The sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona, seen in ultraviolet light
ESA & NASA/Solar Probe/EUI Team
These fiery images are the clearest views of the Sun ever seen by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
solar orbitera joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, is a state-of-the-art instrument that orbits the sun and has been sending information back to Earth since it arrived in 2020.
These images were taken in March 2023, when Solar Orbiter was less than 74 million kilometers from the sun. The photo above was taken using ultraviolet light and reveals the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, in great detail, showing billowing million-degree plasma exploding along the sun’s magnetic field lines. There is. Normally, bright light from the sun’s surface hides the corona. Therefore, the corona can only be seen when observing it by blocking visible light or using ultraviolet light, which typically occurs during solar eclipses.
To create this complete image of the sun’s corona, many smaller zoomed-in images had to be stitched together, resulting in this complete mosaic of 8000 pixels. In the future, Solar Orbiter will be able to obtain two such high-resolution photos of the Sun each year, according to ESA.
Visible Sun imaged by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft’s polarization measurements and solar seismic imager
ESA & NASA/Solar Probe/PHI Team
This second image shows what the sun’s surface, or photosphere, looks like when viewed from Solar Orbiter in visible light, the same light that our eyes can see . The temperature of this layer of the sun is approximately 4500-6000°C. The dark areas here are sunspots, which are cooler and emit less light than the surrounding areas.
Map of the Sun’s magnetic field measured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft’s polarization measurements and solar seismic imager.
ESA & NASA/Solar Probe/PHI Team
Observations using the spacecraft’s magnetic instruments show that the Sun’s magnetic field is concentrated around the sunspot region (see image above). The field directs charged particles away from these areas, cooling them and giving them a dark appearance.
Velocity map, or tachogram, showing the speed and direction of movement of matter on the visible surface of the Sun
ESA & NASA/Solar Probe/PHI Team
Solar Orbiter can also track the speed and direction of plasma as it moves across the Sun’s surface. In this velocity map (above), called a tachogram, blue represents movement toward the spacecraft and red represents movement away from the spacecraft. It shows that it diverges in its surroundings.
This collection of images helps scientists understand the behavior of the sun’s corona and photosphere. Solar Orbiter will also image never-before-seen images of the Sun’s poles at the top and bottom of the star. Currently, not much is known about the solar poles, and researchers expect these regions to look significantly different from the rest of the sun.
F
Or, for those who remember the early days of the survival horror genre, its aesthetic renaissance in the independent gaming scene was a macabre delight. “Crow County,” “The Closing Shift,” and “Murder House” are all modern paranormal adventures with low-poly 3D visuals and blocky textures. It’s used not only as a visual hook, but as a way to reconnect with the things that scared the likes of Silent Hill and Clock Tower. Get involved first. Fear the Spotlight, the debut title from Cozy Game Pals and new horror-focused publisher Blumhouse Games, is another wonderful, warmly chilling example.
Two girls break into a high school library late at night, looking for specific items. It’s a spirit board that was locked in a display case as part of an exhibit on the occult. Vivian is a bit of a nerd and the library’s star volunteer, while Amy is a charming outsider with an interest in the paranormal. When the two decide to hold a seance in a vacant building, they come into contact not only with the dead, but also with tragic events from the school’s recent past. Then Amy mysteriously disappears.
Creepy atmosphere…fear the spotlight. Photo: Blumhouse Games
As Vivian, you must roam the nightmarishly transformed hallways, searching for your friends and learning more about what happened here 30 years ago. Developer Cozy Game Pals understands that night school is the perfect horror setting. The game features dark, locker-lined hallways, shabby bathrooms, and areas such as a gymnasium and pool that take on an eerie atmosphere when it gets quiet. Empty. As you explore, the game gives you small telltale signs of horror conventions. A creaking door, a flickering light, a glimpse of a face down the hallway, so you know something is watching outside. There’s also a nice use of 1990s technology, such as an overhead projector, a television with a video player, and an ancient PC, which not only provides the setting for the puzzles, but also lets you know that we’re no longer in the 21st century.
Particularly fun are the formal nods to Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Important items in the environment will glow, catching your eye and drawing Vivian’s head to interesting artifacts as you pass by. Puzzles also use familiar conventions and often involve mechanical objects, such as a generator that requires a fuse or a piano that requires a particular song to be played. The use of jerky, low-poly visuals is truly retro, but it has a self-conscious, artistic quality that elevates the look of the game beyond mere nostalgia.
This also applies to the story, which rises above the sometimes shoddy plotting and wooden voice acting common to old-school horror titles. At its core, Fear the Spotlight is a sensitive and emotionally resonant queer love story through which it explores themes of performance and observation. This is a game about the role we play in life and the role that imagination (for better or worse) plays in love and desire. The title Spotlight is both literal and figurative, offering a metaphor for the human gaze: love and bullying, desire and obsession.
This is a short game that can be completed in a few hours and has a slightly lower difficulty level, making it a great entry point into the horror genre for young adults. There’s a nice message at the end thanking players for their time and attention and acknowledging that the game isn’t perfect. Not really, but nothing really. The time I spent with the company was absorbing, eerie, and unexpectedly thought-provoking. Horror offers a distorted, shadowy lens through which to view our lives and learn new things about ourselves and the world, and it’s expertly utilized here. With its focus on love, Fear the Spotlight does more than just scare you.
Q
Wayne refused to use them. Musicians’ unions tried to ban them. Then computers overtook them. Synthesizers have been ridiculed, despised, and discarded throughout history, but somehow they’re entering a new golden age.
A new wave of synth makers has emerged, developing machines that are more ambitious and often outlandish than their beeping predecessors, satisfying the desires of a growing fan base.
Thousands, including Portishead’s Adrian Utley, gathered at Makina Bristonica, a festival of “knobs, buttons and discussion” in Bristol this weekend, to perform and sometimes cross the line from musical instruments to conceptual art. The designers created devices that they believed in.
Less than a decade ago, anyone wanting to discover the latest in electronic music production had to make a pilgrimage to the annual Superbooth fair in Berlin, but now there are several Superbooth fairs in the UK It has been. SynthFest UK took place in Sheffield last week, and Synth East in Norwich opened for the first time last year.
“A lot of people are using computers to make electronic music,” says Machina Bristronica co-founder Ben Chilton. Over the past 20 years, software like Cubase, Reason, and Ableton Live have made it easy for anyone to create music on their computer or mobile phone. Software synthesizers can be heard in nightclubs everywhere.
“People sold synthesizers when they were excited about computers, but a few years later they started craving something they could touch,” Chilton says. The ability to shape sounds on the fly during a performance, rather than feeling like you’re programming a machine, is behind the resurgence of synth hardware, he added.
Human League performs live on stage in 1983. Photo: BSR Entertainment/Gentle Look/Getty Images
Synthesizers have inspired generations of musicians in one form or another. Pink Floyd created menacing soundscapes. dark side of the moon Using a synthesizer in my briefcase. The Human League, Gary Numan, and Cabaret Voltaire pioneered the 80s synthpop sound, later enhanced by the Yamaha DX7. And while Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” brought the Moog to disco, DJ Pierre and Juan Atkins pumped out a Roland TB-303, intended as a bass replacement, for squelky sounds. Modern dance music would be very different if we hadn’t realized that it was possible to create . Acid house sounds.
Modern synthesizers fall into two categories. Self-contained desktop synths typically have a keyboard and a number of knobs, dials, and faders that allow the player to swoop or soar the instrument. Additionally, there are synths assembled from different modules, some of which generate sounds and others which manipulate sounds. Modular synths can be simple or extraordinary hunks of cables and metal, like the 15,000-pound colossus that film composer Hans Zimmer built to restart the BBC Radiophonic Workshop this year. There is also. In 2013, sound on sound reported that there are approximately 730 modules available in Eurorack, which has become a modular standard. Today, there are over 16,000.
Yesterday also marked the 60th anniversary of the first commercially available synth, the Moog Modular. Until 1964, anyone interested in the possibilities of electronic music had to build their own machine. Delia Derbyshire uses tape and BBC test equipment in her radiophonic workshop. doctor who Theme song. After Robert Moog’s synthesizer came the Buchla Easel.
“Originally they were designed with the home organist in mind, but by the mid-‘70s people realized they were instruments in their own right. [Jean-Michel] Jarre, Tomita, Vangelis” is a synth historian and ” synthesiszero evolution.
Not everyone liked them. Some musicians feared being replaced, and some bands took a stand. Queen said, “No synthesizers!” It was used on the covers of four albums, and in 1982 the musicians’ union passed a ban.
Now that just about every sound imaginable can be generated from a computer, the options are endless and creators are turning to more limited devices. Tom Whitwell, former editor mix mugnow manufactures synth modules as Music Thing, and today at machina Bristronica he will be demonstrating his latest equipment, a portable modular synth.
Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in London in 1970. Photo: Mirror Pix/Getty Images
The increased interest in synthesizers is due to a post-pandemic boom and easy access to factories in China, Whitwell said, noting that synthesizers like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, James It is said to be used by Blake, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and others.
“The barrier is much lower,” he said. “You design something, send some files to Shenzhen, and three weeks later you have these magical circuit boards for £25. It means you can take on the challenge.”
He helps the participants of Machina Bristronica create microphonies. This is a musical joke inspired by Karlheinz Stockhausen, in which the sound of a synthesizer switch is captured with a microphone and fed back into the machine.
The key to synthesizer success is getting people playing again, said Jack Edwards of Beep Boop Electronics. “It rekindles the spark of interest in my environment and the universe that I had when I was a child,” he says. “It’s a conversation between the player and the instrument. You get something that words can’t explain.”
He said they are also prone to addiction, especially smoking.
Perhaps these noble and mysterious Taal people (as he sometimes called Neanderthals) extracted nicotine from tobacco plants by cruder methods, such as chewing the leaves, before a critical inflection point in history. Of the world he said was likely extracted: When beginning a man touched beginning on tobacco leaves beginning fire.
As I read this part of Bruno’s email, skimming from “man” to “touch” to “leaf” to “fire,” a 1950s greaser wearing a white T-shirt and black leather jacket caught fire. I could imagine touching the tip of a match with a mark on it. I take a sip of Camel’s cigarette and inhale. The Greaser leans against the wall—that’s what Greasers do, so they lean and wander—and exhales.
Bruno Lacombe told Pascal in these emails, which I secretly read, that Neanderthals had very large brains. Or at least their skulls were so large that we can safely assume that their skulls were probably filled with brains, Bruno said.
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He used modern metaphors to talk about the impressive size of Thar’s brainbox, comparing it to a motorcycle engine and noting that its displacement had also been measured. Of all the two-legged, human-like species that roamed the Earth over the past million years, the Neanderthal brainbox was come forward a whopping 1,800 cubic centimeters.
I imagined the King of the Road up ahead.
I could see his leather vest, big guts, legs outstretched, engineer boots resting on spacious chrome-plated footpegs mounted in the front. His helicopter is fitted with a barely reachable ape hanger, which he pretends won’t tire his arms or cause severe gunshot pain in his lower back.
Bruno said Neanderthals’ skulls show they had huge faces.
Inspired by Joan Crawford. that Facial scale: dramatic, brutal, convincing.
And after that, the natural history museum in my head, the museum diorama I was creating while reading Bruno’s email, showed people in loincloths, yellow teeth, and messy hair, ancient people drawn by Bruno. All included men. They all looked like Joan Crawford.
They had her white skin and fiery red hair. Bruno said scientific advances in genetic mapping have shown that red hair is an inherited trait of the Thar tribe. And beyond such research and evidence, we might use our natural intuition to infer that, like the typical redhead, Neanderthal emotions were strong, sharp, and spanned high and low. , said Bruno.
Bruno writes Pascal some of the things we currently know about Neanderthals. They were good at math. They didn’t like crowds. They had strong stomachs and were not particularly prone to ulcers, but their diet of constant barbecuing took a toll on their intestines, just like everyone else’s. They were particularly vulnerable to tooth decay and periodontal disease. And while they had overdeveloped jaws that were surprisingly capable of chewing through gristle and cartilage, they were inefficient at eating soft foods. Too much. Bruno described the Neanderthal jaw as characteristic of its overdevelopment, pathos due to the burden of a square jaw. He talked about sunk costs as if the body were a capital investment, a fixed investment, a machine-like body part bolted to a factory floor, equipment that had been purchased and could not be resold. The Neanderthal jaw sunk cost.
Still, Bruno said the tar’s heavy bones and sturdy, heat-conserving construction are worthy of praise. Especially when compared to the breadstick-like limbs of modern humans. homo sapiens sapiens. (Bruno didn’t say “breadsticks,” but since he was writing these emails in French, I was translating, which is a very good language and my native language.) (The full text in English was used.)
The Thar people survived the cold well, he said. The story about them continues, if not for centuries – the story we know. must be complicated he said, if we want to know the truth about the ancient past, if we this The world, now, and how to live in it, how to spend the present, and where to go tomorrow.
——
My own tomorrow was meticulously planned. I am scheduled to meet Pascal Balmy, the leader of Le Moulin, who was the addressee of Bruno Lacombe’s email. And I didn’t need Neanderthal help on where to go. Pascal Balmy tells me to go to the Café de la Route in the central square of the small village of Ventôme at one o’clock in the afternoon, and that’s where I am.
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H
arding and Birkin may sound like law firms, but these two have a long history in the battlefield. Harding was a brilliant special forces operative who could handle any job, no matter how bloody. Birkin was Harding’s handler, and now he’s trying to bring him back for one last job. Harding has long ago hidden away in the woods to start a new life, but can Birkin chase him out at gunpoint? How far will they go? And with the two lost in the wilderness together, who is really chasing who?
That’s the engrossingly sleazy premise of Strange Scaffold’s latest action game, I Am Your Beast. What follows is not so much Rambo as an exploration of the way he’s become ingrained in our memory – the trees, the traps, the body counts. Strange Scaffold is known for making hectic, unrelenting games at a hectic, unrelenting pace. I Am Your Beast is another masterpiece of agility and efficiency. Playable in three hours at a stretch, this first-person shooter finds you constantly outgunned with firearms, but with infinite wit. Even the longest of the game’s “micro-sandbox” missions is over in 90 seconds, and you’ll be done before you have time to acknowledge the fact that the level names all sound like Jack Reacher novels – Late Shift, Breakdown, On Your Six.
I am your beast. Photo: Strange scaffolding
It all works extremely well: the beautifully streamlined design allows for fast first-person movement, having you ducking through roots one moment and leaping between the branches of a treetop canopy the next, while the sandbox approach to action sees you grabbing an enemy’s weapon, using it until it runs out of ammo, and hurling it at a nearby target to deliver the final blow, without having to be slowed down by tedious reloads.
There are elements of seminal first-person action games like Mirror’s Edge and SuperHot echoing this, but I Am Your Beast remains entirely its own thing. It has a speedrunner-like pacing, but the idea is that the simplest of mission structures, when combined with feel-good generic fiction, can really pump up the action. Simply fire up three laptops, target five satellite dishes, and kill everyone you come across. The objectives loop, but they add up to infinite lives in the game’s compact, complex arenas. A short health bar and a repetitive structure of attacking then disappearing behind the trees always make you feel like you’ve made a good getaway.
What makes I Am Your Beast thrilling is the vivid, well-chosen details. Grab the nearest herb and heal yourself on the spot. Let your enemy’s invincible attack helicopter wipe out hordes of enemies while sparing collateral damage. Kick people into ravines or jump on their heads to kill them. Every encounter is a chance to keep up the rhythm of carnage as inventively as possible, while increasingly frantic radio chatter from your enemies narrates the bloody and gore-splattered scenes as if they were commentating on a gruesome Olympics.
In fact, that emotion is at the heart of it all: Beneath the smoke and spent shells, I Am Your Beast is a reimagining of playground warfare as sport. On this forest battlefield, you perform deeds that are frighteningly good, and if you don’t get it right the first time, you’re one step closer to perfection.
Forest bathing is an ancient Japanese therapeutic technique dating back to the 1980s. It involves spending restorative time in forests and natural environments to connect with nature and achieve sensory relaxation. Despite sounding like hippie nonsense, there is scientific evidence emerging that supports the benefits of forest bathing.
This practice does not involve any nudity or water activities; instead, it encourages mindfulness, disconnecting from technology, light exercise, and escaping the sensory overload of the modern world. Research has shown that spending time in nature can have a positive impact on mental and physical health, reducing blood pressure, cortisol levels, and heart rate.
Studies on green space exposure have demonstrated significant improvements in various health markers, such as lower rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. Forest bathing is taken seriously in Japan and South Korea, where doctors prescribe it as a therapeutic intervention for stress and hypertension.
A UK study on forest bathing led by Dr. Kirsten McEwan has shown promising results, including a 12% improvement in heart rate variability and enhanced mood. The mechanism behind these health benefits is believed to involve the stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system and the release of chemicals by trees that boost the immune system.
Nature’s impact on long-term health outcomes is still being studied, but initial findings suggest that spending time in nature can have significant health benefits. Perhaps Western medicine is beginning to recognize and embrace the benefits of traditional practices like forest bathing, aligning with generations of knowledge that being outside in nature is good for overall well-being.
About our experts
Dr. Kirsten McEwan, Associate Professor of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Derby, is leading research on forest bathing through the Forest Therapy Hub.
isDuring this long, hot, dreary summer, I’ve come to believe in only one thing: seeing Twisters in 4DX. Set in Oklahoma, this Lee Isaac Chung-directed film gets a 7/10 in 2D. It’s a sort of blockbuster sequel to the 1996 disaster movie, with Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones playing tornado chasers and showing off some modest chemistry. But in the immersive theater format of 4DX, where audiences are pelted with literal wind and rain, Twisters gets a can’t-miss 10/10.
In 4DX, you feel every jolt, from the punch in your back to the tickle in your ankles, as the truck sways in the F5 winds. When the characters cling to their bolted-down theater seats during the climactic storm, I clung to the armrests to keep from being torn apart by the wind. There were loud cheers at my screening every time the movie’s tornado hit, as in the scene in which Powell wears a skin-tight white T-shirt in a light rain. I emerged from Twisters with matted hair and tear stains down my side. A friend lost a shoe. In 4DX, in the words of Tyler Owens, who plays Powell, you don’t just “ride out” the storm. teeth storm.
I’m not alone Glorious Recognition4DX has been around in the US for a decade, first introduced with Transformers: Age of Extinction in 2014, but Twisters marks 4DX’s culmination and breakout success this summer. Domestic box office records were broken 4DX grossed $2.3 million in its opening weekend across 62 theaters across the US. A TikTok user recorded himself leaving a screening of Twisters and heading home. Mascara streaks, Pushing and shoving in a four-person theater seat and Seeing God (With shocked parents) In the wind tunnel. A week later, Deadpool and Wolverine Exceeded Twisters’ record $2.8 million marked the second consecutive best weekend ever for 4DX, the second most popular of the so-called “premium large-format” viewing options after IMAX, which accounted for a significant chunk of this month’s box office takings. Alien: Romulus box office.
“Premium formats like 4DX and IMAX are making a full comeback,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “People complain about the price of movie tickets, but audiences don’t seem to mind paying a premium for a particular film experience.” For an average of $8 more than a standard ticket, audiences can feel the impact of a sandworm in Dune, simulate the terror of zero gravity in Alien, and scream inside a tornado. The hype for Twisters has been building for years. A Post-Pandemic Craze for Bold, Spectacular Theatrical Experiences “With Twisters, everything clicked,” says Duncan MacDonald, head of worldwide marketing and theatrical development for 4DX company CJ 4DPlex Americas. “We’ve been stuck at home for so long, and theaters have been closed for so long, so we wanted to see something different, and 4DX gave us that.”
4DX’s summer is largely thanks to a team of artists (whom the company calls “editors”) based in Seoul, South Korea, who adapt 35-40 Hollywood movies and about 70-80 non-Hollywood films a year. Since 2009, the studio has enhanced some 1,050 movies, from horror to the Fast and Furious to Pixar films, with 4DX effects such as smells (gardenias, roses from Beauty and the Beast, Wonka chocolate), weather, lighting, and chair programming adapted from a military flight simulator. What began as an experiment by South Korean cinema chain CJ CGV is now screening in 792 cinemas worldwide, including 63 in the U.S. and Canada, according to the company.
Editors take over once nearly all post-production is finished, usually about a month before the film’s release. The team then goes through the film scene by scene, and frame by frame for particularly intense action sequences, choreographing the chair movements and fine-tuning the effects to match the change in perspective. They have to decide which elements to emphasize at which moments and which to tone down. In the case of Twisters, do you focus on the experience of the battered truck, or the wind? In one storm scene, the 4DX experience “starts with the truck, and you feel every little impact,” says Paul Hyun Kim, senior vice president of content and production at CJ 4DPlex. When a tornado forms in the distance, the seats shake less to match the swaying of the truck, emphasizing the tornado’s intense gusts and smooth movement, drawing the audience into the larger storm. “You’re focused on the tornado, you become part of it,” Kim says.
“It’s a very creative process,” he added. It’s also collaborative: Each team has a lead editor who pitches internally to the studio’s editor-in-chief, Cindy Lee, who has edited 300 titles in 15 years. “With that experience, you really start to gain nuance and a feel and expertise for what to highlight and what to distance yourself from,” Kim said.
Two rows of rundown, dirt-smothered caravan parks line either side of the road near the motorway that winds into Bristol’s city center. Rats dart between water-filled concrete sluices and piles of rubbish-strewn vegetation. Drug users stumble out of a nearby underpass as trucks roar overhead.
It’s a dreary camp where around 30 Brazilian delivery drivers for big companies like Deliveroo and Uber Eats are forced to scrape by to make ends meet.
Celia Campos, 45, has been living in a caravan next to the lock for a year. “We left Brazil to look for a better place,” she says in rapid Portuguese. “But most of us don’t achieve our dreams. We come back in a worse state than when we left.”
Delivery drivers claim their income is not keeping up with rising prices, making it extremely difficult to make a living from delivering food.
The national minimum wage is £11.44 an hour, but food delivery companies like Deliveroo and Uber Eats do not formally employ their drivers – they are gig economy workers who are paid per delivery, meaning they can earn much less than the minimum wage.
Campos says she works long hours for both companies, working 333 hours in July and earning the equivalent of £6.27 an hour. Her pay records show she was paid around £1.20 for some Uber Eats deliveries. “We spend as much time as we can on the streets. I work from 8am until I’m tired, usually until midnight,” she says. “Delivery work is not good anymore. You have to be a slave to make enough money.”
She cannot afford Bristol’s soaring rents, which have risen faster than anywhere else in the country and have resulted in an increase in the number of people living in their cars in the West Country city.
Harsh living conditions, long hours and low wages have led to mental health issues in the camps. “I had depression for a year. It was awful,” Campos said. “I don’t want anyone to go through that. If you just work, work, work, work and you have no life… that’s what causes depression.”
Deliveroo, which recently survived a seven-year legal battle over greater rights for gig economy delivery workers, posted its first profit this month and reported a net profit of £1.3m for the first half of 2024.
Uber, which provides taxi and food delivery services, said it expects its pre-tax profits in the UK to rise to £32 million in 2022 from £5 million in 2021, with the delivery arm of its UK business generating revenue of £700 million.
The Labour government promised a new employment rights bill that would ban zero-hours contracts and provide sick pay from day one, but plans to introduce a single status for all employees – which would give gig economy workers the same rights as employed staff – have been replaced with a promise to consult on a simpler employment framework.
Some Labour MPs have raised concerns about Deliveroo’s relationship with the party after the company sponsored a series of Labour events, and its chief executive Will Thew was invited to a drinks party hosted by Keir Starmer last month. Shu appears in the video It was recorded at the event and shared on the PM’s official X account.
Another of the three women living in the caravan is preparing to work for Uber Eats. Lorena, 28, has been living in the caravan for a year and a half. She says she works 12-hour days and earns £600 a week, which works out to £7.14 an hour. “When I got here it wasn’t so bad but now I feel like a dehumanised person,” she says.
Riders say they get little support from the platforms they log into every day, so they look out for one another. They protect their mopeds, fix each other’s punctures, raise money for injured or sick workers. One person likens the road community to a labor union or “syndicate,” while another says Favela – A working-class slum in Brazil.
Some still feel vulnerable to street violence: Lorena fears that anti-immigrant protesters will burn down their house. “We feel threatened,” she says.
Her neighbour, Lucas, 25, is staying in a rundown caravan, its window seams covered with black duct tape and undersides covered with a tarpaulin, his double bed taking up most of the living space, just five metres by two metres.
The wall above the small camping stove is covered in black mold, making it dangerous to use in an enclosed space. “There is no comfort here. [in the caravan]”I just have a bed to sleep in and that’s it. Sometimes I lose motivation,” he says.
On the other side of the road, another rider prepares to head out on his moped. Freitas, 32, is a qualified pharmacist in Brazil but delivers takeaways in the UK, earning an average of £3.43 per delivery, according to figures from his Uber Eats app. “I studied for five years. I don’t want to tell my family what’s going on here,” he says.
He desperately wants to move because his caravan has no electricity, no heating and no place to cook. When it rains, the windows leak into his bed. “It’s hard to live like this. At night you have to wrap yourself up in a blanket,” he explains. “Many of the people who stay here develop mental problems because they live in a small box.”
Heather Mack, deputy leader of Bristol city council, said: “Most of us strive to treat others how we would like to be treated but shamefully this is not the case for companies like Deliveroo and Uber Eats in our city. People who work for a living should be able to live a life that provides the essentials we all need – safety, hygiene and food.”
Mack also called on the government to end “cruel and hostile environment” policies to give immigrants a path to legal work.
The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which led an unsuccessful legal campaign to secure employment rights for delivery drivers, said the Bristol camp was “emblematic of the mass misery that the gig economy is producing”. Maritza Castillo Calle, vice-chairman of IWGB, accused delivery companies of slashing driver pay to boost profits. “We should not be mistaken in thinking that Deliveroo’s first-ever profit last week is a direct result of workers facing unprecedented hardship,” she said.
Deliveroo said it was “very concerned” that delivery drivers were living in unsuitable conditions and would contact Bristol City Council. A spokesman added: “Deliveroo offers protections to its delivery drivers, including the flexible working they want, attractive income opportunities, free insurance, sickness cover, financial support for delivery drivers who become new parents and a range of training opportunities.”
Uber said Uber Eats offers thousands of delivery workers flexible ways to earn money. “When delivery workers work with us, they have a range of protections, including insurance for their journey, and we regularly work with them to see how we can improve their experience.”
Back in Bristol, Campos gets on his scooter. He’s exhausted after a long night’s shift, but he says he has to go back to work. “If you’re only getting paid £1, £2 or £3 per delivery, you have to make a lot of deliveries. The owners of these companies don’t think about us, the couriers who make their money, they only think about themselves.”
The impact of the long corona pandemic appears to vary by age
Damir Cudic/Getty Images
Symptoms of long COVID appear to be very different in young children and adolescents, and a better understanding of how the symptoms manifest could aid in diagnosis.
So far, most research on long-COVID has focused on adults, in part because of a “misconception that children can't get long-COVID,” he said. Rachel Gross At New York University.
Gross and his colleagues are currently following 751 children ages 6 to 11 and 3,109 children ages 12 to 17 whose parents say they had previously been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The researchers defined long COVID as having at least one symptom that lasted more than a month, started or worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, and was present at the time of the study.
Among young children, these symptoms primarily included sleep problems, difficulty concentrating, and abdominal problems such as pain, nausea, vomiting, and constipation.
The symptoms were uncommon among about 150 children of the same age who had not previously been infected, and were confirmed by the absence of antibodies against the virus in their blood samples.
In contrast, symptoms in the 1,300 uninfected young people typically included pain, fatigue and loss of smell or taste.
It's unclear why symptoms differ across different age groups, but Gross said it could be due to differences in hormones or immune systems, or that teenagers may simply be better able to vocalize their symptoms than younger kids. Danilo Buoncenzo A study from the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome, Italy. For example, a teenager may complain of fatigue, but a caregiver may only notice lingering symptoms in a younger child when they vomit.
Armed with this data, the researchers developed a score that ranks how likely a young person's symptoms are to have long-Covid. Currently, diagnosis depends on doctors ruling out other illnesses and recognizing that long-Covid can take many different forms. “Doctors would prefer a score or more objective criteria. Such a tool would definitely help clinicians at least recognize that a child may have long-Covid,” Buoncenso said.
TThe Crush House developer Nerial describes the game as a “first-person shooter,” which is a surprisingly accurate tagline. On the Malibu coastline, a grand vaporwave-and-neon mansion stands. Producer Jae sleeps in a bleak little basement below. Your job is to roam the house from behind the camera, filming the reality show’s hot and sexy cast. You pick a panel of 12 for each season, chase them around the glitzy grounds, and make sure they fight, kiss, or both to boost ratings and satisfy viewers. You’re free to move around, but you’re warned never to talk to the cast. As the tagline suggests, the game certainly has a first-person shooter vibe, but instead of a gun, you’re brandishing a camera. Think sexy Pokémon Snap.
Every night a different demographic tunes in, and all of them have very specific needs. Some want to see drama, some want to see art in the house, some want to see food being prepared, and of course some want to see detailed, zoomed-in looks at feet, lots of feet, or other body parts. Your job is to satisfy them all, or risk your show being canceled.
What a surprise…Crash House. Photography: Devolver Digital
This makes the play experience a fun and surprising cinematography simulator. Audience requests scroll across the screen, telling you where the cast sleeps, asking where you shower, asking if anyone will kiss you even once. They’re weirdos, but if you don’t listen to them, you’re fired. The script is sharp, funny, and sometimes a little shocking. Definitely one of the funniest games I’ve played this year. Conversations between cast members are algorithmically executed. Each of the 12 brings something slightly different to the table, and different possibilities for getting along or clashing with the other housemates. This means every combination is a surprise. If one set doesn’t work out, you can try a different combination in the next season. The housemates don’t care. You come back fresh, as if your memory has been wiped, or worse.
At night, when the housemates have retired to bed, the player re-enters the house and adds props to make it more interesting. These props (some of which match the interests of the housemates) cost money earned by running surreal advertisements during the day. Another challenge is finding a balance between the advertisements and the viewers who might enjoy them. Of course, more engaged viewers bring in more money, which might allow you to buy a sauna, a lighthouse, a saxophone, etc. – all things that make the house more interesting.
But as you set up your props after dark, you might bump into an escaped housemate who asks you for a favor: more airtime, a specific angle, a personal request to be filmed flirting with two people to really piss your mom off. It’s up to you to decide if you want to grant it or not. Going this route will reveal the stories behind the poolside fun and deep chats by the bonfire. Of course, there’s more going on than meets the eye. What fun it will be to discover the darkness that lingers behind the neon lights.
If The Crush House was simply a smart, funny photography and cinematography game, I would have been pleased and pleased. But the game offers players much more than that. Beneath the snappy text and playful design, it also has a quirky heart. It’s worth noting that the review build still had its moments of glitches, but the strength of the idea and execution far outweighs any technical issues. This in itself is remarkable. The Crush House is so much fun that I didn’t want to turn it off, even when some parts were a little broken. It’s a great way to spend the last cool evenings of summer, and the season ahead.
The Perseid meteor shower, one of the most stunning meteor showers in 2024, is currently in full swing and offering a breathtaking display of fast, bright shooting stars streaking across the night sky.
As we move closer to the middle of August, the excitement is set to increase. During the peak of the shower, if conditions are favorable, you could witness up to 100 meteors per hour, some of which might even turn into fiery fireballs.
Unlike other meteor showers this year, the moonlight is not expected to overshadow this magnificent event. Although the waxing crescent moon will be visible as we near the peak, it will have set below the horizon by the time meteor activity intensifies.
For a comprehensive list of meteor showers throughout the year, check out our meteor shower calendar. If you’re interested in astrophotography but unsure where to begin, expert Pete Lawrence has put together a beginner’s guide on capturing amazing photos of the moon.
When is the Perseid meteor shower in 2024?
The Perseid meteor shower will commence on July 17, 2024, and extend until around August 24. The optimal viewing time for the meteors is from midnight until dawn.
The peak of the meteor shower is expected on August 12, with increased meteor activity around this period. Since the peak occurs during the daytime, the best times to observe the Perseids are before and after the peak, specifically on the nights of August 11/12 and August 12/13.
You’ll have the best visibility between midnight and just before sunrise (around 5:30 am in the UK, 6 am in New York, and Los Angeles).
How many meteors can you see?
The Perseids are known for being one of the most active meteor showers of the year, but it doesn’t mean there will be a constant stream of meteors to observe. Most images capturing numerous meteors are the result of long exposure shots that can capture dozens, or even hundreds, of meteors in a single frame.
Under ideal conditions and dark skies, you could potentially see up to 100 meteors per hour. However, in reality, you’re likely to witness far fewer, possibly only a few dozen per hour. Nonetheless, the Perseid meteor shower remains a spectacular event.
The Perseid meteor shower is about to reach its peak. – Photo credit: Getty Images
Where to look in the sky
The most favorable direction to observe the Perseid meteor shower is directly overhead. Aim to have as much of the sky in your field of view as possible, as the meteors will traverse the entire sky and won’t be confined to a specific location.
It can be useful to know the radiant point, as it helps differentiate the Perseids from sporadic meteors. The radiant point of a meteor shower appears to be the origin of the meteors.
In the case of the Perseid meteor shower, the radiant point is within the constellation Perseus, hence the name “Perseid meteor shower.”
If you look towards the northeast early in the morning, you’ll spot the constellation Perseus positioned directly above the bright Jupiter. Taurus is situated to the right of Jupiter, and you might even catch a glimpse of Mars nearby.
Since the sun rises in the east, facing in that direction and slightly turning left will have you looking towards the northeast. However, don’t worry if you’re unsure of the direction – meteors can appear anywhere overhead.
Perseus lies between the prominent “W” of Cassiopeia and the Pleiades star cluster. If you’re having difficulty locating the radiant point, an astronomy app can assist you (check out our recommended astronomy apps).
* The closest conjunction of Mars and Jupiter is set to occur on August 14, 2024. This will be the closest conjunction of the two planets until 2033, potentially offering an extraordinary sight alongside the Perseid meteor shower.
What causes the Perseid meteor shower?
Meteor showers manifest when a parent object (typically a comet or asteroid) leaves behind a trail of debris in its path around the Sun. As Earth intersects with this debris stream, the particles interact with the atmosphere, creating luminous streaks known as shooting stars.
Regular meteor showers like the Perseids follow a predictable pattern, occurring at the same time each year and peaking when Earth’s orbit intersects with the densest part of the shower.
According to astronomer David Schneider, “As Earth passes through the debris stream, the density of particles increases to a maximum and then decreases again. This usually takes a few weeks, but can also take a few days. The meteor shower peaks during the period of maximum density.” Presenter Pete Lawrence further elaborates.
In the case of the Perseids, Comet Swift-Tuttle serves as the parent body, which is a sizable comet composed of dust, ice, and rock. With a nucleus diameter of approximately 26 kilometers (about 16 miles) and a 133-year orbit around the Sun, Comet Swift-Tuttle is classified as a short-period comet denoted by the “P” in its official designation, 109P/Swift-Tuttle.
The comet’s last visible appearance was in 1992, with its next anticipated return in 2125 or 2126. While it was too dim to be observed with the naked eye in 1992, a clearer view is expected a century from now.
Will the moon affect visibility?
This year, moonlight may pose a challenge as a half moon will be visible on the evenings of August 11 and 12 before and after the peak. The moon’s luminosity will gradually increase as it approaches full moon status on August 19.
If observing at night, you may have to contend with moonlight obstruction, with the Moon being 51% bright on August 12 and 61% bright on August 13.
However, as the Perseid meteor shower activity intensifies after midnight on both nights, observing in the early morning should not be hindered by the moon’s light.
The optimum viewing time for the Perseid meteor shower is before sunrise between midnight and 5:30 am in the UK and 6 am in the US. With the moon below the horizon, there will be a higher probability of witnessing more meteors.
Tips for Maximizing Your Meteor Watching Experience
You don’t need a telescope or binoculars to enjoy the Perseid meteor shower; it’s best observed with the naked eye to capture a wider expanse of the sky than through optical devices.
“For optimal visibility, watch in a dark, moonless sky and allow at least 20 minutes in complete darkness to acclimatize to your surroundings,” suggests Lawrence. “A reclining chair provides an ideal vantage point for meteor observation.”
“Spend at least 30 minutes, if not longer, watching the sky. The rest is up to chance, but witnessing a bright summer meteor streaking across the sky will leave a lasting impression,” he adds.
Here are some tips to help you maximize your meteor viewing experience.
Avoid bright lights. Choose viewing locations away from bright artificial lights and ensure that streetlights are not directly in your line of vision.
Allow your eyes to adapt. Spend about 20 minutes outside until your eyes adjust to the darkness.
Use a red light filter when looking at your phone. This can be a physical red filter or an app that maintains your night vision until your eyes acclimate.
Choose the right time: Early morning is the prime time to witness the Perseid meteor shower at its peak activity and with the Moon below the horizon.
Block out the moon. If unable to observe in the early morning, still look out for meteors in the evening. During the peak on August 11/12 and 12/13, the Moon will be about 50-60% illuminated, so position yourself where the Moon is obscured by buildings or trees for better viewing.
Keep a wide field of vision. Maximize your peripheral vision to see as much of the sky as possible.
Beware of fireballs. The larger particles from the comet fragments responsible for the Perseid meteor shower can produce bright, long-lasting bursts of light, known as fireballs.
Identifying Perseid Meteors
While other meteors might be visible during this event, they are considered sporadic meteors.
Referred to as “sporadic meteor showers,” these meteors can appear from any direction in the sky and are not linked to a specific meteor shower like the Perseids (albeit they may originate from undiscovered meteor showers).
Lawrence differentiates between sporadic and shower meteors, stating: “Sporadic meteors occur when a small rock, typically the size of a grain of sand, enters Earth’s atmosphere, vaporizes, and creates a luminous streak known as a meteor trail. These occur randomly and can appear at any time, from any direction.”
Distinguishing between a sporadic meteor and a Perseid meteor shower can be tricky, but it’s based on their apparent direction in the sky. Meteor showers typically emanate from the radiant point associated with the shower, while sporadic meteors can streak across the sky from any direction at any given time.
According to Lawrence, “Meteor showers, in contrast [to sporadics], occur when a stream of sand-sized particles in orbit around the Sun intersects Earth’s atmosphere. Associated with comets and possibly asteroids, these particles are released over time and dispersed into orbit.”
“As they follow parallel orbits around the Sun and enter the atmosphere, they appear to originate from the same region of the sky, known as the shower’s radiant point.”
Knowing the radiant point of a specific meteor shower (such as the constellation Perseus for the Perseid meteor shower) enables you to discern whether the meteor you’re witnessing belongs to that meteor shower or if it’s a sporadic meteor.
About our experts
Pete Lawrence: With extensive experience as an astronomer, astrophotographer, and BBC night sky presenter, Pete Lawrence’s expertise shines on the show aired on BBC Four and available on demand through BBC iPlayer.
yesWhile the name might lead you to think of a game about herding sheep, it’s actually a lot stranger than that. teeth They’re sheep, but they’re fluffy flying sheep that float around after you as you ride on the back of a giant, colorful bird. Every now and then, they’re sheared and knitted into new jumpers or hats with pom-poms so the sheep look like naked, purple, aerial sausages with eyes. But the majority of your flock is actually made up of flying fish. Or are they fish? Some are curvy like eels, some moo like chickens, and some look like winged whales. Like we said, it’s pretty weird.
Your job in Flock is to find them in the wild, identify them from their short but varied and obvious written clues (“drooping proboscis,” “vertical stripes,” “often mistaken for a noisy radish”), and fill a field guide full of these big-eyed, flying-fish-like creatures. They all resemble sea creatures through a slightly surreal pop art filter, but are so well drawn that you can now tell the difference between a Cosmet and a Beul, a Thrips and a Rustic. Some camouflage among weeds and leaves, others flee when you approach, and others chirp at you while sunning themselves on rocks. You can find a piper to teach the birds to sing, and then collect them like a piper into a cloud of creatures that will follow you.
I’m still not very good at charming creatures. I can’t get the timing right and often end up frightening the birds with my off-key shrieks instead of leading them into the flock. But I morning It’s good at finding them. The flying is done for you. Birds fly around trees and mossy rocks automatically, so you’re free to observe your surroundings and listen for the chirps and twitters that announce the presence of undiscovered birds and fish. I navigated by sound as often as by sight. The nature-inspired soundscapes are one of Flock’s strongest features, along with the eye-catching art and cute, witty writing.
I enjoyed my few days with Flock, though I wish it were longer. There were some really interesting environmental puzzles that made me want to find other creatures hiding out on the plateau. Most creatures were easy to find, but a few required some fun deduction from a single sentence in the field guide. Once or twice, a creature in my entourage would tell me the location of another creature or help me find something, but most creatures just follow the player around and don’t do anything. I couldn’t help but imagine a more ambitious version of this game, one where the main creatures give you interesting abilities once you’ve filled out the field guide, and you can do things with your friends in races and challenges. But in under five hours, I’d done everything there was to do.
And yet I keep firing up Steam Deck just to fly around the swamps and moss forests for a few minutes – it’s so relaxing, so fun to look at, and so endearingly quirky that it stands out from the crowd.
Forty minutes into my job at Integrity Bank, anxiety hits me. This is how a normal day starts. This time, it's for a wedding and final exams, but it's neither a wedding nor an exam. From my window seat, I can see the city, but I can't hear any sounds. This high up in Rosewater, everything is orderly. Blocks, roads, streets, traffic slowly winding around the dome. From here, I can see the cathedral. The window is to my left, and I sit with four other contractors at the end of an oval table. We're on the top floor, 15th floor. A three-foot-by-three-foot skylight opens above us, and all that separates us from the morning sky is a security grid. The blue sky is dotted with white clouds. There's no scorching sun yet, but that will come later. Despite the skylight being open, the air conditioning in the room is controlled. It's a waste of energy, and Integrity Bank is fined every week. They're happy to cover the cost.
Bora, to my right, is yawning. She is pregnant and has been very tired lately. She also eats a lot, which I think is natural. I have known her for two years, and she has been pregnant the entire two years. I don't fully understand pregnancy. I am an only child and never grew up around pets or farm animals. My education was nomadic and I never had a strong interest in biology, except for microbiology, which I had to pick up later.
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I try to relax and focus on my bank customers, and the wedding anxiety kicks in again.
A holographic teleprompter rises from the center of the table. Right now it's made of random swirls of light, but within minutes it will project text. Next to ours is a room where the night shift is drawing to a close.
“I hear you read Dumas last night,” Bora says.
She's just having a conversation, it doesn't matter what the other shift people are reading, I just smile and say nothing.
The wedding is coming up in three months. The bride has gained some weight and is wondering if she should change her dress or get liposuction. Bora looks better during pregnancy.
“You've got 60 seconds,” a voice said over the loudspeaker.
I take a sip of water from the tumbler on the table. The other contractors are new. They're not dressed as formally as Bora and I are. They're wearing tank tops and T-shirts, with metal jewelry in their hair. They have implants in their phones.
I hate implants of any kind. I have one too. It's a standard locator with no extra features. It's really boring, but my employer requires it.
Exam anxiety fades away before you can identify and investigate its cause, and that's fine by me.
The metal pieces in the young men's hair are from plane crashes — planes have been shot down on every route in Nigeria since the early 2000s, in Lagos, Abuja, Jos, Kano and everywhere in between — and they wear pieces of the planes as talismans.
Bora noticed me staring, winked, and then she opened her snack. It was a packet of cold moin-moin, old-fashioned orange-colored tofu wrapped in a leaf. I looked away.
“Go,” the bullhorn says.
Plato's Republic Ghostly holographic shapes scroll slowly and steadily on the cylindrical display. I, like the others, begin to read, silently and then out loud. We enter the xenosphere, we configure the bank's firewall. I feel the usual momentary dizziness. Text swirls and becomes transparent.
With around 500 customers transacting financially at the facility every day and staff transacting all over the world every night, it’s a 24-hour job. Rough sensitives probe and push, and criminals try to pluck personal information out of the air. Dates of birth, pin numbers, mother’s maiden names, past transactions — it all lies dormant in each customer’s forebrain, in their working memory, waiting to be plucked out by hungry, untrained, predatory sensitives.
Contractors like me, Bora Martinez, and Metalfan are trained to fight these off. And we do. We read the classics and flood the alien sphere with irrelevant words and ideas. It’s a firewall of knowledge that reaches into the subconscious of our clients. A professor once did a study on this. He found a correlation between the material used for the firewall and the client’s activity for the rest of the year. Even people who have never read Shakespeare will suddenly find a piece of Shakespeare. King Lear It pops into my head for no apparent reason.
While it’s possible to track the intrusion, Integrity isn’t interested. Crimes committed on alien space are difficult and expensive to prosecute. If no lives are lost, the courts aren’t interested.
The queues at the cash machines, the crowds of people, the worries, desires, passions… I was tired of filtering other people’s lives through my own mind.
Yesterday I went to Piraeus with Glaucon, son of Ariston, to make a prayer to the goddess, and to see how they celebrated a festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants, but the Thracian procession was just as beautiful, if not more so. Having finished our prayers and admired the spectacle, we set out in the direction of the city.
When you enter the alien sphere, there is a projected self-image. Untrained wild sensitives project their true selves, but professionals like me are trained to create a controlled, selected self-image. Mine is a Gryphon.
The first attack today was from a middle-aged man who lives in a townhouse in Yola. He appeared to be thin and with very dark skin.
When I warned him, he backed away. A teenager quickly took his place, which made me wonder if they were in the same physical location as part of a hacker farm. Crime syndicates sometimes round up sensitive people into “Mumbai Combos,” a call-center model run by serial criminals.
I've seen it a lot before. There aren’t as many of those attacks now as there were when I started. I think they’re frustrated by how efficient we are at our work. Either way, I'm fed up.
Copyright Tade Thompson
This is the excerpt below Rose waterpublished by Orbit Books, is the latest selection from the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up here to read along with our members.
Similar to childbirth, the process of dying involves stages and noticeable progressions. The speed at which this process occurs varies from person to person, just like in childbirth. In some cases, medical support may be necessary to ensure that dying, or childbirth, is as safe and comfortable as possible.
As death nears, most individuals lose interest in eating and drinking. This is a normal occurrence, and sometimes only a small amount of food may be welcomed when regular meals become overwhelming.
Dying individuals often experience extreme fatigue due to a lack of energy. While sleep usually helps to replenish energy and aid in recovery, in the final stages of life, the impact of sleep diminishes as the body weakens towards death.
Individuals approaching death spend less time awake and more time in a state of apparent unconsciousness. When they do wake up, many report feeling as though they had peacefully slept without any sense of being unconscious.
If the dying person relies on regular medications to manage symptoms, it is important to transition to medications that can be administered without the person needing to be awake. Skin patches, syringe pumps, or suppositories can be considered. It’s crucial to note that loss of consciousness is typically a result of the dying process itself rather than the medication.
What happens in the final moments?
As death progresses, heart rate decreases, blood pressure drops, skin temperature decreases, and fingernails darken. Internal organs also slow down as blood pressure declines. Restlessness, confusion, and periods of deepening consciousness may occur during this time.
While there are no established methods for studying the experiences of dying individuals, recent studies suggest that the unconscious brain may respond to noise as death approaches. Breathing patterns in an unconscious person are governed by the brain stem’s respiratory center, leading to heavy breathing and occasional saliva flow.
Breathing patterns may shift from deep to shallow and fast to slow until breathing eventually slows, becomes shallow, pauses, and ceases altogether. Following a few minutes without oxygen, the heart stops beating.
Recognizing common patterns of dying and understanding its stages can help companions comprehend what is happening, alleviate fears of unlikely complications, and empower them to seek medical assistance if necessary to manage symptoms and ensure a peaceful passing. Additional information can be found in BBC Short Films on Death.
A recent study suggests that women may have improved cognitive performance during their menstrual cycle. The research conducted by University College London (UCL) and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health (ISEH) sheds light on this phenomenon.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuropsychology, this study is the first to analyze sports-related cognition throughout the menstrual cycle phases.
241 participants took cognitive tests simulating mental processes common in team sports, such as recognizing emotions, attention, reaction time, and spatial awareness.
Participants also tracked their menstrual cycle using an app to identify their phase during testing. Surprisingly, participants performed better in reaction time and made fewer errors during menstruation, contrary to their expectations.
For example, their timing accuracy in a ball collision task was 10 milliseconds better during menstruation. Similarly, their error rates were 25% lower in an inhibition task involving smiles and winks.
Lead researcher Dr. Flaminia Ronca from UCL Department of Surgery and ISEH noted the unexpected performance enhancement during menstruation.
During the luteal phase, reaction times slightly decreased, but error rates remained stable. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding how menstrual cycle phases impact cognitive abilities in sports performance.
Co-author Dr. Megan Lawley highlights the need for more research in this area to improve performance discussions between coaches and athletes.
About the Experts
Flaminia Ronca, an Associate Professor at UCL, focuses on the body-brain interaction through movement in her research. She is also a leader at UCL’s Movement Neuroscience Research Group (ENRG).
Megan Lawley, a Senior Sports Scientist, specializes in female athlete health and performance factors. Her previous research at UK Sport and Bangor University delved into the complexities of athletes’ success in high-performance environments.
By Monday morning, firefighters had built containment lines around three-quarters of the fire.
“The humidity is starting to drop,” Kurth said. “We’re seeing an increase in grass fires.”
He noted that the heat wave that began this week is not unusual for Central California in August, but because it started so quickly, it could become more severe because “people aren’t used to the heat.”
“If a heatwave occurs early in the season, the impact on people could be greater,” he said.
He said high early-season surf could also increase the risk of drowning in the Western mountains, where people often flock to rivers and streams fed by melting snow.
“The water is pretty cold and the currents are strong,” Kurth said. “Please be careful and wear your life jackets.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted last month that 2024 will be one of the five warmest years on record and could easily be the hottest year on record.
Last year, a prolonged heatwave hit much of the South and Southwest, causing a sharp rise in deaths.
Adrian Mata stands in a little shade while waiting for a bus in Phoenix on July 15. Brandon Bell/Getty Images file
More than 2,300 people who died in the United States last summer mentioned heat on their death certificates, the highest number in 45 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, but its impact can be obscured in death certificate data because heat often aggravates underlying conditions like heart, respiratory and kidney disease. Researchers at Texas A&M University estimated that heat was responsible for 11,000 deaths last year that would not have occurred otherwise, according to the Associated Press.
A weather pattern, such as a ridge of high pressure that is expected to develop this week, is responsible for many of these deaths.
Temperatures in the Phoenix area topped 110 degrees Fahrenheit every day except one last July, according to data from the National Weather Service. Scientists later concluded that would be “virtually impossible” without the effects of climate change. At least 645 people died from heatstroke in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and many of its suburbs, last year, a 52% increase from the previous year.
Tesla experienced its first drop in vehicle deliveries in almost four years, failing to meet Wall Street’s expectations. This indicates that the impact of price reductions is diminishing as car manufacturers face tougher competition and subdued demand.
Since the start of the year, Tesla’s shares have plummeted by nearly 30% and were down 5.7% in early trading on Tuesday.
The world’s most valuable automaker delivered approximately 386,810 vehicles in the first quarter of the year, a 20.2% decrease from the previous quarter, while producing 433,371 vehicles. Wall Street analysts, surveyed by Visible Alpha, had anticipated Tesla to deliver 454,200 vehicles on average.
Compared to the previous year, deliveries from electric vehicle manufacturers dropped by 8.5%. The last time Tesla encountered a decline in sales was in the second quarter of 2020, when the pandemic caused production halts.
The company attributed the decrease in production to preparations for scaling up production of the new Model 3 at its Fremont, Calif., plant, and disruptions at its Berlin plant due to transportation diversions amid the Red Sea conflict and an arson fire. This led to a temporary halt in early March. A left-wing group claimed responsibility for setting fire to a pylon at a German factory that churns out 500,000 cars annually.
In China, Tesla faces tough competition from local companies like BYD, which overtook the American company as the largest EV maker in the last quarter, and newcomer Xiaomi.
Despite this competition, Elon Musk’s company managed to outsell BYD in the quarter, delivering 369,783 Model 3s and Model Ys, along with around 17,000 other models including the Model S sedan, Cybertruck, and Model X premium SUV.
In January, Tesla also cautioned that sales growth would be “significantly slower” this year as it shifts its focus towards producing next-generation electric vehicles.
I was going to start this article differently. But that was before my 10-year-old daughter intervened. In fact, I had already started writing when she got up and tried to trick me. She offered to bet me her ten pounds that I could write red with a regular pencil. Unfortunately for this budding entrepreneur, I turned down the bet. She was so confident that she suspected he was up to something. But I let her reveal the trick. She took her lead pencil in her hand and she wrote, “In red color.” Then she laughed like a hyena and went out to fool her mother.
Our bright little sparks have opinions on everything from video games to sports to books. She’s learning basic algebra and coding, but her Taylor Swift expertise far exceeds mine. But even with all this knowledge, she still has many years to go before she reaches adulthood. If she lives out her average lifespan, she will spend a quarter of her year as a minor.
It is truly strange that humans have long childhoods. No other primate takes this long to reach adulthood. During the evolution of our species, childhood has become significantly longer, along with more obvious physical changes. Traditionally, paleoanthropologists have paid little attention to children, but that is now changing. A series of interesting discoveries over the past few years are building a complete picture of human childhood. When did this seemingly unproductive life stage expand, why was it so long, and what did prehistoric children do? This discovery does more than just shed light on a dark corner…
Numerous countries in western and central Africa are currently experiencing a lack of internet service due to reported outages in several submarine cables.
The cause of the cable outage on Thursday remains unknown.
Seacom, an African submarine cable operator, has confirmed the downtime on their West African cable system, leading to rerouting of affected customers who used their cables, which are part of the Google Equiano cable.
According to NetBlocks, disruptions due to cable damage have been a recurring issue in Africa, but the current situation is considered one of the most severe instances.
Data transmissions have shown significant disruptions at the international shipping points of the submarine network, impacting at least a dozen countries, with a major threat to critical services in countries like Ivory Coast.
Africa, known for a high proportion of internet traffic on mobile devices, relies heavily on internet connectivity for various business operations.
Several countries, including Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso, were heavily affected by the outage, as reported by NetBlocks.
Cloudflare also highlighted ongoing internet disruptions in countries like Gambia, Guinea, Namibia, Lesotho, and others, pointing out a disruptive pattern from north to south in Africa.
South African carrier Vodacom attributed connectivity issues to an undersea cable failure affecting network providers in South Africa.
Mehta emphasized that the impact of such cable failures could escalate as networks try to prevent damage, resulting in reduced capacity for other countries.
“While the initial disruption may be physical, further technical issues could arise,” she added.
“I was faced with an overflowing immensity.” An underwater river.
alamy stock photo
From the age of 10, I was allowed to swim alone in the Nieuwe Maas River. The cold water shocked me, calmed me down and stole my heart. I went into the water, lay on my back, closed my eyes, and floated away. Then I staggered back along the stony shore, my legs turning blue and numb from the cold. I wrapped a towel around her and put her head in my lap, shivering. I let the water drain from my ears and the sound of the car returned. It took me a long time to convince myself to stand up again because I didn’t want to go home. As I put my weight down, the stone pressed into the thin soles of my feet, and every time I left the beach I told myself that if I just put the same stone in my pocket and went out into the water, I would never have to go again. I’m going home again.
It was an effective illusion. I was able to continue because I knew I didn’t have to. Every time I swam a little, and every time I climbed ashore, the stones dug deeper into my feet. One afternoon in early fall, I felt particularly hopeless. I couldn’t see any realistic way to escape from Geat’s situation, and I lived in constant fear of him. Storm clouds were approaching and the beach was deserted. I felt a dangerous tremor, felt free to ignore my own safety, and grimaced as I continued into the water. The water burned me and an amazing energy coursed through my body. It was very cold. When I reached the point where my shoulders were submerged in the water, my chest began to spasm and I swallowed a mouthful of bitter water. Then, as if from far away, very faintly, I felt it trying to give way.
I opened my eyes and dove into the water, digging and kicking out. Although it was only a few meters deep, it felt like I was digging another tunnel, entering a crack and swimming through a new realm, my own secret chamber. The water was muddy with the movement of my limbs, but when I stopped I suddenly saw everything clearly. The large rocks on the riverbed were dotted with insects, sponges, limpets, and lichens. Beyond that, green and purple river grass floats. It didn’t make the slightest sound. No water pressure thuds in your ears, no competing voices in your head. I hung horizontally, staring at the scene floating below the water’s surface, there was no further movement clouding my vision, but suddenly, as if out of nowhere, everything around me came to life fully alive. As if he realized that it was happening.
There was no gap between my body and the living world. I was pressed against the teeming vastness, where every cubic millimeter of water was dense with living things. These creatures were so small that I couldn’t see them, but somehow I felt their presence, their camaraderie around me.I wasn’t looking out of the water. towards Life, I looked straight ahead. into the The vast patchwork of water life that supports my body flows into my nostrils, ears, tiny cracks and crevices in my skin, swirls through my hair, and enters the same eyes that observed it. In what felt like minutes but should have been just seconds, I found myself floating in a web of entirely different worlds, important and complex places, and an almost infinite number of independent life forms. , I saw it scoop up countless creatures with every slight change. And the undulation of the body.
extracted from Ascension in progress Written by Martin McInnes, published by Atlantic Books. Ascension in progress This is the latest recommended book from the New Scientist Book Club.Register here and read along
Early Thursday morning, cell phone outages affected cities across the United States, causing thousands of AT&T customers to experience service interruptions. These interruptions prevented them from sending text messages, accessing the Internet, making phone calls, and even calling 911.
Around 7 a.m. ET, more than 50,000 incidents were reported, and that number exceeded 70,000 by 9 a.m. ET. However, by 11 a.m. ET, reports of service failures had decreased to 60,000.
AT&T spokesperson Jim Greer stated, “Some customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service. He recommends using Wi-Fi calling until service is restored. I recommend it.”
AT&T, the largest U.S. mobile phone service provider with 240 million subscribers, did not offer a possible explanation for the outage. The company also did not provide a timeline for when full service would be restored. Despite intermittent outages in recent days, Thursday’s outage was much larger.
The most affected cities, according to the website, included San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago.
Users of other carriers such as Verizon, T-Mobile, Cricket, and UScellular also reported outages, but those were much smaller compared to AT&T. Verizon and T-Mobile confirmed that the outage did not affect their own customers, except when trying to contact customers of other carriers.
T-Mobile stated, “No outages occurred,” while Verizon’s statement said, “Verizon’s network is operating normally.”
The San Francisco Fire Department and the City of Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications were actively addressing the issues affecting AT&T Wireless customers.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens confirmed that calls with the city’s emergency services continued to work. However, Massachusetts State Police advised against using phone services and dialing 911 due to a flooding of concerned callers testing the service.
The police department stated, “Many 911 centers across the state are inundated with calls from people trying to see if 911 works from their cell phone. Do not do this. Call another number via your cell phone service. If you can make a non-emergency call, 911 service will also work.”
The early crescent phase of the moon following the new moon is well located in the early spring evening sky. From February to March, the spring crescent moon looks very beautiful in the evening glow.
If you have binoculars or a small telescope, there are some things to keep in mind. Known as the clair-obscure effect, or trick of the light, this effect causes recognizable shapes to appear within a jumbled area of moonlight and shadow. Two popular examples are known as Moons X and V. These occur simultaneously at different locations along the moon’s terminator (the line that separates night and day).
We spot them in the daytime sky around 12:40 a.m. on February 17th and again at 2:20 p.m. on March 17th. The effect lasts only a few hours.
Another striking Clair Obscure effect is the Jeweled Handle. This occurs a few days after the waxing moon, when the crooked peaks of the Montes Jura (Jura Mountains) are illuminated at dawn.
These Clare Obscure effects, or tricks of light, will be visible over the next month. Go outside on a sunny day and watch them. – Image credit: Pete Lawrence
Its unique arc appears to extend into the lunar night. This can be seen with just a keen eye, but is best seen with optical aids. The jeweled handle is best observed during daylight hours on February 19 at 3:50 p.m.
If the evening of March 13 is clear, the waxing moon will appear near bright Jupiter. If the skies are clear and you can see it with just your eyes, it’s a spectacular sight.
Speaking of eyes, if you have a small telescope, look at the southern part of the moon in a few days, on March 18th. Just before 8 p.m., the oval exterior of Clavius, the large crater, is mostly dark and shrouded in shadow.
Two exceptions are the raised crater rims that are illuminated within them. These form another perspective effect known as the Eye of Clavius.
In the strange world of the paranormal, one unique phenomenon that comes up again and again is the near-death experience (NDE). The white light at the end of the tunnel, the memories of someone’s life flashing before your eyes, and even the vision of heaven.
All these clichés are thoroughly played out in movies and TV shows for a reason. Research shows that people do experience these intense visions.
A near-death experience can be an amazing boost to a better life, making people happier, more fulfilled, and less afraid of death. It is not just natural to feel quite distraught when you are close to death and experience such a mirage. In fact, the opposite may also be true.
So what exactly are the effects of a near-death experience? What’s happening in the brain during these events? And… well, is it possible to create one without nearly dying?
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What is a near-death experience actually like?
Although not all near-death experiences result in some form of vision or ultimately a unique experience, they are very common and often apply to positive or negative experiences.
“When people started studying near-death experiences, the focus was almost entirely on the more positive, more typical experiences. But as time went on, people became more aware of the negative as well. Now,” Professor Chris French said a psychologist who believes in the paranormal. BBC Science Focus in instant genius Podcast.
“In terms of what’s going on, it’s a very rich hallucinatory experience, but it feels incredibly real. It feels as real as anything you’ve ever experienced.”
For those who have had positive experiences, it’s not as much of a problem, but when people have negative experiences, they often have problems such as: increased fear of death, and may even experience lifelong trauma. What’s even more frightening is that people think: Approximately 1 in 5 near-death experiences You fall into this negative camp.
Chris categorizes these negative experiences into three categories.
The first is the most important consideration. positive experience. An awe-inspiring moment, perhaps seeing their memories come flooding back to them, but they may not see it in a positive way.
The second category he describes as Hieronymus Bosch’s hellscape. In other words, this is a complete nightmarish view of life and death, where humans are tortured and a painful afterlife awaits them.
Finally, something even more sinister, there is nothing. Many reports paint a picture of an empty void, where you spend the rest of eternity drifting aimlessly.
So far, it doesn’t sound very good, but what about positive experiences? These still sound pretty scary, but the vast majority of people have experienced intense experiences that help them realize the joy in life. We are reporting positive experiences in line with our experience.
Common examples include feeling yourself floating out of your body, seeing your life flashing before your eyes, and of course seeing the light forming at the end of the tunnel you have to walk through. Here are the people who saw it.
When people have a more positive experience, they tend to report sensations at the same time. You feel lighter, freer and completely calm. For some people, these visions (which can be quite frightening) can be made more comfortable by the joy they feel.
These experiences are associated with a higher appreciation for life and positive feelings towards the whole experience, despite coming close to death.
The science behind the experience
So what exactly causes near-death experiences? Are they visions from God? Can we actually get a glimpse of the afterlife? Of course, science cannot say for sure. But researchers like French have an interesting theory.
“Most neuropsychologists think this is a vision of a dying brain. Strange things usually happen in the brain in situations like this, and this is how we experience it,” French said. Told.
“It’s incredibly real, and there’s no definitive answer to explain it, but this is definitely the most logical answer we have.”
In the brain, this occurs primarily in the right temporoparietal cortex, the part of the brain that takes in information from the visual, auditory, and somatosensory (sensory) systems.
“It’s important to note that someone doesn’t actually have to be close to death to experience this, they just need to believe it. Although there are still many questions remaining regarding near-death experiences. , a neuropsychological approach is the best we have.”
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A more fulfilling life after facing death
You’re close to death, you’ve had some kind of vision of the afterlife, and now you’re back to normal life. How do people move forward when they find themselves in a situation like this?
For most people, the experience is transformative. An overwhelming percentage of people who have had a near-death experience report a desire to change their lives after approaching death.
Not surprisingly, many people who have had a near-death experience believe that they have seen the afterlife or experienced another dimension, and have since focused on reincarnation, the afterlife, and projections of the mind. It becomes much more spiritual.
In a study of cardiac arrest survivors People who have had a near-death experience are statistically less afraid of death, have more belief in life after death, are more interested in the meaning of life, are more accepting of others, and are more likely to be loving and empathetic. has become higher.
For some people, this takes effect immediately after they regain consciousness. For some people, this can take years to build up.
How to induce a near-death experience without nearly dying
This all sounds great, but dying is a very difficult way to bring more joy into your life. Is there an easier way to experience a near-death experience? Technically yes. There are reports of people getting into them without the dying part.
In some cases, people have been able to meditate on near-death experience visions and experiences.in Study of advanced Buddhist meditatorsthey were able to induce that experience without causing fear of death.
However, these were monks with over 20 years of experience in the world of meditation, who frequently meditated for hours on end. Buddhist monks have also had near-death experiences and even claim to be able to understand the emotions that accompany a near-death experience.
Unfortunately, outside of meditation, that experience is difficult to force. In most cases, the fear of dying is so strong that the experience is triggered. If you don’t meditate throughout your life, you’ll either really die or think you’re going to die…Maybe meditation is the best way to go after all.
The final update on Rick’s journey to overcome cell phone addiction allows him to make a breakthrough. And a big one.
“Do you want to be my girlfriend?” I ask Almond one day.
She’s flipping through a plastic-like bag of Thai basil from a record store. “I already am. That’s what it is,” she said patiently, taking my hand. Oh yes, I say. got it. nice.
Two months after my last diary entry, something strange happened. I dismissed this experiment as a waste of time, but it seems to be yielding skewed results. Currently, I use my smartphone for 90 minutes a day. Five of those are spent on Instagram. I no longer feel addictive. Part of the reason my online life has decreased is because I no longer have to scour the savanna to find a mate. However, that alone does not determine everything.
All the experts I spoke to gave reassuringly similar advice. Oddly enough, some of my most impactful conversations about technology were with Buddhists in cafes without Wi-Fi. Sthiramanas is a meditation teacher at the London Buddhist Center and runs his Upgrade Your Mind, his six-week course on mindful screen use.
“Looking outward for satisfaction is a fundamental human weakness,” he says. Sthiramanas doesn’t just mean infinite scrolling. Heading to a quiet retreat or digital detox his cabin in the woods is also an escape from everyday life. What they learn often doesn’t stick with them by the time they get home. “If you want your life to be happier and more creative, you have to experience life as it is and change things from there.
“What is desire? Under Want to check your phone? ” he continued. “If you’re addicted to dating apps, is it because you want to feel attractive? If you’re a news addict, are you addicted to feeling in control? Or is it because you want to feel like you’re in control? Are you in touch? Are you texting your friends all the time just because you want to be loved?”
ah. When did these Buddhists choose violence?
Ever since that chat, I think of friendship as mostly an offline activity. What we do with our bodies. My friends are great at arranging day trips to the seaside, dancing, and cooking for each other. Laughing in the same space is nourishing. Sounds Waltons-esque, but better than meta. I still find him texting his friends frequently throughout the day, but when he doesn’t, it’s fun not being able to see them. Maybe I’ve gone crazy.
Is it possible to enjoy the reality of “boring” life without fantasies of escape? Photo: Alicia Kanter/The Guardian
Always-on connectivity is a new expectation, and meeting it can be challenging. My biggest fear about turning off my cell phone was missing a call from my girlfriend’s mother if she fell. But I realized that at the root of my resistance was a fear of control. And someday we all have to give it up. “You can also set up a landline for emergencies and give that number only to your loved ones,” suggests Stiramanath. That’s a good idea.
Another slow burn is the increase in time spent reading. I think that’s why I no longer spend the entire day on Instagram. Now, when I open any social media app, I feel like… stupid. Perhaps concentration is actually a muscle, and when you build muscle, you try to lift heavier. Of course, there are many people who enjoy both. This is not to say that all social media content is shallow and meaningless. (I think so too!)
Is it possible to enjoy the reality of “boring” life without fantasies of escape? This was a very important question for me.
I’ll clean up my apartment more. look It’s more than that. I continued to walk 10,000 steps. I still like filling out fitness tracking circles, but I’m not as obsessive about it. I can feel the effects on my body. Sometimes you forget your cell phone at home. It’s a mental reset to feel the atmosphere like you’re not anywhere else. And I’m much happier than before.
If you’re a fan of capitalism, I should point out that my freelance income has increased and my productivity has increased. I don’t think it’s helpful to malign tech companies too much, and I’ve stopped anthropomorphizing my phone. A shiny, infinitely content machine is neither your muse nor your cold lover nor your nemesis. It’s a tool. More than anything it’s my barometer of dissatisfaction.
When I realize that I have that weight in my hands, and the force that distracts me and tries to escape, I try to diagnose what is really going on inside me. Are you worried about something? am i lonely? What better way to meet my needs? I’m learning to believe that even if I’m just bored, there’s creativity hidden there.
Who could have predicted this? My smartphone, like a canary in the coal mine, represents what’s most important to me: days without sleepwalking. The thief of my life? No one can steal my life.
When you open the door, it hits you and warmth spreads over your skin. Fighting the smoke and heat, I brace myself and head inside. As you walk through a burning building, flames flicker around you. You find what you want and run away. It's so cold outside that I start shivering and my hands and feet go numb.
But when I remove the headset, everything stops. An incredibly realistic training exercise is now complete. All of these sensations felt real, but they were not caused by changes in my surroundings. Instead, carefully selected chemicals were injected into the skin to mimic different emotions.
Such stimuli have long helped us understand the most complex of the human senses: touch. In the 1990s, research into capsaicin, an extract from chili peppers, and menthol, found in peppermint, helped determine how our bodies respond to heat and cold. now, Jasmine Lu and colleagues at the University of Chicago They use this knowledge to create chemically induced sensations that make virtual environments incredibly realistic.
With a technology called chemical haptics, they built a wearable device that, when placed on the skin, can cause the wearer to experience different sensations, such as hot or cold, numbness or tingling, depending on their needs. . Its uses could include creating highly realistic virtual worlds for gamers to explore, training firefighters, and more. But will we ever be able to fully recreate the experience of touching the real thing? And if we can't, what might we stand to lose?
Most animals see the world differently than humans, and now it's a little easier to see through their eyes. Using two cameras and some software, the system can create videos that show people what a scene looks like to different species.
“We went outside to photograph birds in the trees, and only then did the brightness of the ultraviolet-colored sky sink in,” he says. Bella Vasas at Queen Mary University of London. “The color of the sky for most animals is different from the color of the sky for us.”
Vasas and colleagues used two commercial cameras housed in 3D-printed cases to record video in both visible and ultraviolet light. They then ran that footage through the software they developed to estimate the wavelengths of light that a particular animal sees with the naked eye. The program processes video frames to reflect the perspective of a particular animal.
The results include a colorful video showing a bee watching a caterpillar reveal hidden body parts to fight off predators, and a close-up of a jumping spider. The camera system works best within 2 meters (6 feet) of the animal, which is not moving so fast that the camera loses focus. Daniel Hanley Co-authored by researchers at George Mason University in Virginia. He says the method works on many insects, spiders, lizards, turtles, birds and mammals.
The “gold standard” for this type of research, he said, is hyperspectral imaging, a technique that can capture uniform wavelengths of light across the visible and ultraviolet spectrum. Jolyon Troscianko at the University of Exeter, UK. But while such equipment costs him more than $20,000, a new camera system costs only a few thousand dollars. This could allow it to be used more widely for photographing moving, life-like animal exhibits. “Imagine a bird of paradise that shows color instantly,” he says.
According to an internal document released late Wednesday, Meta estimates that about 100,000 children on Facebook and Instagram are subjected to online sexual harassment every day, including “pictures of adult genitalia.” The unsealed legal filings include several allegations against Meta, based on information the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office learned from presentations and communications between Meta employees. These allegations describe an incident in 2020 in which the 12-year-old daughter of an Apple executive was solicited via Instagram’s messaging product, IG Direct.
In testimony before the US Congress late last year, a senior Meta employee described how his daughter was recruited through Instagram. His efforts to resolve the issue were ignored, he said. This suit is the latest in a series of lawsuits filed by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office on December 5, alleging that Meta’s social network has become a marketplace for child predators. The state’s attorney general, Raul Torrez, accused Meta of allowing adults to find, send messages to, and groom children. Meta released a statement in response to Wednesday’s filing, stating, “We want to provide teens with a safe and age-appropriate online experience, and we have over 30 tools to support them and their parents.”
The lawsuit also referenced a 2021 internal presentation on child safety, in which Meta states that it has “poorly invested in the sexual expression of minors on IG, with significant sexual commentary on content posted by minors.” The complaint also highlights Meta employees’ concerns about the safety of children. Meta’s statement also said the company “has taken significant steps to prevent unwanted contact from teens, especially adults.”
The New Mexico lawsuit follows a Guardian investigation in April that revealed how Meta failed to report or detect the use of its platform for child trafficking. According to documents included in the lawsuit, Meta employees “coordinate human trafficking operations” and ensure that “every step of human exploitation (recruitment, conditioning, and exploitation) is expressed on our platform.” But an internal email from 2017 said executives opposed scanning Facebook Messenger for “harmful content,” citing the service’s desire to “provide more privacy.” In December, Meta received widespread criticism for introducing end-to-end encryption for messages sent via Facebook and Messenger.
The sky of an icy planet in space may be full of diamonds. Compacted carbon compounds may turn into diamonds at less extreme temperatures than researchers thought would be necessary, which could make diamond rain a common phenomenon inside giant ice cubes. there is.
In the past, laboratory experiments have confused the conditions under which diamonds form inside ice giants like Uranus and Neptune. There are two types of experiments to investigate this: dynamic compression experiments, in which a carbon compound is subjected to a sudden impact, and static compression experiments, in which it is placed in a chamber and gradually compressed. Previous dynamic compression experiments required much higher temperatures and pressures to form diamonds.
mango frost Using static compression and dynamic heating, researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California sandwiched polystyrene (the same polymer used to make Styrofoam) between two diamonds and applied an X-pulse. We conducted a new series of experiments to compress Ray of light. They observed diamonds begin to form from polystyrene at temperatures of about 2,200 degrees Celsius and pressures of about 19 gigapascals, conditions similar to the shallow interiors of Uranus and Neptune.
These pressures are much lower than those found necessary for diamond formation in previous experiments using dynamic compression. This reaction took longer than the typically performed dynamic compaction experiments. This may explain why no low-pressure diamond formation was detected in such experiments. “It didn't match the established results and wasn't what we expected, but it was a good fit and brought everything together,” Frost says. “It turns out it's all due to different timescales.”
This could mean that diamonds could rain on smaller planets than previously thought. The researchers calculated that of the approximately 5,600 exoplanets identified, more than 1,900 could rain diamonds.
This also means that diamonds may form at shallower depths within our solar system than we think, which could change our understanding of the internal dynamics of giant planets. There is a possibility that it will change. This shallow geological formation could allow diamond rain to pass through layers of ice as it sinks toward the centers of these planets. This, in turn, will affect the icy world's magnetic fields, which are complex and poorly understood.
A new study has found that people who are unable to burp due to a rare health condition feel more anxious, depressed and embarrassed.
Published on December 20th, the study was conducted by experts from around the world to investigate the social impact of retrograde cricopharyngeal muscle dysfunction (R-CPD), also known as “inability to burp syndrome.”
R-CPD involves dysfunction of the cricopharyngeus muscle, which prevents the patient from relaxing enough to expel gas. It was first reported in 1987, but it wasn’t given an official name until 2019.
Out of the 199 people who participated in the study, 98% reported feeling bloated, 93% reported a “socially unpleasant rumbling sound,” 89% reported excessive flatulence, and 55% reported difficulty vomiting.
R-CPD patients often have to lie down or force themselves to vomit to relieve painful symptoms.
Although the condition can be treated by injecting Botox into the affected muscles, the treatment is not available on the NHS in the UK and must be carried out in private.
Researchers found that participants reported high levels of embarrassment, anxiety, and depression, which also negatively impacted their relationships and work lives.
Read more from Sky News: There’s a risk of painful injuries in the bedroom this Christmas Christmas vegetables that may help fight cancer
“R-CPD is a disease that is unfamiliar to many healthcare providers and leaves patients underserved. It affects not only their daily lives but also their personal and professional relationships. It will affect you.”
“Understanding and raising awareness of the basic characteristics of the disease has the potential to improve diagnosis and treatment rates and improve quality of life.”
A spokesperson for NHS England said: “Clinical evidence for this condition is very limited due to the small number of people coming forward with the condition, but NHS staff have been advised by NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) to Establishing clinical advice, providing care and services appropriate to patients with specific conditions and needs.”
Google on Tuesday introduced a range of new features and updates to its mapping services in India as it closes out the year and lays the foundation for next year.
The latest in a series of new features is Lens in Maps, which will be launched on Android in 15 cities across India by January. The feature was introduced in the U.S. and select global markets in October and uses a combination of artificial intelligence and augmented reality to show people information such as opening hours, ratings, reviews, and photos when they point their smartphone camera on the street. I will provide a. Go to a restaurant or cafe.
Google has also launched Live View Walking Navigation in India, providing overlays of arrows, directions, and distance markers on the map screen to help users navigate to their destinations easily. Google says the feature will initially be available on Android and will be rolled out to more than 3,000 cities and towns across the country.
“India is a huge country with very diverse needs,” Miriam Karthika, vice president of Google Maps Experience, said at the event. “The scale on which we have to operate for India is enormous.”
In addition to the visually immersive viewing experience with Lens in Maps and Live View walking navigation, Google uses a combination of machine learning signals to discover the most relevant lands around your pinned address. We announced an address descriptor that provides up to five mark and area names and displays landmark references. Users share their location information. This India-first feature was introduced for Google Maps Platform developers earlier this year and will be available across his 75+ cities in India.
Image credits: Google
Google is also bringing fuel-efficient directions to India, which will be available to users starting in January. This feature works on domestic four-wheelers and two-wheelers and helps users reduce fuel consumption and limit carbon emissions. The feature will be available to users in Indonesia in addition to India next year.
Since its initial launch in October 2021, through September this year, Google said its fuel-efficient directions had prevented more than 2.4 million tons of CO2e emissions worldwide. The company says the feature uses AI to understand real-time traffic data, road elevation, and vehicle engine type to identify routes that limit fuel and emissions.
Apart from launching global features in India, Google has partnered with India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and mobility app Namma Yatri to bring metro schedules and reservations directly to users through Google Maps. . The experience will be available from the Kochi metro by the middle of next year, and will be rolled out in stages as other metros come on board with the open e-commerce network.
Google is also expanding its Where Is My Train app, which helps more than 80 million users every month to navigate their intercity train journeys, to local trains in Mumbai and Kolkata, with plans to add more cities in the future. .
To date, Google has mapped millions of kilometers of roads and 300 million buildings across the country. More than 50 million searches are made every day on the domestic map, 2.5 billion kilometers of directions are recorded every day, and more than 60 million unique users contribute to the map. Additionally, Google said it has mapped 30 million businesses and locations across the country, enabling direct connections between 900 million merchants and consumers.
Last July, Google introduced the Street View feature in India, six years after it was banned due to security concerns. The company has partnered with local companies Genesis and Tech Mahindra. According to Google, more than 50 million users in Japan are currently viewing Street View.
TikTok has rolled out updates that enhance the app experience for viewers on tablets and foldable devices, the company announced Monday. The app has been optimized for larger screens, so viewers can now experience a crisper video feed, streamlined navigation bar, and orientation support.
With the new update, users will see a polished video feed that “presents content more clearly.” Additionally, navigation bars at the top and bottom of the screen provide easy access to app features and tabs.
The app now works in landscape or portrait orientation. Today’s announcement comes a year after TikTok began testing horizontal full-screen mode on mobile worldwide. TikTok is already pushing further into YouTube territory by rolling out landscape mode on larger devices and supporting longer videos. The company’s support of long-form content makes it sensible to enhance the viewing experience for users watching things like cooking demos and beauty tutorials on tablets. The company hopes this new mode will persuade people who normally watch YouTube on their tablets to spend their time on TikTok instead.
“While most people already know and love TikTok on their mobile devices, we know that many people prefer accessing TikTok on larger screens and foldable devices,” the company said in a blog post. “Whether you’re looking for the latest cooking trends or searching for the latest soccer highlights, we’re excited to share that TikTok is now even more optimized for tablets and foldable gadgets.”
TikTok’s optimization for foldables and tablets comes at a time when one of its main competitors, Instagram, still lacks an iPad app. By rolling out updates to its app experience on larger devices, TikTok can surpass its mobile-first approach at a time when competitors are still lagging behind.
To stream as them My mysterious alter ego is a VTuber named Mai. M41H41, typically had to juggle at least four to seven different programs. However, doing everything at once was not only mentally exhausting, but also taxed the computer and could cause it to overheat in the process. If the program crashes, you have to destroy the characters to fix it. “In many cases, you don’t actually need to use all the programs,” Mai told TechCrunch during a Discord call. “So I literally told the community, ‘Sorry, you can’t like, throw videos, chat interactive videos today. Because we literally can’t do it right now.” ” VTuber A portmanteau of “virtual YouTuber,” who streams as a 2D or 3D model rather than showing his or her actual face. This burgeoning genre has produced some highly successful streamers, but the barrier to entry has been high due to the upfront costs and technical skills required to stream as an animated character. Obscur, an all-in-one broadcast application, wants to make VTubers more accessible by allowing users to create 3D models and interactive environments without any technical skills. The company premiered several new features at TwitchCon, including Character Creator, which was officially released last week. Obskur’s broadcast software essentially combines multiple different programs into his one platform, which can be easily integrated with Twitch. This is a big attraction for her VTubers like Mai. Obskur’s Character Creator and user-generated content marketplace is particularly unique in the VTuber space. Character Creator allows users to customize his 3D model by choosing free hairstyle, facial features, and body type. Users can adjust features to change their shape and size using sliders, and select feature colors from a color wheel. For further customization, users can browse an integrated marketplace where artists sell ready-made models and his 3D assets such as costumes and interactive backgrounds. “It needs to be advanced enough that people can create a character that’s so unique that they feel like, ‘This is me and this is my brand.’ But it also needs to be easy enough that they don’t need to know anything. ” Obskur co-founder Andranik Aslanyan told TechCrunch. “It’s like you don’t have to understand rigging, modeling, textures, etc. Just select a few options and it feels like a video game. If you can play The Sims, our application You should be able to use it.” Image credits: Provided by Obscur Mai says she started using Obksur regularly after testing the demo at TwitchCon. Previously, I used up to 12 applications to run streams. One is for running models, who often have flowing seafoam-colored hair, pink moth-like antennae, and ruffled black tops; It is meant to improve body tracking. Additional software was required to perform basic animation. For example, something as simple as a VTuber making a model cry or flirting with a subscriber by bouncing her chest can involve technical subtleties that viewers rarely see behind the scenes. . Mai has to use third-party programs for her chat interactions, such as being able to throw things at viewers or sprinkle flower petals, and also says that she has to use third-party programs to make those interactions a part of her Twitch earnings. It was necessary to use additional third-party software to integrate with the features. She also needed a program to upload models into her 3D backgrounds, ranging from a basic living room to an extraterrestrial planet. “And that’s before you even think about the type of content you’ll create that day,” Mai continued. “And you need to learn how each of them works as an application on its own, but also how it works as an application in conjunction with other applications you’re running. There are a variety of models. There were probably 10 to 12 applications that I downloaded for the part.” Next is cost. When Mai first became interested in her VTuber last year, she tried to create her own models by drawing with a mouse using her free software VRoid Studio. They said it was impossible and “looked all sorts of awful.” They ended up paying another artist about $100 to $120 (the industry’s “absolute rock bottom”) to model. A high quality She 2D model can cost thousands of dollars or more, depending on the quality of the original artwork, custom She mesh and textures, and various animations. Even 3D models that are less complex to animate are still expensive to commission. Additional assets such as new costumes, hairstyles, and backgrounds are expensive and difficult to source. While many artists focus on custom commissions, others sell preset assets on Etsy, Patreon, or other online marketplaces scattered across the internet. Some large marketplaces, like Booth, are “absolute monsters in and of themselves,” Mai said, as they are offered entirely in Japanese. “In that case, you have to download them and hope they’re in the right file format. If you don’t speak the language, no one will understand,” Mai said. Aslanyan pointed out that chat interactions are not only cumbersome to use, but also difficult to look at. On Twitch, users can purchase bit, prices start at $3.00 for 300 pieces and go up to $308 for 25,000 pieces. Twitch pays streamers 1 cent per Bit, so streamers typically offer special perks to viewers who spend Bits while streaming. VTubers often encourage their viewers to consume Bits by providing certain interactive features. A viewer can, for example, “throw” objects such as electronic money to her VTuber by spending 100 bits, and change her outfit by spending 1,000 bits. Streamers needed to get into character and engage with their viewers while manually triggering interactions in the third-party software they were using. Image credits: Provided by Obscur Obskur’s Twitch extensions and apps make features like viewer interaction more seamless for both streamers and viewers. The app allows streamers to determine different stages of interaction, which are automatically triggered when a viewer consumes a Bit. Obskur receives the standard 20% developer share set by Twitch. Aslanyan hopes that by making the process more seamless, monetization opportunities will become more accessible for streamers. “The idea behind it is to give viewers a reason to spend some money, because if you look at the return on bits compared to things like subscriptions and direct donations, it’s on the lower side. ” Aslanian said. “The reason is that there is no real incentive to donate to Bit.” It may be easier for streamers to monetize their work, but do artists risk losing their commissions? VTuber 2D and 3D design has grown into a digital cottage industry since 2020, with many artists looking to make full use of it. Time relies on commissions for its income. Neither Mai nor Aslanyan are worried about Obscur’s Character Creator pushing out artists. Instead, they said, the platform’s user-generated marketplace creates opportunities for artists to expand their clientele. Mai described Character Creator as a “baseline” opportunity for complete beginners to step into her VTuber career without paying a fortune or learning complex animations. “I think there’s still a lot of desire for specific art styles with specific designs that are unique only to individual artists. They’re still doing that craft in other mediums, and a lot of artists are moving into this field. “I mainly work in Obscur because the marketplace allows you to make money from the assets you’ve already created,” Mai said. Additionally, if streamers want to use more complex and highly specialized models for their streams, they can import commissioned works into Obskur. Image credits: Provided by Obscur Image credits: Courtesy of Obxul Aslanyan added that Obskur considered feedback from artists when designing Character Creator. An artist known as the art director of Obscur. art gunis known for designing the model for Ironmouse, one of North America’s most popular VTubers. According to Aslanyan, she oversaw the development of the character creator and also helped launch the marketplace. “From my point of view as a creator, the market size is expanding,” Aslanyan continued. “The basics are one-to-one. In our case, we can create a cool jacket, and then in the marketplace people have almost instantaneous access to the character, and we can sell that jacket many times over, and we’re able to sell that jacket many times over. You can potentially generate more revenue than spending months creating a jacket for a single character. It’s more of a scale business than…
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