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Think for a minute about the little bumps on your tongue. You probably saw a diagram of those taste bud arrangements once in a biology textbook: sweet sensors on the tip, salty on both sides, sour in the back, bitter in the back.But the idea that specific tastes are confined to certain areas of the tongue is a myth that "persists in the collective consciousness despite decades of research debunking it," according to an article published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine. The concept that taste is limited to the mouth is also wrong.The old diagram, used in many textbooks over the years, originated in a study published by David Hanig, a German scientist, in 1901. But the scientist wasn't suggesting that the various tastes are separated on the tongue. He was actually me...

For years I had heard about the island of Pantelleria, the craggy, hard-to-reach Eden of middle-of-nowhere tranquility that lies 89 miles southwest of the island of Sicily and about 50 miles east of Tunisia. Luca Guadagnino's 2015 film “A Bigger Splash” painted a seductive idyll of mud baths, romantic ruins and secluded coves. Celebrities such as Madonna, Sting and Julia Roberts have visited, attracted by the evocative atmosphere, where Africa meets Italy, together with Giorgio Armani, a part-time resident since 1980. The fact that no one was impressed added to the charm.“We always tell newbies that you will love it or hate it,” said designer Sciascia Gambaccini, who has owned a vacation home on the island for 33 years. “This is not Capri. We don't have Chanel. There are no lu...

Few debates have raged longer and more controversially in the computing industry than one: Is “open source” better than “closed” when it comes to software development?This debate was revived as companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft differed on how to compete for supremacy in artificial intelligence systems. Some choose a closed model while others embrace an open approach.Here's what to know.What does open source software mean?Source code is the underlying building blocks of the apps you use. Developers can write tens of thousands of lines of source code to create programs that will run on a computer.Open source software is any computer code that can be freely distributed, copied, or modified for the developer's purposes. The nonprofit Open Source Initiative, an indu...

The temporary pier that the US military built and put in place to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid to Gaza broke due to rough seas, the Pentagon said Tuesday.The latest calamity to befall the pier venture has punctuated several particularly grim days in Gaza, where Israeli forces have stepped up attacks on the city of Rafah just two days after carrying out a deadly attack that killed dozens of people .“Unfortunately, we had a perfect storm in high seas conditions and then, as I said, this North African weather system also came through at the same time, creating a suboptimal environment to operate,” Sabrina Singh, Pentagon deputy press secretary. , he said at a press conference.Army engineers are working to put the pier back together, and Defense Department officials hope "it will be f...

Fluctuating disease rates, innovative treatments and talk of “moonshots” at the White House could make cancer seem like a modern plague. But a new discovery sheds light on how humans dealt with disease and sought cures as far back as ancient Egyptian times.Scientists led by Edgard Camarós, a paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, were studying an Egyptian skull about 4,600 years old when they found signs of brain cancer and its treatment.“There was an uncomfortable silence in the room, because we knew what we had just discovered,” Dr. Camarós said.Using a microscope, he and Tatiana Tondini of the University of Tübingen in Germany and Albert Isidro of the Sagrat Cor University Hospital in Spain, the study's other authors, found cut marks around the edges...

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken plans to spend this week showing U.S. support for nations facing a hostile Russia during visits to Moldova and the Czech Republic, where he will participate in a meeting of NATO foreign ministers discussing on how to strengthen Ukraine.Mr. Blinken, who stopped in Kiev more than two weeks ago, is expected to fly to Chisinau, Moldova's capital, on Wednesday and meet with Maia Sandu, the nation's president, who is running for re-election. Ms. Sandu supported Moldova's membership of the European Union and scheduled a referendum vote on EU membership on the same day as October's general elections.He is expected to run against a pro-Russian candidate, and U.S. and European analysts say Moscow will likely try to interfere in the election, as i...

Ryan Salame, a top executive at collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on Tuesday, making him the first of Sam Bankman-Fried's circle of advisors at FTX to receive a prison sentence.Salame, 30, a trusted lieutenant of Bankman-Fried, the exchange's founder, pleaded guilty last year to violating campaign finance law and a charge of operating a money transfer business without license. He is one of four top deputies in the FTX empire who have pleaded guilty to crimes since the company imploded in November 2022.Mr. Salame's sentence exceeded the five to seven years recommended by prosecutors. Defense lawyers had asked for 18 months.Wearing a blue suit and socks emblazoned with the Bitcoin logo, Salame stood before Judge Lewis A. Ka...

Gaza officials said at least 21 people were killed and dozens injured Tuesday in an attack that hit a tent camp housing displaced people in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area in southern Gaza where Israel has designated a safe zone since humanitarian point of view.The Israeli army immediately denied carrying out attacks inside the area. Videos verified by the Times show several people dead and injured in an agricultural area of ​​Al-Mawasi, where civilians had taken refuge near the area.Dr Mohammed Al Moghayer, a senior official with the Palestinian Civil Defense emergency relief organisation, said most of the dead and wounded were taken to nearby field hospitals and others to Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis. Dr Moghayer and the Gaza Ministry of Health said that in addition to those ki...

In more than a dozen states, doctors and nurses have resorted to paper, handwritten treatment orders to track patients' illnesses and monitor them, unable to access the detailed medical histories that have long been available only through computerized records.Patients have waited long periods in emergency rooms and their treatments have been delayed as lab results and readings from machines like MRIs are ferried through makeshift efforts lacking the speed of electronic uploads.For more than two weeks, thousands of medical staff have switched to manual methods after a cyber attack on Ascension, one of the nation's largest health systems with about 140 hospitals in 19 states and the District of Columbia.The large-scale attack on May 8 was eerily reminiscent of the hack of Change Heal...

Shein, the online retail giant founded in China, had big ambitions to go public in New York. But as relations between Washington and Beijing soured, the ultra-fast fashion company began taking a closer look at a backup plan across the Atlantic.The company will now focus more on the London Stock Exchange for its initial public offering, according to two people familiar with the matter. This may not have been the company's initial choice, but it would be a major victory for Britain, which has been wary of its capital losing its status as a global financial centre.Jeremy Hunt, Britain's top financial official, reportedly courted Shein, anticipating that a major IPO would strengthen London's position as one of the world's leading financial centers. A Shein spokesperson decli...