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No sign of super-symmetry has yet appeared in CERN’s collider, leading some science writers to voice doubts about the concept.
But Heuer said that just because it was elusive did not mean it did not exist. “It took us 30 years to find the Higgs,” he added.
The LHC, in its 27-kilometre (17-mile) circular tunnel under a corner of Switzerland and France, was conceived in the early 1990s at a time when particle physicists, astrophysicists and cosmologists were increasingly talking together.
The interchange between experts in once separate fields has brought theories about the universe and its nature - as well as what came before and whether there are parallel undetected worlds - into sharper focus.
This has also been fueled by the increasing power of telescopes, allowing scientists to detect indirectly that there must be some strange substance massing around the galaxies to keep them together. This has become known as dark matter because it cannot be seen, although its effects are evident.
Recent measurements by the European Space Agency’s satellite-borne Planck telescope found dark matter accounted for 27 percent of the universe and the even more enigmatic dark energy - driving galaxies apart - 68.3 percent.
Visible matter in open space - galaxies, stars and planets - accounts for just 5 percent.
String theory says particles are in fact tiny oscillating strings that can appear differently depending on how they are viewed. It requires multiple extra dimensions that have yet to be detected.
The theory, which has partly morphed into the M-theory espoused by British scientist Stephen Hawking, has fierce critics. It also allows for parallel universes - a multiverse where universes spring into existence and die spontaneously.
What Can Blockchain Really Do For The Food Industry?
Blockchain is just a digital ledger, a digitized record of whatever data is added by its members, with no ability to verify the accuracy of the underlying data itself.
Blockchain technology could transform the entire food industry, some bullish tech prospectors say, by increasing efficiency, transparency and collaboration throughout the food system.
Consumers could be able to trace the source of their lettuce in seconds. Shippers could see if a truck is full before they schedule a delivery. Grocery stores could verify if a carton of eggs is actually cage-free. Or could they? As blockchain gets closer to its marketplace debut in the food system, it’s important to scrutinize just how the technology will actually work.
Blockchain was initially developed as part of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, but the technology in the cryptocurrency context looks different from how it’s being developed for the food space. Bitcoin’s blockchain is an immutable digital ledger that works through a consensus of computer systems.
Computers on the Bitcoin blockchain are essentially racing to correctly solve a calculation, and when one “wins” the race, it wins a unit of cryptocurrency and a block of data is added to the chain. The huge numbers of computer systems on the Bitcoin blockchain are why there’s a huge energy cost associated with Bitcoin, a feature that would be detrimental in the agriculture space, where farmers needs to grow more and use less.
In the Walmart-IBM blockchain that made news this past week, the system is far more limited in scale. It’s only open to those in Walmart’s leafy green food supply chain, which will likely translate into hundreds of users, not tens of thousands. As a result, there are fewer digital additions to the data chain, which means fewer verification nodes and, most importantly, far less energy expended overall. The IBM system also isn’t trustless because its members are known to each other in the supply chain.
Blockchain is just a digital ledger, a digitized record of whatever data is added by its members, with no ability to verify the accuracy of the underlying data itself. Because the truth of that data isn’t actually evaluated, there’s no aspect of blockchain technology that can make sure that the cage-free egg is really cage-free or that the lettuce is actually free from contamination.
For Walmart, the technology will be used to tell stakeholders that a particular head of lettuce came from a particular harvest on a particular farm, so if a consumer gets sick, government investigators will have a head start on the investigation. Rather than chasing a paper trail for days, they can get to the source of a tainted head of lettuce within seconds, and that should mean less wasted produce, fewer sick people and more confidence in the food system.
Though blockchain is being touted as the technology that could potentially solve all of agriculture’s challenges, it’s not necessarily clear why blockchain is better than something like a database or any other form of digital information storage. Companies could simply build a database rather than build a blockchain, particularly as some of the original features of the Bitcoin version, like trustless verification, aren’t a feature.
It’s not entirely clear why blockchain is the best technology for the job of transforming the food industry, and it may not be. It may just be that it’s the one getting attention right now, particularly as technology experts look for ways to transfer their experience and make their mark in the burgeoning agritech sector.
Where blockchain starts to reach its potential is when it’s used with other technologies and systems. At the same time that the blockchain is implemented for food traceability, for example, producers can also put into place systems like enhanced water testing mechanisms or increase buffer zones between leafy green growers and livestock operations.
When used with sensors and precision delivery systems for pesticide and water all connected to a network, as with the Internet of Things, blockchain can be used to gather a wealth of data and employ it in the field.
While blockchain can’t verify that an egg operation is truly cage-free or what that cage-free operation really looks like, it might offer a way for farmers to get more information to consumers. Farmers, particularly the ones who don’t sell their food to a farmer’s market or get an opportunity to interact with consumers, often struggle with how to engage with the public, looking for ways to explain how and why they grow food the way they do. Blockchain enables farmers to get data to consumers, but what if it could provide more context, too? That’s the thing consumers really need to make informed decisions about their food.
Blockchain could be used to tell consumers that the corn was grown with herbicide, for example, but maybe someday there could be a mechanism for explaining why that herbicide is used, or a comparison of that herbicide to other weed prevention systems or removal methods. The complicated nature of agriculture doesn’t always translate so well to a smartphone app, but then again, that might be a challenge that’s too big for blockchain to solve anyway.
Comedian Chris Rock isn’t one to shy away from conversations about race. In a new video for Essence, the Top Five star sounds off on a topic that’s of particular interest this February: Black History Month. “Black History Month is in the shortest month of the year, and the coldest—just in case we want to have a parade,” Rock says.
And though Rock jokes about February being the one month that black is “in,” in the two-minute clip he also reflects on the prejudice and racism African-Americans faced in the Jim Crow South around the time he was born in South Carolina.
President Donald Trump embraces Senator Ted Cruz as he arrives to the podium during the MAGA Rally at the Toyota Center, Monday, Oct. 22, 2018, in Houston.
President Donald Trump on Monday called Rep. Beto O'Rourke "a stone-cold phony" and took a few sharp jabs at Sen. Ted Cruz's Democratic opponent, but otherwise focused on national issues while praising Cruz and a laundry list of Texas Republicans.
Trump, in Houston for a rally to support Cruz, also encouraged the Toyota Center crowd to vote for Rep. John Culberson, acknowledging the nine-term Republican faces a tough re-election challenge. He is up against trial lawyer Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, a Democrat, in the 7th Congressional District.
Cruz ticked through his top hits from the stump, continuing to cast O'Rourke as too far liberal for Texas. Trump echoed Cruz's harsh criticism for O'Rourke's stances on gun control and immigration, denouncing the El Paso Democrat for saying immigrant gang members are "people," not "animals."
At the end of his speech, Cruz indicated he would not seek the Republican presidential nomination next election.
"I'm going to make a prediction to every person here: In 2020, Donald Trump will be overwhelmingly re-elected as president of the United States," Cruz said. "I look forward to campaigning alongside him in 2020."
Trump acknowledged that he and Cruz "had our little difficulties" and "it got nasty" during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, when Trump called Cruz "Lyin' Ted." But he commended Cruz for doing a "beautiful job staring down an angry left-wing mob" during the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
"Nobody has helped me more with your tax cuts, with your regulations, with all of the things that we're doing, including military and our vets, than Senator Ted Cruz. Nobody," Trump said.
Trump also told the crowd to vote for Rep. Ted Poe, who is not seeking re-election to Texas' 2nd Congressional District. Republican Dan Crenshaw is battling Democrat Todd Litton for the seat.
Aside from his praise for members of the Texas congressional delegation, Trump lauded Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — Trump's 2016 Texas campaign chair — and Sen. John Cornyn. The three Republicans spoke Monday before Cruz and Trump's stump speeches.
Otherwise, Trump continued to claim the caravan of migrants heading from Central America to the U.S. was supported by Democrats, without evidence to back up the claim. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Monday said the administration has evidence that people from the Middle East are part of the caravan, but did not provide evidence.
Abbott, Cornyn and Patrick, appearing in that order, freely bashed O'Rourke while lauding Trump's record and his impact on the Texas economy.
"Isn't it great to have a president who lives up to his campaign promises? He promised you he would cut your taxes, and he did," Abbott said. "He promised you that he would cut regulations, and he did."
At one point, Trump said Abbott asked him for $10 billion in federal funding for an infrastructure project, which he jokingly said should be called "the Trump Dam."
Patrick addressed the crowd with the most gusto of the three, railing against Democrats who are hoping for a "blue wave" in Texas. And he joked that O'Rourke's name stands for "Border Enforcement Totally Optional."
"Why are we here? To tell Beto O'Rourke and the Democrats we're not turning Texas into California," Patrick said. Near the end, he led the crowd in a chant of "We love Trump!" and said emphatically, "We will never give up Texas!"
Meanwhile, O'Rourke pushed back over the weekend against the partisan undertones in Abbott's and Cruz's message.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle on Sunday night in Sugar Land, he said this election isn't about Texas being red or blue.
"Who cares about the partisan color of Texas?" O'Rourke said. "I could give a damn about what party you are in."
The rally, Trump's 29th of the year, drew what appeared to be a mostly full crowd at an arena that holds about 18,000 people. Trump's campaign reported thousands more had signed up in the hopes of attending.
Cornyn followed Abbott onstage and warned of "job-killing California-style mandates," calling Texas "the firewall in this midterm election."
"I need Ted Cruz back in the Senate," Cornyn said. "Texas needs Ted Cruz back in the Senate."
Some of Abbott's Republican allies from the Texas Legislature attended, including state Sens. Paul Bettencourt, Dawn Buckingham, Donna Campbell and Bryan Hughes. Newly elected state Sen. Pete Flores also attended the rally.
Members of the crowd donned "Trump-Pence 2020" and pink "Women for Trump" shirts. They held up signs reading "Finish the Wall" and "Stand for America." Chants of 'USA' repeatedly echoed through the arena.
Outside but away from the line to enter the arena, protesters and conservative provocateurs, including Infowars host Alex Jones, verbally jousted.
Staff writers Jeremy Wallace and Nicole Hensley contributed reporting.
CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. – A manslaughter trial has begun for a woman accused of killing her boyfriend by lacing a jug of margarita cocktails with antifreeze at their apartment in western New York.
Cynthia Galens was charged with murder in January, three months after Air Force veteran Thomas Stack died from complications of ethylene glycol poisoning. But a grand jury opted for a first-degree manslaughter charge, which carries a sentencing range of five years to 25 years in prison.
State police say the 51-year-old Galens told them Stack was abusive and she decided in October to pour a shot glass of antifreeze into a margarita mix. She says she intended only to sicken him.
A jury was selected Monday. Prosecutor Bill Hart says the trial should last several days.
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The Brief, powered by PLATFORMA – What if you drink faster than you read?
Next month, the EU’s alcohol industry will come up with a much-awaited self-regulatory proposal about labelling of alcoholic beverages.
Silvio Berlusconi, like any half-decent B-movie villain or that spider that lives in your kitchen, refuses to stay (politically) dead. He has, inexplicably to non-Italians, clawed his way back into political relevance and his latest masterplan is just starting to become clear.
A recent vote in favour of reforming the EU's carbon market is a "strong signal" that energy-intensive businesses should accelerate decarbonisation processes, although the European Parliament's rapporteur on the reform has warned that Brexit will act as high-profile distraction. EURACTIV’s partner edie.net reports.
Eighteen months after surprisingly winning the referendum that they had craved for so long, British Eurosceptics are increasingly depressed. They fear that the UK is sleep-walking into remaining a de facto member of the EU that will be paying into its budget and adopting EU laws without a say over them for the foreseeable future.
The EU was supposed to enable us all to take part in the energy transition and help make Europe's economy a low-carbon one. It's easy to see why the member states would be against this but it's more surprising that the Parliament is not championing citizens' clean energy hopes.
If central bankers were the ‘heroes’ of the post-financial crisis recovery, Mario Draghi shined among them. But the heel of Europe’s Achilles has been exposed so much that it could jeopardise what he set out to protect: the public good.
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Dozens of troops from Fort Bragg are being trained on how to deal with the deadly Ebola virus.
The Army has announced that 120 troops from Bragg will be dispatched to West Africa in the coming weeks and local media outlets report that they are being trained and have been fitted with full-body protective suits, masks and gloves.
The troops are getting training from the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland in how to use the gear and take precautions against the virus.
The troops are being sent to West Africa to provide support for those dealing with the virus, to guard American troops and to help in creating an infrastructure to deal with the Ebola.
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (AP) — For decades, tourists visiting this popular Adirondack village could gape at the skeletons of soldiers from nearby French and Indian War sites. Then in 1993, a somber reburial ceremony was held to finally put the remains to rest.
Almost all of the 18th-century skeletons were never buried. Instead, the collection of remains eventually was taken to Arizona and Canada for study and has yet to be returned for reburial. In this small upstate New York town that was the real-life setting for the historical events depicted in "The Last of the Mohicans," people had no idea.
"Most of them aren't there?" asked Robert Blais, mayor of Lake George since 1971, who learned about the decision from The Associated Press.
The AP spoke to archaeologists who have dug at the site, fort officials and the anthropologists who have the remains to confirm that the bulk of the skeleton collection is not at the fort.
Now, the people behind the decision are publicly discussing for the first time how such important artifacts left Lake George, and why they haven't been returned after nearly two decades.
"You're reaching the time when they should come home," said David Starbuck, a New York archaeologist who has written about the history behind Fort William Henry's skeleton collection.
On Memorial Day weekend in 1993, a well-publicized reburial ceremony was held to honor the redcoats and American provincial soldiers whose remains were being reinterred in the cemetery at the fort, a full-scale reconstruction of the outpost the British built here at the outbreak of war in 1755. The original fort was the real-life setting of the historical events in James Fenimore Cooper's classic, "The Last of the Mohicans."
But what fort officials didn't bother to tell the dozens of history buffs, tourists, and local, British and Native American dignitaries at the ceremony was that only three of 15 mostly complete skeletons were actually reburied. The others were still being analyzed by two anthropologists. The fort's owners decided to go ahead with the ceremony anyway.
"We didn't make an issue out of it," said Robert F. Flacke Sr., longtime president of the Fort William Henry Corp., which owns the fort and an adjacent resort hotel.
Those involved in the '93 project said there was no intention to deceive anyone, but a local historian who said he was at the reburial ceremony recalls no public mention being made of a change in plans.
Starbuck, who spoke at the ceremony, said a longer-than-expected analysis that spring, followed by other issues and job changes among the anthropologists, all combined to leave the reburial in limbo. He and others involved in the project didn't bring up the issue at the ceremony, figuring the bones would be returned soon enough.
"It was not intended to drag on this long," said Starbuck, who has conducted several digs at the fort over the past two decades. In the early 1990s, he recommended that the fort's skeletons be removed from exhibits and reinterred after being studied by experts in bioarchaeology, the study of human skeletal remains from archaeological sites.
Those experts, anthropologists Brenda Baker and Maria Liston, both told the AP they had longstanding agreements with the fort to keep the collections while their studies continued. Neither Baker nor Liston attended the reburial ceremony.
Baker said officials at Fort William Henry haven't asked for the return of the collection, which includes a dozen skeletons from the '93 project and three more uncovered during a follow-up excavation two years later.
"They know where they are and they know what I have and we keep in contact," Baker told the AP.
Though the findings of the anthropologists appeared in professional journals and other publications in the 1990s, few in the public knew where the bones were, including the residents of Lake George, who had long been led to believe the remains were buried there.
"Arizona?" asked a stunned Paul Loding, town historian in nearby Kingsbury, when informed of the skeletons' whereabouts.
"Why don't they do the right thing and get them back?" asked Randy Patten, a French and Indian War re-enactor and former member of the New York commission that promoted the 250th anniversary of the war.
But the fort lacks the facilities to properly preserve and store a large collection of full skeletons, and building such a space is cost prohibitive for a seasonal business, Flacke said. If the collection were to wind up back at the fort, the skeletons would be buried for a final time, he said.
Baker, the anthropologist who took the bulk of the skeletons with her to Arizona State University in 1998, said the remains are stored at the campus in Tempe in climate-controlled conditions that preserve the bones. She's had them so long, it's clear she's protective of them, even though the bones rightfully belong to the fort.
"When they build an adequate storage facility, they will go back to the fort," she said.
Liston said company officials, after being contacted by the AP, asked her to return the fort's boxes of human bone fragments that she had for years at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
"I am happy to cooperate," Liston said.
Baker, a former employee of the New York State Museum in Albany, said she has gleaned vital information from her years of studying the skeletons.
"Skeletons of any sort from this time period in North America, particularly people of European descent, are incredibly rare, and to have them from some sort of military context is even more rare," Baker said. "These skeletons were a window into what life was like at the fort."
In August 1757, the French burned the fort to the ground after the British surrendered following a weeklong siege. After the surrender, Indian allies of the French killed about 200 of the garrison's defenders.
"We want to treat human remains with proper respect. That is always the priority within anthropology," said Benjamin Auerbach, a member of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists' repatriation committee, which deals with issues involving human remains.
Committee members are aware of the situation surrounding the Lake George skeletons, though no formal complaints regarding possible ethics violations have been brought.
Some of the remains did make a homecoming of sorts last year, when Baker brought a few of the bones back to Lake George for a four-part historical forensics series airing this spring on the National Geographic Channel.
The hammer is coming down on the county's public library scofflaws starting next Wednesday. The library will lower the fine block amount from $25 to $10 per card, meaning people will not be able to use their card for materials or public computers if they owe $10 or more. Patrons will also have to renew annually and pay all fines in full beforehand or borrowing privileges will be nixed. Go to www.sjcfl.usq.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, left, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., center, speaks with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Sept. 13, 2018, in Washington.
A number of senators, including several Republicans, are calling for a possible delay in the nomination vote for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after a woman publicly alleged Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school.