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Senators unveil bipartisan abortion access bill; measure unlikely to pass

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A bipartisan group of senators has unveiled compromise legislation to guarantee federal access to abortion, an effort to codify abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where it is unlikely to gain enough Republican support.

The legislation, co-authored by Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine (Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), is an attempt to create a middle ground on an issue that is largely pitting antiabortion Republicans against pro-abortion rights Democrats.

Since the Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June, 17 states have either outlawed or mostly banned abortion. A handful of other states are in the process of prohibiting abortion, and on Tuesday, Kansas will be the first state where voters are set to go the polls to determine whether the state will reverse the constitutional right to an abortion.

The compromise legislation unveiled Monday ensures federal abortion rights up to viability, and allows post-viability abortion when the health of the mother is in jeopardy. The statute does not specify what week is viability or what constitutes when a mother’s health is in danger. Both issues are to be defined by the pregnant person’s medical practitioner.

“It clearly uses viability as a key distinction,” Kaine said. “Pre-viability women should have significant freedom — a state can regulate but can’t put an undue burden. Post-viability, the state can regulate a lot more, but can never stop a woman from accessing an abortion for her life and health.”

The measure comes after Senate Democrats attempted to pass partisan legislation that would codify Roe. The vote in May, after a draft version of the Supreme Court decision was leaked, failed, gaining the support of 49 Democrats. One Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and all Republicans, voted against it, including Collins and Murkowksi because, they said, it went far beyond codifying Roe.

Kaine admits, however, that the proposal being unveiled Monday does not have the support of 10 Republicans needed for it to pass the Senate. Still, he said it’s an important marker in the conversation.

The bipartisan bill, called the Reproductive Freedom for All Act, also ensures access to contraception, which abortion advocates fear will be outlawed in some conservative states or that Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court case that granted a personal right to contraception, would be overturned. The bill also includes a conscience clause, which allows a provider to opt out of abortion services if it violates a religious belief, an issue that was important to Collins.

“There’s a majority of the U.S. Senate that wants to codify Roe v. Wade, and to leave the impression that there’s only a minority that wants to codify Roe v. Wade, I think, is that’s a weak position to be in,” Kaine said in an interview Monday.

“For five decades, reproductive health-care decisions were centered with the individual — we cannot go back in time in limiting personal freedoms for women,” Murkowski said in a statement.

It’s not clear that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) would bring up the bill for a vote ahead of the midterm elections in November. There has been disagreement in the Democratic caucus on whether a bipartisan bill that has no chance of passage should be brought forward, which would make it more difficult for Democratic candidates to contrast themselves with Republicans. And many Democrats, Kaine said, would prefer the Democratic version of the bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, which includes fewer limitations on abortion.

Kaine calls the bill the bare minimum.

“What the four of us were trying to do was put a statutory minimum in place that replicated what the law was a day before Dobbs,” he said.

Recent polling by The Washington Post-Schar School found that a majority of respondents — 58 percent — supported access to abortion until viability, including 77 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of independents. Just 34 percent of Republicans, however, supported it.

Abortion rights groups are critical of the proposal, in part because it won’t pass the Senate because of the 60-vote threshold in that chamber.

“This bill is just another political stunt that would not actually address the abortion rights and access crisis that has pushed care out of reach for millions of people already,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju said in a statement. “Unless these senators are willing to end the filibuster to pass this measure, there’s no reason to take it seriously.”

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Science

Astronomers Have Spotted a Record-Breaking Magnetic Field in Space, And It’s Epic

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Far out in the Milky Way, roughly 22,000 light years from Earth, a star unlike any other roars with a magnetic force that beats anything physicists have ever seen. 

At a whopping 1.6 billion Tesla, a pulsar called Swift J0243.6+6124 smashes the previous records of around 1 billion Tesla, discovered surrounding the pulsars GRO J1008-57 and 1A 0535+262.

 

For a bit of context, your average novelty fridge magnet comes in at around 0.001 Tesla. The more powerful MRI machines manage to hit around 3 Tesla.

A few years ago, engineers earned a pat on the back for achieving a semi-respectable 1,200 Tesla, sustaining it for a blink of just 100 microseconds.

So it stands to reason that 1.6 billion Tesla is going to demand some truly mind-blowing physics. The kind only achievable by massive objects crammed into impossible volumes and spun at incredible speeds, fast enough to accelerate electrons to ridiculous velocities.

Swift J0243.6+6124 was already regarded as a star worth paying attention to. A type of super-compact cosmic heavyweight known as a pulsar, it’s the only X-ray source in our galaxy to fall into the ultra-luminous category.

It’s also the only example in the Milky Way of an X-ray pulsar with a Be-type companion star feeding it matter fast enough to generate radio-emitting jets of matter from its poles.

Those features alone add up to a unique opportunity in our galactic backyard astronomers can’t help but study in detail.

 

Measuring the magnetic field of a far-distant object is easier said than done, though. As strong as they are, those fields quickly weaken to become undetectable over distances of thousands of light years.

Fortunately clues can be found in the way that the ultra-bright glow of X-rays scatters from the electrons whizzing down the magnetic racetrack, something known as a cyclotron resonance scattering feature.

China’s launch of the X-ray observatory Insight-HXMT in 2017 provides astrophysicists with a way to capture signatures like these in distant emissions, leading to the measure of electron energies in the GRO J1008-57 field in 2020.

Fortunately, an outburst of activity in Swift J0243.6+6124 following Insight-HXMT’s launch also provided a glimpse into its own high-strength magnetic field, with a cyclotron resonance scattering feature buried within its X-ray spectrum.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Sun Yat-Sen University in China, and the University of Tübingen in Germany, subsequently analyzed the feature to calculate the energy of its electrons to peak at an astonishing 146 kiloelectron volts, blitzing the 90 and 100 kiloelectron volts of the previous record holders.

 

Given Swift J0243.6+6124 is the only ultra-luminescent X-ray pulsar in our galaxy, having a precise measure on its magnetic field gives astronomers a better idea of what might be happening close to its surface.

As a type of neutron star, pulsars like Swift J0243.6+6124 are made of atoms squished into configurations far beyond anything we can create on Earth. Its magnetic properties help exclude or support various models that explain how its highly compact crust behaves.

Specifically, the nature of the neutron star’s magnetism confirms the likelihood that its field is complex, consisting of multiple poles.

That’s a solid win for astrophysicists keen to understand the mysteries of some of the most exotic objects in space.

For the rest of us, it’s enough just to try to imagine the might of a 1.6 billion Tesla magnet stuck to our fridge.

This research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

 

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Science

Physicists harness quantum ‘time reversal’ to measure vibrating atoms

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MIT researchers used a system of lasers to first entangle, then reverse the evolution of a cloud of ultracold atoms. Credit: Simone Colombo

The quantum vibrations in atoms hold a miniature world of information. If scientists can accurately measure these atomic oscillations, and how they evolve over time, they can hone the precision of atomic clocks as well as quantum sensors, which are systems of atoms whose fluctuations can indicate the presence of dark matter, a passing gravitational wave, or even new, unexpected phenomena.

A major hurdle in the path toward better quantum measurements is noise from the classical world, which can easily overwhelm subtle atomic vibrations, making any changes to those vibrations devilishly hard to detect.

Now, MIT physicists have shown they can significantly amplify quantum changes in atomic vibrations, by putting the particles through two key processes: quantum entanglement and time reversal.

Before you start shopping for DeLoreans, no, they haven’t found a way to reverse time itself. Rather, the physicists have manipulated quantumly entangled atoms in a way that the particles behaved as if they were evolving backward in time. As the researchers effectively rewound the tape of atomic oscillations, any changes to those oscillations were amplified, in a way that could be easily measured.

In a paper appearing today in Nature Physics, the team demonstrates that the technique, which they dubbed SATIN (for signal amplification through time reversal), is the most sensitive method for measuring quantum fluctuations developed to date.

The technique could improve the accuracy of current state-of-the-art atomic clocks by a factor of 15, making their timing so precise that over the entire age of the universe the clocks would be less than 20 milliseconds off. The method could also be used to further focus quantum sensors that are designed to detect gravitational waves, dark matter, and other physical phenomena.

“We think this is the paradigm of the future,” says lead author Vladan Vuletic, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics at MIT. “Any quantum interference that works with many atoms can profit from this technique.”

The study’s MIT co-authors include first author Simone Colombo, Edwin Pedrozo-Peñafiel, Albert Adiyatullin, Zeyang Li, Enrique Mendez, and Chi Shu.

Entangled timekeepers

A given type of atom vibrates at a particular and constant frequency that, if properly measured, can serve as a very precise pendulum, keeping time in much shorter intervals than a kitchen clock’s second. But at the scale of a single atom, the laws of quantum mechanics take over, and the atom’s oscillation changes like the face of a coin each time it is flipped. Only by taking many measurements of an atom can scientists get an estimate of its actual oscillation—a limitation known as the Standard Quantum Limit.

In state-of-the-art atomic clocks, physicists measure the oscillation of thousands of ultracold atoms, many times over, to increase their chance of getting an accurate measurement. Still, these systems have some uncertainty, and their time-keeping could be more precise.

In 2020, Vuletic’s group showed that the precision of current atomic clocks could be improved by entangling the atoms—a quantum phenomenon by which particles are coerced to behave in a collective, highly correlated state. In this entangled state, the oscillations of individual atoms should shift toward a common frequency that would take far fewer attempts to accurately measure.

“At the time, we were still limited by how well we could read out the clock phase,” Vuletic says.

That is, the tools used to measure atomic oscillations were not sensitive enough to read out, or measure any subtle change in the atoms’ collective oscillations.

Reverse the sign

In their new study, instead of attempting to improve the resolution of existing readout tools, the team looked to boost the signal from any change in oscillations, such that they could be read by current tools. They did so by harnessing another curious phenomenon in quantum mechanics: time reversal.

It’s thought that a purely quantum system, such as a group of atoms that is completely isolated from everyday classical noise, should evolve forward in time in a predictable manner, and the atoms’ interactions (such as their oscillations) should be described precisely by the system’s “Hamiltonian”—essentially, a mathematical description of the system’s total energy.

In the 1980s, theorists predicted that if a system’s Hamiltonian were reversed, and the same quantum system was made to de-evolve, it would be as if the system was going back in time.

“In quantum mechanics, if you know the Hamiltonian, then you can track what the system is doing through time, like a quantum trajectory,” Pedrozo-Peñafiel explains. “If this evolution is completely quantum, quantum mechanics tells you that you can de-evolve, or go back and go to the initial state.”

“And the idea is, if you could reverse the sign of the Hamiltonian, every small perturbation that occurred after the system evolved forward would get amplified if you go back in time,” Colombo adds.

For their new study, the team studied 400 ultracold atoms of ytterbium, one of two atom types used today’s atomic clocks. They cooled the atoms to just a hair above absolute zero, at temperatures where most classical effects such as heat fade away and the atoms’ behavior is governed purely by quantum effects.

The team used a system of lasers to trap the atoms, then sent in a blue-tinged “entangling” light, which coerced the atoms to oscillate in a correlated state. They let the entangled atoms evolve forward in time, then exposed them to a small magnetic field, which introduced a tiny quantum change, slightly shifting the atoms’ collective oscillations.

Such a shift would be impossible to detect with existing measurement tools. Instead, the team applied time reversal to boost this quantum signal. To do this, they sent in another, red-tinged laser that stimulated the atoms to disentangle, as if they were evolving backward in time.

They then measured the particles’ oscillations as they settled back into their unentangled states, and found that their final phase was markedly different from their initial phase—clear evidence that a quantum change had occurred somewhere in their forward evolution.

The team repeated this experiment thousands of times, with clouds ranging from 50 to 400 atoms, each time observing the expected amplification of the quantum signal. They found their entangled system was up to 15 times more sensitive than similar unentangled atomic systems. If their system is applied to current state-of-the-art atomic clocks, it would reduce the number of measurements these clocks require, by a factor of 15.

Going forward, the researchers hope to test their method on atomic clocks, as well as in quantum sensors, for instance for dark matter.

“A cloud of dark matter floating by Earth could change time locally, and what some people do is compare clocks, say, in Australia with others in Europe and the U.S. to see if they can spot sudden changes in how time passes,” Vuletic says. “Our technique is exactly suited to that, because you have to measure quickly changing time variations as the cloud flies by.”

New type of atomic clock could help scientists detect dark matter and study gravity’s effect on time

More information:
Simone Colombo et al, Time-reversal-based quantum metrology with many-body entangled states, Nature Physics (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-022-01653-5
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Physicists harness quantum ‘time reversal’ to measure vibrating atoms (2022, July 14)
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Science

This Electronic Tattoo Can Measure Your Blood Pressure Better Than a Smartwatch

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Getting a new tattoo isn’t only about looking cool (or making a decision you’ll regret years later)—it could also save your life. At least, that’s the idea behind a new electronic tattoo that can continuously and unobtrusively measure your blood pressure.

In a paper published Monday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team from the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University developed a device that can attach to the skin of the wrist and be worn comfortably for up to 24 hours. It can continuously monitor blood pressure with incredible accuracy potentially helping diagnose arising issues and inform the treatment of patients with serious heart conditions. Researchers hope that it will pave the way for a blood pressure monitor that doesn’t require a cuff device like a traditional armband.

“Blood pressure is an important metric,” Roozbeh Jafari, a professor of biomedical engineering at Texas A&M and co-author of the study, told The Daily Beast. “It gives us a holistic view of the entire cardiovascular system. But if you want to measure it, just one or a few measurements a day isn’t enough, and cuff-based solutions are inconvenient, uncomfortable, and impractical.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos by University of Texas at Austin/Texas A&M University

In fact, when it comes to the world of blood pressure monitoring, having a cuffless device is the “holy grail,” Jafari said. That’s because cuffed devices are often uncomfortable to wear, and heart monitoring products like smartwatches also tend to move around the wrist too much to be able to provide accurate data.

That’s why the Texas team turned to graphene—a material similar to graphite pencils—to create a tattoo that can be applied directly over a person’s arteries in their wrists. Not only is it incredibly durable, but it’s also the thinnest material in the world. This makes it perfect to be used in an e-tattoo as it allows the wearer to not even feel it on their skin.

It’s also applied exactly like a temporary tattoo: A piece of paper is placed over the spot on your wrist, which is then dabbed with a small amount of water. After a few seconds, the paper is removed, and voila—you have a slick new cyberpunk tattoo. Unfortunately, though, it’s not quite enough to measure your heart rate yet.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos by University of Texas at Austin/Texas A&M University

“We have these circuits that we need to connect to the skin to get the information about the blood pressure,” Kaan Sel, an electrical and computer engineering researcher at Texas A&M and co-author of the study, told The Daily Beast. “The tattoo is the interface. Once the tattoos are transferred, it gives that reliable and long-term connection with the skin.”

The circuits lead to a small box of electronics that transmits the information to a computer, which uses machine learning to produce the biometric data. The whole system works by sending an electrical current into the skin of your arm that allows it to detect changes in the volume of the arteries in your arm, i.e., changes in blood pressure.

“You have blood that pumps through the arteries,” Dmitry Kireev, a bioelectronics researcher at UT at Austin and co-author of the study, told The Daily Beast. “This will change the volume of the arteries and this is what we pick up.”

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos by University of Texas at Austin/Texas A&M University

Mind you, that’s just a prototype. The team hopes to further refine the system so it can be adapted to smartwatches, to allow for much more accurate blood pressure readings. That would represent a massive improvement over current smartwatch tech that relies on an optical system to detect your heart rate—which is problematic for a number of reasons.

For one, the optical system is based on the light reflection off your skin “but that light only penetrates so much,” Sel said. Those with darker skin tones also have a notoriously more difficult time with those systems.

The e-tattoo could lay the groundwork for a commercial cuff-less blood pressure monitor that’ll allow the patients to be able to detect and send vital biometric data to their doctors without having to be tethered to a cumbersome machine. This data can include things like “muscle contractions, hydration, tissue composition changes, or even breathing,” according to Sel.

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Health

New blood test could measure COVID-19 immunity  – The Hill

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Story at a glance

  • Researchers have come up with a new way to test for COVID-19 immunity, a blood test that checks for a person’s T-cell response to the virus. 
  • T-cells, which are produced to fight off viruses, can stay present in the body much longer than antibodies, making them a better long-term indicator of immunity.
  • The test could help researchers better understand who is likely to get a breakthrough COVID-19 case. 

Researchers have developed a new type of blood test to check for potential COVID-19 immunity.  

How the test works is explained in a study published this week in Nature Biotechnology.

When a virus enters by either infection or through vaccination the body does two things, the first is create antibodies, as part of humoral immunity, and the second is to activate a type of white blood cell called T-cells that work to stop a virus from getting “too serious” once it has entered a cell, according to Ernesto Guccione, professor of oncological sciences and pharmacological sciences at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, one of the lead authors of the study. 

Our country is in a historic fight against the coronavirus. Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

“Even if [someone] gets infected, as long as there is a robust secondary immunity, these people will clear the virus within a few days or a week and then go on to live their lives,” said Guccione.  

Unlike antibodies, which can leave the body after an infection, T-cells can stay present in the body for years, making them a better long-term indication of immunity.  

The test, called dqTACT, requires the mixture of a small blood sample with peptides, essentially a chain of proteins, from the COVID-19 virus. Once the mixture takes place, researchers then check after 24 hours to see if there is a T-cell response.  

Researchers believe the test could help better anticipate a person’s risk of getting a breakthrough infection and the frequency to which an immunocompromised person should be vaccinated against the virus.  

Researchers are in the process of implementing the test in larger clinical trials over the next several months ahead of applying for approval from the Food and Drug Administration, Guccione told Changing America.  

READ MORE STORIES FROM CHANGING AMERICA

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Published on Jun. 17, 2022



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Business

The Fed’s favorite inflation measure rose 4.9% in April in a sign that price increases could be slowing

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People shop in a supermarket in Washington, DC, on May 26, 2022, as Americans brace for summer sticker shock as inflation continues to grow.

Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge rose 4.9% in April from a year ago, a still-elevated level that nonetheless indicated that price pressures could be easing a bit, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

That increase in the core personal consumption expenditures price index was in line with expectations and reflected a slowing pace from the 5.2% reported in March. The number excludes volatile food and energy prices that have been a major contributor to inflation running around a 40-year peak.

The 0.3% increase on a monthly basis was the same as March and in line with Dow Jones estimates.

Including food and energy, headline PCE increased 6.3% in April from a year ago. That also was a deceleration from the 6.6% pace in the previous month. However, the monthly change showed a more marked pullback, with an increase of just 0.2% compared with the 0.9% surge in March.

The data showed that consumers continued to spend but were tapping into their savings to do so.

“Consumers remained undaunted by inflation last month, strongly increasing spending and changing their mix to more services such as at bars and restaurants, and travel and recreation as the weather warms,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “The spending was fueled in part by higher wages, and also by Americans drawing more money out of savings, which is a giant stockpile of at least $2 trillion.”

Inflation for the past several months has been moving at a pace not seen since the early 1980s. The inability of supply to keep up with demand has pushed prices higher, fed by unprecedented fiscal stimulus during the Covid pandemic, clogged global supply chains and the war in Ukraine that has sent energy prices soaring and led to fears of food shortages.

Responding to the price pressures, the Fed has implemented two interest rate increases totaling 75 basis points and has indicated that a series of hikes are likely ahead until inflation comes closer to the central bank’s 2% goal.

The PCE numbers reported Friday are lower than the consumer price index used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Headline CPI for April rose 8.3% from last year.

The two numbers differ in that the CPI tracks data from consumers while PCE is extracted from businesses. The Fed considers PCE a broader-based measure of what is happening with prices on a variety of levels.

Along with the inflation data, the BEA reported that personal income rose 0.4% during the month, a 0.1 percentage point decline from March and a slight miss on the 0.5% estimate. Consumer spending, however, held up, rising a better-than-expected 0.9%, though that was below March’s upwardly revised 1.4%.

Income after taxes and other charges was flat for the month after falling 0.5% in March.

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Health

Painless wearable gadget can measure blood sugar, alcohol and muscle fatigue at the SAME time

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A new wearable gadget that fixes to the arm can measure blood sugar and muscle fatigue at the gym and alcohol levels at the pub.

Created in California, the prototype can continuously monitor three health stats – glucose, alcohol and lactate levels – either separately or simultaneously in real-time.

About the size of three poker chips stacked together, it is applied to the skin painlessly through a Velcro-like patch of microscopic needles.

These needles take readings from fluid under the skin and then sends the data wirelessly to a custom smartphone app. 

Researchers hope to commercialise the device, which could provide a single solution for diabetes patients in everyday life.  

The device can be worn on the upper arm while the wearer goes about their day – whether they’re at the gym or the pub

HOW DOES IT WORK? 

The device’s patch of 25 microscopic needles, or microneedles, are each about one-fifth the width of a human hair.

Sticking these in a person’s arm does not cause pain, the researchers say, as the microneedles barely penetrate the surface of the skin.

Different enzymes on the tips of the microneedles react with lactate, glucose and alcohol found in interstitial fluid – the fluid surrounding the cells beneath the skin. 

These reactions generate small electric currents, which are analysed by electronic sensors and communicated wirelessly to the smartphone app.  

Engineers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) describe their device in a paper published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering. 

‘This is like a complete lab on the skin,’ said study author Joseph Wang, a professor of nanoengineering at UC San Diego. 

‘It is capable of continuously measuring multiple biomarkers at the same time, allowing users to monitor their health and wellness as they perform their daily activities.’ 

Most commercial health monitors, such as continuous glucose monitors for patients with diabetes, only measure one signal. 

The problem with that is that it leaves out information that could help people with diabetes manage their disease more effectively.

For example, monitoring alcohol levels is also useful because drinking alcohol can lower glucose levels. 

Knowing both levels can help people with diabetes prevent their blood sugar from dropping too low after having a drink.

Combining information about lactate – a biomarker for muscle fatigue, such as during exercise – is also useful because physical activity influences the body’s ability to regulate glucose. 

The device works with a custom smartphone app, created by the research team, for data capture and visualization

About the size of three poker chips stacked together, the new device is applied to the skin painlessly through a Velcro-like patch of microscopic needles. Here, the disposable microneedle patch detaches from its reusable electronic case

‘With our wearable, people can see the interplay between their glucose spikes or dips with their diet, exercise and drinking of alcoholic beverages,’ said co-author Farshad Tehrani at UCSD. 

‘That could add to their quality of life as well.’ 

The device’s patch of 25 microscopic needles, or microneedles, are each about one-fifth the width of a human hair.

Sticking these in a person’s arm does not cause pain, the researchers say, as the microneedles barely penetrate the surface of the skin.

Different enzymes on the tips of the microneedles react with lactate, glucose and alcohol found in interstitial fluid – the fluid surrounding the cells beneath the skin. 

These reactions generate small electric currents, which are analysed by electronic sensors and communicated wirelessly to the smartphone app. 

In trials, the wearable was tested on five volunteers, who wore the device on their upper arm, while exercising, eating a meal and drinking a glass of wine.

The device’s microneedles barely penetrate the dermis – the inner layer of the two main layers of the skin

The device can be recharged on an off-the-shelf wireless charging pad, like the ones used for Apple’s iPhones 

It was used to continuously monitor the volunteers’ glucose levels simultaneously with either their alcohol or lactate levels. 

Glucose, alcohol and lactate measurements taken by the device closely matched measurements taken by a commercial blood glucose monitor and a breathalyzer, as well as blood lactate measurements performed in the lab. 

According to the team, each microneedle patch is disposable, so customers could potentially buy in bulk and stock up when they need to when the device is commercialised. 

The wearable connects to a reusable electronic case that houses the battery, electronic sensors, wireless transmitter and other electronic components. 

This allows the device to be recharged on any wireless charging pad used for phones and smartwatches. 

Researchers have co-founded a startup company called AquilX to further develop the technology for commercialization.

Next steps include testing and improving upon how long the microneedle patch can last before being replaced.

The company is also excited about the possibility of adding more sensors to the device to monitor medication levels in patients and other health signals. 

SCIENTISTS CREATE SMART BRACELET THAT TRACKS YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE 

A bracelet that can track blood pressure whether you are standing up, sitting, lying or even fast asleep could help in the fight against hypertension.

The Aktiia home blood pressure monitoring kit, created by a firm of the same name, comes with a cuff, bracelet and partner app, which can constantly track blood pressure without a bulky device.

The Switzerland-based firm began work on monitoring blood pressure using optical sensors 15 years ago, and was ready to bring it to market in the spring of 2021.

It makes use of signal processing, to take real measurements against a baseline, rather than using artificial intelligence to ‘predict’ blood pressure levels.

Aktiia says its goal is to ‘improve cardiovascular health by providing patients and physicians with a deeper understanding of their blood pressure patterns’.

Read more: The smart bracelet that tracks your blood pressure 

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US

Austin voters overwhelmingly say yes to marijuana, no-knock warrant ballot measure

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Austinites voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that prevents the city’s police officers from enforcing laws against possessing small amounts of marijuana or from entering a property unannounced using no-knock warrants.

Proposition A  — which removes police discretion by cementing these two policies into law — passed with  56,004 votes in favor, or 85.8%, while there were 9,270 votes against it, or 14.2%, according to final but unofficial results from the Travis County Clerk’s office.

Prop A was Austin’s lone proposition on the Saturday ballot and generated limited buzz ahead of the vote. Following hotly contested fights in Austin elections on homeless camping in May 2020 and police officer hires last November, Prop A did not even yield an opposition campaign.

More: Why there is little opposition to Austin ballot measure on pot, no-knock warrants

With the passage of Prop A, the city’s police officers will no longer be allowed to make an arrest or issue a citation for possession of a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, with two exceptions: if the arrest or citation is part of an investigation into a high-priority narcotics case or into a violent felony.

Otherwise, the most police officers will be allowed to do is seize the drugs.

The proposition’s passage by voters codifies into law the policy the Austin City Council recommended to the Austin Police Department in early 2020 after Gov. Greg Abbott the year before signed a law that made it all but impossible to distinguish narcotic marijuana from legal hemp. In July 2020, then-Police Chief Brian Manley announced that officers would no longer cite or arrest people for having small amounts of pot.

More: Austin council OKs plan to give $1M in taxpayer money to struggling families

On the no-knock warrants issue, passage of Prop A  stipulates that police officers investigating a crime can still enter a residence with a signed warrant, but only after they’ve announced their presence and waited at least 15 seconds. 

The use of no-knock warrants became the focus of a national conversation in 2020 after Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville, Kentucky, police officers in a botched raid of her apartment. Later that year, the Austin City Council limited police use of a no-knock warrant to only when officer safety is an issue and after receiving approval from a commander and a judge.

Austin police officers execute a no-knock warrant only three or four times a year and only when confronting a suspect they believe to be dangerous, according to Ken Casaday, who heads the Austin Police Association labor union.

The police union was neutral on the proposal’s marijuana-related language but opposed the elimination of no-knock warrants. Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon told the American-Statesman he was not taking a public position on Prop A. 

The organization behind the proposition, Ground Game Texas, is led by two past congressional candidates: Julie Oliver, the Democratic nominee in House District 25 in 2018 and 2020, and Mike Siegel, the Democratic nominee in House District 10 in those same years.

Siegel, the political director of Ground Game Texas, said the organization was pleased with the results.

“It looks like Prop A is passing with an enormous mandate from Austin voters,” Seigal said. “We hope that sends a message to state leaders that issues like marijuana reform and stopping no-knock warrants are extremely popular among voters and we need to get this done statewide.”

Casaday, president of the Austin Police Association labor union, said he was not overly concerned with the measure passing.

“This was really a feel-good deal for the people that were behind Prop A but we don’t believe it really affects anything,” Casaday said. 

Casaday said the union did not “get involved in the marijuana debate,” and that it believes federal law will cover the no-knock warrant aspect of the proposition. 

“We don’t believe that will affect us. The city of Austin cannot tell the police chief how to run his department when it comes to safety and we fully expect to continue to do search warrants even though we only do maybe two or three a year. I don’t think this will affect anything,” he said. “As far as the marijuana goes, we’ve pretty much had a hands-off policy for the last two or three years.”

The effective date for Prop A will be the date of the canvass of the election. The deadline to conduct the canvass is May 18.

Saturday’s vote was the final city election before the November election, when the mayor and five City Council districts will be in play.

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Technology

USFL to eliminate chains, measure first downs with chip in ball and yellow line on TV

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When it’s time to measure for a first down in the USFL, the officials will call for a high-tech solution in place of the decidedly low-tech 10-yard chains that have been used in football for a century.

The USFL played a preseason game on Friday night that included the debut of its new first down measuring system, which combines a chip in every football and the yellow first-down line that fans are accustomed to seeing on TV. Video of its use during the preseason game was accompanied by a claim from the USFL that the upstart league has “First down measurements that are more accurate than ever.”

That, however, may not be accurate. Although it undeniably looks cool on TV to see an image of the football and an image of the line to gain — reminiscent of the way replay is used in tennis — the reality is that this kind of ball tracking technology isn’t precise enough to guarantee that first down calls will be correct.

The NFL already has a chip in every football, but it uses those chips only for its Next Gen Stats tracking data, and not for officiating. That’s because the chips in the middle of every ball just aren’t accurate enough to locate where a football is to the inch. The data works fine as a good approximation of where the ball is, give or take the length of one football. But it doesn’t tell you whether a third down play just barely picked up the first down, or whether the offense should be facing fourth-and-inches.

Replay technology works so well in tennis because tennis is a sport fundamentally conducive to it: The smaller size of the ball, the spherical shape of the ball, and the ability to always have camera angles with unobstructed views of the ball and the lines on the court make tennis well suited to its replay system. Football just doesn’t work that way. It’s not always possible to tell precisely where the ball was when the ball carrier’s knee touched the ground, especially when huge men are surrounding the ball carrier and blocking any view of his knee or the ball.

So TV viewers will probably enjoy watching the USFL’s solution to first downs, but no one should expect the actual spotting of the ball to be any more accurate than it is in the NFL.



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Business

The Fed’s Favorite Inflation Measure Hits Record High

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The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index — the Federal Reserve’s preferred metric for tracking inflation — is rising at a 6.4% year-over-year rate as of February.

The increase surpasses the 6.1% rate charted in January, marking the highest inflation rate since 1982. Without considering volatile categories like food and fuel, the PCEPI climbed 5.4% year-over-year.

Rising price levels have been a major criticism of President Joe Biden’s first year in office, with 83% of Americans responding affirmatively to a poll asking whether “increased prices of everyday items caused you or your household any hardship” over the past month.

Likewise, voters were also asked about the recent surge in gas prices. 39% blamed the trend on the Biden administration; 21% blamed gas and oil sanctions placed by the Biden administration and Western allies on Russia; 18% blamed oil and gas companies; and 8.5% blamed COVID-19.

Last month, the Federal Reserve — which is charged with manipulating the money supply to target stable inflation and maximum employment — raised interest rates for the first time since December 2018. The 0.25% bump from near-zero levels is an attempt to tap the brakes on inflation; indeed, the Fed is predicting six more rate increases in 2022, three in 2023, and zero in 2024.

“Indicators of economic activity and employment have continued to strengthen. Job gains have been strong in recent months, and the unemployment rate has declined substantially,” the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee explained in a statement. “Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher energy prices, and broader price pressures.”

“The Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 1/4 to 1/2 percent and anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate,” the statement continued. “In addition, the Committee expects to begin reducing its holdings of Treasury securities and agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities at a coming meeting.”

As The Daily Wire’s Cabot Phillips explained on a recent episode of Morning Wire, the rate hike will have ripple effects throughout the economy.

“The general idea is that as interest rates go up, average people are less likely to take out loans because the deals aren’t as good as they’ve been,” he explained. “As that happens, the idea is that people will stop borrowing and spending money, which will leave fewer active dollars in the economy … hopefully curbing inflation.”

“For anyone taking out larger loans, they are gonna notice this,” Phillips continued. “If you have an existing car loan or federal student loan, those won’t be affected, because they’re fixed rates, but others will.”

Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index increased by 7.9% over the 12 months ending in February — hitting another 40-year high. In response to rising prices for gasoline and other staples, some governors are suggesting amendments to various state taxes.

“As Americans see their cost-of-living skyrocket amid historic inflation, suspending the grocery tax is the most effective way to provide direct relief to every Tennessean,” Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) said in a statement proposing a pause to the state’s grocery tax. “Our state has the ability to put dollars back in the pockets of hardworking Tennesseans, and I thank members of the General Assembly for their continued partnership in maintaining our fiscally conservative approach.”

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