6 Key findings of this investigation: Right up until his arrest for child sex trafficking, Chomsky was advising Epstein on crisis management, sympathizing with the “horrible way you are being treated in the press and public.” On multiple occasions, Chomsky expressed his desire to visit Little St. James Island, site of Epstein’s infamous sex crimes.  …

Humans have five main senses, of course, and there's even strong scientific agreement about a sixth: proprioception, or the ability to sense where our limbs are in space. But new research suggests we may also have a "seventh sense." Scientists are calling it "remote touch."A study out of Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) recently set out to examine how humans compare to common shorebirds like sanderlings, sandpipers, and plovers.These birds are masters at finding prey hidden in the sand. In fact, their survival depends on it. By sticking their beaks into the sand, they use a tactile foraging system finely tuned to detect subtle vibrations and pressure changes, alerting them to food sources they can't see, smell, or hear. A sanderling looks for food. Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash The researchers had a hunch that humans might possess a similar ability and decided to put it to the test. They buried small cubes in a container of sand and asked participants to gently move their fingers around. Volunteers were told to stop when they felt they were close to touching or finding a cube, but before actually making physical contact with it.Surprisingly, the results showed that humans were quite adept at sensing the object's presence before they could touch it."Participants were able to perceive extremely small shifts in the sand caused by the buried object," QMUL wrote on SciTechDaily. "This level of sensitivity comes close to the theoretical physical limit for detecting mechanical reflections in granular material, where moving sand subtly changes direction or resistance when it encounters a stable surface beneath it." On average, the human participants in the study were about 70 percent accurate at detecting the hidden cube without actually touching it. Humans' sense of remote touch has never been put to the test before. Photo by Juli Kosolapova on Unsplash We've known for a long time that humans can be very sensitive to subtle changes in heat, pressure, and sensation. For example, it's been a common party trick among kids for decades. One person closes their eyes while another slowly moves a finger toward the center of their forehead. Usually, the person with their eyes closed can sense when the finger is close, even before it actually makes contact. There might be a tingling, tickling, or light buzzing feeling.However, research from QMUL shows just how advanced our remote touch abilities really are. To add further context for how finely tuned humans' remote touch ability is, the researchers then tested specially designed robots on the same task.The robot, armed with tactile sensors, was able to detect the hidden cube from farther away than humans, but it was far less accurate overall, with just 40 percent precision.The implications of this first-of-its-kind study are vast. For example, we may be able to better train robots based on what we learn about humans' extraordinarily fine-tuned sense of touch."The discovery opens possibilities for designing tools and assistive technologies that extend human tactile perception," said Zhengqi Chen, a PhD student at QMUL's Advanced Robotics Lab. "These insights could inform the development of advanced robots capable of delicate operations, for example locating archaeological artifacts without damage, or exploring sandy or granular terrains such as Martian soil or ocean floors. More broadly, this research paves the way for touch-based systems that make hidden or hazardous exploration safer, smarter, and more effective."More immediately, it's always amazing to discover new things about the human body and how it works. Our sense of touch, in particular, is incredibly complex and fascinating. Did you know that the "phantom touch illusion" can cause people to experience physical sensations when they aren't being touched at all? Or that amputees sometimes feel phantom pain coming from a limb that no longer exists? - YouTube www.youtube.com According to the researchers, remote touch has never been studied in humans before, and we're truly only scratching the surface when it comes to understanding this extraordinary ability. It's also exciting to think about what an eighth sense might one day turn out to be.

When you think back to your own school dances—from buttoned-up proms to casual after-the-ballgame romps—you may feel a tinge of wistful sadness, teenage angst, or residual awkwardness. But no matter the emotion, or perhaps because of it, you probably remember exactly which songs were playing. If you happen to hear an R&B slow jam or a classic rock power ballad on the radio, all of those feelings can come flooding back.While some tracks transcend age, every generation has its definitive slow-dance songs. If you look around online, you'll find numerous threads devoted to the topic, with hundreds of people casting their votes. So let's all shuffle into our collective gymnasium and remember some of these eternal bangers. - YouTube www.youtube.com "I can almost smell the gym full of kids wearing too much cologne"Our first stop is the r/GenX subreddit, where users shared some staples from middle school and high school. The OP mentioned a handful of '80s hits from Journey ("Open Arms," "Faithfully," and "Who's Crying Now") as well as favorites from Foreigner ("Waiting for a Girl Like You" and "I Want to Know What Love Is"). They also highlighted the Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes duet "Up Where We Belong," which sounds like it was scientifically engineered for slow dancing. Here are some other popular responses:Bryan Adams - "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You"Bryan Adams - "Heaven"Cyndi Lauper - "Time After Time"The Cars - "Drive"Nazareth - "Love Hurts"The Bangles - "Eternal Flame" "OMG," one person wrote. "[R]eading through this I can almost smell the gym full of kids wearing too much cologne and the popcorn machine run by a lunch lady getting in some overtime." - YouTube www.youtube.com "Still love that song!" One song kept popping up in threads for both Xennials and Millennials: K-Ci & JoJo's 1998 R&B anthem "All My Life.""My senior prom, I remember slow dancing to 'All My Life' by K-Ci & JoJo," one user wrote. "Still love that song!" Another Redditor added, "STOP IT. I opened the comments to say exactly this."These other '90s songs also got some votes: Seal - "Kiss From a Rose"Boyz II Men - "End of the Road"Aerosmith - "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"Savage Garden - "I Knew I Loved You"Goo Goo Dolls - "Iris"Celine Dion - "My Heart Will Go On"All-4-One - "I Can Love You Like That"Edwin McCain - "I'll Be"Brian McKnight - "Back at One" But what about the current millennium? Do teenagers even slow-dance these days? In 2023, Billboard's Kyle Denis spoke with a number of DJs to find out whether the ritual has disappeared for Gen Z. It's a fascinating look at shifting cultural norms, including how factors such as the omnipresence of camera phones and the lyrical sentiments of popular songs have helped drive that change."I feel like the content directly relates to it—to me, slow [dancing] goes with more romantic music," said DJ R-Tistic. "Whether it's [Jodeci's] 'Forever My Lady,' a Luther [Vandross] song, or even, for the late '90s, a D'Angelo-Lauryn Hill 'Nothing Even Matters.' Those [songs] are more about romance." - YouTube www.youtube.com

A family in Australia is hailing their 13-year-old son as a hero after he saved their lives following a kayaking and paddleboarding expedition that saw them quickly drift miles off shore. Austin Appelbee bravely left his family (mother Joanne, brother Beau and sister Grace) floating in the waters of Western Australia on Friday, Jan. 30 to seek help in. The nearest land was almost four miles away. "The wind picked up and it went from there," Joanne Appelbee told BBC News. "We lost oars, and we drifted out further.... It kind of all went wrong very, very quickly."With every moment dragging the family further into the ocean, Joanne had to make a gut-wrenching decision: to ask Austin to attempt to swim ashore for help, knowing he may not survive. - YouTube www.youtube.com A mother's gut-wrenching decisionWith conditions worsening and daylight fading, Joanne had to make one of the most difficult choices of her life."One of the hardest decisions I ever had to make was to say to Austin, 'Try to get to shore and get some help, this could get really serious really quickly,'" she told the ABC News. "I knew he was the strongest and he could do it. I would have never went because I wouldn't have left the kids at sea, so I had to send somebody."According to a statement from the WA Police Force, Austin "alerted authorities after he decided to return to shore in fading light and rough conditions. He paddled a short distance before his kayak took on water and swam approximately four kilometers (about two nautical miles) before reaching land."Naturaliste Marine Rescue commander Paul Bresland added that Austin swam for the first two hours with a life jacket on, calling his swimming "superhuman." "And the brave fella thought he's not going to make it with a life jacket on, so he ditched it, and he swam the next two hours without a life jacket," he explained to ABC News. - YouTube www.youtube.com The family had been stranded at sea for 10 hours when a rescue helicopter spotted Joanne and her two children clinging to a paddle board 8.5 miles offshore. A "volunteer marine rescue vessel was directed to their location and all three were successfully rescued and returned to shore."Joanne is also being hailed a hero for tethering herself and her kids to the paddleboard as they floated further and further out. "We kept positive, we were singing, and we were joking and … we were treating it as a bit of a game until the sun started to go down, and that's when it was getting very choppy [with] very big waves," she said. "As the sun went down, I thought something's gone terribly wrong here and my fear was that [Austin] didn't make it. Then, as it got darker, yeah, I thought there was no one coming to save us. It was the end, it was definitely the end." @cnn A 13-year-boy swam for more than two miles in "rough conditions" to get help for his family who were stranded out at sea. Austin Appelbee told CNN affiliate 9News that he focused on happy things to keep him going. #cnn #australia Austin Appelbee speaksAustin shared more about his heroic battle to save his family."I started paddling to shore on the kayak … but it kept taking on water and I was fighting rough seas and then I thought I saw something in the water and I was really scared," he shared with ABC News. "I was trying to get the happiest things in my head, and trying to make it through, [and not think of] the bad things that will distract me."Mentally, he had to keep himself locked in."And at this time, you know, the waves are massive, and I have no life jacket on … I just kept thinking 'just keep swimming, just keep swimming," he added. "And then I finally made it to shore, and I hit the bottom of the beach, and I just collapsed."However, the physical challenge was not over. Once he made it to land, Austin had to run two kilometers (about 1.25 miles) to the family's parked car to call authorities on his mom's cell phone."I said, 'I need helicopters, I need planes, I need boats, my family's out at sea.' I was very calm about it," he said, adding that "nice ladies on the beach" were able to offer him food before he "just passed out."Days later, Austin was using crutches to help him walk on incredibly sore legs. Despite the physical exertion and trauma, he remained humble about the ordeal."I don't think I am a hero—I just did what I did," he told BBC News.

Learning a new skill means studying and then practice, practice, practice. That might mean learning how to read music and then playing “Für Elise” by Beethoven over and over again. Or, if you’re learning to speak French, you have to memorize the words and then hone your pronunciation through repetition. But what would happen if you gave your brain a moment during practice to really soak in what it was doing instead of a nonstop information dump?How to learn things fasterA 2021 study from the National Institutes of Health found that when you’re studying a new skill and practicing, you can speed up your progress by taking short breaks. Instead of keeping your head in the piano and playing for 45 minutes straight, your brain does a better job at encoding new information if you drop in a series of 10-second breaks. The strategy makes a lot of sense for this simple reason: your brain has difficulty encoding and learning new information simultaneously. So why not give it a second to catch up? A man getting golf lessons.via Canva/Photos"Our results support the idea that wakeful rest plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill. It appears to be the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced," the senior author of the study said, according to Fox 13 Seattle. "Understanding this role of neural replay may not only help shape how we learn new skills but also how we help patients recover skills lost after neurological injury like stroke."How to use the 10-second memory techniqueThere isn’t any official time limit between when you should take a break and let your mind encode the new information. Still, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman suggests that “every few minutes” you stop what you’re doing, clear your mind, and let your brain encode the information for 10 seconds. “Now, you actually have to do the work, and how many of these to insert? It should be random,” Huberman said. - YouTube www.youtube.com So, if you were playing “Für Elise” on the piano, set a time for five minutes of intense playing, then when the alarm goes off, sit still for ten seconds and clear your mind of everything, almost like a meditation. Then your brain will kick into action, like a computer booting up, and encode what you just learned. Next, set a timer for three minutes; after the next encode break, set a timer for seven minutes, and so on. Students learning sigh language.via Canva/PhotosThe researchers tested their hypothesis by placing a brain-scanning cap on right-handed participants who were shown a series of numbers on a computer screen and asked to type them as many times as possible with their left hand. The gains were even greater for those who did the 10-second breaks than for those who had just had a great night’s rest.Ultimately, the 10-second technique makes a lot of sense because it’s a lot harder to concentrate on something when doing two things at the same time. You’ve got to give your brain a moment to jot down notes instead of learning and writing at the same time. At the end of the day, what’s not to like about the 10-second technique? You get to take a break and improve your skills at the same time.

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Love is in the air on TCM this week — and so are the Oscars.