'Unseen Artist' Eric Tucker Spent Decades Painting — But Nobody Knew

"Eric Tucker's paintings have an effect on people. You can see it in their expressions as they stroll through a new exhibition, Eric Tucker: The Unseen Artist, at the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery."

"'Happy. Really happy,' says Cris Bury. 'He's got the character straightaway.'"

"'I'm wandering round here with a smile on me face because I just think they're wonderful,' says Phil Lord. And Colin Okell adds, 'A lot of them depict a society that's gone.'"

"Bury is a retired teacher who's lived in this former industrial town in northwest England for four decades. She didn't know about Tucker. 'Nobody did until he died,' she says. 'And that's when it was discovered.'"

"Tucker was a boxer and construction worker in Warrington. And though few knew it, he was also a prolific, self-taught artist whose paintings depicted a lost, industrial era. Before he died in 2018 at the age of 86, family members discovered a trove of about 400 canvases, the best of which are now on display here."

"Tucker spent his days in the front parlor of his home, painting the working-class world he knew: Boisterous pubs where people played piano and sang. Neighborhoods of terraced houses — the English equivalent of row homes — where men played cricket in empty lots against a skyline of belching smokestacks. It was a communal way of life that disappeared with Warrington's factories."

The Wide-Ranging Ways In Which The Coronavirus Is Hurting Global Business

More than a month and a half into the outbreak of a new coronavirus in China, the country's economy is still largely in lockdown mode, stalling a global manufacturing powerhouse at the heart of nearly every industrial supply chain. As the crisis continues, businesses big and small are struggling with the disruption the pneumonia-like illness has caused, with effects reaching across the globe.

Restaurants and stores have been forcibly shut, many with paper seals to prevent owners from covertly reopening. Factory production lines are at a standstill. Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, has twice extended its holiday break, keeping tens of millions at home in an effort to contain the virus. The death toll from COVID-19 now exceeds 2,000.

"If this [outbreak] drags past March, that really becomes quite bad," says Tom Rafferty, China research head at the Economist Intelligence Unit. "Then you're talking about long-term dislocation in supply chains. You're talking about a negative impact on the consumer sector, which is not temporary. And when you factor all these things and perhaps a cooling housing market, you get some pretty nasty economic data."

Even more worrying have been the dire labor shortages. China's factories normally ramp up production right after the Lunar New Year, but this year, few workers have returned. Most of China's migrant workers, who number some 300 million, remain cloistered in sealed-off villages and towns. Those who do manage to leave find themselves barred from renting places to stay near their workplaces by landlords fearful of travelers.

Cities And States Are Saying No To Cashless Shops

"After almost 10 minutes of standing in line at a coffee shop, Ritchie Torres realized he only had cash in his pocket — a form of payment no longer accepted by this store."

"'It was a humiliating experience,' he said. 'I remember wondering aloud, how could a business refuse to accept cash, which is legal tender?'

"Torres is a City Council member in New York. He says his constituents, especially seniors, have also complained about a spurt of cashless stores. So Torres led the charge on a bill to ban businesses from rejecting cash, which New York's city leaders passed almost unanimously last month."

"A similar ban is slated for a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 13. In the past year, Philadelphia, San Francisco and the state of New Jersey have also banned cashless stores — a rare case of governments fighting a tech trend before it spreads far. Massachusetts has required establishments to accept cash since 1978."

As Warm Winters Mess With Nut Trees' Sex Lives, Farmers Help Them 'Netflix And Chill'

"In love, timing is everything, the saying goes. The same is true for fruit and nut orchards in California's Central Valley, which depend on a synchronized springtime bloom for pollination. But as winters warm with climate change, that seasonal cycle is being thrown off."

"Cold is a crucial ingredient for California's walnuts, cherries, peaches, pears and pistachios, which ultimately head to store shelves around the country. The state grows around 99% of the country's walnut and pistachio crop."

"Over the winter, the trees are bare and dormant, essentially snoozing until they wake up for a key reproductive rite."

"'In the pistachios, the females need to be pollinated by the males trees,' says Jonathan Battig, farm manager for Strain Farming Company in Arbuckle, Calif. 'Ideally, you'd like the males to be pushing out the pollen as the females are receptive.'"

"In Battig's orchard, one male tree is planted for every 20 female trees, though an untrained eye couldn't tell them apart."

"'I know by just looking at them,' says Battig. 'The buds on the males are usually more swollen.'"

A Photographer's Guide To 'Slow Seeing' The Beauty In Everyday Nature

"At first glance, you might see a jumble of weeds, a thicket of twigs, a heap of dying leaves. You might be inclined to stop looking at this point."

"Janelle Lynch invites you to look closer, and slower. She'd want you to see each image as a world in itself — not an accidental grouping of plant matter, but a well-ordered composition created by nature and fixed in time and space by her 8-by-10-inch large-format camera."

"Her implicit message is that one needs only to be still, take your time and pay close attention to find the beauty that surrounds you. But, like meditation, this seemingly simple act is often more difficult than it appears."

"Lynch points to the poetry of Mary Oliver, keen observer of the natural world, and especially the poem "The Summer Day."' After spending a day in the grass, both 'idle and blessed,' the poet asks: 'Tell me, what else should I have done? / Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? / Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?'"

Rare Weedy Seadragons Hatch At California Aquarium

"After years of trying, a Southern California aquarium has two very tiny — and very rare — bundles of joy."

"Two weedy seadragons recently hatched at Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. The delicate creatures resemble bits of seaweed and are distant cousins of the seahorse. And they're notoriously difficult to breed."

"Birch announced the news on Thursday and is now one of only a few aquariums worldwide to get the finicky animal to reproduce in captivity. Jennifer Nero Moffatt, the aquarium's senior director of animal care, science and conservation, called it a 'momentous occasion.'"

"'Seadragons are charismatic, sensitive, and require detailed husbandry,' Moffatt said in a statement. 'We have spent over 25 years working with these animals and love that we have made the next steps to conserve this delicate species.'"

"Birch Aquarium says it has bred 13 types of seahorses since 1995 and started its weedy seadragon program because of that track record of success."

Michael Pollan Explains Caffeine Cravings (And Why You Don't Have To Quit)

"After wrapping up his book about the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs, author Michael Pollan turned his attention to a drug that's hidden "in plain sight" in many people's lives: caffeine."

"'Here's a drug we use every day. ... We never think about it as a drug or an addiction, but that's exactly what it is,' Pollan says. "I thought, 'Why not explore that relationship?'"

"Pollan's new audiobook, Caffeine, explores the science of caffeine addiction and withdrawal — and the broader impact that coffee and tea have had on the modern world. Caffeine, he says, is a powerful drug that alters the brain in surprising ways."

"'There are studies that show that people's both mental performance and athletic performance are improved by coffee,' he says. 'If you have a cup of coffee after you've learned something or read a textbook chapter, you are more likely to test better on it the next day.'"

"It was only when he quit caffeine cold turkey that Pollan fully appreciated the mental and psychological boost his morning cup of coffee had provided: 'I just couldn't focus,' he says. 'I lost confidence. The whole book seemed like a really stupid idea. And loss of confidence is actually listed as one of the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal.'"

'Ghost' DNA In West Africans Complicates Story Of Human Origins

"About 50,000 years ago, ancient humans in what is now West Africa apparently procreated with another group of ancient humans that scientists didn't know existed."

"There aren't any bones or ancient DNA to prove it, but researchers say the evidence is in the genes of modern West Africans. They analyzed genetic material from hundreds of people from Nigeria and Sierra Leone and found signals of what they call "ghost" DNA from an unknown ancestor."

"Our own species — Homo sapiens — lived alongside other groups that split off from the same genetic family tree at different times. And there's plenty of evidence from other parts of the world that early humans had sex with other hominins, like Neanderthals."

"That's why Neanderthal genes are present in humans today, in people of European and Asian descent. Homo sapiens also mated with another group, the Denisovans, and those genes are found in people from Oceania."

Timetable For A Vaccine Against The New Coronavirus? Maybe This Fall

Right now scientists are trying to accomplish something that was inconceivable a decade ago: create a vaccine against a previously unknown virus rapidly enough to help end an outbreak of that virus. In this case, they're trying to stop the spread of the new coronavirus that has already infected tens of thousands of people, mainly in China, and given rise to a respiratory condition now known as COVID-19.

Typically, making a new vaccine takes a decade or longer. But new genetic technologies and new strategies make researchers optimistic that they can shorten that timetable to months, and possibly weeks — and have a tool by the fall that can slow the spread of infection.

What's the urgency?

"Vaccines are really our most successful tool to prevent an infectious disease," says David Weiner, executive vice president and director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.

It used to take a long time to make vaccines, because scientists had to isolate and grow the virus in the lab. But now, it's possible to skip that step altogether and build a vaccine based on a virus' genetic sequence.

Taking Zinc Can Shorten Your Cold. Thank A 91-Year-Old Scientist For The Discovery

"The common cold is a top reason for missed work and school days. Most of us have two or three colds per year, each lasting at least a week."

"There's no real cure, but studies from the last several years show that some supplement containing zinc can help shorten the duration of cold symptoms by up to 40% — depending on the amount of the mineral in each dose and what it's combined with."

"Zinc has an interesting back story. It wasn't even acknowledged as an essential mineral for human health until the 1970s. But that changed thanks to the work of Dr. Ananda Prasad — a 91-year-old doctor who, decades ago, had a hunch that led to a better understanding of zinc's role in immunity."

"Back in the 1960s Prasad was studying a group of young men in Egypt who had not grown to normal heights and remained underdeveloped in other ways, too. Prasad wondered if the problem might be a lack of zinc."

"When Prasad gave them zinc supplements, the men grew significantly taller."

Bats Carry Many Viruses. So Why Don't They Get Sick?

"Like Ebola virus in Africa and the Nipah virus in Asia, the new coronavirus — 2019-nCoV — appears to have originated in bats."

"Chinese researchers took samples of the coronavirus from patients in Wuhan, the city in central China where the outbreak was first detected."

"They compared the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus — 2019-nCoV — to a library of known viruses and found a 96% match with a coronavirus found in horseshoe bats in southwest China. The findings were published in a study in Nature this week."

"'They're too close in terms of their pure genetics to say they're not related, or that they didn't have a common ancestor,' says Vineet Menachery, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston who was not affiliated with the study."

"Menachery and many other researchers think this new coronavirus spread from bats to humans, with a possible stop with another animal in between."

"It's happened with other coronaviruses. In the case of the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak, from 2002-2003, a bat coronavirus jumped to civets, a member of the mongoose family, and was sold to people as food at markets. The MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak, first detected in 2012, was caused by a coronavirus that jumped from bats to camels to people who maybe drank raw camel milk or ate undercooked meat."

Pesticide Police, Overwhelmed By Dicamba Complaints, Ask EPA For Help

"Every summer for the past three years, the phones have been ringing like crazy in the Office of the Indiana State Chemist. Farmers and homeowners were calling, complaining that their soybean fields or tomato plants looked sick, with curled-up leaves. They suspected pesticides from nearby farms — a kind of chemical hit-and-run."

"It was up to investigators like Andy Roth to find the true culprit."

"'It's sort of a mad rush at the beginning,' he says. 'You rush out, you do the field work, you take the pictures, you take the samples, you get them back here" to the office's forensic laboratory, where soil and plant tissue can be tested for pesticide residues."

"The lab staff also was overwhelmed. "The first issue was we quickly reached our maximum storage capacity," says Ping Wan, the lab supervisor. They had to buy more freezers to store the evidence. "There is not an inch of wall space left," Wan says, gesturing toward freezers that line one side of the lab."

Researchers Link Autism To A System That Insulates Brain Wiring

"Scientists have found a clue to how autism spectrum disorder disrupts the brain's information highways."

"The problem involves cells that help keep the traffic of signals moving smoothly through brain circuits, a team reported Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience."

"The team found that in both mouse and human brains affected by autism, there's an abnormality in cells that produce a substance called myelin."

"That's a problem because myelin provides the "insulation" for brain circuits, allowing them to quickly and reliably carry electrical signals from one area to another. And having either too little or too much of this myelin coating can result in a wide range of neurological problems."

"For example, multiple sclerosis occurs when the myelin around nerve fibers is damaged. The results, which vary from person to person, can affect not only the signals that control muscles, but also the ones involved in learning and thinking."

"The finding could help explain why autism spectrum disorders include such a wide range of social and behavioral features, says Brady Maher, a lead investigator at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and an associate professor in the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine."

Picking A Lightbulb, Made Easy

"The lightbulb aisle can be a confusing place because over the past five years, a revolution has taken place in the lighting industry. The old energy-hogging incandescent lightbulb that dominated lighting for more than a century is going away. Now more efficient LED, or light-emitting diode, bulbs are taking over."

"While reporting on this change, I've witnessed a scene repeatedly at stores: a shopper holding an old lightbulb in one hand and trying to find a new one just like it."

"LEDs are a completely different technology than incandescent bulbs and that change comes with a learning curve. But LEDs also come with big benefits and they give you new ways to more easily control the light in your space — more on that later."

"We have some tips to help you learn what you need to know to avoid ending up with lights that hurt your eyes or just make you feel tired. Being a little more conscious about what lights you buy and when you use them also could improve your sleeping habits."

A New Form Of Northern Lights Discovered In Finland – By Amateur Sky Watchers

"People in northern climes have long gazed at the wonder that is the aurora borealis: the northern lights."

"Those celestial streaks of light and color are often seen on clear nights in Finland, where they're so admired that a Finnish-language Facebook group dedicated to finding and photographing them has more than 11,000 members."

"There aurora aficionados gather to discuss subjects like space weather forecasts and the best equipment to capture the northern lights."

"Among its members is Minna Palmroth. She's a physicist and professor at the University of Helsinki, where she leads a research group that studies the space weather that causes auroral emissions."

"When members of the group posted photos of the auroras they'd seen and wanting to learn more, Palmroth would often reply with the aurora's type and the scientific explanation for its form. The discussions led Palmroth and two collaborators to publish a field guide to the northern lights."

"But even after the book came out, some questions remained unanswered. A few of the citizens' photos showed a form of aurora that didn't fit into any of the known categories. It had green, horizontal waves running in parallel. Its undulations reminding some observers of sand formations, and it was christened 'the dunes.'"

Scientists Find Imperfections In 'Minibrains' That Raise Questions For Research

"Brain organoids, often called 'minibrains,' have changed the way scientists study human brain development and disorders like autism."

"But the cells in these organoids differ from those in an actual brain in some important ways, scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature."

"The finding suggests that scientists need to be cautious about extrapolating results found in organoids to people, says Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco."

"'It's far too early to start using organoids as examples of normal brain development because we just don't know how well they really represent what's going on in utero,' Kriegstein says."

"But Dr. Guo-Li Ming, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania who is not connected to the study, says she is 'not concerned too much' by the finding."

"'If we are careful enough we can still learn from brain organoids,' says Ming, who used the approach to help understand how Zika virus could affect the brains of babies in the womb."

"Brain organoids are clusters of lab-grown brain cells that assemble themselves into structures that look a lot like human brain tissue. The process by which these cells become specialized and begin to communicate resembles the development of a human brain in the months before birth."

Must-Know Vocab For Wuhan Coronavirus: From Droplets To Zoonotic

"The world is being flooded with perhaps unfamiliar words and phrases in coverage of the newly discovered coronavirus — starting with the very word "coronavirus." (see below for definition)."

"It's useful to understand relevant medical terms during a time of health crisis, says Melissa Nolan, a medical doctor and a professor of epidemiology at Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. 'When you educate people, they're not as afraid. And they can understand what their personal risk is.'"

"Nolan, who worked as a disease investigator at Texas Children's Hospital during the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, along with epidemiologist Peter Krause of the Yale School of Public Health, helped identify and define some of the key terms related to the new infectious disease."

"Coronavirus: This term refers to a category of viruses that can cause fever, breathing difficulties, pneumonia and diarrhea. Some are potentially fatal. Others can cause a certain percentage of common colds. The name comes from the Latin word "corona," which means crown. Under a microscope, these viruses are characterized by circles with spikes ending in little blobs."

A History Of Quarantines, From Bubonic Plague To Typhoid Mary

"China is building a quarantine center on the outskirts of the city of Wuhan, where a newly identified virus has infected many hundreds of residents."

"The idea of putting a possibly sick person in quarantine goes back to the ancient texts. The book of Leviticus tells how to quarantine people with leprosy. Hippocrates covered the issue in a three-volume set on epidemics, though he came from a time in ancient Greece when disease was thought to spread from "miasmas," or foul-smelling gas that came out of the ground."

"With this new quarantine effort in the news, we offer a look at quarantine use — and abuse — over the ages."

Bubonic plague in Venice (1370)

"The so-called Black Death killed 20 million Europeans in the 14th century. So Venice, a major trade port, grew nervous. If a ship was suspected of harboring plague, it had to wait 40 days before any passengers or goods could come ashore. Venice built a hospital/quarantine center on an island off its coast, where sailors from plague-infested ships were sent either to get better, or, more likely, to die. This 40-day waiting period became known as quarantinario, from the Italian word for 40. As opinions about the disease changed, the isolation period shrank to trentinario — 30 days — but the original name stuck."

Space Walk Underway For Final Fix Of International Space Station Device

"Two astronauts aboard the International Space Station began their fourth and final space walk early Saturday to finish a series of repairs aimed at extending the functioning of a cosmic ray detector attached to the spacecraft."

"The planned six-and-a-half-hour foray outside the space capsule began shortly after 7:00 a.m. ET and was being shown in a live video feed from NASA."

"NASA flight engineer Andrew Morgan and the commander of the space station's Expedition 61, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, are doing leak checks on their installation of a new cooling system meant to extend the lifespan of the externally-attached Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer dark matter and antimatter detector."

"They are being assisted by two other Expedition 61 crew members, NASA flight engineers Jessica Meir and Christina Koch, who are operating a Canadarm2 robotic arm capable of fine-tuned maneuvers."

"The AMS, as the cosmic ray detector is known, was installed about nine years ago on the spacecraft and was designed to function for only three years. It was not meant to be serviced in flight."

Holocaust Survivor Returning To Auschwitz: 'It's Like Going To The Family Cemetery'

"Vladimir Munk remembers the day he walked free from Blechhammer, a sub-camp of Auschwitz in eastern Germany."

"'I was happy,' Munk says. He was sick and starving, but he had survived."

"The Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945. The concentration camp in Poland is where more than a million people, mostly Jews, were murdered during the Holocaust. This Monday, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation, Munk is traveling back to Auschwitz for the first time since he was imprisoned there."

"Munk's parents were killed in Auschwitz, as were most of his family members. "So, for me, it's like going to the family cemetery," Munk says."

"The decision to go back, though, wasn't an easy one to make. When he walked free from Blechhammer, Munk decided not to let the experience define him. He says he's known survivors who never recovered from the Holocaust."

"'They are a survivor, but they never got over it,' Munk says. 'Yes, I'm a survivor, but I've tried to live a normal life.'"

"Munk was born in Pardubice, Czechoslovakia, in 1925, and was a teenager when Nazi Germany invaded the country. A few years into the occupation, Munk's family was forced onto a train and sent to a concentration camp called Terezin."