Summary: Scientists have been working on creating a perennial rice variety that would regrow after harvest without the need to be resown, which would greatly reduce the cost to both farmers and the land. Rice is one of the world's most important staple crops, with about half of the global population depending on it for sustenance. Currently, rice is cultivated annually, which means replanting the fields year after year. The article discusses one promising perennial rice effort, the 'Yunda 107', which is harvested in the Yunnan Province of China and can be harvested for successive regrowth seasons, maintaining a relatively stable yield and greatly reducing labor input.

Summary: The author of the article, Alex R. Rosenblat, shares her experience of declining to share her medical data with advertisers at her doctor's office through Phreesia's tablet check-in system. Despite declining the authorization to share her data, Phreesia still shared her data with advertisers. The HIPAA authorization form was deceptive, as it was labeled "Required" in bright red letters, and patients were required to acknowledge it to be seen. Phreesia was asking for consent to mine the data entered through the check-in process to show targeted ads. The author believes that staying in control of her data privacy is a burden that requires proactive attention, and privacy harms add up.

Summary: According to a Reuters special report, subsea cables that carry the world's data have become central to the US-China tech war. The US has thwarted Chinese projects abroad and choked Big Tech's cable routes to Hong Kong, fearing Beijing's spies. The report highlights a $600m cable project by American subsea cable company SubCom LLC, known as South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6, which will connect a dozen countries from Singapore to France, crossing three seas and the Indian Ocean. The project was awarded to SubCom LLC instead of Chinese company HMN Technologies Co Ltd, which was on the brink of snagging the contract three years ago.

Summary: The popularity of programming languages was analyzed by GitHub pull requests, and the results were published on Daniel Lemire's blog. The analysis found that Python is the most popular language, followed by JavaScript and Java. C++ and C# were also popular, while Ruby and PHP were less so. The popularity of languages varied by industry, with Python being popular in data science and Java being popular in enterprise software. The analysis also found that the popularity of languages has remained relatively stable over the past few years.

Summary: The article is about Tatjana van Vark, a Dutch craftsman who has built, replicated, and restored a wide variety of scientific instruments. Her work is characterized by superb craftsmanship and attention to detail, which is necessary due to the intricate nature of these objects. Tatjana's interest in scientific instruments was established at an early age, and she has explored many areas of study in electronics, including power systems and logic systems in relays and electronics. She has also worked on aircraft avionics, navigational inertial guidance systems, radar, and weapons control systems. Tatjana's work has taken her into many regions of scientific study, and she has worked as a scientific consultant for large technological firms, the government, and military institutions.

Summary: The GitHub repository "ClickHouse/NoiSQL" contains code for a project that generates music using SQL queries. The project includes examples and instructions for creating different types of sounds and music using basic waves, noise, distortion, envelopes, and sequencers. The code is available for Linux and MacOS and is licensed under the Apache-2.0 license. The project is aimed at demonstrating how to play sound and music with declarative SQL. The README file provides information on how to get started with the project, limitations, and further directions. The project is open source, and contributions are welcome.

Summary: The Dutch Republic had a more advanced financial infrastructure than England during the late seventeenth century, despite England being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Josiah Child, a young merchant, wrote a list of Dutch policies and customs in 1665 that made the Dutch wealthy, which England failed to emulate. These included including merchants in councils of state and war, gavel-kind succession laws, high regulatory standards for goods, encouragement for inventors, cheaper and easier-to-handle ships, education of all children in arithmetic and keeping accounts, and low customs duties but high consumption taxes.

Summary: A study published in Nature Nanotechnology has found that human Siglec-14, a paired immune receptor, recognizes carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and provokes inflammation. The research used a three-dimensional protein-structure-based in silico screen to identify Siglec-5 and Siglec-14 as CNT-recognizing receptors. Molecular dynamics simulations showed the spatiotemporally stable association of aromatic residues on the extracellular loop of Siglec-5 with CNTs. Siglec-14 mediated spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk)-dependent phagocytosis of multiwalled CNTs and the subsequent secretion of interleukin-1β from human monocytes. Ectopic in vivo expression of human Siglec-14 on mouse alveolar macrophages resulted in enhanced recognition of multiwalled CNTs and exacerbated pulmonary inflammation. Furthermore, fostamatinib, a Syk inhibitor, blocked Siglec-14-mediated proinflammatory responses

Summary: In a post from Rach Smith's digital garden, the author talks about a simple animation trick called lerp, which stands for Linear Interpolation between two points. By linearly interpolating to a percentage of the distance between two points, and updating the position by that amount on each frame, the object moves slower as it gets closer to its target, creating a nice easing effect. The author provides examples of using lerp, such as a ball following the user's mouse or touch and a scrolling indicator that updates as the user scrolls down the page. Overall, lerp is a great tool to have for web animation to combat linear or jagged movement.