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    ‘Dune’-like Sandworm Existed Millions of Years Longer Than Thought

    Researchers examined fossils of the predatory worm and found a new species that persisted for 25 million years after it was believed to have become extinct.With a head covered in rows of curved spines, ancient Selkirkia worms could easily be confused with the razor-toothed sandworms that inhabit the deserts of Arrakis in “Dune: Part Two.”During the Cambrian Explosion more than 500 million years ago, these weird worms — which lived inside long, cone-shaped tubes — were some of the most common predators on the seafloor.“If you were a small invertebrate coming across them, it would have been your worst nightmare,” said Karma Nanglu, a paleontologist at Harvard. “It’s like being engulfed by a conveyor belt of fangs and teeth.”Thankfully for would-be spice harvesters, these ravenous worms disappeared hundreds of million years ago. But a trove of recently analyzed fossils from Morocco reveals that these formidable predators measuring only an inch or two in length, persisted much longer than previously thought.In a paper published today in the journal Biology Letters, Dr. Nanglu’s team described a new species of Selkirkia worm that lived 25 million years after this group of tube-dwellers was thought to have gone extinct.The newly described tubular worms were discovered when Dr. Nanglu and his colleagues sifted through fossils stored in the collection of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. The fossils hail from Morocco’s Fezouata Formation, a deposit dating back to the Early Ordovician period, which began around 488 million years ago and spanned nearly 45 million years. This was a dynamic era when holdovers from the Cambrian rubbed shoulders with evolutionary newcomers like sea scorpions and horseshoe crabs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Bird Flu Spreads to Dairy Cows

    U.S. regulators confirmed that sick cattle in Texas, Kansas and possibly in New Mexico contracted avian influenza. They stressed that the nation’s milk supply is safe, saying pasteurization kills viruses.A highly fatal form of avian influenza, or bird flu, has been confirmed in U.S. cattle in Texas and Kansas, the Department of Agriculture announced on Monday.It is the first time that cows infected with the virus have been identified.The cows appear to have been infected by wild birds, and dead birds were reported on some farms, the agency said. The results were announced after multiple federal and state agencies began investigating reports of sick cows in Texas, Kansas and New Mexico.In several cases, the virus was detected in unpasteurized samples of milk collected from sick cows. Because pasteurization kills viruses, officials emphasized that there was little risk to the nation’s milk supply.“At this stage, there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply or that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health,” the agency said in a statement.Outside experts agreed. “It has only been found in milk that is grossly abnormal,” said Dr. Jim Lowe, a veterinarian and influenza researcher at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.In those cases, the milk was described as thick and syrupy, he said, and was discarded. The agency said that dairies are required to divert or destroy milk from sick animals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Psychedelic Evangelist

    Before he died last year, Roland Griffiths was arguably the world’s most famous psychedelics researcher. Since 2006, his work has suggested that psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, can induce mystical experiences, and that those experiences, in turn, can help treat anxiety, depression, addiction and the terror of death.Dr. Griffiths and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University received widespread recognition among scientists and the popular press, helping to pull the psychedelic field from the deep backwater of the 1960s hippie movement. This second wave of research on the hallucinogenic compounds bolstered political campaigns to decriminalize them and spurred biotech investment.Dr. Griffiths was known to friends and colleagues as an analytical thinker and a religious agnostic, and he warned fellow researchers against hype. But he also saw psychedelics as more than mere medicines: Understanding them could be “critical to the survival of the human species,” he said in one talk. Late in life, he admitted to taking psychedelics himself, and said he wanted science to help unlock their transformative power for humanity.Perhaps unsurprisingly, he held a vaunted, even prophetic role among psychonauts, the growing community of psychedelic believers who want to bring the drugs into mainstream society. For years, critics have denounced the outsize financial and philosophical influence of these advocates on the insular research field. And some researchers have quietly questioned whether Dr. Griffiths, in his focus on the mystical realm, made some of the same mistakes that doomed the previous era of psychedelic science.Now, one of his longtime collaborators is airing a more forceful critique. “Dr. Griffiths has run his psychedelic studies more like a ‘new-age’ retreat center, for lack of a better term, than a clinical research laboratory,” reads an ethics complaint filed to Johns Hopkins last fall by Matthew Johnson, who worked with Dr. Griffiths for nearly 20 years but resigned after a charged dispute with colleagues.Roland Griffiths, director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins, in 2021.Matt Roth for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    This Was Village Life in Britain 3,000 Years Ago

    Three millenniums ago, a small, prosperous farming community briefly flourished in the freshwater marshes of eastern England. The inhabitants lived in a clutch of thatched roundhouses built on wooden stilts above a channel of the River Nene, which empties into the North Sea. They wore clothes of fine flax linen, with pleats and tasseled hems; bartered for glass and amber beads imported from places as far-flung as present-day Iran; drank from delicate clay poppyhead cups; dined on leg of boar and honey-glazed venison, and fed table scraps to their dogs.Within a year of its construction, this prehistoric idyll met a dramatic end. A catastrophic fire tore through the compound; the buildings collapsed and the villagers fled, abandoning their garments, tools and weapons. Everything, including the porridge left in cooking pots, crashed through the burning wicker floors into the thick, sticky reed beds below and stayed there. Eventually, the objects sank, hidden and entombed, in more than six feet of oozing peat and silt. The river gradually moved course away from the encampment, but the debris remained intact for nearly 3,000 years, preserving a record of daily life at the end of Britain’s Bronze Age, from 2500 B.C. to 800 B.C.That frozen moment in time is the subject of two monographs published Tuesday by Cambridge University. Based on a 10-month excavation of what is now known as Must Farm Quarry, a submerged and superbly preserved settlement in the shadow of a potato-chip factory 75 miles north of London, the studies are as detailed as a forensic investigation report of a crime scene. One paper, a site synthesis, runs to 323 pages; the other, for specialists, is nearly 1,000 pages longer.“This didn’t feel like archaeology,” said Mark Knight, the project director and one of the paper’s authors. “At times, excavating the site felt slightly rude and intrusive, as if we had turned up after a tragedy, picked through someone’s possessions and got a glimpse of what they did one day in 850 B.C.”The sharpened tip of a post; an amber bead; an axehead in situ.Cambridge Archaeological UnitEvidence for life in Britain’s Bronze Age has traditionally come from fortified and religious sites that are often found on high, dry landscapes. Most of the clues come as pottery, flint tools and bones. “Generally we have to work with small bits and pieces and barely visible remains of houses, and read between the lines,” said Harry Fokkens, an archaeologist at Leiden University. Convincing anyone that such places were once thriving settlements takes a little imagination.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    This 1,000-Year-Old Smartphone Just Dialed In

    Lost & Found This 1,000-Year-Old Smartphone Just Dialed In By Franz Lidz and Clara VannucciFor 2,000 years, celestial observers mapped the heavens with astonishingly precise instruments called astrolabes.Resembling large, old-fashioned vest pocket watches, astrolabes allowed users to determine time, distances, heights, latitudes and even (with a horoscope) the future.Recently, an astrolabe dating to the 11th century turned up at the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo in Verona, Italy.Federica Gigante, a historian at the University of Cambridge, first noticed it in a corner of a photograph while searching online for an image of a 17th-century collector whose miscellany was housed in the museum.After learning that the museum staff had very little information about the piece, Dr. Gigante went to Verona for a closer look.At the museum, a curator brought her to a side room, where she stood by a window and watched the sunlight illuminate the relic’s brass features.She made out Arabic inscriptions and, seemingly everywhere, faint Hebrew markings, Western numerals and scratches that looked like they had been keyed.“In the raking light, I realized that this wasn’t just an incredibly rare, ancient object but a powerful record of scientific exchange between Muslims, Jews and Christians over nearly a millennium,” Dr. Gigante said.Astrolabes are believed to have been around at the time of Apollonius of Perga, a Greek mathematician from the third-century B.C. known as the Great Geometer.Islamic scholars improved the gadgets, and by the ninth century A.D. the Persians were using astrolabes to locate Mecca and ascertain the five periods of prayer required each day, as stated in the Quran.The tool reached Europe through the Moorish conquest of much of Spain.By analyzing the Verona astrolabe’s design, construction and calligraphy, Dr. Gigante narrowed its provenance to 11th century Andalusia, where Muslims, Jews and Christians had worked alongside one another, particularly in the pursuit of science.“As the astrolabe changed hands, it underwent numerous modifications, additions and adaptations,” Dr. Gigante said.The original Arabic names of the signs of the zodiac were translated into Hebrew, a detail that suggested that the relic had at one point circulated within a Sephardi Jewish community.One side of a plate was engraved in Arabic with the phrase “for the latitude of Cordoba, 38° 30’”; on the other side “for the latitude of Toledo, 40°.”A handful of latitude values were corrected, some multiple times. Another plate was etched with North African latitudes which indicated that, during the instrument’s travels, it might have been used in Morocco or Egypt.A series of Hebrew additions led Dr. Gigante to conclude that the astrolabe had eventually reached the Jewish diaspora in Italy, where Hebrew, rather than Arabic, was used.“Basically, carving in the revisions was like adding apps to your smartphone,” Dr. Gigante said.Lost & FoundThis 1,000-Year-Old Smartphone Just Dialed InFranz Lidz and March 12, 2024Updated 10:06 a.m. ETProduced by More

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    Americans Are Signing Up for Obamacare in Record Numbers

    The NewsMore than 15 million people have signed up for health insurance plans offered on the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace, a 33 percent increase compared to the same time last year, according to preliminary data released by the Biden administration on Wednesday.Federal health officials project that more than 19 million people will enroll in 2024 coverage by the end of the current enrollment period next month. That total would include those who gain coverage through state marketplaces, continuing the record-setting pace.“It means more Americans have the peace of mind of knowing that going to the doctor won’t empty their bank account,” Xavier Becerra, the health and human services secretary, said in a statement.An Affordable Care Act sign-up kiosk in a mall in Miami this month.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressWhy It Matters: The Affordable Care Act is expanding its reach.Despite a recent warning from former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, the latest surge in marketplace enrollment is a testament to the law’s enduring power.Legislation passed earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic increased federal subsidies for people buying plans, lowering the costs for many Americans. The Biden administration also lengthened the sign-up period and increased advertising for the program and funding for so-called navigators who help people enroll.“More and more people are realizing they can come onto the marketplace,” said Cynthia Cox, the director of the Program on the Affordable Care Act at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group.She added: “Just because the A.C.A. has been around for a while doesn’t mean people who need to sign up for it know how to do that.”One Eye-Popping Statistic: 750,000 sign-ups in a single day.On Dec. 15 — the deadline to sign up for coverage that begins on Jan. 1 — nearly 750,000 people opted for a marketplace plan on HealthCare.gov. It was the largest single-day total yet.Dr. Benjamin Sommers, a health economist at Harvard who served in the Biden administration, said that improved outreach helped explain the record sign-ups. “I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Russian Academics Aim to Punish Colleagues Who Backed Ukraine Invasion

    A campaign is circulating a list of dozens of researchers in the hopes they will be denied the prestige of election into the Russian Academy of Sciences.Some academic researchers in Russia are quietly working to prevent colleagues who have supported their country’s invasion of Ukraine from being elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences this month.If they succeed, they will deny those who back the war a prized credential that confers prestige in Russian institutions of higher learning. Their campaign could also show that some acts of protest remain possible despite a government crackdown on dissent.The Russian Academy of Sciences is a nonprofit network of research institutes in a variety of disciplines across the Russian Federation. It has just under 1,900 members in Russia and nearly 450 nonvoting foreign members.The academy elects new members every three years. The upcoming poll, starting on Monday, is for 309 seats, including 92 for senior academicians and 217 for corresponding members. The competition is steep: More than 1,700 candidates have applied.This month, a group of Russian researchers started circulating a list of dozens of candidates who have publicly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by signing pro-war declarations or letters their universities or institutions released or by making such statements themselves.Hundreds of high-ranking officials at Russian universities, most of whom were administrators rather than prominent scientists, also signed a letter in support of the war in March.But many academic researchers have taken an antiwar stance. More than 8,000 Russian scientists and science journalists have signed an open letter opposing the invasion since it was first published in February.Three academic researchers — who were not identified because they risk job loss, imprisonment and their safety by publicly opposing the war — said in interviews that they helped create the list of those who supported the war to prevent them from being elected to the academy.Members of the leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences did not respond to a request for comment.Some voters think the list could make a difference in the elections.“Most of the scientific community is definitely antiwar,” said Alexander Nozik, a physicist at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology who was not involved in creating the list. “Being in such a list could significantly reduce chances to be elected.”Some outside observers say that the Russian Academy is not as powerful as it once was.“It used to be a vast network of research institutes containing the best scientists in the country,” said Loren Graham, a historian who specializes in Russian science, with emeritus positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. “Those institutes have now been stripped away by the Putin government, given to the Ministry of Education, and leaving the academy as an honorific society without genuine heft in science.”Members of the academy have also been implicated in ethical shortcomings in recent years. In 2020, a commission the body appointed found that Russian academic journals and research publications were riddled with plagiarism, self-plagiarism and gift authorship, where scientists were listed as co-authors of manuscripts without contributing to the work. As a result of the report, Russian journals retracted more than 800 research papers in which the authors were thought to have committed ethical violations.A separate 2020 exposé by the same commission at the academy found that several rectors and other senior university officials were guilty of publishing papers in questionable journals, listing fake collaborators and plagiarism.And some say such problems diminish the importance of the academy’s upcoming election.“A lot of people in Russian science still believe that the academy is the oldest structure that can do something — not because it is good but because others are worse,” said Dr. Nozik.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4In eastern Ukraine. More