Apple has acknowledged a persistent bug in its parental controls that allowed children to bypass restrictions and access adult content online.
This bug, which enabled kids to evade controls by entering specific nonsensical phrases in Safari’s address bar, was initially reported to the company in 2021.
Despite being ignored, a recent Wall Street Journal report has shed light on this issue, prompting Apple to commit to addressing it in the next iOS update.
This loophole effectively disabled the Screen Time parental control feature for Safari, allowing children unrestricted access to the internet.
While the bug doesn’t seem to have been widely exploited, critics argue that it reflects Apple’s disregard for parents.
iOS developer Mark Jardine expressed frustration, stating, “As a parent who relies on Screen Time to keep my kids safe, I find the service buggy with loopholes persisting for over a decade.”
When Screen Time was introduced in 2018, it was promoted as a tool for parents to monitor their kids’ device usage and manage their own screen time habits.
Over time, parents have become heavily reliant on Screen Time to control features, apps, and usage times for their children.
Following the release of Screen Time, Apple implemented restrictions on third-party services that offered similar functionalities, citing security concerns. However, this move faced criticism for anticompetitive behavior.
Five years later, critics argue that Apple’s monopoly has led to neglect in improving parental controls. Apple blogger Dan Mollen highlighted concerns raised by parents disillusioned with Screen Time.
Apple responded by saying, “We take reports of issues with Screen Time seriously and have continually made improvements to give customers the best experience. Our work isn’t done yet, and we will continue to provide updates in future software releases.”
A collective of schools in London has made the decision to prohibit the use of smartphones, reflecting a growing concern about the reliance on mobile devices among children.
The heads of 17 out of 20 state secondary schools in Southwark, south London, have united to discourage students from using smartphones outside of school premises in an effort to address the negative impacts of excessive smartphone use.
Additionally, three other public schools in the area are working towards implementing the same policy.
The schools aim to educate families and students about the various harmful consequences associated with smartphone and social media use in young individuals. These include mental health issues, addiction to screen time, disruptions to sleep and concentration, exposure to inappropriate content, as well as an increased risk of theft and robbery.
Mike Baxter, principal at City of London Academy, stated, “We have witnessed firsthand the detrimental effects of smartphones and social media on the health and education of children. The negative behaviors often manifested outside of school hours but were subsequently revealed within the school environment.”
The schools have collectively agreed to confiscate cellphones if used during class. Traditional phones without Wi-Fi access may be quickly returned, while smartphones may only be retrieved after a week or upon personal collection by a parent.
The new measures will impact over 13,000 young individuals in one of London’s top-performing boroughs. The policy applies to students in years 7 to 9 across all secondary schools, with some schools adopting a comprehensive approach.
Furthermore, a group of secondary school principals are collaborating with primary school leaders in Southwark to establish a borough-wide initiative.
Jessica West, principal at Ark Walworth Academy, emphasized that the inaction of phone companies compelled schools to take action to ensure the well-being of children. They aim to guide families and children in making healthy choices regarding smartphone usage.
Recent reports indicate a significant rise in screen time among young children and teenagers, with screen time among children increasing by 52% between 2020 and 2022, according to the UK House of Commons Education Committee.
Approximately 25% of children and adolescents are reported to use smartphones in a manner consistent with behavioral addiction, as per the findings of the report.
The collaborative effort has been praised by Daisy Greenwell, co-founder of A childhood without smartphones (SFC), who stated, “This united action by a headteacher in south London is groundbreaking and truly impactful. It is unprecedented for secondary schools to collectively address this issue. Commendably, this could potentially alter the lives of a generation of children in south London who are at risk of developing mental health challenges due to early smartphone usage.”
Concerns regarding smartphones and children are escalating rapidly, with SFC expanding its reach to other countries such as the US, UAE, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Portugal.
In the UK, an increasing number of parents are committing to delaying the provision of smartphones to their children until they reach the age of 14. Bristol is a prime example, where 80 schools have established SFC groups and over 1,000 parents have pledged their support.
Greenwell expressed excitement about the organic growth of this movement among schools, principals, and parents, indicating that this long-awaited conversation is finally gaining traction.
SpaceX’s Starship, the largest rocket ever, successfully completed its fourth test flight, with the first and second stages completing their missions as planned and each landing in different oceans.
Following liftoff from the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 7:50 a.m. local time, one of the 33 Raptor engines on Super Heavy’s first stage failed to ignite. Despite this, the rocket continued into space and the two stages separated cleanly.
Super Heavy splashed down on schedule about seven minutes after liftoff, close to the launch site in the Gulf of Mexico. After plummeting to Earth from an altitude of more than 100 kilometers, the booster’s engines ignited normally and it slowed from more than 4,000 kilometers per hour to hover just a few meters above the sea surface, but then the live feed cut out and it plunged into the ocean.
Meanwhile, Starship reached an orbit at an altitude of more than 200 kilometers and traveled at a speed of more than 27,000 kilometers per hour. During its descent to Earth, about 60 kilometers above the surface, SpaceX’s livestream footage showed visible damage to one of its four control fins and what appeared to be a cracked camera lens. As it reached the Indian Ocean, it appeared to hover before plummeting into the water.
This fourth test flight focused on returning Starship from orbit after it had reached space for the first time in the previous test. SpaceX opted to perform a “soft splashdown” at sea, as landing on land is currently considered too risky. Instead, the craft would use its engines to slow its descent, align itself as if it were landing on a base, and then gently splash down on the water.
Eventually, the hope is that spacecraft will be able to be refurbished and reused by returning to land from space, as SpaceX already does with its Falcon 9 rocket.
Today’s launch marks the company’s fourth Starship launch and includes software and hardware upgrades, as well as changes to launch procedures based on lessons learned from previous tests. In the first test in April of last year, the first and second stages exploded before separating, and in another test in November, the second upper stage reached space but stopped transmitting data and self-destructed, and the first stage exploded shortly after separation.
SpaceX’s third Starship test flight on March 14 was at least partially successful, reaching space, conducting a fuel transfer test, and flying farther and faster than ever before, but the spacecraft lost control during the flight and failed to make a planned soft landing.
SpaceX is preparing for the next test launch of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built. Here’s everything you need to know.
What time is the launch scheduled?
The launch is expected to take place today, pending regulatory approval, and each flight must be approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration. SpaceX tweeted: The live stream begins at 12:30 p.m. UK time.
Judge Eddie Trevino of Cameron County, Texas, where SpaceX’s Starbase launch site is located, Nearby roads are closed In official documents, Treviño clarified that the closures were for “flight testing” and were limited to a 14-hour period between midnight and 5pm local time.
Where is Starship going?
The fourth test flight will focus on returning Starship from orbit and conducting a mock landing of both the Starship and the Super Heavy first stage booster. Both vehicles will make a “soft splashdown” in the ocean, using their engines to slow their descent and line up for a gentle touch down on the water. The first stage booster is scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the launch site, about seven minutes after liftoff, while Starship aims to splash down in the Indian Ocean about an hour later.
What has happened in Starship launches so far?
All three Starship launches have ended in explosions, which was expected as part of SpaceX’s “fail fast, learn fast” strategy.
During the first launch on April 20 last year, three of the first stage’s three engines (out of a total of 33) failed to ignite. Several more subsequently failed during the flight. The rocket then spun out of control and its self-destruct safety mechanism was activated. The entire flight lasted about three minutes, reaching a maximum altitude of 39 kilometers.
Starship’s second launch was on November 18. This time, all 33 engines were working, and the rocket flew far enough for the first and second stages to separate. But as the first stage rotated to begin its deceleration and landing procedure, it exploded. The second stage continued on smoothly to an altitude of about 90 miles, passing the Kármán line, which marks the beginning of space. But it was destroyed by a safety device after it stopped transmitting data before completing an orbit or returning to Earth.
SpaceX’s third Starship test flight, on March 14, was at least partially successful, as it reached space, performed a fuel transfer test, and flew farther and faster than ever before. However, it lost attitude control during the flight and failed to make the planned soft landing. Nevertheless, it achieved several important milestones, including Starship’s first atmospheric reentry from space, the first opening and closing of Starship’s payload door in space, and a successful demonstration of fuel transfer, which is key for future NASA Artemis missions to the Moon.
What would happen if this launch were to fail?
The chances of Starship completing its mission perfectly are slim, so it’s likely to fail in some way. But failure will provide data and experience that can be used to improve the design and process for the fifth launch. SpaceX has shown it can iterate quickly and make great strides with each launch.
debtFor nearly 15 years, I used to fly to Los Angeles every June to cover E3, the massive video game conference where major games and consoles were unveiled for the first time, from PlayStation to Wii U, from Fallout 4 to Final Fantasy VII Remake. However, due to the pandemic, E3 was canceled this year and replaced by a series of loosely connected events: Summer Game Fest, organized by The Game Awards’ Jeff Keighley, the Xbox Game Showcase, and the indie-led event Day of the Devs. It all kicks off tomorrow, June 6th.
Publishers like Ubisoft and Devolver are hosting their own broadcasts, while other E3 regulars like EA and Square-Enix are absent. Live Show From leading games and entertainment website IGN – I worked there during the height of E3 in the early 2010s, when companies would rent studios and broadcast basically all of their announcements over four consecutive days. What’s basically happened is that it seems like we still get as much gaming news as we get at E3, but now it’s much more spread out and crammed into one weekend instead of a week-long conference.
In short, it’s all a bit chaotic right now, but I’m on a plane to Los Angeles just like the old days, so I’ll do my best to play and cover as many interesting games as I can. If you’re looking to follow events other than E3 over the weekend, here are five things to keep an eye on (and where to watch them).
It’s a two-hour live showcase hosted by Keighley from LA’s YouTube Theatre. Based on my previous experience with both SGF and the Game Awards, it’s going to be a series of blockbuster trailers interspersed with very tepid, very rehearsed conversations with developers. It’ll be an endurance test, but with all the big names in the video game industry in attendance, including Capcom, 2K Games, and PlayStation, there should be at least two major game announcements and it should be worth watching. Straight afterwards, for those staying up late in the UK, the Day of the Devs indie showcase (4pm PST/midnight BST) and Devolver Direct broadcast (5pm PST/1am BST) will showcase the satire and independent spirit of the games industry, dispelling any corporate chic.
If you’re looking for a cozy gaming vibe, this is the place. Farming simulators, dating games, anything with cats and frogs. I get a lot of emails from Pushing Buttons readers asking where to find non-violent, approachable games, and this is the place. In past years, this showcase has proven to be long-lasting enough to get cloyingly cute, and with over 70 games on display, it’s quite possible that will be the case in 2024 as well, but the wholesome intention behind it makes up for it for me.
Looks promising… Star Wars Outlaws. Photo: Ubisoft
Xbox Games Showcase – Sunday, June 9th9am PST / 5pm BST
I’m very interested to see how the rather embattled Xbox division will fare this year, having pushed through the Activision/Blizzard/King mega-merger last year and then made the very unpopular decision to close down some of their studios. With a new version of Xbox on the horizon, the Game Pass strategy seems to be shifting, and Microsoft now owning a lot of developers, should There’s no shortage of games to premiere, with the sequel to the Call of Duty Black Ops series (above), due to launch this year, also premiering shortly thereafter.
PC releases tend not to get as much attention in the games media as console releases, so this will be a most exciting showcase for a readership that loves real-time strategy, 4x, Moba, team-based FPS games, CRPGs, and other genre acronyms that accompany PC-exclusive games. Organized by venerable magazine PC Gamer, the event is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
Ubisoft Forward – Monday, June 1012pm PST / 8pm BST
Ubisoft’s lineup this year is promising, with the new Assassin’s Creed game set in feudal Japan and the promising Star Wars Outlaws alone being enough to keep me entertained for an hour, but I Mario vs Rabbids Kingdom Battle 2017 Edition Shigeru Miyamoto made an appearance, Rabbids creative director Davide Soliani got emotional, and it wouldn’t be E3 without a slightly embarrassing “Just Dance” performance.
What to Play
One of the best… Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Photo: FromSoftware
I have two long-distance flights coming up, so it’s time to get serious. Elden Ring On Steam – Fortunately, the best game of 2022 (and in fact one of the best fantasy games of all time) runs great on a portable PC console. Shadow of the Elder TreeThe expansion is out on June 20th and is small enough to be considered a mini-sequel. The good news for those of you who haven’t finished Elden Ring yet, like me, is that you don’t have to finish the game to the end before the expansion comes out, but you’ll still get to enjoy the brutal yet exhilarating rhythm of the combat (and Substantial We’ll be looking back at the game’s history before taking on a new challenge later this month.
Available on: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Estimated play time: 60+ hours (expansion will take at least another 15-20 hours)
Now on TV… Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Photo: SEGA
Amazon Prime Unexpectedly Live-action television series It’s based on the fantastic cult-favorite crime drama game, Like a Dragon (pictured above).
Sony’s State of Play showcase last week technically kicked off a summer of gaming-related announcements. Gamesradar There is an overview Highlights from the trailer Astro Botstarring an adorable little white robot who serves as PlayStation’s best mascot, is a playful mix of platforming, puzzles, and action that’s great fun.
In news that’s too depressing for me to even think about, IKEA plans to pay its employees the minimum wage. Virtual Roblox Store You wanted the metaverse? Here’s the metaverse. Working at IKEA for minimum wage. But now. Not real.
Actor and developer Abubakar Salim recently released his debut game, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, with his studio Surgent. made a statement He talks about the targeted racist harassment he and his team suffered, part of a resurgence of the anti-woke culture wars that have resurfaced this year in the games industry and beyond. “There’s always going to be a reason why diverse stories can’t exist. These exclusionary rules keep piling up, and the goalposts keep shifting, until I, my studio, and people like us just sit back, shut up, and accept the fact that we’re outsiders. And I won’t,” he says.
Xylitol is often marketed as a “natural” way to sweeten drinks and foods.
Pixelshot/Alamy
Xylitol, a sweetener commonly found in sugar-free drinks, chewing gum and toothpaste, has been shown to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Often marketed as “low carb,” “natural,” or “keto-friendly,” xylitol is a sugar alcohol found in fruits and vegetables, but at levels roughly 1,000 times lower than what’s added to commercial products. It can also be prepared artificially. Chemical reactions from plant materials.
last year, Stanley Hazen Hazen and his colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio found that the sweetener erythritol was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Suspecting that xylitol might also affect heart health, Hazen surveyed 3,306 adults in the United States and Europe.
The researchers took a single blood sample from participants to measure their xylitol levels after an overnight fast, and found that over a three-year follow-up, those with the highest blood xylitol levels were one-third more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, such as a heart attack or stroke.
To better understand this trend, the researchers looked at the effects of xylitol in the lab on human blood cells called platelets, and on platelet activity in mice. Platelets crowd together at the site of an injury to prevent bleeding, but they can also clot within blood vessels. This can affect blood supply to the heart and brain, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease.
The researchers found that human platelets cultured in xylitol showed signs of being more likely to clot than those cultured in saline, and blood clots formed significantly more quickly in the veins of mice injected with xylitol.
Finally, the team tracked platelet activity in 10 subjects after they drank the same amount of water sweetened with xylitol. Within 30 minutes, plasma xylitol levels increased 1000-fold, and all indicators of platelet clotting readiness improved, especially in subjects with the highest levels of xylitol in their blood.
“This study highlights the urgent need to investigate sugar alcohols and artificial sweeteners,” Hazen said. “While there’s no need to throw away your toothpaste just because it contains xylitol, people should be aware that consuming products high in xylitol may increase their risk of developing blood clot-related conditions.”
Combined with previous research on erythritol, the findings “emphasize the need for systematic research into the effects of artificial sweeteners on cardiovascular disease risk,” the researchers say. Silvia Radenkovic At the University Medical Center Utrecht, Netherlands.
A former Meta engineer filed a lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the company of discriminatory practices in handling content related to the Gaza war. He claimed that he was fired by Meta for trying to fix a bug that was throttling Palestinian Instagram posts.
Feras Hamad, a Palestinian-American engineer on Meta’s machine learning team since 2021, sued the social media giant in California, alleging discrimination and wrongful termination over his firing in February.
Hamad accused Meta of bias against Palestinians, citing the removal of internal communications mentioning deaths of Gaza Strip relatives and investigations into the use of a Palestinian flag emoji.
The lawsuit alleged the company did not investigate employees posting Israeli or Ukrainian flag emojis in similar situations. Meta did not immediately respond to the allegations.
These allegations align with ongoing criticism from human rights groups about Meta’s moderation of Israel-Palestine content on its platform, including an external review in 2021.
Since last year’s conflict outbreak, Meta has faced accusations of suppressing support for Palestinians. The conflict erupted in Gaza in October after Hamas attacks, resulting in casualties and a humanitarian crisis.
Earlier this year, about 200 Meta employees raised similar concerns in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders.
Hamad’s firing seems linked to a December incident involving a troubleshooting procedure at Meta. He raised concerns about restrictions affecting Palestinian content on Instagram.
The lawsuit mentioned a case where a video by a Palestinian photojournalist was wrongly classified as explicit, sparking further issues.
Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia are under increased scrutiny for their involvement in the artificial intelligence industry as U.S. regulators have reportedly agreed to investigate these companies.
The New York Times reported that the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have reached an agreement to investigate key players in the AI market, with the investigation expected to be completed within the next few days.
The Justice Department will lead an investigation into whether Nvidia, a leading chip maker for AI systems, has violated antitrust laws aimed at promoting fair competition and preventing monopolies, according to Wednesday’s NYT.
Meanwhile, the FTC will scrutinize OpenAI, the developer of the ChatGPT chatbot, and Microsoft, the largest investor in OpenAI and supporter of other AI companies.
The Wall Street Journal also reported on Thursday that the FTC is investigating whether Microsoft structured a recent deal with startup Inflection AI in a way to avoid antitrust scrutiny.
In March, Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleiman, CEO and co-founder of Inflexion, to lead its new AI division and agreed to pay the company $650 million to license its AI software.
The FTC has shown interest in the AI market before, ordering OpenAI, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, and Anthropic to provide information on recent investments and partnerships involving generative AI companies and cloud service providers.
An investigation into OpenAI was launched last year based on allegations of consumer protection law violations related to personal data and reputations being at risk.
Jonathan Cantor, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, stated that the department will “urgently” investigate the AI sector to examine monopoly issues and the competitive landscape in technology.
oh
On my desk, next to my ultra-modern gaming PC, sits a strange device that resembles a spaceship control panel from a 1970s sci-fi movie. There’s no keyboard or monitor, just a few rows of colorful switches beneath a string of blinking lights. If you thought the recent proliferation of retro video game consoles, such as the Mini SNES and the Mega Drive Mini, was an amazing development in technology nostalgia, look no further than the PiDP-10. It’s a 2/3-scale replica of the PDP-10 mainframe computer, first introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1966. It was designed and built by an international group of computer enthusiasts known as the PiDP-10. Obsolescence is certain
It’s a beautiful thing.
The project’s genesis dates back to 2015, when Oscar Vermeulen, a Dutch economist and lifelong computer collector, wanted to build a single replica of the PDP-8 mainframe that had fascinated him since childhood. “I had a Commodore 64 and proudly showed it to a friend of my father’s,” Vermeulen says. “He scoffed and said the Commodore was a toy. The real computer was the PDP, specifically the PDP-8. So I started looking for discarded PDP-8 computers, but I couldn’t find a single one. Now they’re collector’s items, very expensive and most of the time broken. So I decided to build a replica for myself.”
Ever the perfectionist, Vermeulen decided he needed a professionally made front panel cover. “The company that could make them told me I’d have to pay for one four-square-metre sheet of Perspex to cover 50 of these panels,” Vermeulen says. “So I made 49 extra ones, thinking I’d find 49 idiots to do it for me. Little did I know it would end up costing me thousands of dollars on my dinner table.”
At the same time, Vermeulen began posting in various vintage computing Google Groups, where he worked on software emulators for pre-microprocessor computers. As word spread about his replica, it quickly became a group effort that now has over 100 members. While Vermeulen focuses on designing the hardware replica (a front panel with working switches and lights), others are working on different aspects of the open source software emulation, which has a complicated history. At its core is SIMH, created by the ex-SIMH. December Developed by employee and megastar hacker Bob Supnick, the program emulates a variety of classic computers, and it was later improved by Richard Cornwell and Lars Brinkhoff to add driver support for the PDP-10. the Many other people were involved in the operating system and other MIT projects, some of whom collected and preserved old backup tapes, some of whom added improvements and debugging, and some of whom provided documentation and schematics.
Happy hacking! …PiDP-10 replica computer in Keith Stewart’s game room Photo: Keith Stewart/The Guardian
The attention to detail is incredible. The lights on the front aren’t just decorative. They show the instructions being executed, CPU signals, and memory contents, just like the original machine. Vermeulen calls it watching the heartbeat of the computer. This element was taken very seriously. “Two people spent months on one particular problem,” Vermeulen says. “You know, LEDs blink, but incandescent bulbs glow. So we studied exhaustively the LEDs to simulate the glow of the original bulbs. And we found that different bulbs from different years glow for different amounts of time. Measurements were made and calculations were applied, but the glow of the lamps was added. More CPU time was spent simulating that than simulating the original.”
Why? Why go to all this trouble? First, there’s the historical importance. The PDP machines, built between 1959 and the early 1970s, were revolutionary. Not only were they much cheaper than the giant mainframes used by the military and big corporations, but they were designed to be general-purpose, fully interactive machines. Instead of writing a program on punch cards, giving it to the IT department to run on the computer, print it out, and debug it maybe a day later, PDP let you type directly into the computer and test the results immediately.
A tedious task… In the 1950s, before the advent of PDP machines, mainframe computers took up entire rooms and used punch cards to input computer programs. Photo: Pictorial Parade/Getty Images
These factors led to an explosion of experimentation. Most modern programming languages, including C, were developed on DEC machines. The PDP-10 was the heart of the MIT AI Lab, the room where the term artificial intelligence was born. “The PDP-10 computer dominated the Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet,” says Lars Brinkhoff. “Internet protocols were prototyped on the PDP-10, PDP-11, and other computers. The GNU Project was inspired by the free sharing of software and information on the PDP-10. Stephen Hawking’s artificial voice grew out of the DECtalk device, which grew out of Dennis Klatt’s speech synthesis research begun on the PDP-9.”
The PDP made its way into university labs around the world, where it was embraced by a new generation of engineers, scientists, and programmers — the original computer hackers. Steve Wozniak got his start programming on a PDP-8, a small, inexpensive machine that sold by the thousands to hobbyists. Its operating system, OS/8, was the precursor to MS-DOS. Bill Gates and Paul Allen were teenage students who would sneak into the University of Washington to program the PCP-10, and it was on a PDP computer that MIT student Steve Russell and a group of friends designed a shoot-’em-up game. Space War!was one of the first video games to run on a computer.
Pioneers… Steve Russell at the California Computer History Museum, 2011. Russell stands in front of the Digital PDP-1, a computer game he developed in the early 1960s. Photo: MediaNews Group/The Mercury News/Getty Images
This legendary game wasn’t the only one. There were many others at the time, because making games was a fun way to explore possibilities. “There were Dazzle Dart, a four-player laser tennis game, and Lunar Lander,” Vermeulen says. “Maze War was the first networked video game. People connected two IMLAC minicomputer/graphics terminals to the Arpanet via a PDP-10 mainframe, and used that million-dollar pile of hardware to chase each other through a maze or shoot each other.” And the original text adventures like Colossal Cave and Zork, as well as the first multiplayer online games like MUDs and Star Trek, were also written on PDP computers.
These machines are an essential part of our digital culture, the furnace of the modern gaming and tech industries. But to be understood, Already used
“The problem with computer history is that putting old computers in a museum that aren’t being used communicates very little,” says Vermeulen. “You need to experience these machines and how they worked. And the problem with computers before about 1975 is that they were huge, heavy and nearly impossible to keep running. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen loved his PDP-10 deeply, and with the funds he had, he was able to hire a team of skilled technicians to repair and get it running. But it was very expensive, and sadly, his family decided to discontinue this after he passed away.”
The answer is emulation. The PDP replica has all the look of the original terminal, including the lights and switches, but the calculations are done by a Raspberry Pi microcomputer connected to the back via a serial port. To get it running at home, just plug in the Raspberry Pi, connect a keyboard and monitor, boot it up and download the software. Then flip the switch on the front of the PDP-10, reboot the Raspberry Pi, and you’ll be in PDP mode, with a window on your monitor emulating the old Knight TV terminal display. A command line interface (remember those?) gives you access to a range of the original programs, including games.
This is what I’ve been waiting for. We all know the important role SpaceWar played in the birth of the modern games industry, but actually playing it and controlling a spaceship battling amongst vector explosions against a flickering starry sky…it feels like you’re living history.
In the 15 years since Vermeulen began developing his personal PDP-8 emulator, the Obsolescence Guaranteed group has sold hundreds of replicas and continues to develop more, including a replica of MIT’s experimental Project Whirlwind computer from the 1950s (which ran a simple version of tic-tac-toe). Today, a company in Panama called Chiriqui Electronic Design Studio manufactures the hardware. What started as a personal project has become something much bigger. “We had an ‘official’ launch of our PiDP-10 replica at MIT in Boston, where the original machine was kept. The demo session was attended by about 50 hackers from the 1970s. It was fun to see people playing the multi-user Maze War game 50 years later.”
Another reason the PiDP-10 is worth it is because it’s fun. I never imagined seeing something like this up close, much less plugging it into a monitor at home and playing with it. It was an exciting, nostalgic, and weirdly emotional experience. Navigating the ITS disk system, the glowing green dot-matrix font, the appealing list of programs and games, the “happy hacking!” message above the terminal command line – it’s very evocative.
Impressive…PiDP-10 screen. Photo: Keith Stewart/The Guardian
Meanwhile, programmers who bought PiDP machines are creating new programs and games. They range in age from 80-year-old PDP veterans to 20-year-olds who want to relive a bygone era of programming. Memory and processing power were scarce, so elegant and super-efficient code had to be written; there was no room for bloat. “Quite a few universities are using the PiDP-11 and -8 in their classes,” Vermeulen says. “Partly to show computer science students our origins, but also because the super-low-level programming still required for microcontrollers and hardware drivers is the type of coding you learn very well on these dinosaurs.”
Brinkhoff agrees that while these machines have a certain nostalgia, they also have something to teach us: They’re functional. “I enjoy writing new software for the 10, like a program to display fractals or generate QR codes,” he says.
“I hope it becomes more widely accepted, because if you don’t do anything with PiDP, it just sits on a shelf and the lights flash. It looks pretty, but I don’t think the computer can be truly happy unless you program it.”
I
If Franz Kafka were alive and commenting on the video game adaptation of his work, Playing Kafka, the big question might have been: “Where’s the sex?” This interactive version of The Trial has branching narratives, but it’s lacking in sexuality. It’s not hard to imagine the author and playtester being infuriated by the lack of sadomasochism or desire. Overall, the choices made in this literal and lightly interactive adaptation seem tuned to be appropriate for leaving it running on an iPad in a museum. The barrier to entry is low with simple binary choices and touchscreen controls, and there’s no imagery to frighten classroom visitors.
Playing Kafka, released just a few weeks before the 100th anniversary of Kafka’s death, is a collaboration between the Goethe-Institut and developer Charles Games (a studio, not an individual). It adapts Kafka’s unfinished novels The Trial and The Castle, along with lengthy, critical letters Kafka wrote to his father about their relationship.
Playing Kafka.
Photo: Charles Games
The Trial lost the most in translation, speeding through the text and stripping away the complexities of its protagonist, reducing him to a hollow, docile avatar. Video game mechanics can offer stories and experiences other media can’t, but in this case they’re not enough to make up for what the developers gave up. And Kafka’s letters to his father don’t gain emotional weight from formulaic dialogue and pattern-matching puzzles; his father probably would have loved them.
Bigger and deeper than any of Kafka’s plots is his world and the Kafkaesque sense of an anonymous institution that is indifferent and incomprehensible to its participants. This contrasts with the practice of good game design, which demands clear rules, victory conditions, and systems that work as you expect them to. In Kafka’s world, the court is unknowable. It’s outside the courthouse, in attics and tenements, in wallpaper and lamplight. There may be no courthouse, no rules, no meaning at all.
So Playing Kafka doesn’t suggest that you can achieve anything with the experience. It’s full of movement without progress, choices without consequences. It can be a boring video game for players and purists. The German character light is adapted to the system and language of a mobile game with a story choice.
A screenshot of playing the Kafka video game.
Photo: Charles Games
This is where The Castle works best: Kafka didn’t give the novel an ending, which may have relieved the developers of the pressure to reach a certain point; their version is free of burden and admirably silly and playful, a boring exercise in what is probably nothing.
Would Kafka approve? Of course not; he never wanted to publish it in the first place. But if Kafka’s adaptation doesn’t satisfy the author, it will trap him in a hell of his own making. Playing Kafka Playing Kafka would have been Kafka’s ultimate nightmare: lost in a maze of his own words, stumped by unclear (or non-existent) objectives, bewildered by dialogue options that offer no alternative, and ultimately unable to proceed after a glitch prevents his lawyer character from smashing through the floor. There’s something at least a little Kafkaesque about the idea.
HHave you ever been to Taylor Town? As you know, it’s where The Beatles came from. It’s where you can catch a ferry across the River Mersey. It’s home to two famous football stadiums, Goodison Park and Anfield, the latter of which I think was home to Taylorpool FC. Oh, wait. It’s not. It’s Liverpool, right?
Frankly, you could be forgiven for making that mistake, because the place is getting all hyped up about Taylor Swift’s upcoming concert, with “Liverpool Loves Taylor” posters plastered all over the city and an 11-part art installation trail featuring a grand piano, a throne and “hand-made seagulls” has been created. Rename the town after the star.
But is it too much? When does one musician have too big an impact on the world? Is Taylor Swift (whisper it) boring? These are the topics explored in detail in the latest series of The Guardian’s Pop Culture With Chanté Joseph. Swift’s Elle Hunt takes a deep dive into the artist. This week, we’re joined by a great club history of a Welsh LGBTQ+ venue, a wild tale of people mixed up at birth, and a profile of sporting heroes from Colin Murray and Ellis James. We also bring you a roundup of the best podcasts to get you through the upcoming Euros. And if England doesn’t perform as well as expected, there’s one piece of advice from Liverpool’s new de facto mayor: shake it off.
Alexi Duggins Deputy TV Editor
This week’s picks
East Block, an LGBT club in London. Photo: PYMCA/UIG/Getty Images
All you need to play for Wondery+, all episodes will be released on Monday Just in time for the Euros, Ellis James and Colin Murray launch their Sports Heroes Podcast to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wayne Rooney’s Euro debut. Their fact-packed commentary is passionate and they have a lot of empathy for the young Rooney’s first appearance as he faced off against the press conferences and tabloids. With Euro 2004 coming up, the pressure is even greater as a nation places its hopes on the talented 18-year-old. Hannah Verdier
A new study led by scientists at the University of New South Wales confirms that eating fruit can help ward off depression – but eating vegetables does not.
High fruit intake is associated with a reduced risk of developing depression.
Depression is a major public health concern: the global impact of depressive disorders is estimated to be over 50 million years of life lived with disability, making depression the largest contributor to non-fatal disease burden.
More than 80% of this burden is borne by low- and middle-income countries.
Compared with depression in younger adults, depression in older adults has a greater impact on physical and cognitive abilities and is associated with reduced quality of life and increased all-cause mortality.
A growing body of evidence suggests that diet, particularly increasing fruit and vegetable intake, may be important in reducing the risk of depression.
“The aim of this new study was to examine the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and depression in adults aged 45 and over,” said researcher Dr Annabel Mattison, from the University of New South Wales.
The study involved 7,801 non-depressed, community-dwelling adults from multiple sites across six continents, including the United States, Sweden, Brazil, Nigeria, Malaysia and Australia.
The results showed a beneficial association between higher fruit intake and a lower risk of depression over a nine-year period.
“This intriguing finding of a protective relationship between fruit consumption and risk of depression points to the need for greater emphasis on diet in healthcare,” said Dr Mattison.
The results suggested a benefit to vegetable consumption, but the benefit was not statistically significant.
“The reason we found a beneficial association with fruit consumption but not with vegetable consumption may be because fruits are typically consumed raw, whereas vegetables are typically consumed cooked, which may affect their nutritional value,” Dr Mattison said.
“Fruit and vegetable intake was self-reported via a comprehensive food frequency questionnaire, a short food questionnaire, or a dietary history.”
“Depressive symptoms were assessed using validated scales, and depression was defined by applying validated cut-offs.”
“We used Cox regression to examine the association between baseline fruit and vegetable intake and incident depression over 3- to 9-year follow-up periods.”
It has been suggested that the high antioxidant, dietary fiber, and vitamin content of fruits and vegetables may have beneficial effects on depression through a variety of mechanisms, including their role in inflammation, oxidative stress, and gut microbiota.
Because fruits and vegetables contain different nutrients, it is also possible that different types of fruits and vegetables may have different effects on depression risk.
The evidence that citrus fruits and green leafy vegetables reduce the risk of depression is particularly strong.
“Future studies that take into account consumption of different types of fruit and vegetables using standardized measures and focus on a larger number of older people, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, are definitely needed,” Professor Henry Brodaty, from the University of New South Wales, said.
“The expanding research currently being conducted into genes associated with dietary intake provides a promising avenue for influencing fruit and vegetable intake.”
“To better understand the association, the types of fruits and vegetables consumed also need to be taken into account, and studies need to be designed to be more comparable across cohorts.”
of study Published in Journal of Affective Disorders.
_____
Annabelle P. Mathison others2024. Associations between fruit and vegetable intake and incident depression in middle-aged and older adults in 10 diverse international longitudinal cohorts. Journal of Affective Disorders 359: 373-381; doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.05.096
Neutron stars typically spin quickly, taking just a few seconds or even a fraction of a second to complete one revolution around their axis, but one neutron star labeled ASKAP J1935+2148 bucks this rule, emitting radio signals at a relatively slow interval of 53.8 minutes.
Artist's impression of a neutron star. Image courtesy of Sci.News.
“We're used to extreme examples when studying radio-emitting neutron stars, so the discovery of such a compact star that is still emitting radio waves despite rotating slowly was unexpected,” said Professor Ben Stappers, from the University of Manchester.
“This new generation of radio telescopes demonstrates that pushing the boundaries of our search space will reveal surprises that will shake up our understanding.”
At the end of their lives, massive stars use up all their fuel and undergo a spectacular explosion called a supernova.
What remains is a stellar remnant called a neutron star, which consists of trillions of neutrons packed into an extremely dense sphere with a mass 1.4 times that of the Sun, packed into a radius of just 10 km.
Astronomers detected an unexpected radio signal from ASKAP J1935+2148 that traveled about 16,000 light-years to Earth.
The nature of its radio emission and the rate of change of its rotation period suggest that it is a neutron star, but further study is needed to confirm what this object is.
“This discovery relied on the complementary capabilities of the ASKAP and MeerKAT telescopes, combined with our ability to probe these objects on timescales of minutes, and examine how their radiation changes from second to second,” said Dr Kaustubh Rajwade, an astronomer at the University of Oxford.
“Such synergies can shed new light on how these compact objects evolve.”
ASKAP J1935+2148 was detected by CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope in the Wadjari Yamatji region of Western Australia.
“What's interesting is that this object exhibits three different radiation states, each with completely different properties to the others,” said Dr Manisha Caleb, an astronomer at the University of Sydney.
“The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa played a key role in distinguishing between these states.”
“If the signals had not come from the same point in the sky, it would be hard to believe that it was the same object producing these different signals.”
“Until the arrival of these new telescopes, the dynamic radio sky was relatively unexplored,” said Professor Tara Murphy, from the University of Sydney.
“Now we can look deeply and frequently see a variety of unusual phenomena.”
“These events give us insight into how physics works in extreme environments.”
This discovery paper In the journal Natural Astronomy.
_____
M. Caleb othersA radio transient phenomenon in which the radiation state switches with a period of 54 minutes. Nat AstronPublished online June 5, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02277-w
Pachystropheus reticulum One of the last thalattosaurs, it was a large marine lizard with otter-like behaviour that could move on land, but was likely a primarily marine predator with a different ecological niche from contemporary marine reptiles (placodonts, ichthyosaurs) and carnivorous fishes (hybodont sharks, actinopterygii).
Restoration of Life Thalattosaurus alexandraePhoto courtesy of: Nobu Tamura, translation:.
Pachystropheus reticulum It is a type of thalattosaur that lived in the Late Triassic deposits of Britain and continental Europe.
Although known for a long time, this ancient reptile still remains shrouded in mystery.
For many years, is assumedPachystropheus reticulum the first chorusAnother group of marine reptiles similar to crocodiles.
In the new study, paleontologist Jacob Quinn of the University of Bristol and his colleagues Pachystropheus reticulum Since 1935.
They called this PachistropheusKnown as Annie, the cave contains hundreds of bones from several different humans.
“Thalattosaurs existed throughout the Triassic Period, some of which reached lengths of up to four metres (13 feet) and would have been terrors of the seas,” Quinn said.
“But our Pachystropheus reticulum Its body was just over a metre (3.3 feet) long, half of which was its long tail.”
“It had a long neck, a tiny head the size of a matchbox (which has yet to be found) and four paddles.”
“If it was like its relatives, it would have had lots of sharp little teeth that were ideal for catching fish and other small, mobile prey.”
“Before Pachystropheus reticulum “This dinosaur was the first to be identified as a member of the Choristoderes, another group of crocodile-like marine reptiles, and was held in great importance because it was the oldest,” said Professor Mike Benton, from the University of Bristol.
“Jacob said some of the bones were from fish and others were actually Pachystropheus reticulum “That indicates that it was in fact a small thalattosaur.”
“So what was thought to be the first of the choristoderes has now been identified as the last of the thalattosaurs.”
“Pachystropheus reticulum “It probably lived a similar lifestyle to modern otters, feeding on small fish, shrimp and other invertebrates,” said Dr David Whiteside.
“This slender reptile had a long neck, a flattened tail for swimming, and surprisingly strong forelimbs for a marine animal. Pachystropheus reticulum They may have come onto land to feed or to avoid predators.”
“At the time, the Bristol area, and much of Europe, was covered by shallow waters and these animals likely lived in large populations in the warm, shallow waters around the islands.”
of result Appears in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
_____
Jacob G. Quinn othersRelationships and paleoecology Pachystropheus reticuluman enigmatic marine reptile (diapsid: Thalattosaurinae) from the Late Triassic period. Journal of Vertebrate PaleontologyPublished online June 4, 2024; doi: 10.1080/02724634.2024.2350408
The Alameda, California City Council decided not to permit ongoing controversial experiments related to technology that aims to brighten clouds. The project involves spraying saltwater onto a former aircraft carrier’s deck at the city’s pier to test devices that can create and measure aerosol plumes. This research could lead to marine cloud brightening, a form of climate intervention aimed at making clouds more reflective to send heat back into space and help mitigate global warming. Despite the potential long-term benefits, the council unanimously voted against continuing the experiments.
This decision placed city officials in the midst of a national debate about geoengineering and whether testing such technology should be allowed. The council’s vote does not reject the science or the concept of geoengineering but rather criticizes the lack of transparency, safety vetting, and misguided approach of the researchers. The researchers from the University of Washington had already begun the experiment on the USS Hornet in Alameda without proper public disclosure. The experiments aimed to study the effects of increasing water droplets in clouds to make them more reflective to sunlight, which could help reduce global warming.
The council’s concerns focused on potential health risks to the community surrounding the experiment site, lack of regulatory measures, and insufficient transparency from the project leaders. Despite claims of safety from the researchers, city leaders stopped the experiments, prompting a discussion on the risks and benefits of geoengineering.
While project organizers expressed disappointment with the council’s decision, outside environmental groups warned about the broader implications of geoengineering, fearing unintended consequences that could impact global climate efforts. The debate highlights the challenges of advancing geoengineering research in the face of skepticism and concerns about the potential risks associated with altering natural systems.
Earth’s Speed It’s getting warmer 2023 is the highest on record, beating last year’s astonishing 92%. Record-breaking heatwave Leading scientists have calculated that the cause is human.
A group of 57 scientists from around the world used UN-approved methods to investigate what’s behind it. Last year’s heatwaveThey said that even if the rate of warming has increased, they found no evidence of a significant acceleration of human-induced climate change beyond increased burning of fossil fuels.
Last year’s record temperatures were so extraordinary that scientists have been debating what’s behind the spike, whether climate change is accelerating or if other factors are at play.
“When we see the world accelerating or going through a major tipping point, things aren’t happening,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds and lead author of the study. “Temperatures are rising and things are getting worse exactly as we predicted.”
A person sprays water at passersby on a hot summer day in Karachi, Pakistan on May 30, 2024. Asif Hassan/AFP via Getty Images
This can mostly be explained by the buildup of carbon dioxide from increased fossil fuel use, he and his co-authors said.
Last year’s warming rate was 0.26C (0.47F) per decade, up from 0.25C (0.45F) the year before. Forster said that’s not a huge difference, but this year’s rate is the highest on record.
Still, outside scientists said the report paints a more alarming picture than ever before.
“While whether or not to tackle climate is a politically contentious issue, this report should remind people that it is actually a fundamentally life-saving choice,” said Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin who was not part of the international research team. “To me, that’s something worth fighting for.”
Ocean Beach in San Francisco during a heat wave warning in California on June 4, 2024. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
The authors, who formed to provide an annual scientific update between major UN scientific assessments every seven to eight years, concluded that last year’s temperature was 1.43 degrees Celsius higher than the 1850-1900 average, of which 1.31 degrees was due to human activities. The remaining 8 percent of warming was Mainly due to El NiñoThese include natural, temporary warming in the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather around the world, as well as unusual warming along the Atlantic Ocean and other weather randomness.
Looking at longer time frames — decade-by-decade, which scientists prefer over annual periods — the world has warmed about 1.19 degrees Celsius (2.14 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, the report said. Earth System Science Data Journal found.
The report also says that if the world continues to burn coal, oil and natural gas, the planet is likely to reach a point within four and a half years where it will become unavoidable to cross internationally accepted warming thresholds. 1.5℃ (2.7℃) ).
Students experience extreme heat at an elementary school in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, on May 7, 2024. Chaidir Mahyudin/AFP via Getty Images
This is consistent with previous studies that project that if emissions trajectory remains unchanged, the planet will reach at least 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by early 2029. While reaching 1.5 degrees may be years away, it seems inevitable once all the carbon is used, Forster said.
Scientists say that going over 1.5 degrees won’t mean the end of the world or humanity, but it will be pretty dire. Past UN Studies Large-scale changes to Earth’s ecosystems are expected to become more likely with a warming of between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, ultimately resulting in the loss of the planet’s coral reefs, Arctic sea ice, plant and animal species, as well as more extreme and life-threatening weather events.
Last year’s temperature rise wasn’t just a minor spike — September was particularly unusual, said study co-author Sonia Seneviratne, head of the land climate dynamics department at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
A caged howler monkey receives treatment during a heatwave in Cunduacan, Mexico, on May 24, 2024. The heat was so severe that the monkey fell from a tree and died. Jose Torres/Anadolu via Getty Images
Seneviratne said this year was at the higher end of the range but within expectations.
“If there was an acceleration, it would be even worse, perhaps a worst-case scenario, where the world would reach a tipping point,” Seneviratne said. “But what’s happening now is already very bad, and we’re already seeing big impacts. We’re in the middle of a crisis.”
Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Environmental Studies, and Zeke Hausfather, a global climate scientist at the University of Berkeley, neither of whom worked on the study, said they still see an acceleration in warming, which Hausfather noted is much faster than the 0.18 degrees Celsius (0.32 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade that occurred from 1970 to 2010.
Medical workers treat a dehydrated patient in Austin, Texas, 2023. Brandon Bell/Getty Images file
The scientists Big increase in SeptemberHausfather called that “staggering.” Wednesday’s report didn’t find enough warming from other potential causes. It said that while reduced sulfur pollution from ships had some cooling effect on the atmosphere, that was offset last year by carbon particles released into the atmosphere by Canadian wildfires.
The report also noted that undersea volcanoes, which released huge amounts of heat-trapping water vapor into the atmosphere, also spewed cooling particles, with the two forces roughly cancelling each other out.
“The future is in our hands,” said Katherine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “It’s up to us, humans, not physicists, to decide how fast and how much the Earth will warm.”
Gene therapy involves administering normal copies of the mutated gene that causes a particular disease.
nobeastsofierce/Shutterstock
Five Chinese children born deaf have received gene therapy that provides them with a healthy copy of a mutated gene, allowing them to hear in both ears. Although the children have varying degrees of hearing loss, all can now hear and localize sounds at conversational volume.
Six months after treatment, the five children’s hearing was about 50 to 60 percent of normal levels, team members say. Chen Yi Chen “They get confused when we whisper, but normal conversation is fine,” he said at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. “We’re very happy.”
In the first phase of the trial, which began in 2022, the team gave another group of six children in China the gene therapy in just one ear. Five of the six children had their hearing restored in the treated ear, with continued improvement, Chen said.
The team expects to see further progress in the second group of five children. “The progress we’re seeing now isn’t the peak,” Chen says. “We expect to see even more progress.”
The trial in China is the first of several ongoing trials around the world. She lives in the UK with her two children. There have also been reports in the United States of people regaining hearing in one ear after undergoing gene therapy.
“The tests are all pretty much the same.” Manohar Bans Doctors from Cambridge University treated two children in the UK.
All of the children in these trials were born with hearing loss because they carry a mutation in both copies of the gene for a protein called otoferin, which plays a key role in synapses, or connections, between the hair cells in the ear that detect sound and the nerves that transmit signals to the brain. The mutation affects the protein, blocking the transmission of signals.
Between 2 and 8 percent of children worldwide who are born with hearing loss are thought to have this condition, known as DFNB9.
Both parents of a child with DFNB9 have normal hearing if they each have just one mutant copy of otoferlin. These couples are often unaware that they have a one in four chance of having a child that is born deaf.
Gene therapy relies on the help of a virus called AAV to deliver a working version of the otoferlin gene to hair cells. Due to the gene’s large size, it needs to be split and put into two separate viruses.
The virus cocktail is injected into the inner ear, and the complete gene is reconstituted in cells that receive both halves. The DFNB9 trial marks the first time that so-called dual AAV gene therapy has been used to treat humans.
“This is a major technological advance,” Chen says, “and we hope that this technology will be widely used to treat other genetic diseases.”
The clinical trials will begin by treating one ear at a time because half the dose of AAV is needed, reducing the chance of adverse events, he says. No serious adverse events have been reported in any of the trials.
Chen’s team now plans to treat the other ears of the first group of children. This could be difficult because an immune response to the initial AAV injection could block gene delivery, but Chen believes it is possible.
Treating other inherited hearing loss is more difficult because some of the structures inside the ear degenerate. With DFNB9, all of the structures remain intact. “You only need to repair one element,” Chen says.
“Parents and young people need to be aware of all the risks and, above all, understand that hearing loss in itself does not prevent people from living a happy and fulfilling life,” he says.
People collect water in hot weather in New Delhi, India on May 22.
Amarjeet Kumar Singh/Anadolu via Getty Images
With each new month comes new records as the planet continues to experience unprecedented, record-breaking heatwaves. Last month, global temperatures were the warmest on record for a May, marking the 12th consecutive month of such record-breaking weather, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Copernicus’ Carlo Buontempo said in a statement that while the current record will eventually end, the record set over the past year is likely to be broken in coming years as the world continues to warm due to rising greenhouse gases. “This period of the hottest months will likely be remembered as a relatively cool one,” Buontempo said.
The average Earth’s surface temperature in May 2024 was 1.52°C higher than the 1850-1900 average, considered pre-industrial levels, and 0.19°C higher than the warmest May to date, in 2020. May 2024 will mark the 11th consecutive month with average temperatures more than 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial levels, the threshold that countries aim to avoid exceeding under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The global average temperature over the past 12 months was 1.63°C higher than the average from 1850 to 1900, the highest on record, but climate scientists will not consider the 1.5°C limit to have been breached until the long-term average exceeds this level.
Climate scientists had predicted that 2023 and 2024 would be hotter because of an El Niño weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that dumps ocean heat into the atmosphere, temporarily warming the surface of the planet on top of the trends caused by rising greenhouse gases. But temperatures actually turned out to be even hotter than predicted, and it’s unclear why.
El Niño is now being replaced by La Niña, during which much of the Pacific Ocean absorbs more heat than usual from the atmosphere. This may temporarily cool sea surface temperatures, but because sea surface temperatures are still at record levels, 2024 is likely to be even hotter than 2023.
Unusually warm May caused extreme heat and heat waves Heat waves are occurring in parts of the world, including large swaths of India, where temperatures in the capital Delhi reached a new record of 49.9°C (121.8°F) on May 28.
Howler monkeys in Mexico Falling from a tree and dying This heat has now spread to the northern United States during a prolonged heat wave.
Last year, a study warned that if the world exceeds the 1.5°C limit, heatwaves could become so intense that they cause mass deaths in places where people are not used to such heat and buildings are not designed with it in mind.
In 1960, most of the world’s population was deficient in the micronutrient iodine, with serious implications for public health. By 2020, the number of iodine-deficient countries had decreased to 21 (down from 113 in 1990), and 90% of people were receiving sufficient amounts.
The solution? Adding iodine to table salt. Adding iodine to the salt supply is strongly supported by the salt industry and governments, and is arguably one of the most effective public health interventions in history.
In 2024, the world faces a similar public health crisis. High blood pressure is a leading cause of illness and death. A key contributor is excessive sodium intake, which raises blood pressure. But as we report in An Easy Way to Satisfy Your Salt Cravings Without Compromising Your Health, new research suggests that an equally simple solution may be at hand: potassium-fortified salt.
This could be a game changer, since efforts to reduce salt intake have failed for a variety of reasons, not least because people prefer salty foods. Governments and industry must also bear some of the blame: processed food manufacturers have been reluctant to set salt reduction targets, while the salt industry has tried to cast doubt on the efficacy and safety of salt reduction, in part by promoting the idea that too little is as harmful as too much.
Either way, new scientific findings offer a new solution: Switching to potassium-fortified salt is a win-win: reduce sodium and increase potassium intake. New research shows this has a greater impact on blood pressure than reducing sodium intake alone. Only 14% of people get enough potassium. Nearly everyone gets too much sodium.
“If industry won’t act on these findings voluntarily, governments should be forced to do so. Hypertension is an enormous cost to the health care system. Adding potassium to salt, as we have done with iodine, is a surprisingly simple way to save lives and money.”
Hydrogel-made brain sensor is small enough to be injected with a needle
Hanchuan Tang and Jianfeng Zang
Tiny sensors can be injected into the skull with a needle to monitor brain health until they dissolve within a few weeks. These sensors have been tested in animals, and in the future, they may enable minimally invasive, implantable sensors in the human body that can monitor traumatic brain injury and neurological disorders such as epilepsy.
“To my knowledge, this is the first wireless sensor that can monitor conditions inside the body without the need for surgery,” he said. Jules Magda The researcher is from the University of Utah, but was not involved in the study.
The sensor is a soft hydrogel cube about 2 millimeters wide, about the width of a grain of rice. Jiangfeng Zhan Professors from China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology created structured “metagel” sensors by creating precisely spaced air columns throughout a hydrogel. When an external ultrasound source is aimed at the sensor, the channels guide the ultrasound waves. The shape of the sensor changes subtly in response to changing conditions in the brain, such as pressure or temperature, which can be seen in the reflected ultrasound.
“No wiring or electronics are required,” Zhang says. “It’s as if the metagel acts as a tiny acoustic mirror that changes its reflection depending on the environment.”
Zhang and his colleagues showed that when metagel sensors were injected into the brains of rats and pigs, they could measure pressure, temperature, pH levels, and flow rates in nearby blood vessels. They obtained results comparable to wired probes traditionally used to monitor brain health. Their experiments also found that metagel broke down into relatively harmless components, such as water and carbon dioxide, within four to five weeks.
Injecting the sensor into the brain requires a thick needle, which could still cause pain or discomfort, Magda said, and he noted that researchers also need to make sure the dissolved metagel is non-toxic.
Zhang says that the rats in the study showed little swelling in brain tissue or buildup of immune cells after the sensors were implanted and degraded, but he says that longer-term testing in larger animals is still needed to show that the metagel works reliably and safely before clinical trials in humans can begin.
It is already known that excessive salt intake increases blood pressure.
Toufik Ahmed/iStockphoto/Getty Images
Researchers have found that people with the skin condition have higher levels of sodium in their urine, suggesting that excessive salt intake may be linked to eczema.
To see if salt plays a role, Katrina Abuaballah Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) looked at urine sample data from more than 215,800 adults who took part in the UK Biobank study, more than 10,800 of whom had eczema.
The researchers used each participant's urine sample to estimate urinary sodium excretion over a 24-hour period. About 90% of dietary sodium is excreted in the urine.This waste product therefore provides a relatively reliable way of measuring a person's salt intake.
Overall, study participants were estimated to have excreted an average of 3.01 grams of sodium in their urine over a 24-hour period. Typically around 2.5 grams per dayThis is the equivalent of 6 grams of salt, or 1 teaspoon.
The researchers found that for every gram of sodium excreted, participants were 11 percent more likely to be diagnosed with eczema, and their risk of ever developing eczema at any one time increased by 16 percent.
The team acknowledges that a single urine sample may not accurately reflect an individual's typical salt intake, but in another part of the study, the researchers looked at the daily diet of a different group of more than 13,000 U.S. adults and found further correlations between high salt intake and eczema.
In previous studies, Sodium activates immune system cells“The immune system responds to allergens and irritants in a way that triggers several inflammatory pathways,” Abuaballah said. People with eczema have an overactive immune response to allergens and irritants, which causes skin inflammation and subsequent symptoms.
Although the study suggests a link between high urinary sodium levels and eczema, team members say more research is needed to prove that the former causes the latter. Brenda Chanalso at UCSF.
“It's too early to say whether lowering sodium in the diet can reduce the severity or risk of developing eczema,” he said. Karsten Flor At King's College London.
Abuaballah said her team will soon begin enrolling participants for a National Institutes of Health-funded study that will look at the relationship between dietary sodium, sodium levels on the skin, and eczema severity.
Starliner launched on June 5th from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Joe Raedl/Getty Images
Boeing has successfully launched its Starliner spacecraft with a crew for the first time on its third attempt, a landmark launch that gives NASA two commercial options for sending astronauts into space: Boeing and SpaceX.
Starliner was launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. June 5th, 10:52 AM (local time) After several years of delays, the manned launch has finally come to fruition. Initially, the manned launch was expected to take place by the end of 2017, but the plans fell behind schedule. The mission was finally scheduled to launch in May, but a valve failure forced NASA to abort the mission. The second launch on June 1 was scheduled for Discarded Due to computer problems.
But the third launch just a few days later was successful, with the capsule reaching orbit as planned. Carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, they made the 24-hour journey to the International Space Station, where they will stay for about a week to test various systems before returning to Earth aboard the same spacecraft.
The capsule was named Calypso. Reportedly Named after Jacques Cousteau's oceanographic ship, the mission's goal is to verify that Starliner is safe to transport crew to the ISS. If these tests are successful and the two astronauts return safely to Earth aboard Starliner, similar ships could begin annual crewed flights to the space station.
Each Starliner is designed to last up to 10 round trips, carrying up to seven people per flight, though a standard operational flight will likely only carry three or four astronauts.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Two contracts won Ten years ago, there were bids for a shuttle ship to transport crew to the International Space Station. One bid was for Boeing's Starliner, the other was SpaceX's Dragon capsule. Dragon outdid Starliner with its first crewed flight in 2020.
Starliner will be the sixth manned orbital spacecraft launched by the United States, following Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle and Dragon.
A device that can convert infrared light into visible light
Laura Valencia Molina et al. 2024
Glasses coated with lithium compounds may one day help us see clearly in the dark.
For more than a decade, researchers have been searching for the best lightweight materials that can convert infrared light, invisible to the human eye, into visible light in order to provide an alternative to night-vision goggles, which are often heavy and cumbersome.
Until recently, the leading candidate was gallium arsenide. Laura Valencia Molina The researchers, from the Australian National University in Canberra, and their colleagues found that a film of lithium niobate coated with a lattice of silicon dioxide performed better.
“Through improved design and material properties, we have achieved a tenfold increase in the conversion rate from infrared to visible light compared to gallium arsenide films,” the team said. Maria del Rocio Camacho MoralesAt the Australian National University.
Through a series of experiments, the team demonstrated that the lithium niobate film could convert high-resolution images from infrared light with a wavelength of 1,550 nanometers to visible light with a wavelength of 550 nanometers, exceeding the capabilities of gallium arsenide.
Night vision goggles require infrared particles called photons to pass through a lens and be converted into electrons in a device called a photocathode. These electrons then pass through a phosphor screen to be converted into visible light photons. This entire process requires cryogenic cooling to prevent distortion of the image.
Molina says the lithium niobate film is hit by infrared light emitted by an object and illuminated with a laser at the same time. The film combines the infrared light with the laser light, which then up-converts the infrared light into visible light.
Camacho Morales says that one day, lattices of lithium niobate and silicon dioxide could be made into a film thinner than plastic wrap that could be coated over regular glasses to improve night vision.
While still in the research stage, the laser was positioned so that it could be easily shone onto the film along with infrared light emitted by the object, and the team is now experimenting with creating an array of nanolasers that can be positioned on top of the lithium niobate film.
The research is an important next step toward lightweight night-vision devices, and perhaps a film that can be attached to ordinary glasses, Camacho Morales said. It could also help drones navigate in the dark, he said, because current night-vision devices are too heavy to carry in some vehicles.
According to the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, a Russian cybercriminal group is responsible for a ransomware attack that disrupted operations and testing at a major NHS hospital in London.
The attack on pathology services firm Synovis resulted in a significant capacity impairment and was deemed a very serious incident.
Following the attack, the affected hospital declared a critical situation, halted operations and tests, and was unable to conduct blood transfusions.
A memo sent to NHS staff at multiple London hospitals and primary care services described the incident as a “major IT incident”.
During a BBC Radio 4 interview, Ciarán Martin confirmed that a group of Russian cybercriminals known as Kirin was behind the Synovis attack. These groups operate within Russia, targeting organizations globally for financial gain.
The cybercriminals, who have a history of attacks on various entities, inadvertently caused severe disruption to primary care with their ransomware attack.
While the government’s policy is to refrain from paying ransoms, companies affected by such attacks have the option to do so.
The National Cyber Security Centre is collaborating with NHS authorities to investigate the repercussions of the cyber attack.
Synovis has reported the incident to the police and the Information Commissioner.
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins assured that patient safety is the top priority and efforts are underway to resume services safely.
Synovis CEO Mark Darragh mentioned that a taskforce of Synovis and NHS IT experts is evaluating the impact and necessary measures.
It may take “weeks rather than days” to receive pathology results due to the severity of the attack, as per a senior source cited by the Health Service Journal.
During a family walk in North Dakota, a rare fossil was unexpectedly discovered buried in the soil — that of a teenage boy, a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
This discovery is significant as it could provide greater insight into the life of this famous dinosaur known as “Teen Rex,” who was discovered by two younger brothers, his father, and a cousin.
The fossil was found in the North Dakota wilderness, about 10 miles from the town of Marmarth, in 2022 by children aged 7, 9, and 10. While on a walk, one of the children and his father noticed a large foot bone sticking out of the ground.
Tyrannosaurus Rex was smaller than a full-grown Tyrannosaurus and had not yet fully matured – Courtesy of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science
The father, Sam Fisher, contacted Tyler Lyson, curator of paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, who confirmed the discovery through research.
“This finding is particularly interesting because Tyrannosaurus Rex “All the fossils found so far have been of adults,” said Lyson. “Studying the remains of young animals will shed light on different aspects of dinosaur life, such as growth patterns.”
“Furthermore, three young scientists have embraced their passion and the excitement of discovery, making incredible dinosaur discoveries that advance science, deepen our understanding of the natural world, and inspire other explorers and scientists of the future.”
Tyrannosaurus is one of the best-known dinosaurs of all time and lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, between 90 and 66 million years ago.
In a paper published in 2023, it was initially believed that dinosaurs like T. rex were particularly clever, with brains containing about 3 billion neurons, more than a baboon’s. However, recent studies have shown intelligence comparable to that of a reptile.
It is now thought that this Teen Rex was around 13 to 15 years old, measuring 7.6 meters (25 feet) in length and weighing around 1,500 kilograms. They reach full growth at around 18-21 years of age and can weigh more than twice as much as this specimen.
After careful excavation and extraction, “Teen Rex” was airlifted by Blackhawk helicopter and is now displayed at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The fossil and its plaster encasement weigh over 2,000 kg.
A team of museum paleontologists and volunteers will now clean the skeleton and prepare it for study in the Teen Rex Discovery Preparation Lab where the progress can be followed by the public.
A group of current and former employees from prominent artificial intelligence companies has published an open letter. The committee warned of inadequate safety oversight within the industry and called for better protection for whistleblowers.
The letter, advocating for a “right to warn about artificial intelligence,” is a rare public statement about the risks of AI from employees in a usually secretive industry. It was signed by 11 current and former employees of OpenAI and two current and former Google DeepMind employees, one of whom previously worked at Anthropic.
“AI companies have valuable non-public information about their systems’ capabilities, limitations, safeguards, and risk of harm. However, they have minimal obligations to share this information with governments and none with the public. We cannot rely on companies to share this information voluntarily,” the letter stated.
OpenAI defended its practices, stating that they have hotlines and mechanisms for issue reporting, and they do not release new technology without proper safeguards. Google did not respond immediately to a comment request.
Concerns about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence have been around for years, but the recent AI boom has heightened these concerns, leading regulators to struggle to keep up with technological advancements. While AI companies claim to be developing their technology safely, researchers and employees warn about a lack of oversight to prevent AI tools from exacerbating existing societal harms or creating new ones.
The letter also mentions a bill seeking to enhance protections for AI company employees who raise safety concerns. The bill calls for transparency and accountability principles, including not forcing employees to sign agreements that prevent them from discussing risk-related AI issues publicly.
In a recent report, it was revealed that companies like OpenAI have tactics to discourage employees from freely discussing their work, with consequences for those who speak out. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apologized for these practices and promised changes to exit procedures.
The open letter echoes concerns raised by former top OpenAI employees about the company’s lack of transparency in its operations. It comes after recent resignations of key OpenAI employees over disagreements about the company’s safety culture.
Studies indicate that adolescents with internet addiction exhibit alterations in brain chemistry that can contribute to further addictive behaviors.
In a study published in PLOS Mental Health, researchers analyzed fMRI studies to explore how brain regions interact in individuals with internet addiction.
The findings revealed changes in neural network activity in the brains of young individuals, with increased activity during rest and reduced connectivity in areas involved in cognitive functions like memory and decision-making.
These alterations were linked to addictive behaviors, mental health issues, cognitive abilities, and physical coordination in adolescents.
The study reviewed 12 prior studies involving 237 young individuals diagnosed with internet addiction from 2013 to 2023.
Recent surveys show that nearly half of British teens feel addicted to social media platforms.
Lead researcher Max Zhang from the University of London emphasized the vulnerability of adolescents to internet addiction due to developmental changes during this crucial stage.
The study suggests that early intervention for internet addiction is essential to mitigate negative impacts on adolescent behavior and development.
Experts recommend targeted treatments focused on specific brain regions or therapies to combat internet addiction symptoms.
Parental education plays a crucial role in preventing internet addiction, enabling better management of screen time and impulsive online behaviors.
Lead author Eileen Li from GOS ICH emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries on internet usage and being mindful of its effects on mental and social well-being.
TikTok has taken action to address a cyberattack that targeted the accounts of various celebrities and brands, such as Paris Hilton and CNN.
The social video app has confirmed that CNN was one of the high-profile accounts affected after its security team discovered malicious actors targeting US news media.
A TikTok spokesperson stated, “We have collaborated with CNN to restore access to the account and have implemented stronger security measures to safeguard the account from future attacks.”
While Hilton was also targeted, TikTok clarified that her account remained uncompromised.
The platform disclosed that the attack exploited the app’s direct messaging feature but did not provide additional specifics. The company is currently investigating the incident and assisting affected account owners in regaining access.
Owned by ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, TikTok faces potential bans in the US due to national security concerns. President Joe Biden enacted a bill in April that will prohibit the app nationwide if ByteDance fails to sell it to non-Chinese entities by mid-January.
With approximately 170 million users in the US, TikTok previously announced its intention to legally challenge the ban, citing it as unconstitutional and a violation of freedom of speech.
Recent reports revealed that former President Donald Trump, who had previously banned TikTok over ties to Beijing in 2020, joined the platform. Trump has since reversed his stance, no longer supporting a ban on TikTok despite concerns about national security risks.
The cyberattack on TikTok is the latest in a string of hacking incidents targeting social media platforms. One of the most notable incidents occurred in July 2020 when Twitter accounts, including those of Biden, Obama, Musk, Gates, Bezos, and Apple, were compromised.
The NHS confirmed on Tuesday that it fell victim to a cyberattack, declaring it a “major incident.”
Seven hospitals managed by two NHS trusts, including Guy’s, St Thomas’, and King’s College London, experienced significant disruptions in services due to a ransomware attack on a private company responsible for analyzing blood tests.
If spending time on the couch, binging fast food, drinking too much alcohol or not paying into your company pension is ruining your carefully laid plans for life, it might be time to have a conversation with your future self.
With time machines not readily available, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an AI-powered chatbot that simulates a user’s past self and offers observations and valuable wisdom in the hope of encouraging people to think more today about who they want to be tomorrow.
By digitally de-aging profile photos so that younger users appear as wrinkled, grey-haired seniors, the chatbot generates plausible artificial memories and weaves a story about a successful life based on the user’s current aspirations.
“The goal is to encourage long-term changes in thinking and behavior,” says Pat Pataranuthapong, who works on the Future You project at the MIT Media Lab, “which may motivate people to make smarter choices in the present that optimize their long-term well-being and life outcomes.”
In one conversation, an aspiring biology teacher asked a chatbot, a 60-year-old version of herself, about the most rewarding moment in her career so far. The chatbot, responding that she was a retired biology teacher in Boston, recalled a special moment when she turned a struggling student’s grades around. “It was so gratifying to see my student’s face light up with pride and accomplishment,” the chatbot said.
To interact with the chatbot, users are first asked to answer a series of questions about themselves, their friends and family, the past experiences that have shaped them, and the ideal life they envision for themselves in the future. They then upload a portrait image, which the program then digitally ages to create a portrait of them at 60 years old.
The program then feeds information from the user’s answers into a large language model to generate a rich synthetic memory for the simulated older version of itself, ensuring that the chatbot draws on a coherent background story when responding to questions.
The final part of the system is the chatbot itself, powered by OpenAI’s GPT3.5, which introduces itself as a potential older version of the user and can talk about their life experiences.
Pattaranuthapong has had several conversations with his “future self,” but the most memorable was when the chatbot reminded him that his parents won’t be together forever, so he should spend time with them while he still can. “The perspective I gained from that conversation is still influential to me today,” he said.
Users are told that their “future self” is not a prediction, but a potential future self based on the information they provide, and are encouraged to explore different futures by varying their survey answers.
be A preprint scientific paper on the projectA trial of 344 volunteers, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, found that talking to a chatbot made people feel less anxious and more connected to their future selves. Pattaranthapong said this stronger connection should encourage better life choices, from focusing on specific goals and exercising regularly to eating healthier and saving for the future.
Ivo Vlaev, professor of behavioural science at the University of Warwick, said people often struggle to imagine themselves in the future, but doing so could lead to stronger adherence to education, healthier lifestyles and more careful financial planning.
He called the MIT project a “fascinating application” of behavioral science principles. “It embodies the idea of a nudge, a subtle intervention designed to steer behavior in a beneficial direction by making your future self more salient and relevant to the present,” he said. “Implemented effectively, this could have a profound impact on how people make decisions today with their future well-being in mind.”
“From a practical standpoint, its effectiveness will depend on how well it simulates meaningful, relevant conversations,” he added. “If users perceive the chatbot as authentic and insightful, it can have a significant impact on behavior. But if the interaction feels superficial or quirky, its impact may be limited.”
Geologists have analysed 4-billion-year-old zircon crystals from Jack Hills in Western Australia’s mid-west region to date the emergence of fresh water back just a few hundred million years after the Earth formed.
Artistic conception of early Earth. Image by Simone Marchi/NASA.
On the early Earth, extensive interactions between flowing (fresh) water and the emerging continental crust may have been key to the emergence of life, but when the water cycle first began is unclear.
In the new study, Curtin University scientist Hamed Gamaleldien and his colleagues used the oxygen isotope composition of zircon crystals from Jack Hills in Western Australia to determine when the water cycle began.
Their findings suggest that meteoric water appeared on Earth about 4 billion years ago, 500 million years earlier than previously thought.
“We were able to date the origins of the hydrological cycle, the ongoing process by which water moves around Earth and is essential for maintaining ecosystems and supporting life on Earth,” Dr Gamalerdien said.
“By examining the age and oxygen isotopes of microscopic crystals of the mineral zircon, we discovered an anomalously light isotopic signature that dates back 4 billion years.”
“These light oxygen isotopes typically result from hot freshwater altering rocks several kilometers below the Earth’s surface.”
“The evidence for the presence of fresh water this deep in the Earth casts doubt on existing theories that the Earth was completely covered by oceans 4 billion years ago.”
“This discovery was crucial for our understanding of how Earth formed and how life began,” said Curtin University scientist Hugo Orioluk.
“This discovery not only sheds light on the early history of Earth, but also suggests that land and freshwater systems provided the foundation for life to thrive within a relatively short time frame – less than 600 million years after Earth’s formation.”
“This discovery represents a major advance in our understanding of Earth’s early history and opens the door to further exploration of the origin of life.”
H. Gamaleldine othersThe Earth’s water cycle began 4 billion years ago or sooner. National GeographyPublished online June 3, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41561-024-01450-0
CHarless Yeh’s fight against disinformation in Taiwan started with a bowl of beef noodles. It all began nine years ago when the Taiwanese engineer was dining at a restaurant with his family. His mother-in-law began removing scallions from his dish, claiming they were bad for the liver based on a text message she had received. This prompted Yeh to investigate and reveal the truth.
Confused by the misinformation, Yeh decided to expose the truth on his blog and share it with his family and friends via the Line messaging app. The information quickly spread, leading to requests from strangers who wanted to connect with his personal Line account.
Yeh recognized the demand for fact-checking in Taiwan, leading him to launch the website “MyGoPen” in 2015, which translates to “Don’t be fooled again” in Taiwanese. Within two years, MyGoPen gained 50,000 subscribers and now boasts over 400,000. In 2023, the platform received 1.3 million fact-check requests, debunking various myths and false claims.
Several other fact-checking organizations have also emerged in Taiwan, including the Taiwan Fact-Checking Centre, Cofacts, and DoubleThink Lab. However, as these organizations grow, the threat of disinformation also increases.
The growing and changing threat from China
A study by the Democratic Diversity Project at the University of Gothenburg identified Taiwan as the target of foreign disinformation more than any other democracy, with the most significant threat originating from across the Taiwan Strait, particularly during election seasons.
Doublethink Lab monitors China’s influence in various spheres across 82 countries, ranking Taiwan at the top for China’s impact on society and media and 11th place overall.
Despite the increasing threats, Yeh and his team at MyGoPen continue to combat disinformation using a combination of human fact-checkers and AI. They leverage advanced technologies to verify information and educate the public about evolving disinformation tactics.
Extinction of Woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta Antiquitatis) This species, which lived at the beginning of the Holocene Epoch, remains shrouded in mystery, with conflicting evidence as to its causes and dynamics. A team of paleontologists led by scientists from the University of Adelaide and the University of Copenhagen has used computationally intensive modelling techniques and extensive paleontological and ancient DNA information to uncover why and how this enigmatic species went extinct.
Woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta Antiquitatis) was once widespread across northern and central Eurasia but became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Image by Mauricio Antón.
The woolly rhinoceros is an iconic member of the giant steppe fauna of central and northern Eurasia, originating from the Tibetan Plateau approximately 2.5 million years ago.
Based on fossil chronology, the woolly rhino is estimated to have become extinct by 13,900 years ago, despite having survived multiple glacial and interglacial cycles during the Pleistocene.
However, recent discovery of woolly rhinoceros DNA in early Holocene deposits suggests a later extinction date of 9,800 years ago. This young dating is subject to debate, but is unlikely to be due to redeposition of DNA.
“Using computer models, fossils and ancient DNA, we have traced the population history of woolly rhinoceros across Eurasia over 52,000 years, at a resolution previously thought impossible,” said Dr Damian Fordham, from the University of Adelaide.
“This suggests that a combination of decreasing temperatures beginning 30,000 years ago and small-scale but continuing hunting by humans caused the woolly rhino's range to shrink southwards, confining it to isolated and rapidly degraded habitat at the end of the last ice age.”
“As the Earth thawed and temperatures rose, woolly rhino populations were unable to colonize key new habitats in northern Eurasia, causing destabilization and collapse, ultimately leading to extinction.”
The new research contradicts previous studies that found humans were not responsible for the woolly rhino's extinction, despite the animal coexisting with humans for tens of thousands of years before its disappearance.
“The demographic responses revealed by our analysis have a much higher resolution than previously captured in genetic studies,” said Professor Eline Lorenzen from the University of Copenhagen.
“This allowed us to pinpoint key interactions between woolly rhinos and humans and document how these have changed over time and space.”
“One of these largely overlooked interactions is persistent, low-level hunting by humans, presumably for food.”
“Humans pose similar environmental threats today,” the researchers said.
“Large animal populations have been forced into fragmented and suboptimal habitats by overhunting and changes in human land use.”
“Of the 61 species of large terrestrial herbivores weighing more than one tonne that lived during the Late Pleistocene, only eight survive today, five of which are rhinos.”
“Our results show how climate change and human activities can lead to the extinction of large animals,” said Professor David Nogus Brabo from the University of Copenhagen.
“This understanding is crucial for developing conservation strategies to protect species currently at risk of extinction, such as vulnerable rhinos in Africa and Asia.”
“Studying past extinctions can provide valuable lessons for conserving Earth's remaining large animals.”
of study Appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
_____
Damien A. Fordham others2024. 52,000 years of woolly rhino population dynamics reveal mechanisms of extinction. PNAS 121(24):e2316419121; doi:10.1073/pnas.2316419121
A team of paleontologists Ctenochasmatoid pterosaur Discovered in the Kimmeridg Clay of Oxfordshire in central England, this specimen is one of the largest Jurassic pterosaur fossils, with an estimated wingspan of at least 3 metres (10 ft), and is the first pterodactyl pterosaur described from the Jurassic of Britain.
Partial wingspan profiles of large Jurassic pterosaurs: pterodactyloides (left), including the new fossil (EC K2576), and rhamphorhynchids (right). Image courtesy of Etienne others., doi: 10.1016/j.pgeola.2024.05.002.
Pterosaurs were flying reptiles of the Mesozoic era characterized by a flight membrane stretched between their forelimbs and hindlimbs and an extremely elongated fourth digit consisting of four elongated phalanges.
The largest Cretaceous form was Aramburgiana, Hatzegopteryx and QuetzalcoatlusThe combined wingspan reached a length of over 10 metres (33 ft).
However, Triassic and Jurassic forms were considerably smaller, with a typical wingspan of 0.5 to 2 metres (1.6 to 6.5 ft).
There is evidence that some Jurassic species also achieved large wingspans, but these rarely exceeded 3 metres (10 ft).
The new pterosaur fossil was discovered in the Kimmeridge Clay near Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England.
This specimen is a wing bone, broken into three pieces but still well preserved.
The team said the dinosaur belonged to adult Ctenophora, a group of pterosaurs known for their elongated wings, long jaws and thin, bristle-like teeth.
“When the bones were discovered their size was certainly remarkable,” said Professor David Martill, from the University of Portsmouth.
“We performed numerical analysis and came up with a maximum wingspan of 3.75 meters (12.3 feet).”
“This is small for a Cretaceous pterosaur, but absolutely gigantic for a Jurassic one.”
“This fossil is particularly special as it is also one of the first records of this type of Jurassic pterosaur in the UK.”
“This specimen is currently the largest known Jurassic pterosaur in the world, surpassed only by a Swiss specimen, with an estimated wingspan of 5 metres (16.4 feet).”
“AbFab, as the Abingdon pterosaur is nicknamed, shows that pterodactyloides, the advanced pterosaurs that completely dominated the Cretaceous period, achieved astonishingly large sizes shortly after they first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, just as the ancestors of bird-like dinosaurs were beginning to take to the air,” said Dr Dave Unwin from the University of Leicester.
a paper The paper on the survey results is Proceedings of the Association of Geologists.
_____
James L. Etienne others“Giant” pterodactyloid pterosaur that lived in the Jurassic of Britain. Proceedings of the Association of GeologistsPublished online May 24, 2024, doi: 10.1016/j.pgeola.2024.05.002
Japanese paleontologists have described a new species of shark-like cartilaginous fish based on fossil teeth found in the Momonoki Formation of the Late Triassic Period.
Fossilized teeth Parvodus ominechonensisScale bar – 0.5 mm. Image courtesy of Breeden III others., doi: 10.1080/02724634.2024.2322749.
Named Parvodus ominechonensis The newly identified shark species lived during the Late Triassic period, between 237 million and 227 million years ago.
“Hybodontiforme is an extinct lineage of sharks that is generally considered to be the sister lineage of Neoselachia (i.e. rays, rays, and modern sharks) within the chondrichthyes Euselaciidae,” he said. Dr. Benjamin T. Breedon III Researchers from the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tsukuba and his colleagues.
“The oldest clearly hybodontiform fossils are from the Mississippian, but the discovery of isolated teeth has pushed the oldest record of this group back to the Late Devonian.”
“Hybodontiform fossils have been found primarily in coastal and lagoonal deposits throughout the Late Palaeozoic, suggesting a shallow-marine palaeoecology of the clade's ancestors.”
“However, some hybodontiforms appear to have become euryhaline early in the evolution of their lineage, and since the Mississippian, hybodontiforms have repeatedly invaded freshwater environments.”
“Hybodontis were the most abundant group of sharks among marine and non-marine vertebrate groups throughout the Early Mesozoic, but their diversity declined after the Early Jurassic until their extinction at or near the end of the Cretaceous.”
Ecological reconstruction of the hybodontiform shark Strophodus rebeccae Image credit: Jorge Blanco / CC BY 4.0.
Some isolated teeth Parvodus ominechonensis It was collected from the non-marine peach tree layer in Ominecho (romanized as Ominecho) in the western part of Mine City, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
“The diversity of Triassic hybodontids is known from Japan, among which Parvodus ominechonensis It is the only species known from non-marine sediments and the first reported occurrence of this family. Ronchididae” the paleontologist said.
According to the study: Parvodus ominechonensis Filling in gaps in the geological record Parvodas Between occurrences in Middle Triassic and Middle Jurassic strata.
“The Triassic Global Record Parvodas include Parvodus physodus From the Chinese Olenekians, Parvodas Chinese Anisian sp., and Parvodus ominechonensis The Carnian period in the Japanese Archipelago Parvodus ominechonensis and Parvodus physodus “It is also known from non-marine deposits,” the authors say.
“Since the Triassic Period, Parvodas It is known to have lived in marine and non-marine strata throughout Laurasia and South America until its extinction in the Early Cretaceous.
“this is, Parvodas They may have originated in freshwater habitats in the southern Chinese region of Pangaea after the end-Permian mass extinction, diversified throughout the Triassic in what is now East Asia, and achieved a global distribution during the late Mesozoic.”
Discovery Parvodus ominechonensis It has been reported paper In Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
_____
Benjamin T. Breedon III others2023. A new species of hybodontiform shark (Chondrichthyes, Elasmobranchia), a freshwater shark from the Upper Triassic Momonoki Formation of Yamaguchi Prefecture. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 43(5); doi:10.1080/02724634.2024.2322749
The space telescope entered hibernation over a week ago due to the failure of one of its three remaining gyroscopes, which are part of its pointing system. This same gyro had been malfunctioning for months, affecting its scientific capabilities.
NASA confirmed on Tuesday that efforts to repair the gyro had been unsuccessful, leaving the spacecraft operating with just one gyroscope, limiting its scientific functions.
As a result, Hubble will be inactive until mid-June. The telescope will have reduced agility and slower target acquisition. Despite these limitations, officials believe that Hubble will still be able to make significant discoveries in the coming decade.
“We are optimistic about Hubble’s future,” said Patrick Close, NASA’s project manager.
Mark Crump, NASA’s astrophysics director, stated that there are currently no plans to launch a mission to extend Hubble’s life by raising it to a higher orbit.
A billionaire who has booked SpaceX flights for himself has offered to sponsor and perform the necessary repairs. However, Crumpen expressed concerns about the risks involved and the need for further analysis.
The Hubble Telescope was launched into orbit in 1990, initially facing challenges due to a misaligned mirror. After a successful repair mission, Hubble resumed its observations of the cosmos in remarkable detail.
During a visit in 2009, astronauts installed six new gyroscopes on Hubble. Unfortunately, three of them have stopped functioning. These gyroscopes are crucial for maintaining the telescope’s stability and orientation.
Currently, only two gyroscopes are operational, one for pointing and the other as a backup.
The Webb Space Telescope, a more advanced successor to Hubble, is set to launch in 2021.
Rivals Boeing and SpaceX are preparing for a busy week with upcoming key test flights of their rockets and spacecraft.
Boeing is set to launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station aboard its Starliner spacecraft for the third time on Wednesday. The liftoff is scheduled for 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Command Station in Florida.
The following day, SpaceX will conduct the fourth uncrewed test flight of its Starship megarocket. The launch will take place from SpaceX’s Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas, with a targeted liftoff time of 8 a.m. ET.
Despite being spaceflight competitors, this week’s launch serves a unique purpose: Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, developed in collaboration with NASA, will transport astronauts to the space station – a service SpaceX has been providing commercially for NASA since 2020.
Boeing’s third attempt to launch astronauts into space
Should Boeing’s initial crewed test flight succeed, it could pave the way for regular flights of its Starliner spacecraft to the space station for NASA, challenging SpaceX’s current dominance.
The Starliner will carry NASA astronauts Barry “Batch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who will spend approximately a week aboard the space station before returning to Earth and landing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Butch Wilmore (left) and Suni Williams put on their Boeing space suits at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP – Getty Images
Starliner’s most recent launch attempt was halted on Saturday with less than four minutes to go due to an automatic abort triggered by a computer controlling the Atlas V rocket, created by United Launch Alliance, a collaboration between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
SpaceX’s Starship test flight on Thursday aims to demonstrate technologies critical for future moon missions.
Starship, the most powerful rocket ever developed and designed to be fully reusable, is expected to play a vital role in NASA’s plans to send astronauts back to the Moon. Additionally, SpaceX intends to use Starship for eventual missions to Mars.
NASA is also working on its own Space Launch System megarocket and Orion spacecraft for moon missions, part of the Artemis program which envisions establishing a base camp on the moon’s surface before exploring Mars.
SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket was deployed on the launch pad at StarBase, the company’s facility in South Texas, in June 2024 ahead of a planned test flight.
SpaceX is getting ready Starship. The most powerful rocket ever built is gearing up for its next test launch. Here’s everything you need to know.
What time is the launch scheduled?
The launch is expected to take place in the next week or so, but SpaceX has said it could take place as soon as June 5, pending regulatory approval. Each flight must be approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
Other signs point to the same day. Judge Eddie Trevino of Cameron County, Texas, home to SpaceX’s Starbase launch site, said: Nearby roads are closed. It will be carried out at the beginning of June. This precautionary measure is usually taken during launches, but it may also be relevant for some of the ground tests.
However, Treviño explicitly states in official documents that these closures are for “flight testing,” and establishes a 14-hour closure period from midnight to 2 p.m. local time on June 5. The documents also state that alternative closures of the same duration could be scheduled on June 6 and 7, if the company so desires.
How can I watch the Starship launch?
SpaceX has announced that a live webcast will begin approximately 30 minutes before launch.
Where is Starship going?
The fourth test flight will focus on returning Starship from orbit and conducting a mock landing of both the Starship and the Super Heavy first stage booster. Because landings on ground are currently deemed too risky, both vehicles will make a “soft splashdown” in the ocean, using their engines to slow their descent and line up, as if they were landing on a base, to gently touch down on the water. The first stage booster is scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the launch site, about seven minutes after liftoff, while Starship aims to splash down in the Indian Ocean about an hour later.
What has happened in Starship launches so far?
All three Starship launches have ended in explosions, which was expected as part of SpaceX’s “fail fast, learn fast” strategy.
During the first launch on April 20 last year, three of the first stage’s three engines (out of a total of 33) failed to ignite. Several more subsequently failed during the flight. The rocket then spun out of control and its self-destruct safety mechanism was activated. The entire flight lasted about three minutes, reaching a maximum altitude of 39 kilometers.
Starship’s second launch was on November 18. This time, all 33 engines were working, and the rocket flew far enough for the first and second stages to separate. But as the first stage rotated to begin its deceleration and landing procedure, it exploded. The second stage continued on smoothly to an altitude of about 90 miles, passing the Kármán line, which marks the beginning of the universe. But it was destroyed by a safety device after it stopped transmitting data before completing an orbit or returning to Earth.
SpaceX’s third Starship test flight, on March 14, was at least partially successful, as it reached space, performed a fuel transfer test, and flew farther and faster than ever before. However, it lost attitude control during the flight and failed to make the planned soft landing. Nevertheless, it achieved several important milestones, including Starship’s first atmospheric reentry from space, the first opening and closing of Starship’s payload door in space, and a successful demonstration of fuel transfer, which is key for future NASA Artemis missions to the Moon.
What would happen if this launch were to fail?
The chances of Starship completing its mission perfectly are slim, so it’s likely to fail in some way. But failure will provide data and experience that can be used to improve the design and process for the fifth launch. SpaceX has shown it can iterate quickly and make great strides with each launch.
Having a positive mindset can have unexpected results
DEEPOL (Plain Picture/photo by Anja Weber Dekker)
Do you suffer from low self-esteem? If so, you may have been told to repeat phrases like, “I am worthy of love, I am worthy of love, I am worthy of love.” Repeating positive statements like these is called self-affirmation, and it's said to boost a person's mood and sense of worth. Sounds incredible, right? Well, it is. When psychologists tested the effectiveness of this mantra, it backfired. Participants who started out with low self-esteem ended up feeling worse. The problem was, they simply didn't believe what they were being told.
We know that a positive attitude is good for your health, and that the right mindset can really impact your health and happiness. But it turns out that too much of a good thing can be bad. What psychologists who study self-esteem have discovered is an example of “toxic positivity” – the idea that forcing yourself to interpret your experiences in an optimistic way and suppressing negative emotions can actually do you harm. The term has become something of a buzzword in both academia and pop culture. And yet, the messages that “happiness is a choice” and “positivity is a mindset” are rampant.
What is needed is a return to balance. It is not enough to say that excessive positivity is harmful; we need to know when, why and for whom it is harmful. Fortunately, there is a growing body of research addressing these questions. …
We are on the brink of having a third thumb, thanks to a revolutionary prosthetic limb being tested in the UK by researchers at University College London. This robotic prosthetic limb for the hand aims to extend human capabilities by allowing users to better grasp and hold objects.
The Third Thumb is a 3D printed wearable that sits on the hand opposite the real thumb and is controlled by wireless sensors attached to the foot. Pressure sensors under the toes control the movement of the thumb, enabling users to lift and hold objects with it.
Recent studies have shown that users can quickly learn to control the extra thumb, with almost all participants being able to use it immediately. Regardless of age, gender, or background, most individuals were able to complete tasks with the thumb, showcasing its potential for widespread application.
While the need for a third thumb may seem unnecessary at first, it has the potential to assist in various tasks, from everyday activities like carrying shopping bags and using a phone to more specialized tasks for musicians, laborers, and surgeons.
The designer of The Third Thumb, Dani Claude, sees it as an extension of the body rather than a replacement limb, emphasizing its assistive nature. While availability to the public may still be some time away, the potential applications for this innovative prosthetic are vast.
Whether it’s holding limes, assisting in surgical procedures, or enhancing musical abilities, the Third Thumb could revolutionize the way we interact with the world around us. Stay tuned for further developments on this cutting-edge prosthetic technology.
About our expert, Dani Claude
Dani Claude is the mastermind behind The Third Thumb, a range of prosthetics designed to enhance the human form’s versatility. Her innovative work in this field aims to push boundaries and empower individuals with new capabilities.
Paleontologists from the University of Texas at Austin and other institutions have discovered fragments of the jaw of a feline with scimitar teeth. Homotherium McFaddin Beach, Texas. Homotherium from the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico. The topography may have formed a broad subtropical gulf coastal corridor that facilitated the dispersal of Neotropical species along the coast between Texas and Florida. The associated fauna at McFaddin Beach includes Neotropical mammals common to South Texas and Florida, Homotherium It was a type of animal that lived in the Gulf Coast Corridor during the Late Pleistocene.
Homotherium serumImage credit: Sergiodlarosa / CC BY-SA 3.0.
Homotherium It is an extinct genus of scimitar-toothed cat that lived in the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, from about 4 million to 12,000 years ago.
These animals are large, sturdy cats about the size of a jaguar, with elongated faces, long, slender front legs, and sloping backs that end in short, cropped tails.
Their serrated canines were covered with large gum tissue, similar to that of modern domestic dogs.
Their fossils have been found in several areas of Texas, but the newly discovered remains show for the first time that the big cats roamed the now-submerged continental shelf between Texas and Florida.
“This region was a neotropical corridor,” said John Moretti, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues.
“Animals that couldn't move any further north, such as capybaras and giant armadillos, used these moist grasslands to migrate from Mexico to Texas and Florida.”
In this fossil specimen Homotherium Moretti's research otherstwo teeth are visible at the bottom: an incisor and the tip of a partially evolved canine. Scale bar – 1 cm. Image courtesy of Sam Houston State University.
The fossils studied by the team were discovered more than 60 years ago. McFaddin BeachIt was written by Professor Russell Long of Lamar University, south of Beaumont.
“The fossil appears to consist of a few exposed teeth in a rugged, rounded rock that appears slightly damaged after being submerged and tumbling on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for thousands of years before washing up on the shore,” the researchers said.
“But when we X-rayed the fossil, we found more than met the eye: hidden canines that had not yet erupted from the jawbone.”
“That was the information we needed to identify the fossils as belonging to a specific organism. HomotheriumIt is a genus of large cats that roamed large areas of the Earth for millions of years.”
“This cat wasn't fully developed when it died, so its characteristic sabre-shaped canines hadn't fallen out of place. The teeth were still nestled inside the jaw, protecting them from the environment.”
“If the sabre teeth had been fully developed and in their adult form, rather than during the awkward period of their mid-teens, they would have broken right away,” Moretti said.
“It wouldn't have been there and it couldn't have been used as evidence.”
“The discovery Homotherium “Studying the animals that lived along this corridor gives scientists a glimpse into the local ecosystem during the Late Pleistocene,” he added.
“These large carnivores, like cats, helped shape the wider animal community, suppressing prey populations and impacting local biodiversity.”
John A. Moretti othersScimitar Cat Homotherium From the submerged continental shelf of the Gulf Coast of Texas. Anatomy recordPublished online April 23, 2024, doi: 10.1002/ar.25461
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
