Marybaude

Connected media - Associated media The loss of biodiversity played an especially large role in driving up disease risk, the researchers found. Many scientists have posited that biodiversity can protect against disease through a phenomenon known as the dilution effect. The theory holds that parasites and pathogens, which rely on having abundant hosts in order to survive, will evolve to favor species that are common, rather than those that are rare, Dr. Rohr said. And as biodiversity declines, rare species tend to disappear first. “That means that the species that remain are the competent ones, the ones that are really good at transmitting disease,” he said. Lyme disease is one oft-cited example. White-footed mice, which are the primary reservoir for the disease, have become more dominan...

Connected media - Linked media In a March 15 letter to a British parliamentary committee, David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary, expressed his “enormous frustration” that aid supplied by the United Kingdom had been “routinely held up” on its way to Gaza. “The main blockers remain arbitrary denials by the government of Israel and lengthy clearance procedures including multiple screenings and narrow opening windows in daylight hours,” he wrote. Before Oct. 7, around 500 trucks entered Gaza each day, carrying both aid and commercial items, Mr. Cameron said. That number fell by approximately 75 percent in the early months of the conflict, and although there has been a modest increase in April, the most recent weekly average for which figures were available was only 202 trucks per day,...

Linked media - Associated media TikTok takes its fight to court TikTok fired the latest broadside in its battle with Washington, suing to block a law that could force the company to split from ByteDance, its Chinese owner, or face a ban in the U.S. The company argues that the law violates the First Amendment by effectively killing an app in the U.S. that millions of Americans use to share their views. Another problem: a divestiture within 270 days is practically impossible, Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe report for The Times. DealBook spoke with Maheshwari about the lawsuit filed yesterday and what happens next. Do legal experts think TikTok has a chance at winning? It could go either way. Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, says that...

Connected media - Associated media Artificial intelligence is giving machines the power to generate videos, write computer code and even carry on a conversation. It is also accelerating efforts to understand the human body and fight disease. On Wednesday, Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s central artificial intelligence lab, and Isomorphic Labs, a sister company, unveiled a more powerful version of AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence technology that helps scientists understand the behavior of the microscopic mechanisms that drive the cells in the human body. An early version of AlphaFold, released in 2020, solved a puzzle that had bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years. It was called “the protein folding problem.” Proteins are the microscopic molecules that drive the behavior of...

Related media - Related media Dr. Clinton White, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said microscopic tapeworm eggs are sticky and easily transferred from one person to another. Once hatched, the larvae can travel in the bloodstream, he said, “and end up in all kinds of tissues.” Though it is impossible to know, he added that it is unlikely that a parasite would eat a part of the brain, as Mr. Kennedy described. Rather, Dr. White said, it survives on nutrients from the body. Unlike tapeworm larvae in the intestines, those in the brain remain relatively small, about a third of an inch. Some tapeworm larvae can live in a human brain for years without causing problems. Others can wreak havoc, often when they start to die, which causes...

Related media - Related media Hamas hinted at progress on a cease-fire A Hamas leader said yesterday that the group was studying Israel’s latest cease-fire proposal with a “positive spirit,” raising hopes of progress in the stalled efforts for a truce. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political wing, said that a delegation would travel to Cairo to discuss the cease-fire. The current deal would include a weekslong truce and the release of hostages held by Hamas and of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The proposal would also allow civilians to return to northern Gaza and would enable increased delivery of aid to the territory. The complex cease-fire negotiations have dragged on for months. This week, Israel softened some of its positions, saying that it would allow Palestinians ...

Associated media - Linked media When Disney reported robust earnings in February, the activist investors then circling the company essentially called it a stunt — a temporary, heat-of-battle effort to fend them off and not, as Robert A. Iger maintained, proof that a struggling Disney had finally “turned the corner.” The Disney chief’s argument just got a lot stronger. Disney blew past Wall Street’s expectations for a second consecutive quarter on Tuesday, in part because its flagship streaming service made money — a first. Disney+ had been expected to lose more than $100 million in the most recent quarter, widening losses since its 2019 arrival to roughly $12 billion. Instead, it swung to a $47 million profit. “Two quarters earlier than expected,” Hugh Johnston, Disney’s chief financi...