Lumen Technologies, an American company that operates one of the largest Internet backbones and carries a significant percentage of the world’s Internet traffic, said today it will stop routing traffic for organizations based in Russia. KrebsOnSecurity reports:Lumen’s decision comes just days after a similar exit by backbone provider Cogent, and amid a news media crackdown in Russia that has already left millions of Russians in the dark about what is really going on with their president’s war in Ukraine. Monroe, La. based Lumen (formerly CenturyLink) initially said it would halt all new business with organizations based in Russia, leaving open the possibility of continuing to serve existing clients there. But on Tuesday the company said it could no longer justify that stance. Source: Internet Backbone Giant Lumen Cuts Service To Russia – Slashdot
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Amazon Nears ‘Tipping Point’ Where Rainforest Could Transform Into Savanna – Slashdot
By examining satellite images taken between 1991 and 2016, the researchers determined how long the rainforest took to bounce back after such events, The Guardian reported. The researchers determined that, since the turn of the 21st century, the rainforest has been taking longer and longer to recover biomass, meaning the mass of living trees and other vegetation, after droughts and fires. “That lack of resilience shows that, indeed, there is only so much of a beating that this forest can take,” Paulo Brando, a tropical ecologist at the University of California, Irvine who was not involved in the study, told The New York Times. If the rainforests surpasses this tipping point, the ecosystem could swiftly change into a vast savanna, unleashing tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide during the transformation, The Guardian reported.
At this point, can anything be done to prevent the Amazon rainforest from turning into the Amazon savanna? Experts say there is. “These systems are highly resilient, and the fact that we have reduced resilience doesn’t mean that it has lost all its resilience,” Brando told the Times. “If you leave them alone for a little bit, they come back super strongly.” But it requires key steps to be taken, experts said. “We have to get to zero deforestation, zero forest degradation,” Carlos Nobre, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil, who was not involved in the study, told the Times. “We still have a chance to save the forest.” Source: Amazon Nears ‘Tipping Point’ Where Rainforest Could Transform Into Savanna – Slashdot
Moral Consciousness
We have to make choices based on our moral consciousness instead of choosing to be on the side of popularity and expediency.
© Norma Bobb-Semple 2022
Lê Vĩnh Tài | EOU – 10. you’re transient as though you’re drowning in light
Serendipity, the Brain and Death
Sometimes you get interesting data by accident. You weren’t trying to do research; you were trying to do something else entirely. But the data fall into your lap, so to speak. Do you throw the data away, or share what you’ve found?
This particular incident has taken five years to surface. In 2016, an elderly Canadian was hospitalized with seizures. He was given medication and then the doctors conducted tests to determine the cause of the seizures.
An EEG turned out to be the final test.(2) As the team measured brain waves, the patient underwent a series of seizures, then cardiac arrest, and then death. (The patient had a Do Not Resuscitate order in force.) The EEG collected 15 minutes of data spanning these events.
What did the EEG detect?
- The brain functions for 30 seconds after the heart stops.
- There was a pause in brain activity just after the…
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Ukrainian actor Pasha Lee killed in Russian bombardment – BBC News
IMAGE SOURCE,PASHA LEE/INSTAGRAMSource: Ukrainian actor Pasha Lee killed in Russian bombardment – BBC News
They escaped Ukraine with newborn. What about their surrogate? – Los Angeles Times
Despite the joyous reunion, the Boeckmanns say they have “survivor’s guilt.” They can’t stop thinking of the people left behind in Ukraine — especially the surrogate mother who gave birth to Vivian, Lilya, who lives about 150 miles southwest of Kyiv. (Lilya did not want her last name published for security reasons.)
About the same time on Feb. 24 that the Boeckmanns and Vivian left the hospital in Kyiv to start their journey back home, Lilya was discharged from the hospital to an apartment she was sharing with other surrogate mothers.
That night, a section of her apartment building, several blocks long, was bombed by Russian forces advancing upon the city. Her unit wasn’t hit. She made it out unscathed. By Saturday, she was at home with her two daughters, ages 7 and 14.
Since then, Russian forces have heavily shelled Lilya’s village, said Jessie, who texts with her and others in Ukraine nearly every day.
In an interview last Thursday, Lilya told The Times that food prices were five times higher than usual. If the war doesn’t end soon, she said, she probably will have to tap into her savings to survive.
“How can we help you?” Jessie texted Lilya last week. “Can we help get you and your girls to the U.S.? You can live with us?”
Source: They escaped Ukraine with newborn. What about their surrogate? – Los Angeles Times
School mask mandates: Is it safe for kids to go maskless? – Los Angeles Times
Why masks still make sense for young children
Some parents have been eager for masks to become optional, and there are instances in which that can make sense.
It can be prudent to retain mask-wearing policies in situations where kids are too young to be vaccinated, Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, chief of infectious diseases at Stanford University School of Medicine’s pediatrics department, said in an interview.
“Masks, distancing work when you can’t be vaccinated, or when … you’re immunocompromised,” Maldonado said. Because children under 5 aren’t eligible to be vaccinated, day care centers with those younger kids “still need to use masks.”
Maldonado, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, said people who say masks and distancing don’t work are wrong.
“They absolutely work. We’ve seen so much data now that they work,” Maldonado said.
Source: School mask mandates: Is it safe for kids to go maskless? – Los Angeles Times
Inside LA’s New Mexican-Food Museum – Gastro Obscura
Implements used in nixtamalization and processing maize.
Somewhere between 1500 and 1200 BC, Mesoamerican people discovered nixtamalization, or boiling dried corn kernels in alkaline water with calcium hydroxide derived from ash. The process rendered corn far more digestible, unlocking previously unobtainable nutrients and creating a foodstuff that fueled empires. By 1000 BC, dough made from nixtamalized corn was being formed into tamales and other staples.
“It was very difficult to tell the story of corn in such a small space, so it had to be small and mighty,” says Ximena Martin, a director at the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. Telling the gastronomic history of a country is never easy, but it’s particularly challenging when it is as ancient and complex as that of Mexico’s. Yet LA Plaza Cocina, an extension of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, which opened in February in Los Angeles, seeks to do just that, often by combining various mediums and methods. In the near future, the full onsite kitchen will be home to everything from cooking classes to mezcal tastings.
“Every class is going to have some cultural history behind it,” Martin says. While chefs such as Carlos Salgado of Taco María will helm some classes, Martin is excited to pass the mic to home cooks as well. “This is about where it comes from, with opportunities for oral history and storytelling.”
Source: Inside LA’s New Mexican-Food Museum – Gastro Obscura

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