A team of Australian researchers has developed a method to morph personalized stem cells into hematopoietic stem cells, something that would promise risk-free bone marrow transplants For a myriad of blood and bone marrow-based diseases including leukemia, a bone marrow transplant is the best standard treatment option available. However, risks abound with the procedure such […] The post Lab-Grown Blood Stem Cells Could Replace Donor Bone Marrow Transplants appeared first on Good News Network.

Books Creating Visual Passion: Behind the Scenes of the Swordcrossed Cover Even from the early sketches, you can feel the sexual tension… By Christine Foltzer | Published on September 24, 2024 Art by Cynthia Shepphard Comment 0 Share New Share Art by Cynthia Shepphard Not everyone knows that I started my career in book design on romance covers. It was the bulk of my work for the eight years that I worked at Grand Central Publishing. While my own reading tastes normally lean elsewhere, working on books with paranormal passion, historical hunks, and luscious costuming during my formative baby designer years—let’s just say it left a mark on my soul. So, when I was told we were working on a queer, enemies to lovers, romantasy that was going to get all the bells and whistles, I was excited!   Looking for an artist for Swordcrossed, I wanted to find someone who would not only capture the desire and heat but also the luxurious fabrics, patterns and details this story exudes. Cynthia Shepphard was the right person for this job. Her work is classical in a timeless sort of way, while still clearly being fantasy. She has a way of capturing body language that makes you feel in the moment with the characters. I reached out to her with the project proposal and the first line of her response read “Omg YES this sounds amazing!!” Buy the Book Swordcrossed Freya Marske Buy Book Swordcrossed Freya Marske Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Thus, the cover assignment began. I gathered up all of the relevant information. This included the amazing amount of visual resources Freya had provided for us, including costuming, patterns, setting, textiles, dueling poses, and character references. A few weeks later I got the sketches in. *Insert screams of delight and Muppet flailing!* … I mean *ahem professional word of enthusiasm*… Art by Cynthia Shepphard Even from these early line drawings you can feel the sexual tension. We have caught them in the moment that combat turned into passion.Cynthia on creating these compositions—“One of the more interesting challenges early on was trying to get a balance between the fighting and the romance in the swordplay. If you’re that close to your opponent in an actual rapier fight, someone has lost the fight, or maybe one person has grappled the other, which can look awkward when done correctly—I worked with someone who trains with swords to act out how that might go. Even the way a rapier is supposed to be held, with one finger above the quillon looks kinda “wrong” to the untrained eye, so it ended up feeling more appropriate to make this an intimate moment between their rounds of sparring, rather than pretend they ended up locked together like this somehow during a fight.” I later found out this project also inspired Cynthia to purchase her own prop sword in order to get posing as accurate as possible. “Because it came with a free engraving, I had the words “It’s for Reference” emblazoned on the blade.” Photo: Cynthia Shepphard After we stopped shrieking from how amazing these sketches were, we got down to the difficult business of picking one to go to final. In the end we didn’t just pick one. We decide that we wanted to combine elements from several of them to make the perfect cover. The way the swords intersected from one, the tilt of the head from another, the flowing fabrics, and the hint of architecture from a third. Cynthia took our feedback and then sent us over more refined sketches, with various color options. Art by Cynthia Shepphard We went through this process of refining and polishing a few more times. We wanted to make sure the steel was sharp, the heat high and the thirst yearning. And Cynthia brought it! This art has us all thirsty! Art by Cynthia Shepphard From there I had a the magnificently challenging task of designing typography to match this gorgeous cover art. I tried several different designs, and debated which effects would allow this cover to truly sing. Foil, embossing, spot gloss, stained edges, and patterned end papers; this novel has it all! It was truly an honor to work on this cover. A huge thanks to Cynthia and everyone involved![end-mark] Cover art by Cynthia Shepphard; Design by Christine Foltzer Design by Christine Foltzer The post Creating Visual Passion: Behind the Scenes of the <i>Swordcrossed</i> Cover appeared first on Reactor.

Books history Five SFF Works About Creating, Revising, and Obfuscating History Each of these works explores attempts at controlling the past, and rewriting history… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on September 24, 2024 Photo: Chris Lawton [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Chris Lawton [via Unsplash] A revered social visionary once observed “who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” How easy it is to guide people towards your desired goals if you control their perception of where they began! Alternatively, poorly documented or entirely forgotten history can leave people rudderless on the currents of destiny. Perhaps some examples would help. Hegira by Greg Bear (1979) Hegira is far vaster than fabled Earth. Hegira hosts a myriad of nations. Hegira is ancient. Distance implies isolation. Isolation plus time would ensure extreme divergence… had the people who created Hegira not taken steps to provide a common history, in the form of vast archives erected at regular intervals across Hegira’s surface. Thousand-kilometer-tall obelisks are engraved with human history and knowledge, with the earliest and most primitive at the bottom, and the most recent at the top. Cribbing from the obelisks offers technological shortcuts, the key to imperial supremacy. Thus, there is incentive for nations to familiarize themselves with the common past. Less clear, the future. Too bad for the Hegirans, as that future is about to become the survivors’ present. On the one hand, Hegira’s designers had clear reasons for designing their megastructure the way they did. On the other, their approach seems needlessly convoluted and inhumane. It’s almost as though their purpose was to provide a pretext for thrilling adventures. Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi (1996) Wandering bodyguard Balsa sees the carriage conveying Second Prince Chagum’s carriage tumble into a raging river. Prudence dictates she leave the boy to his fate. Nevertheless, Balsa rescues Chagum. Her heroism wins Balsa a central role in a national crisis. Chagum hosts a demon, or so his father the Mikado believes. Thus, to avoid scandal and to save the kingdom, near-fatal accidents have been arranged. Chagum’s mother, the Second Queen, wishes to save her son. Against every cautious instinct, Balsa is convinced to protect the boy—a nearly impossible task, given that Balsa has been denied certain critical, strictly need-to-know, information. New Yogo’s royals have been careful to curate an official history that suits propagandist ends. The fellow quoted at the top would approve! To this end, certain embarrassing (directly relevant to the plot) truths have been suppressed. New Yogo’s neighboring nations might glare disapprovingly, if later volumes did not establish that this sort of self-flattering historical revisionism is rife on this continent. Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle (2000) Ash keenly desires a principality of her own. Her army means it is in the interest of the local nobility to provide Ash with title and lands, lest she simply take them for herself. Charles the Bold provides Ash with the status she craves, but with a catch in the form of an arranged marriage to the unlovable Fernando de Gui. Destiny provides Ash with a distraction in the form of invasion by the seemingly unstoppable Visigoths. Centuries later, a historian wrestles with Ash’s history. Certain details beggar belief. The accounts must have been embellished…except, as the historian discovers, they have not. History is far less linear than scholars would like to believe. Many content warnings would be justified, here. Gentle may be the least aptly-named author in speculative fiction. However, unlike other authors I could mention, the unpleasant bits of Gentle’s tales are in no way gratuitous. Daemons of the Shadow Realm by Hiromu Arakawa (2021 onward) Skilled hunter Yuru lives in a peaceful rural village. Of the outside world, he knows little, save that he does not wish to travel there. To leave would be to abandon his sister Asa. Asa cannot travel, as she is permanently ensconced in the village prison. In the wake of a violent attack on the village, Yuru discovers that the village elders have withheld facts, even outright lied to Yuru. Yuru is one half of a treasure the world craves. Asa is the other half. However, the woman Yuru knows as Asa is an imposter. Reuniting with his sister and coming to terms with the world as it is requires learning to navigate an entirely unfamiliar modern world. For a few pages, I thought maybe this was another pleasant rustic tale like Arakawa’s Silver Spoon. Then the dismembering began. The tone is closer to Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist, except somehow even more violent. The Melancholy of Untold History by Minsoo Kang (2024) A prank somehow escalates, transforming four gods into bitter enemies who pursue a relentless feud for centuries. A storyteller, having delivered all his ruler demanded, finds himself slated for death. Bereavement leaves a historian unable to savor his moment of triumph. Three different narratives unfolding in three different settings, yet somehow inextricably entangled. Some readers may struggle with the intricate structure of the book. Persevere. Kang’s examination of how nations create history, and how this plays out on various personal levels, is a delightful fable. Perhaps you have your own favorite examples of histories obfuscated, misplaced, or created out of whole cloth. If so, comments are below. Regale us with new books for Mount Tsundoku![end-mark] The post Five SFF Works About Creating, Revising, and Obfuscating History appeared first on Reactor.

Noncitizens number in the hundreds of thousands in each of the seven most fiercely contested battleground states expected to decide the Nov. 5 presidential election, and research suggests more than 1 million of them could vote nationally if past voting patterns continue.  Of the seven battleground states, Georgia has the largest number of adult noncitizens at 787,588, according to numbers assembled by the Center for Immigration Studies.  North Carolina follows with 726,079 noncitizens, according to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in the first quarter of 2024 and analyzed by CIS at the request of The Daily Signal.  The third highest number of noncitizens in a battleground state is Arizona, with 611,717 ages 18 or older.  The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank, advocates enforcement of federal border and immigration laws. About 6% of noncitizens vote, CIS says. Pennsylvania has 516,123 voting-age noncitizens, according to CIS, and Michigan has 271,138. Nevada is next with 258,736 and  Wisconsin, with 129,600, has the smallest number of noncitizens among the seven swing states, CIS says. “In some states even if only a modest portion of noncitizens voted, it could possibly flip the state, as some states are likely to be decided by less than 30,000 votes,” Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal. “Of course, that does not mean it has actually happened or will happen.” “Noncitizens” is an umbrella term that includes both legal but unnaturalized residents as well as illegal immigrants.  What isn’t knowable is how many of these individuals are registered to vote or would vote in the Nov. 5 election.  However, a recent study by the Only Citizens Vote Coalition determined that if noncitizens vote at the same rate in 2024 as in 2008, about 1.5 million could cast ballots for president and other offices. This finding is consistent with separate research by Just Facts, a research institute that estimates between 1 million and 2.7 million noncitizens likely would vote.  Both studies attempted to update numbers from one in an academic journal by professors from Old Dominion University and George Mason University, which determined that about 6.4% of noncitizens voted.  Although Democrats and left-leaning media outlets have disputed the findings of that 2014 academic research, in recent years several blue and red states have reported numerous cases in which noncitizens registered to vote and went on to vote.  Just Facts, basing its research on the most recent data, determined that 10% to 27% of noncitizens are illegally registered to vote in the United States. Using the same dataset as the 2014 study, but with new data on illegal immigration, Just Facts estimates that 5% to 13% of noncitizens will vote in this year’s election. The study, released in March, cites Census Bureau data finding that over 19 million noncitizens live in the United States.  “My study is not extrapolating. It uses the newest data to ascertain the newest numbers,” James Agresti, president of Just Facts, told The Daily Signal.  The study from Just Facts also concludes:  Given the estimates above and the fact that more than 20 million noncitizen adults live in the U.S., roughly 1 million to 2.7 million of them will illegally vote in 2024 unless stronger election integrity measures are implemented. This could easily overturn the will of the American people in close major elections. So do the 2008 numbers for noncitizen voting apply to 2024? Maybe, says Jesse Richman, an associate professor of political science at Old Dominion University who was the lead author of the heavily cited study. But it’s not a certainty, he warns.  “There are variations and different sources of information on noncitizen voting rates,” Richman told The Daily Signal. “Those sources provide a range of different numbers. Many are lower figures. Keep in mind, there are substantial uncertainties about the magnitude of the problem.” He noted that each side of the political spectrum tends to estimate the extent of the problem differently.  “Democrats lean too far in dismissing noncitizen voting as a nonissue,” Richman said. “Republicans sometimes lean too far into characterizing it as the monster that ate democracy.” Among the seven battleground states, The Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Scorecard ranks Georgia—with the most voting-age noncitizens—as the best state for citizenship verification in voter registration. It earns the maximum of four points for that category. Georgia is second place overall on Heritage’s scorecard.  Arizona comes in third place for best verification of citizenship, with three out of four points. Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin each got zero points for citizenship verification.  Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, says he has doubts that noncitizen votes will surpass 1 million. Even so, he says, these votes would be enough to tilt an election outcome.  “I would be shocked if the number is that high. Still, a congressional seat in Iowa was decided by six votes in 2020. A presidential election in a state can be moved by 10,000 to 20,000 votes,” Cuccinelli told The Daily Signal. “The Biden administration’s open border combined with Bidenbucks will make the problem worse.” The term “Bidenbucks” refers to President Joe Biden’s executive order in 2021 requiring federal agencies to work with nonprofit organizations to crank up voter registration and participation.  “I don’t know the effect that Executive Order 14019 will have because the administration has stonewalled everything,” Cuccinelli said, referring to Biden’s order. “I usually count on the incompetence of the federal government when it works outside its mission scope not to have much impact.”  In 2024, the number of noncitizens totals 25.7 million, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, and of those 23.2 million are voting age. That’s up from a reported total of 21.6 million noncitizens in 2008.  Under current law, 17 jurisdictions across California, Maryland, Vermont, and the District of Columbia allow noncitizen voting for local elections only—such as for mayor, city council, or school board.  The 2014 study from professors at Old Dominion and George Mason universities looked at both the 2008 and 2010 elections and determined that noncitizen voting in 2008 tilted North Carolina in favor of Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain in the presidential race. A different result in North Carolina would not have affected the ultimate outcome of the presidential election, however.  The study also found that noncitizen voting tilted the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota in favor of Democrat Al Franken over the Republican incumbent, Norm Coleman.  Nationally, more than 81% of noncitizens voted for Obama. The Daily Signal previously reported that the Boston Election Department removed 70 noncitizens from the city’s voter rolls and that 22 had voted in the city, according to information obtained by a watchdog group, the Public Interest Legal Foundation.  Last May, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, ordered 137 noncitizens removed from the voter rolls.   The previous May, the Virginia Department of Elections removed 1,481 noncitizens from the rolls; 335 noncitizens voted in Virginia elections over the previous four years. In North Carolina, an audit found that 1,454 registrants didn’t appear to be naturalized before Election Day 2014 and would have to be challenged at the polls. Out of those, 89 appeared at polling places, 24 were challenged, and 11 of those challenges were sustained or justified. In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, the voter registrations of 139 illegal immigrants were canceled through self-reporting since 2006. Of those, 27% cast at least one vote. The post How Noncitizen Voting Could Affect These 7 Battleground States appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Just in time for spooky season.