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Second Darwin’s sandwich shop opens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Posted on June 17, 2019June 17, 2019 by

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Darwin’s Ltd. opened a second location of their sandwich shop at 1613 Cambridge Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in late May. It is situated across from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Previously limited to one location at 148 Mount Auburn Street, the second store seats approximately 30 people and sells sandwiches, coffee drinks, locally made pastries, as well as some produce and snack foods. The establishment also provides free wireless access through the WanderingWifi service. The shop plays music during the day; during this reporter’s visit to the shop, selections played ranged from David Bowie to The Strokes. The store is air-conditioned.

Key differences between the original store and the new one include the unification of the cafe and the sandwich line now behind one counter, handicap accessible restrooms, no beer or wine sold at location, and a lack of a loyal customer base. Although the recent months have been slow, business is expected to pick up with the return of Cambridge area students this autumn.

While the original location of Darwin’s was recently cited for lacking sneeze guards before the kitchen counter, according to the Cambridge Chronicle, the new Darwin’s has acrylic sheets along the front of their sandwich counter. The original Darwin’s has installed the sneeze guard at the kitchen counter the day following citation.

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

How Do Dentistry Services In Heber Springs Keep Your Smile Healthy?

Posted on June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 by

Here’s An Opinion On:

byAlma Abell

Keeping your smile healthy involves you doing your part and seeing your dentist as often as you should. You need to make sure you brush and floss your teeth at least twice a day. It is also imperative you eat a healthy diet and drink plenty of water. This can help to keep your teeth and gums healthy and strong, so you can avoid dental concerns. As a part of taking care of your smile, you need to make sure you see your dentist at least twice a year. If you are prone to certain oral health concerns, you will need to see the dentist more often. Through dentistry in Heber Springs, your smile can stay healthy.

How Can Your Dentist Help You Prevent Oral Health Problems?

To keep your teeth and gums healthy, the dentist will work to keep your teeth clean. Deep cleanings are carried out on your teeth every six months. These cleanings remove the plaque and food particles that can cause decay in your teeth. This also protects your gum health. If these substances are allowed to stay on your teeth, they can cause cavities and damage. Though you brush your teeth every day, you could still be missing areas your brush cannot reach. Through the thorough cleanings your dentist provides you, your teeth will stay healthier and stronger.

Along with cleaning procedures, the dentist also monitors your oral health and protects it in other ways. Through examinations and X-rays, the dentist can check the health of your teeth and gums and monitor you for any health concerns. Your current examination and X-ray results are compared to past results, so the dentist is always aware of how healthy your teeth and gums are. In the event concerns are found, they can quickly be treated, before they cause major health problems.

To keep your smile healthy and attractive, you need to seek dentistry in Heber Springs. For more information on how dental care can keep your oral health at its best, visit BoldSmiles.com. They will provide you with the dental services you need, to ensure your smile is healthy, strong and beautiful.

News briefs:July 29, 2010

Posted on June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 by

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Hurricane Nate weakens as it reaches United States

Posted on June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 by

Monday, October 9, 2017

After killing 30 people on a rampage through Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua and dumping rain on the Yucatan in Mexico, Hurricane Nate reached the U.S. states of Louisiana and Mississippi on the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday night. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) downgraded Nate to a tropical storm on Sunday morning. A state of emergency was declared parts of Louisiana, which saw damage from the significantly more intense Hurricane Harvey earlier this year; Alabama; Florida; and Mississippi.

Nate made its first U.S. landfall on Saturday night, bringing winds of 85 miles per hour (134 kph) and considerable storm surge to the mouth of the Mississippi River. By Sunday morning, these had declined to 35 miles per hour (56 kph). Tens of thousands of households in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana were without power.

In contrast, when Nate made its way across Latin America, dozens of people died. Some 400,000 Costa Ricans lost access to safe drinking water. All train travel and a great deal of air travel halted, and many national parks closed. Landslides trapped travelers in a dangerous road segment nicknamed “the Mountain of Death” on the Inter-American Highway, and the high water of the Tárcoles River raised concerns about crocodile attacks.

“We were well aware that this could’ve been a much more serious storm. There was talk of it being a Category 2 with an 11-feet tidal surge when it came ashore. It did not — happily — it did not live up to that billing,” said Vincent Creel, public affairs manager for Biloxi, Mississippi, near which Nate made its second U.S. landfall.

The storm had been expected to move further west, and some evacuations were recommended in the New Orleans area in preparation. Many of the ports on the U.S. Gulf Coast were closed to shipping. In one way, Nate is having a more pronounced effect than Harvey: production of oil and natural gas is a fraction of normal levels as workers evacuated oil rigs and platforms.

The NHC forecast the storm to continue north and east, losing intensity as it moves inland.

“Our great team at FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] is prepared for #HurricaneNate. Everyone in LA [Lousiana], MS [Mississippi], AL [Alabama] and FL [Florida] please listen to your local authorities and be safe!” tweeted President Donald Trump.

This is the fourth major hurricane to hit U.S. territory since summer, after Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

Blast in a coal mine in Donetsk, Ukraine

Posted on June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 by

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Another blast shook the Ukrainian coal mine Zasyadko in Donetsk, where over 100 miners died in a methane blast in November. According to the United Press International news agency, 52 miners were injured. The ITAR TASS news agency reports also that most of them suffered carbon monoxide poisoning and were taken to an occupational diseases treatment clinic, while seven were hospitalised at the central hospital of the Donetsk region.

Marina Nikitina, a local officer of the Ukrainian’s industrial safety agency Gosgorpromnadzor, informed the press that all of the 385 miners who were underground when the explosion occurred, have been already evacuated. According to her, the blast took place at 5.55 a.m. EET (UTC+2) in an isolated part of the collery at the deep of 1078 metres, where 63 people were working. A Ukrainian TV channel Kanal 5 reports the disaster has been caused by a methane blast. It informs also that Vitalij Shevchenko, the mine’s general engineer, has been ousted from his post by the Ukrainian mining supervision.

It is the second explosion in two weeks that happened in the pit. The November 18 blast is regarded among the Ukrainian media as the worst coal-mining disaster in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history.

Today’s blast is a part of deadly series of accidents in the Ukrainian coal mining industry; in the Donetsk region alone about 200 people have died this year.

[edit]

Biologist Nick Bos tells Wikinews about ‘self-medicating’ ants

Posted on June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 by

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Nick Bos, of the University of Helsinki, studies “the amazing adaptations social insects have evolved in order to fight the extreme parasite pressure they experience”. In a recently-accepted Evolution paper Bos and colleagues describe ants appearing to self-medicate.

I have no doubt that as time goes on, there will be more and more cases documented

The team used Formica fusca, an ant species that can form thousand-strong colonies. This common black ant eats other insects, and also aphid honeydew. It often nests in tree stumps or under rocks and foraging workers can sometimes be spotted climbing trees.

Some ants were infected with Beauveria bassiana, a fungus. Infected ants chose food laced with toxic hydrogen peroxide, whereas healthy ants avoided it. Hydrogen peroxide reduced infected ant fatalities by 15%, and the ants varied their intake depending upon how high the peroxide concentration was.

In the wild, Formica fusca can encounter similar chemicals in aphids and dead ants. The Independent reported self-medicating ants a first among insects.

Bos obtained his doctorate from the University of Copenhagen. He began postdoctoral research at Helsinki in 2012. He also runs the AntyScience blog. The blog aims to help address “a gap between scientists and ‘the general public’.” The name is a pun referencing ants, its primary topic, science, and “non-scientific” jargon-free communication. He now discusses his work with Wikinews.

((Wikinews)) What first attracted you to researching ants?

Nick Bos Me and a studymate were keeping a lot of animals during our studies, from beetles, to butterflies and mantids, to ants. We had the ants in an observation nest, and I could just look at them for hours, watching them go about. This was in my third year of Biology study I think. After a while I needed to start thinking about an internship for my M.Sc. studies, and decided to write a couple of professors. I ended up going to the Centre for Social Evolution at the University of Copenhagen where I did a project on learning in Ants under supervision of Prof. Patrizia d’Ettorre. I liked it so much there I ended up doing a PhD and I’ve been working on social insects ever since.

((Wikinews)) What methods and equipment were used for this investigation?

NB This is a fun one. I try to work on a very low budget, and like to build most of the experimental setups myself (we actually have equipment in the lab nicknamed the ‘Nickinator’, ‘i-Nick’ and the ‘Nicktendo64’). There’s not that much money in fundamental science at the moment, so I try to cut the costs wherever possible. We collected wild colonies of Formica fusca by searching through old tree-trunks in old logging sites in southern Finland. We then housed the ants in nests I made using Y-tong [aerated concrete]. It’s very soft stone that you can easily carve. We carved out little squares for the ants to live in (covered with old CD covers to prevent them escaping!). We then drilled a tunnel to a pot (the foraging arena), where the ants got the choice between the food with medicine and the food without.

We infected the ants by preparing a solution of the fungus Beauveria bassiana. Afterwards, each ant was dipped in the solution for a couple of seconds, dried on a cloth and put in the nest. After exposing the ants to the fungus, we took pictures of each foraging arena three times per day, and counted how many ants were present on each food-source.

This gave us the data that ants choose more medicine after they have been infected.

The result that healthy ants die sooner when ingesting ROS [Reactive Oxygen Species, the group of chemicals that includes hydrogen peroxide] but infected ants die less was obtained in another way (as you have to ‘force feed’ the ROS, as healthy ants, when given the choice, ignore that food-source.)

For this we basically put colonies on a diet of either food with medicine or without for a while. And afterwards either infected them or not. Then for about two weeks we count every day how many ants died. This gives us the data to do a so-called survival analysis.

We measured the ROS-concentration in the bodies of ants after they ingested the food with the medicine using a spectrophotometer. By adding certain chemicals, the ROS can be measured using the emission of light of a certain wave-length.

The detrimental effect of ROS on spores was easy to measure. We mixed different concentrations of ROS with the spores, plated them out on petridishes with an agar-solution where fungus can grow on. A day after, we counted how many spores were still alive.

((Wikinews)) How reliable do you consider your results to be?

NB The results we got are very reliable. We had a lot of colonies containing a lot of ants, and wherever possible we conducted the experiment blind. This means the experimenter doesn’t know which ants belong to which treatment, so it’s impossible to influence the results with ‘observer bias’. However, of course this is proof in just one species. It is hard to extrapolate to other ants, as different species lead very different lives.

At the moment it seems that sick ants mostly take care of the problem themselves

((Wikinews)) Where did the ants and fungus you used come from? How common are they in the wild?

NB For ants, see above about the collection.

This species of fungus does appear in Finland, but we chose to use a different strain from Denmark (with thanks to Prof. J. Eilenberg and the laboratory technician Louise Lee Munch Larsen from the University of Copenhagen). Animals can adapt to local strains (‘local adaptation’), and just to make sure we thought it would be good to use a strain of fungus that the ants definitely did not evolve specific resistances against. This means that the reaction of the ants (to self-medicate) is very likely to be a general response, and not just against their local fungal enemies.

((Wikinews)) Are there any ethical considerations around exposing ants to toxins and parasites?

NB Legally, no. Insects do not have any ‘rights’ as such regarding ethics. That said, we do take measures to not make them ‘suffer unnecessarily’. For example, dissections are done when the ants are anesthetized (either by CO2 or Ice), and when ants need to be killed, we do it in alcohol, which kills the ants in a matter of seconds. So while the ants do not have ‘rights’ as such, we still try to handle them with as much respect as possible (even though the experiment involves infecting them with a deadly fungus).

But even though the 12,000 ants in our study sounds like a lot (and it is), this is negligible in the ‘grand scheme of things’. It has been calculated that in the Netherlands alone, nearly a trillion insects die against just the licence-plates of cars every six months. I don’t own a car, so that means I’m excused right? 😉

((Wikinews)) This is the first evidence for self-medicating insects. How widespread do you think this phenomenon could be in reality?

NB It’s not actually the first evidence for self-medication in insects. Moths and fruit flies definitely do it, and there’s evidence in honey bees and bumble-bees as well. So it seems to be quite wide-spread in the insect world. I have no doubt that as time goes on, there will be more and more cases documented. Insects (and animals in general) seem to be quite good at taking care of themselves.

((Wikinews)) How might ants locate healing substances in the wild?

NB Very good question. This is something that’s important to know. If they would only do it in the lab, the behaviour wouldn’t be very interesting. We have some guesses where they might get it from, but at the moment we don’t know yet. That said, I plan to investigate this question (among others) further [in] the next couple of years.

((Wikinews)) For your PhD you researched ants’ scent-based communications. Could healthy ants perhaps tell other ants are infected and encourage this behaviour?

NB There’s not much known about this. There’s conflicting evidence about whether sick ants actually smell different from healthy ones or not. At the moment it seems that sick ants mostly take care of the problem themselves. Sick ants stop most interaction with nestmates and especially brood, and leave the nest to die in isolation. This is probably for reducing chance of infecting nestmates, but of course it also reduces the work load of their nest-mates, as their corpse doesn’t have to be dragged out etc.

So as an answer to the question, I would find it unlikely that such a behaviour would evolve, but it’s not known yet.

((Wikinews)) Ants generally avoided the peroxide if they were healthy, but in some circumstances might they try to build resistance against infection in advance?

NB Who knows? Also not known yet unfortunately. That said, there is a very interesting study about resin collection in ants. Wood ants collect tree-resin, which has anti-microbial properties. They collect this even if not infected, and when you infect them, they don’t collect more of the resin than normal. So basically it seems like they collect it in order to keep diseases out of the nest, so they stop the disease before it can actually infect them.

((Wikinews)) Are there plans to follow this research up? Might you research other species? Other substances?

NB I first want to find out where they get it from in nature. There might be many sources of medicine (recent evidence suggests that tobacco plays a similar role for bumble bees). Dalial Freitak, who is also on this paper is currently running tests with Ph.D. student Siiri Fuchs (who is also on the paper) with other substances to see if any have the same effect as H2O2 [hydrogen peroxide].

Once the behaviour has been well described in this species of ant, I might do a comparison with other species. For example, once we find the source of the medicine in nature… would species without access to this source also have evolved the same behaviour in the lab? And if so… where would they get it from?

Also… can ants medicate their friends? 🙂

((Wikinews)) What other research are you working on right now?

NB Phew…lots! 🙂

I still have some questions left unanswered from my Ph.D. work related to how ants recognize who is a friend and who isn’t. I also started collaborating with Prof. Michael Poulsen from the University of Copenhagen on immunity in fungus-growing termites, as well as their chemical recognition abilities. Furthermore we’re working on social parasitism in wood-ants (ants have lots of animals exploiting the nest for shelter and resources, which all somehow have to get in to the fortress without getting killed).

Science and Technology

Guinean military leader in ‘favourable’ condition after attempted assassination

Posted on June 11, 2019June 11, 2019 by

Monday, December 7, 2009

Morocco said earlier today that Guinea’s military ruler, Moussa Dadis Camara, has undergone successful surgery for gunshot wounds sustained on Thursday in an apparent assassination attempt. Guinea’s military government is offering a reward for the capture of the former head of the presidential guard whose men are accused of carrying out the attack.

The inspector of Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces’ health services said that Camara has had successful surgery for head trauma. In a statement issued by Morocco’s official press agency, Dr. Ali Abrouq said Camara’s condition is “not worrying.”

“The current health condition of the Guinean president does not inspire concern,” Abrouq noted in a statement. “The result of the operation is favorable.”

Camara flew to Morocco on Friday after being shot the day before by men loyal to his former aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Aboubacar Sidiki Diakite, who is also known as Toumba. Toumba escaped the attack, and is still at large with a group of the presidential guard.

Harouna Kone, a spokesman for the junta, commented that Camara should be able to return to Guinea by Wednesday. “The president is doing very well and we expecting that he will come back maybe on Wednesday […] he is in the Royal Hospital of Rabat, and I think that everything is well there. He called last night and [spoke] with his minister of communication and they discussed about something,” he said, as quoted by the Voice of America news agency.

Security forces, meanwhile, are patrolling Guinea’s borders in search of Toumba, and the government is offering a reward for information leading to his capture.

Guinea’s vice-president and defense minister, General Sekouba Konate, became the interim leader following the attempted assassination.

Thursday’s shooting followed an argument between Toumba and Camara about who should take responsibility for the killing of opposition demonstrators two months ago. Witnesses say Toumba gave the order for the presidential guard to open fire on people protesting Camara’s expected presidential candidacy.

Local human rights groups said that at least 157 people were killed on September 28; the military put the number at 57 people.

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Indian Premier Manmohan Singh undergoes heart bypass; Pranab Mukherjee takes charge

Posted on June 5, 2019June 5, 2019 by

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh received a successful coronary artery bypass surgery and was recuperating well in the state-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Sunday.

Dr. Manmohan Singh is the 17th and current Prime Minister of the Republic of India. He also serves as the Union Minister for Finance, succeeding P. Chidambaram.

“The 76-year-old Prime Minister is doing fine now. He is conscious, stable, comfortable and is making rapid progress. He also met his family and congratulated all doctors. [His] ventilator has been taken off and he is breathing on his own. This is an important step,” said Dr. Ramakant Panda, one of the surgeons, after the 11-hour procedure on Saturday.

According to critical care specialist Dr. Vijay D’Silva, who has been entrusted with his post-operative care, Singh has been given a liquid diet since morning including a cup of tea, and was speaking to doctors after the procedure. “The way you [doctors] are taking care of me, you should also take care of other people”, Dr. D’Silva, who received his basic medical training in Nagpur and headed the ICU at Mumbai’s Jaslok and Lilavati Hospitals before he helped set up the ICU at the ultra-modern Asian Heart Institute, quoted Singh as saying.

“We started the operation at 7:45 am. The second operation always takes longer and makes it difficult to reach the heart. We did a total of five by-passes to clear multiple blockages in his arteries. Surgery was the long term answer since there were many blockages. We will take the PM out of the breathing machine in the next 2-3 hours and the PM should stay for three days in the ICU and then 4-5 days more in the hospital,” Drs. Panda and D’Silva explained.

Singh’s personal physician and AIIMS cardiac surgeon, Dr. K. S. Reddy, has predicted the PM will be allowed to attend to some official work in two weeks, to most of the duties in four weeks and will be able to resume office in six weeks. “PM was sent to the Operation Theatre at 6:40 am, surgery was done at 8:45 am and was concluded at 7:30 pm. PM was sent back to the ICU at 8:55 pm,” said Dr. Reddy.

“The team has brought about 20 boxes of special equipment with it. Earlier, Dr. K. S. Reddy had discussions with Dr. Panda in connection with the line of treatment to be followed,” the team of 11 doctors said.

The team of surgeons made a 6 to 7 inch incision along the scar that marked the PM’s 1990 bypass operation, and he was given five grafts. “The new grafts, all 3 mm long, will last the PM the rest of his life,” said Dr. Pradyot Kumar Rath from the Asian Heart Institute. “If the PM could have been so active with all the blockages, he can be even more active now,” Dr Panda said.

Singh underwent a coronary angiography at the AIIMS hospital on Tuesday and Wednesday and was discharged on Thursday. The tests results revealed multiple arterial blockages and Singh returned to hospital on Friday for pre-surgery tests.

External Minister Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, age 73, has been given the charge of Finance Ministry after he held meetings with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and then Prime Minister Singh. Mukherjee said he would meet the Prime Minister because he was going for treatment and when he was abroad, Singh was in hospital. “These are quite natural things. You should not be unnecessarily worried over and coming here in large numbers,” he said.

Mukherjee has also taken charge over some prime ministerial responsibilities, while Singh recovers, officials and media reports said. But no acting prime minister has been named while Singh is recuperating. Mukherjee will also preside over Cabinet meetings and will further handle coal, environment and forests, including information and broadcasting and finance portfolios.

Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, a native of West Bengal, India, is the Minister for External Affairs of India in the Manmohan Singh-led Government of India. A prominent leader of the Indian National Congress in the 14th Lok Sabha, he is known to be a competent party apparatchik, “a prominent Gandhi family loyalist who did not win a popular election until 2004”.

Singh, a diabetic, underwent a bypass surgery in Britain in 1990 and had an angioplasty in 2004 in Delhi in which stents were introduced in his arteries. He had earlier been operated for a benign enlarged prostate in 2007, and for nerve compression in both wrists in 2006 and cataract removal procedure last year, officials said.

The Congress Party, which leads the coalition Government, has said that he will remain Prime Minister if Congress and its allies win again. But Congress is reportedly planning to replace him, possibly within two years, with Rahul Gandhi, the 38-year-old son of Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born Congress leader. “Days are not far off for Rahul Gandhi to become Indian Prime Minister,” Mr Mukherjee said earlier this month.

Rahul is an Indian politician and member of the Parliament of India, representing the Amethi constituency. He is a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family, the most prominent political family in India. He is the son of current Italian-born Congress President Sonia Gandhi, and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991. Gandhi was 14 years old when his grandmother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her security guards. His great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first Prime Minister of India, and his great-great-grandfather Motilal Nehru was a distinguished leader of the Indian independence movement.

Unreported tainted milk incident publicised in China

Posted on June 1, 2019June 1, 2019 by

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The health department in Guizhou province, China has ordered three batches of milk products to be removed from sale after the discovery they contain melamine. In 2008 six children were killed by milk contaminated with the chemical and 300,000 fell ill.

The department has suspended all sales from the three companies involved. Last November, two men were executed for their roles in selling milk tainted with the chemical, which was largely distributed by Samlu Corp, a company that has since been liquidised. The executed convicts mixed up batches totalling hundreds of tonnes of melamine-tainted milk, and were among 21 people successfuly prosecuted over the contamination. Chinese dairy products were withdrawn around the world.

The latest finds have gone unreported for nearly a year before a provincial news service reported on the tainted products from Shandong Zibo Lusaier Dairy Co., Liaoning Tieling Wuzhou Food Co. and Laoting Kaida Refrigeration Plant. This was then picked up today by China Daily, meaning it has only now come to the world’s attention. No specifics are available other than that popsicles are involved.

Early 2009 would place the discoveries and recalls shortly after the government anounced a crackdown on malpractice in the dairy industry. Recently, two other reports have emerged of tainted milk being discovered elsewhere in China, including Shanghai.

It is uncertain why this is only now becoming public knowledge, althought the Shanghai case was said to be complicated by crossing provincial borders. There, reports emerged on New Year’s Eve although the actual news dated back to April.

After the 2008 milk scandal new food safety legislation was passed. These new laws made room for more vigourous testing and stronger recall arrangements. The government made it clear that coverups were intolerable. At the time, 22 companies were indentified as being involved in melamine-contamination in milk.

Two dairies recently named in state media as behind more recent incidents were on that original list, including Laoting Kaida and Shanghai Panda Dairy Co. Media reports suggest that the newer problem may have been that milk containing melimine that was never destroyed from the original discovery was then repackaged.

The companies involved have stated that they bought in raw milk without realising it contained the poisonous chemical. China Daily quoted an official as saying the same thing. It also stated an ex-dairy industry official had said that it was probable that further milk containing illegally high levels of the substance remained available to the Chinese consumer.

News organisations have tried contacting the companies involved and authorities in Guizhou province but with little success. This trend was bucked by the Agence France-Presse, who reached Guizhou’s health department, only to be told the reports were not correct.

Melamine has a high nitrogen content which can make watered-down milk seem to contain extra protein. It is intended for use in manufacturing industries, in products such as concrete, plastic and fertiliser. Large quantities can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.