Month: December 2021

Enlarge / This “quantum pendant” purports to protect the wearer from 5G signals. The anti-5G hysteria is a groundless conspiracy theory, but the pendants aren’t just useless trinkets. They emit low levels of ionizing radiation that can cause adverse health effects over time. (credit: Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu)

Worried that 5G cell phone towers are beaming dangerous levels of radiofrequency radiation into your brain? Forget the classic tinfoil hat and try the “quantum pendant” pictured above. It’s a much more stylish accessory. The product leans on a tried and true pseudoscientific marketing gimmick: Slap the label “quantum” on something, and the word imparts an aura of magical mystery in the minds of the perpetually gullible.

These kinds of “negative ion” products can be found for sale all over the Internet, claiming to enhance immune function, increase energy, and, yes, protect the wearer from supposedly harmful 5G waves, among other purported benefits. The hysteria over 5G risks has no scientific basis, and even if it did, “negative ions” aren’t some kind of magical defense. But if people want to spend their hard-earned cash on nonsense, that’s their prerogative. No harm, no foul, right?

Not so fast. It turns out that many of these products emit low levels of ionizing radiation that could be dangerous over prolonged use—so much so that the Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ANVS) in the Netherlands has just issued a consumer warning and banned the sale of ten such products, including that snazzy quantum pendant.

Enlarge / Just some of the prizes available in this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive Sweepstakes.

If you’ve been too busy playing Halo Infinite to take part in this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, don’t worry. You still have time to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $1,600 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win).

So far this year, after just over three days, nearly 100 readers have donated nearly $9,000 to either the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Child’s Play as part of the charity drive (Child’s Play is leading in the donation totals by about $1,100, FWIW). That’s a long way off from last year’s record haul of over $58,000, but there’s still plenty of time until the Charity Drive wraps up on Jan. 7, 2022.

That doesn’t mean you should put your donation off, though. Do yourself and the charities involved a favor and give now, while you’re thinking about it. Don’t let it slip your mind and end up kicking yourself in January for not taking part.

Enlarge (credit: Reshi Irshad / Getty Images)

On Friday, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their latest vaccine trial was showing some odd results in children within a specific age range. Children in the 2- to 5-year age group didn’t produce as strong of an antibody response to the vaccine as older and younger children did. As a result, the trial is being modified to include a third dose of vaccine for participants in this age group.

The trial was designed to enroll as many as 4,500 children to test the safety and efficacy of the companies’ messenger RNA vaccine. It included an early test of how well the vaccine was tolerated in different age groups. Based on these results, the companies went ahead with a two-tiered strategy: children from 5 to 11 years of age got two doses of 10 µg; younger children (down to six months in this trial) received two doses of 3 µg.

The trial is ongoing, and both the participants and doctors involved remain blinded to the status of the participants. But blood samples were obtained from some participants one month after the second dose and analyzed by a separate group of researchers who were not blinded as to the vaccine/placebo status of the participants. The analysis they performed showed an unexpected pattern.

Enlarge / The Robo-bass, along with some actual fish. (credit: Giovanni Polverino)

The mosquitofish is a particularly troublesome invasive species that has spread from its original home in North America to various locales around the world, including Europe and Australia. The small, 3 cm-long fish likes to chew the tails off fish and tadpoles and consume the eggs of other freshwater denizens.

Being an invasive species, the fish are mostly fearless, and they have no predators in the places they’ve colonized. However, an international team of biologists and engineers has found a solution to the problem: a robot.

Back in 2019, Giovanni Polverino—currently a post-doc at the University of Western Australia—and his colleagues developed a mechanical largemouth bass that proved to be effective in scaring mosquitofish. In North America, juvenile largemouth bass regularly make meals of the species; the primal fear of this predator has stuck with the mosquito fish as they traversed the globe.

Enlarge / Frank Huntley, who raises awareness of opiate addiction with his sculpture “Pill Man,” is among protesters who rallied at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on December 3, 2021, calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to bring criminal charges against members of the Sackler family. (credit: Getty Images | Pacific Press )

A federal judge yesterday rejected the Purdue Pharma settlement that would grant lifetime legal immunity to the Sackler family for their role in the opioid crisis, finding that the bankruptcy court doesn’t have the authority to approve legal immunity for people who did not declare bankruptcy. The ruling to vacate the bankruptcy plan was issued by Judge Colleen McMahon in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Non-debtors like the Sackler family members aren’t obligated to “disclose their assets and apply them… to the resolution of the claims of their creditors,” McMahon noted. Because non-debtors do not have those obligations, they also “do not have any rights at all under the ‘special remedial scheme’ that is bankruptcy—certainly not the ‘right’ to have claims that are being asserted against them outside the bankruptcy process released.”

The $4.5 billion settlement was previously approved by a judge in US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. While 15 US states agreed to the settlement, eight states and the District of Columbia objected to it and filed appeals. US government officials also objected to the settlement.