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The mainstream Ch 8 police wrongdoing show sequential C.L.I.F. is back for its fifth run, with new-yet-not-exactly new main events, Rebecca Lim and Pierre Png. Be that as it may, more on that fascinating chunk later.

C.L.I.F. is the first Ch 8 dramatization to get the extent that a fifth season, verifying the fame of stories spinning around our men dressed in blue. As per past news reports, C.L.I.F. 3 drew a record of very nearly a million watchers for its introduction scene, and the Singapore Police Force saw a �50 percent expansion in the quantity of candidates� after the principal season publicized.

The principal season featured Qi Yuwu and Joanne Peh � and the couple was dating off-camera when they were brought together in C.L.I.F. 2.

C.L.I.F. is likewise where Rui En and Li Nanxing played CID officers and love premiums for as far back as three seasons (the previous in the Special Investigation Section and the last mentioned, Specialized Crime Division, in the event that you didn’t have an inkling).

For cycle 5, the 20-scene arrangement resembles it’s getting a make-over, highlighting another driving cast that incorporates Rebecca Lim, Pierre Png and Taiwanese star Weber Yang.

Be that as it may, pause, Rebecca and Pierre aren’t add up to outsiders to C.L.I.F. In the primary season, which disclosed in 2011, Becks reveals to us that she really “played a legal sciences officer with scarcely five scenes� in the show. “That was it,� she giggles great naturedly. Quick forward 8 years, and Rebecca has been um, elevated to lead on-screen character for C.L.I.F. 5, and adventures from the sterile lab out to the untamed waters, as she plays the pioneer of the police ocean watch group.

She stars inverse Taiwanese Weber Yang, with whom Rebecca says she shares “a fascinating romantic tale�. She likewise reunites with her Missing co-star Pierre Png. Turns out Pierre is somewhat of a C.L.I.F ‘top choice�, as he was in both C.L.I.F 2 and 3, however his sequential criminal cum-killer cum-specialist character kicked the bucket toward the start of 2013’s season 3.

No, the terrible criminal hasn’t been revived. Try not to stress, Pierre is the main man in No. 5, so he certainly plays one of the heroes in blue.

It always seems busy over at the Lego company, but right now it seems busier than usual. No only is it seemingly running out of stock ofÌýAvengers: EndgameÌýtie-in sets, there’s also the new release of theÌýSpider-Man: Far From Home tie-in setsÌýand the ongoingÌý20th anniversary celebrations for the Lego Star Wars theme.ÌýBut May 4th is on the way, and asÌýStar WarsÌýday approaches we just found out what sort of offers Lego has in store for us.

Those offers have been revealed thanks to a promotional leaflet sent out to VIP members, and post online byÌýBrickset member maniac (registration required). That leaflet reveals a special set for people spending more than £75 onÌýStar WarsÌýsets, featuring a miniaturisedÌýdiorama of the Battle of Hoth, while VIP members will get a freeÌýStar WarsÌýposter if they spend over £35.

Anyone spending more than £35 onÌýStar WarsÌýin a physical Lego store (ie not online) will also get a miniature Naboo Starfighter. Lego stores will also be letting shoppers build miniature versions of the Tantive IV in a new ‘make and takeâ€� event. Those are usually free, but you will have to get there between 4-6pm on Friday 3rd May. No doubt the instructions will appear online shortly afterwards, if you can’t.

Of course that’s not all, and there will be the usual selection of discounted sets, but we don’t know which ones are going to enjoy the lovely discount we wish all Lego sets had. Fortunately allÌýStar WarsÌýsets will net their buyers double VIP points, and while that’s not the same as a proper discount it’s still far better than nothing.

And then of course theÌýnew Tantive IV setÌýwill arrive on 3rd May as well. Costing £180, that should tick all the boxes for the free stuff.

Google’sÌýÌýhead-worn smart display, Google Glass, in finally ready to move the tassel.

After defining the company’s far-flung connected dreams when it was first announced in 2013, the enterprise-refocused headset is graduating from the X moonshot factory with a new hardware update that aims to make it more approachable for companies.

After a soft consumer tease that was buzz-worthy if not laughably pre-mature, Google Glass Enterprise Edition was announced two years ago and the dedicated group has been plugging along since then courting businesses to hop on board.

The design of Glass Enterprise Edition 2 doesn’t appear to be radically different from its predecessor, but under the hood there are some noteworthy changes, namely the platform now runs on Android and Android Enterprise Mobile Device Management. Those changes alone are probably enough for enterprise customers to move from the non-starter camp to giving it a first look.

The software upgrades are made possible by the headset’s transition to Qualcomm’s AR/VR-focusedÌýXR1 chipset. The company also says the new headset has “improved camera performance and qualityâ€� as well as USB-C connectivity.

The Glass team joins Google’s AR/VR team and marks another key point in the company’s gradual pivot away from driving to the consumer hoop. In the past year, Google has minimized product updates to its consumer VR platform, while shuttering some groups focused on creative content production and refocusing efforts on enterprise and consumer products more heavily leveraging machine learning.

With its move from X, the Glass team joins projects like Waymo, Wing and Loon that also proved worthy of moving deeper inside Google.

During a recent experiment at Boston Children’s Hospital, bioengineers used a robotic catheter to reach a leaky valve inside pig hearts. But get this � the device was completely autonomous, navigating through the heart all by itself and without the benefit of a surgeon’s guiding hand. Welcome to the future of heart surgery.

NewÌýresearchÌýpublished today in Science Robotics describes a robotic catheter that’s capable of moving autonomously inside a living body. In tests, the device navigated through beating, blood-filled pig hearts in search of its target â€� a leaky prosthetic valve. Once at the scene, a surgeon took over to finish the repair. The senior investigator of this project, bioengineer Pierre Dupont from Boston Children’s Hospital, said this proof-of-concept experiment suggests autonomous surgical robots could be used for complex procedures, freeing up surgeons to focus on the most difficult tasks.

“The right way to think about this is through the analogy of a fighter pilot and [an autonomous] fighter plane,� said Dupont in a press statement. “The fighter plane takes on the routine tasks like flying the plane, so the pilot can focus on the higher-level tasks of the mission.�

In addition to relieving surgeons of a tiring, onerous task, a minimally invasive procedure such as this reduces chances of trauma and infection, which are associated risks of open heart surgery. Currently, robotic catheters are used during heart surgery, but they’re not autonomous, requiring a surgeon to manually move the device using joysticks. What’s more, a patient typically requires about 30 minutes of exposure to x-rays during the procedure, which is obviously not great.

Illustration of robotic catheter navigation to the site of the leaking prosthetic valve.Ìý

A key to this breakthrough was the application of haptic vision � a form of “seeing� through the sense of touch. Inspired by the way insects and other creatures move around in dark or unfamiliar environments, Dupont and his colleagues developed a system capable of learning the lay of the land through touch. In this case, the “land� was comprised of heart tissue. The robotic catheter was able to sense and creep along the tissue walls to reach a targeted location within the heart.

To enable the haptic vision, researchers at Dupont’s lab developed a proprietary optical touch sensor. This sensor, with the help of AI, a pre-programmed anatomy lesson, and pre-operative scans, told the catheter where it was located inside the heart and where it needed to go next. The sensor, attached to the bottom end of the catheter, was able to recognize a heart wall, sense the presence of blood, and detect a valve. It also knew how strongly and how frequently it needed to exert pressure onto the tissue walls.

The catheter itself was comprised of concentric, telescopic tube robot technology. A “motorized drive system located at the base of the tubes rotated and telescopically extended the tubes with respect to each other to control the shape of the catheter and its tip position,� describe the authors in the new study.

In tests, the scientists used the autonomous catheter for a procedure known as paravalvular aortic leak closure, which is done to repair replacement heart valves that are leaking around the edges. Pigs were chosen for the experiment given the similarity of their anatomy to ours. The device was able to move inside the heart all by itself, eventually reaching the target. From there, a surgeon took over, deploying a device from inside the catheter called an occluder to plug the leaky tissue surrounding the prosthetic valve. In total, five pigs were used over the course of 83 trials. The autonomous catheter reached its destination in 95 percent of attempts, requiring around the same amount of time as a surgeon. The researchers weren’t able to detect any signs of bruising, scratches, or other tissue damage.

A diagram of the occluder deployment system.

“This is a significant breakthrough, and an outstanding piece of work,� said Ellen Roche, an assistant professor at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering & Science, in an email to Gizmodo. “Autonomous catheters could be transformative in interventional cardiology and cardiac surgery, as well as for other surgeries.�

Roche, who wasn’t involved with the new research, was impressed by the use of haptic vision to achieve the autonomous control, saying it would be interesting to see how the system might work for procedures other than preventing leakage around an implanted replacement valve.

Nikolay Vasilyev, an assistant professor of surgery in the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Boston� Children’s Hospital, liked the new approach, saying it could pave the way toward the development of autonomous image-guided robotic repairs, not only inside the heart, but also in thoracic (spine), vascular (veins and arteries), gastrointestinal, and other surgical procedures.

“One potential hurdle for wide clinical application, besides addressing safety questions and ensuring user adoption, is the technologies are developing much faster than regulations,� Vasilyev, who was not affiliated with the new study, wrote in an email to Gizmodo. “This may require close collaboration with regulatory agencies and potentially creation of new standards for regulatory approvals of autonomous medical robotic devices.�

That said, and as Roche explained to Gizmodo, it “typically it takes 3 to 7 years for approval for human use once the design is frozen, and has been submitted to the FDA, so likely a couple of years longer overall.� So it could be another decade before we see autonomous robotic probes slinking their way through our bodies during surgery. That should give regulators plenty of time to address potential safety and ethical concerns.

Which is a bit of a relief. The future of surgery will almost certainly involve increasing levels of robotic autonomy inÌýa wide range of applications. If we’re going to have robots working in our bodies without the help of humans, we better get it right.

Last week,ÌýStar Trek: Discovery’s second season finaleÌýdelivered more explosionsthan a full compliment of photon torpedoes ever could. But with them, it also delivered one of the biggest status quo shifts aÌýStar TrekÌýshow has ever contemplated—and it wasn’t just shocking, it brought with it some truly fascinating promise.

“Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2â€� concluded with Michael Burnham and theÌýDiscoveryhaving to actually act on a plan most shows would usually leave to the “dire scenario our heroes asspull their ways out of at the last minuteâ€� sort of cliffhanger archetype. In order to stop the dangerous A.I. system known as Control from gaining the data it needed to become sentient (and, y’know, destroy all meatbags), Michael and the crew construct an angelic time-travelling suit that the former uses to pull the latter, and theÌýDiscoveryÌýitself, a whopping 930 years into the future—permanently.

In one shocking moment,ÌýStar Trek: DiscoveryÌýstopped being a prequel to the very firstÌýStar TrekÌýshow, and instead became the farthest-flung series in the venerable franchise’s entire history. And not just farthest flung by a couple of decades, as was the gap betweenÌýDeep Space NineÌýand theÌýupcoming Jean-Luc Picard show, or even a century like the leap fromÌýStar TrekÌýtoÌýThe Next Generation. Nine entire centuries putsÌýDiscoveryÌýnow in a timeline so far removed from the rest of its predecessors that they might as well be in a completely different series.

But it isn’t, as much as some ofÌýDiscovery’s detractors might desperately want it to be. Instead, the time jump invites us to ask incredibly exciting questions of bothÌýDiscoveryand the franchise at large: What doesÌýStar TrekÌýso far removed from its familiar trappings even look like? And, most importantly, what is it aboutÌýStar TrekÌýthat is so enduring, so fundamentally defining about the series, that even the most subversive versions still include it no matter what?

This isn’t actually the first timeÌýStar TrekÌýas a franchise has had thoughts like this. The entire initial premise ofÌýStar Trek: VoyagerÌýwas to imagine what a Starfleet vessel so far removed from Federation contact, in an unknown region of space, values of itself and its crew as it goes out and carries on that fundamental mission of diplomacy and exploration. If anything,ÌýVoyager’s biggest disappointment is that it drops those questions relatively quickly to just become aÌýStar TrekÌýshow with minimal involvement from Starfleet and the Federation until near the end of its run. But even then, it still delivered on a base level of bringing in new worlds, species, and cultures into the vastÌýStar TrekÌýpantheon thanks to that premise, adding to the variety ofÌýStar Trek’s rich tapestry instead of simply just playing about with what was established by the shows that had come before it.

ButÌýDiscovery’s status quo shift means so much more than the exciting base potential of new worlds, of new races, of new villains and new problems for Michael and her fellow crewmates to tackle as they adjust to their new normal. Because unlikeÌýVoyager, its removal from its franchise predecessors is not by vast distance—to the point that franchise staples still existed as we knew them, they were simply out of reach—but by vast time. The Federation and Starfleet as we know them in the 23rd and 24th centuries no longer exist inÌýStar Trek: Discovery’s future-present. Neither do even the versions of them briefly glimpsed inÌýStar Trek: Enterprise’s temporal storylines, drawing upon a potential 26th century—either because by this point they don’t exist at all, which would be interesting, or because those societies and structures have evolved so far beyond those points that they are practically unrecognisable not just to theÌýDiscoveryÌýand her crew, but us as viewers. Which would be evenÌýmoreÌýinteresting!

Contrast the difference between the gung-ho expansionist Federation of Kirk’s time and the diplomatic, scientific bureaucracy it had become byÌýThe Next Generation. That was just a century’s difference—contrast it even further with what was perhaps meant to be the Federation at its apex inÌýEnterprise’s imagined future, where Klingons, Ithenites, and Xindi had entered the fold, a few centuries beyond that.ÌýDiscoveryÌýnow gets to play with what a difference can be made by going anotherÌýsixÌýcenturies even beyondÌýEnteprise’s ponderance. In doing so, it can say so much more about the ideals and values ofÌýStar TrekÌýas a franchise than it ever could while being so intimately enmeshed in the nostalgic world of being a close prequel to the original series.

And really, that is the other truly liberating aspect ofÌýDiscovery’s time jump. One of the biggest weaknesses in the first two seasons of the show has been a reliance on the crutch of nostalgia for the originalÌýStar Trek. It’s been used to either distract from messy storytelling, or toÌýback downÌýfrom asking challenging questions aboutÌýStar TrekÌýas a series.ÌýDiscovery’s first season set upÌýan intriguing critiqueÌýof Starfleet’s approach to its own lofty values in a time of war, only to immediately negate those critiques by revealing that the focal character issuing them—in this case, Jason Isaac’sÌýCaptain Gabriel Lorca—was in fact from the familiar world ofÌýStar Trek’s Mirror Universe of sinister arseholes. It lead to not onlyÌýa muddled back halfÌýto the season, but the show itself having very little to say thematically, beyond the fact it knew that the Mirror Universe was an Old Thing that the fans liked.

Its second season at the very least handled its nostalgia in a much more nuanced fashion. That’s surprising, given that it went immediately for the nostalgia jugular, so to speak, recruiting legendary figures like Captain Pike, theÌýEnterprise, and even Spock himself instead of something asÌýintrinsically fannishÌýas the Mirror Universe. These nostalgic elements ended up being much more delicately handled in comparison—Michael and Spock’s relationship as adoptive siblings became aÌýgreat emotional spineÌýfor the entire season, and some truly incredible performances from Anson Mount and Ethan Peck as Pike and Spock delivered definitive new takes on these familiar characters. But they were still ultimately very slick distractions from the fact that the show once again started asking interesting ethical questions aboutÌýStar Trek’s revered institutions (in this case,ÌýSection 31, and what its existence has to say about the Federation’s utopia) only toÌýback down from themÌýthe moment they gotÌýtoochallenging a prospect to consider.

One last blast of nostalgia in the closing moments of Discovery’s second season finale: a reverse recreation of the opening shot of “The Cage,� Star Trek’s original pilot episode. (Image: CBS)

Now, by its own decision to completely sever itself from that time period,ÌýStar Trek: DiscoveryÌýcan no longer rely on those nostalgic elements to mask its hesitation to really challenge us with imaginings of what theÌýStar TrekÌýuniverse can be. And that is incrediblyÌýexciting, not just because it’s hard to imagine where else the show could have gone with its nostalgia—other than rapidly downhill—after literally canonisingÌýStar Trek’s original pilotÌýinto its premise. But because it means now, it has to commit: there’s no Spock or Pike, nor a gorgeously re-imaginedÌýEnterpriseÌýbridge, to hide behind. It has to move forward, and forge a path of its own, at practically every level of its premise. One it is seemingly is going to do, given thatÌýa new comicÌýwill explore what the show left behind in the 23rd century, rather than the series itself.

It’s time, at last, forÌýStar Trek: DiscoveryÌýto truly boldly go where none of its predecessors have gone before it. And I absolutely cannot wait to see what it does with such a powerful opportunity.

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How were giant ancient structures like Stonehenge, or the towering Moai heads on Easter Island, assembled at a time when cranes and trucks were still hundreds of years away? Researchers at MIT have given more credence to theories that ancient engineers were masters of balance and leverageÌýwith a new experiment that produced giant concrete structures, some 25 tonnes in weight, thatÌýcan be still be manoeuvred by hand.

Matter DesignÌý(which was co-founded byÌýBrandon Clifford, who’s also an assistant professor at MIT) worked with CEMEX, a company that specialises in building materials, to design a series of over-sized concrete monoliths that could be assembled like giant building blocks into a larger, functional structure. But despite weighing many tonnes apiece and being durable enough to survive hundreds of years, the concrete blocks feature unique makeups and shapes that make them relatively easy to move, even by just a single person.

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There are a couple of different design approaches at work here. The blocks, which are also known as massive masonry units—or MMUs, for short—are made from concrete with varying densities to allow precise control over where the object’s centre of gravity ends up, adding stability and balance. And while each giant block looks like a random blob, they’re engineered with strategically placed bevels, rounded edges, pivot points, handles, and interlocking features. The resulting structures are still far too heavy for a human to lift, but they can be rocked, pivoted, tilted, walked, and even rolled from one location to another, with remarkable ease and precision.

So yes, the idea that 82-tonne Moai statues were rocked and walked across an island to their final resting places is not implausible. But this experiment does more than just prove a hypothesis. GivenÌýadvances in 3D printing, especially on grander scales, this approach could be used to design and build permanent, durable structures in places where a truck or a towering crane would be impossible, or too cost-prohibitive, to employ. In places where flooding is a threat or water levels are already rising, concrete walls could be easily assembled by local residents. Or heavy, impenetrable barricades could be quickly manoeuvred into a place where threats are imminent, and there’s no time to build a more elaborate structure. One day you might even assemble your new home like a giant concrete Lego set. Just throw down a rug or two and those concrete walls won’t seem so cold.

E-cigarette fans at this point might be getting used toÌýbad newsÌýabout the chemicals found in their products. A new study out Wednesday adds another potential, if still very unclear, risk to the list. It suggests that many e-cigarette cartridges and refilling e-liquids are contaminated with toxins spewed out by bacteria and fungi.

Smoke from traditional tobacco cigarettes is obviously filled with no shortage of toxins. Some of these toxins aren’t created by the burning of tobacco itself, though, but come from dead bacteria and fungi that contaminate the products at some point during the production process. They include endotoxins, which are found inside gram-negative bacteria, and glucans, which help form the cell walls of many fungal species.

Respiratory problems like lung inflammation or asthma flare-ups have been linked to breathing in endotoxins and glucans (whether through cigarette smoke or other exposures, like working in a textile factory). But according to the authors behind this study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, there’s never been any research looking at how common these microbial toxins could be in e-cigarette products.

The Harvard researchers tested 75 individual products from 10 of the leading brands at the time. They bought all of the products online, except for those from one brand, which were purchased from a convenience store near campus. These included 38 cartridges (single-use devices) and 37 e-liquids, which are used to refill certain e-cigarette products, in various flavors such as fruit, tobacco, and menthol.

They found that 23 per cent had detectable levels of endotoxin, while 81 per cent contained some glucan. On average, cartridges had three times more glucan than the e-liquids. Tobacco- and menthol-flavoured products had glucan levels that were 10 times higher on average. Endotoxin levels, meanwhile, were slightly higher in fruit-flavoured products.

The findings, the authors say, indicate that “some popular [e-cigarette] brands and flavors may be contaminated with microbial toxins.�

Scary as that sounds, there are some big caveats to the findings.

One limitation is that they didn’t test the levels of toxins that actually end up in the aerosol produced by these products that users would breathe in. They also only tested first-generation devices, not newer ones like pens, tanks, and pods. Pods in particular now provide evenÌýmore nicotine per puffÌýto users through a different mode of delivery than older devices, but we have no idea how that might affect the level of exposure to these toxins. We do know that, generally, people are getting exposed to significantly less environmental toxins from vaping than they would from smoking a tobacco cigarette (though that doesn’t mean e-cigs areÌýcompletely harmless).

As even the authors admit, there’s no scientific evidence right now supporting “a hypothesis that current observed levels of endotoxin and glucan in [e-cigarettes] raise health concerns.�

Still, airborneÌýendotoxinÌýandÌýglucanÌýin high enough levels do seem to affect the lungs, and they’re thought to play a role in why cigarette smoke is so damaging to our breathing. So at the very least, it’s worth further studying how often these toxins can be found in e-cigarette products and whether chronic exposure through vaping can pose any health risks. If nothing else, there might be ways to reduce the risk of contamination. Cotton wicks, for instance, are often used in e-cigarette cartridges, and cotton fibres are routinely contaminated by both toxins.

“Additional research is needed to confirm our findings and assess potential exposures and health effects in [e-cigarette] users,� the authors wrote.

A U.S. government-led trial may confirm the worst fears of anyone whose diet starts and ends in the frozen food aisle in Tesco. It suggests that people who mostly eat ultra-processed foods will take in more calories and gain more weight than those who stick to mostly unprocessed foods—even if the two diets start off with the same amounts of fat, carbs, and other nutrients.

Lots of circumstantial evidence (and common sense) would lead you to think that diets rich in ultra-processed foods can be unhealthy and likely to cause weight gain. But according to the study’s lead author Kevin Hall, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, there’s not much concrete proof of a direct cause-and-effect link. That’s a long-standing problem in the world of nutrition, since it’s hard (and expensive) to study people’s diets in isolation.

“There’s this old adage that correlation doesn’t necessarily equate causation. For instance, it could be that people who eat ultra-processed foods are unhealthy in other ways. Or they could be less wealthy than people who don’t eat a diet as high in ultra-processed foods. So you don’t know whether ultra-processed foods could be an innocent bystander in all this,� Hall told Gizmodo by phone.

To help remedy this gap in evidence, Hall and his team recruited 20 healthy volunteers to vacation for a month at the National Institutes of Health’s Metabolic Clinical Research Unit for a randomised, controlled trial—seemingly the first of its kind ever conducted. But while their room and board were free, there was a major stipulation. For two weeks, they would have to eat a diet of ultra-processed foods, while the other two weeks would be spent eating unprocessed foods. Half were randomly assigned to start the unprocessed diet first, and vice-versa.

One of the ultra-processed meals volunteers ate in the NIH study.

There’s some debate as what exactly qualifies as an ultra-processed food, but Hall and his team decided to abide by guidelines developed by the United Nations, which take into account the different types of industrialised processing a food or ingredient goes through before it ends up on our plate. An example of an ultra-processed breakfast, highlighted by the authors, might include pancakes, sausages, and hash browns, while a mostly unprocessed breakfast would contain blueberries, raw nuts, and oatmeal.

“[Ultra-processed foods] are a bit like pornography—it’s hard to define, but you’ll know it when you see it,� Hall noted.

Dietitians created the meals for each diet, and designed them to roughly match in terms of total calories, macronutrients like fat and sugar, sodium, and fibre. But importantly, the volunteers were told to eat as much or little as they wanted. Together with freely available snacks, each person had the option to eat up to twice as many calories as they would likely need to stay at their current weight, based on a preliminary screening.

The team’s final results were striking. On the ultra-processed diet, the volunteers ate an average of 500 extra calories a day, gained body fat and about a pound of weight by the two-week mark; on the unprocessed diet, they lost body fat and dropped that same pound.

The results wereÌýpublishedÌýThursday in Cell Metabolism.

While the findings may seem obvious on the surface, Hall said that it’s not clear why people overate on the ultra-processed diet. In recent years, many experts haveÌýgravitatedÌýto the simple, intuitive idea that since ultra-processed foods tend to be richer in fat, sugar, and salt, it’s these three nutrients that are largely to blame for the rise in weight, obesity, and metabolic disorders. But given the design of this study, that explanation seems to fall short.

“I was kind of suspecting that once you matched for these nutrients—for the fat, sugar, and salt—that there wouldn’t be much difference, but I was wrong,� Hall said.

The study wasn’t meant to go much further than testing the specific role of fat, sugar, and salt in increasing our calorie intake. And the small sample size of the study means that their findings should be viewed with some caution, at least until more research confirms them. But Hall said there were interesting hints of why ultra-processed foods might encourage us to gorge.

“When people were consuming the unprocessed diet, the levels of a hormone called PYY, which is an appetite suppressant hormone secreted by the gut, actually increased. And similarly, another hormone that’s known to induce hunger, called ghrelin, deceased on the unprocessed diet,� Hall said.

At this point, though, the specific ingredients or chemicals commonly found in ultra-processed foods that could be causing this hormonal shift toward eating more are unclear.

Another potentially major difference they noticed was that people ate ultra-processed food much more quickly than unprocessed food. That speed likely would have given their body less time to throw up the stop sign and make them feel full. The ease in eating ultra-processed food might have helped, too, given how much softer and easier to chew they were, on average, than unprocessed food.

By contrast, one commonly suspected factor for why ultra-processed foods can cause weight gain that didn’t play any big role here was taste: The volunteers said that they enjoyed eating one diet as much as they did the other.

“That throws a monkey wrench into that explanation as well,� Hall noted. “But that’s good news in a way from one perspective. It suggests that if you are able to switch to your diet from one with ultra-processed foods to one without these foods, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to like it any less.�

Of course, while our stubborn human nature can make any sweeping lifestyle change a challenge, there are plenty of things that make itÌýobjectively harderÌýfor many people to switch to healthier diets. Many people living in poorer neighbourhoods, for instance, are unable to easily go to stores stocked with fruits and vegetables, yet are surrounded by fast food restaurants and vending machines.

But for those who are able to drastically change their eating habits, Hall said there’s a silver lining to their findings—one that might even mend some fences between proponents of different diet fads.

“There’s a lot of debate in the scientific community, and in the public as well, about whether low-carb or low-fat diets are best for losing weight and what not. But one thing all these people on different sides of the diet wars tend to agree on is that we should eat less ultra-processed foods,� Hall noted. “It’s intriguing to speculate that maybe some of the success stories people have attributed to a low-carb or low-fat diet may have actually been due to changes in cutting the amount of ultra-processed foods in their diet—it’s at least an intriguing hypothesis to keep studying.�

Online media retailer Zavvi has just had a massive head-in-hands-GIF moment, thanks to an email mix-up that saw the company inform its entire registered customer base that they had each won a VIP trip to go to the all-England Champions League final in Madrid.

Of course the idea was to tell just one person, the actual winner, and not everyone who has an email on file with the firm. Zavvi and sponsor MastercardÌýran the competition that offeredÌýan all-expenses paid trip to see the two last-gasp English winners battle for the ultimate annual EU football prize, with the way too many winner announcements going out late on May 8.

Social mediaÌýlit up with commentsÌýfrom these short-term “winnersâ€� after the shop erroneously told everyone they’d won, before Zavvi apologised for “technical issuesâ€� and rescinded all the prize offers but one. The rather paltry replacement offer for those who had their prize offers taken away? AÌý15 per cent discount code for use on the site. There are a few football DVDs for sale on there at least.

Mastercard is sad that its name has been tarnished by Zavvi’s IT department, with a spokesperson saying: “We are extremely disappointed with today’s events and our sympathies go to the many people who were wrongly contacted by Zavvi in connection to their competition.ÌýWe have asked Zavvi to clarify how they are resolving as a matter of urgency.â€�

Virgin Trains has submitted some ideas to the government on how the futures of all our trains might be better organised, ideas which it says are all about improving the services. Services that Virgin probablyÌýwon’t be providing any more.

Big Idea One is to open a national ticketing service that guarantees everyone a seat on their chosen long distance train trip, ending the misery of overcrowding and chancing it and having to sit of the floor by the toilets for four and a half hours like someone who’s stealing a journey. Big Idea Two is even more of a systemic wrench, as it suggests binning the current franchise system and instead having the rail operators bid for berthing slots at rail stations, in a similar way to how airlines book up chunks of time and tarmac at the nation’s airports.

Virgin explained Idea One with: “…customers could buy a flexible ticket which would allow them to change trains and make a reservation for a different service if there was space. Customers would be free to choose a popular train at a higher price, or a less popular train at a lower price.�

No one seems particularly keen on listening toÌýVirgin’s suggestions, mind, as a spokesperson from theÌýRMT union says it would, as ever, see companies bidding for the most lucrative slots and leaving the rubbish old east/west regional commuter lines abandoned.