"To save itself, TikTok in 2022 offered the U.S. government an extraordinary deal," reports the Washington Post. The video app, owned by a Chinese company, said it would let federal officials pick its U.S. operation's board of directors, would give the government veto power over each new hire and would pay an American company that contracts with the Defense Department to monitor its source code, according to a copy of the company's proposal. It even offered to give federal officials a kill switch that would shut the app down in the United States if they felt it remained a threat. The Biden administration, however, went its own way. Officials declined the proposal, forfeiting potential influence over one of the world's most popular apps in favor of a blunter option: a forced-sale law signed last month by President Biden that could lead to TikTok's nationwide ban. The government has never publicly explained why it rejected TikTok's proposal, opting instead for a potentially protracted constitutional battle that many expect to end up before the Supreme Court... But the extent to which the United States evaluated or disregarded TikTok's proposal, known as Project Texas, is likely to be a core point of dispute in court, where TikTok and its owner, ByteDance, are challenging the sale-or-ban law as an "unconstitutional assertion of power." The episode raises questions over whether the government, when presented with a way to address its concerns, chose instead to back an effort that would see the company sold to an American buyer, even though some of the issues officials have warned about — the opaque influence of its recommendation algorithm, the privacy of user data — probably would still be unresolved under new ownership... A senior Biden administration official said in a statement that the administration "determined more than a year ago that the solution proposed by the parties at the time would be insufficient to address the serious national security risks presented. While we have consistently engaged with the company about our concerns and potential solutions, it became clear that divestment from its foreign ownership was and remains necessary." "Since federal officials announced an investigation into TikTok in 2019, the app's user base has doubled to more than 170 million U.S. accounts," according to the article. It also includes this assessment from Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University law professor who researches international tech policy. "The government had a complete absence of faith in [its] ability to regulate technology platforms, because there might be some vulnerability that might exist somewhere down the line."

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The New York Times reports on a program to forgive U.S. student loans from private lenders — a kind of private parallel to a federal program which "allows those who were seriously misled by their schools to have their federal student loans eliminated." The problem? Eight U.S. senators complain the loan discharge process remains "burdensome and confusing" — and most students don't even know it exists. Navient, a large owner of private student loan debt, has created, but not publicized, a program that allows borrowers to apply to have their loans forgiven.... A nonprofit group of lawyers has stepped in ease the process: On Thursday, the Project on Predatory Student Lending, an advocacy group in Boston, published Navient's application form and an instruction guide for borrowers with private loans who are seeking relief on the grounds that their school lied to them... For nearly a decade, in the early 2000s, Navient — then known as Sallie Mae — struck deals with for-profit schools to issue private loans to their students. Lawsuits from state attorneys general later accused Navient of making those loans knowing that most would never be repaid. Many schools indemnified Navient for the private loans, agreeing to defray the company's loss if the loans defaulted. In 2022, Navient settled with 40 state attorneys general and canceled $1.7 billion in debt on those private loans — but only for borrowers who had already defaulted. Because those debts were unlikely to ever be repaid, the deal cost Navient only $50 million, the company said in regulatory filings. Borrowers who had kept paying their bills... remained stuck. But a pressure campaign from lawmakers, federal regulators and lawyers representing borrowers prompted the company to create the "school misconduct discharge." Navient began sending a 12-page application form this year to some borrowers who complained about their private loans. The document lists dozens of types of impropriety by schools — such as inflating job placement rates and graduates' earnings, or misrepresenting their educational programs — and asks borrowers to choose which apply to their experience. Applicants are required to submit documentation for their claims... [Navient's CEO, David Yowan] told investors on a conference call in January that Navient had put $35 million in reserve for losses on school misconduct claims. He cited "new regulatory expectations" as the reason. Navient has not disclosed how much of its $16.6 billion private student loan portfolio consists of loans that could be eligible for the debt cancellation program.

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"Chinese scientists develop cure for diabetes," reads the headline from the world's second-most widely read English-language newspaper. ("Insulin patient becomes medicine-free in just 3 months.") The researchers' results were published earlier in May in Cell Discovery, and are now getting some serious scrutiny from the press. The Economic Times cites a University of British Columbia professor's assessment that the study "represents an important advance in the field of cell therapy for diabetes," in an article calling it a "breakthrough" that "marks a significant advancement in cell therapy for diabetes." Chinese scientists have successfully cured a patient's diabetes using a groundbreaking cell therapy... According to a South China Morning Post report, the patient underwent the cell transplant in July 2021. Remarkably, within eleven weeks, he no longer required external insulin. Over the next year, he gradually reduced and ultimately stopped taking oral medication for blood sugar control. "Follow-up examinations showed that the patient's pancreatic islet function was effectively restored," said Yin, one of the lead researchers. The patient has now been insulin-free for 33 months... The new therapy involves programming the patient's peripheral blood mononuclear cells, transforming them into "seed cells" to recreate pancreatic islet tissue in an artificial environment. Their article calls it "a significant medical milestone" — noting that 140 million people in China have diabetes (according to figures from the International Diabetes Federation). Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

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China's Chang'e-6 probe successfully lands on far side of the moon China's moon probe has "successfully touched down on the far side of the moon," CNN reports, in "a significant step for the ambitious mission that could advance the country's aspirations of putting astronauts on the moon" by 2030. The mission's ultimate goal is to return to Earth the first samples from the moon's far side, CNN reports. And China's lunar lander "is now expected to use a drill and a mechanical arm to gather up to 2 kilograms of moon dust and rocks from the basin, a crater formed some 4 billion years ago." To complete its mission, the lander will need to robotically stow those samples in an ascent vehicle that made the landing with it. The ascent vehicle will then return to lunar orbit, where it will dock with and transfer the samples to a re-entry capsule, according to mission information provided by the China National Space Administration. The re-entry capsule and orbiter will then travel back to Earth's orbit and separate, allowing the re-entry capsule to make its expected return later this month to the Siziwang Banner Landing Site in China's rural Inner Mongolia region. The mission began with its launch on May 3 — and is expected to last 53 days. The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the far side of the moon. China first completed that historic feat in 2019 with its Chang'e-4 probe... The technically complex mission is made more challenging due to where it is being conducted. The far side of the moon is out of range of normal communications, which means Chang'e-6 must also rely on a satellite that was launched into lunar orbit in March, the Queqiao-2.

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'"As AI programs shake up the office, potentially making millions of jobs obsolete, one group of perpetually stressed workers seems especially vulnerable..." writes the New York Times. "The chief executive is increasingly imperiled by A.I." These employees analyze new markets and discern trends, both tasks a computer could do more efficiently. They spend much of their time communicating with colleagues, a laborious activity that is being automated with voice and image generators. Sometimes they must make difficult decisions — and who is better at being dispassionate than a machine? Finally, these jobs are very well paid, which means the cost savings of eliminating them is considerable... This is not just a prediction. A few successful companies have begun to publicly experiment with the notion of an A.I. leader, even if at the moment it might largely be a branding exercise... [The article gives the example of the Chinese online game company NetDragon Websoft, which has 5,000 employees, and the upscale Polish rum company Dictador.] Chief executives themselves seem enthusiastic about the prospect — or maybe just fatalistic. EdX, the online learning platform created by administrators at Harvard and M.I.T. that is now a part of publicly traded 2U Inc., surveyed hundreds of chief executives and other executives last summer about the issue. Respondents were invited to take part and given what edX called "a small monetary incentive" to do so. The response was striking. Nearly half — 47 percent — of the executives surveyed said they believed "most" or "all" of the chief executive role should be completely automated or replaced by A.I. Even executives believe executives are superfluous in the late digital age... The pandemic prepared people for this. Many office workers worked from home in 2020, and quite a few still do, at least several days a week. Communication with colleagues and executives is done through machines. It's just a small step to communicating with a machine that doesn't have a person at the other end of it. "Some people like the social aspects of having a human boss," said Phoebe V. Moore, professor of management and the futures of work at the University of Essex Business School. "But after Covid, many are also fine with not having one." The article also notes that a 2017 survey of 1,000 British workers found 42% saying they'd be "comfortable" taking orders from a computer.

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"The seemingly star-cross Boeing Starliner — within minutes of its long-delayed blastoff on the spacecraft's first piloted test flight — was grounded again Saturday," writes CBS News, "when one of three redundant computers managing the countdown from the base of the launch pad ran into a problem, triggering a last-minute scrub." More details from NPR: With 3:50 left in the countdown, the rocket's computer initiated a hold. The next launch attempt won't happen until at least Wednesday, NASA said. An issue with one of the three redundant computer systems at the base of the launch pad that are responsible for initiating the launch sequence prompted the automatic halt, said Tory Bruno, the head of United Launch Alliance, the government contractor trying to launch the Starliner. "We do require all three systems to be running — triple redundancy," ULA President and CEO Bruno said at a Saturday afternoon press briefing. "Those three big computers do a health check. ... Two came up normally. The third one came up, but it was slow to come up, and that tripped a red line that created an automatic hold." ULA engineers don't know why the computer halted, and will troubleshoot ground support equipment overnight, NASA said in an update on Saturday evening.

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"The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has added a critical security bug in Linux to its list of vulnerabilities known to be actively exploited in the wild," reported Ars Technica on Friday. "The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-1086 and carrying a severity rating of 7.8 out of a possible 10, allows people who have already gained a foothold inside an affected system to escalate their system privileges." It's the result of a use-after-free error, a class of vulnerability that occurs in software written in the C and C++ languages when a process continues to access a memory location after it has been freed or deallocated. Use-after-free vulnerabilities can result in remote code or privilege escalation. The vulnerability, which affects Linux kernel versions 5.14 through 6.6, resides in the NF_tables, a kernel component enabling the Netfilter, which in turn facilitates a variety of network operations... It was patched in January, but as the CISA advisory indicates, some production systems have yet to install it. At the time this Ars post went live, there were no known details about the active exploitation. A deep-dive write-up of the vulnerability reveals that these exploits provide "a very powerful double-free primitive when the correct code paths are hit." Double-free vulnerabilities are a subclass of use-after-free errors...

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"Within less than a minute, I'm approached by a store worker who comes up to me and says, 'You're a thief, you need to leave the store'." That's a quote from the BBC by a wrongly accused customer who was flagged by a facial-recognition system called Facewatch. "She says after her bag was searched she was led out of the shop, and told she was banned from all stores using the technology." Facewatch later wrote to her and acknowledged it had made an error — but declined to comment on the incident in the BBC's report: [Facewatch] did say its technology helped to prevent crime and protect frontline workers. Home Bargains, too, declined to comment. It's not just retailers who are turning to the technology... [I]n east London, we joined the police as they positioned a modified white van on the high street. Cameras attached to its roof captured thousands of images of people's faces. If they matched people on a police watchlist, officers would speak to them and potentially arrest them... On the day we were filming, the Metropolitan Police said they made six arrests with the assistance of the tech... The BBC spoke to several people approached by the police who confirmed that they had been correctly identified by the system — 192 arrests have been made so far this year as a result of it. Lindsey Chiswick, director of intelligence for the Met, told the BBC that "It takes less than a second for the technology to create a biometric image of a person's face, assess it against the bespoke watchlist and automatically delete it when there is no match." "That is the correct and acceptable way to do it," writes long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam, "without infringing unnecessarily on the freedoms of the average citizen. Just tell me they have appropriate rules, effective oversight, and a penalty system with teeth to catch and punish the inevitable violators." But one critic of the tech complains to the BBC that everyone scanned automatically joins "a digital police line-up," while the article adds that others "liken the process to a supermarket checkout — where your face becomes a bar code." And "The error count is much higher once someone is actually flagged. One in 40 alerts so far this year has been a false positive..." Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

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Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares the announcement of a new report from the International Energy Forum: The seemingly universal presumption persists that the copper needed for the green transition will somehow be available... This paper addresses this issue by projecting copper supply and demand from 2018 to 2050 and placing both in the historical context of copper mine output... Just to meet business-as-usual trends, 115% more copper must be mined in the next 30 years than has been mined historically until now. To electrify the global vehicle fleet requires bringing into production 55% more new mines than would otherwise be needed... Our main purpose... is to communicate the magnitude of the copper mining challenge to the broader public that is less familiar with upstream resource issues. "On the other hand, hybrid electric vehicle manufacture would require negligible extra copper mining..." the report points out. Wikipedia describes the non-profit as a 73-country organization promoting dialogue about the world's energy needs. The group's announcement ends with a hope that the report "will promote discussion and formulation of alternative policies to be certain the developing world can catch up with the developed world while global initiatives advance with the green energy transition."

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Journalist Steven Brill has written a new book called The Death of Truth. Its subtitle? "How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World-And What We Can Do." An excerpt published by Wired points out that last year around the world, $300 billion was spent on "programmatic advertising", and $130 billion was spent in the United States alone in 2022. The problem? For over a decade there's been "brand safety" technology, the article points out — but "what artificial intelligence could not do was spot most forms of disinformation and misinformation..." The end result... In 2019, other than the government of Vladimir Putin, Warren Buffett was the biggest funder of Sputnik News, the Russian disinformation website controlled by the Kremlin... Geico, the giant American insurance company and subsidiary of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, was the leading advertiser on the American version of Sputnik News' global website network... No one at Geico or its advertising agency had any idea its ads would appear on Sputnik, let alone what anti-American content would be displayed alongside the ads. How could they? Which person or army of people at Geico or its agency could have read 44,000 websites? Geico's ads had been placed through a programmatic advertising system that was invented in the late 1990s as the internet developed. It exploded beginning in the mid 2000s and is now the overwhelmingly dominant advertising medium. Programmatic algorithms, not people, decide where to place most of the ads we now see on websites, social media platforms, mobile devices, streaming television, and increasingly hear on podcasts... If Geico's advertising campaign were typical of programmatic campaigns for broad-based consumer products and services, each of its ads would have been placed on an average of 44,000 websites, according to a study done for the leading trade association of big-brand advertisers. Geico is hardly the only rock-solid American brand to be funding the Russians. During the same period that the insurance company's ads appeared on Sputnik News, 196 other programmatic advertisers bought ads on the website, including Best Buy, E-Trade, and Progressive insurance. Sputnik News' sister propaganda outlet, RT.com (it was once called Russia Today until someone in Moscow decided to camouflage its parentage), raked in ad revenue from Walmart, Amazon, PayPal, and Kroger, among others... Almost all advertising online — and even much of it on television (through streaming TV), or on podcasts, radio, mobile devices, and electronic billboards — is now done programmatically, which means the machine, not a planner, makes those placement decisions. Unless the advertiser uses special tools, such as what are called exclusion or inclusion lists, the publishers and content around which the ad appears, and which the ad is financing, are no longer part of the decision. "What I kept hearing as the professionals explained it to me was that the process is like a stock exchange, except that the buyer doesn't know what stock he is buying... the advertiser and its ad agency have no idea where among thousands of websites its ad will appear."

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A new article in the Washington Post argues that a phenomenon called "Quiet vacationing" has "joined 'quiet quitting' and 'quiet firing' as the latest (and least poetic) scourge of the modern workplace. "Also known as the hush trip, workcation, hush-cation, or bleisure travel — you get the idea — quiet vacationing refers to workers taking time off, even traveling, without notifying their employers." Taking advantage of work-from-anywhere technology, they are logging in from hotels, beaches and campgrounds, sometimes using virtual backgrounds and VPNs to cover their tracks. Given the difficulty many employers already have trusting remote workers to be productive anywhere outside the office, you can bet they are not keen on the idea of their employees pretending to have their head in the game while their toes are in the sand. But employers also have legitimate legal reasons for keeping tabs on their employees' location when they're on the clock. "Evil HR Lady" Suzanne Lucas, writing in Inc. magazine, recently highlighted the many tax, employment, business-operation and security laws that focus on an employee's location. Workers secretly performing their jobs in other states or countries can trigger compliance headaches for their employers, Lucas notes, giving the hypothetical of an employee seeking workers' compensation after sustaining an injury while on unauthorized travel.... As with declines in birthrates, home purchases and demand for mined diamonds, the quiet-vacationing trend is being attributed primarily, though not exclusively, to millennial workers. But before launching into generational finger-pointing and stereotyping, it's worth taking a look at why they might feel the need to take their PTO on the DL. The U.S. Travel Association in a 2016 report proclaimed millennials to be a generation of "work martyrs," entering the workforce around the time average U.S. vacation usage began declining and mobile technology began enabling round-the-clock attachment to jobs... The work-vacation boundaries most premillennial workers took for granted growing up have gone the way of defined-benefit pensions and good tomatoes. Inadequate paid leave is another driving force. The United States continues to be the only nation among its industrialized economic peers that does not guarantee paid vacation, sick leave or holidays for all workers, leaving such benefits to the discretion of employers. Workers with limited PTO — whether new to the workforce or stuck in lower-paying, low-benefit industries — generally want to keep as much paid leave banked as possible, especially if they may need it for unpredictable emergencies like illness or caretaking. If you can preserve those precious hours by packing your laptop alongside your flip-flops, why wouldn't you? The article also mentions employers who begrudge vacation and employees who fear "becoming a target for future cost-cutting..."

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How will Apple protect user data while their requests are being processed by AI in applications like Siri? Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Apple Insider: According to sources of The Information [four different former Apple employees who worked on the project], Apple intends to process data from AI applications inside a virtual black box. The concept, known as "Apple Chips in Data Centers" internally, would involve only Apple's hardware being used to perform AI processing in the cloud. The idea is that it will control both the hardware and software on its servers, enabling it to design more secure systems. While on-device AI processing is highly private, the initiative could make cloud processing for Apple customers to be similarly secure... By taking control over how data is processed in the cloud, it would make it easier for Apple to implement processes to make a breach much harder to actually happen. Furthermore, the black box approach would also prevent Apple itself from being able to see the data. As a byproduct, this means it would also be difficult for Apple to hand over any personal data from government or law enforcement data requests. Processed data from the servers would be stored in Apple's "Secure Enclave" (where the iPhone stores biometric data, encryption keys and passwords), according to the article. "Doing so means the data can't be seen by other elements of the system, nor Apple itself."

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This week the Washington Post reported that Americans "are more hesitant to buy EVs now than they were a year ago, according to a March Gallup poll, which found that just 44 percent of American adults say they'd consider buying an EV in the future, down from 55 percent last year. High prices and charging worries consistently rank as the biggest roadblocks for electric vehicles," they write, noting the concerns coincide with a slowdown in electric car and truck sales, while hybrids are increasing their market share. But something else happened this week. The chair of California's Air Resource Board and the chair of the state's Energy Commission teamed up for an op-ed piece arguing that "despite negative hype," electric cars are their state's future: When California's electric vehicle sales dipped at the end of last year, critics predicted the start of a new downward trend that would doom the industry and the state's broader effort to clean up the transportation sector, the single largest source of greenhouse gases and air pollution. But the latest numbers show that's not the case. Californians purchased 108,372 new zero-emission vehicles in the first three months of 2024 — nearly 7,000 more than the same time last year and the highest-ever first-quarter sales. Today, one in four new cars sold in the Golden State is electric, up from just 8% in 2020... California is now home to 56 manufacturers of zero-emission vehicles and related products, making our state a hub for cutting-edge automotive technology. Soon even raw materials will be sourced in-state, paving the way for domestic battery production... Challenges persist, and chief among them is the need for more widely available charging options. Many more charging stations need to be built as fast as possible to keep up with EV adoption. To address this, California is investing $4 billion over six years to rapidly build out the EV refueling network, on top of billions in investment by utilities. Equally essential is improved reliability of the EV charging network. Too many drivers today encounter faulty charging stations, which is why the California Energy Commission is developing the strongest charging reliability standards in the country and will require companies to be transparent with the public about their performance. They also point out that California "now boasts more EV chargers in the state than gasoline nozzles." And that it's become the first U.S. state whose best-selling car is electric.

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"A Swiss biocomputing startup has launched an online platform that provides remote access to 16 human brain organoids," reports Tom's Hardware: FinalSpark claims its Neuroplatform is the world's first online platform delivering access to biological neurons in vitro. Moreover, bioprocessors like this "consume a million times less power than traditional digital processors," the company says. FinalSpark says its Neuroplatform is capable of learning and processing information, and due to its low power consumption, it could reduce the environmental impacts of computing. In a recent research paper about its developments, FinalSpakr claims that training a single LLM like GPT-3 required approximately 10GWh — about 6,000 times greater energy consumption than the average European citizen uses in a whole year. Such energy expenditure could be massively cut following the successful deployment of bioprocessors. The operation of the Neuroplatform currently relies on an architecture that can be classified as wetware: the mixing of hardware, software, and biology. The main innovation delivered by the Neuroplatform is through the use of four Multi-Electrode Arrays (MEAs) housing the living tissue — organoids, which are 3D cell masses of brain tissue...interfaced by eight electrodes used for both stimulation and recording... FinalSpark has given access to its remote computing platform to nine institutions to help spur bioprocessing research and development. With such institutions' collaboration, it hopes to create the world's first living processor. FinalSpark was founded in 2014, according to Wikipedia's page on wetware computing. "While a wetware computer is still largely conceptual, there has been limited success with construction and prototyping, which has acted as a proof of the concept's realistic application to computing in the future." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Artem S. Tashkinov for sharing the article.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Twice before, this Virginia carpenter had awoken in the predawn to start his work day only to find one of his vans broken into. Tools he depends on for a living had been stolen, and there was little hope of retrieving them. Determined to shut down thieves, he said, he bought a bunch of Apple AirTags and hid the locator devices in some of his larger tools that hadn't been pilfered. Next time, he figured, he would track them. It worked. On Jan. 22, after a third break-in and theft, the carpenter said, he drove around D.C.'s Maryland suburbs for hours, following an intermittent blip on his iPhone, until he arrived at a storage facility in Howard County. He called police, who got a search warrant, and what they found in the locker was far more than just one contractor's nail guns and miter saws. The storage unit, stuffed with purloined power tools, led detectives to similar caches in other places in the next four months — 12 locations in all, 11 of them in Howard County — and the recovery of about 15,000 saws, drills, sanders, grinders, generators, batteries, air compressors and other portable (meaning easily stealable) construction equipment worth an estimated $3 million to $5 million, authorities said. Some were stolen as long ago as 2014, a police spokesperson told the Washington Post, coming from "hundreds if not thousands" of victims...

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Nashville-based Yoshi Mobility launched in 2015 to deliver gasoline to vehicle owners, reports Forbes. But this week the company announced they'll begin converting GM electric delivery vans into "mobile EV superchargers" — fast, battery-powered 240 kw DC chargers — for corporate fleets of electric cars. "There's kind of this critical grid problem and so we think that we can accelerate towards an EV future and this is a unique way that we can do it," said [cofounder/CEO Bryan] Frist in an interview. "The mobile charger can charge and then it can multiplex all the spots. So we tell people, it can electrify every spot in your parking lot." Each mobile supercharger can service between five and seven vehicles according to Frist. With perhaps two superchargers operating on a fleet operator's lot, one would service a vehicle while the other supercharger would replenish its own charge off the grid and they would alternate, according to Frist. "What we say is we can do that same charge instead of three and a half hours, we can do in 10 minutes, and we can move around your lot," Frist says. "You don't have to put in all the infrastructure. You don't have to build it out. You just contract with us." The company plans to begin with a "handful" of mobile superchargers in [GM's] BrightDrop vans but expects to ramp up production and begin commercializing more widely during the first quarter of 2025... The mobile superchargers will complement Yoshi Mobility's existing offering of high-capacity mobile generators that sit on a fleet operator's lot putting out as much as a megawatt of power and can service a larger number of vehicles than the mobile units.

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Studies show ultraprocessed food "encourages overeating but may leave the eater undernourished," writes Ars Technica. But the food industry's response has been "a ferocious campaign against regulation." In part it has used the same lobbying playbook as its fight against labeling and taxation of "junk food" high in calories: big spending to influence policymakers. FT analysis of US lobbying data from non-profit Open Secrets found that food and soft drinks-related companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023, almost twice as much as the tobacco and alcohol industries combined. Last year's spend was 21 percent higher than in 2020, with the increase driven largely by lobbying relating to food processing as well as sugar. In an echo of tactics employed by cigarette companies, the food industry has also attempted to stave off regulation by casting doubt on the research of scientists like [Brazilian nutritional scientist Carlos] Monteiro. "The strategy I see the food industry using is deny, denounce, and delay," says Barry Smith, director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London and a consultant for companies on the multisensory experience of food and drink. So far the strategy has proved successful. Just a handful of countries, including Belgium, Israel, and Brazil, currently refer to UPFs in their dietary guidelines. But as the weight of evidence about UPFs grows, public health experts say the only question now is how, if at all, it is translated into regulation. "There's scientific agreement on the science," says Jean Adams, professor of dietary public health at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. "It's how to interpret that to make a policy that people aren't sure of." [...] As researchers have learned more about the link between UPFs and poor health outcomes, companies have remained largely silent about these risks, leaving trade bodies that advocate on their behalf to argue loudly against the validity of the research.

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"About 1 in 9 children in the U.S., between the ages of 3 and 17, have been diagnosed with ADHD," reports NPR: That's according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that calls attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder an "expanding public health concern." Researchers found that in 2022, 7.1 million kids and adolescents in the U.S. had received an ADHD diagnosis — a million more children than in 2016. That jump in diagnoses was not surprising, given that the data was collected during the pandemic, says Melissa Danielson, a statistician with the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and the study's lead author. She notes that other studies have found that many children experienced heightened stress, depression and anxiety during the pandemic. "A lot of those diagnoses... might have been the result of a child being assessed for a different diagnosis, something like anxiety or depression, and their clinician identifying that the child also had ADHD," Danielson says. The increase in diagnoses also comes amid growing awareness of ADHD — and the different ways that it can manifest in children... The study, which appears in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, was based on data from the National Survey of Children's Health, which gathers detailed information from parents.

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This week the Washington Post noted that just last year nearly 1.2 million more electric vehicles were sold in America, "accounting for over 7 percent of total new car sales and a new national record." But "data show that EV sales are far outpacing growth in the U.S. charging network... In 2016, there were seven electric cars for each public charging point; today, there's more than 20 electric cars per charger." The article points out that 80% of America's EV's are just charging at home, according to the U.S. Energy Department. (Which seems to leave one public charger for every four EVs that don't charge at home.) And the article notes several other important caveats: Experts say that there is no "magic number" for the best ratio of EVs on the road to public chargers. "It absolutely depends on the local landscape," said Peter Slowik, U.S. passenger vehicles lead for the International Council on Clean Transportation. Globally, there is about 1 public charger for every 11 EVs, according to the International Energy Agency. But in countries where there are more single-family homes and garages, the ratio could be lower.... In a way, the United States' slow charging build-out could be a benefit in the long-term: Many automakers have now promised to switch to Tesla's charging connector in the next few years, which could help put most cars on the same system. Not everyone agrees there is a delay. Slowik says that his team's research shows that the United States is on-track for building out the charging needed over the next eight years. An increase in the number of EVs per public charger is a natural part of the adoption process, he argues, that will subside with more sales and as more chargers come online. Still, the article argues if Americans continue buying electric cars, public chargers will be essential "to support long road trips, help apartment-dwellers go electric and alleviate overnight pressure on electricity grids." Today U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reiterated America's commitment to having a national network of 500,000 charges by 2030, saying the country is at "the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come."

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