The bacterium is known as Corynebacterium accolens. It was discovered decades earlier but wasn’t fully described until 1991. The bacterium has since been found to be the cause of a variety of infections including pelvic osteomyelitis, endocarditis, and breast abscesses. It’s also known to be found in the presence of the potential pathogen * Staphylococcus aureus* particularly in the nasal environment. This latter association suggests having this bacterium in the nose could lead to a higher risk for infection....

The controversial decision to prevent the EPA from taking this action centered around former President Obama’s Clean Power Plan introduced in 2015. However, this plan fell through because the Supreme Court stayed it in 2016, but the Biden administration expressed interest in bringing it back to life. The section of the Clean Air Act relevant in this case, Section 111, gave the EPA authority to regulate carbon emissions from various sources, such as coal plants....

Reducing tire drag Companies like Pirelli, Goodyear, and Continental have actively ramped up research and development of tires designed specifically for EVs. Rolling resistance is an important aspect of tire construction for EVs, as it directly affects both range and ride quality. Continental Tires defines rolling resistance as “the amount of energy a tire uses over a defined distance.” Reducing rolling distance requires a shallower tread depth and narrower footprint, along with harder tread compound and stiffer sidewalls....

Right now, manufacturers use a variety of terms, most of which you’ve probably seen: “use before,” “sell by,” “expires on,” and others. You might have wondered how a food company knows when their product is going to go bad. Here, at last, is the answer: they don’t. Not really. As the FDA notes, there’s no precise science behind creating a sell-by date. Manufacturers are estimating, and it’s not always clear whether they’re doing so based on safety concerns or just on quality....

Along with official questions about citizenship, national origin, work history, and family, there will soon be a new step to crossing into the US: a cheek swab. The federal government is moving to mass DNA test hundreds of thousands of people detained for immigration violations, and is also developing tools to analyze the samples rapidly and in bulk. In a press phone call on October 2, officials at the Department of Homeland Security revealed that everyone in ICE and CBP custody will be subject to DNA tests for a controversial FBI criminal database....

Looking for the complete list of 100 winners? Check it out here. Grand Award Winner Vision EQXX by Mercedes-Benz: The slipperiest EV This year, Mercedes-Benz introduced a one-off, world-beating car with an altruistic purpose: To make the most out of the heavy batteries at the core of the growing EV fleet. The numbers for the Vision EQXX are otherworldly for an EV: 3,900 pounds of car and 747 miles on a single charge....

What’s new? Back in 2016, the original Impossible Burger debuted as a veggie burger that could almost pass as beef. Its meaty secret was a molecule called heme, which contains iron and is largely responsible for the flavors we associate with cooked flesh. But, according to Impossible CEO Pat Brown, it requires a protein to bind it. The original Impossible Burger used wheat protein, which worked, but had some drawbacks. First, it meant the Impossible Burger wasn’t gluten-free, but it also put some limitations on the meat’s form factor....

The X7i downloads maps over Wi-Fi from a Web site called iFit, which lets you pick popular routes like San Francisco’s Golden Gate Trail, as well as treks you’ve designed on your computer across any territory covered by Google Maps. As you run, a seven-inch screen scrolls the map and shows snapshots of passing landmarks. (The “scenery” will help distract you from the burning in your legs—the machine cranks to 40 degrees upward or six downward....

McMasters University recently released a study showing a direct link between the amount of coverage an infectious disease receives from the media and the severity of that disease in the mind of the public. Essentially, we automatically assume the diseases we hear about on TV are much worse than the ones we don’t here about, which is not always the case. During a heavily reported recent outbreak of bluetongue, for instance, I overheard a woman in a supermarket say, “I’m not buying beef right now....

“The morgue is what makes the Times the Times,” says Jeff Roth, researcher and archival caretaker of the collection in a new video promoting the collaboration, “It’s the history of the world through the eyes of The New York Times.” Back in 2015 the grey lady had a bit of a scare when a pipe burst and partially flooded the subterranean room where the archives are stored. The damage was minimal, but the incident forced the company to begin examining ways that the images within could be digitized....

The order, which Reuters reports was carried out by Russia’s defense ministry on Monday the 28, includes adding more personnel to the military departments responsible for launching nuclear strikes. Staffing increases are one way to signal a readiness to launch nuclear weapons as a first strike, or to prepare to launch those same weapons in response to another country’s first strike. It is hard to know what, if any, other changes were made as part of Russia’s move....

But that aroma doesn’t happen by chance. During the research and development phase of building a new car, a great deal of work goes into ensuring that the first scent a customer detects when climbing into the driver’s seat isn’t something bothersome or overwhelming. And that means hiring a team of trained noses to sniff out anything offensive. In a newly released video by Nissan, the automaker shows just how serious it takes getting smells right....

We humans may toss around the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child,” but there are cases in the animal world where this is more literally true. Naked mole-rats, wrinkly mammals of the East African desert, offer an example of the whole “village” cooperating to raise offspring. Each individual naked mole-rat has a specific job. Like in a honeybee hive, a naked mole-rat colony has one queen, whose job it is to reproduce....

In fact, half of the world’s orca populations could collapse over the next century from exposure to polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) pollution, according to a study published last month in the journal Science. “I’m always just surprised to see that we’re still talking about these old contaminants and these are the ones we still find in the highest concentrations everywhere,” says Magali Houde, a researcher with the Aquatic Contaminants Research Division for the Canadian government, who was not involved in the new study....

Luckily, you don’t need to be an expert florist to make your bouquets last as long as possible—and in some cases, all you’ll need is a cotton ball or a teaspoon of sugar. Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style, out next week, provides the perfect guide to arranging and maintaining your blooms, and some gorgeous photos for inspiration. The following is an excerpt adapted from Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style by Christin Geall....

Arnu arrives at the A’Le’Inn in a big SUV, pulling up and saying hi to the hungover twentysomethings rocking in rocking chairs out front before he greets us. “You ready?” he asks, and we pack into his Tahoe and head right back out on the Extraterrestrial Highway. Arnu has owned property in Rachel since the early 2000s. Back in its boom, when the tungsten mine near Tempiute Mountain was still digging wealth out of the planet, around 500 people lived here....

When an NFL icon publicly declares that he isn’t taking the vaccine because he’s worried about his fertility, it’s worth paying attention to his reasoning—and not just because he has 4.5 million Twitter followers. He’s also in good company. Online searches for info on the COVID-19 vaccine and fertility increased by up to 710 percent in the 48 days after the vaccine received Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA, according to a study by University of Miami urologists....

The US will contribute 30 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a massive cache of federal fuel established after the oil crisis of the 1970s. The reserve sits in a series of underwater caverns along the petrochemical corridor of the western Gulf of Mexico, and allows the US Department of Energy to squirrel away crude oil to dispense when supplies are disrupted. The US tapped the reserve in November, as pandemic turmoil drove the price of a barrel of oil above $85, after years of hovering around $50....

And if you’re in the NYC area, you can come join us for an extra-weird live show on September 14. Fact: If you pee into the wrong kind of bottle, it can suck your penis inside By Mary Beth Griggs There are currently 174 books on and around my desk. I counted. This is wild, but it is not the weirdest thing I learned this week. That honor goes to a delightfully horrifying anecdote found in one of those 174 books....

These tiny bits of polymer infiltrate almost everywhere, and likely wrapped around the globe before we even realized they existed. And now, we’re finding them in our poop. (They’ve probably been there a while, too.) Researchers at the Medical University of Vienna and the Environment Agency Austria are the first to find microplastics in human stool samples. They plan to present their findings at United European Gastroenterology Week this week....