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New immune-evading Omicron subvariant BA.5 is now dominant in the U.S.—and previous heavy hitter “stealth Omicron” is now a shadow of its former self, according to federal health data released Tuesday.

BA.5 is estimated to have caused nearly 54% of COVID infections in the U.S. last week, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Along with twin variant BA.4, it swept South Africa this spring thanks to its ability to evade immunity from both prior infection and vaccination.

The week before that, the two variants combined made up slightly more than half of U.S. cases. But last week, BA.5 accomplished the same feat alone, without the help of BA.4, which came in third at 16.5%.

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After more than a year on the surface of Mars, China’s Tianwen-1 probe has taken images covering the entire red planet, the country’s space agency announced Wednesday.

Tianwen-1, which means “quest for heavenly truth,” was launched in 2020 and landed on Mars last May, when the Zhurong rover on board started its mission of patrolling and exploring the planet while the orbiter spun overhead.

In a statement, China’s National Space Agency (CNSA) said the probe has now completed all its assigned tasks, including taking medium-resolution images covering the entire planet.

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Summary: Study reveals how dopamine may have a central role in maintaining our consciousness.

Source: The Conversation.

Consciousness is arguably the most important scientific topic there is. Without consciousness, there would after all be no science. But while we all know what it is like to be conscious – meaning that we have personal awareness and respond to the world around us – it has turned out to be near impossible to explain exactly how it arises from the hardware of the brain. This is dubbed the “hard” problem of consciousness.

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Summary: Researchers have developed a new implantable device that can “cool” nerves and provide on-demand pain relief for those suffering from neuropathic or chronic pain.

Source: AAAS

An implantable device designed to “cool” nerves can provide targeted, on-demand pain relief, researchers report. When tested on rats with neuropathic pain, the device produced highly localized cooling.

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Summary: People who practice meditation often report feeling “pure awareness” in which they say they experience consciousness itself. The state encompasses specific sensations and non-specific feelings, thoughts, and perceptions. Researchers say their findings will help explain “pure consciousness,” and work to generate a prototypical minimal model for human conscious perception.

Source: Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

In the context of meditation practice, meditators can experience a state of “pure awareness” or “pure consciousness”, in which they perceive consciousness itself. This state can be experienced in various ways, but evidently incorporates specific sensations as well as non-specific accompanying perceptions, feelings, and thoughts.

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Don SpantonUmmm so what?

Worms experience pain. Pigs, chickens also experience pain. … See more.

Nicholi AveryAuthor.

Don Spanton good question.

However pain is not a trivial matter when it comes to abortion. Astudy by the University of Otago Centre for Science Communication, found that A person’s stance on abortion is linked to their, often inaccurate, belief ab… See more.

Continue reading “Self-calibrating programmable photonic integrated circuits” | >

Summary: Recent antibiotic use impacts the way in which people pay attention to negative facial expressions. Findings shed light on how antibiotic use can increase the risks of depression.

Source: Lieden University.

People who have taken antibiotics in the past three months pay more attention to negative facial expressions, according to research by postdoc Katerina Johnson and assistant professor Laura Steenbergen. This may explain how antibiotics increase the risk of developing depression.

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The ability to turn superconductivity off and on with a literal flip of a switch in so-called “magic-angle twisted graphene” has allowed engineers at Caltech to observe an unusual phenomenon that may shed new light on superconductivity in general.

The research, led by Stevan Nadj-Perge, assistant professor of applied physics and , was published in the journal Nature on June 15.

Magic-angle twisted graphene, first discovered in 2018, is made from two or three sheets of graphene (a form of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms in a honeycomb-like lattice pattern) layered atop one another, with each sheet twisted at precisely 1.05 degrees in relation to the one below it. The resulting bilayer or trilayer has unusual electronic properties: for example, it can be made into an insulator or a superconductor depending on how many are added.

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