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 S37How to choose a trustworthy mental health app in a market bloated with options   I like to start my day with a bowl of cereal. It’s quick, light and, if I make the right choice, good for me. I also have the freedom to make a less healthy choice – but when I go to the supermarket and look over the array of options in front of me, I need only look at the back of the box to understand what I’ll be eating and, most importantly, whether the ingredients are nutritious.Today’s vast market in mental health apps feels similar to choosing cereal. With the waiting lists for NHS mental health services being months long, apps appear to have the potential to ease pressure and are relatively cheap. Their accessibility and light-touch approach suggests that people in need of support will be able to manage their own mental health.
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S36Man eats raw chicken for 25 days - why isn't he sick?  John (surname withheld) is an influencer from Florida who has gained notoriety by eating raw chicken for at least 25 days.He uses a blender to grind up the uncooked chicken (wing and breast) with flavourings, raw eggs and lettuce before drinking this chicken smoothie. Raw chicken and eggs have a significant infection risk from harmful bacteria such as salmonella and campylobacter, which can cause severe illness.
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S3Kerala Ishtu: Creamy vegetable stew  Close your eyes and think of Indian curry, and it is very likely that a rich, orangey-red gravy comes to mind, like the fiery chicken tikka masala; or a thick, green sauce that is the base for popular dishes like saag paneer or hariyali chicken.But far away from these dishes that originate in the north Indian state of Punjab – both in terms of geography and flavours – is the Kerala ishtu from the deep south. Ishtu, a variation on the English word stew, is a mild, creamy, pale dish made with seasonal vegetables and enhanced with just a hint of spices. It's a hearty dish that comes together in less than 30 minutes and can be found in home cooking as well as in restaurants serving Kerala cuisine.
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S14Amazon Just Quietly Released The Trippiest Sci-Fi Show of 2024  Animated series are capable of depicting anything: far-off worlds, superheroes, even a man who is also a pickle. But it takes a specific kind of show to combine the ridiculous and fantastical with real-world circumstances that plague us every day. That is exactly what The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy does: expertly balancing bizarre patients from all over the universe with a touching interpersonal storyline that complements the unique art style. It has a unique voice, but once it becomes familiar, it’s well worth being admitted into this hospital. The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy stars Keke Palmer and Stephanie Hsu as Drs. Klak and Sleech, two best friends and surgeons at a struggling galactic hospital that cures all ailments, from STIs to black hole accidents, and everything in between.
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S15NASA's Future Moon Rocket Just Took a Huge Step Towards Being Ready to Launch  The heart of the rocket that will launch astronauts to the Moon in a few years is now complete. These astronauts will become the first people to walk the lunar surface since Apollo. NASA announced on February 16 that technicians have completed welding of the 51-foot-tall liquid oxygen tank that will help launch Artemis III. It’s the second crewed mission of the space agency’s major return to the Moon, and the first to bring astronauts to the lunar surface in more than half a century.
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S5Apple's Sports App Is a Decent Start, but It Could Be So Much More  If you needed any proof that Apple is getting very serious about its foray into live sports, a couple of announcements this week really hammered its ambitions home.First, there’s an entirely native new sports app called Apple Sports, which will be exclusive to iPhones to begin with. Inverse Deputy Editor Raymond Wong wrote all about it here if you want to know more, but the gist is this: you can track your favorite team, scores, and real-time, in-game stats, like fouls, or goals, or substitutions. You’ll even get — please hold your gasps — betting odds. It’s a proper app designed and ready for iPhone-havers everywhere, and it’s also Apple’s first truly dedicated sports app ever.
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S29Deepfakes in South Africa: protecting your image online is the key to fighting them  Leanne Manas is a familiar face on South African televisions. Towards the end of 2023 the morning news presenter’s face showed up somewhere else: in bogus news stories and fake advertisements in which “she” appeared to promote various products or get-rich-quick schemes. It quickly emerged that Manas had fallen victim to “deepfaking”. Deepfakes involve the use of artificial intelligence tools to manipulate images, video and audio. And it doesn’t require cutting-edge technical know-how. Software like FaceSwap and ZaoApp, which can be downloaded for free, mean that anybody can create deepfakes.
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S32Gaza war: will Israel respond to US pressure to tread carefully in Rafah? There is a precedent  As the deadline for Israel’s ground assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah approaches on March 10 – the beginning of Ramadan – world leaders are urging its government to rethink its strategy. Casualties from such an assault may even dwarf the huge human losses so far of close to 30,000 Palestinians killed and 70,000 wounded. US president, Joe Biden, has repeatedly urged his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu – in private and public – to hold off on the assault and to come up with a plan to protect civilians. What Biden may or may not do to influence Netanyahu’s decision is unclear – and will, in part at least, be calibrated by Biden’s domestic political requirements in an election year.
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S33Out of Darkness: I'm an expert on human origins - here's how this stone age thriller surprised me  Penny Spikins was amongst several academics who spoke to the film producers in the very early conceptual stages of the film. Neither the choice of genre (survivalist horror) nor time period (43,000 years ago) bodes well for Out of Darkness. After all, films set in the stone age tend to be comedic, sexualised or woefully historically inaccurate. Think Ice Age (2002), Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) or 10,000BC (2008) – in which mammoths help build the pyramids. Yet this film is neither. It goes way beyond expectations with its attempts at historical accuracy, and what’s more it is fun to watch – especially if suspense or a high body count are your thing.
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S34Sargent and Fashion: the American painter brings silks and satins into the limelight  Another exhibition celebrating male artistic genius through depictions of elite women may sound rather dull, but the Tate Britain’s new exhibition on John Singer Sargent is a refreshing look at this master’s skill of painting fashion.As a fashion historian, whenever I visit an art exhibition, I tend to leave with a camera full of photos of the sitters’ clothes, rather than their faces, anyway. I am often in awe at how masterfully the rich tones in swishing silks and the twinkling light in bejewelled details can be captured.
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S35US election: Haley's supporters believe radically different things to Trump. So where do they go next?  Republican primaries are shedding light on how voters perceive the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as president in 2020. The attitudes being revealed may shape the 2024 presidential race as well as the future of American democracy. Recent polling suggests people who voted for Trump are much more likely to believe that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president than voters for Trump’s Republican rival, Nikki Haley. Entrance poll results from the Iowa primary revealed that 69% of the voters who did not believe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election supported Trump. In contrast, 53% of Republican voters who believe Biden’s presidency is legitimate supported Haley.
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S13'Odysseus' Just Performed First American Moon Landing Since Apollo  Odysseus, a lander from the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, landed on the Moon’s Malapert A crater, near the Moon’s South Pole, sometime around 6:23 p.m. Eastern. The 13-foot-tall spacecraft carries onboard a thermal protection shield from Columbia Sportswear, a selfie camera to document its descent, a series of NASA instruments that learned tiny details about how the surface responds during landing, plus a piece of art made of orbs depicting lunar phases from American sculptor Jeff Koons.This is the first successful mission for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), an initiative to pay for rideshares on private flights to the Moon to save on costs — and to perhaps access the lunar environment more frequently than if the space agency built out the landers itself.
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S19On the shared genetic memories between us, the cat and the fly | Aeon Essays  is a Canadian veterinary epidemiologist. His books include The Origin of Feces (2013), Eat the Beetles! (2017), On Pandemics (2020), A Conspiracy of Chickens (2022) and The Gravity of Love (2023). He lives in Ontario on land that is the traditional home of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and Neutral People.Standing in the mix of muck and manure next to the dairy barn, I was talking to the camera about mad cow disease. This was the early 1990s, when farmers, the general public and politicians were in a panic about the possible dangers associated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). When one of the heifers trundled over to me, bumped me with her nose, and proceeded to lick my coveralls, the news crew backed away, eyeing the heavy metal fence behind them.
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S21S6One of 2024's Most Exciting RPGs Looks Better With Every Trailer  Some games have a concept so good it’s almost impossible to see it in action without wanting to play it. That’s the exact experience a lot of people had with The Plucky Squire. Its reveal trailer from last year showed a 2D RPG that takes place within a storybook, with suitably cartoon-y illustrations — impressive enough on its own — until its hero jumps out of the book and into 3D space, even moving back into 2D by diving onto other flat surfaces around the room. Now, we’ve got a closer look at how that will work in practice, and I’m even more impatient for The Plucky Squire’s 2024 release.As enticing as the first Plucky Squire trailer is, it’s mostly a lot of clips of disparate activities, offering a brief glimpse at everything the game has to offer. Puzzles! Boxing mini games! It’s great! Like most trailers, though, it didn’t make it clear how all that will come together in play. A new Feb. 21 trailer from publisher Devolver Digital solves that mystery, and as it turns out, The Plucky Squire puts all its various pieces together in a fascinating way.
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S25EPA has tightened its target for deadly particle pollution - states need more tools to reach it  Tens of millions of Americans, including many Texans like me, live in counties that will soon be violating air pollution particle standards for the first time. It’s not that our air is getting dirtier – it’s because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just tightened its cap on the deadliest air pollutant: fine particulate matter, or PM2.5.The EPA acted because the Clean Air Act requires it to periodically review existing standards for six major air pollutants to ensure that the targets protect public health. Its 2022 scientific review showed that fine particles increase rates of illnesses and death even when inhaled at levels below existing standards.
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S48S49S31Kalahari weaver birds lay bigger eggs when they have female helpers to feed nestlings  Tswalu Kalahari Reserve is a protected nature reserve at the southern edge of the Kalahari desert in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. It’s an arid area with high daytime temperatures and unpredictable rainfall.One of the species that lives in this harsh environment is the white-browed sparrow-weaver (Plocepasser mahali). They live here in social groups of up to 12 birds. Group members stay in the same group for many years at a time.
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S12Xbox Game Pass Just Quietly Added the Most Brutal Zombie Game of the Decade  Despite bearing the word “island” in its name, Dead Island 2 doesn’t take place on an island at all, and it’s the smartest thing the game could have done. Dead Island 2’s apocalyptic vision of Los Angeles is utterly fascinating to explore, especially as the game leans hard on its satire of American culture and media. That setting breathes new life into the zombie genre which has been oversaturated for years. Combine that with Dead Island 2’s gritty combat and dismemberment systems, and you have one of the best zombie-slaying games seen in years. Now, Dead Island 2 is at available on Xbox Game Pass, making it the perfect game to while away a weekend. While at first glance, Dead Island 2 is a sequel to the original Dead Island released in 2011, it’s light on direct ties. After years of troubled development, the project was taken over by Dambuster Studios, which explains how the sequel feels a bit different from its predecessor. You choose from one of six playable survivors, who each fill a different role or class. A zombie outbreak has rocked the city of Los Angeles but you’re somehow immune, and it’s now your job to get to the bottom of everything.
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S20S22Bacteria can develop resistance to drugs they haven't encountered before -  In 1943, microbiologist Salvador Luria and physicist turned biologist Max Delbrück invented an experiment to argue that bacteria mutated aimlessly. Using their test, other scientists showed that bacteria could acquire resistance to antibiotics they hadn’t encountered before.The Luria–Delbrück experiment has had a significant effect on science. The findings helped Luria and Delbruck win the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1969, and students today learn this experiment in biology classrooms. I have been studying this experiment in my work as a biostatistician for over 20 years.
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S45S46S2Khowsey: a festive South Asian spaghetti curry  Khowsey is a beloved spaghetti curry in Karachi, Pakistan, with different dialects spelling and pronouncing it as khao suey, khoi soi, khowsa, khawsa and many other ways. It is championed most fervently by the Memon community, a Muslim ethnic group known for their affinity for trade and entrepreneurial prowess in the city. However, historically, it isn't a Pakistani dish at all.Memon businessmen and traders who had established themselves in British-occupied Burma (now Myanmar) in the 19th Century were forced to return to the subcontinent after the military junta regime in the 1960s. When they returned to Pakistan and India, they brought a version of flavourful Burmese Ohn-No Kyaukse, noodles with chicken in a coconut milk-based broth (often thickened with chickpea flour). When the Memon traders settled in Karachi, they made the dish their own by heaping on the spice and zest. They swapped out egg noodles for easily accessible spaghetti, and a served rich curry made with yoghurt and gram (chickpea) flour on the side to drown the noodles, before adding a decadent, fall-apart meat gravy on top.
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S4Here's Exactly How Long It Takes to Beat 'Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth'  Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth finally takes the party out of Midgar and into the larger world from the original 1997 game. It’s a massive sequel that’s exponentially larger than Remake, both in terms of story content and side quests. From the sunny beaches of Costa Del Sol to the misty mountains of Nibelheim, there’s a lot to see and do in this second chapter. Here’s exactly how long you can expect to take with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, whether you want to see its side content or not. Rebirth’s story takes you through six different regions of the world, and you’ll be able to return to each one.
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S1025 Years Later, a Huge Gap in the Star Wars Timeline is About to be Filled  The prequels may not be the most beloved Star Wars trilogy, but it’s definitely the era we’ve seen the most of. Over 15 years ago, Star Wars: The Clone Wars began filling in the gaps between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, ultimately telling an animated story that lasted seven seasons. Rebels and The Bad Batch have also supplemented the prequel trilogy we all know and tolerate. But there’s one conspicuous absence from this extended universe, and 25 years later, a new comic book could address it. Writer Greg Pak has revealed he’ll be writing a 40-page comic celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Phantom Menace, building off his success writing the Darth Vader comics. There’s no official release date yet, but Pak said it will hit stores this May, a month that contains both Star Wars Day (May 4) and the day Phantom Menace came out (May 19).
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S1815 Years Ago, Square Enix's Most Overlooked Franchise Delivered a Perfect RPG Battle System  Star Ocean has long been one of Square Enix’s most overlooked franchises, never garnering the attention of NieR, Mana, or Final Fantasy. A big part of the reason is that every entry after Star Ocean 2 has proved incredibly divisive, and nowhere is that more true than Star Ocean: The Last Hope. The series’ fourth entry is bloated with an incredibly convoluted story, but at the same time, it has the best action combat system to ever grace the RPG genre. The Last Hope is a prequel to the entire series, but it’s kind of like in Star Wars where technology in the prequel feels far more advanced than the stories that take place later. The technological jump from PS2 to Xbox 360 also worked wonders for Star Ocean, allowing The Last Hope to be far more ambitious than anything developer Tri-Ace had done before. While that ambition doesn’t always land with its story and world, the battle system is where The Last Hope really innovated, and every other Star Ocean game since has taken cues from this underrated title.
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S23Donors gave $58 billion to higher ed in the 2023 academic year, with mega gifts up despite overall decline  Charitable giving to colleges and universities fell 5% in inflation-adjusted terms to US$58 billion in the 2023 academic year, according to the latest Voluntary Support of Education survey from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE.Giving had reached an all-time high of $59.5 billion in the prior 12-month period. Although the 2023 total marked the second-highest for any 12-month period ever, the decline fits into ebbing levels of philanthropy seen recently.
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S24Colleges are using AI to prepare hospitality workers of the future  If you’re planning to go into the hospitality industry, the pathway is increasingly going to involve some sort of familiarity with AI. That’s one of the key messages in “Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Robot Applications in Hospitality Businesses,” a new book by hospitality professor Rachel J.C. Fu. In the following Q&A, Fu discusses how the hospitality jobs of the future will rely more and more on technology to provide a pleasant guest experience.AI could not only reduce the number of jobs, but it has already begun to change the way existing jobs are done by handling tasks such as guest check-ins, customer inquiries and the like.
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S27S28Speaker Lindsay Hoyle sparks chaos: five steps to understanding why MPs stormed out of Parliament during Gaza vote  Chaos engulfed the House of Commons on Wednesday, February 21 when MPs representing the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party (SNP) stormed out of the chamber following a furious row over a debate on calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The situation was complex but can be explained in five key moments.The main piece of business in the House of Commons on the day in question was an opposition day debate tabled by the Scottish National Party (SNP) calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Opposition day debates are an opportunity for opposition parties to put issues that they care about onto the parliamentary agenda.
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S40Gaza update: Biden ups the pressure on Israel as deadline for Rafah assault approaches  Joe Biden’s most senior Middle East adviser, Brett McGurk, has arrived in Israel to push for a deal to halt the war in Gaza and secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. McGurk has served each successive president since joining George W. Bush’s national security team in 2005, and his presence in the region at this increasingly crucial time, as Israel prepares for a ground assault on the overcrowded southern Gaza city of Rafah, is an indication of the urgency with which the Biden administration views the situation.Thus far, intransigence on both sides has scuppered various initiatives aimed at securing a ceasefire. Last week, after Benjamin Netanyahu pulled Israeli negotiators out of talks in Egypt, blaming Hamas for refusing to budge on what he called its “ludicrous” demands, Israel’s prime minister pledged to press ahead with the Rafah offensive. However, his war cabinet member Benny Gantz said this week that a deal might still be possible.
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S41S42Extreme environments are coded into the genomes of the organisms that live there  An organism’s genome is a set of DNA instructions needed for its development, function and reproduction. The genome of a present-day organism contains information from its journey on an evolutionary path that starts with the “first universal common ancestor” of all life on Earth and culminates with that organism. Encoded within itself, an organism’s genome contains information that can reveal connections to its ancestors and its relatives.
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S44Side-effects of expanding forests could limit their potential to tackle climate change - new study  Tackling climate change by planting trees has an intuitive appeal. They absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere without using expensive technology. The suggestion that you can plant trees to offset your carbon emissions is widespread. Many businesses, from those selling shoes to booze, now offer to plant a tree with each purchase, and more than 60 countries have signed up to the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore degraded and deforested landscapes.
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S16Star Wars' Most Exciting New Show Could Explore a Unique Genre  Lucasfilm is working hard to craft a cinematic universe on the big and small screen, all centered around The Mandalorian. That said, Star Wars’ most exciting new project actually has nothing to do with the Mando-verse. It’s The Acolyte, a mysterious series from showrunner Leslye Headland, that’s been drawing the most curiosity. Set years before the Star Wars prequels in the High Republic era, The Acolyte will reportedly follow a Sith padawan as they infiltrate the Jedi Order. The series has all the trappings of a noir, a genre only briefly explored in prequels like Attack of the Clones and the animated Clone Wars series. It’s safe to assume that The Acolyte will delve into darker territory than any of its predecessors — but a recent addition to the crew could place the series in a new genre altogether.
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S17Netflix Just Quietly Added the Most Innovative Sci-Fi Movie of the Century  True originality is hard to come by these days, especially in movie theaters. Most new movies seem to follow the same old rules, and while that’s not necessarily bad, it’s become increasingly rare for a mainstream movie to feel unlike anything you’ve ever seen.But that’s what happened when Everything Everywhere All At Once hit theaters in March 2022. The film, which became a minor cultural phenomenon and an unlikely Best Picture winner, is a maximalist sci-fi epic that defies all formal, narrative, and tonal expectations at practically every turn. It’s a pure, unfiltered example of writer-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s (a.k.a. the Daniels) unique artistic vision, and now it’s streaming for the first time on Netflix.
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