NEW SHEPARD FLIES AGAIN, BRINGING SUBORBITAL SPACE TOURISM CLOSER
Sunday’s flight was Blue Origin’s eighth overall launch of the New Shepard system and the second time this particular spacecraft and booster have flown. They last flew in December. It is believed that this capsule, the third one built by the company, will undergo extensive testing before crew flights begin in the fourth vehicle. Source: arstechnica.com
ARCHAEOLOGISTS INVESTIGATE WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE AFTER DARK IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
A few years ago, when we began thinking about the night lives of our ancestors, we found little academic work on the subject. The more we thought about the nocturnal, whether it was during the Paleolithic (which co-author April Nowell studies), or during Classic Maya times (which co-author Nancy Gonlin researches), the more we realized that very little research had been explicitly conducted on it. That is when we embarked on the process, with the assistance of many of our fellow archaeologists, of putting together the book Archaeology of the Night (2018), which we co-edited.
Read moreAN API JOURNEY: FROM IDEA TO DEPLOYMENT THE AGILE WAY
The goal of this series of posts is to describe a proposed approach for an agile API delivery process. It will cover not only the development part but also the design, the tests, the delivery, and the management in production. You will learn how to use mocking to speed up development and break dependencies, use the contract-first approach for defining tests that will harden your implementation, protect the exposed API through a management gateway and, finally, secure deliveries using a CI/CD pipeline.
Read moreWHAT TECH CALLS “AI” ISN’T REALLY AI
First, the problem itself is poorly defined: what do you mean by intelligence? Nature, with all her blind hideous strength, endless experimentation and wild wastes of infinite time, has only managed the trick once (by our narrow definition), with one species of tree-ape on a rolling green world. Even if you believe there’s intelligent biological life elsewhere, the stats aren’t promising. Eternity had forever to crack the code. We have minds, but less patience.
Read moreSCOTTISH ISLAND EXPERIMENT COULD MAKE SCOTLAND WORLD AUTOMATION LEADER
According to Glasgow Provan MSP Ivan McKee, Scotland could become a leader in automation by mounting a full-scale island experiment to test the technologies of the future. The Scottish Government should make a “moon shot statement”, he told the Sunday Herald, and pledge to transform one of its communities with tech advances like self-driving cars and economic redesigns such as introducing a citizen’s income.
Read moreBLUE LIGHT LIKE THAT FROM SMARTPHONES LINKED TO SOME CANCERS, STUDY FINDS
The researchers found that those exposed to high levels of outdoor blue light at night had around a 1.5-fold higher risk of developing breast cancer and a twofold higher risk of developing prostate cancer, compared with those who were less exposed. Men exposed to high levels of indoor artificial light also had 2.8-fold higher risk of developing prostate cancer, according to the study.
Read moreLOST IN MATH: BEAUTY != TRUTH
In Lost in Math, Hossenfelder delves briefly into the history of particle physics in order to explain the success of the Standard Model of particles and forces. She touches on why we’ve not had any unexplainable data from experimental particle physics for the last 50 years. She then takes us on a tour of the data that make us think we should be looking for physics that is not explained by the Standard Model—dark matter, dark energy, and cosmic inflation.
Read moreCLOUDS OF ATOMS, VIBRATING MIRRORS SHOW THEIR QUANTUM SIDE
To say the quantum world is unintuitive is a staggering understatement. Particles end up in more than one place at a time, and the instances interact with each other. Decisions made after a photon has traversed an obstacle course determine the path it took through it. Entangled quantum objects can be in separate galaxies, yet measuring one will instantly set the fate of the second. Obviously, things like this don’t take place in the world of our common experience.
Read moreMOTORIST WHO SAT IN PASSENGER SEAT OF TESLA ON UK MOTORWAY BANNED FOR 18 MONTHS
Bhavesh Patel, 39, was spotted by a passing driver in the passenger seat with his hands behind his head as his wife’s £70,000 Tesla S 60 sped along the congested M1 motorway at 40mph. Source: co.uk
HOW MIRROR NEURONS AFFECT THE EXPERIENCE OF FANDOM
You won’t have seen it on the podium, but the human brain’s mirror neuron system could have medaled at this year’s Olympic Games, or basically any sporting event with an audience. The mirror neuron system is a network of neurons that activates both when you watch someone do something and when you do it yourself, and it turns out to be an important part of the subjective experience of being a fan.
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