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Feeling sexy? Stanford scientists find where lust lives — in mice

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

The source of desire has long been elusive, the stuff of poets and musicians.Now, Stanford University researchers have found it doesn’t live in the heart but in a very specific set of cells in the brain.They have located the cellular circuitry that drives the passion of male mice, and learned how to turn it on and off – a discovery that could lead to new treatments and deepen our understanding of this most primal force.“It’s a fundamental behavior that is central to our personal satisfaction, and also the propagation of our species,” said Nirao Shah, Stanford professor of psychiatry and neurobiology and the senior author of the study published in the most recent issue of the journal Cell.“But we know very little about how the brain organizes and regulates this behavior,” he said.Shah and his team found buried in mice brains, a bit above the roof of the mouth, tiny neural connections that are tasked with processing information from the outside world.They tell a male mouse...

Northern California Slide Fire now fully contained, officials report

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

The Slide 1 Fire, located 1.5 miles north of Mount Linn in the Yolla Bolly Middle Eel Wilderness, was 100 percent contained at 473 acres as of Tuesday evening, U.S. Forest Service officials reported in what they described as the “final update” for the incident.“I want to express my deep appreciation for everyone’s hard work,” Forest Supervisor Wade McMaster was quoted as saying in a press release, which also explained that: “Precipitation moved over the fire on Monday and rained on firefighters for several hours during the day shift. Hotshot crews finished securing containment line during Tuesday’s shift, (and on Wednesday), crews will be backhauling supplies and equipment from the fireline using aircraft.”Related ArticlesEnvironment | Crews battle blaze on park district land near Oakland Coliseum, I-880 Environment | Deadly Happy Camp Complex fires burn more than 11,000 acres near California-Oregon border Environment | NorCal wildfires upd...

Wildfire in Redwoods State and National Park likely to enter old growth forest

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

Steve Mietz, Redwood National and State Parks superintendent said during a town hall in Orick that the Glenn Fire is likely to get into some old growth redwoods. The fire is contained, he noted, and is currently burning in second growth that has already been harvested, with some areas thinned. According to a Wednesday U.S. Forest Service news release about the lightning complex, the Glenn Fire is at .1 acre and is on patrol status.“This fire is just lipping up on the edge of the old growth,” he said, adding that the edge of old growth isn’t a hard line.Mietz said that all the fires in the parks are in full suppression mode. He said the goal with the fires, a total of three which are currently are burning in the parks, is to maximize firefighter safety in terrain that is very rugged. Cal Fire and Green Diamond Resource Co. are each working on the blazes, two of which have been contained. Over 300 Cal Fire firefighters are working on the Lost Fire, which is still uncontained.Related A...

Underdog SJSU Spartans eager for challenge to open season against No. 6 USC

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

SAN JOSE — San Jose State opens the season on Saturday as a four-touchdown underdog against No. 6 ranked USC.But the Spartans believe that they are more than prepared to compete with a team many believe will be battling for the National Championship this season.“I’m coming in there trying to prove something,” said SJSU cornerback D.J. Harvey. “I saw the write-ups on us. Even though people don’t pay attention to it, I do.”SJSU comes into Saturday’s matchup as 31-point underdogs, according to Caesar’s Sportsbook.com.The Spartans played USC at the Coliseum two years ago, falling 30-7. But those Trojans won just three more games that season, leading to the arrival of head coach Lincoln Riley and a new era in Troy.USC enters this season in the national championship conversation, led by the 2022 Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams who is slated to be the top pick in next year’s NFL draft.“This is the best quarterback I’ve ever seen in college football,” SJSU head coach Brent Brenna...

Inman: The best and worst of 49ers training camp — beyond QB drama

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

SANTA CLARA –Every snap by every quarterback was charted at 49ers training camp. Overkill? Not when reporting on a team that ran out of healthy quarterbacks, finished a win shy of the Super Bowl, and now has cast its 2021 first-round pick into limbo that is Garoppolo-esque.Quarterbacks shared the spotlight all through camp, leading into Friday’s preseason finale against the Los Angeles Chargers. And, to think, neither Brock Purdy nor his three (two?) backups had to elude a pass rush by Nick Bosa.If Trey Lance wants no further part of the 49ers’ quarterback carousel — and vice versa — it shouldn’t be a surprise, not after Purdy earned the starting role via last season’s heroics, and not after Sam Darnold beat out Lance for the No. 2 job.Another year, another quarterback in limbo, though Lance likely won’t reappear on a side field like Jimmy Garoppolo did last August. No NFL team can match the 49ers’ endless quarterback drama. This camp, at le...

Borenstein: Oakland election fiasco leaves uncertainty of who is in charge

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

It seemed at the end of last week that Oakland’s latest election debacle, this one about the boundaries for an upcoming special school board election, had been resolved. It turns out that it hadn’t.The dispute finally reached a tenuous resolution Tuesday. The election to fill a key vacant seat representing District 5 on the evenly divided seven-member school board will go forward, as it should, using the correct pre-redistricting boundaries.But what has transpired since Friday raises troubling questions about why Oakland is refusing to oversee its municipal election. And it indicates that rather than own and correct her mistakes, Oakland City Clerk Asha Reed is trying to push responsibility onto others.This debacle came to light last week, after the candidate filing period ended for the Nov. 7 election, when I pointed out that Reed was using the wrong district boundaries.Reed was planning to use “new” boundaries that were created during the city’s 2021 redistricting. But, as a state...

Warriors’ G League coach Kerr reflects on his path, concerns over nepotism

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO — Nicholas Kerr knows he didn’t get here all by himself.“I would never have gotten into the NBA without a family connection,” the recently promoted Santa Cruz Warriors head coach said during an hour-long conversation over lunch last week.That family connection, after all, is his nine-time NBA champion father Steve, who has won four titles as the Golden State Warriors’ head coach.The younger Kerr has always worried some about the outside perception that he may be a product of nepotism. It’s only gotten worse, he said, as he worked his way up from a video coordinator on his father’s staff to now. So much so that Kerr deleted the Twitter app off his phone before his recent promotion was announced earlier this month.“I don’t blame anyone for saying I have privilege, they’re right,” Kerr said as he leaned back in his chair at Gott’s Roadside. “… I had not even a crack in the door, I had the door wide op...

Simone Biles’ return to gymnastics could save the sport, but that’s not why she’s competing in San Jose this week

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

SAN JOSE — First you’ll see the emotional support dog, Beacon, the fluffy golden retriever running around the SAP Center with his tongue out and heart open, ready to wag his tail and burrow his adorable snout into anybody who needs it.Then you’ll see the name behind every banner and piece of signage: USA Gymnastics, a name once synonymous with betrayal and trauma after the 2018 sexual abuse scandal that rocked the sport.Beacon will be in San Jose this week to help, his cheerful presence part of USA Gymnastics’ makeover from being an organization that let down an entire generation of little girls to one that is trying to once again become a safe place for elite competition.“It makes me a little emotional,” said Li Li Leung, who took over as president and CEO of USA Gymnastics in 2019. “In terms of the state of the sport, we have come a long way.”The headline of this week’s U.S. Gymnastics Championships at the SAP Center will undoubtedly be Simone Biles, the greatest...

Opinion: Alas, Donald Trump is still eligible to run for president

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

A law review article claiming that Donald Trump is automatically disqualified from holding elected office is getting attention in large part because it was written by two conservative, originalist law professors, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen. Baude and Paulsen argue that Trump should be excluded from ballots for giving aid to an “insurrection or rebellion” in violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.There are two problems with the notion that Trump can and should be kept off the ballot by state election authorities.First, although Baude and Paulsen’s originalism is honest and conscientious, originalists outside of academia typically won’t apply their originalism if it leads to a result at odds with their conservatism. Second, there is precedent that contradicts their argument — precedent the scholars dismiss because they say it contradicts the original meaning of Section 3.To condense their main points, when the 14th Amendment was drafted after the Civil War, the ori...

Opinion: Child care is infrastructure and must work for everyone

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:50:00 GMT

As the Bay Area struggles to get workers back to the office, too many business and political leaders continue to neglect a key piece of the puzzle – child care.Child care is infrastructure. If we don’t have child care, parents can’t work – especially women, and especially women of color. As importantly, child care supports human infrastructure – the crucial brain development in the early years, when children build skills and connections that help them thrive in school and beyond.However, a recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that most Californians can’t afford child care – and 15% of children up to age five live in families where someone had to quit a job to care for their child. Nationally, the report said our “lack of afford­able and acces­si­ble child care shortchanges chil­dren, costs the Amer­i­can econ­o­my bil­lions of dol­lars a year, stymies women pro­fes­sion­al­ly and is push­ing fam­i­lies to the break­ing point.”The lack of quality child care creates ...