Digital Gems

The coronavirus pandemic and the continued spread of illegal fentanyl took a devastating toll on drug users, experts said, as the government reported a staggering increase in fatalities.

An extensive array of research reports, online employee debates and drafts of presentations to senior management, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, offer an unparalleled look inside the social-media giant’s failings—and its unwillingness or inability to address them.

Many virtual private network services that were meant to protect your web browsing can no longer be trusted. Here are other ways.

Leap in malnutrition during Covid shows urgent need to overhaul global food systems, report warns

Federal regulators concluded that the risk of developing the syndrome was low, and that the benefits of the vaccine still strongly outweigh it.

Over the last few weeks, the WSJ has run a series of posts generally called "The Facebook Files," which have exposed a variety of internal documents from Facebook that are somewhat embarrassing. I do think some of the reporting is overblown...

After consuming magic mushrooms in Basel, Switzerland, I ran into Albert Hofmann, the chemist who catalyzed the psychedelic era.

A huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people’s movements

Police feared a "Las Vegas style shooting."

The cost of improvement is becoming unsustainable

The internet is not free. Yet billions of people unknowingly trade their data while they browse in what they think is a free ecosystem.  Trackers are lurking everywhere. Web tracking — by the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and a host of other players — has become so pervasive that it’s almost impossible to avoid. A […]

How healthy is your community?

You pay for Facebook with your privacy. And it keeps raising the price.

The SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617 lineage was identified in October 2020 in India1–5. It has since then become dominant in some indian regions and UK and further spread to many countries6. The lineage includes three main subtypes (B1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3), harbouring diverse Spike mutations in the N-terminal domain (NTD) and the receptor binding domain (RBD) which may increase their immune evasion potential. B.1.617.2, also termed variant Delta, is believed to spread faster than other variants. Here, we isolated an infectious Delta strain from a traveller returning from India. We examined its sensitivity to monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and to antibodies present in sera from COVID-19 convalescent individuals or vaccine recipients, in comparison to other viral strains. Variant Delta was resistant to neutralization by some anti-NTD and anti-RBD mAbs including Bamlanivimab, which were impaired in binding to the Spike. Sera from convalescent patients collected up to 12 months post symptoms were 4 fold less potent against variant Delta, relative to variant Alpha (B.1.1.7). Sera from individuals having received one dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines barely inhibited variant Delta. Administration of two doses generated a neutralizing response in 95% of individuals, with titers 3 to 5 fold lower against Delta than Alpha. Thus, variant Delta spread is associated with an escape to antibodies targeting non-RBD and RBD Spike epitopes.

There’s no good evidence yet that personality profiling can influence elections.

One dose of vaccine is not enough to protect against the Delta and Beta variants, new research suggests, and even people who have had Covid-19 should be immunized.

The agency faced criticism for approving Aduhelm for all Alzheimer’s patients. The new label recommends that the drug be given only to patients with mild symptoms.

Chris Gilliard grew up with racist policing in Detroit. He sees a new form of oppression in the tech we use every day.

“This is not normal. This is not healthy.”

This cohort study examines the duration and variation of recovery among COVID-19–positive verses COVID-19–negative individuals.

Much of the U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) discussion revolves around futuristic dreams of both utopia and dystopia. From extreme to extreme, the promises range from solutions to global climate …

Israel reported that the Pfizer vaccine was 64 percent effective against the Delta variant. Other studies suggest a higher rate.

On Android at least

I have the little-known gynaecological condition, and no one can help me.

A team of security researchers has published details this week about a suite of 16 vulnerabilities collectively known as BrakTooth that impact the Bluetooth software stack that ships with System-on-Chip (SoC) boards from several popular vendors.