One of the deadliest skin infections may have met its match as an exciting new family of compounds have shown unprecedented efficacy in clearing a fatal infection in mice. They target the gram-positive bacteria behind a flesh-eating disease known as necrotizing fasciitis that can be fatal in a matter of days.Gram-positive bacteria are characterized by their cell wall, setting them apart from gram-negative bacteria. Which group a bacterium falls into matters when it comes to allocating an antibiotic to someone’s illness, as some drugs will be more effective on one type than the other.Necrotizing fasciitis is a rare but life-threatening infection that can happen when bacteria get in through a break in the skin, be that a bite, burn, or scratch. It’s more commonly associated with gram-positive bacteria, with Streptococcus pyogenes being the most likely culprit.Limb amputation is often required to control the spread of necrotizing fasciitis, and about 20 percent of people die. Getting on top of this fatal infection by tackling the culprit, which is responsible for many other potentially life-threatening diseases, could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year. This latest study focused on S. pyogenes necrotizing soft tissue infections in mice, to see how treatment with a novel family of compounds influenced the progression of disease.The compounds are called GmPcides (for gram-positive-icide) and had already proven their efficacy on bacteria in a Petri dish. The mouse model revealed that the compound was once again effective, both in reducing the virulence of the bacteria and even speeding up post-infection healing.It’s not entirely clear how it’s able to do this just yet, but it’s thought that the GmPcide may affect the bacteria’s cell membranes.“One of the jobs of a membrane is to exclude material from the outside,” said study co-author and professor of molecular microbiology Dr Michael Caparon in a statement. “We know that within five to ten minutes of treatment with GmPcide, the membranes start to become permeable and allow things that normally should be excluded to enter into the bacteria, which suggests that those membranes have been damaged.”As well as letting in things the bacteria would sooner keep out, permeating the cell membrane can make it less able to harm the host, and less resistant to the human body’s immune response. And in case that’s not quite enough good news for you, it also proved to be effective across a range of bacteria.“All of the gram-positive bacteria that we’ve tested have been susceptible to that compound. That includes enterococci, staphylococci, streptococci, C. difficile, which are the major pathogenic bacteria types. The compounds have broad-spectrum activity against numerous bacteria.”So far the compound has been tested in mice, who are a common research subject because they are genetically so similar to us humans. So, while we can’t necessarily generalize findings from mouse studies to humans, it’s a very promising step in the fight against a deadly foe.The study is published in Science Advances.

Leaving streetlights on all night has an unexpected effect on the trees around them, causing them to sacrifice growth for better defense against insects.Street lighting has many benefits, but there is a price to pay for the loss of darkness. It certainly interferes with our view of the stars, and animals are suffering. When scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences noticed how little insect damage was occurring to tree leaves in urban areas, lighting was one suspect.“We noticed that, compared to natural ecosystems, tree leaves in most urban ecosystems generally show little sign of insect damage. We were curious as to why,” said Dr Shuang Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a statement. We might expect that if urban insects are not chowing down on tree leaves as much, the cause would relate to the animals, not the plants. Perhaps light, or air pollution, was affecting the insects directly. Alternatively, the nocturnal illumination might help predators catch the herbivores, leaving fewer left to do their munching.However, Zhang and colleagues also explored the possibility that trees exposed to light through the night would focus on defending themselves through turning up the unsavory chemicals, rather than growth. They tested this by collecting nearly 5,500 leaves from Japanese pagoda (Styphnolobium japonicum) and green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) trees near streetlights in Beijing, and some placed further away from lights. All were the same distance from busy roads, so exposure to air pollution did not vary.Both species produced tougher leaves that made them harder to chew when exposed to 24-hour light. Unsurprisingly, this made leaves from more well-lit areas less attractive to herbivorous insects.Other differences varied by species. The Japanese pagodas exposed to more light had lower concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus, both vital nutrients.  Green ash trees, on the other hand, had more nitrogen when exposed to extra light, and less insect-deterring tannin, but their leaves were smaller.“The underlying mechanism for this pattern is not yet fully understood,” said Zhang. “It is possible that trees exposed to artificial light at night may extend their photosynthesis duration. Additionally, these leaves might allocate a greater proportion of resources to structural compounds, such as fibers, which could lead to an increase in leaf toughness.” The authors speculate the difference between species could be because green ash trees are less attractive to insects under ordinary conditions, and so may experience less pressure to redirect resources towards deterrence. Zhang and colleagues aren’t ruling out increased predation on the insects as a further contributing factor, but that would be harder to test.There’s a reason that trees don’t make their leaves tougher all the time. Energy invested in building defenses comes at the cost of growth, and ultimately seed production. You might not care if insects struggle to feed, but if it means you get less summer shade, the issue might seem more relevant, particularly in a city prone to overheating. The authors also observed: “It's noteworthy that leaves with higher toughness tend to decompose at a slower rate, potentially affecting the nutrient cycling rate negatively.”Moreover, Zhang noted: “Decreased herbivory can lead to trophic cascading effects in ecology. Lower levels of herbivory imply lower abundances of herbivorous insects, which could in turn result in lower abundances of predatory insects, insect-eating birds, and so on. The decline of insects is a global pattern observed over recent decades. We should pay more attention to this trend.”Zhang acknowledges a study on two species in a single city may not be universally applicable. Nevertheless, it adds to existing arguments for turning streetlights off for part of the night, or having them on motion sensors so they only shine when needed.The study is published in Frontiers in Plant Science.

Check the look of dismay/disdain on Kasie Hunt's face as she decried Donald Trump having called Kamala Harris, during his Atlanta rally on Sunday, a "low-IQ individual." On today's CNN This Morning, Hunt claimed that Trump's statement was "definitely race-related." Really? Shall we take a stroll down the list of people of pallor whose intellect Trump has disparaged? Let's begin with the infamous tweet in which Trump used the very same term regarding the very white Mika Brzezinski: "low-I.Q. Crazy Mika." Other examples of white people whose intellect Trump has derided: Jeff Sessions: A "dumb Southerner" Karl Rove: "Stupid" [five times] Glenn Beck: "Stupid" "dumb as a rock" Lindsey Graham: "Dumb mouthpiece" John McCain: "dummy," "graduated last in his class" Arianna Huffington: "dummy" Brit Hume: "dope, know nothing" There are others, but you get the picture. When it comes to insulting people's intelligence, Trump is the Don Rickles of politicians.   Hunt put it to former Biden aide Meghan Hays that Trump's "low-IQ" attack on Harris could actually backfire. Hays was only too happy to agree, saying that the kind of people that Trump needs to persuade in the swing states tend to be non-Trump, Nikki Haley-type women voters who won't look kindly at a women being disparaged as "low-IQ." We must be in deep in the thousdands of occasions where CNN has predicted "backlash" or "backfires" for Trump since 2015. But let's ask this: Hasn't CNN called people they don't agree with "stupid"? Like CNN analyst Ana Navarro said Latinos backing Trump have a "very stupid attitude" -- is that racist?  Trump could certainly focus, as we have previously noted, on the treasure trove of of far-left policy positions that Harris has taken. But in saying it's "race-related" for Trump to call Harris "low-IQ," Hunt chose to ignore his long history of questioning the smarts of his opponents--of all races. Here's the transcript. CNN This Morning 8/5/24 6:18 am EDT DONALD TRUMP: CNN we're going to defeat Crazy Kamala, Ka-ma-la, you know, there's about 19 different ways of saying it. She only likes three. She was here a week ago, lots of empty seats. But the crowd she got was because she had entertainers. She refuses to even say the words illegal alien, or radical Islamic terrorists. She is considered more left-wing than Crazy Bernie Sanders, look at her, she's worse than Bernie.And she happens to be, really, a low-IQ individual. KASIE HUNT: A low-IQ individual. That was a selection of the various ways in which Donald Trump is going on offense against his new rival. . . .  I mean, Meghan Hays, this low-IQ stuff, I mean, it's definitely race-related, right? And this is a thing that, when when it was clear that Joe Biden was leaving the race, one of the notes I got from a Republican in Trump's orbit was that this is going to mean that he is not going to be able to resist going to these places. What do you think? I mean, if you're the Democrats, are these the kinds of attacks, in some ways you would say, well, that's going to actually backfire? It's going to help us. How do you look at it?  MEGHAN HAYS: No, I definitely think it helps the Democrats, I think going back to this in five or six states, with 10,000 people in each state that are going to determine this election. And most of these people are independent women and they're like the non-Trump people, the Nikki Haley voters that we were calling them earlier in the cycle.  These are not people who are going to take kindly to calling a woman having low-IQ, calling out her race, making personal attacks against her. That's not going to win you voters. That energizes your base, and it might be great it for fundraising, but it is not what's going to win you the election.

When the news broke that “Ava” Kris Tyson sent highly sexualized texts between himself and a 13-year-old fan of the MrBeast franchise, the internet was in an uproar. Tyson, who came out as transgender last year and left his wife and child to pursue a new life as a woman, has now been labeled as a “groomer.” Despite standing behind Tyson throughout his transition into womanhood, MrBeast himself, Jimmy Donaldson, is finally taking action against him. “Over the last few days, I’ve become aware of the serious allegations of Ava Tyson’s behavior online and I am disgusted and opposed to such unacceptable acts,” he wrote in a post on X. MrBeast explained in his statement that he would hire “an independent third party to conduct a thorough investigation” to ensure he has “all the facts.” He also removed Tyson from the company and channel. However, Sara Gonzales and her panel on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered” are skeptical that Tyson was actually operating under Donaldson’s nose rather than right before his eyes. In one clip of the MrBeast team in Tyson’s house, there is child porn-inspired art called “Loli” hanging on the wall. The art was created by Shadman, who uses live child models. “They call it ‘Loli,’ a type of highly sexualized anime where grown women are depicted as children,” Gonzales explains, disgusted. BlazeTV contributor Jaco Booyens doesn’t think Tyson is the only one to worry about. “In any given moment in the United States, there’s 750,000 predators actively communicating with children online. Any given moment. Right now, as we’re speaking, there’s ¾ of a million predators communicating on social media,” Booyens explains. “The average groomer at any given time is grooming 32 children,” Booyens says, adding, “This is not an isolated incident by this guy.” Booyens also points out that MrBeast didn’t seem to mind that Tyson was leaving his family to pursue his dream of being a “woman.” “This is not the first MrBeast sexual swirl around that team,” he says. “Birds of a feather flock together.” Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Markets around the world, including in the U.S., tanked on Monday as investors began openly expressing concerns about a possible U.S. economic recession.As they had on Friday, global markets were severely in the red on Monday. The Dow opened down more than 1,000 points and as of mid-morning hovers about -2.6% overall. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is down over 560 points or 3.36%.'Four years ago today, Trump claimed the stock market would 'crash' if Joe Biden was elected.'The Asian markets, many of which are about 12 hours ahead of the American markets, suffered even worse losses on Monday. The Nikkei 225 in Japan tumbled 12.4% — more than 4,450 points — its largest single-day loss in history. The second largest was "Black Monday" in 1987."That was a crash. It smelled like 1987," said Neil Newman, head of strategy at Astris Advisory in Tokyo, according to CNN.On Monday, Taiwan's Taiex likewise fell 8.4% and South Korea’s Kospi 8.8%.These catastrophic numbers have intensified talks about a looming recession in the U.S. Even leftwing outlets like the Daily Beast have acknowledged the possibility."To put it mildly, the spike in volatility-of-volatility is a spectacle that underlines just how jittery markets have become," said Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management, according to ABC News. "The real question now looms: Can the typical market reflex to sell volatility or buy the market dip prevail over the deep-seated anxiety brought on by this sudden and sharp recession scare?"The Federal Reserve will now almost assuredly cut interest rates next month to stabilize the volatile markets. For now, economists are blaming the global market turmoil on the dismal jobs report the U.S. Department of Labor released on Friday. So-called experts had anticipated a report showing that the policies that Biden and Harris have affectionally called "Bidenomics" had created 175,000 jobs last month, but the real number was much lower, just 114,000, causing the unemployment rate to jump to 4.3%, the highest rate since October 2021 and nearly a full point higher than it was at the beginning of the year.As recently as May, an account touting the supposed accomplishments of Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated the soaring stock market and took aim at former President Donald Trump's skepticism about a Biden-Harris administration's ability to address economic issues."Four years ago today, Trump claimed the stock market would 'crash' if Joe Biden was elected (The stock market has reached the highest levels ever recorded in history under President Biden)," Kamala HQ tweeted on May 24.Trump certainly has his doubts that Biden and Harris are up to the task, dubbing the market tumble on Monday the "KAMALA CRASH.""Of course there is a massive market downturn. Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe. Markets will NEVER accept the Radical Left Lunatic that DESTROYED San Francisco and California, as a whole. Next move, THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024! You can’t play games with MARKETS. KAMALA CRASH!!!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.Harris for President spokesperson James Singer, in turn, pointed the finger at Trump for the abysmal jobs report. "Donald Trump failed Americans as president, costing our economy millions of jobs, and bringing us to the brink of recession," Singer said."We’ve made significant progress, but Vice President Harris knows there’s more work to do to lower costs for families." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) recently launched an investigation into Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan's daughter, Loren, over potential "conflicts of interest" regarding her work for former President Donald Trump's political adversaries, Fox News Digital reported.Loren Merchan works for Authentic Campaigns Inc., a progressive political consulting firm that raised at least $93 million in campaign donations for two of its Democratic clients. The funds were raised in part by using solicitation emails that mentioned Trump's New York criminal trial. 'Could profit considerably from President Trump's prosecution.'Despite his daughter's profession prompting concerns of conflict of interest, Juan Merchan has rejected calls from Trump's legal team to recuse himself from presiding over the case. In May, a jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The New York case is one of the four indictments lodged against the former president.Jordan wrote to Loren Merchan in a Thursday letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, requesting information as part of the committee's "oversight of politically motivated prosecutions.""Experts have raised substantial concerns with Judge Merchan, your father, refusing to recuse himself from President Trump's case despite your work on behalf of President Trump's political adversaries and the financial benefit that your firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc., could receive from the prosecution and conviction," Jordan told Loren Merchan.Jordan noted that she was previously "closely involved in presidential campaigns for both President Biden and Vice President Harris." "At a minimum, there is a perception that you and Authentic Campaigns could profit considerably from President Trump's prosecution in a forum overseen by your father," he added.Jordan requested that Loren Merchan turn over "all contracts and invoices" and "all documents and communications" related to her company's campaign work for Biden, Harris, and the Democratic National Committee, beginning in 2023. She must also provide all information regarding political campaigns referencing the New York criminal case against Trump. Lastly, Jordan demanded all communications between the consulting firm and Judge Merchan or any of his staff regarding the trial. Loren Merchan is expected to turn over the requested information by August 8. During the trial, Judge Merchan placed a restrictive gag order against Trump that prohibited him from speaking about any staff or their family members, which extended to Loren Merchan. The judge has since partially lifted the order, but Trump is still barred from making public remarks about Loren Merchan despite a verdict already being reached in the case.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Where is the Trump campaign? We know where former President Donald Trump is. We see him holding rallies, testing messaging, probing weaknesses for better and for worse. We know where Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) is: raising money, speaking on the southern border. But what of the people Trump has empowered to provide the covering fire? They're certainly in the news: For campaign infighting, for attacking conservative Republicans, for blasting outside support structures. But what about blasting Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee and their actual opponent in the general election? Trump famously does what he wants, and the rest is in God’s hands. So what have the campaign staff added, exactly? It’s striking that the first anti-Harris attack ad to go viral was a tweet by Dave McCormick’s U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania. His operation was on message seemingly hours after Harris was thrust upon the Democratic Party. But where was the covering fire from the top campaign? Campaign leaders appear to have been caught completely flat-footed by the long, slow-moving public coup against Joe Biden. If that weren’t negligent enough, it took weeks for them to adjust to the candidate swap once it happened. Trump’s campaign finally posted television ads on Tuesday, nine days after Harris’ announcement. Meanwhile, the super PACs have completely saturated every swing-state market except North Carolina. The play, one campaign ally told Blaze News, is likely for the campaign to hold fire until later in the election and let the super PACs do the work first to avoid running out of money in the final weeks, as happened in 2020. That makes sense. PACs pay a premium — often twice the campaign's rate. Closer to the actual election, that number can rise as high as 10 times the preferred rate offered to the candidate. But the campaign has outsourced just about everything but advertising to the Republican National Committee, so what is it actually doing? Top adviser Chris LaCivita spent Thursday tweeting attacks on Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus who lost his primary recount that day. Personal, intrastate feuds are standard fare in politics, but 31,216 conservative Republicans cast their votes for Good in a state LaCivita is paid to win in November. What’s the plan there? That same morning, the big campaign operative story featured more than a dozen anonymous staffers pointing to longtime Trump confidante Kellyanne Conway for allegedly undermining Vance to reporters. Conway, by the way, is being paid $50,000 a month to lobby for Ukraine. Vance has been a vocal opponent of American involvement in the Ukraine war. She’s not part of the campaign but is certainly part of the noise. The day before, LaCivita and his equal at the top, Susie Wiles, put out a letter attacking the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and, by extension, the dozens of Trump White House alumni laying the policy groundwork for a potential return. They wrote it on campaign letterhead, with Trump’s and Vance’s names at the top, and signed their names at the bottom. Speaking of Vance, his speech on the southern border lighting into the White House’s historically abysmal border security was a rare light in a dark week. He delivered straight messaging on one of the two issues American voters have repeatedly listed as the most crucial. It was Politics 101, and it was overshadowed by backbiting distractions — and the glaring fact that the senator has been under unrelenting attack since his announcement, with nary a defensive shot fired by the campaign. "The way they left JD unprotected against unrelenting attacks was campaign malpractice," one Trump 45 White House communications alum told Blaze News. Granted, it’s difficult to play defense during your opponent’s honeymoon media week and when you’re focusing on Harris. But Vance is a fighter who was cloistered away to weather an unending barrage. Why wasn’t he sent to "Meet the Press" and other shows? He's more than proven his ability to hold his own. Meanwhile, the campaign's top operatives claim they’re trying to tamp down on outside noise (Project 2025) and focus on winning. This might convince if there was a product to show for this focus on winning. Thus far, their greatest pluses were fighting for the debate, Biden being old and senile, and the candidate himself exercising message control during trials (and staying silent during Biden’s implosion). But no one believes campaign staff pulled those off. Trump famously does what he wants, and the rest is in God’s hands. So what have they added, exactly? Absent a product, it looks like two weeks spent jealously defending personal power bases. The news media are fully mobilized for war, and a Democratic Party sitting on four years of porous borders, rampant inflation, war abroad, terrible job growth, and a nearly incapacitated president is somehow on the offensive. We’re 91 days away from Election Day. The triumphalism is over. This is a real race. Time to start running it. Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter. IN OTHER NEWS In defense of Trump’s attack on Harris’ identity (and why it might sting) By now you know Trump told a room of black journalists that Kamala Harris used to identify more with her Indian heritage than her Jamaican heritage. There was laughter in the room along with the jeers, but any sort of nuanced response ended there. The political world was aghast. How dare he! CNN and the New York Times called Trump’s observation racist, etc. Yawn. A time traveler from 2015 called Bill O'Reilly said when you’re talking about race, you’re losing. For her part, Abigail Shrier made the obvious (and so brilliant) point that political attacks only work if they fire up your supporters more than the other team. But is that matter settled? At its core, Trump’s message was that Kamala Harris is, at her core, a complete and total phony — and he planted that take more than three months before the election in a hysterically provocative way. WMAL and the Daily Caller's Vince Coglianese called it "bicycle-kicking the hornets’ nest." The week’s news cycle had been devoted to Vance and childless cat ladies. Suddenly, every segment switched to the authenticity of one of the Democrats’ most sacred totems — race politics. It ain't 2004 any more. Clapping flip-flops at John Kerry rallies isn’t going to cut through the noise. You need to be provocative to get the people going. The wild man who attacked former President George W. Bush over 9/11, Sen. John McCain over being taken prisoner in Vietnam, and the historically brilliant, famously kind, and soft-spoken Dr. Ben Carson as a violent psychopath and a bad doctor was just the man to do it. Trump broke her stride and seized back attention. He went at the core of Harris’ person and called her a poseur. He's not the only person to think this. According to Politico bigwigs Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, even Biden quietly noticed that “she doesn’t seem to know who she wants to be.” It’s three months until Tuesday, November 5, in a world in which the American people have already been distracted from the most famous man in the world nearly being assassinated on live TV. Keep calm and carry on. Meanwhile, the key for those normal Republican politicians caught in the riptide is not to echo his words but to use them to prosecute the more widely appealing version of the attack. UnHerd: The political family has lost its sparkle Spectator: The Josh Shapiro sexual harassment cover-up scandal is actually quite bad I'll see you in a week Just a few paragraphs after telling everyone to get to work, I'm loading the family into the truck and heading to Ocean City, Maryland, to eat blue crabs, ride big waves, and document the terrible state of the tattoos at Seacrets. I'll see you next week.

Uboat is precisely the kind of game I love to see doing well on Steam. It’s committed, its creators clearly love the subject matter, and after five years in early access, it deserves a successful launch. A realistic submarine simulation game set during WWII, Uboat threads the line between believability and accessibility - unlike some milsims, where everything is recreated 1:1, in Uboat, the aesthetic and tone are very grounded, but mechanically, there’s a way in for everyone. Tense and tough, despite its niche premise, the underwater strategy shooter with hints of War Thunder and Command and Conquer is currently thriving on Steam, and deservedly so. Continue reading Ultra realistic milsim Uboat is doing amazingly well on Steam MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best strategy games, Best submarine games, Best WW2 games

What is the best Diablo 4 Spiritborn build? The first Diablo 4 expansion is nearly upon us, bringing with it new bosses, items, and most importantly, the Spiritborn class. Hailing from the jungles of Nahantu, the Spiritborn’s incredible versatility stems from its expert level hand-to-hand skills, Spirit Guardians, and deadly Glaive. When it comes to picking one of the Diablo 4 classes, the Spiritborn looks like the best pick for anyone who wants a flexible class that can truly do it all. Blizzard recently broke down everything Diablo 4 players should know about the Spiritborn, including its origins, how it fits into the overall story, and its skills. We’re going to be taking a look at the Spiritborn’s skills to theorycraft some Diablo 4 builds that you can take with you when the Vessel of Hatred expansion launches. Continue reading Best Diablo 4 Spiritborn build MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Diablo 4 builds, Diablo 4 review, Diablo 4 classes

Nvidia could be about to release a new slightly slower version of the RTX 4070, according to new rumors. A new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GDDR6 variant could use slightly slower GDDR6 memory instead of the usual GDDR6X, which could result in a lower price for the new versions. The rumor of a new variant of one of the best graphics cards you can buy will be sweet music to the ears of those who have been tempted by the RTX 4070 but have found its $550 price still too high. There's no guarantee Nvidia will drop the price of a slightly slower version, but we'd be surprised if a small saving didn't accompany the new card, if it does turn out to be real. Continue reading Nvidia is working on a new, slightly slower, RTX 4070, says leak MORE FROM PCGAMESN: GeForce RTX 4070 Super review, DLSS explained, Best graphics cards