Last year’s summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600bn tons of ice from Greenland – enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months, new research has found. Last year was the hottest on record for the Arctic, with the annual minimum extent of sea ice in the region its second-lowest on record.
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new device for connecting the brain directly to silicon-based technologies. While brain-machine interface devices already exist—and are used for prosthetics, disease treatment and brain research—this latest device can record more data while being less intrusive than existing options.
A quantum sensor could give Soldiers a way to detect communication signals over the entire radio frequency spectrum, from 0 to 100 GHz, said researchers from the Army. Such wide spectral coverage by a single antenna is impossible with a traditional receiver system, and would require multiple systems of individual antennas, amplifiers and other components.
While the bubonic plague raged elsewhere, Newton, in seclusion, embarked on what he'd later describe as the most intellectually productive period of his life.
"In order to improve the condition of mankind all men must be given the certainty of security through the exchange of safeguards, the assurance of prosperity through an exchange of resources, the reality of freedom through the free movement of information, persons and ideas." - Antoine Pinay
"A society that does not defend itself is doomed. A system that remains passive in the face of attack deserves to go under. Those unwilling to defend freedom will become unfree. To stand idly by is to commit suicide." - Brian Crozier
Russian hacker group Digital Revolution claims to have breached a contractor for the FSB -- Russia's national intelligence service -- and discovered details about a project intended for hacking Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The group published this week 12 technical documents, diagrams, and code fragments for a project called "Fronton."
Repair specialist iFixit is building a database filled with repair information for the world’s hospital equipment in anticipation of the increased demand caused by COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. In particular, it’s calling for repair manuals for ventilators and BiPAP machines that can be used as ventilators. iFixit’s database can be found here, and the company is calling for people to create new device pages and upload photos and manuals.
An asteroid currently being tracked by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CENOS), known as 2020 EF, will pass close enough to the planet to potentially ’cause an airburst’. However, the agency explains that we’re safe either way — the asteroid is too small to survive contact with Earth’s atmosphere.
Every day, the InSight lander’s suite of instruments sends back data proving that the Red Planet isn’t really dead. Marsquakes rumble the seismometer. Swirling vortices register on onboard pressure sensor. And temperature sensors help track the weather and changing of the seasons. Despite the lander’s successes, however, one gauge has met with resistance from the Martian environment while trying to carry out its mission. Something has stopped InSight’s 15-inch digging probe, dubbed “the mole” for its burrowing prowess. Instead of diving deep into the Martian sand where it could take the planet’s temperature, it’s been stuck half-buried. An intercontinental team of MacGyvers has spent a year devising successively daring plans to get the mole digging again, but still it flounders on the surface. Now their final gambit—directly pushing the mole into the soil—has shown tentative signs of success, NASA announced Friday on Twitter.
In his 2015 TED Talk titled "The Next Outbreak? We're Not Ready," Bill Gates predicting: "If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war."
Over the past decade, the world’s richest man has become the World Health Organization’s second biggest donor, second only to the United States and just above the United Kingdom. This largesse gives him outsized influence over its agenda, one that could grow as the U.S. and the U.K. threaten to cut funding if the agency doesn’t make a better investment case.
“The foundation’s impact on the WHO is enormous,” said Garrett, of the Council on Foreign Relations. “If they weren’t there, if they walked away with their money, the deleterious impact would be profound, and everyone is all too aware of that.”
The impact of the coronavirus around the world and the resulting turmoil in global markets are dominating global attention. As governments respond to these interlinked crises, they must not lose sight of a major challenge of our time: clean energy transitions.
“To actually stop the virus, [China] had to do rapid testing of any suspect case, immediate isolation of anyone who was a confirmed or suspected case, and then quarantine the close contacts for 14 days so that they could figure out if any of them were infected,” Aylward told New Scientist in an exclusive interview. “Those were the measures that stopped transmission in China, not the big travel restrictions and lockdowns.”
Earlier this week, we covered the Federal Reserve's pursuit of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), based on the blockchain and dubbed "Fedcoin." It turns out that China is also pursuing its own version of a CBDC, and while the consequences of such a move for Americans would be very different than those of a Fedcoin, they have the potential to be even more dire. What's more, Beijing could be even closer to implementation than the Fed is.
It was on Thursday, July 11th 2019 that the former Peoples Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan told an event in Beijing that Facebook’s Libra project was a ‘new risk’ that should motivate the government to ‘make good preparations and make the Chinese yuan a stronger currency’. This ‘new risk’ of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency appears to have acted as validation to the ongoing tinkering of a Chinese organisation tasked to investigate digital currencies.
The profit sags, the low market value in the crisis invites to takeover. The Chinese major shareholders are already securing further share packages. Daimler CEO Ola Källenius has to fight for the independence of the German top brand.
Commodity group Glencore GLEN.L has temporarily closed down its London offices due to coronavirus, a Glencore spokesman said on Friday. The spokesman said the move came after one of the company's employees tested positive for coronavirus.
Prince Albert of Monaco has tested positive for coronavirus. The 62-year-old's COVID-19 diagnosis was revealed on March 19 by the Prince's Palace. The day before, the royal said Monaco would go into lockdown to fight the virus, which the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic.
Prince Albert of Monaco's Jeffrey Epstein connection is his close friend Prince Andrew, Duke of York, who was one of Epstein's best clients. Also Princess Caroline's ex husband and playboy Philippe Junot and Princess Stephanie's ex Jean-Yves Le Fur were closely tied to Epstein.
If the Monsanto lawsuits against Bayer soon dissolve, it may be because of this: US President Donald Trump said in the White House on Thursday that the drug agency FDA has approved chloroquine, a drug manufactured by the German Bayer Group, for the treatment of coronavirus patients.
A group of Iranian physicians have written a letter to certain regional heads of state, urging them to take necessary measures to destroy “all of the US biological laboratories,” amid reports and speculation that the global coronavirus outbreak has been caused by unidentified laboratories spreading the epidemic as part of a "biological warfare."