The Cross Heads

Who needs the dark web? Drug sales flourish on social media

For every illegal drug, there is a combination of emojis that dealers and consumers use to evade detection on social media and messaging platforms. Snowflakes, snowfall, and snowmen symbolize cocaine. Love hearts, lightning bolts, and pill capsules mean MDMA, or molly. Brown hearts and dragons represent heroin. Grapes and baby bottles are the calling cards […]

December 18, 2024 | drugs, illegal drugs, Instagram, Policy, snapchat, social media, syndication, telegram | No comments

Researchers home in on headache-causing compounds in red wine

Putting enzymes to the test Testing ALDH was the next step. We set up an inhibition assay in test tubes. In the assay, we measured how fast the enzyme ALDH breaks down acetaldehyde. Then, we added the suspected inhibitors—quercetin, as well as some other phenolics we wanted to test—to see whether they slowed the process. […]

December 16, 2024 | headaches, Health, red wine, sulfites, syndication, tannins | No comments

Weight loss drugs may also treat addiction, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease

Adam Steensberg, the chief executive of Danish biotech Zealand Pharma, which is developing an alternative weight loss product based on a different hormone, says “there is a duopoly already” in the GLP-1 market. Combining different drugs could be a way of expanding the effects of GLP-1s further still. Doctors such as Perkovic envisage a possible […]

December 12, 2024 | Features, GLP-1, Health, Ozempic, Science, syndication, wegovy, weight loss, weight loss drugs | No comments

The latest in poker cheats: Tiny cameras that can see cards as they’re dealt

“I think it’s kind of surprising that a lot of these things don’t happen sooner, to be perfectly honest,” Coles says, noting that many of these cameras, earpieces, and transmitters have existed for a decade or more. “You could do it with a very cheap investment,” Piallat says. “You won’t need a lot of money.” […]

December 11, 2024 | cameras, poker, syndication, Tech | No comments

Avian flu cases are on the upswing at big dairy farms

Rankin pointed to an analysis that looked at 39 different viral outbreaks in birds from 1959 to 2015, where a low pathogenic avian influenza became a highly pathogenic one. Out of those, 37 were associated with commercial poultry operations. “So it’s a very clear relationship between the increasing pathogenicity of this virus and its relationship […]

December 10, 2024 | avian flu, dairy cattle, H5N1, Health, syndication | No comments

Obesity rates are down. Is that because of weight-loss drugs?

The CDC’s recent findings come from a long-running survey known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, which employs health experts to collect information like weight and height measurements from a nationally representative sample of study participants. Obesity and severe obesity are determined based on body mass index, and results are reported […]

December 9, 2024 | Health, obesity, Ozempic, syndication, wegovy, weight loss drugs | No comments

Teen creates memecoin, dumps it, earns $50,000

On the evening of November 19, art adviser Adam Biesk was finishing work at his California home when he overheard a conversation between his wife and son, who had just come downstairs. The son, a kid in his early teens, was saying he had made a ton of money on a cryptocurrency that he himself […]

December 7, 2024 | cryptocurrency, memecoins, Policy, syndication | No comments

Lower-cost sodium-ion batteries are finally having their moment

In contrast, a sodium-ion battery relies on an element—sodium—that you can find in table salt and ocean water. Among the other benefits, sodium-ion batteries perform better than lithium-ion batteries in extreme cold. CATL has said its new battery works in temperatures as low as -40° Fahrenheit. Also, a sodium-ion battery has much lower risk of […]

December 6, 2024 | Cars, EVs, sodium batteries, sodium-ion batteries, syndication | No comments

$1 phone scanner finds seven Pegasus spyware infections

Seven out of 2,500 scans may sound like a small group, especially in the somewhat self-selecting customer base of iVerify users, whether paying or free, who want to be monitoring their mobile device security at all, much less checking specifically for spyware. But the fact that the tool has already found a handful of infections […]

December 5, 2024 | Biz & IT, nso group, pegasus, Security, spyware, syndication | No comments

Seagrass is fantastic at carbon capture—and it’s at risk of extinction

It’s best to wait to plant eelgrass in the early fall, after most of the late summer storms have passed, according to Novak, who spent several days planting seeds in Pleasant Bay and nearby East Harbor this September with a team including a biologist from the National Park Service and a representative from the Mashpee […]

December 4, 2024 | climate change, eel grass, Science, sea grass, syndication | No comments

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