May 4, 2026

05 Sci-Tech

Trump Fires Board Overseeing DEI-iddled National Science Foundation– legalinsurrection.com

pgnewser April 30, 2026 0

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The Trump administration has removed the entire board of independent overseers for the National Science Foundation (NSF), CBS News reports. The decision, announced Friday, eliminated all 22 members of the board, which had planned to meet next week.

“I wasn’t entirely surprised, to be honest,” said one dismissed board member in an email.

Another dismissed board member noted the vast changes the Trump administration hopes to accomplish regarding the move.

“I think this is one more indication of the sweeping changes that the administration has in mind for the NSF.”

The board members were released via an email from the Presidential Personnel Office which noted that “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” their positions were to be terminated, “effective immediately.”

FISA Passes House, Biden Vehicle Kill Switch Survives

pgnewser April 30, 2026 0

Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) is still trying to kill what is being called the Biden Vehicle Kill Switch. This is a requirement by the government that all car manufacturers create a vehicle kill switch that car owners cannot deactivate. So far, he has failed. This latest effort has also failed, with the Johnson-led House passing FISA renewal ahead of Thursday’s deadline.

Roy proposed an amendment to the FISA renewal act that effectively kills the Biden kill switch. Roy said, “Republicans should not be continuing a blatantly invasive Biden-era policy that enables round-the-clock monitoring of Americans in their own cars. That’s why I introduced an amendment to FISA to eliminate the ‘kill switch’ and stop this Big Brother technology from being built into new vehicles.”

Roy Pushes Amendment to End Biden Surveillance Mandate– www.dailysignal.com
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The vehicle kill switch may be getting another chance to be killed in Congress this week as a member of the House Rules Committee wants to repeal legislation that directs automakers to install surveillance technology on all new vehicles starting in 2027.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a committee member and influential congressman on the conservative House Freedom Caucus, says the Biden-era mandate poses “a direct threat to our Fourth Amendment rights.”

“Republicans should not be continuing a blatantly invasive Biden-era policy that enables round-the-clock monitoring of Americans in their own cars,” Roy told The Daily Signal while the possibility of the amendment was still being discussed by the Rules Committee.

“That’s why I introduced an amendment to FISA to eliminate the ‘kill switch’ and stop this Big Brother technology from being built into new vehicles.”

This is Roy’s second attempt at killing the kill switch this year.

The need for an amendment already has large support from House conservatives, including Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; Scott Perry, R-Pa.; and Keith Self, R-Texas.

“The government should never have the ability to remotely kill your car or anything else you own,” Self told The Daily Signal. “When a group of us conservatives in the House tried to repeal this Joe Biden-era mandate set to take effect next year, 57 Republicans teamed up with 211 Democrats to stop us. That’s unacceptable.”

House passes FISA extension ahead of Thursday’s deadline – WGHN

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A powerful surveillance authority that the U.S. government uses to spy on foreigners cleared the House on Wednesday, resolving one stalemate that threatened to derail its renewal before it expires this week.

It now faces hurdles in the Senate.

The controversial spy tool, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is set to lapse Thursday. Congress approved a 10-day extension ahead of the original April 20 deadline.

After House GOP opposition forced days of delay, the lower chamber advanced the measure earlier Wednesday in a procedural vote that was held open for about two hours as leaders worked to convince holdouts to flip their votes.

The House passed the measure — which is formatted as an amendment to an unrelated bill — in a 235 to 191 vote later in the day.

Section 702, which was first authorized in 2008, allows the government to collect the communications of noncitizens located outside the U.S. without a warrant, though it can also sweep up the data of Americans who are in contact with the targeted foreigners. The FBI is able to search Americans’ data gathered through the program without a warrant.

National security officials have long argued that the law is vital for disrupting terrorist plots, foreign espionage, international drug trafficking and cyber intrusions.

AI creates 1K Jobs at Salesforce

pgnewser April 29, 2026 1

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced online plans to hire 1000 new college graduates to drive the “exponential” potential of AI. He said in his X post, “… they said AI would kill entry-level jobs.  Meanwhile these grads & interns are building it.”

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Marc Benioff has announced plans to hire 1,000 graduates and interns at Salesforce, positioning the move as a counterpoint to fears that artificial intelligence will erode entry-level job opportunities.

In a post on X, Benioff said the new hires would contribute to building AI-driven products within the company, including initiatives such as Agentforce and Headless360. He encouraged graduates to apply through the company’s recruitment channels, emphasising that young talent is actively participating in developing the very technologies expected to disrupt traditional roles.

Scientists just found a chilling way life may have begun– www.sciencedaily.com

pgnewser April 29, 2026 0

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Modern cells are highly intricate systems. They contain internal scaffolding, tightly controlled chemical processes, and genetic instructions that guide nearly everything they do. This complexity allows them to survive in diverse environments and compete based on their fitness. In contrast, the earliest cell-like structures were extremely simple. These primitive compartments were essentially tiny bubbles, where lipid membranes enclosed basic organic molecules. Understanding how such simple protocells eventually gave rise to the complex cells we see today remains a central question in origin-of-life research.

A recent study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo takes a closer look at how these early structures might have behaved on ancient Earth. Instead of proposing a single explanation for how life began, the researchers focused on experiments that simulate realistic environmental conditions. Specifically, they examined how variations in membrane composition affect protocell growth, fusion, and the ability to retain important molecules during freeze/thaw cycles.

Louisiana HB 586 Would Make It a Crime to Leave a Loaded Firearm Where a Minor Could Access It– www.usacarry.com

pgnewser April 29, 2026 0

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Key Takeaways

  • House Bill 586 aims to create a new criminal offense for firearm owners if minors access and misuse loaded guns.
  • The bill, known as ‘Noah’s Law,’ defines punishable violations for unsecured firearms leading to injury or death.
  • Exceptions exist for firearms used in self-defense, carried on the person, or accessed unlawfully by minors.
  • Concerns arise about subjective standards for liability, potentially putting law-abiding owners at risk.
  • The bill awaits a committee hearing on April 28, 2026, where Louisiana gun owners can provide input.

Scientists catch antimatter “atom” acting like a wave for the first time– www.sciencedaily.com

pgnewser April 29, 2026 0

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One of the defining breakthroughs that set quantum physics apart from classical physics was the realization that matter behaves very differently at extremely small scales. Among the most important discoveries was wave-particle duality, the idea that particles can also act like waves.

This concept became widely known through the double-slit experiment. When electrons were fired through two narrow openings, they produced a pattern of alternating light and dark bands on a detector. This pattern revealed that each electron behaved like a wave, with its quantum wave-function passing through both slits at once and interfering with itself.

Scientists later confirmed this effect with neutrons, helium atoms, and even larger molecules, establishing matter-wave diffraction as a key principle of quantum mechanics.

However, despite these advances, this phenomenon had not been directly observed in positronium. Positronium is a short-lived, two-body system made up of an electron and a positron bound together and orbiting a shared center of mass. Because both components have equal mass, researchers have long sought to understand how such a system would behave when forming a beam and undergoing diffraction.

Scientists think they finally know why Neanderthals vanished– www.sciencedaily.com

pgnewser April 28, 2026 0

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Scientists are still working to understand why Neanderthals went extinct while Homo sapiens established a lasting presence in Europe. The answer is not simple. It likely involves several overlapping factors, but a new study using techniques inspired by digital ecology is offering a clearer picture.

The research was led by Ariane Burke, a professor of anthropology at Université de Montréal and head of the Hominin Dispersals Research Group in Quebec. Building on work by her doctoral students, Benjamin Albouy and Simon Paquin, Burke adapted models commonly used to study the distribution of plants and animals and applied them to ancient human populations. The approach combines archaeological evidence with ethnographic data to better understand how early humans lived and moved.

The team focused on Europe during the last glacial cycle, between 60,000 and 35,000 years ago. This period was marked by dramatic climate swings, shifting between cold (stadial) and warmer (interstadial) phases. It was also the time when Homo sapiens first appeared in the archaeological record in Europe and when Neanderthals disappeared.

Mistral AI launches Workflows, a Temporal-powered orchestration engine already running millions of daily executions– venturebeat.com

pgnewser April 28, 2026 0

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Mistral AI, the Paris-based artificial intelligence company valued at €11.7 billion ($13.8 billion), today released Workflows in public preview — a production-grade orchestration layer designed to move enterprise AI systems out of proofs of concept and into the business processes that generate revenue.

The product, which launches as part of Mistral’s Studio platform, is the company’s clearest articulation yet of a thesis that is quietly reshaping the enterprise AI market: that the bottleneck for organizations adopting AI is no longer the model itself, but the infrastructure required to run it reliably at scale.

“What we’re seeing today is that organizations are struggling to go beyond isolated proofs of concept,” Elisa Salamanca, who leads go-to-market for Mistral’s enterprise products, told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview ahead of the launch. “The gap is operational. Workflows is the infrastructure to run AI systems reliably across business-critical processes.”

The release arrives at a pivotal moment for both Mistral and the broader AI industry. The dedicated agentic AI market has been valued at approximately $10.9 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $199 billion by 2034. Yet despite that staggering growth trajectory, industry research points to a stark reality: over 40% of agentic AI projects will be aborted by 2027 due to high costs, unclear value, and complexity. Mistral is betting that Workflows can help its enterprise customers avoid becoming one of those statistics.

China develops a new fuel cell that turns coal directly into electricity without burning |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com

pgnewser April 28, 2026 0

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Chinese researchers have unveiled a groundbreaking ‘Zero-Carbon-Emission Direct Coal Fuel Cell’ (ZC-DCFC) that fundamentally transforms coal-based energy. Led by Xie Heping at Shenzhen University, this innovation bypasses traditional combustion – the process responsible for massive carbon emissions and energy loss in conventional power plants. By utilising electrochemical oxidation, the system converts coal’s chemical energy directly into electricity, as noted in the Energy Reviews journal.

This closed-loop technology not only prevents the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere but also captures it in situ, converting it into valuable chemical feedstocks like synthesis gas or sodium bicarbonate. This development challenges long-standing assumptions about the environmental impact of coal, potentially providing a cleaner pathway for utilising vast fossil fuel reserves.