An Oregon science teacher found himself in a shocking situation when the local police announced they were launching an investigation into his questionable teaching methods. Nothing makes a more enthralling high school science class than playing with Tesla coils. This particular class, however, got a little too charged, and teacher Samuel Dufner was placed under arrest at South Salem high school for burning his students with one of the coils.
Dufner used a Tesla coil to burn the phrase “I [heart] mom” into his students arms, reports local station Q13 Fox. Lt. Steve Birr explained in statement that Dufner was using the Tesla coils during a class exercise last week. We don’t know what Dufner was thinking, but he did tell his students that the high voltage tool could be used to mark skin and asked for volunteers from his class. According to Lt. Birr the marks have since faded and no student was physically harmed in the process, but nevertheless, the Salem-Keizer School District has placed Dufner on leave.
Marion County Deputy District Attorney Doug Hanson said Wednesday that there is no plan to file charges against Dufner “for now.” The investigation will be seen through, and proper course will be taken upon its conclusion. It is doubtful that the 37-year-old Dufner will find himself on the lecture circuit any time soon, and it’s unclear whether he will lose his job. It is currently unknown how the police came to hear of this incident, but it seems likely that a student may have reported the incident.
No statement has yet been made available from any students, parents, school officials, or Dufner himself. It is likely the school district will face a battery of questions, such as has this happened before? School curriculum is often repeated year to year, so it’s certainly a possibility.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.