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John Cacioppo, Who Studied Effects of Loneliness, Is Dead at 66

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Supported by Obituaries John Cacioppo, Who Studied Effects of Loneliness, Is Dead at 66 Photo John and Stephanie Cacioppo, partners in marriage and neuroscience, at the University of Chicago in 2017. Credit Whitten Sabbatini for The New York Times She was a brain researcher and an authority on the scientific basis of love. He, too, was a neuroscientist, but with an expertise in loneliness. She was in her mid-30s, he in his late 50s.
Both were wedded to careers in separate hemispheres — until they happened to be seated beside each other, serendipitously, at dinner on the last night of a neuroscience research symposium in Shanghai.
Before going their separate ways, they left the restaurant together. A romantic full moon was rising over the East China Sea. He snapped a photograph. A few weeks later, she emailed him to request a copy (which she later admitted was just a pretext to resume their brief acquaintance).
She, Stephanie Ortigue, was conducting research at the University of Ge..

Poison Was Left on Russian Spy’s Front Door, the British Police Say

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Poison Was Left on Russian Spy’s Front Door, the British Police Say Photo Police officers outside the home of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian double agent who was poisoned by a nerve agent, in Salisbury, England. Credit Frank Augstein/Associated Press LONDON — The British authorities said on Wednesday that Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, the poison victims at the epicenter of a diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West, had been sickened with a nerve agent on the front door of Mr. Skripal’s house.
The announcement narrows the many possibilities of how the Skripals came into contact with the poison.
Detectives will focus their efforts now on Mr. Skripal’s house in the cathedral town of Salisbury, England, said Dean Haydon, senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, in a news release.
They will also, presumably, search for a person who could have delivered the poison.
Mr. Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter, who had been visiting hi..

Budget Deal in Congress Includes Help for Affordable Housing

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Budget Deal in Congress Includes Help for Affordable Housing Photo An affordable-housing complex under construction in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco in January. The low-income housing tax credit has been a major lever in financing residential construction for the poor. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times When Congress voted last year to sharply reduce corporate income taxes, it undermined the nation’s largest subsidized housing program. This week’s federal spending compromise may help shore it up.
The program, called the low-income housing tax credit, enables corporations to lower their taxes by helping to finance low-cost housing. Lower corporate tax rates made the credit less useful, alarming developers and agencies that provide housing for the poor in rural America and large cities.
Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, negotiated a provision in the spending bill to increase the number of affordable-housing credits for the first time in a decade. Developers..

F.C.C. Joins Push to Limit China’s Telecom Reach

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F.C.C. Joins Push to Limit China’s Telecom Reach Photo A target of a national security rule proposed by the Federal Communications Commission is the Chinese giant Huawei, which promoted its telecommunications equipment at the CES trade show in January in Las Vegas. Credit David Becker/Getty Images The Federal Communications Commission is joining the Trump administration, Congress and other government agencies that have targeted Huawei, China’s giant telecommunications equipment maker, as a national security risk.
Ajit Pai, chairman of the commission, on Monday proposed a rule to tighten restrictions on companies building internet infrastructure in the United States. Part of the rule’s impact may be to further crimp Huawei’s meager sales in America by potentially affecting some deals with small and rural carriers, analysts said.
The proposed F.C.C. rule would prohibit carriers from using money from the Universal Service Fund to buy gear from companies deemed to pose national security ri..

Q&A: Unique Identifiers in Animal DNA

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Unique Identifiers in Animal DNA Photo Credit Victoria Roberts Q. Are humans the only creatures with individual DNA fingerprints? What about other species?
A. Individual members of many species also have unique and identifiable genetic profiles. As with human beings, a large number of variations in a relatively short sequence of DNA can make it possible to identify an individual and to distinguish that animal from other members of the species.
DNA fingerprinting is commercially available for dogs, for example, for purposes like identifying a lost or stolen pet or tracing a pedigree.
The approach is also used in wildlife research. It can determine whether an isolated population of wild birds has become too inbred for survival, for instance, so that some can be moved elsewhere.
Scientists at the University of Arizona and elsewhere also have turned to genetic fingerprinting to identify individual animals that have been poached or illegally trafficked, as well as to determine where importe..

Gary Lincoff, 75, Dies; Spread the Joy of Mushrooms Far and Wide

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Gary Lincoff, 75, Dies; Spread the Joy of Mushrooms Far and Wide Photo The mycologist Gary Lincoff pointed out a resinous polypore fungus in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx on a mushroom foray in 2011. Credit Alan Zale for The New York Times Gary Lincoff, a self-taught mycologist whose contagious enthusiasm turned him into a pied piper of mushrooms, died on March 16 in Manhattan. He was 75.
His family said he died after a stroke.
Mr. Lincoff, a philosophy major and law-school dropout, wrote a field guide to North American mushrooms that sold more than a half-million copies. He led mushroom hunts as far afield as Siberia, India and the Amazon and as near to his home as Central Park, two blocks away, where over the course of decades he counted more than 400 species.
Mr. Lincoff taught for more than 40 years at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and instructed Martha Stewart on dredging puffballs in panko bread crumbs to bring out their flavor. He wrote peer-reviewed journal articl..

Anbang Was Seized by China. Now, It Has a Deal for You.

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Supported by Business Day Anbang Was Seized by China. Now, It Has a Deal for You. Photo Anbang offices in Beijing. In recent years, investors have poured money into wealth management products offered by companies like Anbang that enabled the companies to go on buying binges around the world. Credit Jason Lee/Reuters BEIJING — Less than a month after it was seized by the Chinese government, Anbang Insurance Group, the giant conglomerate, is once again offering small investors “you snooze, you lose” investment opportunities — your money back, guaranteed.
Sold like stocks or bonds in bank branches around China, the products carry names like Anbang Abundant Stability No. 10, suggesting the investments are conservative. They are anything but.
In the past, Anbang has used the money it raised from those products to help pay for risky deals like the purchase of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York and other flashy properties around the world. The approach saddled the company with big deb..

The Last Great Clothing Store

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The Last Great Clothing Store
Open since 1938, Boyds fights back against e-commerce and the rise of the Supreme hoodie, with extra-personal service and fancy new designer labels.

PHILADELPHIA — In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s here, as in many big cities, there were dozens of independent men’s clothing stores selling tailored suits, sport coats, dress shirts and “furnishings” (socks, ties, pocket squares) to dapper professionals. Among these were the Arrow Store, Morevilles, Diamonds, Irving’s and Jacob Reed’s Sons. Today, professionals no longer need be dapper, and only one store from that period remains in business: Boyds. Like the Liberty Bell and the stone Rocky Steps, Boyds is a local landmark, and one equally impervious to the shifting seasons.
For 80 years, the family-owned business has outfitted lawyers, bankers, doctors, politicians and famous athletes, with all-American brands like Hickey-Freeman, groovy European labels like Pierre Cardin and Tiger of Sweden and lately high-end ..