Curiosity’s drill bit slammed into the surface over the weekend, but it didn’t rotate, so it wasn’t really drilling. It just proved that it can breach a rock’s surface and expose its interior. This is called a “drill-on-rock checkout,” and it’s designed to use the hammer part of the hammer-drill action. This will assure engineers that the percussion mechanism and all the controls work properly and are properly tuned, NASA says....
MagicPlaylist For MagicPlaylist, all you need is a song: Plug it into the web app, and get a playlist full of similar music out at the other end. Start typing into the search box at the top of the home page to find that your track of choice shows up way before you’ve finished or got to inputting the artist. Once you’ve found your song, you’ll get your results back—a smattering of tracks from the same artist, plus a selection of others that MagicPlaylist thinks you’ll like based on your original selection, all courtesy of Spotify’s algorithms....
The famous Eisenhower Tree, on the 17th hole of the Augusta National Golf Club, was the bane of President Eisenhower. He hit it so many times while playing that he asked the club to cut it down. To avoid offending the president, the club’s chairman abruptly adjourned the meeting, rather than reject his request. (In 2014, the late president finally got his wish when an ice storm damaged the tree so badly, it had to be removed....
The idea behind putting the device on the ship is for the Navy to have a way to fabricate metal parts it might need at sea. Here’s how it works. It reaches a temp of 1,562 degrees The printer, called the ElemX, is made by Xerox. It measures 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall, and will remain in its roughly 20-foot-long conex storage box while deployed on the Essex....
It is changing its social feed and expanding its privacy controls. Most notably, the app is getting rid of its global social feed, which showed payments posts from people you weren’t friends with. Users will also be able to hide their own accounts from public discovery. The company put out a statement on July 20 saying that the new updates will become available to users in the coming weeks. “Venmo has always been social at its core, designed to be a place where friends can split and share payments and experiences,” the company says....
For better or worse, companies are forging ahead with a procession of new metaverse-related products (whether we want them or not) both at and beyond the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show. Here’s a lowdown of who’s making moves into the mirrorworld. First off, fashion and beauty companies are selling visions of metaverse makeovers, in which avatars get dressed up and dolled up. Luxury brands like Gucci, Balenciaga and Burberry have been sketching and planning digital fits to adorn digital users....
Autoblog
Made by Estonia’s Milrem Robotics, the Multiscope Rescue Hydra was on display at the SOFINS special forces exhibition outside Bordeaux in France. The exhibition ran the last week of June, and caters specifically to the military units tasked with missions that fall outside the usual purview of traditional forces. Fighting fires isn’t a specific military billet, but it fits under the broader umbrella of tasks the military has to do in addition to the work of war....
What we considered to be short-term exposure we must now call medium-term exposure. Given this is a new phenomenon, we don’t know for sure what prolonged exposure to bushfire smoke could mean for future health. But here’s what air pollution and health data can tell us about the sorts of harms we might be looking at. Short-term effects We know poor air quality is having immediate effects, from irritated eyes and throats, to more serious incidents requiring hospital admission—particularly for people with existing respiratory and heart conditions....
Although most pathogens don’t go on to fuel pandemics like the novel coronavirus did, it’s all too common for diseases to travel from animals into people. These illnesses, known as zoonotic diseases, can spread rapidly because people have no prior immunity to them. Now, scientists are taking a sweeping look at zoonotic viruses and what causes them to spill over into people, and some key patterns directly related to human actions have come into view....
“Many companies are motivated,” Kelley Kizzier, vice president for Global Climate at Environmental Defense Fund, said in a press call last week. “They are getting more and more pressure from their own customers to have ambitious climate goals. I think this is one of the amazing things that’s emerged in the last few years.” Throughout the years there have been multiple policies to incentivize large companies or countries to slim down their footprints over time....
Fifty years later, the liquid is a deep amber color and the smoke aroma is gone; the bright fruit notes have matured into richer baked fruit notes; there are toffee, honey, caramel, and chocolate characteristics; and there is a tannic dryness to the finish. Much of the initial alcohol has evaporated over the half-century in the barrel, leaving a mere 100 bottles available for sale- at $25,000 a pop. Whisky (and any other spirit, but we’ll stick to whisky for the sake of this discussion) is influenced by the environment inside the barrel, compounds in the wood, especially where it has been charred on the interior, and even the environment where the barrel is stored....
As a cognitive neuroscientist, I study how the brain processes thoughts and emotions. I used to focus on sensation-seeking behavior, which involves people pursuing risky activities to get a thrilling reward. In 2015, a journalist heard about my work with daredevils and suggested I test the brain of free-solo climber Alex Honnold, who scales cliffs—such as Yosemite National Park’s 3,000-foot-high El Capitan—without ropes. I would describe him as a super-sensation seeker, but he’s also conscientious; he climbs with intention and thought, as opposed to an impulsive adrenaline junkie....
In the modern West, we no longer fret over night ambush by saber-toothed tigers, but we still squirm in the dark. “After thousands of years,” wrote Annie Dillard, “we’re still strangers to darkness, fearful aliens in an enemy camp, with arms crossed over our chests.” I have many times been disquieted by darkness. In childhood games of sardines, hiding in the corner of my father’s closet, my heart thumping. In the bush in Australia, getting up to pee without a flashlight, losing sight of the tent, stumbling through the dark, thinking of packs of dingoes....
In some ways, an early 20th century event doesn’t provide a great analogue to how a modern disease might evolve. 100 years ago we didn’t have widespread air travel, nor did we have antibiotics, which can’t treat a virus but can help with the infections that often accompany respiratory diseases (and cause many of the deaths in a viral outbreak). 100 years ago, we didn’t even know what viruses were....
Despite the many benefits to owning an e-bike, the average price of one is quite high; resting between $2,000 and $3,000, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But with a little work, you can convert your existing non-electric bicycle into an e-bike, allowing you to reap the same benefits for a fraction of the cost. Pedal-assist sensor: Detects when you’re pedaling, and turns on the electric motor after it detects a predetermined level of pedaling intensity....
New York State Assembly member Zohran Kwame Mamdani posted a lengthy Twitter thread in June to explain why he introduced the bill to the Assembly, writing: “Every day across NYC, cyclists like myself go head to head with cars in bike lanes—an incredibly scary and dangerous experience.” In one of the tweets, he included a video of a cyclist being confronted by a driver trying to use the lane, who then spat on the cyclist when she refused to yield to the car....
Then there’s Tesla, which believes vision-based image recognition using only cameras is the key to affordable and reliable autonomy. But there’s a catch to Tesla’s method: perfecting vision-based autonomy is difficult. It requires the use of a continuously improving system that can quickly adapt to new and changing road conditions, and then it must be capable of sharing that information with other vehicles on the roadway. That kind of learning takes significantly more processing power than what is available in a single vehicle—it takes a supercomputer....
