Hello There

For the first time, scientists managed to open a line of two-way, real-time communication with sleeping volunteers who were in the midst of a lucid dream.

Scientists from Northwestern University and various European institutions were able to chat with lucid dreamers and ask them questions, receiving answers in real-time in the form of specific eye movements, Motherboard reports. It’s an unusual development, but it’s one that could help scientists gain a new level of insight into the content and structure of sleep — not to mention opening up new frontiers for the technology, entertainment and even commercialization of dreams.

Blink Twice

Lucid dreaming, or the ability to become self-aware while asleep akin to the characters in “Inception” or “The Matrix,” is a psychological oddity that’s long piqued scientists’ interests.

“There are studies of lucid dreamers communicating out of dreams, and also remembering to do tasks,” lead author and Northwestern researcher Karen Konkoly told Motherboard. “But there’s a fairly limited amount of research on the stimuli going into lucid dreams.”

Experienced lucid dreamers communicated with scientists by moving their real-world eyes left and right, responding to questions and even math problems in real-time, according to research published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

Holy Mountain

The dreamers reported hearing the researchers’ voices as a sort of intangible narrator, clearly identifying it as something coming from outside their dream, according to Motherboard. Scientists were able to accurately communicate with the dreamers about 18 percent of the time — but another 20 percent yielded incorrect or incoherent responses, suggesting that there was at least some form of communication going on.

For now, the researchers are thrilled just to have established some sort of communication.

“It’s amazing to sit in the lab and ask a bunch of questions, and then somebody might actually answer one,” Konkoly told Motherboard. “It’s such an immediately rewarding type of experiment to do. You don’t have to wait to analyze your data or anything like that. You can see it right there while they’re still sleeping.”

READ MORE: Scientists Achieve Real-Time Communication With Lucid Dreamers In Breakthrough [Motherboard]

More on lucid dreaming: MIT Scientists Are Building Devices to Hack Your Dreams

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Heat Seeker

Texas was gripped by a deep freeze this week, bringing the second largest state in the United States to its knees. Millions are still without power, while many more continue to lack access to clean water or even water at all.

Amid rolling blackouts, Texans are having to get creative to stay warm, as homes predominantly use electricity as a heat source in the state.

But Tesla owners had an ace up their sleeve. Thanks to their vehicles’ hefty batteries, some opted to sleep in their cars with the heater running — without running the risk of dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, as The New York Post reports.

Catching Zs

“So my wife my dog and my newborn daughter slept in the garage in our Model 3 all nice and cozy,” one user on the subreddit TeslaMotors wrote, as quoted by the Post. “If I didn’t have this car, it would have been a very rough night.”

Thanks to a two-way vehicle-to-grid feature included in Tesla’s PowerWall, the company’s home battery solution, some users were able to power their homes using the batteries in their Tesla vehicles, VICE reports.

$TSLA power walls saving the day in Houston.@WholeMarsBlog pic.twitter.com/YCL6rzu93s

— dayyanl (@dayyanl) February 16, 2021

Power Backup

Others were able to weather the storm by drawing backup power from their PowerWalls. Some who opted to install solar panels on their roofs were also able to store enough energy in their PowerWall systems to use during blackouts.

Using electric vehicles as a form of survival isn’t exactly a long term solution to Texas’ power grid woes — but at least it can offer a hand while political leaders face off with electric grid operators to get the state back on its feet.

READ MORE: Elon Musk slams Texas power grid operator for being unreliable [New York Post]

More on Texas: Elon Musk, Who Moved to TX For Less Regulation, Is Furious That the Power Went Down

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It’s Alive!

For the first time, scientists cloned an organism on the United States’ list of endangered species: a black-footed ferret that they’ve named Elizabeth Ann.

Elizabeth Ann was born on December 10 and, as far as the Fish and Wildlife Service scientists raising her can tell, is a perfectly healthy and lively young critter, The Associated Press reports. The tentative success story, a first for conservationists, suggests that cloning could serve as a way to help breathe life into species that are on the brink of total extinction.

JUST IN: Scientists have cloned the first U.S. endangered species, a black-footed ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago. https://t.co/xmkAAP7Yiw

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 19, 2021

New Tools

Cloning technology isn’t new by any means, but recent advances are making it a viable tool for conservationists rather than a scientific oddity.

In this case, scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the conservation organization Revive & Restore used the genes from a ferret that died 30 years ago to clone Elizabeth Ann, according to the AP. And while the ferret’s mother is tame, Elizabeth Ann behaves like a wild animal, making it possible for her to survive outside of a lab.

“How can we actually apply some of those advances in science for conservation? Because conservation needs more tools in the toolbox,” Ryan Phelan, co-founder and executive director of Revive & Restore told the AP. “That’s our whole motivation. Cloning is just one of the tools.”

Family Planning

Elizabeth Ann’s birth was the result of a seven-year effort, according to the AP. Her birth and survival offer a new opportunity to revive a species that was actually thought to be entirely extinct due to loss of habitat until the early 1980s.

But cloning won’t be without its challenges. All black-footed ferrets alive today come from just seven ancestors, and their genetic similarity makes them prone to disease. Unfortunately, cloning technology can replicate those ferrets, but it can’t yet introduce the sort of variability that will give them a better shot in the wild.

READ MORE: Scientists clone the first U.S. endangered species [The Associated Press]

More on cloning: Chinese Scientists Cloned Gene-Edited Monkeys With Horrifying Results

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Jetpack Snapshot

NASA has released a new photo sent to us all the way from Mars courtesy of its Perseverance rover, which successfully landed on the Red Planet on Thursday.

The incredible image shows the rover hanging below the probe’s “sky crane,” a rocket-powered device that lowered Perseverance from an altitude of about 70 feet down to the surface below. A similarly designed crane also was used to lower NASA’s Curiosity rover during its 2012 landing.

The moment that my team dreamed of for years, now a reality. Dare mighty things. #CountdownToMars pic.twitter.com/8SgV53S9KG

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) February 19, 2021

The image shows a stunning amount of detail, capturing not only the entire top side of the rover itself, but also the craggy Martian surface below.

“This shot from a camera on my ‘jetpack’ captures me in midair, just before my wheels touched down,” the rover’s official Twitter account wrote.

“This is something we’ve never seen before,” Aaron Stehura, a systems engineer at JPL, said of the jetpack image during today’s live stream. “It was stunning and the team was awe struck.”

Mars in Color

NASA also released a full color resolution version of the surrounding Jezero Crater, as taken by the rover’s hazard camera it uses to safely navigate the surface.

An additional image shows one of the rover’s wheels close up.

Doing Well

During a Friday briefing, the team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory noted that Perseverance is doing well. The rover “continues to be highly functional and awesome and I’m exhilarated,” an excited Pauline Hwang, mission operations system manager for the Perseverance Mars rover at JPL, said during today’s press conference.

Perseverance will now transition to using surface software to check its various instruments and eventually begin its journey across the Martian surface.

READ MORE: NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV [NASA]

More on Perseverance: BREAKING: NASA Successfully Lands Perseverance Rover on Mars

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Closed Doors

Remember that artificial intelligence-worshipping church, the Way of the Future?

Well, first of all: Yes, that existed. But secondly, founder Anthony Levandowski told TechCrunch this week that he has now decided to dissolve the church and donate all of its funds — just over $175,000 — to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. Levandowski still supports the church’s mission to responsibly develop and support artificial general intelligence, but he said he was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement to do something with a more immediate impact.

“I wanted to donate to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund because it’s doing really important work in criminal justice reform and I know the money will be put to good use,” Levandowski told TechCrunch.

Wild Ride

Aside from his bizarre church, which never had a physical location, rituals, or gatherings, you may remember Levandowski from his legal battles over stolen trade secrets within the self-driving car industry.

Levandowski founded the Way of the Future when he was working at Google. He later left to form his own startup, which got bought by Uber — only to be sued by Google’s self-driving vehicle offshoot Waymo over stolen trade secrets. He ended up facing an 18-month prison sentence and a massive fine that prompted him to file for bankruptcy, but was pardoned by former President Donald Trump.

True Disciple

Even though the Way of the Future is gone, Levandowski still believes in its founding principles, he told TechCrunch.

He believes that genuinely intelligent and perhaps even conscious artificial intelligence will be a net positive for society, as long as it’s crafted with the right considerations in mind. Church or no church, Levandowski told TechCrunch that he wants to make sure that still happens.

READ MORE: Anthony Levandowski closes his Church of AI [TechCrunch]

More on Levandowski: Way of the Future: A New Church Worships an AI God

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Artificial Intelligence-Worshipping Church Officially Shuts Down

Not Again

A powerful earthquake struck the site of Japan’s already-crumbling Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant last weekend, further damaging the facility that experts and authorities have spent years trying to safely maintain.

The power plant’s operators found that cooling water levels had dropped in two of the plant’s reactors, indicating that the earthquake caused them to spring new leaks, The Associated Press reports. The development will make it far more difficult and complicated to continue decommissioning the plant, which has been an ongoing effort since it was mostly destroyed in a 2011 tsunami.

Silver Lining

Thankfully, the leaking water seems to be contained entirely within the reactor buildings, and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) spokesman Keisuke Matsuo told the AP that there’s no sign of any impact or radiation leakage outside of the facility itself.

But the worsened leaks mean that more water will need to be pumped in to replace it, increasing the amount of irradiated water that then needs to be managed. Unfortunately, the authorities’ current plan is to dump it into the sea. Environmental groups were already concerned about that idea, so it’s unfortunate that the dump will now likely be larger than anyone predicted.

Overdue Accountability

Meanwhile, just one day before the new earthquake, the Tokyo High Court reversed a previous ruling to declare that the government and TEPCO could be held accountable for the devastation, especially because so many residents had to flee the area after the initial nuclear disaster, the AP reports. The ruling may alter how the government continues to respond to the issues facing the power plant, now that it might face consequences for its actions.

“The case raises the question of whether we should tolerate a society that prioritizes economic activities over people’s lives and health,” Izutaro Mangi, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told the AP.

READ MORE: Water leaks indicate new damage at Fukushima nuclear plant [The Associated Press]

More on Fukushima: Fukushima Plans to Power Region With 100% Renewable Energy

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After US president Joe Biden signed an executive order almost a month ago to move the United States toward rejoining the Paris climate agreement, the country formally reentered the international pact today, as Scientific American reports.

The reentry signals the start of a lengthy process of drafting new emissions pledges. Biden called for an international climate summit on April 22, which falls on Earth Day, so the pressure is on to come up with 2030 carbon goals.

The Paris Agreement is a United Nations framework established in 2016 that requires member countries around the world to do their best to keep the increase in global temperatures to below two degrees Celsius throughout the 21st century.

The reentering marks a significant U-turn in the country’s approach to climate accountability. Former US president Donald Trump made the decision in 2017 to have the US withdraw from the agreement, a three-year process that officially came into effect in November 2020, the same month Biden was voted president.

“From a political symbolism perspective, whether it’s 100 days or four years, it is basically the same thing,” Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief, told The Guardian. “It’s not about how many days. It’s the political symbolism that the largest economy refuses to see the opportunity of addressing climate change. We’ve lost too much time.”

Experts believe the Biden administration’s renewed commitment to the agreement could mark a new chapter in the fight against climate change, as Scientific American reports.

Biden’s carbon goals, to be announced in April, will be based on data collected by non-federal analysts and think tanks, according to SciAm. Experts believe the goals may end up being more sweeping than the Obama administration’s pledge to cut greenhouses gases between 26 and 28 percent by 2025, a goal set in 2015.

The US has fallen behind considerably in the fight against climate change. Countries have turned towards other world powers for leadership throughout Trump’s presidency, with China making significant promises of late, including a pledge to become carbon neutral by 2060.

The Biden administration now has the uncomfortable task of convincing other world leaders that the US is indeed committed to keeping global warming to a minimum.

But late is better than never — the US remains the second largest polluter in the world. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the US contributed 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2018, the second highest contributor after China.

READ MORE: U.S. Officially Rejoins Paris Climate Agreement [Scientific American]

More on the Paris agreement: BIDEN MOVES TO REJOIN PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT

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Nightlight

Scientists just published a massive map of the night sky speckled with twinkling white lights.

But instead of distant stars and constellations, the map actually shows the locations of more than 25,000 supermassive black holes, according to research accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Each one is surrounded by its own galaxy, illuminated by the radio emissions of matter getting gobbled up and ejected.

Tiny Slice

The project involved 256 hours of observations — followed by years of analysis — conducted by an army of scientists working at 52 facilities spanning nine European countries, according to a Leiden University press release. And after all that, the gigantic map spans just four percent of the northern half of the sky.

“This is the result of many years of work on incredibly difficult data,” research leader and former Leiden scientist Francesco de Gasperin said in the press release. “We had to invent new methods to convert the radio signals into images of the sky.”

Zooming Out

Most of the work to make the map came from finding a way to convert those radio emissions into visible light. The problem was that the Earth’s atmosphere and ionosphere kept distorting the signal, so the team had to develop sophisticated algorithms to fix it.

“After many years of software development, it is so wonderful to see that this has now really worked out,” Leiden Observatory’s scientific director Huub Röttgering, said in the press release.

With that sorted out, the team plans to rapidly map out the rest of the supermassive black holes in the northern sky, reusing their algorithm to make sure they have a clear view along the way.

READ MORE: Astronomers publish map showing 25,000 supermassive black holes [Leiden University]

More on sky maps: This X-Ray Map of the Entire Sky Is a Psychedelic Dreamworld

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Key Lime

The sharp-eyed bloggers at Patently Apple spotted a fascinating new patent by Apple: a system that would add a tiny screen to every single key on a device’s keyboard.

“The first surface may be adjacent to the key display and may receive key label images from the key display,” reads the ponderous patent-speak. “The second surface may face outwardly towards a user and may receive key press input from the fingers of a user while presenting key label images for viewing.”

Screen Time

In other words, Apple is describing a standalone or laptop keyboard in which every single key can be reconfigured to show anything — switching from English characters to Cyrillic, for instance, or changing the layout from QWERTY to Dvorak on the fly.

Of course, it could probably also do a lot more. It’s not hard to imagine the system opening up cool new possibilities in design or gaming.

Pop Cap

At the same time, keyboards are a difficult piece of hardware to innovate on. They deal with constant percussive hits from users and it’s nearly impossible to use a computer without one. And any apps that relied on the new tech wouldn’t work on any existing computers that didn’t have it yet.

And Apple has run into trouble with keyboards before. A few years back, a wave of problems hit the company’s fragile new MacBook Pro keyboards in an embarrassing episode that eventually led the tech giant to abandon the keyboard design entirely.

READ MORE: He spent 10 days in jail after facial recognition software led to the arrest of the wrong man, lawsuit says [NJ Advance Media]

More on algorithmic policing: Cops Arrested an Innocent Man Because Facial Recognition Told Them To

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Apple Patents Tech to Put Tiny Screen on Every Keyboard Key

After an onslaught of media scrutiny, Apple removed Vybe Together, an invite-only app that helped people find secret in-person gatherings, from its app store.

If your first question, like ours, was “hold on, an app that did what?” then yes, Vybe connected people who wanted to host or attend parties despite the still-extremely-dangerous coronavirus pandemic. Now, thankfully, the app has been removed and its online presence deleted, Business Insider reports, eliminating one more way that COVID-19 could have potentially — and likely did — spread.

Vybe largely went unnoticed for its months of operation until it was spotted by New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, who tweeted about how the app was promoting New Year’s Eve celebrations with footage of maskless revelers.

Some terrible people built a whole app for finding and promoting COVID-unsafe large, indoor house parties and they’re using TikTok to market it to millions of ppl. pic.twitter.com/zYhBiFH4vR

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) December 29, 2020

But CEO Alexander Dimcevski is defending the app, saying the footage was exaggerated for marketing’s sake and that the service only hosted small gatherings.

“We do not condone large unsafe parties during a pandemic,” Dimcevski told BI.

A Vybe spokersperson told Ars Technica that the app draws a distinction between “large unsafe parties during a pandemic” and “small get-togethers,” but the fact is that there’s not really any such thing as a safe get-together, especially inside an apartment, like Vybe promoted.

With a spike in new cases likely heading our way after Christmas and New Year’s gatherings, our already-struggling healthcare system will have an even harder time giving every COVID-19 patient the care they need. Given that, any development that stops even small gatherings from happening is a step in the right direction.

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Apple Takes Down App That Coordinated Maskless Parties

If regular exercise or other strenuous physical activity has you suffering from chronic muscle pain, you’ve likely tried to find a good topical rub to relieve the pain. But if your go-to muscle rub isn’t giving you the results you need, it’s time to upgrade to the advanced pain relief of Quanta CBD Muscle Rub Plus.

The secret to this fastest-acting CBD topical rub lies in Quanta’s own proprietary polarization technology. Polarizing the rub’s active ingredient (arnica montana) energizes it and allows it to penetrate the muscle tissue through the skin faster. The end result? More and greater relief and less inflammation compared to other CBD topical rubs.

With so many muscles in the human body, there are countless sources of potential pain and discomfort. But Quanta Muscle Rub Plus has alleviated almost all of them. Hundreds of satisfied customers have taken to the Quanta website to share their experiences with a Quanta CBD rub, and they report relief for everything from lumbar pain, hip pain, leg pain, and much more.

Quanta CBD Muscle Rub Plus: All Natural, Fast Acting. 

And perhaps best of all Quanta Muscle Rub Plus is all natural. For proof, here’s a complete list of its 13 all-natural ingredients: Cera Alba (Beeswax), Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower Oil), Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride (Fractionated Coconut Oil), Menthol (Menthol Crystals), Limnanthes Alba Seed Oil (Meadowfoam Oil), Polarized Arnica Montana (Arnica Oil), Mentha Piperita (Peppermint Oil), Cinnamomum Camphora (White Camphor Oil), Tocopheryl Acetate (Vitamin E Oil), Curcuma Longa (Turmeric Oil), Lavandula Angustifolia (Lavender Oil), Eugenia Caryophyllus (Clove Oil), Polarized Cannabidiol (Hemp CBD), and Zingiber Officinale (Ginger Root Oil).

Some users of CBD oils have complained about smell, but Quanta Muscle Rub Plus is lightly scented for a fresh and clean scent. It’s never greasy, and if you’ve been dissatisfied with topical rubs in the past, it might just change the way you think about such products in the future.

Quanta’s Muscle Rub Plus is the Extra Strength variant of Quanta’s regular CBD rub, and customers have reported a marked difference in both its effectiveness and the speed at which it starts to work. So if you have anything more than mild, occasional muscle pain, it might be the heavy hitter you need.

You can get a single tin of Quanta Muscle Rub Plus for $60. But if you buy in bulk (anywhere from ten to a hundred tins) you can save 20-percent off the regular price — making the bulk option a no-brainer if you intend to enjoy its benefits on a regular basis.

So if you have tired or aching muscles that would benefit from the most powerful CBD topical rub available, head to Quanta now and give Muscle Rub Plus a try.

A non-editorial team at Futurism has partnered with Harmony Hemp to create this article, and we may receive a percentage of sales from this post. This supplement has not been evaluated by the FDA, and is not intended to cure or treat any ailments. Do not take CBD products if you are allergic to any of the ingredients in the product you are consuming. Tell your doctor about all medicines you may be on before consuming CBD to avoid negative reactions. Tell your doctor about all medical conditions. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins and herbal products. Other side effects of CBD include: dry mouth, cloudy thoughts, and wakefulness. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of any drugs to the FDA. Visit http://www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

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In what can only be described as an extremely unfortunate event, a San Jose hospital staff member who dressed in a self-inflating Christmas tree costume likely caused a COVID-19 outbreak, which the The Washington Post reports has infected 43 and killed one so far.

“Obviously this is a highly unusual situation involving a well-intentioned staff member acting on their own without advance notice or approval,” Irene Chavez, senior vice president and area manager of the Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center in California, told the newspaper. “Any exposure, if it occurred, would have been completely innocent, and quite accidental, as the individual had no COVID symptoms.”

Officials believe the battery-powered fan inside the Christmas costume may have spread and circulated coronavirus droplets around the hospital, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“They’re just acting as the mover of air in a huge way,” Peter Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine and infectious disease expert at the University of California in San Francisco, told the Chronicle. “It’s like a fan that’s kind of multidirectional and random.”

A registration clerk at the hospital died after catching COVID in the outbreak, according to NBC.

California’s hospitals are absolutely slammed right now. Hospitalizations are at an all time high with ICUs across the state at almost 100 percent capacity.

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Baja Challenge

The Baja 1000 has long been the ultimate test for off-road vehicles. The international race stretches over 1,000 miles of dirt track, sand dunes, and steep inclines on the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk bragged in April that the electric car company’s much-hyped Cybertruck would pass the challenge with flying colors.

“We’re working on increasing dynamic air suspension travel for better off-roading,” Musk wrote in a tweet at the time, referring to the Cybertruck. “Needs to kick butt in Baja.”

Now, a Tesla competitor is throwing down the gauntlet, Teslarati reports. James Glickenhaus, leader of the boutique automotive manufacturer Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, challenged Musk to “bring it” at the 2023 Baja event, challenging Tesla to a race — against Glickenhaus’ hydrogen-powered off-road vehicle.

Cybertruck vs. Hydrogen

It’s an especially spicy challenge considering Musk’s views on the matter. “You have said that Hydrogen technology is ‘Mind boggling [sic] stupid,'” Glickenhaus wrote in an Instagram post. “You’ve also mentioned that The Baja would be a great test for your Cyber Truck [sic]. We say Bring It.”

“The Baja 1000 would be a great test for your Cyber Truck [sic],” the boutique owner wrote, noting that its gas-powered vehicles raced the Baja 1000 twice, winning last year’s Baja 1000 Class 2.

Charge Cars

Glickenhaus’ plan is to convert that winning formula to a hydrogen powertrain in order to race in the 2023 Baja 1000.

“This would be a great time for you to join the race with your Cyber Truck [sic],” he wrote.

Glickenhaus even offered up to “set up charging stations for your Cybertruck,” noting that one tank of hydrogen should be enough for “the entire 1,000 miles.”

Tesla’s top-of-the-range Cybertruck with three motors only has an estimated range of “500 plus miles,” according to the company’s website.

READ MORE: Tesla Cybertruck challenged to 1k-mile race against hydrogen-powered off-road beast [Teslarati]

More on the Cybertruck: Toy Cybertrucks Will Be Delivered Too Late For Christmas

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Carmaker Challenges Cybertruck to Off-Road Race Against Fuel Cell Vehicle

Trust Fall

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the company plans to eventually try to catch a Super Heavy booster — the rocket that will launch the SpaceX Starship — with its own launch tower.

It’s an extremely bold idea, and one that would put both the Super Heavy booster and the launch tower itself at risk of catastrophic failure, according to Ars Technica. But if it does work, the accomplishment would be a major step forward in SpaceX’s plans for reusing more and more of its rockets, even shortly after they land.

Quick Layover

Musk mentioned the idea on Twitter in response to a simulated Super Heavy landing.

“We’re going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load,” Musk tweeted.

We’re going to try to catch the Super Heavy Booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 30, 2020

If the plan works — and as Ars Technica notes, that’s a big “if” — Musk suggested in a later tweet that the Super Heavy may be ready for reuse within one hour since it’s landing on its own launch site.

Share The Load

Aside from a quicker turnaround time, using the launch tower to catch a Super Heavy booster would allow SpaceX to build the rocket to be lighter and therefore more efficient as a vehicle. Without using the tower, the booster would need to land on its own legs, which Ars Technica calculates would add about five to ten metric tons of weight.

In theory, it seems like a good way to lighten the load, but it remains to be seen whether SpaceX will be able to execute the idea without smashing its own tower in the process.

READ MORE: SpaceX may try to catch a falling rocket with a launch tower [Ars Technica]

More on SpaceX: SpaceX Just Reused a Single Booster for the 6th Time

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If you live in Florida and want to get your COVID-19 vaccine, you may find yourself watching Eventbrite as if you were trying to nab concert tickets before they sell out.

Florida’s state health department and the health departments of eight Florida counties have partnered with the event management site to schedule vaccination appointments, Motherboard reports. But the first-come-first-served appointment system is already reportedly causing problems, serving as an illustration of the lack of coordination in vaccine rollout across the board.

Part of the problem is that not everyone who needs a shot will be able to access the system, potentially leaving them behind. As it stands, only between 80 and 90 percent of the households in those counties have internet or broadband access, according to Motherboard. Those that don’t are primarily low-income or racial minority families, meaning the groups that have been hit hardest by the coronavirus may have the hardest time accessing the vaccine.

The use of Eventbrite also calls into question the security of the whole process. Motherboard notes that scalping could become an issue and that people might use bots to scoop up appointments before those who more urgently need their vaccine are able to secure their time slot. There’s no indication that’s happened yet, but it remains a distinct possibility.

Meanwhile, the appointments filled quickly. Brevard County, one of the counties using the Eventbrite system, offered vaccination appointments through January 29 and every single one is already booked.

And it’s not just Florida scraping together these first-come-first-serve systems. In the absence of a state-wide vaccine distribution plan, Cleveland County in Oklahoma is reportedly using a free, poorly-secured version of the event planning website SignUpGenius for its vaccination appointments.

Jesus Christ. Oklahoma doesn't even have a *statewide* rollout plan and is leaving it up to the counties to organize their own individual vaccine rollouts.

My county is using a free SignUpGenuis page to sign people up for vaccines—which has no verification or data security. pic.twitter.com/bjI7kC9pLP

— Kendall Brown (@kendallybrown) January 1, 2021

Neither Florida’s health department nor Eventbrite responded to Motherboard‘s requests for comment, so it remains unclear how vaccines will be given out to the vulnerable populations incapable of using the online ticketing service.

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Israeli biotech company Nanocare says it’s created a gun that can spin out “Spider-Man”-like webs that can cover burns and wounds, The Guardian reports.

The artificial skin being shot out of the company’s “Spincare Portable Wound System” allows patients to move around and shower, unlike bandages. It even allows health practitioners to watch the wound healing below, because it’s translucent.

While the technology, a technique called “electrospinning” that generates nano-fibers from a solution, has been around for a couple of years, the Spincare device is far smaller and much more mobile, Nanocare says. Its small size even allows it to be carried to a patient’s bedside.

Early reviews indicate that it could be a promising alternative to laborious and expensive bandages and dressings.

“You have this fine whitish thing on that’s fairly robust and seems to cope with most things,” Baljit Dheansa, a doctor in the UK who specializes in burns, told The Guardian, adding that it “does what it says on the tin.”

Spincare does seem to only work with surface wounds and burns and won’t be effective for deep burns, which affect all layers of the skin.

“With this kind of dressing, in the right circumstance, it just means the patient doesn’t have to learn about how to do dressings, and they are bit more flexible and don’t have to worry so much,” Dheansa said. “And sort of relax a bit more.”

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Reality Check

One of the most unusual speculations in the realm of science and tech is that the universe itself isn’t real.

Simulation theory, or the notion that our entire perceived reality is a virtual creation of some sophisticated alien — or future human — society, has a lot of support among big names like SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, and most recently a bunch of kids on TikTok.

But the idea is almost certainly nonsense, mathematician Jonathan Bartlett, director of a STEM research non-profit called The Blythe Institute, told Mind Matters News. Simulation theory, he argues, relies on faulty logic — meaning it’s more likely that we are in fact living in reality.

Stacking Turtles

To make his point, Bartlett considers the technology required to simulate physical reality in a virtual environment.

“I can make a model of atoms moving around, but it actually requires entire computers, which are all made of trillions of atoms, to make that simulation,” Bartlett told Mind Matter News. “And so you actually wind up with a space problem that you can’t simulate as much as you have reality. And so even if you could make a perfect simulation of reality, it would have to be a smaller reality than what you’re simulating it with.”

Logical Challenge

That becomes a problem for simulation theory’s argument that if any advanced civilization learns to simulate reality, we’d be more likely than not to live in a simulation because the simulated entities would eventually learn to do the same and create a string of simulations all the way down.

“There’s kind of a faulty logic that goes to why a lot of people think we live in a simulation,” Bartlett told Mind Matter News.

READ MORE: Jonathan Bartlett on Why We Do Not Live in a Simulated Universe [Mind Matters News]

More on simulation theory: Kids on TikTok Are Convinced We’re Living in a Simulation

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Mathematician: Here’s Why the Simulation Theory Is Stupid

Conspiracy theorists in Italy are sharing an image of a circuitry diagram they claim is a 5G chip that has been inserted into the COVID-19 vaccine.

Not surprisingly, the theory is nonsense.

And as it turns out, as Boing Boing points out, the diagram is the schematic of a popular electric guitar pedal by music gear maker Boss. So if it were in the vaccine, which it’s not, it would absolutely shred.

Here in Italy people started to share this figure claiming that this is the diagram of the 5G chip that has been inserted in the covid vaccine.

In reality it is the electric circuit of a guitar pedal and I believe that putting it in the covid vaccine has been an excellent idea pic.twitter.com/qXKnv7VVly

— Mario Fusco (@mariofusco) December 28, 2020

A tweet by open source advocate and Red Hat project lead Mario Fusco first shed light on the extremely dumb theory.

“In reality it is the electric circuit of a guitar pedal and I believe that putting it in the COVID vaccine has been an excellent idea,” Fusco wrote.

“I bet when they found out they were all, ‘Wah! Wah!'” Twitter user Craig Cowling quipped.

It’s unclear how widely the image was shared on social media, but the unintentionally hilarious post is symptomatic of a much larger — and more serious — problem.

Throughout the pandemic, coronavirus conspiracies and misinformation have circulated widely online. The World Health Organization even had to create an entire webpage dedicated to the most common ones, including phony remedies such as taking a hot bath or eating garlic.

The French ministry of health even had to declare in March that “no, cocaine does NOT protect against COVID-19,” in a post on Twitter.

In case you’re wondering, the BOSS Metal Zone MT-2 guitar pedal provides “incredible-sounding distortion pedal” and is “a must-have pedal for any hard rock or metal guitarist,” according to the company.

The post This Might Be the Dumbest Vaccine Conspiracy Theory We’ve Ever Seen appeared first on Futurism.

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Students at the University of California in San Diego are now able to get a coronavirus test kit from a vending machine, local LA news station KTLA5 reports.

The machines are part of a program in which students and employees will be provided with free tests. The university will cover the cost, but students will have to complete daily symptom and exposure screenings.

Twenty vending machines containing the kits were installed in early December in an attempt to get ahead of any potential outbreaks. Testing is meant for both the symptomatic and asymptomatic.

Remote-only students are also encouraged to take part in free testing twice a month, according to the university’s website.

Anybody who doesn’t complete their test “for more than 16 days will be referred to the Student Conduct Office for the progressive discipline process.”

According to KTLA 5, UC San Diego will also test samples of wastewater outflow for signs of the coronavirus.

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Carb Loading

A team of scientists took pandemic baking to a new level — by using their doughy creations as a scaffold for lab-grown human cells.

“It seemed like a fitting project for these times,” lead author and University of Ottawa researcher Andrew Pelling told New Scientist.

The project, shared on the preprint server BioRxiv, sounds like a bit of a stunt. But if the cells end up being viable for use, using bread as a scaffold instead of collagen could drive down the cost of medical treatments and even lab-grown meat.

Sláinte!

Pelling and his team tried several different breads to see what worked best with the cells. Many of their early attempts — as well as any gluten-free recipes — resulted in what New Scientist characterized as a “soggy mess.”

But the scientists’ luck changed when they tried out Irish soda bread. After baking the soda bread, sterilizing it with alcohol, and then chemically treating it to reinforce its structure, the team found that human muscle, skin, and bone cells were able to cling on and proliferate.

“It’s remarkable to me how human and animal cells have this capacity to grow in really odd, artificial environments,” Pelling told New Scientist.

Get That Bread

So far, Pelling knows that the cells can grow on bread. What he doesn’t yet know is whether those cells will be remotely useful to lab-grown meat manufacturers or clinicians.

“While there are still many studies needed to determine if bread is a viable scaffold,” Worcester Polytechnic Institute researcher Glenn Gaudette, who didn’t work on the study, told New Scientist, “this innovative thinking by Pelling can help push the field in new directions.”

READ MORE: Home baking frenzy inspires tissue scaffold for growing human muscle [New Scientist]

More on lab-grown cells: Scientists Grow Mini Human Livers, Transplant Them Into Rats

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