レアジョブ英会話 Daily News Article Podcast

Whether they’re rummaging through grass in a park or scuttling along pavements on the hunt for crumbs, pigeons seem to fit right in busy London.

But the same bird that often blends in as part of the urban background has helped scientists investigate one of the hardest questions in biology. How can a pigeon be taken many kilometers from home and still find its way back?

After all, unlike their human counterparts, they don't have the luxury of satellite GPS navigation. Animals use several techniques to navigate. Some follow the stars. Others remember landmarks, smells, or the position of the sun.

Birds, fish, and sea turtles are also known to orient themselves using Earth’s magnetic field, effectively giving them a natural compass. That ability is known as magnetoreception. It means an animal can detect information from Earth’s magnetic field and use it for direction, position, and orientation.

Since the 1960s, studies by researchers, including Cornell University ornithologist William Keeton, have shown that pigeons use several navigation cues at once. They can use the sun, familiar landmarks, smell, vision, and the Earth’s magnetic field.

But scientists still haven’t fully understood how birds physically detect magnetism inside the body.

Previous theories focused mainly on the eyes, the beak, and the inner ear. One idea suggested birds might “see” magnetic fields through light-sensitive molecules in the eye called cryptochromes.

Now, a new study published in the journal Science points to the liver. Researchers from the University of Bonn, University Hospital Bonn, the University of Duisburg Essen, and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior found that special immune cells in pigeon livers may respond to magnetic fields.

Those cells are macrophages. In the pigeon liver, the researchers found macrophages packed with iron oxide nanoparticles. Those particles appear to make the cells superparamagnetic.

In simple terms, superparamagnetic particles don’t stay permanently magnetic like a fridge magnet, but they react strongly when exposed to an outside magnetic field.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

A novel pill helped people with advanced pancreatic cancer live longer, researchers reported, raising hopes of long-needed better treatments for one of the deadliest types of cancer. “While not curing the cancer, it is a very large step forward,” said Dr. Zev Wainberg, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped lead the study.

The drug is called Daraxonrasib, and it blocks a mutated protein that fuels tumor growth in more than 90% of pancreatic cancer cases—a target that had eluded treatment for decades.

The daily pills nearly doubled survival time, with fewer severe side effects, in a study that randomly assigned the experimental drug or more chemotherapy to 500 patients whose metastatic, or spreading, cancer had stopped responding to prior treatment.

The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago.

Those taking Daraxonrasib lived for a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for chemotherapy recipients. While that may seem like a small improvement, Wainberg said it marked the first drug to show a substantial advantage over chemotherapy.

“Having treated pancreatic cancer for 16 years, I actually started crying” when first seeing the study results, Dr. Rachna Shroff of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, who wasn't involved with the research, said from the ASCO meeting. She was struck by how “patients stayed on this treatment because it was providing durable and meaningful benefit to them.”

The pills’ effects eventually wane, but recipients used them for significantly longer than the comparison group stayed on chemotherapy, reporting less pain and a better quality of life as their tumors shrank. Many still were using the drug after the data were analyzed, which Wainberg said means the survival gap may widen as researchers continue tracking them.

Dr. Brian Wolpin, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, presented the findings. He said the drug should become “a new standard of care” for previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer, adding that researchers also will explore its use earlier in the disease, including to see if tumor shrinkage might let more patients qualify for surgery.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Your favorite pair of jeans may have traveled around the world through cotton farms, dye houses, wash facilities, and factories before ending up in your closet. The denim may have never been worn, but it is stonewashed, sanded, chemically faded, or laser-treated to look like it.

Those processes can require significant amounts of water, energy, and chemicals—part of the reason denim has become a growing target for sustainability efforts across the fashion industry, which is among the world’s biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions.

Brands are responding to wider awareness by marketing their jeans as “sustainable,” touting regenerative cotton, recycled fibers, and low-water manufacturing techniques. But figuring out if that's true is far more complicated. For one, sustainability is difficult to define—and there isn't a universal set of standards.

Recently, Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein acquired Everlane, a brand known for transparency and sustainability efforts, highlighting broader tensions over scale and affordability. Improvements in sustainable processes typically cost more, making it difficult for companies with fast production cycles and low prices to adopt them widely. Consumers are left to navigate a complicated web of tradeoffs involving farming practices, chemical processes, labor ethics, and a wide range of prices.

Experts say consumers should be wary of vague sustainability claims and instead look for brands that provide detailed information about their sourcing and manufacturing processes.

Dana Davis, a strategic fashion adviser who led sustainability efforts for the label Mara Hoffman, encouraged shoppers to look beyond a single product page and examine whether brands discuss labor rights, textiles, and manufacturing sites across their entire business—not just in a capsule collection.

But one of the simplest ways to reduce denim’s environmental footprint is also the least glamorous: to buy fewer jeans, wear them longer, wash them less, and shop secondhand.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Ohio, one of the nation's data center destination hot spots, is suspending a tax break that has been critical to its competition with other states to attract the massive new facilities that power and train artificial intelligence chatbots.

The move by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine comes as tax breaks for energy-hungry AI data centers are increasingly playing a role in state budgets, and the industry is under pressure to pay the full costs of the vast network of its computing warehouses needed to power AI.

The size of Ohio's tax break skyrocketed, dwarfing previous projections, as opposition to data centers is sweeping through cities, suburbs, and towns there and prompting lawmakers to form a committee to study the impact.

In the meantime, residents are trying to bypass the GOP-controlled Legislature and get a referendum on November's midterm election ballot that's designed to permanently ban hyperscale data centers, likely the strictest such statewide ban under consideration in the U.S.

DeWine's office cited the rising utilization of the tax break and the state Legislature's new research undertaking to declare a pause in granting it to new applicants.

The governor felt it was the right time to let the citizens know, let businesses know that we're going to pause on new offers of this tax incentive while that process plays out, DeWine's spokesperson, Dan Tierney, said.

DeWine stressed that he supports data centers—calling them a critical component in today's economy—and that the roughly $37 billion in data center-related investment in 2024 and 2025 in Ohio has been worthwhile. Meanwhile, business groups—including the state Chamber of Commerce—and labor unions warned that pausing the tax break put Ohio at risk of losing tech-sector investments to other states.

The state, in 2024, had used previous history in projecting that the exemption would total $136 million in fiscal 2025 and $142 million in fiscal 2026. It was $554 million in 2024 and nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, the state reported.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

For weddings, vacations, or other special occasions, more consumers are turning to clothing rental services instead of buying something new.

These subscription-based services, often marketed as a sustainable alternative to fast fashion, ship straight to customers everything from everyday and workwear to dresses, handbags, and formalwear. Then, the items are returned for someone else to use.

“I haven’t bought anything for a big occasion since 2019,” said Sasha Eck, a user of clothing rental services.

Along with giving her continuous and affordable access to newer, trendier clothes, she said renting formalwear made more sense than spending the equivalent of a month's rent on a dress she would only wear once. A recent survey from ThredUp suggests others face the same predicament, with the resale platform finding 87% of wedding guests said they had purchased at least one outfit they wore only once.

Clothing rental services appear to be an environmentally ethical alternative: One garment can be worn by multiple people instead of being tethered to a single closet. But fashion and logistics experts say the reality of rental subscriptions is more complicated, especially once shipping, returns, and consumer habits are factored in.

Kate Fletcher, a professor of sustainability, design, and fashion systems at Manchester Metropolitan University, said rental services can sometimes encourage the same mindset that drives fast fashion.

“In theory, the embodied resources within that garment get a chance to be worked harder by having that many more people wear it. And so that’s the sort of compelling argument of it,” she said.

But Fletcher said many of those environmental benefits can be undermined by repeated shipping, returns, and cleaning.

Aja Barber, a sustainability consultant and writer, said people often overlook the footprint of those processes.

“When you think about rental, you don’t think about the packaging that comes every time you get something from rental. You don’t think about the carbon footprint of shipping the item to you. And you certainly don’t think about the carbon footprint of dry cleaning,” said Barber.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Oreo is teaming up with K-pop supergroup BTS for a bit of marketing dynamite that capitalizes on consumers' growing interest in global flavors.

Mondelez, Oreo's parent company, said that BTS-themed Oreos would go on sale June 1 online and June 8 in stores. The cookies, which feature purple wafers in a nod to the band's signature color, would be sold in more than 80 markets around the world, making the partnership the brand's biggest to date.

The band also designed 13 embossments for the wafers, including the names of the seven members and an outline of the light stick that fans hold at BTS concerts. The white-and-tan creme center of the sandwich cookies was formulated to taste like hotteok, a warm, brown sugar-stuffed pancake that's a popular Korean street food.

For Oreo to be the first snacking brand we've collaborated with globally is a huge honor. We ate them as kids, we eat them in the studio, and now Oreo is helping us share a taste of home with the world, BTS said in a statement.

BTS Oreos will be sold for a limited time. Chicago-based Mondelez wouldn't say how many packages it's making.

Martin Renaud, Mondelez's chief marketing and sales officer, said the BTS cookies strike a balance of staying true to Korean culture and food while remaining consistent with Oreo's brand and flavoring.

You want to be authentic, you want to be differentiated, and live an experience. But when you are Oreo, you need to be pleasing a large group of people, Renaud told The Associated Press. You cannot come up with something that will be liked only by 20% of the population because it would alienate some of our customers.

Renaud said Oreo spent around two years developing the BTS cookie, eventually narrowing the possible flavors to three before settling on hotteok.

In recent years, Oreo has partnered with Coca-Cola, singer and actress Selena Gomez, and the K-pop girl band Blackpink, among others. The brand also offers limited-time flavors in specific markets, like cherry sakura in Japan and red bean paste in China.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

America has been called the “breadbasket of the world” due to its export of food products across the globe. Now, with the U.S. agriculture industry grappling with a shrinking labor force and aging farmers, many operations are pivoting to automation.

The manufacturer, Carbon Robotics, is making the machines that use lasers and artificial intelligence in the U.S. and selling them to farms across the country and in Europe. It can recognize weeds and distinguish them from plants the farmer wants to keep.

“So in our large plant model, we have over 150 million plants already labeled so that when those cameras and the NVIDIA GPUs see a crop or a weed, it pulls from that database to decide if it has to shoot it or not,” says Brian Ballard from Carbon Robotics.

The laser weeding robots cost anywhere from $500,000 to $1.4 million, depending on size, and kill weeds that emerge shortly after crops are planted. The robots work with any food crops.

Rutgers University is working with Carbon Robotics on developing the tech. So far, their data suggests this could be an improvement on other methods.

“We realized that this kind of equipment is as effective as traditional herbicides. And in addition, we realized that some of these traditional herbicides are still hurting the crop. You can still have crop stunting, less biomass production for this crop when you use an herbicide. And it's something that you don't see when you use a LaserWeeder. We did experimentation in spinach and peas, and we have up to 30% yield increase where we use a LaserWeeder. Why? Because we didn't have any herbicides that could potentially be damaging to the crop,” says Thierry Besançon, an Extension Weed Science Specialist at Rutgers University.

The shift toward technology comes as the labor pool tightens.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

After more than a decade of mixing and kneading dough in his family’s Brooklyn pizzeria, Salvatore Lo Duca recently made a distressing discovery: a key component of their thin-crust pies, bromated flour, contained a suspected carcinogen already banned in much of the world.

So, in the back kitchen of Lo Duca Pizzeria, the 39-year-old began tweaking the original recipe handed down by his parents—with unexpected results.

Cost-wise, yes, it is a little more expensive, but the quality is there. So it's like anything else. You pay a little bit more for better quality. So if you want to give a better product, you should pay a bit more, said Lo Duca, who runs the shop with his five brothers.

A looming ban on the additive, potassium bromate, may soon force thousands of pizzerias and bagel shops across New York into a similar transition.

The bill, passed by state lawmakers and awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature, has divided dough-makers, triggering fears that even a minor change to long-established baking practices could have dramatic implications for the city’s most iconic foods.

“This is an earth-shaking event for New York pizza,” said Scott Wiener, a pizza historian who leads tours of notable slice shops.

Employees at several stores that use bromated flour declined to comment for this story. But Wiener estimated that around 80 percent of pizza and bagel shops rely on a flour that contains the oxidizing agent, which reduces rest time for dough and helps ensure a stronger, chewier product.

To some, the quintessential qualities of the New York bagel—its height and structure, external crispiness and springy bite—would not be possible, or at least as ubiquitous, without the chemical shortcut.

It's a little alarming. In the sense that you might see a little bit of a price increase on your local neighborhood spot. You might pay a little more for your morning breakfast or your afternoon slice of pizza, lamented Jesse Spellman, the second-generation owner of Utopia Bagels.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

The Trump administration loosened federal rules requiring grocery stores and air-conditioning companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cooling equipment, a step that President Donald Trump said would help lower grocery costs.

Trump said at a White House ceremony that the action by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would substantially lower costs for consumers by delaying costly restrictions that limit the type of refrigerants U.S. businesses and families can use.

The move to relax the Biden-era rules on harmful pollutants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, emitted by refrigerators and other appliances, was the latest attempt by the Republican administration before pivotal elections in November to try to address rising voter concerns over the cost of living.

It is not clear how much or how quickly grocery prices could be impacted. Industry groups said it could even raise prices because manufacturers have already redesigned products, retooled factories, and trained workers to build and service next-generation refrigerant equipment.

Inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, amid price spikes caused by the Iran war and Trump's sweeping tariffs. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.

The regulation from the Democratic Biden administration was unnecessary and costly and actually makes the machinery worse, Trump said at a ceremony joined by top executives from Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, and other grocery chains. He said the EPA action would protect hundreds of thousands of jobs and save Americans more than $2 billion a year.

The Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, which represents more than 330 HVAC manufacturers and commercial refrigeration companies, said the change in approach would inject uncertainty across the market and could even raise prices.

This rule works against basic supply and demand, said Stephen Yurek, the group's president and CEO. By extending the compliance deadline for phasing out HFCs, the administration is maintaining and even increasing demand in the market for existing refrigerants while supply continues to fall.

The net result will be higher service costs and higher costs for consumers, he said.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons, and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India.

In May, the India Meteorological Department forecasted maximum temperatures of around 45 °C (113 °F) in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope.

The weather department has warned that conditions are expected to persist across several northern regions, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses.

India declares a heat wave whenever temperatures are above 40 °C (104 °F) in the plains and 30 °C (86 °F) or more in its hilly regions. The extreme heat has disrupted daily life across several northern states.

In some parts of Uttar Pradesh state, India's most populous, roads and markets have closed in the afternoons as people stayed indoors, while some traders shifted work to early mornings. Farmers began working at night because daytime conditions became unbearable.

The heat also disrupted schools, with authorities in several areas announcing early summer vacations and suspending classes as the maximum temperature shot up to 48.2 °C (118.8 °F) in the city of Banda last May.

Health authorities urged people to avoid going outdoors during peak afternoon hours, stay hydrated, and seek medical help if they experience symptoms such as dizziness or high fever.

In New Delhi, residents and tourists sought relief from the heat inside cooling shelters set up across the capital. The shaded space provides air coolers, fans, drinking water, and oral rehydration solutions to help people deal with the extreme heat.

Inside one tent, people rested beside air coolers as officials distributed cups of water mixed with rehydration salts.

“We had come here for outing. But it is too hot here. The cooling system here is good for us,” said Basharat Ahmad Malla, a 25-year-old tourist.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.