Researchers from the University of Stirling, UK, have embedded ceramic spheres in aluminum foam to create a material that couldn't be cut with angle grinders, power drills or water jet cutters. "They dubbed it Proteus after the shape-shifting Greek god, for the way the material metamorphosed in different ways to defend against attacks," reports New Scientists. From the report: "It's pretty amazing," says Miranda Anderson at the University of Stirling, UK, who worked on the project. Rather than just being a hard surface that resists external pressure, the material turns the force of the drill or cutting mechanism back on itself, as the ceramic spheres create vibrations that disrupt the external force. "It actually destroys the cutting blade through the sideways jerky vibrations that it creates, or it widens the water jet's spray," says Anderson.

The material has a second defense mechanism. Attempting to cut it breaks the ceramic spheres into smaller fragments which are even harder and act like very tough sandpaper. "So the attack mechanism causes the material to become more resistant to the attack," says Anderson. While an angle grinder took 45 seconds to cut through steel armor used to protect against explosive mines, it was rendered inoperative by Proteus. The only comparable structure in the natural world is diamond, says Anderson, but Proteus is cheaper and lighter, making it practical for a range of applications, from security doors and barriers to shoe soles or elbow pad and forearm guards for workers. She believes it can be mass-produced, as there is no shortage of the metals and ceramics it is made from. The new material has been reported in the journal Scientific Reports.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: So many of us do it: You get into bed, turn off the lights, and look at your phone to check Twitter one more time. You see that coronavirus infections are up. Maybe your kids can't go back to school. The economy is cratering. Still, you incessantly scroll though bottomless doom-and-gloom news for hours as you sink into a pool of despair. This self-destructive behavior has become so common that a new word for it has entered our lexicon: "doomscrolling." The recent onslaught of dystopian stories related to the coronavirus pandemic, combined with stay-at-home orders, have enabled our penchant for binging on bad news. But the habit is eroding our mental health, experts say. [C]linical psychologist Dr. Amelia Aldao warns that doomscrolling traps us in a "vicious cycle of negativity" that fuels our anxiety. "Our minds are wired to look out for threats," she says. "The more time we spend scrolling, the more we find those dangers, the more we get sucked into them, the more anxious we get." Aldao, the director of Together CBT, a clinic that specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, has worked with her patients to cut back on doomscrolling. Here's some of her advice on how to temper the doom:

Set a timer. I work mostly with clients who experience anxiety and part of what I've been doing with them now for weeks, for months, is actually setting limits to how much they're scrolling. And I literally tell them, "Set up a timer." You do want to know what's happening in the world, so the solution isn't to never go online again, but it's finding boundaries.

Stay cognizant. Going into it, opening up your phone, reminding yourself why you're there, what are you looking for, what information are you trying to find. And then periodically checking in with yourself -- have I found what I needed?

Swap 'vicious cycles' for 'virtuous cycles.' Whether it's ice cream, connecting with friends, sending something funny to a friend -- those are the things we should spend more time doing just to build positive emotions in our lives.

A coronavirus vaccine the University of Oxford is developing with AstraZeneca showed promising results in early human testing, a sign of progress in the high-stakes pursuit of a shot to defeat the pathogen. From a report: The vaccine increased levels of both protective neutralizing antibodies and immune T-cells that target the virus, according to the study organizers. The results were published Monday in The Lancet medical journal. BBC adds: Trials involving around 1,077 people showed the injection led to them making antibodies and white blood cells that can fight coronavirus. The findings are hugely promising, but it is still too soon to know if this is enough to offer protection and larger trials are under way. The UK has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine.

Slashdot reader destinyland writes: On April 7th, a Trump campaign advisor told the Los Angeles Times "One way we still win this election is by turning it into a referendum on China." Within weeks the Washington Post noted "reports that the Trump administration has sought to pressure U.S. intelligence agencies to search for proof of a link between the Wuhan lab and the covid-19 outbreak." And that same month selected portions of two diplomatic cables from 2018 were leaked to the Washington Post, and published in a controversial "opinion piece."

The Post requested "expedited processing" for the release of the complete text of both cables — a routine request which was nevertheless denied. (Though a virologist at Columbia University shared a rebuttal in memes.) The complete text of the cables has now been released — and the additional information undercuts the story line that the lab — which was located a full nine miles from the market at the center of the outbreak — was anything less than safe. Though the Post's opinion piece had highlighted a clause about "a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory" — the diplomats had actually been concerned instead that the shortage would interfere with the lab's productivity and utilization — and not it's safety.

And there was apparently more information in the cable which was withheld. CNN reports:

The January 2018 cable, obtained by the Washington Post after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, noted that ties between the WIV and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston could help alleviate the shortage and that, reportedly, the US-based institution was training technicians to work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). A second cable about the WIV from April 2018 cited a French official who said that "French experts have provided guidance and biosafety training to the lab, which will continue...."

Back in April a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development surmised the misleading excerpts from the cables had come from "an administration official with an obvious axe to grind." And this weekend the Columbia University virologist reacted to what the cable's full text revealed about the high safety standards at the Wuhan Institute of Virology:

"This cable says NOTHING about concerns with the work that was being done at WIV. The supposedly worrisome work was actually presented as a success story in a lab that was coming online more slowly than everyone — including the US authors of the cable — expected or hoped."