Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. flu infections showed signs of a slight decline last week, but health officials say it is not clear that this severe flu season has peaked.New government data posted Friday — for flu activity through last week — showed declines in medical office visits due to flu-like illness and in the number of states reporting high flu activity.However, some measures show this season is already surpassing the flu epidemic of last winter, one of the harshest in recent history. And experts believe there is more suffering ahead.“This is going to be a long, hard flu season,”…
This new solid-state EV battery can fully charge in just 5 minutes I stopped by the exhibit for Donut Lab, a startup out of Finland that specializes in electric mobility. The company (which gets its name from its flagship donut-shaped in-wheel EV vehicle motor) announced at CES the launch of what it calls the first solid-state battery for vehicle production. Solid-state batteries differ from lithium-ion batteries (which are used by a majority of EVs) in that they use solid rather than liquid electrolytes. They are supposed to offer much greater energy density (more bang for your buck, so to speak)…
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A trial began Friday for five current and former Stanford University students who occupied the university president’s offices during a pro-Palestinian protest in 2024 — in a rare instance of demonstrators facing trial for actions from the wave of campus protests that year. Authorities initially arrested and charged 12 people after demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the president and provost’s offices for several hours on June 5, 2024, the last day of spring classes at the university in California’s Silicon Valley.One defendant, a 21-year-old man, pleaded no contest under an agreement that allows eligible youth to have…
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said he was blindsided by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal Thursday to curtail the superintendent’s duties and he disagrees with it, although it’s unclear what he can do to stop it.“Tony Thurmond is proud and grateful to work with Gov. Newsom. They’re both champions of public education,” said Elizabeth Sanders, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, which Thurmond heads. Sanders was speaking on behalf of the superintendent.“Unfortunately, on this particular issue they are not aligned.”In his State of the State address on Thursday, Newsom proposed shifting oversight of the Department of Education, a…
More than 100 documents detailing texts, emails, and even diary entries from some of the world’s most powerful tech executives were unsealed on Tuesday as part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.The documents provide a rare window into the inner workings of Silicon Valley — from late-night texts to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to debates between Altman and Musk about OpenAI’s future. The documents also include previously unreleased writing from Nadella, as well as several entries from the personal diary of OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman.In his lawsuit, filed in 2024, Musk alleges that OpenAI executives…
When federal health officials announced on Jan. 5, 2026, that they were taking six out of 17 vaccines off the childhood immunization schedule, they argued that the move would give parents and caregivers more choice.Instead of all U.S. children routinely receiving them, these six vaccines are now optional – available to families who request them after consulting a clinician, through a process called shared clinical decision-making, officials said. All six – hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, rotavirus, meningococcal disease and COVID-19 – will still be covered by federal programs such as Medicaid and the Vaccines for Children program, and by…
Methamphetamine doesn’t just spike levels of the pleasure-inducing hormone dopamine in the reward pathways of the brain – it also provokes damaging brain inflammation through similar mechanisms.Meth is addictive because it increases dopamine levels in the brain. While researchers know that meth triggers brain inflammation, whether the immune system also affects the brain’s reward system during drug use has been unclear.Our work focuses on how dopamine is regulated in the body and the reward pathways of the brain. Dopamine shapes motivation, movement, learning and cognition, and its disruption is linked to a range of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, including substance…
Elon Musk’s AI company has restricted Grok’s controversial AI image-generation feature to only paying subscribers on X, after the tool invited heavy criticism from across the world for letting users generate sexualized and nude images of women and children. In replies to users on Friday, Grok said only paying subscribers on X would be able to generate and edit images on the platform. Notably, these limits do not apply to the Grok app, which, at the time of publication, was letting anyone generate pictures without having to pay for a subscription. Initially available to anyone with daily limits, Grok’s image…
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minneapolis school system will offer families the option of remote learning for a month amid federal immigration enforcement in the city, the district said.The district provided the update late Thursday in an email to teachers that was obtained by The Associated Press. Under the temporary plan, teachers will simultaneously deliver lessons from their classrooms to students in the classroom and at home. The move comes as the Trump administration sends 2,000 immigration agents to the area and the community responds to the fatal shooting of a local woman earlier this week by a federal agent.Immigration enforcement…
(This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)Jan 9 (Reuters) – Adding yoga to regular treatment can help speed recovery from opioid withdrawal, a small Indian study suggests.Combining standard buprenorphine therapy with yoga helped people recover from opioid withdrawal almost twice as fast as the drug alone, researchers found.During opioid withdrawal, the stress system of the body remains overactive while its calming system is underactive, said study leader Dr. Hemant Bhargav from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in India.Patients can experience diarrhea, insomnia, pain, anxiety, and…