Research
Motherless babies possible as scientists create live offspring without need for female egg telegraph.co.uk
The landmark experiment by the University of Bath bath.ac.uk rewrites 200 years of biology teaching and could pave the way for a baby to be born from the DNA of two men.
A little sensationalized as it's more "maybe" than "possible", but a step in a scary direction.
Abortion
Obama’s Parting Gift to Planned Parenthood joemiller.us
The Department of Health and Human Services has announced a new regulation that would force states to give federal family planning funds to Planned Parenthood and other abortionists. The move could mean millions more in taxpayer dollars for the nation’s abortion market leader at the expense of women’s health.
Society
NCAA pulls championship events from North Carolina. Will the ACC follow? collegefootballtalk.nbcsports
The NCAA on Monday joined the NBA in pulling its championship events from the state of North Carolina following the state’s controversial implementation of HB2, a law that requires residents to use the public restroom corresponding to their sex as assigned at birth.
Also see ACC Pulls Championship Games From North Carolina Over HB2 time
Ohio attorney general rejects proposal to brand abortion as aggravated murder cleveland
In a letter to the three proponents of the amendment, DeWine said they failed to submit 1,000 valid signatures from registered voters, a requirement for the proposed amendment to clear the first hurdle toward getting to the ballot. Boards of election in the counties where signatures were gathered found 842 of 1,006 signatures submitted were valid.
Death
Plan your digital afterlife and rest in cyber peace theguardian
By the end of the century, many of us will rest alongside each other in the world’s biggest “virtual graveyard.” The number of dead people on Facebook is expected to outnumber living members of the social network by 2098, a statistician claimed earlier this year. Although our profiles may not have the same grandeur of some of the great Victorian cemeteries like Highgate, thanks to our strong interest in online and social networks our digital legacy – whether that’s goodbye messages via social networks or avatars fuelled by artificial intelligence (AI) – has never been so in vogue.
Odd
Rivers of blood flow on streets of Dhaka after Eid animal sacrifices theguardian v
Poor drainage in the city makes flooding a regular fact of Dhaka life. But the problem is rarely illustrated as vividly as it was on Tuesday, after thousands of sheep, goats and cows were slaughtered.
Archeology
Marble statues of Aphrodite unearthed in Jordan's Petra archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot
As part of a larger excavation at the site, the group of North Carolina State University and East Carolina University faculty and students discovered two marble statues of the mythological goddess Aphrodite -- artifacts that dig co-director Tom Parker describes as "absolutely exquisite."
Explore This Mysterious Mosaic—It May Portray Alexander the Great news.nationalgeographic
After several years of digging and study, archaeologists are revealing an extraordinary—and enigmatic—mosaic discovered among the ruins of a Roman-era synagogue at a site in Israel known as Huqoq. Nothing like it has come to light in any other building yet known from the ancient world, experts say.
Dated to the fifth century A.D., the mosaic depicts a meeting between two high-ranking male figures, one of whom appears to be a great general leading his troops. A major challenge to interpreting the scene is a total lack of identifying inscriptions.
Rare Roman gold coin found in Jerusalem at Mt. Zion archaeological dig sciencedaily
The gold coin (aureus) bears the bare-headed portrait of the young Nero as Caesar. The lettering around the edge of the coin reads: NERO CAESAR AVG IMP. On the reverse of the coin is a depiction of an oak wreath containing the letters "EX S C," with the surrounding inscription "PONTIF MAX TR P III." Importantly, these inscriptions help to work out the date when the coin was struck as 56/57 AD. Identification of the coin was made by the historian and numismatist, Dr. David Jacobson from London.
This mansion [where found] and other [sic] like it, were utterly destroyed by Titus and the Roman legions, when Jerusalem was razed to the ground. It is likely, owing to the intrinsic value of the gold coin, it was hidden away ahead of the destruction of the city, and was missed by the marauding and looting Roman soldiers.
Israel
US approves record $38bn Israel military aid deal bbc
A brief statement issued by the US state department on Tuesday said the new memorandum of understanding with Israel on security assistance, running from 2019 until 2028, constituted "the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in US history".
Also see 'US, Israel agree to record military aid deal worth at least $38 billion' jpost
Terroism
Obama would veto bill allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia in.reuters
President Barack Obama would veto a bill passed by both houses of Congress that would allow survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for damages, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday.
Big Data
Chevy and IBM Watson want to judge your mood. Will you let them? venturebeat
For Sept. 13, International Positive Thinking Day, Chevy made a Global Positivity System (GPS), with artificial intelligence provided by IBM Watson. When granted access to your Facebook or Twitter accounts, it taps into Watson’s Personality Insights and AlchemyLanguage APIs to find your most and least positive posts and give you a positivity score. My Twitter activity got a 128 out of 200. But exactly what these numbers mean, I couldn’t tell you.
Tech
NEC Develops ARmKeypad Air, A Contact-free Virtual Keyboard wtvox
The new ARmKeypad Air...enables contact-free operation through the movement of a wearer’s finger using Augmented Reality (AR) to create the image of a virtual keyboard on the forearm of a wearer. Unlike the existing ARmKeypad, which recognises contact (vibration) operations, this new technology enables contact-free operation, which is ideal for sites where operations must be performed under sterilised conditions, free of direct contact with objects and clothes, etc. Also, because there is no need for users to wear a watch, the ARmKeypad Air is ideal for professions where wearing devices on the arm are not advisable, such as those carrying out medical procedures.
Space
Stunning, high-res star map shows Gaia Mission’s quest to draw precise, 3D chart of our Milky Way galaxy news.nationalpost
Mission manager Fred Jansen told a news conference in Madrid that the project has already collected some 500 billion measurements and he is “extremely happy” with the precision of the data. It is being distributed among scientists for analysis.
At the heart of the five-year mission is the 10-metre-wide Gaia spacecraft, which resembles a barrel sitting on a silver saucer. It carries two telescopes, and is orbiting slowly around the sun.
Origins
A nose by any other name: Biology may affect the way we invent words washingtonpost
If you visited Iceland and asked someone what they called the smelling organ in the middle of their face, they'd tell you, nev. In Japan, it's hana. To Sar speakers in southern Chad it's kon, and among the Zuni tribe of the southwestern United States. it's noli. In fact, you could go to more than 1,400 places around the world, question speakers of more than 1,400 different languages, and hear 1,400 words that contain the sound "n." But all of them mean the same thing: nose. ... Despite a long-standing assumption in linguistics that the sounds we pick to signify certain concepts are arbitrary, the researchers argue that at least some associations are more universal than you'd think.
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