Mayorkas Runs the Secret Service, and Hates Trump. Hmm.

At some point on a long drive, you or a persistent child have probably wondered what the black dots at the top of your windscreen are for. They appear to be on most vehicles but, like indicators, almost nobody knows what they are for. You might guess that the black "frit" stretching across the windscreen is decorative, or to keep a little light out. But in fact the strip is there to keep the windscreen in place and allow you to see properly, but probably not in the way you'd expect.Before the 1950s and 60s, windscreens were held in place with a metal trim, before manufacturers moved to using adhesives. Frits, made of a rough ceramic paint, are there to conceal this ugly adhesive; but also to help keep the windscreen in place.“The modern windshield is a marvel of engineering, and dare we say one of the most underappreciated components of a vehicle. Part of that engineering involved how the windshield is bonded to the frame,” a blog post from North Carolina-based bodyshop DeDona Tint & Sound explains. “While the inward facing side of the frit allows adhesive to bond to the glass, the outward facing side of the frit acts as a shield against UV radiation in order to protect the adhesive bond, which would otherwise be weakened by continual exposure to direct sunlight.”As well as protecting the adhesive bonds from UV radiation, ultimately keeping your windshield from flying at you mid-drive, the dot gradient running away from the frit serves another important purpose. During manufacturing, an engineer with Pittsburgh Glass Works explained to Jalopnik, windscreens are bent inside a hot oven.      While inside the oven, the long black frit heats up faster than the glass of the windshield. Left alone, without the dot matrix, this would introduce distortions into the glass. But the dots leading away from the black frit help spread the temperature more evenly, helping to reduce any distortion, which wouldn't be ideal while you're driving.The frit is also supposed to look pleasing, which is good because as it is baked onto the windshield, it is virtually impossible to scrape off.

Sapphires, like many precious gemstones, are formed in the bowels of Earth’s crust, cooked up by immense pressure and intense heat. However, the exact recipe for the stunning blue crystals has previously escaped scientists.The main ingredient in sapphires is a form of aluminum oxide (corundum) along with a cocktail of trace elements including iron, titanium, cobalt, lead, chromium, vanadium, magnesium, boron, and silicon.Their famous blue color comes from these trace elements, specifically iron and titanium. When these elements are present in the crystal, they interact with the crystal lattice and absorb certain wavelengths of light, particularly in the red and yellow parts of the spectrum. Since these wavelengths are absorbed, the remaining reflected light is predominantly blue, which is why sapphires appear a rich ultramarine color to our eyes. Rubies are another corundum mineral, but their scarlet hue is caused by higher concentrations of another impurity: chromium.Cooking up this complex meddle of elements is an intensive natural process involving ancient volcanic rock that is low in silicon dioxide but rich in sodium and potassium. In a new study, researchers at Heidelberg University uncovered new insights into this process by analyzing 223 sapphires found in the Eifel mountain range of western Germany, a volcanic region where magma from the Earth’s mantle has been penetrating the crust for nearly 700,000 years.A sapphire found in sediment of the Kyll, a river in the western Eifel, approximately 0.9 mm in diameter.Image credit: Sebastian SchmidtWhile some of the sapphires were found in rock samples collected from volcanic deposits in the region, most came from river sediments – a testament to their toughness.“Like gold, sapphire is very weathering-resistant compared to other minerals. Over protracted time periods, the grains are washed out of the rock and deposited in rivers. Because of their high density, they are easy to separate from lighter sediment components using a gold pan,” Sebastian Schmidt, who conducted the studies as part of his master’s degree at Heidelberg University, said in a statement.The origin of the sapphires was tracked using oxygen isotope and trace element analysis, revealing they had been formed at the same time the volcanism began in the region. The makeup of oxygen isotopes within the sapphires suggests they didn't stay at high temperatures over 900°C (1,652°F) for very long, contrary to the established theory that they are formed within the mantle or lower crust. Instead, some sapphires got their isotopic signature from mantle melts that were mixed with heated and partially melted crustal rock found about 5 to 7 kilometers (3.1 to 4.3 miles) deep. Other sapphires formed when underground melts came into contact with surrounding rock walls, causing these rocks to produce sapphires.“In the Eifel, both magmatic and metamorphic processes, in which temperature changed the original rock, played a role in the crystallization of sapphire,” stated Schmidt.The study is published in the journal Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology.

The gamma-ray burst (GRB) known as the Brightest Of All Time (BOAT) had an emission line in its afterglow, the first time one has been detected with confidence in any GRB. The astronomers who discovered the line suspect it is the product of matter and antimatter particles annihilating each other in the aftermath of the explosion while hurtling toward us at close to the speed of light.For most natural phenomena, the most dramatic example recorded is not all that far ahead of the second or third – think earthquakes, volcanoes, or colliding black holes. When it comes to GBRs, however, that pattern breaks down. The BOAT (officially GRB 221009A) earned its name by being 70 times brighter than the next brightest we have seen. Based on the pattern of other GBRs, we should expect to see something like this once every thousand (some say ten thousand) years, not in the first few decades after we had the instruments to observe it. It’s as if someone ran the marathon in under an hour, while every other entrant was slower than the existing world record.Unsurprisingly, astronomers are keen to extract every scrap of information they can about this unparalleled event, but are hindered by the fact its initial brightness saturated gamma ray cameras. Now, an examination of the radiation shortly afterward has revealed something astronomers have sought in other GRBs: an emission line.The release of electromagnetic energy at a particular wavelength creates an emission line within a broader spectrum. These lines are usually produced by electrons transitioning from excited states, releasing an amount of energy specific to that element. Emission, and corresponding absorption lines, have taught us most of what we know about the nature of stars – but the only previous potential detections in GRBs were so weak they were thought likely to be statistical fluctuations.“A few minutes after the BOAT erupted, Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor recorded an unusual energy peak that caught our attention,” said Dr Maria Edvige Ravasio, of Radboud University in Nijmegen, in a statement. “When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps. Our analysis since then shows it to be the first high-confidence emission line ever seen in 50 years of studying GRBs.”As co-author Dr Om Sharan Salafia at INAF-Brera Observatory added; “We’ve determined that the odds this feature is just a noise fluctuation are less than one chance in half a billion.” Then again, before the BOAT occurred, the chances of seeing something so powerful would have been rated not much higher, so perhaps we shouldn’t dismiss such odds.By saturating instruments such as FERMI, the BOAT prevented us from learning much about the crucial first seconds. The peak brightness has had to be reconstructed from what we could see once intensity dropped to manageable levels. The line appeared almost five minutes after the explosion started and lasted for at least 40 seconds. GRBs come in two sorts, thought to have different sources, although astronomers can’t yet rule out the possibility the BOAT represents the only example we have seen of a mysterious third class. So far, however, they are treating it as a more powerful version of what we know, in which case it would be the consequence of a massive star collapsing to form a black hole. As well as the supernova explosion such an event creates, immensely powerful jets are produced. When one is pointed at Earth, we are exposed to a burst of gamma rays lasting a few hundred seconds at most.The emission line started at 0.00099 Angstroms or 12.56 Million electron volts and was last detected at half that value. Blue light is 3 eV, and some of the gamma rays used in radiotherapy have energies of 1.2 MeV.Energy like that certainly doesn’t come from excited electrons returning to their ground state, so the team who made the discovery had to find a new explanation. They think the cause is the annihilation of electrons and positrons (the anti-matter equivalent of an electron).“When an electron and a positron collide, they annihilate, producing a pair of gamma rays with an energy of 0.511 MeV,” said Professor Gor Oganesyan of the Gran Sasso Science Institute. “Because we’re looking into the jet, where matter is moving at near light speed, this emission becomes greatly blueshifted and pushed toward much higher energies.”A blueshift this size would require the particles to have been accelerated to 99.9 percent of the speed of light, but that seems unremarkable in the context of everything else about the BOAT. A tiny slowdown would reduce the blue shift and explain why the energy fell during the detection period.    “After decades of studying these incredible cosmic explosions, we still don’t understand the details of how these jets work,” said Elizabeth Hays of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “Finding clues like this remarkable emission line will help scientists investigate this extreme environment more deeply.” Just imagine what we would have seen if instruments like Fermi had been built with the capacity to record the BOAT’s brightest part – something not previously thought necessary.The findings are published in the journal Science.

If you thought humans were the only ones capable of getting creative in the baby-making process, think again. In the forests of India’s Andaman Islands, there’s a small species of frog with a unique breeding behavior that involves them being upside-down.The frog in question is Charles Darwin’s frog (Minervarya charlesdarwini), named after the famed naturalist. Over the course of three years, a team of biologists spent many nights in the island’s forests – including during the monsoon season – seeking out the frogs to find out more about how they reproduced.First things first, it turns out that to successfully find a partner as a male Charles Darwin’s frog, you’ve got to be willing to get a bit aggressive – and maybe even lose a limb. If a hostile call isn’t enough to put a competitor off, it can quickly become fisticuffs at dawn, involving kicking, boxing, and chomping on each other’s body parts and heads.Such aggressive tactics aren’t unusual in the frog world, but when it comes to the point of spawning, the process becomes far less typical for Charles Darwin’s frogs. The researchers discovered that not only were the frogs the only species within the wider frog family Dicroglossidae to lay their eggs in water-filled tree holes, but they also did something seen in no other species of terrestrial frog that lays its eggs in this way.At the point where the female frog is ready to pop out her eggs and the male ready to release sperm to fertilize them, the mating pair position themselves within the tree hole upside-down, completely out of the water. It’s thought this could be a way of preventing further attacks from competitive males.“Upside-down spawning is the most remarkable behavior in this frog. No other frog is known to lay terrestrial eggs inside tree holes in an upside-down position,” said study lead Professor S. D. Biju in a statement. “This discovery is fundamental for understanding how the species interacts with its environments and which habitats are essential for its survival.”What the team wasn’t expecting to find was that, in multiple instances, they found the frogs breeding in places where they naturally wouldn’t – plastic sapling bags and rain-filled trash. It’s thought that this could come down to habitat loss, with the population of Charles Darwin’s frogs currently estimated to be decreasing for the same reason.Frogs were found breeding in rain-filled discarded food cans.Image credit: G. Gokulakrishnan“The frogs’ use of trash for breeding is both surprising and worrying. We now need to know its causes and long-term consequences, and devise ways to protect the natural breeding sites that are critical for survival of the species,” said study co-lead Sonali Garg.The study is published in the journal Breviora.

Antarctica might conjure up images of snow-capped peaks and intrepid explorers, but against these romanticized views of one of Earth’s harshest environments are the species that have to survive there. While seals and penguins might be more well-known, what about the largest land creature on the continent? It's time to meet the Antarctic midge (Belgica antarctica). Despite only being 2-6 millimeters (0.07-0.2 inches) long, the Antarctic midge is actually the largest full-time terrestrial resident native to Antarctica. Penguins and seals are not full-time residents and most bird species come and go with the seasons, spending large parts of the year at sea. What is extra unusual about the Antarctic midge is that compared to most midge species, which fly around annoying people and taking blood meals, this insect neither flies nor bites. They have completely lost their wings as a remarkable survival strategy against the incredibly high winds in the polar region. Instead, they have a litany of adaptations involving being able to survive -15°C (5°F), such as the loss of 70 percent of their body fluids and a month without oxygen. They also survive over winter by accumulating sugars as a natural antifreeze, and becoming dehydrated to prevent the formation of ice crystals inside their cells. The world’s southernmost insect species can even survive being frozen solid for nine months of the year. As a result, the tiny critter takes 2 years to complete its full lifecycle, which is spent largely as larvae. These larvae eat mostly bacteria, algae moss, and penguin poop.By staying comparatively warm under a blanket of snow, studies have revealed that the larvae can survive a range of temperature drops, and use a process called rapid cold hardening to protect themselves under lab conditions. “Evidence from previous studies shows the Antarctic midge has survived on the continent since the beginning,” University of Kentucky researcher Nick Teets said in a statement about a grant award to study these insects in 2019. “They are a good model for us to learn about the history of Antarctica and a good model for scientists to predict how the continent will respond to climate change.”But while they might be pros at surviving Antarctic conditions, those conditions are changing. A study from 2022 shows that Antarctic midges are negatively impacted by warming conditions and could be in danger from global warming as temperatures across the world continue to rise. 

HBO’s John Oliver began Last Week Tonight on Sunday by recapping Vice President Kamala Harris’s entry into the presidential race by accusing Republicans of resorting to outright racism” and falsely accusing her of being a radical left-winger. Like many in the non-comedy media, Oliver thought it was racist to point out that, by Joe Biden’s own words, Harris was selected as VP in the name of diversity, “Republicans spent the week trying to counter the newfound enthusiasm around Harris, with criticism frequently defaulting to outright racism. She was called, among other things, a diversity, or ‘DEI hire.” Oliver also maintained that Republicans have no good substantive criticisms of Harris, “when they weren't stooping that low, they were reaching for desperate attacks like these.”     That led him to introduce a trio of Fox News clips. The first two saw Steve Doocy and Sean Hannity condemning Harris for wanting to ban plastic straws while the third featured Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Hannity declaring that “Kamala can't have my guns, she can't have my gasoline engine, and she sure as hell can't have my steaks and cheeseburgers. She is a radical California leftist.” Not only is Oliver wrong that plastic straws and Harris’s red meat comments are the only criticisms Republicans have of Harris, he’s not even being original in his attempted humor. Stephen Colbert shared the Doocy and Hannity clips verbatim on Wednesday. Nevertheless, after the Cruz clip, Oliver claimed, “That's almost a parody of right-wing fearmongering nonsense. ‘She'll take your straws, she'll take your burgers, and brother, if you like eating your burgers through a straw, say goodbye to your whole life.’” Oliver also insisted that Harris can’t be a radical, “For the record: Harris is not a 'radical California leftist.' She was a prosecutor. If Dick Wolf thinks your job is heroic and noble, chances are you're not leading the revolution. And even if she were, that doesn't translate to ‘Stealing people's cheeseburgers.’ That's the Hamburglar, Ted. You're thinking of the Hamburglar.” Harris’s comments about red meat highlight a certain form of nanny statism that is not nearly as weird as Oliver thinks it is, but even if it was, Harris constantly ranked among the Senate’s top liberals, simply being a prosecutor does not make her some sort of moderate. Here is a transcript for the July 28 show: HBO Last Week Tonight with John Oliver 7/28/2024 11:19 PM ET JOHN OLIVER: Republicans spent the week trying to counter the newfound enthusiasm around Harris, with criticism frequently defaulting to outright racism. She was called, among other things, a diversity, or "DEI hire," and when they weren't stooping that low, they were reaching for desperate attacks like these. STEVE DOOCY: You know, a major liability for Kamala Harris, she wants to ban plastic straws. SEAN HANNITY: She wants to ban my plastic straws? I love my plastic straw, I hate those paper ones. TED CRUZ: Kamala can't have my guns, she can't have my gasoline engine, and she sure as hell can't have my steaks and cheeseburgers. She is a radical California leftist. OLIVER: That's almost a parody of right-wing fearmongering nonsense. "She'll take your straws, she'll take your burgers, and brother, if you like eating your burgers through a straw, say goodbye to your whole life."  For the record: Harris is not a "radical California leftist." She was a prosecutor. If Dick Wolf thinks your job is heroic and noble, chances are you're not leading the revolution. And even if she were, that doesn't translate to "Stealing people's cheeseburgers." That's the Hamburglar, Ted. You're thinking of the Hamburglar.

After helping to force President Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race, the corporate media and the Democratic Party are now working overtime to reframe the optics of the administration's handling of the border.A recent report from Politico attempted to convince readers that the Biden-Harris administration was more tough on the border than former President Donald Trump. The article claimed that Trump had a "hard time" removing more illegal aliens than Biden.'Now that the status of our southern border has proven embarrassing and unpopular, Democrats are trying to spin the numbers.'"Even as Trump slams the president for open borders, the Biden-Harris administration has kicked out far more immigrants than Trump ever managed to," Politico reported.The news outlet proceeded to compare Title 42 expulsions under the two administrations. Title 42, which was enacted by Trump and went into effect in March 2020, allowed the federal government to expeditiously deport illegal immigrants arriving at the southern border who had recently been in a country where COVID-19 was present. While the Biden administration undid much of Trump's border restrictions, it kept Title 42 until May 2023. Politico reported that Biden used the program to expel more illegal immigrants than Trump's administration. However, buried deep in the article, the news outlet acknowledged that Trump executed far more Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations compared to the current administration.The National Immigration Center for Enforcement reported that under Trump, there were just over 3 million illegal alien encounters, versus more than 9 million under Biden's leadership. Trump used ICE to remove 31.1% of those illegal immigrants, while Biden only removed 4.4%. — (@) Politico reported that part of the reason that Biden did not have ICE carry out more removal proceedings was that the southern border was so overwhelmed with illegal aliens seeking asylum that the administration was more or less forced to reallocate the agency's resources to assist Customs and Border Protection at the U.S.-Mexico border and away from interior arrests.Since 2021, the CBP has reported more than 10 million nationwide encounters. The agency's statistics do not include known or unknown gotaways who were not apprehended by law enforcement officials before entering the country's interior. Former Trump White House official Theo Wold told Blaze News, "Under Kamala Harris's border policies, record numbers of aliens entered the country illegally, while ICE deported only a small fraction of the deportations conducted under Trump." "Now that the status of our southern border has proven embarrassing and unpopular, Democrats are trying to spin the numbers. But the numbers don't lie," Wold continued. "With Harris in charge of immigration policy, deportations don't happen — illegal aliens enter and just stay. And American citizens, like Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray, suffer."The corporate media has also been trying to erase evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris was ever labeled the "border czar" in an effort to create some distance between her presidential campaign and Biden's disastrous handling of the illegal immigration crisis. Axios attempted to slam Trump and Republicans for "repeatedly" using the title to refer to Harris, but the publication was quickly corrected by X's Community Notes, which pointed out that Axios itself used the term several times in 2021.The media aided in Biden-Harris' mission to make its recent border executive order appear tough on illegal immigration by providing surface-level reporting that the administration would shut down the southern border when encounters reached 2,500 per day for seven consecutive days. However, the media often failed to mention the order's lengthy list of exceptions, including that the administration would still allow illegal aliens to enter the country if they made an appointment at a port of entry through the CBP One application.Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas attempted some sleight of hand to brand the executive action as both a crackdown on illegal crossings and a gesture of compassion toward asylum seekers. During an interview, he noted that the shutdown order — if and when enforced — would impact only illegal aliens attempting to enter "in between ports of entry." He also applauded the Biden-Harris administration for building additional "lawful pathways" for illegal immigrants wishing to claim asylum. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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