ZZZ

If your house caught fire in the middle of the night, you’d want to wake up to deal with that emergency, right?

In a new prescription sleeping pill study published this week in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, half of the study participants slept through a fire alarm as loud as someone vacuuming next to their bed. Researchers from Kagoshima University, Japan estimated that millions of people taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien and Halcion would sleep through a fire alarm. They propose that a new class of hypnotic drug might be used as an alternative which would function like a sleeping pill while still allowing the brain to wake up during an emergency.

DORA The Hypnotic Drug

The most widely prescribed type of sleeping pills, benzodiazepines, are really effective at getting the brain into “sleep mode”. Unfortunately, they act as a sort of blanket, suppressing areas of the brain that they don’t need to. That includes the area of the brain that decides which external information, such as noises in the night, to pay attention to.

Over the past decade scientists have been developing a new class of hypnotic drugs called dual orexin receptor antagonists (DORAs). DORAs more selectively target the brain’s sleep/wake pathways making them a safer alternative to benzodiazepines while also leaving the user with a reduced hangover-like affect these drugs can cause.

Wake-up Call

When tested in lab mice, those that had been given the benzodiazepine triazolam were slower to rouse than those given DORA-22 when presented with the sounds of a fox, a serious threat to a mouse. Better still, once the danger had passed the mice given DORA-22 fell back asleep as fast as the mice that had been given a sleeping pill, and significantly faster than mice that hadn’t been given anything at all.

More human testing is needed in order to show DORAs have potential applications as sleep aids. Since 2014, a DORA called surovexant has gained regulatory approval in Japan, the USA and Australia. High costs and limited clinical testing of surovexant have stymied its use but new types of DORAs currently in development could some day offer better results at a lower cost.

READ MORE: Millions on prescription sleeping pills would sleep through a fire alarm [EurekAlert]

More on Sleep: Here’s How Sleeping Too Little Literally Transforms Your Brain

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A New Class of Drugs Could Make Safer Sleeping Pills

Antibiotic Bust

The world faces a potential antibiotic crisis. A lack of new antibiotic drugs combined with increasing amounts of antibiotic resistant bacteria is setting the stage for a potential pandemic. The calamitous potential has researchers trying all kinds of ways to develop new drugs. From super enzymes to synthetic microbes… heck, even AI has been thrown into the ring.

Now, researchers at the University of Washington-Madison and at the University of California, San Francisco are taking a new approach by repurposing the gene-editing tool CRISPR to study which genes are targeted by particular antibiotics. By observing how antibiotics interact with genes, the researchers hope to find clues to improve existing medicines or develop new ones.

Cover Up

CRISPR is a tool used to edit DNA by slicing out one segment of genes and inserting a new one while the cell is repairing. The new system, developed by UW-Madison professor Jason Peters uses a somewhat modified technique. “Most people, when they think about CRISPR, think about gene editing,” said Peters.

But Peters and team employed a modified version of the technique known as Mobile-CRISPRi. A sort of defanged form of CRISPR, CRISPRi is engineered not to be able to slice DNA but instead sits on top of it blocking off proteins that would otherwise activate certain genes. By selectively blocking different genes the researchers are able to reduce the amount of proteins produced from those genes. They found that if they decreased the amount of protein targeted by an antibiotic, bacteria became much more sensitive to lower levels of the drug. Other researchers could replicate this in order to gather data on thousands of genes at a time.

Clip on, Clip off

The Mobile-CRISPRi system is very versatile and easy to use. By exploiting a form of bacterial sex called conjugation, CRISPRi can be easily introduced to different types of bacteria. Peters and team demonstrated this by applying CRISPRi to lab-grown E. Coli bacteria and also a much less commonly encountered kind of bacteria called V. casei which they collected from a rind of French cheese. In both cases the CRISPRi easily adhered to the bacteria’s genetic information.

Peters is offering up Mobile-CRISPRi to other researchers to study their germs of choice. “So now it’s going to be completely available to the community,” said Peters. “Now this gives people a path forward.”

READ MORE: Gene-editing tool CRISPR repurposed to develop better antibiotics [EurekAlert]

More on New Antibiotics: There’s a new antibiotic in town, and we can create it in the lab

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Researchers Repurposed CRISPR to Help Develop Better Antibiotics

No More Handouts

Every unprofitable coal mine in the European Union must cease production by the first day of 2019, the date on which all public funds for the mines will come to an end. In Spain, that means that 26 coal mines are about to close up shop, according to Reuters.

This move away from coal is a refreshing bit of bluntness — letting the failed remnants of a fossil fuel industry fade away — compared to how the federal government in the U.S. is grasping at anything to keep coal alive. But it remains to be seen how much of an impact the coal closures will have in the ongoing effort to curb climate change.

Always a Bigger Fish

The deadline was set back in 2010 as the EU sought to move away from fossil fuel dependence, according to Telesur. The EU wanted to end public aid to coal mines sooner, but groups from Germany — which shuttered its last coal mine earlier this month — and Spain are responsible for extending the deadline all the way to the end of 2018.

Spain has already decreased the portion of its electricity generated by coal down to about 14 percent, according to United Press International. And 90 percent of the coal burned in Spain is imported from Russia and Colombia anyway.

Still, the deal that Spain struck with the EU dictates that nine of the 15 coal-burning plants in Spain must close by 2020, according to Telesur. That on its own is huge news for the transition to cleaner power, and marks a clear sign that major world powers are taking their responsibility to help prevent our impending climate change catastrophe seriously.

Think Ahead

Once again in stark contrast to the U.S., where coal miners in Appalachia face a weak job market with few prospects, Spain’s socialist government — largely supported by coal mining communities — made a deal with mining union in October to ensure that displaced workers will be taken care of, according to Reuters.

About 60 percent of the people who worked in closing mines are expected to take advantage of an early retirement offer, while others have access to the 250 million euros that the government is making available to help launch new businesses or repurpose the land around the coal mines.

The headline of this story has been updated.

READ MORE: Spanish coal miners work last shifts before mines shuttered [Reuters]

More on coal: More Than 40 Percent of the World’s Coal Plants Lose Money

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Spain Shuts Down 26 Unprofitable Coal Mines

Shell Game

New calculations suggest that Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus could have active tidal waves, much like those here on Earth, under their thick icy shells — and that could be increase the potential of finding extraterrestrial life on either moon.

“I can imagine organisms anchored to the sea floor or the ice benefiting from these waves,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Steven Vance told New Scientist of the new findings. “If these standing waves do occur, maybe these spots where they focus are also focal points for life.”

New Wave

The new research in the journal Icarus comes out of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, where scientists calculated how the enormous gravitational pull from Jupiterand Saturn— the most massive planets in the solar system — would affect the liquid water under the icy shells of Europa and Enceladus, two of the planets’ moons.

Scientists have long been interested in the dark oceans of these moons as a potential home for life beyond Earth, so the promise of tidal waves under their ice is an exciting finding — it could give a way, Vance told New Scientist, for nutrients and energy to flow between the moons’ cores and shells.

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The Moons of Jupiter and Saturn Could Have Earth-Like Tidal Waves

Space Butt-Dial

We’ve all been butt-dialed. But have you ever considered what would happen if you punched in the wrong number while orbiting around Earth? Houston, we’ve got a problem.

In a new radio interview with Dutch public broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, Netherlands astronaut André Kuipers recalled how he accidentally ended up calling American emergency services while on board the International Space Station (ISS).

Intergalactic Operator Please

Kuipers explained that phone calls from the ISS are routed through NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

“If you’re in space, it’s like you’re making a call via Houston, first you dial the 9 for an outside line, and then 011 for an international line,” Kuipers tells NOS, according to Google Translate. “I made a mistake. The next day I received an email message: did you call 911?”

Expect Delays

While there’s a longer-than-usual delay of data transfer from Earth to the ISS, long-distance phone calls are readily available to crew members, NASA Flight Director Holly Ridings told Space Answers in a 2013 interview. Thanks to the immense distance the signal has to travel from Earth via a relay satellite and then to the ISS, there’s a bit of a delay — but usually still less than a second.

But if there were a real emergency on the space station, the astronauts would have to deal with it themselves. Emergency services on Earth are way too far away.

READ MORE: Astronaut accidentally calls 911 from space [Newsweek]

More on living on board the ISS: A Day on — The ISS Edition

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An Astronaut Accidentally Dialed 911 in Space

Distant Flyby

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of the Kuiper Belt object known as Ultima Thule on Jan 1, making it the most distant object ever visited by a human spacecraft. New Horizons collected about 7 gigabytes of data during its brief flyby, including pictures, spectrometer readings, and radio signals.

And now the first pieces of the puzzle are coming in.

In a live stream, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft team revealed new details about Ultima Thule, a space rock that’s only 23 miles (37 kilometers) across, and floating some 4.1 billion miles (6.6 kilometers) away from Earth.

NASA scientists were puzzled by mysterious light signatures of the oddly-shaped space rock, but new data collected by New Horizons gives us a much clearer look:

The “Snowman”

The New Horizons team also gave Ultima Thule the whimsical nickname “the Snowman,” and dubbed the two halves “Ultima” and “Thule.”

We don’t know much about why it’s this shape, but we can make some educated guesses: rotating cloud of small rocks could start to spin around each other, two of which could start getting closer and closer, until they finally touch — not colliding but slowly pressing into each other — forming a “bi-lobed object,” as NASA’s New Horizons Co-Investigator Jeff Moore put it.

“This coming together of lobes would be at an extremely slow speed,” Moore said. “It’d be about maybe one or a few miles an hour — the speed at which you might park your car at a parking space.”

Big Bang Time Machine

So why all this excitement about a tiny space rock only 37 kilometers across? It could help us answer some of the most fundamental questions about the creation of the solar system.

“Think of New Horizons as time machine that has brought us back to the very beginning of the solar system, to a place where we can observe the most primordial building blocks of the planets,” Moore said.

THIS is #UltimaThule.

The image taken by @NASANewHorizons – shown in its original version (left) & sharpened version (on right) – is the most detailed image of the farthest object ever explored by a spacecraft. https://t.co/gItPsMvbPC @NASA pic.twitter.com/i7rDBURNrw

— Johns Hopkins APL (@JHUAPL) January 2, 2019

READ MORE: New Horizons Successfully Explores Ultima Thule [NASA]

More on Ultima Thule: New Horizons Will Fly Past the Most Distant Object We’ve Ever Visited

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It’s Evolution, Baby

Planetary solar systems like our own don’t just pop into the universe fully formed — instead they evolve from a ring of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disk, which surrounds an early-stage star, or protostar.

Now, astronomers using observations from the ALMA radio observatory in Chile have found a protostar unlike any other observed in the universe. The protostar, named L1527, is very young and has a “warped disk” that doesn’t lie on a single astronomical plane — and it could lead to a better understanding of both the universe and our own solar system.

Out of Line

The planets in a solar system typically orbit on a single plane that lines up with the equator of the system’s star.

However, astronomers have observed exceptions to this rule — solar systems with planets on multiple planes or on a single plane that isn’t aligned with the star’s equator. The planets in our own solar system, for example, orbit on planes as much as seven degrees off from the Sun’s equator.

Astronomers speculated that this could be due to some warping of the protoplanetary disk when the system was young, and recent research bolstered that speculation. However, they still didn’t know how early in a protostar’s formation disk warping could take place.

But L1527 is changing that.

Baby Star

In a study published on Monday in the journal Nature, researchers from RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research and Japan’s Chiba University detail their discovery of L1527, a protostar with a warped disk consisting of two parts, each rotating on a different plane.

What’s exciting about this is L1527’s age. It’s just tens of thousands of years old — an infant in star terms.

“This observation shows that it is conceivable that the misalignment of planetary orbits can be caused by a warp structure formed in the earliest stages of planetary formation,” researcher Nami Sakai said in a press release.

Keep Looking

The scientists will need to do more research to figure out what may have caused this warping and determine whether L1527 is an anomaly or merely one of many similar protostars.

Thankfully, L1527 is located just 450 light years away from Earth, and its disk is positioned in a way that makes observation easy, meaning the infant star could teach us more about our solar system — and the universe — in the not-so-distant future.

READ MORE: Early Protostar Already Has a Warped Disk [RIKEN]

More on protoplanetary disks: Beautiful New Images Show Clouds of Dust Forming Into Planets

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Astronomers Find First-of-Its-Kind Protostar With a “Warped” Disk

Doomsday

If a killer asteroid were on course to collide with the Earth, it could be a planet-scale disaster. Just look at what happened to the dinosaurs.

To determine whether Earth’s space agencies would have any chance of deterring that sort of catastrophe, an upcoming NASA mission will smash a probe into a distant asteroid at an astonishing 13,500 mph (21,000 kilometers per hour).

If the mission is successful, it’ll produce an astonishing space collision — and signal an historic breakthrough in planetary defense.

Armageddon

NASA named the mission Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART — an acronym that acknowledges the delicate aim required to collide with an asteroid called Didymoon at extraordinary speed.

The idea, DART team member and Johns Hopkins planetary scientist Nancy Chabot told Space.com earlier this month in December, is that the probe’s extreme velocity could cause a small change in the killer ‘roid’s direction, sending it off course years before impact.

“To do something like this, we’d also need a really long warning time; the idea of a kinetic impactor is definitely not like [the movie] ‘Armageddon,’ where you go up at the last hour and you know, save the Earth,” Chabot said. “This is something that you would do five, 10, 15, 20 years in advance — gently nudge the asteroid so it just sails merrily on its way and doesn’t impact the Earth.”

Deep Impact

The current plan is to launch the DART probe in 2020 or 2021 so that it smashes into the asteroid in 2022. Several years later, a follow–up mission headed by the Italian space agency will study the damage and look for any change in the space rock’s trajectory.

“That’s one of the big differences, is a lot of the science-driven missions seem to be focused on understanding the past of the solar system,” Chabot told Space.com. “Planetary defense is really about the present solar system and what are we going to do in the present.”

READ MORE: Humanity Will Slam a Spacecraft into an Asteroid in a Few Years to Help Save Us All [Space.com]

More on killer asteroids: Retired Astronaut: NASA Left Earth Defenseless Against Asteroids

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NASA Scientist: Asteroid Deflection Mission Not Like “Armageddon”

Wrong Way

University of Glasgow engineers are about to embark on a three-week journey to Antarctica where they’ll study the bedrock hidden deep beneath the continent’s ice sheet and try to better understand the world’s changing climate.

Coming with them is a light, high-power drill that will help them reach and collect those rocks — a piece of heavy machinery they originally built with UK Space Agency funding to be used by rovers digging beneath the surface of Mars.

Reuse, Recycle

Just like flexible solar arrays, the Glasgow drill is the latest in a long line of research projects and gizmos that were built for space but ended up adding immense value to life — and science — back here on Earth.

In particular, the University of Glasgow engineers built a drill that could generate enough downward force to dig in microgravity while still being small enough to pack on the long flight to Mars. Coincidentally, that also makes it small enough to lug around Antarctica during the trip, which is scheduled to begin Thursday.

Rocky Road

This upcoming mission to Antarctica is part test run and part climate study. With the help of their new drill, scientists will be able to collect samples of the rock hidden away beneath Antarctica’s ice.

Once those rocks are back in the lab, scientists will use them to determine how long ago the bedrock last saw the sun — helping them map out the history of Antarctica’s ever-changing ice landscape.

READ MORE: MARTIAN DRILL SET FOR ANTARCTIC CLIMATE MISSION [University of Glasgow]

More on Antarctica: A NEW MAP OF ANTARCTICA IS DETAILED ENOUGH TO SEE A CAR PARKED ON AN ICE SHELF

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A Drill Built for Mars Will Probe Antarctic Bedrock

Happy New Year?

2019 is not off to a great start for Tesla.

The federal tax credit U.S. customers receive for buying one of Tesla’s electric vehicles (EVs) dropped from $7,500 to $3,750 on Tuesday. To compensate, Tesla cut the price of all its vehicles by $2,000.

While the move may please customers, shareholders are apparently less than thrilled: Tesla’s stock fell by more than 9 percent Wednesday morning — a sign that Tesla could be in for another tumultuous year.

Good…

Based on the state of Tesla’s stock, one might think 2018 ended terribly for the company, but it actually had a solid fourth quarter. According to a press release, Tesla produced 86,555 EVs and delivered 90,700 in Q4 — an 8 percent increase over the company’s previous records in both categories.

And the year as a whole went well, too. Tesla delivered more than 350,000 EVs in 2018, a nearly three-fold increase over the previous year, prompting the company to note in the press release that its “achievements in 2018 likely represent the biggest single-year growth in the history of the automotive industry.”

But Not Good Enough

The issue is that, while these figures do show positive growth, investors were expecting more.

“Tesla disappointed the market,” Frank Schwope, an analyst with NORD/LB, told Reuters. “The deliveries are below our estimates and the consensus estimates.”

The price cut is also an issue for investors, according to Craig Irwin, an analyst with Roth Capital Partners. With it, Tesla confirmed that it relied at least partially on that $7,500 credit to encourage sales — and that’s not something investors want to hear.

“The price cut is what’s driving the stock lower,” he told Reuters, “as it openly acknowledges the sunset of subsidy dollars is a material headwind.”

Ultimately, Tesla is just two days into 2019, and Schwope is already predicting another rough year ahead: “I don’t expect that Tesla operates in the black in 2019.”

READ MORE: Tesla Shares Dive After Price Cut, Production Numbers [Reuters]

More on Tesla: The Tesla Tax Credit Is Going Away, but Elon Musk Has It Covered

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Climbing Numbers

Norway just hit a major milestone on its mission to stop selling gas-powered vehicles by 2025. Over the entire course of 2018, 31.2 percent of all the new cars sold in the country were entirely powered by electricity instead of fossil fuels, according to Reuters.

That’s the highest percentage worldwide, with Iceland in a distant second place with 12 percent, and a dismal 2.2 percent and 1.2 percent in China and the U.S., respectively. Just last year, only 21 percent of new cars sold in Norway were electric — a striking case study in how policy changes can affect a whole country’s environmental impact.

Big Fraction, Small Number

Too often, though, a single percentage can obscure the scale of an accomplishment. According to Reuters, some 148,000 cars were sold in Norway in 2018. To put that into perspective, just under 1.4 million new vehicles were sold in the U.S. in November alone, 413,500 of which were passenger cars.

So while Norway’s ongoing plan to curb vehicular greenhouse gas emissions is a monumental undertaking and that 31 percent mark represents a great shift in attitudes toward more environmentally-friendly lifestyles. But all things considered, it’s not a ­huge numbers of gas guzzlers that were taken off the road.

What it Will Take

There are a few challenges in the way of Norway’s ambitious plan to take gas-powered vehicles out of dealerships by 2025. Most importantly, according to Reuters, is the challenge of at-home charging.

Given that few people have dedicated, private places to park, full adoption of electric vehicles may be a harder sell than in an area where everyone has a garage or access to a charging station.

Even so, Norway is working hard to incentivize people to go electric, offering tax credits as well as free charging docks to people who go green — and these figures demonstrate that the approach seems to get results.

READ MORE: Norway’s electric cars zip to new record: almost a third of all sales [Reuters]

More on electric vehicles: CALIFORNIA IS INSTALLING CHARGERS FOR A TYPE OF ELECTRIC CAR THAT DOESN’T EXIST YET

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Nearly a Third of Norway’s 2018 New Car Sales Were Electric

Wave Hello

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just gave Google permission to continue developing Project Soli, the company’s radar-based sensors that let people control gadgets without touching them.

Project Soli began in 2015, when the tech giant made claims about the tech that sounded like interfaces from “Minority Report,” which would turn up music volume when someone rotated their wrist, or zoom in on a picture when they separated two fingers from each other.

Now the project has cleared a major regulatory hurdle, according to The Verge, paving the way, potentially, for next-gen gesture interfaces.

History Lesson

The actual technology, as it was built back in 2015 onward, left a lot to be desired, missing or failing to respond to many gestures. The problem seemed to be the strength of the radar itself, so Google pursued developing higher-powered radar, according to The Verge.

But FCC regulations stood in the way. Worse yet, rival tech giant Facebook raised concerns that the higher-powered radar signals would interfere with other technologies.

Now the FCC has cleared the tech to proceed. The FCC’s ruling comes after Google struck a deal with Facebook saying that the tech company would still pursue more powerful radar technology, just not quite as powerful as it originally wanted.

Google is free to improve the long-stagnant project, which could be a game-changer for people with fine motor control impairments.

Next Steps

Because this is such recent news, Google has not yet commented on how it plans to develop Project Soli, The Verge reports.

The most obvious use for this hands-off technology, aside from being able to wave your arm and control your smart gadgets from across the room like some sci-fi astronaut, is for people who struggle with the tiny screens and controls on things like smartwatches and other wearables.

If the touch-free sensors do take off, a lot of people will suddenly have access to new gadgets and tools that they hadn’t been able to use for one reason or another, and life could become a lot easier as a result.

READ MORE: Google’s project to control gadgets with touchless hand gestures is moving forward [The Verge]

More on Google: Google Wins Lawsuit Over Facial Recognition Technology

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FCC Clears Google To Pursue “Minority Report”-Like Gesture System

The U.S. of A.I.

Right now, the position of world leader in artificial intelligence is up for grabs — but soon, it could be out of the United States’s reach.

At least, that’s a growing concern in Silicon Valley, the nation’s hub for all things tech, according to a New York Times story published on Tuesday.

These industry insiders worry that proposed rules limiting or even outright banning the export of American AI services and technologies will prevent the nation from dominating the global AI industry. And that wouldn’t just hurt the U.S. economy — it could also jeopardize the nation’s security.

Sharing Is Scaring

On November 19, the U.S. Department of Commerce published a proposal listing various types of AI software that it thinks could benefit from export restrictions. These restrictions could be anything from the need for a company to obtain a license before selling the tech to other countries to an outright ban on sales to certain nations.

According to the proposal, the purpose of the restrictions would be to bolster the U.S.’s national security — after all, AI has many potential military uses, so why would the U.S. want to put that technology in the hands of nations such as China or North Korea?

Pointless and Harmful

Silicon Valley opposes these AI export restrictions for a few reasons, according to the NYT’s story.

Perhaps most obviously, they could hurt American companies and help foreign ones. By limiting where companies such as Amazon and Google could sell their AI services, the restrictions would damage those companies’ bottom lines. They’ll also leave open a market gap that other nations, such as China, could fill.

The restrictions might not actually prevent other nations from getting the fundamental research at the core of the latest technologies, either — in computer science and AI, experts share much of their work for free via online repositories such as arXiv.org.

Opposite Effect

Finally, Silicon Valley has been the dominant force in technology over the past couple of decades partially because many of the brightest minds from across the globe want to work there.

If the U.S. moves forward with its proposed AI export restrictions, it might actually deter experts from choosing to work in America. “It might be easier for people to just do this stuff in Europe,” international trade lawyer Jason Waite told the NYT.

Given that “this stuff” would likely also include technologies designed to improve national security, it’s easy to see how the nation’s attempt to keep its citizen’s safe through AI export restrictions might actually do the opposite.

READ MORE: Curbs on A.I. Exports? Silicon Valley Fears Losing Its Edge [The New York Times]

More on AI: U.S. Military Declares Mandate on AI: “We Want to Be the Threat”

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U.S. Plan to Restrict AI Exports Could Backfire

Neural Implant

For people with neurological conditions like severe epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease, a small device may someday help manage symptoms by sitting on the surface of the brain, monitoring its electrical activity and jolting it back to equilibrium when something goes wrong.

The new prototype device, called the Wireless Artifact-Free Neuromodulation Device (WAND) by the UC Berkeley scientists who built it, isn’t the first implant isn’t the first to treat neurological conditions with targeted electrical stimulation. But it fixes a lot of the problems with earlier models such as size limitations and noisy data collection, according to research published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering on Monday — and it suggests a path forward for treating some of the most widespread neurological conditions in the world.

Listening In

The device, which has been tested on primates but not yet on humans, improves on other neural implants is because it works as a closed-loop system.

Specifically, the array of electrodes is the first that can simultaneously interpret the brain’s electrical activity and send out therapeutic shocks, resulting in more specialized treatments that are fine-tuned to the brain’s needs than other implants could only do one or the other.

“We want to enable the device to figure out what is the best way to stimulate for a given patient to give the best outcomes,” UC Berkeley electrical engineer and computer scientist Rikky Muller said in a university-published press release. “And you can only do that by listening and recording the neural signatures.”

Smart Devices

In the future, the team wants to implement an artificial intelligence system so that the implant can get even better at reading and understanding the brain’s signals.

But before it gets to that point, the scientists will likely have to make sure that their device actually works in people — a long process that will involve volunteers who are already hospitalized for epilepsy or Parkinson’s and agree to try out an experimental surgery.

Hopefully the implant helps people, but it will be a while before we know for sure.

READ MORE: Wireless ‘pacemaker for the brain’ could be new standard treatment for neurological disorders [Berkeley News]

More on neural implants: New Jelly-Like Neural Implant Eliminates the Need to Drill Through the Brain

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A Wireless Neural Implant Might Jolt the Brain out of Seizures

Facial Recognition

Ever have trouble putting a name to a face? The creators of SocialRecall say their app uses facial recognition to scan people you’ve met before — or even strangers at an event — and tell you their names.

It’s a bold vision of a future in which facial recognition provides contextual information about the people around you — but also an inflection point in the mainstream deployment of a technology that troubles privacy advocates.

Face Blindness

There are two versions of the app, according to Scientific American.

In one version, a user upload selfies that SocialRecall then uses to identify the person for other app users within the bounds of a specific geographic area, such an event venue. Another version is designed for users with prosopagnosia, better known as face blindness. That version lets a user tag images of their own friends so that the app can remind them of their names on the fly.

Privacy Concerns

SocialRecall says it deletes obsolete user data on the event version of the app, and that data for the other version is only stored on a user’s phone.

But privacy experts are still concerned that the app represents a mainstream rollout of technology that could have profound implications for the future of public spaces — and that it’s difficult to adequately inform users about the long-term risks of a technology that’s still so new.

“The cost to everyone whom you are surveilling with this app is very, very high,” New York University law professor Jason Schultz told Scientific American, “and I don’t think it respects the consent politics involved with capturing people’s images.”

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This Facial Recognition App Remembers Names so You Don’t Have To

Walk This Way

Hyundai’s CES 2019 press conference on Monday might just end up being standing-room only.

During the event, the South Korean automaker will reveal more information about Elevate, a walking car — and it just might represent an entirely new category of vehicles.

Rise Above

Hyundai teased Elevate with a short news release and image on Wednesday morning.

All we can glean from those is that Elevate is an electric vehicle with four robotic legs, each of which has a wheel where a foot would normally be — not entirely unlike the nightmare-inducing Wheelers from “Return to Oz.”

The legs appear to have at least three joints each. Those are presumably what allow the vehicle to “drive, walk, or even climb over the most treacherous terrain,” as stated in the press release.

Kick the Wheels

Hyundai is calling Elevate the world’s first Ultimate Mobility Vehicle (UMV), which it says will “take people where no vehicle has been before.”

As for who those people might be, the giant red cross on the side of the walking car could indicate potential use as a rescue vehicle following a disaster. That would make sense given that the car is navigating across rubble in the press image. After all, it doesn’t exactly seem like something you’d use for trips to the grocery store.

We’ll have to wait until Monday’s showcase of the Elevate prototype to find out any other plans Hyundai has for the vehicle. But if Elevate is as impressive as it appears in the released image, the vehicle might be the first UMV — but it probably won’t be the last.

READ MORE: Innovative Hyundai ‘Elevate’ Walking Car Concept Creates a New Vehicle Category, the UMV, Ultimate Mobility Vehicle [Hyundai]

More on rescue vehicles: A Six-Foot Tall Humanoid Robot Could Come to Your Rescue During a Disaster

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Hyundai Debuts a Walking Car With Four Legs

On the Road Again

So much time is lost in transit, from spending hours in line at airport security to getting stuck in traffic.

But Toronto-based design studio Aprilli has cooked up a futuristic solution that could turn those lost hours into valuable time. The firm’s “Autonomous Travel Suite” concept combines the ease and comfort of a hotel room with the power of autonomous driving. Think of it as an ultra-deluxe Uber that you can sleep, work and eat in while you travel — not to mention a bold vision of the future of transportation.

Autonomous Travel Suites

The autonomous pod is a full-fledged transportation solution that is “equipped with the basic sleeping, working, and washroom facilities, allowing the guests to use their travel time more efficiently and productively,” according to Aprilli’s site. You can summon it with an app, and Aprilli sees the Autonomous Travel Suite to be part of a much bigger “network of hotel facilities” where individual pods can dock to offer clients even more amenities.

In an explainer video, for instance, you can watch the pod connect to a “parent suite” inside a circular “hotel” that turns the simple travel suite into a much bigger “upscale integrated unit” that includes a washroom and living space.

Travel to Live, Live to Travel

Needless to say, it’s an ambitious idea — we haven’t even figured out how to get autonomous vehicles to reliably share the road with human drivers.

And it’s not an entirely unique idea, either. Other companies like IKEA envision the future of autonomous vehicles as not just hotel suites: their SPACE10 concepts revealed in September include visions of a self-driving mini-greenhouse and a pop-up shop.

Nonetheless, Aprilli’s concept is a promising idea that could shift the whole paradigm of travel — and make some of the most bothersome hours of travel convenient, comfortable, and efficient.

READ MORE: Self-driving hotel room comes to you like an Uber [CNET]

More on autonomous concepts: This Futuristic Audi Concept Transforms Itself Into a Flying Taxi

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Futuristic Hotel Suite Would Drive You Around While You Sleep

A World’s First

In a world’s first, Chinese lunar probe Chang’e-4 just touched down on the far side of the Moon, the side that always faces away from the Earth. The probe landed near the lunar South Pole in the Aitken basin.

After touchdown, Chang’e-4 took a picture and sent it back to Earth via a relay satellite that was launched in June 2018 — signalling a huge win for China’s space exploration ambitions.

Rugged Surroundings

The far side of the moon is pockmarked by large craters and rugged, mountainous terrain, making the landing far more difficult than on the near side.

Chang’e-4 launched on December 7 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre, and entered lunar orbit five days later.

The probe will make its way to the Von Kármán crater — an impact crater 1,550 miles (2,500 km) across —  inside the Aitken basin.

Mission Goals

Chang’e-4 will collect rock samples and compare them to samples taken from the other side of the Moon. It’s also carrying a tiny biosphere containing Earthly species ranging from potato to the fruit fly, and will report on its progress.

And most fundamentally, it shows that China’s space program is committed to — and capable of — exploring entirely new territories in the Solar System.

READ MORE: Far side of the moon: China’s Chang’e 4 probe makes historic touchdown [The Guardian]

More on Chang’e-4: China’s Moon Lander Just Entered Lunar Orbit

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China Just Landed a Rover on the Far Side of the Moon

Mother/Astronaut

Childbirth is stressful enough for many women. But for one brave mother-to-be, it’ll be even more so — because she’ll be giving birth in space.

At least, that’s startup SpaceLife Origin’s plan.

In October, the Netherlands-based company announced its Missions Program 2020-2024, a program culminating with the live birth of a human baby aboard a spacecraft positioned 250 miles above Earth — and according to one of the company’s execs, the success of the mission could affect our plans for off-world colonization.

Space Baby

On Wednesday, The Atlantic published a story about SpaceLife Origin. In it, Egbert Edelbroek, the company’s Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, argues that humanity needs to figure out off-Earth reproduction if it ever hopes to colonize other worlds.

“Human settlements outside of Earth would be pretty pointless without learning how to reproduce in space,” Edelbroek told the magazine.

Over the next five years, the company will complete a series of missions all designed to fill this knowledge gap and prepare humanity for off-world reproduction. According to a press release, these include a plan to send human reproduction cells to space as “insurance” in case of a catastrophe on Earth and the development of a “Space-Embryo-Incubator” capable of fertilizing and developing embryos in space.

The final step in the plan is sending a pregnant volunteer and a team of medical professionals into space on a 24- to 36-hour-long mission during which she’ll give birth.

Labor Pains

As pointed out in the Atlantic piece, this plan sounds like a logistical nightmare — imagine doctors trying to administer an epidural in zero-gravity while blobs of bodily fluids float around the capsule. SpaceLife Origin is also likely to hit a host of regulatory hurdles and face serious ethical backlash by those concerned for the safety of the mother and child.

Still, it’s hard to argue Edelbroek’s point that eventually we are going to need to figure out the logistics of giving birth in space if we want to become an interplanetary species — and the process could start as soon 2024 with a single volunteer.

READ MORE: Imagine Giving Birth in Space [The Atlantic]

More on off-world colonization: Our Bodies Aren’t Built to Have Babies on Mars – so Let’s Alter Our DNA

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This Startup Wants to Send a Pregnant Woman to Space to Give Birth

Late Delivery

This weekend, several of the most widely circulated newspapers in the United States found themselves the target of a cyberattack that reportedly originated on foreign soil.

Many questions about the attack remain unanswered, but one thing is certain: the media is under attack — and if something isn’t done to protect it, we could be headed toward a future in which we can’t believe anything we read.

Stop the Presses

The malware attack targeted newspaper printing plants run by The Los Angeles Times and Tribune Publishing, which owned The Los Angeles Times from April 2007 until June 2018 (and which, in a much-lampooned episode, briefly changed its name to Tronc in 2016.)

The malware prevented editors from transmitting pages of the papers to printing presses, and it delayed the scheduled printing and delivery of the Saturday editions of several newspapers, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Nobody is sure of the source of the attack, but several people with inside knowledge of Tribune told The Los Angeles Times that the attack appeared to be Ryuk ransomware. Experts have linked this software to groups in North Korea and Eastern Europe, but for now, all The Los Angeles Times has confirmed is that the attack appears to have originated from outside the U.S.

Media Under Attack

As the name implies, ransomware attacks are typically financially motivated — attackers disrupt a company’s operations and demand a ransom to end the disruption — but neither Tribune Publishing nor The Los Angeles Times has reported any ransom demand. An anonymous source told The Los Angeles Times that the attackers didn’t appear to steal any information either.

That means a likely motivation behind the attack was preventing newspaper readers from getting their news — and that is highly troubling.

Just this month, the majority of Americans admitted for the first time that they prefer to get their news from social media platforms than from traditional print newspapers. While the latter sources are held to journalistic standards that place a premium on fact-checking and context, the former are notoriously rife with misinformation and bias.

If foreign actors are able to further cripple the U.S.’s already vulnerable newspaper industry by literally preventing the printing of newspapers, the “fake news” that dominates our social media feeds could one day overshadow the real news — and we’ve already gotten a glimpse of the disturbing impact that can have on a democracy.

READ MORE: Malware Attack Disrupts Delivery of L.A. Times and Tribune Papers Across the U.S. [The Los Angeles Times]

More on newspapers: For News, Americans Now Officially Prefer Social Media to Newspapers

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Foreign Cyberattack Cripples Major U.S. Newspapers