James' World 2

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Mosquitoes bite, suck your blood, and leave you with itchy bumps and possibly a horrible infection. Mosquito-borne pathogens include malaria, West Nile virus, Zika virus, Chikungunya virus, and dengue. No wonder so many of us want to learn how to kill mosquitoes for good.

While you might fantasize about living in a mosquito-free world, eradicating them would actually be disastrous for the environment. Adult mosquitoes are food for other insects, birds, and bats, while larval mosquitoes support aquatic ecosystems. The best we can hope for is to limit their ability to transmit disease, repel them, and kill them within the confines of our yards and homes.

Mosquito-killing products bring in the big bucks, so it should come as no surprise that there is a wealth of misinformation out there. Before you get sucked into buying a product that simply won’t work, get educated about what does and does not kill these blood-sucking pests.

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Most people believe the only good mosquito is a dead mosquito. Doug4537 / Getty Images

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California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has responded after a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration broke the law by deploying National Guard troops to Southern California during immigration enforcement operations and related protests.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco stopped short of ordering the troops’ immediate removal but said his ruling would take effect Friday, September 12. Breyer is the younger brother of Stephen Breyer, who served as a Supreme Court justice from 1994 to 2022.

The ruling blocks the Trump administration from “deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants.”

Newsom said in a statement, “Today, the court sided with democracy and the Constitution. No president is a king — not even Trump — and no president can trample a state’s power to protect its people. As the court today ruled, Trump is breaking the law by ‘creating a national police force with the President as its chief.’ That’s exactly what we’ve been warning about for months. There is no rampant lawlessness in California, and in fact, crime rates are higher in Republican-led states.”

Why It Matters

The ruling comes as Trump has discussed deploying the National Guard to various Democratic-led cities, including Chicago, Baltimore and New York, citing concerns about violent crime in the cities. However, crime statistics show that many Republican-run states and cities have equal, or higher, rates of crime.

Trump has already deployed the National Guard in Washington, D.C., in addition to placing the city’s police department under federal control.

“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal service in other cities across the country—including Oakland and San Francisco, here in the Northern District of California—thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief,” Breyer wrote in his ruling.

What To Know

In June, Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed an emergency request asking the court to block Trump and the Department of Defense from expanding the current mission of federalized Cal Guard personnel and Marines.

The governor’s office said the soldiers were ordered to “engage in unlawful civilian law enforcement activities in communities across the region.”

Roughly 4,000 National Guard soldiers and 700 Marines were deployed to Los Angeles in early June to deal with protests over immigration enforcement, despite objections from local and state officials.

What is the Posse Comitatus Act?

The Posse Comitatus Act is a law passed in 1878 that limits the use of federal military personnel. Breyer said the Trump administration violated the law in its deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles.

“Because Defendants’ alleged violations of the Posse Comitatus Act include allegations that Task Force 51 troops have engaged in law enforcement—a domain traditionally within the state’s control—California has suffered an injury that gives it standing to challenge those violations,” Breyer wrote.

What People Are Saying

California Governor Gavin Newsom, in a statement, “Trump’s attempt to use federal troops as his personal police force is illegal, authoritarian, and must be stopped in every courtroom across this country.”

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, in a ruling, “Los Angeles was the first U.S. city where President Trump and Secretary Hegseth deployed troops, but not the last.”

What Happens Next

Breyer’s ruling is scheduled to go into effect on Friday, September 12, which could give the Trump administration time to appeal the ruling.

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Scientists announced this week that they have managed to keep a genetically modified pig lung alive inside a human body—although briefly—for the first time. The lung survived for nine days, marking what some researchers say is an early step toward a major, long-hoped-for medical breakthrough. But others note that the road ahead is still a lengthy one.

With available human organs constantly filling only a tiny fraction of transplant demand, scientists have been trying for decades to turn pigs into lifesaving donors. Many pig organs are close in size and structure to those of humans, and pigs are prolific breeders that are relatively easy to raise in a pathogen-free environment. Researchers have successfully transplanted pig kidneys, livers, and hearts into humans, but lungs have remained a daunting challenge because of their complex physiology.

For one thing, lungs contain many blood vessels and white blood cells called macrophages, which surround and kill bacteria and viruses. These cells rapidly produce immune responses—but they also tend to trigger rapid and potentially lethal inflammation when surgeons restore blood flow after reducing it during transplant surgery. Because of such complexity, “we knew lungs would be the last organ that will get into the clinic,” says Muhammad Mohiuddin, a surgeon and president of the International Xenotransplantation Association, who conducted the first pig-to-human heart transplantation in 2022 but was not involved with the new experiment. And although it “is a great achievement” for the field, “we have to be cautiously optimistic” because this is just an early foray into understanding this extremely difficult procedure.

A team of scientists at China’s Guangzhou Medical University transplanted the pig lung into the body of a 39-year-old recipient who had already been declared brain-dead. The researchers used the gene-editing technique CRISPR to alter three pig genes that are naturally targeted by human antibodies. They also added three human genes to help prevent rejection. From the resulting genetically modified pig, they transplanted the left lung into the recipient, whose body was kept on life support, to observe how the organ functioned and how the human immune system responded. They also administered immunosuppressants to help prevent rejection.

The transplanted lung remained functional for nine days and was not immediately rejected by the human body. The scientists did report signs of lung tissue damage—produced by the lack of oxygen during the transplantation—one day after surgery, however. And the immune system showed the first signs of antibody-mediated rejection on days three and six. The experiment was terminated on day nine at the request of the recipient’s family.

In the study, which was published in Nature Medicine this week, the authors said that the process needs significant improvements, such as optimizing the pig’s genetic modifications and the immunosuppressive drugs used to avoid long-term rejection of the organ. None of the authors responded to Scientific American’s interview requests.“I don’t think blindly adding more knockouts and transgenes is the solution,” says Columbia University immunologist Megan Sykes, referring to genetic changes to the donor pig. If scientists take that approach, she adds, each modification should be tested separately by transplanting the pig organs into a baboon—a primate that is often used as a prehuman test stop for transplants. Sykes was not involved with the surgery and has focused on pig-to-baboon experiments to establish a recipient’s tolerance of transplanted lungs “I think tolerance, as well as better control of innate immunity, is going to be essential for the success,” she says.

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Hmmmmm… This is a major, groundbreaking accomplishment!

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After decades of research and development, a fusion reactor has finally achieved a continuous net energy output, marking a pivotal moment in the pursuit of sustainable energy. This groundbreaking achievement, hailed as one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century, could potentially revolutionize the global energy landscape. As nations compete to lead this new era of energy production, the implications for the environment, economy, and technology are profound.

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Fusion reactor

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