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Whoa. Since when? The first case was reported on September 18 in Tennessee. And it’s still spreading? No. It was never spreading. It came from a pretty sizable batch of contaminated steroid medication. Over 17,000 doses shipped to 76 medical clinics in 24 states. What do you mean by ‘contaminated steroid medication’? There’s a drug called methylprednisolone acetate—a steroid—that doctors sometimes inject into their patients’ necks and backs to ease pain....

To get the town ready, officials had ordered the removal of the huge pile of trash sitting in the town dump. The easiest method available was to set it all on fire. Burning trash remains a common (but mostly illegal) way of getting rid of garbage, especially in rural areas without a robust waste infrastructure. Certainly in 1962, months before the publication of Silent Spring and years before the environmental movement really took off, burning waste was much more common than it is today....

What good is possibly going to come of the Sirius/XM merger? According to the Department of Justice, which had to approve the deal before the FCC signoff, the consumer can look forward to lower prices, more programming options and new technology. When Martin chimed in on behalf of the FCC it was to merely add that, “The merger is in the public interest and will provide consumers with greater flexibility and choices....

The problem, they say, is that flibanserin — and yes, that’s a horrible name for a drug meant to put a woman in the mood — is just not effective enough. In a study done on women with low sex drives by the German drug manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim, the drug modestly increased the number of satisfying sexual experiences women reported each month. But it did nothing for the level of desire the subjects reported....

Original post Some Apple hardware lives on a reliable redesign schedule. The new iPhones, for instance, show up each year just as the leaves start to fall and social media feeds begin to fill with pumpkin-spice-flavored delicacies. Some Apple products, however, keep a more sporadic schedule. The kinds of sporadic updates, however, are the MacBook and the MacBook Air. Both are due for a serious refresh. The MacBook Air debuted back in 2008, and it has gotten a steady stream of spec updates on an annual basis since then, but the Air still seems ancient compared to other modern machines like the MacBook Pro....

To get started, simply print out a template, cut, and fold. Once you add some basic electronics, an Arduino brain will command the robot to roll over the floor, sticking to dark surfaces, based on the amount of reflected light it detects. If the robot’s body tears, it’s no big deal. Cardstock costs only about 10 to 30 cents per piece—just print another. Ankur Mehta, who was an MIT postdoctoral fellow when he designed this machine, says his goal is to get robots into anyone’s hands for cheap....

The primate-inspired robot from Carnegie Mellon University delivered the DRC’s most electric run so far. It drove down the dirt track with impressive speed, but was then inexplicably slow to get out—or “egress,” in DRC-speak. Finally, CHIMP opened the door, and the impossible happened. CHIMP ate it, sprawling onto the floor halfway through the doorway (as seen in the photo above). The robot that seemed incapable of falling, that we (and others) constantly described as being essentially fall-proof, because of its stable posture and use of tracks instead of two-legged walking, had gone down....

On Wednesday, a letter endorsed by over 1,000 health professionals and 175 health organizations around the world are calling on governments to urgently develop and implement a legally-binding Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to end the global dependence on fossil fuels in an effort to protect global public health. “The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage”, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in a press release....

“Evidence is mounting to suggest local transmission via mosquitoes is going on in South Florida,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman Tom Skinner told Reuters. While there are more than 1,600 cases of Zika infection in the United States, none have yet been transmitted via mosquitoes within the country. This is different from the nearly 4,800 cases in American territories, like Puerto Rico, which have almost all been acquired locally....

We’re living in a strange moment in history. In the face of COVID-19 many of us are withdrawing into our homes. Some of us suddenly have a surplus of time. While leisure might have once seemed like an unachievable goal, it now has an unsettling, tenuous quality: Rather than being born out of a desire for relaxation, it is the result of a slow-down that was forced upon us. Around the country and around the world, many of us are in a position where we are sequestered and desperately seeking new kinds of distraction....

But there’s so much hype and excitement around the release of this “flagship” camera that it’s easy to have unrealistic expectations. Would this camera be good enough to make even my crummy photography look great? Well, no. I took plenty of lousy shots, but only when I was goofing around in full manual mode, trying things that I wasn’t really sure how to do. In any of the automated or semi-automated modes, photos were fantastic....

Metallurgists and mineralogists might interpret “softness” to mean a material’s tendency to deform under pressure and to stay in that deformed state. But that reading might come off a little wonky when you start looking at elastic materials, like rubber, which can deform and then regain their form. As a result of this ambiguity, researchers employ an array of hardness (or softness) tests, depending on what sort of material they’re looking at....

This generator is quiet and powerful, perfect for tailgating or camping without disturbing the peace of your fellow free spirits. Its 14 hours of run time on 2.3 gallons of gasoline means you can keep the party going all day long without having to make a fuel run. This beast also has plenty of power ports, including a 120V 30A RV outlet, two 120V 20A household outlets with clean power, a 12V automotive-style outlet, plus dual port USB adapters....

And while you’re at it, don’t forget an amazing LG OLED TV to showcase those next-gen. games!

Right now you can get Microsoft Office Home and Business, as well as Microsoft Office Professional for Windows for hugely discounted rates as a part of our Black Friday Doorbusters! For two days only, starting on Thanksgiving (11/24), you can get these products for some of our lowest prices ever. The Microsoft Office Home and Business for Mac 2021 is designed for students, families, and small businesses who want the classic office apps and email....

Some of the hits in the summer of ’69 (Note: we did not include “Summer of ’69”) give us a glimpse of the starry-eyed musings of artists at the time. “Space Oddity” is almost too on the nose (and was probably pretty depressing for the Apollo 11 crew to hear, yikes) and “In the Year 2525” looks ahead to a super-high-tech (and also super-super-terrible) future. So, when we say “starry-eyed musings,” we really mean “cynical dystopian hot-takes....

Combine a couple of simple household items to make a rocket propulsion system From Flopnik It Came How a satellite failure heralded the launch of NASA—and the revolution of Earth observation_ Ant farms? “Space” pens? Fancy mattresses? The Grouse laments the agency’s less-than-stellar product offerings_ A Brief History of the Apollo Hoax Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, many still insist those footprints above are a myth If It’s Good Enough For Astronauts, It’s Good Enough For Us The high-tech joys of freeze-dried foods...

There’s an episode of 30 Rock where Tina Fey’s character, Liz Lemon, lugs around her dirty, rancid gym bag on the subway, creating a protective stink bubble, so people don’t bother her. As a New Yorker who strongly values her personal space—paradoxical, I know—I’ve occasionally considered adopting this method. But time after time, I remember just how foul that gym-clothes stink can get if you let it fester. And sometimes, especially with clothes made from synthetic fibers, unpleasant odors linger even after multiple washes....

CLIQ Portable Camping Chair If you’re someone who hates having to lug around bulky equipment, the CLIQ Portable Camping Chair is a great option for you. Rated 4.5/5 stars, it folds into the compact size of a water bottle, and it only takes five seconds to unfold and use for seating. Usually selling for $99, you can get it for $89.99; that’s a 10 percent markdown from its MSRP. CARSULE Pop-Up Cabin for Your Car For campers that like to take their cars out on the trip, CARSULE is designed with you in mind....