In its quest to cover its bases against all scenarios, bureaucracy has often forced its employees to do seemingly crazy things. For instance, a 66-year-old Scottish man who wanted to donate blood was turned away after he refused to answer if he was currently pregnant. It’s not good to take blood from a pregnant person, you see. It’s possible for people to identify as a gender different from their sex, so employees are told to ask this question on the off-chance that a pregnant man did want to donate blood. Read full article here
Science
‘Ghostly’ neutrinos provide new path to study protons
In groundbreaking research, an international collaboration of scientists from the University of Rochester have used a beam of neutrinos to measure the size and shape of the protons that make up the nuclei of atoms. This feat, once thought impossible, provides scientists with a new way of looking at the small components of an atom’s nucleus and opens up a wealth of new information about the structure of an atom’s nucleus and the dynamics of the forces that affect neutrino interactions. The researchers solved the challenge of harnessing neutrinos in large numbers by using a neutrino detector containing a target of both hydrogen and carbon atoms, and over nine years of data collection at Fermilab’s accelerator. Read full article here
Merv
March 25, 2023
