List of All Articles with Tag 'a'

NEW HYDE PARK, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 9, 2023--

The Dallas Cowboys have looked dominant for most of the NFL season thus far, but had the script flipped on them on Sunday. Here's who deserves the most blame.

There’s fresh evidence from the FTSE 100 today of quite how vulnerable retailers are to unpredictable weather. High

The German unit of ING Groep NV is rejecting clients that fail to provide credible emissions-reduction plans, according

In 2020, philosopher Toby Ord published The Precipice, a book on the risk of human extinction. The chances of "existential catastrophe" for humanity in the next century according to Ord? One in six. It was a shocking number that alarmed many. After years of being flooded with warnings over climate change, rogue AI, nuclear weapons and pandemics, it's hard to disagree that humans face worrying chances. In his book, Ord discusses a number of potential extinction events, some of which can be examined through history. His research involved looking at the number of space rocks that have hit the moon over its history to figure out the likelihood than an extinction-sized asteroid hitting Earth. This was, in fact, looked at in 2022 by French scientists Jean-Marc Salotti, he calculated the odds of an extinction-level hit in the next century to be roughly one in 300 million. By contrast, Ord estimated the risk to be one in a million, although he does point out a considerable degree of uncertainty. Probabilities can be hard to understand in this context. Traditional probability, for example, relies on observations and a collection of repeated events, but human extinction would be a one-off. But there is another way to think if, called Bayesianism, after the English statistician Thomas Bayes. It sees probabilities as a ranking system of sorts. Specific number predictions shouldn't be taken so literally, but rather compared to other probabilities to understand the likelihood of each outcome. Ord's book contains a table of potential causes of extinctions, accompanied by his personal estimates of their probability. From a Bayesian perspective, we can view these as relative ranks. Ord thinks extinction from an asteroid strike (one in a million) is much less likely than extinction from climate change (one in a thousand). However, even using Bayesianism traditionally requires the incorporation of observational evidence. So, what do we make of Ord's "one in six"? Well it's better to take it less literally but to think of it as a warning, to jump start action on issues such as climate change to hopefully reduce the risk of human extinction in the next century. Sign up to 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.

We're all familiar with the different basic tastes - sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami - but now scientists have found a sixth one where the tongue detects ammonium chloride. Research from USC Dornsife has discovered that protein receptors on the tongue not only respond to sour taste but also to ammonium chloride as well. Scientists were very much aware that the tongue responds to ammonium chloride, but haven't been able to specify which exact protein receptors... until now. The protein OTOP1 is responsible for this which can be found in the cell membranes and forms a channel for hydrogen ions moving into the cell. Whenever we taste anything that's particularly sour such as vinegar or lemon juice, OTOP1 is able to detect the acidity found in both of those. Therefore, given that ammonium chloride similarly affects the concentration of hydrogen ions within a cell, research was carried out on whether OTOP1 protein would react to this too. After lab-grown human cells with OTOP1 protein were created and exposed to acid or to ammonium chloride, the team found that ammonium chloride was a "strong activator" of OTOP1. “We saw that ammonium chloride is a really strong activator of the OTOP1 channel. It activates as well or better than acids,” Dr Emily Liman, a professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife and study author. Now, perhaps you're wondering what ammonium chloride tastes like, one example of where it can be found is in salt liquorice candy which is popular in Nordic countries. “If you live in a Scandinavian country, you will be familiar with and may like this taste,” Dr Liman added. Though the flavour can be of an acquired taste and one that many may not be a fan of - but there is an explanation for this. “Ammonium is found in waste products – think of fertilizer – and is somewhat toxic, so it makes sense we evolved taste mechanisms to detect it,” Dr Liman explained. Sign up to 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.

Fat Joe is hosting the BET Hip Hop Awards for the second year in a row. He couldn't be more thrilled, especially given that this year marks the 50th anniversary of hip hop.

A bride has annoyed people of the internet by charging guests £2,000 to attend her nuptials. Reportedly posting on Mumsnet, one of the guests claimed she had been invited to stay at a villa with the bride’s family and friends and was asked to split the cost for a week regardless of how long she could stay. She wrote: “The thought of spending a week socialising in a villa feels overwhelming, particularly when I don't know anyone and everyone else is in a couple, so I was going to stay only four nights.” So, she asked to share a room with another guest to cut costs but the bride didn't take it well. “She started crying and said she was upset because I have never been enthusiastic about her wedding plans (which is true, when she first asked for my villa deposit, I had asked a few times about other accommodation options),” she explained. After complaining, the bride reportedly refused to talk to her friend and the pair later ended up embroiled in a "heated discussion". The wedding guest was allegedly told: “It's clear the time/cost/venue etc. is asking too much of you and if it had been the other way round, it wouldn't have even crossed her mind to think about these things.” The woman's deposit was returned but she was still unsure about going to the wedding. She wrote: “She has always been quite selfish but I'm really upset by her lack of understanding as to why I don't want to spend a week with strangers and that I really did want to speak about the wedding. But at the same time, I know weddings are stressful and maybe she was trying to be sensitive. “Truth be told I'd rather go to a school friend's wedding on the same weekend who I feel like is a much better friend.” Responding to the situation, one commenter reportedly wrote: "The friendship is already over I'm afraid. I wouldn't go. I'm sorry." Another added: "It sounds like the friendship is going to survive much longer anyway." While a third said: "You shouldn't have to fund someone else's wedding." Sign up to 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.

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS EU antitrust regulators are asking Microsoft's users and rivals whether Bing should comply

WICHITA, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 9, 2023--

By Johan Ahlander and Simon Johnson STOCKHOLM Harvard economic historian Claudia Goldin won the 2023 Nobel economics prize

Elliot Sorene, a London-based surgeon, describes how his son escaped the attacks in Israel.