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Jun 22, 2021

7 mysteries about Venus that could soon be solved

Posted by in category: space

NASA and the European Space Agency recently announced the approval of three new missions to explore Venus.


How did this scorching planet evolve to be so different than its sister, Earth? 3 NASA and ESA missions are beginning the search for answers.

Jun 22, 2021

A Hardware Engineer Built A Self-Balancing Autonomous Bicycle /

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

I think there is actually a company that makes something similar to this.


The self-balancing bike is a reminder of the incredibly creative projects that students and young recently graduated engineers can come up with — another recent example is an all-electric monowheel built by a group of Duke University students.

Continue reading “A Hardware Engineer Built A Self-Balancing Autonomous Bicycle /” »

Jun 22, 2021

A CCTV Company Pays Remote Supervisors to Monitor Employees

Posted by in categories: security, surveillance

Live Eye Surveillance, a Seattle-based company, takes it to the next level and provides security systems to convenience stores like 7-Eleven; it employs “remote supervisors” who are real people sitting miles away behind the surveillance cameras, monitoring all activity captured by the tools.


Employers are using various surveillance technologies to track employee movement and interactions, and now 7-Eleven stores are involved in the game.

Continue reading “A CCTV Company Pays Remote Supervisors to Monitor Employees” »

Jun 22, 2021

Experimental brain implant instantly detects and relieves pain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, neuroscience

Researchers from the New York University School of Medicine have developed a brain implant designed to detect pain sensations in real-time and deliver bursts of pain-relieving stimulation. The device is still deeply experimental but a new proof of concept study demonstrates it working effectively in rodent models.

In the world of brain implants the chasm between science fiction and reality is still quite vast. Apart from some exciting human tests showing paralyzed individuals with implants regaining a sense of touch or controlling computers with their mind, most research in the field is still nascent.

Animal tests have demonstrated incremental technological advances, such as pigs broadcasting neural activity or monkeys playing Pong. Now, an interface that can detect pain signals in one part of the brain and immediately respond with stimulation to another part of the brain targeted to relieve that pain has been developed.

Jun 22, 2021

Russia Wants To Send A Nuclear-Powered Spacecraft To Jupiter This Decade

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, satellites

Russia is planning to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to the grand gas giant of the Solar System, Jupiter, in 2030.

Roscosmos, Russia’s federal space agency, announced the plan for the mammoth 50-month journey last week. The journey will take it on a mini tour of the Solar System, taking pit stops around the Moon and Venus, dropping off spacecraft along its way, before heading on to Jupiter.

More specifically, a “space tug” with a nuclear-based transport and energy module dubbed Zeus will head towards the Moon where a spacecraft will separate from it. It will then pass by Venus to perform a gravity assist maneuver and drop off another spacecraft, before venturing towards Jupiter and one of its satellites.

Jun 22, 2021

SpaceX’s Starlink expects it can provide global coverage around September

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, internet, satellites

SYDNEY, June 22 (Reuters) — Starlink, the satellite internet unit of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, expects to be able to provide continuous global coverage by around September but will then need to seek regulatory approvals, its president Gwynne Shotwel said on Tuesday.

“We’ve successfully deployed 1800 or so satellites and once all those satellites reach their operational orbit, we will have continuous global coverage, so that should be like September timeframe,” she told a Macquarie Group (MQG.AX) technology conference via webcast.

“But then we have regulatory work to go into every country and get approved to provide telecoms services.”

Jun 22, 2021

An Inconstant Hubble Constant? New Research Suggests Fix to Cosmological Cornerstone

Posted by in category: space

More than 90 years ago, astronomer Edwin Hubble observed the first hint of the rate at which the universe expands, called the Hubble constant.

Almost immediately, astronomers began arguing about the actual value of this constant, and over time, realized that there was a discrepancy in this number between early universe observations and late universe observations.

Early in the universe’s existence, light moved through plasma — there were no stars yet — and from oscillations similar to sound waves created by this, scientists deduced that the Hubble constant was about 67. This means the universe expands about 67 kilometers per second faster every 3.26 million light-years.

Jun 22, 2021

Studies suggest finding automatic ways to spot fake news may be more complicated than anticipated

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Clickbait headlines might not be as enticing to readers as once thought, according to a team of researchers. They added that artificial intelligence—AI—may also come up short when it comes to correctly determining whether a headline is clickbait.

In a series of studies, the researchers found that clickbait—headlines that often rely on linguistic gimmicks to tempt readers to read further—often did not perform any better and, in some cases, performed worse than traditional headlines.

Because fake news is a concern on , researchers have explored using AI to systematically identify and block clickbait. However, the studies also suggest that identifying fake news with may be even more complicated than anticipated, said S. Shyam Sundar, James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory.

Jun 22, 2021

Ex-Im Bank finances SpaceX launch deal

Posted by in categories: finance, satellites

The Export-Import Bank of the U.S. has arranged financing for the SpaceX launch of a Hispasat satellite, the first space deal it has done in six years.


WASHINGTON — The Export-Import Bank of the United States has arranged financing for the SpaceX launch of a Hispasat satellite, the first space deal the bank has done in six years.

Ex-Im announced June 21 that it approved $80.7 million in financing for a Falcon 9 launch of a Hispasat satellite, Amazonas Nexus, as well as launch and initial in-orbit insurance. The bank said the financing will be in the form of either a direct loan or a loan guarantee.

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Jun 22, 2021

Mysteries of Epigenetics: There’s More to Genes Than DNA

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Biologists in the UK and Austria have discovered 71 new imprinted genes in the mouse genome.

Biologists at the Universities of Bath and Vienna have discovered 71 new ‘imprinted’ genes in the mouse genome, a finding that takes them a step closer to unraveling some of the mysteries of epigenetics – an area of science that describes how genes are switched on (and off) in different cells at different stages in development and adulthood.

To understand the importance of imprinted genes to inheritance, we need to step back and ask how inheritance works in general. Most of the thirty trillion cells in a person’s body contain genes that come from both their mother and father, with each parent contributing one version of each gene. The unique combination of genes goes part of the way to making an individual unique. Usually, each gene in a pair is equally active or inactive in a given cell. This is not the case for imprinted genes. These genes – which make up less than one percent of the total of 20000+ genes – tend to be more active (sometimes much more active) in one parental version than the other.