Stockpiling Grain.

Feuding in Philadelphia.

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1. The Norwegian government on Tuesday signed a deal to start stockpiling grain, saying the COVID-19 pandemic, a war in Europe and climate change have made it necessary. The deal to store 30,000 tons of grain in 2024 and 2025 was signed by agriculture and food minister Geir Pollestad, finance minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum and four private companies. The wheat, which will belong to the Norwegian government, will be stored in already existing facilities by the companies in facilities across the country. Three of the companies will store at least 15,000 tons this year. Companies “are free to invest in new facilities and decide for themselves where they want to store the emergency grain, but they must make the grain available to the state if needed,” the government said. (Source: sfgate.com)

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2. It is widely accepted that humans have been heating up the planet for over a century by burning coal, oil and gas. Earth has already warmed by almost 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times, and the planet is poised to race past the hoped-for limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. But fewer people know that burning fossil fuels doesn’t just cause global warming — it also causes global cooling. It is one of the great ironies of climate change that air pollution, which has killed tens of millions, has also curbed some of the worst effects of a warming planet. Tiny particles from the combustion of coal, oil and gas can reflect sunlight and spur the formation of clouds, shading the planet from the sun’s rays. Since the 1980s, those particles have offset between 40 and 80 percent of the warming caused by greenhouse gases. Read the rest. (Source: washingtonpost.com)

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3. A low-power ultrasound system can alter activity deep within the brain with far greater precision than previously possible, allowing the organ to be studied in new ways. It will also help brain surgeons plan operations and could be used to treat some conditions directly. “I think it does open a new avenue for neuroscience,” says Charlotte Stagg at the University of Oxford, whose team created the system. “We can, for the first time, transiently, safely, non-invasively modulate activity in various bits of the deep brain and see what happens in healthy adults.” (Sources: newscientist.com, ndcn.ox.ac.uk)

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