Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Although alcohol abstinence is associated with improved health outcomes, addiction researchers have theorized that brain changes that occur during abstinence may increase a person’s risk of relapse. To explore this theory, we studied how mice behaved after giving them long-term voluntary access to alcohol followed by a forced abstinence period. We found that a subset of the mice developed aversion-resistant alcohol intake – that is, they now drank alcohol despite the quinine we added to make it increasingly bitter. Moreover, compared to those who did not experience forced abstinence, these mice drank even larger quantities of the very bitter alcohol.…

Reading Time: 3 minutes Most of the 29 people killed in ATV/UTV crashes so far this year had never completed an off-highway vehicle safety course, according to the latest data from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. And DNR officials say that 15 of those who died were over the age of 60 — meaning they were among those who are not required to take safety courses under state law. DNR data shows most of the people killed in off-highway vehicle incidents were not wearing seat belts or helmets, and frequently alcohol was a factor in the crashes. Those are all…

A fortnight or so ago, my two teenage kids and I set out on a three-night visit to the Peak District where temperatures were hovering at a comparatively tepid 28C. We stayed at a youth hostel – more of which in a moment – and began the trip with the 20-minute ascent of Mam Tor, a modest peak that pulls in both dedicated ramblers who then yomp along the ridge beyond, and newbies who mostly want to get to the top and immerse themselves in the jaw-dropping view.The next bit might sound self-parodically Guardian-esque, but what the hell: in its…

Deir Al-Balah, Gaza – Eman Mahmoud Shamia has been uprooted several times since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, before finally settling into a new home – a tent in a camp.It provides rudimentary shelter for 33-year-old Eman, her husband, Yahya Shamia, 50, and their five children, all under 11, but it lacks many of the basic amenities her old home provided.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listWith the help of a worker who specialised in digging soakaway underground drainage pits, the community in the camp built a “municipal toilet”. It provides relief but Shamia said…

The fight over data centers is suddenly at the epicenter of the midterm elections.One new ad in Texas begins with someone typing into a chatbot, “Why is my electric bill going up?” Another in Ohio blames one of the state’s Republican senators for a proliferation of data centers, calling them “a total scam.” And in top House battlegrounds in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Democratic challengers are all running ads against the server warehouses powering the artificial intelligence boom.Data centers have become unlikely fault-lines in the broader fight over an A.I. revolution that is remaking the global economy and threatening…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldThousands of South Korean and US troops were this week supposed to be continuing 11 days of military exercises intended to demonstrate readiness to defend against an attack from North Korea. Instead, the troops packed up on Friday, day five — after Donald Trump announced on the eve of the drills that he was scaling them back as they sent a “hostile” signal to a country that he said had been “unthreatening and respectful” during his presidency. The president’s move…

Few of the top AI labs have published or demonstrated containment response plans, according to a recent study. A containment plan spells out what happens once an AI is caught trying to subvert human control — what access gets cut, and when the system gets shut down entirely. That’s the finding from Guidelight AI Standards, an organization dedicated to promoting safe frontier AI development practices, which graded five leading labs on how prepared they are for exactly this scenario. OpenAI came out on top; Anthropic and Meta scored lowest. The findings matters as agentic AI takes on more autonomous roles…

Chip makers are baking post-quantum cryptography acceleration into hardware as the threat of quantum systems breaking current encryption rises.The technology is still years away from the general market, but defenders are concerned about harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks that could build up stores of data until quantum computing becomes more widely available to exploit it. Security professionals and regulators encourage organizations to begin future-proofing now, and some key players are acting.”You don’t want to be stuck in the harvest now, decrypt later kind of attacks, because the time is not three years out, the time is now,” Anand Pashupathy, vice president and general…

In brief Check Point Research identified nearly 2,000 compromised WordPress sites used by the StopAndProtect malware operation. More than 6,000 unique IP addresses had been compromised as of July 24, including 1,852 in the United States. Researchers believe the attackers accidentally infected themselves, exposing internal files and tools used to manage compromised sites. Nearly 2,000 hacked WordPress websites were used to distribute malware, steal data, monitor victims, and deploy ransomware, according to cybersecurity firm Check Point Research.In the report published on Tuesday, researchers said the StopAndProtect ransomware family was first discovered in mid-May before tracing it to a broader operation.…

Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk watches a Greenland shark glide slowly through the dark waters of the Arctic on her computer screen. “You see it move its eye,” says the University of California, Irvine associate professor of physiology and biophysics, pointing to the footage. “The shark is tracking the light — it’s fascinating.” Greenland sharks are the longest-living vertebrates known to science, with some individuals surviving for as long as 400 years. They have thick gray bodies, small heads and short, rounded snouts. Their cloudy-looking eyes can appear almost lifeless, and parasites are often found attached directly to the eyeballs. Because of those…