Month: April 2021

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  Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) engage in a staring contest. [credit: YouTube/Marvel ]

Confession: I wanted to like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier more than I ultimately did. The various trailers seemed so promising, giving off vibes of a "buddy cop" action flick, with a bit more room to flesh out the character development and themes. What we got was a show that was trying to do too many things at once—including setting the stage for the Phase 4 films coming down the pike—and as a result, it never did any of those things as well as it could have done.

(There are a few major spoilers below the second gallery. We'll give you a heads up when we get there.)

F&WS picks up in the wake of Avengers: End Game, when Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) handed his Captain America shield to Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson (The Falcon) and Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes (The Winter Soldier), having chosen to remain in the past and live out his life with Peggy Carter. Sam and Bucky must grapple with losing Steve and the burden of his legacy. Meanwhile, the US government has named their own new Captain America, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a decorated veteran and ultimate "good soldier" who thinks he can better embody "American values" than Rogers. (The nerve!)

Enlarge / Trees grow near a former hospital in a town abandoned due to the Chernobyl disaster. (credit: Canvan Images / Getty Images)

Chernobyl is generally recognized as the worst nuclear accident on record, directly killing 31 people and causing widespread contamination in Eurasia. It's estimated that thousands of people will eventually die earlier than they would have due to the cancers caused by their exposure.

Now, international teams of researchers have looked at the genetic damage that's the legacy of Chernobyl exposures. One group looked at the genetic changes found in thyroid tumors that have been linked to exposure to the radioactive iodine spewed out during the disaster. And another team looked at the children of people assigned to the Chernobyl cleanup and found that the damage seems to be limited to those exposed rather than being passed down.

Radiation and DNA

Radiation causes long-term problems because it can cause damage to our DNA. The precise nature of the damage, however, is complicated. The radiation can damage individual bases of DNA, leading to minor mutations. But it can also make breaks in both of the strands of DNA's double helix (which biologists creatively call "double-stranded breaks").

Enlarge / Maybe this textbook is from the Ma Bell era? #ThanksStockGettyImages (credit: designer491 / Getty Images)

Josh Hawley had some questions about how Apple came up with the money to buy back $58 billion in stock over the past year.

“I just want to focus on one major source of that income,” the Republican senator said to Apple’s lawyer. “It’s not innovation, it’s not research and development. It’s the monopoly rents that you collect out of your app store.”