Power Transition, Bill To Axe ED, More

President Joe Biden has agreed details for President-elect Donald Trump’s transition staff to coordinate with the federal workforce.

The congressionally mandated agreement allows transition aides to work with federal agencies and access non-public information and allows government workers to talk to the transition team before President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

But Trump has declined to sign a separate agreement that would have given his team access to secure government offices and email accounts, partly because it would require that the president-elect limit contributions to $5,000 and reveal who is donating to his transition effort.

According to the Presidential Transition Act, the White House agreement was supposed to have been signed by Oct. 1, and the Biden White House had issued both public and private appeals for Trump’s team to sign on.

The agreement is a critical step in ensuring an orderly transfer of power at noon on Inauguration Day. It lays the groundwork for the White House and government agencies to begin sharing details on ongoing programs, operations and threats.

It limits the risk that the Trump team could find itself taking control of the massive federal government without briefings and documents from the outgoing administration.

A Republican senator has introduced a bill to axe the Department of Education (ED), a campaign promise made by President Trump.

The bill aims to redistribute federal programs to other existing departments. But the biggest change would be allocating K-12 education money directly to the states via block grants. Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced the Returning Education to Our States Act.

“The federal Department of Education has never educated a single student, and it’s long past time to end this bureaucratic department that causes more harm than good.” However, several essential programs within ED were noted, and the goal is to move them to other government areas.

Borrowers would still need to make their student loan payments, student loan repayment plans created by law would still be available, and loan forgiveness programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness would still exist.

Researchers have developed a lithium-ion battery design enabling electric vehicles (EVs) to charge from zero to 80% in 15 minutes.

The battery can withstand up to 800 charge cycles, significantly more than current EV batteries. The breakthrough aims to make EVs more affordable and accessible by reducing battery size, increasing charging speed, and extending battery life.

The technology addresses ‘range anxiety’ and improves the reliability of used EVs, making electric transportation more accessible.

The innovation changes the anode design by fusing graphite particles to improve electrical conductivity, facilitating fast lithium-ion movement without degradation or safety risks.

The research team is now focused on optimizing the manufacturing process and ensuring the technology is scalable for industry adoption.

A study finds that great apes track events with their eyes in the same way that humans do.

When watching a cat chase a mouse, humans will alternate looking at the cat and mouse, using the information to connect the two into an “agent-patient” relationship—with the cat as the agent and the mouse as the patient.

This cognitive mechanism is one of the bases for human language's evolution, forming how people think about events and structure speech.

In the study, the authors compared human responses to the visual responses of five chimpanzees, two gorillas, and two orangutans. The authors found that apes and adult humans paid the most attention to the agents and the patients compared with background information.

While apes tended to track events like human adults, six-month-old human babies did not; instead, they paid attention mainly to the background.

The authors said, “Gaze patterns from eye tracking data suggest that apes, like human adults, can decompose causal actions into agent and patient roles, which is crucial for language. Our findings are consistent with a shared cognitive mechanism between humans and apes.”

A federal judge rebuked Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday after the former New York City mayor interrupted a court hearing.

Giuliani said he could not pay his bills because two Georgia election workers to whom he owes $148 million have tied up his assets.

Once a personal lawyer for President-elect Donald Trump, Giuliani spoke ahead of a January trial to determine which assets he must surrender to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Moss.

The two election workers won the $148 million verdict from a jury in Washington, D.C., after accusing Giuliani of destroying their reputations by lying that they tried to help steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump.

US District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan previously threatened Giuliani with civil contempt for failing to surrender assets, including a luxury Manhattan apartment, to cover his debts partially.

Liman separately rejected Giuliani's request to delay the trial so he could attend events connected to Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

Research involving 14,000 participants suggests that anti-obesity drugs like Ozempic may also reduce alcohol consumption.

The study involved WeightWatchers participants using anti-obesity medications, including second-generation GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide — the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic. About half of the participants who drank alcohol before the program reduced their consumption.

The findings support the potential of these drugs to treat substance use disorders, though evidence is still preliminary. 45% of participants who drank alcohol reported drinking less after starting the medication. Moderate or heavy drinkers were more likely to reduce their alcohol use.

Lead researcher Lisa Miller-Matero, the associate director of Health Services Research at Henry Ford Health, said future studies could test the medications in randomized trials, including people in weight loss programs who are not taking medication as a control.

Miller-Matero said this would make it easier to determine whether the medications themselves are driving reduced alcohol use rather than the effects of simply being in a weight loss program.

Two half-sisters discovered each other through DNA tests and found they had named their children after each other.

Jessica, curious about her family, ordered a DNA test from Ancestry.com, while Nicole had already done a DNA test and found a new genetic match.

The sisters decided to meet in the summer of 2023 and were surprised by the parallels in their lives, including naming their children after each other. Nicole named her daughter Jessica, and Jessica named her son Nicholas.

Jessica discovered that the man she called dad all her life was not her biological father. Jessica traveled from Florida to Michigan to meet Nicole, and they quickly bonded.

The sisters are unclear what happened nearly 50 years ago. Both of Jessica’s parents died years before the two sisters met, and Nicole’s dad, who is also Jessica’s biological father, passed away 20 years ago. They found more parallels, such as both having the middle name Lenore and losing their mothers to drug overdoses.