'conspiring to violate U.S. export control laws and to defraud the United States'

'There are a lot of quiet Trump supporters, there are a lot of Kennedy supporters'

Frontier Airlines recently had a special guest on their flight from Florida to Puerto Rico—5-year-old Xavier Rivas who was preparing to ‘graduate’ from Kindergarten. But because the graduation at his school was taking place whilst young Xavier was 35,000 feet above sea level, Frontier attendants stepped in to give him a special ceremony. Calling his […] The post When Five-year-old Missed His Graduation, Plane Passengers Give Special Midair Ceremony – (WATCH) appeared first on Good News Network.

An artificially intelligent PC and his human owner find themselves in a romantic rivalry over a woman. Cast: 1984 memories A rental based solely on the artwork. I was a big computer nerd and a CONTINUE READING... The post 84 From ’84: Electric Dreams appeared first on The Retro Network.

A US Postal Service worker in Tennessee gets violently attacked by a dog at a Lincoln County home while delivering a package on Saturday, June 15.

Hamas May Move Headquarters to Baghdad

In June 1944, the German V-2 rocket became the first object to ever reach space. Over the last eight decades, humans have experimented with several different designs to get stuff into orbit and launch ever further into deep space. With revolutionary rockets having been tested recently or imminently taking flight, it is important to understand how they work.The principles of rocketry are actually cardinal ideas in physics, but it is their application that requires more thought. First of all, objects with mass tend to resist being put in motion, but once in motion, they will continue moving as long as there’s no friction or drag. We are talking about inertia here. And then there is Newton’s third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Together, they form the theoretical base for any rocket launch.How do rockets get to space?Let’s start looking at the practicalities. To get up and into space you need to be moving fast. If it is a matter of crossing the Kármán line at 100 kilometers (61 miles) and coming back down, like Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, then you should be aiming for around 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) per hour. That is almost 1 kilometer per second. But if your goal is to get into orbit and stay there, you need to get faster or you'll fall back down. The way one stays in orbit is to be constantly falling back down toward Earth. You just keep missing the planet. The speed required to stay in low-Earth orbit is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per second.To leave the Earth’s gravitational pull for good, you need to go even faster. At least 11.2 kilometers (7 miles) per second. That’s equivalent to 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) per hour. How do rockets lift-off?No matter what speed you want to reach, you need an object that can generate thrust. And lots of it. Thrust depends on the speed of the exhaust gas and the mass of gas being expelled per second. So we move from the principles of physics to the chemistry of explosions.A schematic view of the components of a rocket.Image Credit: James Rodriguez © IFLScienceCalling it the chemistry of fire or of controlled explosions is splitting hairs. In basic terms, it is an exothermic reaction, one that releases heat and energy. It’s what powers your cells. It’s what powers a fire. It’s what powers regular combustion engines. You have a fuel, you have an oxidizer, and an ignition source.Rockets travel very high into the atmosphere, where the amount of oxygen (the oxidizer for all the other namechecked system use) is low. So rockets tend to bring their own oxidizers with them. Liquid oxygen tends to be the oxidizer of choice. But fuel varies. SpaceX’s Falcon rocket used rocket-grade Kerosene as fuel. SpaceX’s Starship instead uses methane. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and the upcoming European Space Agency’s Ariane 6 both use liquid hydrogen as fuel.A recent explainer video from the European Space Agency (ESA,) parallels the rocket behavior to that of an unknotted balloon. Pointing out the main difference, a balloon doesn’t just go up but it moves all over the place. The video makes another important analogy: balancing the rocket – thin and tall with the thrust coming out of the bottom – is like balancing a pencil on a finger. You need to be flexible.         IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.How do you control a rocket?The flexibility comes from having engine nozzles that can be moved, as well as other design elements such as fins. When a rocket begins to tumble uncontrollably, it usually means that those systems are not working and the rocket is either about to explode by itself or will be made to go boom by ground control. Another common feature in rockets is boosters. Not every rocket design needs them, because not every rocket has to generate the same amount of thrust. Boosters such as those on SLS and Ariane 6 use solid fuel – the fuel and the oxidizer are combined in a solid block that burns and burns. There’s no way to regulate thrust when it comes to the boosters, beyond shaping the surface area where the reaction occurs.The final salient characteristic of rockets is that they are usually built in stages. Going back to the principle of inertia, the more mass you have the more thrust you need to move it to the speed you want. But the more thrust you need, the more fuel you need to pack. So it is useful to get rid of a portion of the rocket once it has outlived its purpose. Some first stages are reusable, like in the case of SpaceX rockets.  In other cases, it is only the capsule that carries cargo or crew that is used over and over again.To make sure everything goes right, rockets are tested time and time again. There’s often a lot running on them – literally, when the mission they are launching is carrying astronauts. They do not call it rocket science for nothing.

There have been questions over how cannabis use might affect someone’s risk of severe disease if they catch COVID-19, but a new study claims to be able to address some of the confusion. It seems clear that cannabis use is as risky as smoking when it comes to COVID, with people who used the drug at least once in the year prior to contracting the virus being significantly more likely to require hospital treatment.The study, from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, looked at the health records of 72,501 people who were treated for COVID-19 at clinics within a large Midwest healthcare system in a two-year period between 2020 and 2022.The data showed that people who said they’d used any form of cannabis during the preceding year before catching COVID were 80 percent more likely to require hospitalization and 27 percent more likely to need intensive care treatment than those who had not used cannabis. This was after adjusting for factors like vaccination status and other health conditions.As a risk factor for severe disease, this put cannabis use on a par with smoking tobacco.“There’s this sense among the public that cannabis is safe to use, that it’s not as bad for your health as smoking or drinking, that it may even be good for you. I think that’s because there hasn’t been as much research on the health effects of cannabis as compared to tobacco or alcohol,” said senior author Professor Li-Shiun Chen in a statement.“What we found is that cannabis use is not harmless in the context of COVID-19. People who reported yes to current cannabis use, at any frequency, were more likely to require hospitalization and intensive care than those who did not use cannabis.”While cannabis was associated with more severe COVID-19 symptoms, it did differ from smoking in one important way. There’s not yet enough evidence to show that cannabis use is associated with increased risk of death, whereas for smoking the link is clear: smokers are significantly more likely to die from COVID than nonsmokers.Some previous research had suggested that cannabis may provide some sort of protective effect against viruses like SARS-CoV-2, but these data from real-world patients do not support that hypothesis.“Most of the evidence suggesting that cannabis is good for you comes from studies in cells or animals,” Chen explained. “The advantage of our study is that it is in people and uses real-world health-care data collected across multiple sites over an extended time period. All the outcomes were verified: hospitalization, ICU stay, death.”“Using this data set, we were able to confirm the well-established effects of smoking, which suggests that the data are reliable.”While it looks as though cannabis use worsens outcomes from COVID-19, we’re still not clear on why that may be. The authors suggested a few theories, such as damage to lung tissue from smoking cannabis or a dampening effect on the immune system. It’s also not clear whether the way in which someone consumes cannabis makes a difference.“We just don’t know whether edibles are safer,” said first author and medical resident Dr Nicholas Griffith. “People were asked a yes-or-no question: ‘Have you used cannabis in the past year?’ That gave us enough information to establish that if you use cannabis, your health-care journey will be different, but we can’t know how much cannabis you have to use, or whether it makes a difference whether you smoke it or eat edibles.”He added, “I hope this study opens the door to more research on the health effects of cannabis.”The study is published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

A relatively nearby K-type star called HD 48948 has been found to host three planets, each modestly larger than the Earth. The outermost of these is in the “habitable zone”, where temperatures are right for liquid water at the surface. More investigation is needed – particularly to confirm it is predominantly rock or water, not gas – but there is a good chance this could be rated as the closest known planet to Earth with a good chance of sustaining life.New planets are being found at an astonishing rate, such that one needs to be special to get noticed. HD 48948 d shows every sign of qualifying. The vast majority of planets we have found are either gas giants with no chance to support life themselves (although moons might, if they have them) or are far too hot. Many fail on both counts. Even the few planets that are the right size and average temperature often have problems that make life unlikely, although not necessarily impossible. These include being tidally locked so the same side always faces their star, and being exposed to flares that may well sterilize them. HD 48948 d probably avoids both fates, although the other planets discovered at the same time are certainly too hot. It’s the closest example of a so-called Super-Earth, a planet modestly larger than our home, that lies within its star’s habitable zone.K-type stars have less mass than the Sun, and are consequently somewhat cooler and fainter, but they are more massive than the much more abundant M-type (red dwarfs). They’re sometimes called orange dwarfs since they are the brightest in that part of the spectrum.HD 48948 has a mass 67 percent of the Sun’s and is 55 light-years away in Camelopardalis. It’s a very old star, its 11.5 billion-year life span having offered plenty of time for life to evolve around it. Ten years of observations reveal it wobbling on patterns that indicate it is being affected by the gravity of planets orbiting on periods of 7.3, 38, and 151 days.Even with less luminosity than the Sun, a planet on a 7.3-day orbit would be baked far hotter than Mercury, and even the planet in a 38-day orbit would be more oven than home.HD 48948 d is a different matter. Its orbital distance is similar to Venus, but around a star of this brightness, its temperature would be close to Earth’s, while also being far enough away that flares shouldn’t be a problem.This isn’t a twin of Earth, however – its mass is estimated at 10.59 times our planet’s, give or take an Earth-mass. As far as we know, none of HD 48948’s planets transit across the face of their star from our perspective. Consequently, we don’t know their size, only the mass it would take to produce the gravitational effects we see on their star.A planet of that mass could be a mini-Neptune ball of gas, not a super-Earth, which would be much less exciting. It may be some time before we can tell. Even if solid, its gravity would certainly be tiring.Some previous reports of planets made using this method have been found to be spurious, the result of activity on the star itself. However, Dr Shweta Dalal of the University of Exeter and co-authors express confidence the methods of analysis they used have avoided this."This discovery highlights the importance of long-term monitoring and advanced techniques in uncovering the secrets of distant star systems. We are eager to continue our observations and look for additional planets in the system,” Dalal said in a statement. The paper is published open access in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

Although it may not make front-page headlines, a bill recently passed by a key congressional committee aims to change a flawed system and help extend the gift of life to more American families.At a recent markup, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously passed legislation to change the criteria for paying expenses associated with organ transplantation. Specifically, the bill stipulates that organ procurement organizations or transplant centers receiving federal grants cannot consider the income of organ recipients when reimbursing organ donors’ expenses.Sadly, an average of 17 people die every day because they did not receive a lifesaving transplant.Organ donors go to great lengths, sacrificing their time and potentially affecting their health, to give the gift of life to others. The least we as a people can do is make sure that donors do not suffer financial hardship from making that sacrifice — a principle that should apply regardless of who ends up receiving the donor’s organ.This legislation would continue bipartisan efforts to reform and improve the organ donation system, to increase the number of life-saving transplants performed every year. For instance, in December 2019 the Trump administration proposed expanding the scope of reimbursable expenses to include lost wages and childcare expenses during a donor’s recovery. The recent legislation echoes the principle behind the Trump proposal that individuals should not incur financial losses due to their gracious decision to donate organs.Likewise, both the Trump and Biden administrations have taken actions to modernize the organ procurement organizations that coordinate transplants across the country. By encouraging more organ donations, and more efficiently using the organs already available, one study found that reforms could save 25,000 lives every year, while reducing taxpayer costs for people awaiting transplants.My experience as a mother of a child with cystic fibrosis and a former member of the National Council on Disability illustrated the need to reform the organ donation system. I recognize that my daughter one day could require an organ transplant, making her one of the more than 103,000 individuals on the waiting list for a donor organ. Behind that list are even more friends and family members agonizing as a loved one struggles and grows sicker while waiting. Sadly, an average of 17 people die every day because they did not receive a lifesaving transplant.That’s why this legislation, cosponsored by Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Suzan DelBene (D-Ore.), would have such an important impact, particularly for people on transplant waiting lists and their families. I hope that House Republican leaders will bring the bill to the floor shortly so that it can pass, that Senate Democrats will do the same, and that President Biden will sign the legislation into law.