paper, and the latest data—compiled in March and shared with The Wall Street Journal—shows that the collective probability of fraud across major companies is the highest in over 40 years.

> 

>There are ways for companies to manipulate all these metrics to appear profitable even when actual sales aren’t improving.

>For example, one of the eight metrics raises a flag if a company abruptly starts reporting more “receivables,” that is, more money owed to the firm but not yet paid.

>Another flag goes up if a company reports higher values of assets that cannot be sold, and that aren’t clearly identified as plants, property or equipment.

>A third metric looks at changes in accruals, which is when an expense has been incurred, but not yet paid. Another identifies whether companies change how much depreciation they take.

>Dr. Lee, now a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, says that any of the eight metrics wouldn’t necessarily mean trouble.

>But when the score of the combined metrics is rising, it shows “a growth company, with core businesses that are eroding, that is running out of economic steam and using aggressive accounting,” he said. Even if the accounting is legitimate, he added, “you may want to avoid that company.”

^1 Josh Zumbrun for the Wall Street Journal/News Corp, 24 Mar. 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/accounting-fraud-indicator-signals-coming-economic-trouble-506568a0

^2 Messod D. Beneish, David B. Farber, Matthew Glendening, and Kenneth W. Shaw. Aggregate financial misreporting and the predictability of U.S. recessions and GDP growth. The Accounting Review (1 Dec. 2022) https://doi.org/10.2308/TAR-2021-0160

>velvykat5731

>Are we talking about Joseph Mallord William Turner? Is it correct to describe him as an "impressionist"?

I used the phrase ‘impressionistic paintings’ in the title to refer to an aesthetic effect, mindful of J.M.W.

Excerpt from the linked summary^1 about a paper^2 in PNAS:

>The study conducted by a team of scientists from the United States and Europe shows that artists such as Turner and Monet documented changes in atmospheric pollution in London and Paris through their paintings, providing a unique window into historical trends in air quality.

>The article demonstrates that the progression toward hazier contours and whiter color palettes in Turner and Monet’s paintings and other artists is consistent with the optical changes expected from higher atmospheric aerosol concentrations.

>Monet and Turner’s stylistic changes from more figurative to impressionistic suggested that their works could capture elements of the atmospheric environmental transformation during the Industrial Revolution.

>The study used a mixed-effects model to analyze the paintings, which allowed the researchers to account for both temporal and environmental trends.

>The model showed a significant dependence on emissions of sulfur dioxide – SO2 emissions – indicating that atmospheric pollution contributed to depicting the contrast in Turner and Monet’s paintings.

>The researchers note that while there are limitations to using paintings as a proxy for historical air quality, the evidence provided is complementary to instrumental measurements.

^1 Unfolding Impressionism: how Turner and Monet documented pollution. Josefina Cordera for United Academics Magazine, 16 Mar. 2023, https://www.ua-magazine.com/2023/03/16/unfolding-impressionism-how-turner-and-monet-documented-pollution/

^2 Albright, A. L., & Huybers, P. (2023). Paintings by Turner and Monet depict trends in 19th-century air pollution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(6). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2219118120

Findings in title quoted from the linked paper^1 and a summary^2 from the University of Tokyo.

From the linked paper:^1

>We do not need living organisms, but the existence of life in exoplanets can be probed by remains of microbes, microfossils, minerals produced by biological activities (biominerals), or any other signatures of past biological activities (e.g. concentration of biological molecules or isotopic ratios) (Cavalazzi and Westall 2018).

From the summary:^2

>“I propose we study well-preserved grains ejected from other worlds for potential signs of life,” said Totani [of the University of Tokyo’s Department of Astronomy].

>“The search for life outside our solar system typically means a search for signs of communication, which would indicate intelligent life but precludes any pre-technological life.

>“Or the search is for atmospheric signatures that might hint at life, but without direct confirmation there could always be an explanation that does not require life.

>“However, if there are signs of life in dust grains, not only could we be certain, but we could also find out soon.”

> 

>The basic idea is that large asteroid strikes can eject ground material into space. There is a chance that recently deceased or even fossilized microorganisms could be contained in some rocky material in this ejecta.

>This material will vary in size greatly, with different-sized pieces behaving differently once in space.

>Some larger pieces might fall back down or enter permanent orbits around a local planet or star. And some much smaller pieces might be too small to contain any verifiable signs of life.

>But grains in the region of 1 micrometer (one-thousandth of a millimeter) could not only host a specimen of a single-celled organism, but they could also potentially escape their host solar system altogether, and under the right circumstances, maybe even venture to ours.

>There may be such grains already on Earth, and in plentiful amounts, preserved in places such as the Antarctic ice, or under the seafloor.

^1 Tomonori Totani (2023) Solid grains ejected from terrestrial exoplanets as a probe of the abundance of life in the Milky Way. International Journal of Astrobiology, https://doi.org/10.1017/S147355042300006X

^2 Searching for life with space dust, 22 Mar. 2023, https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00283.html

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Rani Gran:

>NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is cruising back to Earth with a sample it collected from the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu.

>When its sample capsule parachutes down into the Utah desert on Sept. 24, OSIRIS-REx will become the United States’ first-ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth.

>After seven years in space, including a nail-biting touchdown on Bennu to gather dust and rocks, this intrepid mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet: deliver the asteroid sample to Earth while protecting it from heat, vibrations, and earthly contaminants.

>“Once the sample capsule touches down, our team will be racing against the clock to recover it and get it to the safety of a temporary clean room,” said Mike Moreau, deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

>So, over the next six months, the OSIRIS-REx team will practice and refine the procedures required to recover the sample in Utah and transport it to a new lab built for the material at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

>There, scientists will unpack the sample, distribute up to a quarter of it to the OSIRIS-REx science team around the world for analysis, and curate the rest for other scientists to study, now and in future generations.

^1 NASA prepares for historic asteroid sample delivery on Sept. 24, Rani Gran for NASA, 24 Mar. 2023, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-prepares-for-osiris-rex-historic-asteroid-sample-delivery-sept-24-2023

Excerpt from the linked summary^1 by Kendra Leon, about a Current Biology paper:^2

>A daisy living in Namaqualand, a desert environment in northern South Africa where it rains only during the winter, has a few weeks to bloom, pollinate, and set seeds before the area becomes too dry for it to live.

>All the while, it must compete with other flowers to attract pollinator flies.

>According to a study by Beverley Glover, a professor at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and the director of the University’s Botanic Garden, and her team, the daisy known as *Gorteria * combines at least three preexisting genes to "create" lifelike female flies.

>“The thing that’s clever here is that these flowers have 12 to 14 petals, and you only get the spots on two to four of them that look totally random in position. That’s what the fly is doing. They’re looking at it and going, ‘Oh, that’s random. That’s not part of the plant. It must be a lady fly,’” Glover said in a phone interview.

>The male fly then lands on top of the "lady fly" and wiggles around in a vain attempt to mate. Eventually he gives up and flies away, but all the wiggling gave the daisy what it needs to survive — pollen.

> 

>Glover and her team found the gene that moves iron in the daisy changes some of its normally reddish-purple petals to a “more fly-like blue-green.”

>Meanwhile, the gene that grows hairs on the daisy's root causes the the petal hairs to expand, giving its fake female flies texture.

>To further add realism to its fake female flies and draw in unwitting and mating-focused male flies, Glover said the daisy has its fake flies appear seemingly at random — thereby avoiding looking like a patterned, spotted flower.

>She also noted the daisy creates the flies in a spiral pattern which she compared to a clock, with a fake fly petal appearing at 12 o’clock, then another at 4 o’clock and so on to give it the “appearance of being random but it’s not random at all.”

^1 Kendra Leon for Courthouse News, 23 Mar. 2023, https://www.courthousenews.com/daisy-found-to-create-fake-female-flies-to-lure-pollen-bearing-males/

^2 Roman Kellenberger et al. Multiple gene co-options underlie the rapid evolution of sexually deceptive flowers in Gorteria diffusa. Current biology (23 Mar. 2023) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.003

Excerpt from the linked summary^1 of a paper:^2

>"We have shed new light on the molecular mechanisms that allow beetles to absorb water rectally. Insects are particularly sensitive to changes in their water balance.

>"As such, this knowledge can be used to develop more targeted methods to combat beetle species which destroy our food production, without killing other animals or harming humans and nature," says Associate Professor Kenneth Veland Halberg of the Department of Biology, who led the research.

>The researchers studied the internal organs of red flour beetles to learn more about their ability to absorb water through the rectum.

>Red flour beetles are used as so-called model organisms, which means that they are offer tools that make them easy to work with and that their biology is similar to that found in other beetles.

> 

>Here, the researchers identified a gene that is expressed sixty times more in the beetle's rectum compared to the rest of the animal, which is higher than any other gene they found.

>This led them to a unique group of cells known as leptophragmata cells. Upon closer inspection, they could see that these cells play a crucial role when the beetle absorbs water through its rear end.

>"Leptophragmata cells are tiny cells situated like windows between the beetle's kidneys and the insect circulatory system, or blood.

>"As the beetle's kidneys encircle its hindgut, the leptophragmata cells function by pumping salts into the kidneys so that they are able to harvest water from moist air through their rectums and from here into their bodies.

>"The gene we have discovered is essential to this process, which is new knowledge for us," explains Halberg.

^1 University of Copenhagen, 22 Mar. 2023. https://news.ku.dk/all_news/2023/03/researchers-get-to-the-bottom-of-how-beetles-use-their-butts-to-stay-hydrated/

^2 Muhammad T. Naseem et al. (2023) NHA1 is a cation/proton antiporter essential for the water-conserving functions of the rectal complex in Tribolium castaneum. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (13) e2217084120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2217084120

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Amanda Silberling:

>At a company that helps people find jobs, 2,200 employees will now have to embark on a job search of their own. Indeed laid off 15% of employees today, CEO Chris Hyams announced in an all-hands meeting.

>In a blog post, Hyams elaborated on the decision by explaining that the job market is expected to continue to cool down. Indeed makes its money by allowing companies to sponsor job listings, which shows the listing to more job seekers.

>But Hyams said that as of last quarter, sponsored job volumes were down 33% year over year, and total job openings were down 3.5%.

>The CEO will take a 25% cut in base pay himself.

>Employees were emailed about their job status within an hour of the announcement — the subject lines of these emails either read “Your Position Has Been Impacted” or “Your Position Has Not Been Impacted.”

>Employees in the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands and Japan may still be in limbo, due to local regulations.

^1 Amanda Silberling for TechCrunch/Apollo Global Management, 22 Mar. 2023, https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/22/job-listing-platform-indeed-lays-off-2200-employees/

>creepystepdad72

>The memo IS NOT saying they hired 3x the allocated positions; rather, it's saying the additional postings have caused an increase in instances of mistakes being made (e.g. backfill hired for a person who ended up staying on, etc.)

According to the title of the linked content:^1

>Leaked document shows Amazon's flawed job-posting process led to 'over-hiring,' with one team listing 3 times more openings than approved for

According to the text of the linked content:^1

>But for Amazon, most job posts were being actively filled, even if they weren't approved for, in part due to the lack of internal governance, the former recruiting manager said.

Emphases added.

^1 Eugene Kim for Insider/Axel Springer, 21 Mar. 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-flawed-job-listing-process-over-hiring-layoffs-2023-3

Excerpt from the linked content^1,2 by Greg Allen:

>The mosquito — known by its scientific name of Culex lactator — is typically found in Central and South America. Researchers with the University of Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory first discovered it in a rural area near Miami in 2018.

>It's since spread to other counties in Southwest Florida.

>It's not known how the new mosquito was introduced into Florida. Scientists say climate change appears to be a factor that's making the state and other parts of the U.S. welcoming to non-native mosquitoes that can carry diseases.

>Mosquito biologist Lawrence Reeves is the lead author of a report on the newly-discovered species, published Wednesday in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

>He says, "There are about 90 mosquito species living in Florida, and that list is growing as new mosquito species are introduced to the state from elsewhere in the world."

>Reeves says little is known about Culex lactator, but it bears further study. It's a member of a group of mosquitoes known to carry the West Nile and St. Louis Encephalitis viruses.

>The U.S. faces public health challenges related to diseases like West Nile, dengue, and chikungunya, all of which are spread by non-native mosquitoes that have become established here.

>Reeves says, "We need to be vigilant for introductions of new mosquito species because each introduction comes with the possibility that the introduced species will facilitate the transmission of a mosquito-transmitted disease."

^1 A new tropical mosquito has come to Florida, 22 Mar. 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1164937874/uh-oh-a-new-tropical-mosquito-has-come-to-florida-the-buzz-its-creating-isnt-goo

^2 Lawrence E Reeves, Kristin E Sloyer, Kara Tyler-Julian, Rebecca Heinig, Atom Rosales, Candelaria Domingo, Nathan D Burkett-Cadena. Culex (Phenacomyia) lactator (Diptera: Culicidae) in southern Florida, USA: a new subgenus and species country record. Journal of Medical Entomology, 2023; tjad023. https://doi.org/10.1093/jme/tjad023

Excerpt from the linked summary:^1

>Trilobites, prehistoric sea creatures, had so-called median eyes, single eyes on their foreheads, in addition to their compound eyes, research conducted by Dr Brigitte Schoenemann at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Zoology and Professor Dr Euan Clarkson at the University of Edinburgh has now found out.

>Such single eyes are found in all arthropods and also in many relatives of the extinct trilobites. They are usually small cup eyes (ocelli), sometimes even equipped with lenses, and not unlike human eyes.

>Schoenemann and Clarkson examined a specimen of the trilobite Aulacopleura koninckii in which part of the head had been scraped off.

>They found three almost identically shaped dark, inconspicuous and tiny oval spots of the same size at the front of the head. These three structures are parallel to each other and fan out slightly on the underside.

>All three spots are characterized by a smooth, clear outline and a uniform, dark brownish colour.

> 

>In the trilobite Cyclopyge sibilla, which lived in the free ocean, the researchers also found three cup-shaped median eyes on the so-called glabella, the region in the middle of the forehead between the large compound eyes, which even apparently had a lens not unsimilar to human eyes, and were thus clearly more differentiated and probably much more efficient than those of the bottom-dwelling trilobite Aulacopleura.

>In their article, the researchers also consider why the median eyes of trilobites have escaped detection until now: “These eyes are present in trilobites at the larval stage, but lie beneath what is probably a thin, transparent carapace (cuticle), which becomes opaque during fossilisation.

>Both explain why they have remained undiscovered until now,” she added. Thus, the researchers have solved the mystery of missing middle eyes in trilobites.

^1 New eyes discovered in trilobites, 17 Mar. 2023, https://portal.uni-koeln.de/en/universitaet/aktuell/press-releases/single-news/new-eyes-discovered-in-trilobites

^2 Schoenemann, B., Clarkson, E.N.K. The median eyes of trilobites. Scientific Reports 13, 3917 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31089-7

Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Eugene Kim:

>Amazon had little oversight over its job opening process until last year, allowing managers to recruit far more, and ultimately hire more employees, than they were approved to bring on, Insider has learned.

>For example, the utility computing team at Amazon Web Service had 24,988 hiring job posts opened in 2022, when only 7,798 positions were approved for, according to an internal document obtained by Insider.

>That means the utility computing team had over 3-times more job postings than the headcount target at the time.

>The document points to Amazon's lack of standardization and governance for the gap between the job postings and open headcount.

> 

>The result was "a process prone to inconsistency, error, and potential mis-use," including "over-hiring," the document said.

>"This enabled over-hiring in certain cost centers and contributed to span of control and level ratio defects," the internal document said.

>Levels is tech-industry speak for an employee's seniority level, which determines their pay. In theory, if multiple job postings for the same job called for different seniority, a unit could wind up with more over-qualified, or under-qualified, people in the unit than planning budgets assumed.

>"Span of control" is industry jargon for the number of direct reports under each manager, according to Gartner.

^1 Eugene Kim for Insider/Axel Springer, 21 Mar. 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-flawed-job-listing-process-over-hiring-layoffs-2023-3

Excerpt from the linked summary^1 by Dyani Lewis, about research^2 by Hongru Wang et al.:

>The Tibetan Plateau extends from the northern edge of the Himalayas across 2.5 million square kilometres. It is a high-altitude, dry and cold region.

>Despite its inhospitable environment, humans have been present on the plateau since prehistoric times. Denisovans, extinct hominins that interbred with both Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans, lived on the northeastern edge of the plateau 160,000 years ago.

>Stone tools made 30,000–40,000 years ago are further signs of an early human presence in the region.

>But when people established a permanent presence on the plateau — and where they came from — has been a matter of debate, says Qiaomei Fu, an evolutionary geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who led the study.

> 

>Fu and her team sequenced ancient genomes from the remains of 89 individuals, dated to 5,100–100 years ago, unearthed from 29 archaeological sites.

>Their study confirms that permanent occupation of the region pre-dates historical records.

>It also paints a complex picture of where early Tibetans migrated from, and how their interactions in the region and with their lowland neighbours shaped their heritage.

>Analysis of the genomes reveals that the ancient occupants of the Tibetan Plateau have strong genetic links to the Tibetan, Sherpa and Qiang ethnic groups that live on or near the plateau today.

>Comparisons of the oldest genomes with ancient and living people across Asia suggest that the ancestors of modern Tibetans arrived on the plateau from the east.

>By contrast, India and the rest of the Asian subcontinent were populated by immigrants from eastern Eurasia and central Asia.

^1 Dyani Lewis, Nature, 17 Mar. 2023, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00742-6

^2 Hongru Wang et al. Human genetic history on the Tibetan Plateau in the past 5100 years. Science Advances 9, eadd5582 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.add5582

Excerpt from the linked content:^1,2

>Mountain lions are protected from hunting in California by a law passed by popular vote in 1990.

>However, a team of researchers working across the state found that human-caused mortality — primarily involving conflict with humans over livestock and collisions with vehicles — was more common than natural death for this protected large carnivore.

>[Lead author] Benson and his colleagues found that mountain lions were at greater risk of mortality from humans when they were closer to rural development.

>They also found that mountain lions were less likely to die in areas where there were higher proportions of voters in favor of pro-environmental initiatives.

>[The] new study showed that populations of mountain lions in California experiencing greater human-caused mortality also had lower population-level survival rates, suggesting that humans do indeed increase overall mortality.

>Most research on mountain lions is conducted at relatively small scales, which limits understanding of mortality caused by humans across the large areas they roam.

>To address this, scientists from multiple universities, government agencies and private organizations teamed up to better understand human-caused mortality for mountain lions across the entire state of California.

>The team tracked almost 600 mountain lions in 23 different study areas, including the Sierra Nevada, the northern redwoods, wine country north of San Francisco, the city of Los Angeles and many other areas of the state.

^1 University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 20 Mar. 2023, https://www.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/humans-are-leading-source-death-california-mountain-lions-despite-hunting-protections

^2 John Benson et al. (2023) The ecology of human-caused mortality for a protected large carnivore. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (13) e2220030120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220030120