The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration issued a warning on Mar. 21, 2023, about an increase in trafficking of fentanyl adulterated with xylazine, which can increase the risk of overdosing on an already deadly drug. Xylazine is increasingly appearing within the U.S. supply of illicit opioids like fentanyl and heroin. The agency noted that it has seized mixtures of xylazine and fentanyl in 48 of 50 states.
As a physician who cares for people who use fentanyl, I worry about the ways xylazine increases their risk for overdose. I worry even more that misunderstandings about xylazine can make bystanders less likely to administer the lifesaving drug naloxone (Narcan) during an overdose. If you suspect an overdose, calling emergency medical services and administering naloxone are still the critical first steps to saving a life.
Learning what to do when someone overdoses can help save a life.
Tranq overdoses and fentanyl
Xylazine was originally developed as a veterinary anesthesia. It was first identified as an adulterant in heroin supplies in the early 2000s. Although xylazine is not an opioid, it induces opioidlike effects, including sedation, slowed heart rate and small pupils, similar to the effects produced in people by its pharmaceutical cousin clonidine. Xylazine use is also associated with serious skin and soft tissue ulcers and infections.
The use of opioids with sedating medications like xylazine increases the risk of fatal overdose. Historically, people who use drugs have been unaware that xylazine is in the drug supply and are unable to tell whether they have been exposed to it. Routine hospital drug testing does not detect xylazine, further complicating surveillance.
Xylazine overdoses rarely occur in isolation. Xylazine detection in heroin- and fentanyl-associated deaths in Philadelphia has grown from less than 2% before 2015 to more than 31% in 2019. Similarly, one study of 210 xylazine-associated deaths in Chicago from 2017 to 2021 found that fentanyl or a chemically similar substance was detected in 99.1% of overdoses. This data underscores the key role that fentanyl plays in causing fatal overdoses in cases where xylazine is found, and anecdotal evidence suggests the problem is only increasing.
Xylazine overdoses often occur in the presence of fentanyl or heroin.AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Naloxone and xylazine
Unfortunately, increasing awareness of xylazine has contributed to the myth of “naloxone-resistant” overdoses. Unlike overdoses with opioids only, patients experiencing xylazine-associated overdoses may not immediately wake up after naloxone administration. While naloxone may not reverse the effects of xylazine, it is still able to reverse the effects of the fentanyl it is often mixed with and should be used in all suspected opioid overdoses.
The critical goal of administering naloxone is to prevent patients from dying of dangerously low breathing rates. Bystanders who suspect an overdose should always call 911 to bring in experts in case treatment is required.
(Culinary.net) The same bowl of cereal can get boring after eating it for breakfast day in and day out. You may find yourself looking for something new and exciting to start your whole family’s morning off on the right foot.
Kids can be picky when it comes to breakfast foods, but this recipe for Sausage Fresh Toast Roll-Ups is a quick and easy way to fill their bellies with a taste of several flavors they may already love. It’s a perfect way to fill your morning with joy, no matter if the hours ahead are filled with work, school or play.
A sizzling sausage link wrapped with French toast, it combines a favorite breakfast protein and traditional deliciousness in one little roll. Drizzled with warm maple syrup at the end, even adults can’t help but indulge in these breakfast bites.
This is a quick dish too, using few kitchen utensils, which makes for more time in the morning to enjoy the little things that matter most like moments with family before rushing out the door. This recipe can also be made when your family is craving breakfast for dinner.
If you made this recipe at home, use #MyCulinaryConnection on your favorite social network to share your work.
Watch video to see how to make this recipe!
Sausage French Toast Roll-Ups
Servings: 12
12 sausage links
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
3 teaspoons almond extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 bread slices, crust removed, cut in half
3 tablespoons butter
syrup
In skillet, cook sausage links according to package directions. Set aside.
In medium bowl, whisk eggs, milk, almond extract and cinnamon.
Dip bread slice in egg mixture. Wrap bread slice around cooked sausage link, pressing seam to keep from unrolling. Repeat with remaining bread slices and sausage links.
In large skillet over medium-high heat, melt butter. Place roll-ups in skillet, seam-side down, and cook until all sides are browned, approximately 10 minutes.
Spring is planting time for home gardeners, landscapers and public works agencies across the U.S. And there’s rising demand for native plants – species that are genetically adapted to the specific regions where they are used.
Native plants have evolved with local climates and soil conditions. As a result, they generally require less maintenance, such as watering and fertilizing, after they become established, and they are hardier than non-native species.
But there’s one big problem: There aren’t enough native seeds. This issue is so serious that it was the subject of a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The study found an urgent need to build a native seed supply.
Landscapers and land managers explain the benefits of planting native plants.
The need for native plants
Many stressors can damage and degrade land. They include natural disasters, such as wildfires and flooding, and human actions, such as urbanization, energy production, ranching and development.
Ecological restoration aims to bring back degraded lands’ native biological diversity and the ecological functions that these areas provided, such as sheltering wildlife and soaking up floodwater. In 2021, the United Nations launched the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to promote such efforts worldwide.
Native plants have many features that make them an essential part of healthy ecosystems. For example, they provide long-term defense against invasive and noxious weeds; shelter local pollinators and wildlife; and have roots that stabilize soil, which helps reduce erosion.
Restoration projects require vast quantities of native seeds – but commercial supplies fall far short of what’s needed. Developing a batch of seeds for a specific species takes skill and several years of lead time to either collect native seeds in the wild or grow plants to produce them. Suppliers say one of their biggest obstacles is unpredictable demand from large-scale customers, such as government and tribal agencies, that don’t plan far enough ahead for producers to have stocks ready.
Wyoming Big Sage seedlings growing in a greenhouse. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe are working together to produce native seedlings to restore public lands in Idaho that have been damaged by wildfires.Bureau of Land Management Idaho/Flickr, CC BY
Restoring roadsides in New England
Most drivers give little thought to what grows next to highways, but the wrong plants in these areas can cause serious problems. Roadsides that aren’t replanted using ecological restoration methods may erode and be taken over by invasive weeds. Ecological restoration provides effective erosion control and better habitat habitats for wildlife and pollinators. It’s also more attractive.
For decades, state transportation departments across the U.S. used non-native cool-season turfgrasses, such as fescue and ryegrass, to restore roadsides. The main benefits of using these species, which grow well during the cooler months of spring and fall, were that they grew fast and provided a quick cover.
Then in 2013 the New England Transportation Consortium – a research cooperative funded by state transportation agencies – commissioned our research team to help the states transition to native warm-season grasses instead. These grasses grow well in hot, dry weather and need less moisture than cool-season grasses. One of us, John Campanelli, developed the framework for selecting plant species based on conservation practices and identified methods for establishing native plant communities for the region.
We recommended using warm-season grasses that are native to the region, such as little bluestem, purple lovegrass, switchgrass and purpletop. These species required less long-term maintenance and less-frequent mowing than the cool-season species that agencies had previously used.
To ensure sound conservation practices, we wanted to use seeds produced locally. Seeds sourced from other locations would produce grasses that would interbreed with local ecotypes – grasses adapted to New England – and disrupt the local grasses’ gene complexes.
At that time, however, there was no reliable seed supply for local ecotypes in New England. Only a few sources offered an incomplete selection of small quantities of local seeds, at prices that were too expensive for large-scale restoration projects. Most organizations carrying out ecological restoration projects purchased their bulk seeds mainly from large wholesale producers in the Midwest, which introduced non-local genetic material to the restoration sites.
Improving native seed supply chains
Many agencies are concerned that lack of a local seed supply could limit restoration efforts in New England. To tackle this problem, our team launched a project in 2022 with funding from the New England Transportation Consortium. Our goals are to increase native plantings and pollinator habitats with seeds from local ecotypes, and to make our previous recommendations for roadside restoration with native grasses more feasible.
As we were analyzing ways to obtain affordable native seeds for these roadside projects, we learned about work by Eve Allen, a master’s degree student in city planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For her thesis, Allen used supply chain management and social network analysis to identify the best methods to strengthen the native seed supply chain network.
Her research showed that developing native seed supplies would require cooperative partnerships that included federal, state and local government agencies and the private and nonprofit sectors. Allen reached out to many of these organizations’ stakeholders and established a broad network. This led to the launch of the regional Northeast Seed Network, which will be hosted by the Massachusetts-based Native Plant Trust, a nonprofit that works to conserve New England’s native plants.
We expect this network will promote all aspects of native seed production in the region, from collecting seeds in the wild to cultivating plants for seed production, developing regional seed markets and carrying out related research. In the meantime, we are developing a road map for new revegetation practices in New England.
We aim to build greater coordination between these agencies and seed producers to promote expanded selections of affordable native seeds and make demand more predictable. Our ultimate goal is to help native plants, bees and butterflies thrive along roads throughout New England.
Many parents of young children face behavioral concerns like children not listening, throwing tantrums, biting and more. While every situation is unique, parents can rest assured they aren’t alone and these behaviors aren’t atypical.
“As young children grow and develop, behavioral challenges are to be expected,” said Dr. Lauren Starnes, senior vice president and chief academic officer, The Goddard School. “That said, just because these behaviors are often normal doesn’t mean they are easy for the parents addressing them or the young children experiencing them.”
While eliminating undesired behaviors like defiance, tantrums and biting is likely unrealistic, it’s not a lost cause for parents. Understanding why certain behaviors occur and the appropriate techniques to address them can help parents mitigate their impact and lessen their frequency, duration and severity.
Starnes recommends these ways to understand and address challenging behaviors in young children.
Biting
Infants often bite when teething. Young toddlers bite out of excitement, exploration or in response to inconsistencies in their environment. Older toddlers and 2-year-olds frequently bite as a communication method, such as when they fail to have the language to communicate frustration.
For children who are 3 years of age or older, biting is typically an aggressive behavior. Understanding the root cause can help tailor the response more appropriately to curb the behavior. For example, giving infants various textured teething toys can lessen the likelihood they will bite. For 2-year-olds, modeling how to use words and phasing out oral soothing items like pacifiers can also reduce the likelihood of biting.
Defiance
Raising young children means preparing to hear them say, “No.” One of the primary developmental milestones of early childhood is emerging independence. The overt exertion of independence tends to peak at or around age 2 and can continue at varying degrees of intensity, depending in part upon the personality of the child.
One important factor about defiant behavior is that while it is independence exertion, it is also attention-seeking. Behavior is communication and some defiant actions may simply be a means of obtaining attention and situational control. By giving children more independence – for example, asking “Can you please put your shoes on for me?” or “Can you pick which one of these dresses you want to wear today?” – you may be able to help them become compliant.
Logical consequences can also help. For example, if children refuse to sit in their chair to eat, have them stand for dinner or remove their snack until they sit.
Tantrums
The American Academy of Pediatrics defines tantrums as a behavioral response by young children who are learning to be independent and desire to make choices yet lack the coping and self-regulation skills to handle frustration. Whether a tantrum is triggered by communication gaps, frustration or a reinforced behavior to control a situation, there are specific techniques that can be used to deescalate the behavior and help children regain emotional composure.
Your reaction to a tantrum is a direct predictor of its intensity and longevity. Taking an opposite position to children in terms of volume, speed of movement and pace of speech can be enough to counterbalance the tantrum.
Another effective technique to curb a tantrum is sportscasting. Using a soft tone of voice, sportscasting is the verbal, non-biased account of what is happening in the moment retold in third-person as though telling a story or broadcasting a sport. While this may feel awkward at first, it often catches children’s attention and deescalates their reaction. For example, “Lou wanted more gummy bears. Mom said no. Lou is yelling and crying.”
There is no silver bullet to stop biting, defiance and tantrums. These behaviors, for better or worse, are expected parts of early childhood. However, by gaining an understanding of their root causes and employing appropriate techniques to address these behaviors, parents can mitigate their impact while helping children develop and grow socially and emotionally.
For more actionable parenting insights, guidance and resources – including a webinar with Starnes providing additional tips for behavioral guidance – visit GoddardSchool.com.
That’s because what’s been driving income inequality in the United States – and around the world for years – is that the very rich are getting even richer, rather than the poor getting poorer.
In every major region of the world outside of Europe, extreme wealth is becoming concentrated in just a handful of people.
Gini index
Economists and other experts track the gap between the rich and the poor with what’s known as the Gini index or coefficient.
This common measure of income inequality is calculated by assessing the relative share of national income received by proportions of the population.
In a society with perfect equality – meaning everyone receives an equal share of the pie – the Gini coefficient would be 0. In the most unequal society conceivably possible, where a single person hoarded every penny of that nation’s wealth, the Gini coefficient would be 1.
The Gini index rose by 1.2% in the U.S. in 2021 to 0.494 from 0.488 a year earlier, the Census found. In many other countries, by contrast, the Gini has been declining even as the COVID-19 pandemic – and the deep recession and weak economic recovery it triggered – worsened global income inequality.
Inequality tends to be greater in developing countries than wealthier ones. The United States is an exception. The U.S. Gini coefficient is much higher than in similar economies, such as Denmark, which had a Gini coefficient of 0.28 in 2019, and France, where it stood at 0.32 in 2018, according to the World Bank.
Wealth inequality
The inequality picture is even bleaker when looking beyond what people earn – their income – to what they own – their assets, investments and other wealth.
In 2021, the richest 1% of Americans owned 34.9% of the country’s wealth, while average Americans in the bottom half had only US$12,065 – less money than their counterparts in other industrial nations. By comparison, the richest 1% in the United Kingdom and Germany owned only 22.6% and 18.6% of their country’s wealth, respectively.
Globally, the richest 10% of people now possess nearly 76% of the world’s wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% own just 2%, according to the 2022 World Inequality Report, which analyzes data and the work of more than 100 researchers and inequality experts.
Drivers of extreme income and wealth
Large increases in executive pay are contributing to higher levels of income inequality.
Take a typical corporate CEO. Back in 1965, he – all CEOs were white men then, and most still are today – earned about 20 times the amount of an average worker at the company he led. In 2018, the typical CEO earned 278 times as much as their typical employees.
Their assets grow in large part because of a cascade of corporate and individual tax breaks, rather than salaried wages granted by shareholders. When the wealthy in the United States earn money from capital gains, the highest tax rate they pay is 20%, whereas the highest income earners are on the hook for as much as 37% on every additional dollar they earn.
This calculation does not even count the effects of tax breaks, which often slash the real-world capital gain tax to much lower levels.
Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter CEO Elon Musk is currently the world’s richest man, with a fortune of $240 billion, according to a Bloomberg estimate. The $383 million he made per day in 2020 made it possible for him to buy enough Tesla Model 3 cars to cover almost the whole of Manhattan had he wished to do so.
Musk’s wealth accumulation is extreme. But the founders of several tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Amazon, have all earned many billions of dollars in just a few years. The average person could never make that much money through a salary alone.
Globally, inequality is so extreme that the world’s 10 richest men possess more wealth than the 3.1 billion poorest people, Oxfam has calculated.
Economists who study global inequality have found that the rich in large English-speaking countries, along with India and China, have seen a dramatic rise in their earnings since the 1980s. Inequality boomed as deregulation, economic liberalization programs and other policies created opportunities for the rich to get richer.
Why inequality matters
The rich tend to spend less of their money than the poor. As a result, the extreme concentration of wealth can slow the pace of economic growth.
The richest people have more wealth than entire countries. Such extreme power and influence in the hands of a select few who face little accountability is raising concerns that are part of a robust debate on whether and how to address extreme inequality.
Many proposed solutions call for new taxes, regulations and policies, along with philanthropic strategies like using grants and community-based investments to dismantle inequality.
Voters in some states, like Massachusetts, voted to raise taxes on the income earned by their richest residents in ballot initiatives in November 2022. Proponents of these initiatives claim the revenue raised would boost funding for public services, such as education and infrastructure. President Joe Biden is also proposing to almost double the top capital gains tax for those making over $1 million.
However societies choose to act, I believe change is needed.
Over the past decade, vinyl records have made a major comeback. People purchased US$1.2 billion of records in 2022, a 20% jump from the previous year.
Not only did sales rise, but they also surpassed CD sales for the first time since 1988, according to a new report from the Recording Industry Association of America.
Who saw that coming?
I certainly didn’t. In the mid-1990s, I sold off my family’s very large collection of records over my wife’s protests. I convinced her we needed the space, even if the buyer was picking up the whole stash for a song.
Back then, of course, there were far fewer options for listening to music – it was years before on-demand streaming and smartphones.
I now teach at a business school and follow the economy’s latest trends. Sales of records have been increasing since 2007, and the data shows the vinyl record industry’s rebound still has not peaked. Last year, the music industry sold 41.3 million albums, more than in any year since 1988.
One suggestion is that sales have been spurred by baby boomers, many of whom are now entering retirement and are eager to tap into the nostalgia of their youth.
Second, data from the recording industry shows the most likely person to buy a LP record is in Gen Z – people born from 1997 to 2012.
Another theory is that records are cheap. While that might have been true in the past, today’s vinyl records command a premium. “Cracker Island,” the Gorillaz album that is currently topping the vinyl sales charts, lists for almost $22 – twice the cost of the CD. Plus, subscribing to an online service like Spotify for 15 bucks a month gives you access to millions of tracks.
A third explanation for the resurgence is that people claim records have better sound quality than digital audio files. Records are analog recordings that capture the entire sound wave. Digital files are sampled at periodic intervals, which means only part of the sound wave is captured.
While LP records are not sampled or compressed, they do develop snap, crackle and popping sounds after being played multiple times. Records also skip, which is something that doesn’t happen with digital music.
If you’re really going for quality, CDs are usually a superior digital format because the audio data is not compressed and has much better fidelity than records.
In it, he explained that people often buy items as a way to gain and convey status. One of Veblen’s key ideas is that not everything in life is purchased because it is easy, fun or high quality.
Sometimes harder, more time-consuming or exotic items offer more status.
A cake is a great example. Say you offer to bring a cake to a party. You can buy a bakery-made cake that will look perfect and take only a few minutes to purchase. Or you could bake one at home. Even if it’s delicious, it won’t look as nice and will take hours to make.
But if your friends are like mine, they’ll gush over the homemade cake and not mention the perfect store-bought one.
Buying and playing vinyl records is becoming a status symbol.
Today, playing music is effortless. Just shout your request at a smart speaker, like Siri or Alexa, or touch an app on your smartphone.
Playing a record on a turntable takes time and effort. Building your collection requires thoughtful deliberation and money. A record storage cube alongside an accompanying record player also makes for some nice living room decor.
And now I – the uncool professor that I am – find myself bemoaning the loss of all of those albums I sold years ago.
The U.S. military is intensifying its commitment to the development and use of autonomous weapons, as confirmed by an update to a Department of Defense directive. The update, released Jan. 25, 2023, is the first in a decade to focus on artificial intelligence autonomous weapons. It follows a related implementation plan released by NATO on Oct. 13, 2022, that is aimed at preserving the alliance’s “technological edge” in what are sometimes called “killer robots.”
Both announcements reflect a crucial lesson militaries around the world have learned from recent combat operations in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh: Weaponized artificial intelligence is the future of warfare.
“We know that commanders are seeing a military value in loitering munitions in Ukraine,” Richard Moyes, director of Article 36, a humanitarian organization focused on reducing harm from weapons, told me in an interview. These weapons, which are a cross between a bomb and a drone, can hover for extended periods while waiting for a target. For now, such semi-autonomous missiles are generally being operated with significant human control over key decisions, he said.
Pressure of war
But as casualties mount in Ukraine, so does the pressure to achieve decisive battlefield advantages with fully autonomous weapons – robots that can choose, hunt down and attack their targets all on their own, without needing any human supervision.
This month, a key Russian manufacturer announced plans to develop a new combat version of its Marker reconnaissance robot, an uncrewed ground vehicle, to augment existing forces in Ukraine. Fully autonomous drones are already being used to defend Ukrainian energy facilities from other drones. Wahid Nawabi, CEO of the U.S. defense contractor that manufactures the semi-autonomous Switchblade drone, said the technology is already within reach to convert these weapons to become fully autonomous.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, has argued that fully autonomous weapons are the war’s “logical and inevitable next step” and recently said that soldiers might see them on the battlefield in the next six months.
Proponents of fully autonomous weapons systems argue that the technology will keep soldiers out of harm’s way by keeping them off the battlefield. They will also allow for military decisions to be made at superhuman speed, allowing for radically improved defensive capabilities.
Currently, semi-autonomous weapons, like loitering munitions that track and detonate themselves on targets, require a “human in the loop.” They can recommend actions but require their operators to initiate them.
By contrast, fully autonomous drones, like the so-called “drone hunters” now deployed in Ukraine, can track and disable incoming unmanned aerial vehicles day and night, with no need for operator intervention and faster than human-controlled weapons systems.
Calling for a timeout
Critics like The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots have been advocating for more than a decade to ban research and development of autonomous weapons systems. They point to a future where autonomous weapons systems are designed specifically to target humans, not just vehicles, infrastructure and other weapons. They argue that wartime decisions over life and death must remain in human hands. Turning them over to an algorithm amounts to the ultimate form of digital dehumanization.
Together with Human Rights Watch, The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots argues that autonomous weapons systems lack the human judgment necessary to distinguish between civilians and legitimate military targets. They also lower the threshold to war by reducing the perceived risks, and they erode meaningful human control over what happens on the battlefield.
This composite image shows a ‘Switchblade’ loitering munition drone launching from a tube and extending its folded wings.U.S. Army AMRDEC Public Affairs
The organizations argue that the militaries investing most heavily in autonomous weapons systems, including the U.S., Russia, China, South Korea and the European Union, are launching the world into a costly and destabilizing new arms race. One consequence could be this dangerous new technology falling into the hands of terrorists and others outside of government control.
The updated Department of Defense directive tries to address some of the key concerns. It declares that the U.S. will use autonomous weapons systems with “appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.” Human Rights Watch issued a statement saying that the new directive fails to make clear what the phrase “appropriate level” means and doesn’t establish guidelines for who should determine it.
But as Gregory Allen, an expert from the national defense and international relations think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues, this language establishes a lower threshold than the “meaningful human control” demanded by critics. The Defense Department’s wording, he points out, allows for the possibility that in certain cases, such as with surveillance aircraft, the level of human control considered appropriate “may be little to none.”
The updated directive also includes language promising ethical use of autonomous weapons systems, specifically by establishing a system of oversight for developing and employing the technology, and by insisting that the weapons will be used in accordance with existing international laws of war. But Article 36’s Moyes noted that international law currently does not provide an adequate framework for understanding, much less regulating, the concept of weapon autonomy.
The current legal framework does not make it clear, for instance, that commanders are responsible for understanding what will trigger the systems that they use, or that they must limit the area and time over which those systems will operate. “The danger is that there is not a bright line between where we are now and where we have accepted the unacceptable,” said Moyes.
Impossible balance?
The Pentagon’s update demonstrates a simultaneous commitment to deploying autonomous weapons systems and to complying with international humanitarian law. How the U.S. will balance these commitments, and if such a balance is even possible, remains to be seen.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the custodian of international humanitarian law, insists that the legal obligations of commanders and operators “cannot be transferred to a machine, algorithm or weapon system.” Right now, human beings are held responsible for protecting civilians and limiting combat damage by making sure the use of force is proportional to military objectives.
If and when artificially intelligent weapons are deployed on the battlefield, who should be held responsible when needless civilian deaths occur? There isn’t a clear answer to that very important question.
Superconductors make highly efficient electronics, but the ultralow temperatures and ultrahigh pressures required to make them work are costly and difficult to implement. Room-temperature superconductors promise to change that.
The recent announcement by researchers at the University of Rochester of a new material that is a superconductor at room temperature, albeit at high pressure, is an exciting development – if proved. If the material or one like it works reliably and can be economically mass-produced, it could revolutionize electronics.
Room-temperature superconducting materials would lead to many new possibilities for practical applications, including ultraefficient electricity grids, ultrafast and energy-efficient computer chips, and ultrapowerful magnets that can be used to levitate trains and control fusion reactors.
In recent decades, researchers have developed so-called high-temperature superconductors, which only have to be chilled to minus-10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-23 Celsius). Though easier to work with than traditional superconductors, high-temperature superconductors still require special thermal equipment. In addition to cold temperatures, these materials require very high pressure, 1.67 million times more than the atmospheric pressure of 14.6 pounds per square inch (1 bar).
Superconductor electronics refers to electronic devices and circuits that use superconducting materials to achieve extremely high levels of performance and energy efficiency that are orders of magnitude better than can be achieved with state-of-the-art semiconductor devices and circuits.
The lack of electrical resistance in superconducting material means that they can support high electrical currents without any energy loss due to resistance. This efficiency makes superconductors very attractive for power transmission.
Utility provider Commonwealth Edison installed high-temperature superconducting transmission lines and showcased technologies to bring power to Chicago’s north side for a one-year trial period. Compared to conventional copper wire, the upgraded superconducting wire can carry 200 times the electrical current. But the cost of maintaining the low temperatures and high pressures required for today’s superconductors makes even this efficiency gain impractical in most cases.
Because the resistance of a superconductor is zero, if a current is applied to a superconducting loop, the current will persist forever unless the loop is broken. This phenomenon can be used in various applications to make large permanent magnets.
Today’s magnetic resonance imaging machines use superconductor magnets to achieve the magnetic field strength of a few teslas, which is needed for accurate imaging. For comparison, the Earth’s magnetic field has a strength, or flux density, of about 50 microteslas. The magnetic field produced by the superconducting magnet in a 1.5 tesla MRI machine is 30,000 times stronger than that produced by the Earth.
Superconductors, from theory to applications.
The scanner uses the superconducting magnet to generate a magnetic field that aligns hydrogen nuclei in a patient’s body. This process combined with radio waves produces images of tissue for an MRI exam. The strength of the magnet directly affects the strength of the MRI signal. A 1.5 tesla MRI machine requires longer scan times to create clear images than a 3.0 tesla machine.
Superconducting materials expel magnetic fields from inside themselves, which makes them powerful electromagnets. These super-magnets have the potential to levitate trains. Superconducting electromagnets generate 8.3 tesla magnetic fields – more than 100,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field. The electromagnets use a current of 11,080 amperes to produce the field, and a superconducting coil allows the high currents to flow without losing any energy. The Yamanashi superconducting Maglev train in Japan levitates 4 inches (10 centimeters) above its guideway and travels at speeds up to 311 mph (500 kph).
Superconducting circuits are also a promising technology for quantum computing because they can be used as qubits. Qubits are the basic units of quantum processors, analogous to but much more powerful than transistors in classical computers. Companies such as D-Wave Systems, Google and IBM have built quantum computers that use superconducting qubits. Though superconducting circuits make good qubits, they pose some technological challenges to making quantum computers with large numbers of qubits. A key issue is the need to keep the qubits at very low temperatures, which requires the use of large cryogenic devices known as dilution refrigerators.
Room-temperature superconductors would remove many of the challenges associated with the high cost of operating superconductor-based circuits and systems and make it easier to use them in the field.
Room-temperature superconductors would enable ultra high-speed digital interconnects for next-generation computers and low-latency broadband wireless communications. They would also enable high-resolution imaging techniques and emerging sensors for biomedical and security applications, materials and structure analyses, and deep-space radio astrophysics.
Room-temperature superconductors would mean MRIs could become much less expensive to operate because they would not require liquid helium coolant, which is expensive and in short supply. Electrical power grids would be at least 20% more power efficient than today’s grids, resulting in billions of dollars saved per year, according to my estimates. Maglev trains could operate over longer distances at lower costs. Computers would run faster with orders of magnitude lower power consumption. And quantum computers could be built with many more qubits, enabling them to solve problems that are far beyond the reach of today’s most powerful supercomputers.
Whether and how soon this promising future of electronics can be realized depends in part on whether the new room-temperature superconductor material can be verified – and whether it can be economically mass-produced.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 17, 2023, over war crimes in Ukraine, alleging he bears “individual criminal responsibility” for abducting thousands of children from occupied parts of the country.
Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, was also cited by the court on similar charges.
They mark the first arrest warrants the independent tribunal, based in The Hague, has issued since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
But the development will not guarantee the imminent arrest of Putin. The ICC, as it is often called, does not have its own police force and requires other supporting countries to enforce its warrants.
“The ICC is doing its part of work as a court of law. The judges issued arrest warrants. The execution depends on international cooperation,” the court’s president, Piotr Hofmanski, said in a statement on March 17.
As Russian police aren’t likely to arrest their country’s leader, as long as Putin remains inside Russia, he is probably safe.
Since Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian government, Western powers and the United Nations have collected evidence of Russian violations of international humanitarian law, such as war crimes. This includes widespread sexual violence and the forced abduction and transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Since 1998, I have worked in securing forensic evidence of these types of crimes in Afghanistan, Guatemala and other places. To me, it is apparent that identifying and collecting evidence of international crimes like killing civilians during conflict is beyond the capabilities and resources of local police crime scene teams, criminal investigators and prosecutors.
It surprises me that arrest warrants would be issued for the abduction of Ukrainian children. In order to successfully prosecute this crime, investigators will need to show that not only did the alleged abductors take the children against their will, but that they also did not intend to return the children to their legal guardians. This can be more challenging to prove than other kinds of war crimes.
To put these upcoming indictments into perspective, it is also useful to remember that the International Criminal Court, an independent tribunal based in The Hague often known as the ICC, tends to focus on high-level cases that go after political leaders and is not tasked to provide answers to families of all victims.
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court building in The Hague, Netherlands.Michel Porro/Getty Images
Proving war crimes
War crimes, under international law, happen when civilians, prisoners of war, hospitals or schools – essentially anyone and anything that isn’t involved in military activities – are targeted during a conflict.
The Ukrainian government and Donetsk People’s Republic, a Ukrainian breakaway region occupied by Russians, have prosecuted and convicted both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers for war crimes since February 2022.
Ukraine has so far convicted 25 Russian soldiers of war crimes in Ukraine. These prosecutions raise questions about how evidence is collected and handled to support these cases – and about credibility.
I investigate cases in which law enforcement, military and police are alleged to have committed crimes against civilians without accountability. In many cases, these alleged crimes happen during a civil war, like the Guatemalan civil war in the late 1970s and early 1980s, or the Rwandan conflict and genocide in the mid-1990s.
This means that I often work with international organizations like the United Nations to travel to these places and document physical evidence of war crimes – take photographs, take notes, do measurements and draw sketches to illustrate a potential crime scene. The idea is that any other experts can pick up this evidence and reach their own conclusions about what happened there.
Crime scene investigators like me generally do not determine whether a war crime was committed. That is a decision reserved for the prosecutor or a judge who is given the evidence.
Considering that this war is fought between Ukrainians and Russians – but involves other countries like the United States – any independent effort to investigate war crimes will raise questions of credibility.
In this context, one has to consider if an independent investigation and prosecution is even possible. The ICC is perhaps the best candidate, even though it is far from immune to political pressure, particularly from powerful countries.
The ICC has a specific mandate to go after people allegedly responsible “for the gravest crimes of concern to the international community.” This includes genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The forced transfer and deportation of a group of people is a war crime.
But the ICC isn’t tasked with investigating the fate of victims on all sides of the war. This will take a separate effort, decades of work and cost a large amount of money, requiring the support of rich countries.
Since its inception in 2002, the ICC has indicted more than 40 people, all from Africa, and convicted 10 of them. While 123 countries are party to the ICC, meaning they have signed on to support its work, neither Russia nor Ukraine has ratified the treaty that allows the ICC to investigate crimes on their territories or by their forces.
Russia’s foreign ministry responded to the March 17 announcement by the ICC by saying that the arrest warrant does not “have meaning” for Russia, since it is not a party to the ICC.
The U.S. also never ratified the ICC’s founding treaty, with the justification that it would not accept prosecution of U.S. soldiers by a foreign court.
In some cases, the ICC has not been able to successfully prosecute people even when it issues indictments. The court in 2009 and 2010, for example, issued indictments against Omar al-Bashir, former head of state in Sudan, for his role in carrying out genocide, and directing war crimes in Darfur. Yet, even though al-Bashir traveled internationally, no authority in any country he visited ever arrested him, despite the ICC’s arrest warrant.
A makeshift memorial dedicated to children killed, wounded, deported or missing in Ukraine is seen outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin in February 2023.Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
Proving abductions took place
Russian forces have moved at least 6,000 Ukrainian children to camps and facilities across Russia for forced adoptions and military training, according to a March 2023 report by the Conflict Observatory, a program supported by the U.S. State Department.
Showing sufficient evidence that Russia forcibly abducted the children and did not intend to return them to their legal guardians would likely involve the children’s family members giving witness statements. That is, unless the ICC’s prosecutor has obtained Russian military documents or communications that clearly indicate that these are involuntary abductions.
Contrast this with trying to prosecute Russian military commanders and leaders for conducting multiple bombings of nonmilitary sites in Ukraine, such as hospitals or schools. It would be relatively simple to provide evidence that the attacks on these places constituted war crimes, as long as there is no evidence that these sites lost their protected status under international law, such as evidence that a bombed hospital or school had been used for military purposes.
But it is important to remember that the ICC’s prosecution of any war crime will not extend beyond the individual arrest and prosecution of soldiers and political leaders. The court is not responsible for repatriating children to their respective families.
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