Facebook content moderators call for better treatment

As Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg prepares to be grilled by a Senate committee about the handling of politically-charged posts, content moderators are insisting that properly valuing their work is key.

Second-hand site Vinted happy to scare clothing retailers

With more than 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in sales last year on its platform and a new acquisition under its belt, second-hand clothes innovator Vinted believes it is starting to scare fashion retailers—for the good of the planet.

With new tools, Facebook aims to avoid election fiasco repeat

Facebook is leveraging its vast resources to help protect the 2020 election against the kind of massive manipulation and disinformation efforts that the platform failed to act on in 2016.

Vaping epidemic puts adolescents at risk for potentially fatal lung disease

Adolescent use of e-cigarettes and vaping products is at epidemic proportions, yet the adverse health effects are understudied, with almost no data on younger patients. The problem is sizable as children start vaping at a younger and younger age. Recent estimates show that 9.6 percent of eighth graders vape nicotine or THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the main active ingredient of cannabis), along with 19.9 percent of 10th graders and 25.5 percent of 12th graders. Many young people vape daily.

Study estimates exposure to air pollution increases COVID-19 deaths by 15% worldwide

Long-term exposure to air pollution has been linked to an increased risk of dying from COVID-19 and, for the first time, a study has estimated the proportion of deaths from the coronavirus that could be attributed to the exacerbating effects of air pollution for every country in the world.

Phytoplasma effector proteins devastate host plants through molecular mimicry

Phytoplasma are a type of bacteria that live within the cells and cause devastating diseases with damaging effects. For example, in many cases plants infected with phytoplasma are no longer able to develop flowers. These plants have actually been described as "zombies," since they allow the reproduction of phytoplasma but are unable to reproduce themselves anymore. A group of biologists based at Friedrich Schiller University and the Fritz Lipmann Institute in Germany are working to help better understand exactly how phytoplasma cells bring about the so-called zombification of plants.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-10-phytoplasma-effector-proteins-devastate-host.html

Vampire bats social distance when they get sick

A new paper in Behavioral Ecology, published by Oxford University Press, finds that wild vampire bats that are sick spend less time near others from their community, which slows how quickly a disease will spread. The research team had previously seen this behavior in the lab, and used a field experiment to confirm it in the wild.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-10-vampire-social-distance-sick.html