● [Tech] Is 3D printing the future of social housing? ︴ ︴

▼ A family in France has become the first in the world to move into a 3D-printed house. The four-bedroom property is a prototype for bigger projects aiming to make housebuilding quicker and cheaper. Could it cause a shift in the building industry? With curved walls designed to reduce the effects of humidity and digital controls for disabled people, this house could be an expensive realisation of an architect's vision. But having taken 54 hours to print - with four more months for contractors to add in things such as windows, doors and the roof - its cost of around £176,000 to build makes it 20% cheaper than an identical construction using more traditional solutions. The team now believe they could print the same house again in only 33 hours. The 95m (1022ft) square house - built for a family of five with four bedrooms and a big central space in Nantes - is a collaboration between the city council, a housing association and University of Nantes. Francky Trichet, the council's lead on technology and innovation, says the purpose of the project was to see whether this type of construction could become mainstream for housing, and whether its principles could be applied to other communal buildings, such as sports halls. He believes the process will disrupt the construction industry. "For 2,000 years there hasn't been a change in the paradigm of the construction process. We wanted to sweep this whole construction process away," he says. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Tech] Facebook finds Independence document 'racist'. ︴ ︴

▼ Facebook's algorithms have ruled that parts of the US Declaration of Independence are hate speech and removed excerpts of them posted to the platform. In the run-up to Independence Day, a US community paper based in Texas had been posting small daily chunks of the historic document on its Facebook page. At issue was a part of it that referred to "merciless Indian savages". Facebook later apologised and allowed the posting. The Liberty County Vindicator- which is currently unavailable in the EU - had been sharing excerpts from America's founding document to its Facebook page in an attempt to encourage historical literacy among its readers. Part 10 did not appear, with the paper receiving a notice from Facebook saying the post went against its standards on hate speech. Editor Casey Stinnett wrote afterwards of the offending paragraph: "Perhaps had Thomas Jefferson written it as 'Native Americans at a challenging stage of cultural development' that would have been better. "Unfortunately, Jefferson, like most British colonists of his day, did not hold an entirely friendly view of Native Americans." The newspaper later confirmed that Facebook had had a change of heart and apologised. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Why Do Babies Barely Blink? ︴ ︴

▼ Stare into a baby's eyes, and you might notice something odd: Babies rarely blink. As numerous studieshave documented, adults, blink about 15 times a minute, on average. But newbornsand infants blink far less often — only a handful of times every minute, with some babies blinking as infrequently as once a minute. "The average is two or three blinks a minute — so, decidedly low," said Leigh Bacher, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Oswego. This may seem like just an odd little behavior, but researchers believe babies' blinks may hold insights about the mysterious brains of these tiny humans. That's because blinking is regulated by the brain's dopamine, one of the neurotransmitters that allows brain cells to communicate. So, studying blinking in babies could help us better understand how this important neurotransmitter operates in little ones. Studies have shown the link between dopamine and blinking, as conditions or drugs that affect dopamine also change blinking rates. People with schizophrenia, which may be caused, in part, by too much dopamine, blink more frequently. Conversely, in Parkinson's disease, which is caused by the death of dopamine-producing neurons, blinking is markedly decreased. Taking medication to raise dopamine levels brings blinking rate back up. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Arachnids may sense electrical fields to gain a true spidey sense Ballooning behavior might not just be about catching the breeze.. ︴ ︴

▼ Spiders: it shouldn’t be surprising that a creature with four times our number of legs and eyes sees the world a little differently. But as research is starting to reveal, arachnids can even perceive forces we can’t. A new study from researchers at the University of Bristol reveals that spiders are sensitive to electrical fields like those all around us in the earth’s atmosphere. That atmospheric electric circuit is what causes weather like thunderstorms, and the researchers argue that when conditions are right, it also might prompt spiders to take flight, ”ballooning” on strands of web. Previous theories, which date back to at least the early 1800s, held that spiders ballooned in the presence of appropriately strong winds to flit from place to place. But this was an incomplete explanation, the University of Bristol researchers argue. Although ballooning in spiders has been correlated to windy weather, biologist Erica Morleyand her colleague Daniel Robert set out to examine a different possible cause: electrostatic forces. Spiders tend to balloon at low wind speeds, and many spiders balloon on fans of silk strands that don’t seem to get tangled up in the air. Based on 2013 researchthat showed it should be technically possible for electricity in the air to influence ballooning, Morley and Roberts hypothesized that the atmospheric potential gradient, or APG (basically, how electrically charged the atmosphere is at different heights, which is variable) might be the missing piece of the puzzle. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Traces of 'Sonic Boom' Meteorites Found in the Ocean. ︴ ︴

▼ The meteorite fragments were found off the coast of Washington state. Credit: Mark Fries/NASA The first mission designed to hunt a meteorite that crashed into the ocean has now discovered what may be tiny fragments of the meteorite's crust, researchers say. On March 7, three National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather stations detected the fall of a meteoriteabout 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) off the coast of Washington state. "The fall was widely seen around local areas and widely heard around local areas — it came with some loud sonic booms," Marc Fries, the cosmic dust curator for NASA, told Live Science. Fries estimated this fall might yield about 4,400 lbs. (2,000 kilograms) of meteorites. He also calculated the largest meteorite might weigh about 9.7 lbs. (4.4 kg) and have a diameter of about 5 inches (12 centimeters). (▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [Science] Einstein's Theory of Gravity Passes Toughest Test to Date. ︴ ︴

▼ Massive objects, such as galaxies, warp space-time, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity. Credit: University of Warwick Einstein's theory of general relativity has passed its toughest-ever test with flying colors, a new study reports. General relativity, which the great physicist proposed in 1916, holds that gravity is a consequence of space-time's inherent flexibility: Massive objects distort the cosmic fabric, creating a sort of well around which other bodies orbit. Like all scientific theories, general relativity makes testable predictions. One of the most important is the "equivalence principle" — the notion that all objects fall in the same way, no matter how big they are or what they're made of. Researchers have confirmed the equivalence principle many times on Earth — and, famously, on the moon. In 1971, Apollo 15 astronaut David Scottdropped a feather and a hammer simultaneously; the two hit the gray lunar dirt at the same time. (On Earth, of course, the feather would flutter to the ground much later than the hammer, having been held up by our atmosphere.) But it's tough to know if the equivalence principle applies in all situations — when the objects involved are incredibly dense or massive, for example. This wiggle room has given hope to adherents of alternative gravity theories, though such folks remain in the minority. The new study could take some of the air out of their optimism. An international team of astronomers tested the equivalence principle under extreme conditions: a system composed of two superdense stellar corpses known as white dwarfsand an even denser neutron star.(▪ ▪ ▪)

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● [International News] Mother Teresa India charity home 'sold babies'. ︴ ︴

▼ A woman working at Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand has been arrested for allegedly selling a 14-day-old baby. Two other women employees from the centre have been detained and are being questioned about other possible cases. Police took action after the state's Child Welfare Committee (CWC) registered a complaint. The charity has not responded to BBC requests for comment. "We have found out that some other babies have also been illegally sold from the centre," a police official told BBC Hindi's Niraj Sinha. "We have obtained the names of the mothers of these babies and are further investigating." Police also recovered 140,000 rupees ($2,150; £1,625) from the centre, which is located in Jharkhand's capital, Ranchi. Nobel-laureate Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. The sisterhood has more than 3,000 nuns worldwide. She set up hospices, soup kitchens, schools, leper colonies and homes for abandoned children. The Missionaries of Charity also runs centres for unmarried pregnant women but no longer arranges adoptions. India's changing adoption rules By Jill McGivering, BBC News Legally adopting a baby in India can take from a few months to years. Each year, only a few thousand adoptions are formalised - a fraction of the number of those wanting to adopt. Informal estimates of the number of children who are abandoned or unwanted run into tens of thousands. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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.● [International News] Mexico fireworks: Tultepec warehouse blasts kills 24 ︴ ︴

▼ A series of explosions at a fireworks depot in Mexico has killed at least 24 people and injured about 40 others. The biggest blasts took place as police and fire fighters arrived at the scene in the town of Tultepec. Emergency workers are among the casualties. Video on social media shows a huge cloud of smoke over the site in Tultepec. The town, about 30km (20 miles) from Mexico City, is known as the country's pyrotechnic capital. 'Terrible blast' A market in the town has twice been badly damaged by explosions. More than 40 people died in blasts there in 2016. At the time there were calls for the market to be closed, but President Enrique Peña Nieto promised to rebuild it and help hundreds of local artisans who had lost their livelihoods. An explosion earlier this year killed seven people. Tultepec hosts Mexico's national pyrotechnics festival each year. The latest incident began at about 09:30 local time (14:30 GMT). Local people described the scene. "I was having breakfast when there was a terrible blast. We left the house running and I saw a huge white cloud in the sky, as if it were going to rain - except today it rained fire," said resident Alondra Perez, quoted by the AFP news agency. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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