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COVID-19 testing continues in East Las Vegas with next event – KLAS – 8 News Now

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) In Southern Nevada, 25% of COVID-19 cases are coming from the Hispanic community. Over the past month, there have been increased efforts to stop it from spreading, especially in certain areas of the Valley.

In just one East Las Vegas zip code, more than 400 positive cases were reported this week.

Testing is coming back to the area, as events resume tomorrow at Jerome Mack Middle School. Organizers say there is a need for more locations like this to combat the virus among Hispanics.

We have seen these pop-up sites for the past two weekends, with hundreds of people showing up.

The goal? To help this area hit hard by the virus.

The reality is the more you test, the more numbers will go up, said Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom.

East Las Vegas area code 89110 has nearly 2,000 positive COVID-19 tests.

The truth is, we dont have exact numbers, but the positives are unacceptable, Segerblom expressed. It is an underserved area.

Segerblom says we may be seeing more cases because of the amount of testing being done at East Las Vegas pop-up testing sites over the past few weekends.

We had crowds around the block before the doors opened. We ended up doing over twice what we anticipated.

Last Saturday, 900 tests were done. State experts say with more tests being conducted, more tracing can happen. Contact tracing has accounted for 16% of cases in Nevada.

The tests are to result data, and the data is to drive intervention and action that is positive, explained Caleb Cage, Nevada COVID-19 response director. And, that is a good thing.

Sites are planned for two more weekends. More pop-ups and a permanent site are in the works but finding locations isnt easy.

You kind of need a vacant building. Now that the fact the schools are not going to be open right away, I think we may be able to use those schools going forward, too, said Segerblom. We havent talked to the school district about that yet, but that may be one of our avenues.

Testing at Jerome Mack Middle School will be from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. No appointment is needed, and there is no cost to you.

However, you must get there early. Last week, people started lining up as early as 5 a.m .

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COVID-19 testing continues in East Las Vegas with next event - KLAS - 8 News Now

Mandatory masks becoming the rule amid Europe’s virus uptick – Las Vegas Sun

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Published Friday, July 24, 2020 | 9:42 a.m.

Updated 1 hour, 10 minutes ago

ROME (AP) New rules on wearing masks in England came into effect Friday, with people entering shops, banks and supermarkets now required to wear face coverings, while Romania reported a record for daily infections and France announced mandatory testing for arrivals from 16 countries, including the United States.

People in England can be fined as much as 100 pounds ($127) by police if they refuse. Places like restaurants, pubs, gyms and hairdressers are exempt.

John Apter, the national chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said officers would be available as a last resort but added that he hopes the public will continue to do the right thing" to protect other citizens.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Friday that as of August 1, travelers entering France from 16 countries where the viral circulation is strong including the United States must undergo compulsory tests on arrival at French airports or ports unless they can present a negative test less than 72 hours old from their countries of departure. Those testing positive on arrival must isolate for 14 days.

Health authorities say cases on the French mainland have surged 66% in the past three weeks and 26% in the last week alone. Concerns had already prompted the government to make mask-wearing mandatory in all indoor public spaces this week.

In Belgium, health authorities said a three-year old girl has died after testing positive for COVID-19 as new infections surged 89% from the previous week.

Belgian authorities have bolstered restrictions to slow the spread of coronavirus, including making masks mandatory in crowded outdoor public spaces.

Overall, Europe has seen over 201,000 deaths in the pandemic, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the true toll from the coronavirus worldwide is much higher, due to limited testing and other issues.

Romania set an all-time high for daily new infections Friday and authorities blamed the surge on a failure to wear masks, including in indoor public places or on mass transit.

In Italy, most new cases have occurred in northern Italy, where the outbreak in Europe began, but southern regions have lately been seeing clusters of infections.

Many recent cases have been traced to people returning from abroad, most of them foreign workers. Other clusters were among migrants rescued at sea and vacationers.

Last week, the mayor of the tourist-mecca island of Capri ordered people to wear masks in the streets. Capri's main square, with its trendy cafes and narrow streets, had been jammed with holiday-goers, many not wearing masks.

Three young Romans who returned home after a holiday tested positive, Italian media said Friday.

Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza on Friday ordered everyone entering Italy who had been in either Romania or Bulgaria during the last 14 days to self-quarantine. A few weeks ago, a cluster of cases was traced to an apartment complex in a town near Naples housing Bulgarian farm workers.

In Italy, masks must be worn in shops, banks, on public transport and outdoors where it's impossible to keep a safe distance apart.

Amid fears in Spain that poor living conditions for seasonal agricultural workers are creating coronavirus hotspots, the Spanish farm minister said Friday said authorities are pressing employers to provide decent accommodations and transport for the workers. The Health Ministry reported 971 new daily infections, the biggest daily increase since Spain's lockdown ended.

German authorities plan to set up testing stations at airports to encourage people arriving from high-risk countries to get tested for the coronavirus. They also will allow people arriving from other places to get tested for free within three days -- though not at airports.

Fridays decision by the health ministers of Germanys 16 states came amid mounting concern that holidaymakers could bring the virus back with them. There also is worry that not everyone returning from a long list of countries designated as high-risk is going into self-quarantine for 14 days as they are supposed to -- unless they test negative.

Berlins state health minister, Dilek Kalayci, said that in the end we want to call on all people returning to Germany to get tested.

Russia, which had halted all international flights and shut down its borders in late March to stem the outbreak, is resuming international flights starting on Aug. 1 with just three countries Britain, Turkey and Tanzania while the government works to expand the list.

Earlier this month, Russia didnt make the list of countries whose citizens are allowed to travel to European Union countries.

So far, Russia's health officials have reported over 800,000 confirmed cases and 13,046 deaths.

And as scientists around the world search for a vaccine to halt the pandemic, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has dismissed activists seeking to oppose vaccinations as nuts.

Britain has Europe's worst recorded pandemic toll at over 45,600 deaths.

___

Associated Press writers across Europe contributed to this report.

___

Follow APs pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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NJ teachers add updating wills to back-to-school to-do list amid pandemic | Opinion – NorthJersey.com

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Jessica Ward, Special to the USA TODAY NETWORK Published 4:18 a.m. ET July 23, 2020

I am a 28-year-old teacher in a small, middle-class district in Bergen County. I have an amazing toddler and husband who are my everything. I have my dream job teaching Special Education students 15 minutes from home. I have a lovely home and I am probably the happiest I have ever been in my entire life. I grew up in New Jersey, attended a small New Jersey state school and planned to spend the majority of my days teachingNew Jersey studentsin the Garden State.

But now, as COVID-19 has uprooted the lives of so many myself included, I did something today that I did not anticipate myself doing for another 10 to 15 years. My husband, another educator, and I updated our wills. We left our little boy as our beneficiary and outlined the details of what his life should look like if COVID-19 happens to claim one or both of our lives. I cannot imagine leaving my little boy all alone in this world but that is the fate that our state is pushing for.

Coronavirus update: NJ to allow for remote learning when schools reopen

For subscribers: Exclusive: NJ teachers union head says it's not safe to open schools in September | Mike Kelly

Despite the scientific fact that COVID-19 is again becoming severe and seemingly returning for a second round, the push has materialized for students and teachers to return to school. Yes, there are parents who have vowed not to send their children back until its safe. But, there is still a large number of New Jersey residents who need students to return to school, despite the fact that it essentially means sending students and teachers into a petri dish with a small chance that their kid or their kids teacher could contract the virus. Parents who supposedly would die for their kids are begging and pleading to send them back to school because of this need to work mentality created by an economy before human lives mindset orchestrated by President Donald Trump.

Its amazing to me that even a state such as New Jersey, which is supposedly a Democratic state, has fallen subject to the Trump agenda. Why is it that we are marching our children back into a situation akin to a game ofRussian roulette? Why are we willing to accept that some children will indeed die rather than pushing our government to send stimulus and support to allow us to stay home and keep our families safe?

I dont care what the percentage is; if you told me that if I sent my son into any building, hed have any chance of dying or getting extremely sick, he wouldnt be there not for any reason in the world.

And if your mindset is anything but that, maybe you need to reassess what it means to be an effective parent, because anyone whos lost a child or loved one to COVID-19 or any other ailment can tell you that there is no greater pain and that they would do anything to bring that person back.

Is the risk really worth the gamble?

Jessica Ward lives in Hackensack.

Read or Share this story: https://www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/2020/07/23/nj-coronavirus-teachers-add-updating-wills-to-back-to-school-to-do-list/5482317002/

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China Just Launched a Mission to Hunt for Life on Mars

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Tianwen-1

China has successfully launched its Tianwen-1 — roughly translated as “Heavenly Questions” — mission to Mars. The spacecraft, which is intended to hunt for life on the Red Planet, includes an orbiter, lander, and a rover.

A Long March 5 rocket took off from China’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site early Thursday morning local time, kicking off the country’s first mission to the Red Planet since its first failed attempt in 2011. It’s only the fourth time a Long March 5 rocket of this kind, a gigantic heavy lift launch system, has successfully made it off Earth, according to The Verge.

Long Commute

The mission is expected to arrive at Mars in February 2021.

China now has the chance to become only the second country in the world, after the US, to land a functional robotic spacecraft on the surface of Mars. Other attempts by Europe and the Soviet Union have had only limited success. Both of Europe’s attempts failed, while the Soviet Union’s Mars 3 spacecraft managed to land in 1971 — but failed less than two minutes after landing.

NASA has had substantially more success, having sent four robotic vehicles to the Martian surface to date.

Looking for Life

If the lander makes it to the surface intact, the Tianwen-1 rover will attempt crawl the Martian surface to study the planet’s geology. It will also attempt to find evidence of current and past life, map the surface, and examine the composition of Martian soil.

The news comes after the United Arab Emirates kicked off its own mission to Mars on July 19. The country will attempt to explore the Martian atmosphere and climate using a orbiting spacecraft called Hope.

It’s a hot summer for Mars missions, with NASA planning to launch its Perseverance Mars rover mission as early as July 30, weather permitting.

More on the three missions: Three Separate Countries Are Launching Mars Missions This Month

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These Specialty CBD Shots Provide a Productive Day’s Work and a Productive Night’s Sleep

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

It seems like more and more people are discovering the benefits that CBD oil can bring to the human body and mind. If you’ve been looking for a way to try it for yourself but haven’t been able to decide on the right product, these two single-serving CBD shots from B GREAT are a great place to start. The Relax Shot is designed to help you relax in order to get the rest you need, while the Focus shot is intended to help you stay alert and productive for hours.

If you regularly find yourself too wired to unwind at the end of the day, the B GREAT Relax Shot is a great way to bring yourself down to a more restful state. Intended as a gentle treatment for occasional sleeplessness, the passion fruit-flavored drink blends 20 mg of full-spectrum hemp with ingredients like Melatonin, Gingko Biloba, and Lavender Water, all of which work together to quiet your brain down and help you rest.

You can take either a half or a whole bottle just before bed and see if you don’t notice an easier and more relaxing transition into an all-natural good night’s sleep. Relax CBD Shots comes in boxes of 12 at $55 per box.

B GREAT Relax CBD Shots: 12 for $55

But there are also times when relaxation is the last thing you need. Specifically, the stereotypical “3 PM slump,” when all your body seems to want is a quick nap. When the nap isn’t an option, there are B GREAT Focus CBD Shots (also passion fruit flavored), which have 15 mg of full-spectrum hemp plus Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, ginseng root, and a little bit of caffeine, all with the aim of supporting your body’s ability to focus for hours at a time. It works without the jittery side-effects you can get from traditional and sugary energy drinks. Just take half a bottle for a “moderate energy” boost, and a whole bottle for the maximum, whenever you need it most during the day. The Focus Shot is priced identically to Relax Shot, at $55 per 12-bottle box.

B GREAT Focus CBD: 12 for $55

Both the Relax Shot and Focus Shot from B GREAT are made with 100-percent full-spectrum hemp sourced from within the USA. Each batch is lab-tested by an independent third party for quality and consistency, with no GMOs and no pesticides. And for anyone concerned about certain dietary restrictions, they’re both certified vegan and kosher. One of the key words behind the B GREAT business is “Traceability,” which means that you can find a batch number on every B GREAT label, which you can in turn use to track down the certificate of analysis for that individual product and see all the exact ingredients used to make it.

So if you’re looking for a better, more natural way to wind down at the end of the day, get a box of B GREAT Relax Shots for $55 from the B GREAT online store. And if a midday pick-me-up is more what you need, pick up a box of B GREAT Focus Shots for the same price.

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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Fauci: The Coronavirus Will Probably Be Around Forever

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

White House infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday that it's unlikely the coronavirus will ever go away completely.

White House infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday that it’s unlikely the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 will ever go away completely.

“It is so efficient in its ability to transmit from human to human that I think we ultimately will get control of it. I don’t really see us eradicating it,” Fauci told TB Alliance in an interview on Wednesday, as quoted by CNBC.

But not all is lost.

“I think with a combination of good public health measures, a degree of global herd immunity and a good vaccine, which I do hope and feel cautiously optimistic that we will get, I think when we put all three of those together, we will get control of this, whether it’s this year or next year,” Fauci added.

That scenario would be vastly preferable to today’s, with American casualties creeping back over 1,000 deaths per day.

“We’ll bring it down to such a low level that we will not be in the position we are right now for an extended period of time,” he said.

Fauci’s statements appear to contradict president Donald Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that the coronavirus will simply disappear.

“Well, the virus will disappear,” Trump told reporters just yesterday, as quoted by NBC. “It will disappear.”

Despite that optimism, the president’s tone has shifted considerably this week.

“It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” Trump added. “Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is,”

The public’s trust in Trump’s statements about the virus has fallen considerably, with Americans still putting far more trust in what experts are saying, according to recent polls.

The reality is grim. In many ways, the United States couldn’t be further from defeating the virus. Cases are still soaring in several states, with a total number of confirmed cases about to cross the four million threshold. The total number of American deaths stands at more than 143,000.

“We are certainly not at the end of the game,” Fauci admitted in the TB Alliance interview. “Certainly we are not winning the game right now. We are not beating it.”

Fauci described how unique the situation is, with the coronavirus differing in many ways from previous viral epidemics, including SARS in the early 2000s.

“I have never seen infection in which you have such a broad range literally no symptoms at all in a substantial proportion of the population to some who get ill with minor symptoms to some who get ill enough to be in bed for weeks,” he said.

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NASA’s Next Rover Will Bring First-Ever Microphone to Mars

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

NASA's next-gen Mars rover Perseverance is outfitted with not just one but two microphones. We could finally get to listen to the sounds of Mars.

No country has ever successfully sent a microphone to Mars. As a result, we’ve never heard the eerie sounds of the surface of Red Planet.

“Even if only a few minutes of Martian sounds are recorded from this first experiment, the public interest will be high and the opportunity for scientific exploration real,” famed astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in a 1996 letter to NASA, as quoted by the Planetary Society, a nonprofit space exploration advocacy group.

But with NASA’s Perseverance mission launching in just a single week — if the weather plays along — that all may change. The agency’s next-gen Mars rover is outfitted with not just one but two microphones.

After the craft’s six month journey through the solar system, the two microphones attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover could finally offer us a tantalizing first: a chance to listen to what Mars actually sounds like.

One microphone, on Perseverance’s Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) system, was designed to make sure the rover makes it down to Mars unharmed. Thanks to accompanying video, we could soon, for the first time ever, get to watch — and listen to — a Mars landing.

The second is part of the rover’s SuperCam instrument, which builds on Curiosity’s ChemCam, a laser beam that heats and vaporizes rocks to determine what chemicals they’re made of.

The microphones could also tell us about the rover’s health.

“Hearing how the mast swivels, the wheels turn, or hearing how other instruments sound can also be an important engineering diagnostic tool,” said Greg Delory, the CEO and co-founder of space hardware company Heliospace and an advisor to the SuperCam team, in the statement.

Previous attempts at recording the sounds of Mars with a microphone quickly turned into an uphill battle with plenty of setbacks.

The Planetary Society, co-founded by Sagan in 1980, jumped into action in the mid-1990s to finally bring a microphone to Mars. Initially, the team was hoping to attach one to NASA’s Mars Polar Lander mission, set to launch in 1990.

They got to work and after raising $100,000, they came up with the Mars Microphone, the first crowdfunded scientific instrument to fly to another planet, according to the Society.

“The original Mars microphone we built was a smart little box, about 5 centimeters on each side, weighing 50 grams,” Delory said. “The microphone was built for extreme environments, and we tested it enough to know how robust it was.”

Unfortunately, a NASA committee dismissed the idea. A second chance to have it attached to France’s Netlander mission in 2007 cropped up, but the mission was canceled in 2004.

Several years later, a different microphone made its way all the way to Mars mounted to NASA’s Phoenix lander in 2008. In yet another unfortunate turn of events, the microphone had to be deactivated prior to the launch due to a technical glitch.

The closest the Earth has come to hearing the sounds of Mars was in December 2018, when NASA used InSight’s seismometer and air pressure sensor to capture something approximating sound. However, recordings had to be pitched and sped up to hear.

Let’s hope Perseverance makes it to Mars in one piece. Only then will be able to get to hear the sounds of an alien planet.

More on Mars rovers: NASA’s Mars Rover Spent the Weekend Shooting a Weird-Looking Rock With a Laser

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Russia Just Tested a Military Satellite That Kills Other Satellites

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Russia recently tested a weapon capable of shooting down satellites in orbit, which has the Pentagon concerned about off-world escalation.

Space War

Last week, Russia tested what U.S. military officials believe to be a dangerous new anti-satellite weapon.

In short, the Russian satellite Cosmos 2543 demonstrated that it’s capable of approaching another satellite in orbit and shooting it down, C4ISRNET reports. And that demo, amidst international talks about demilitarizing space, has the Pentagon concerned.

Nesting Dolls

The actual weapon worked sort of like a Russian nesting doll: Cosmos 2543 first deployed a sub-satellite that then launched a projectile at the relative speed of 250 kilometers per hour. There was no target, and the satellite was only near another Russian satellite for the demo, but U.S. military officials see the test as a show of force.

“This is further evidence of Russia’s continuing efforts to develop and test space-based systems,” General John Raymond, Space Force Chief of Space Operations, said in a statement provided to C4ISRNET, “and consistent with the Kremlin’s published military doctrine to employ weapons that hold U.S. and allied space assets at risk.”

“Hypocritical Advocacy”

The U.S. State Department sees the weapons test as a sign that space warfare is a growing threat worthy of greater attention, C4ISRNET reports. And officials couldn’t resist taking a jab at Russia along the way.

“This event highlights Russia’s hypocritical advocacy of outer space arms control, with which Moscow aims to restrict the capabilities of the United States while clearly having no intention of halting its own counterspace program,” Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Chris Ford said in the statement.

More on space warfare: The Pentagon Wants Sentinel Satellites To Deter Space Warfare

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Elon Musk Says Tesla Is Launching an Insurance Company

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Elon Musk announced that Tesla is about to try and enter the auto insurance business — and hopefully fare better than its dismal attempt last year.

420 Gecs

Tesla is about to get into the auto insurance game, CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday.

On a call with investors, Musk said that Tesla is in the process of “building” what he called a “major insurance company,” Business Insider reports. By the end of the year, he hopes to have launched in a handful of U.S. states, generating premiums and rates for drivers based on data collected by their cars’ internal sensors.

Take Two

Tesla has actually tried to launch insurance before. In 2019, Tesla advertised an in-house insurance plan for drivers that would supposedly be 20 percent lower than competitors.

But Business Insider reports that those few customers who did get quotes in the hours before the insurance website was taken down said that their current plans were much cheaper. Needless to say, the program didn’t last long.

Personalized Rates

The big idea, Business Insider reports, is that by going to Tesla for both a car and insurance coverage, drivers would be able to get rates that actually match their behavior — like risky driving — at a personalized level.

“Ultimately, where we want to get to with Tesla Insurance is to be able to use the data that’s captured in the car, in the driving profile of the person in the car,” Musk said on the call, “to be able to assess correlations and probabilities of crash and be able then to assess a premium on a monthly basis for that customer.”

More on Tesla: Tesla’s New Insurance Business Had 24 Hours of Hell

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Cornell Scientists Say “Strange Metals” Are Similar to Black Holes

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Scientists developed a working model for a bizarre state of matter called

Strange Metals

For the first time, scientists are saying that so-called “strange metals” could be a bizarre new state of matter.

According to new research published Wednesday in the journal PNAS by researchers at the Flatiron Institute and Cornell, there are even odd parallels between strange metals and black holes. Those unexpected similarities, they say, could help them probe previously unexplored realms of quantum physics.

Extreme Conditions

A metal’s electrical resistance, or how much it impedes the flow of electricity, is determined by a number of factors. But, according to the new research, if a superconducting metal — one that doesn’t impede electrical currents at all — is heated past the temperature at which it can still superconduct, it becomes a strange metal. At that point, its resistance is determined only by temperature and two fundamental constants — the same three factors that determine many qualities of a black hole.

“The fact that we call them strange metals should tell you how well we understand them,” Olivier Parcollet from the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Quantum Physics said in a press release. “Strange metals share remarkable properties with black holes, opening exciting new directions for theoretical physics.”

Odd Parallels

Several properties of black holes are determined by temperature and those same two fundamental constants, such how long a black hole merger will send out gravitational waves.

“The fact that you find this same scaling across all these different systems,” Parollet said, “from Planckian metals to black holes, is fascinating.”

READ MORE: Quantum physicists crack mystery of ‘strange metals,’ a new state of matter [Simons Foundation]

More on strange metals: Scientists Create “Strange Metal” Packed With Entangled Electrons

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Elon Musk: If You Don’t Think AI Could Outsmart You, You’re an Idiot

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Elon Musk is once again warning about the perils of unregulated AI, saying that people who think AI couldn't fool them are fooling themselves.

Big Brain

Elon Musk, who long been notorious for warning of the dangers of artificial intelligence, has a message to the doubters among us: They’re not as clever as they think.

In the past, Musk has gone as far as to say that artificial intelligence is even more dangerous than nuclear war, Business Insider reports. One of his concerns is that AI will replace human workers. But he also frets that a Skynet-like AI will decide it no longer needs humans at all.

“I’ve been banging this AI drum for a decade,” Musk told Business Insider.

Cognitive Trap

Musk’s latest warning is that smart people who assume they could never be fooled by a machine are in effect lowering their guard to any AI trickery coming their way.

“We should be concerned about where AI is going,” Musk told Business Insider. “The people I see being the most wrong about AI are the ones who are very smart, because they can’t imagine that a computer could be way smarter than them. That’s the flaw in their logic. They’re just way dumber than they think they are.”

Alarm Bells

Musk’s fears aren’t always shared among his peers, especially since he sometimes makes them alongside unsupported claims to have seen dangerous, secret AI research that others don’t know about.

But the severity of his warnings aside, Musk’s solution seems reasonable: Greater regulation and oversight for AI development would be an important safeguard against abusive or irresponsible technology.

More on Elon Musk: Reddit Co-founder Mocks Elon Musk’s Warnings About AI

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Former Employee: “Facebook is Hurting People at Scale”

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Disgruntled Facebook employees are reckoning with their company's multifaceted role in damaging

The Departed

With the presidential election looming, current and recently-departed Facebook employees are reckoning with the many ways that they say the social media platform is damaging society.

Software engineer Max Wang left the company after seven years this month, BuzzFeed News reports. As he departed, he posted a 24-minute video and accompanying note urging his fellow employees to take a closer look at what Facebook was doing to the world.

“I think Facebook is hurting people at scale,” he wrote, BuzzFeed News reports. “If you think so too, maybe give this a watch.”

Airing Laundry

Workers have raised a long list of complaints against Facebook. For instance, BuzzFeed News reports that Facebook reportedly refused to match employee donations to black justice organizations as other tech corporations had.

Mark Zuckerberg, who like other Silicon Valley billionaires has made billions more since lockdown began, personally told employees that Facebook wouldn’t match donations due to the global recession.

Great Power, Etc.

On top of that, workers complained about how leadership refuses to tackle the spread of disinformation on its platform, which could threaten the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election and others around the world.

“Social media has enough power to damage the fabric of our society,” engineer Dan Abramov wrote in an internal memo. BuzzFeed News reports. “If you think that’s an overstatement, you aren’t paying attention.”

READ MORE: “HURTING PEOPLE? AT SCALE” [BuzzFeed News]

More on Facebook: Expert: Online Disinfo Now Targeting COVID-19, Black Lives Matter

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Watch a 60-Foot Mecha-Style Robot Take Its First Steps

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

A recently uploaded video shows Japan's 60-foot Gundam robot taking its first tentative steps — despite still missing its head.

Headless Horseman

Engineers in Japan have been hard at work building a gigantic, 60-foot humanoid robot modeled after those in the “Gundam” sci-fi franchise.

And while construction of the robot has slowed due to the coronavirus, it seems like progress is well under way. A recent video shows it taking its first tentative steps, Popular Mechanics reports, despite still missing its head.

The footage appears to be sped up, so it’s unclear how long the procedure took. While the robot managed to raise its right leg, it doesn’t appear to be putting any weight on it — meaning this was likely just a test for future walks.

Evening Stroll

The entire robot, including the head, will weigh about 25 tons and have 24 degrees of freedom, meaning it should be able to walk pretty much anywhere, according to Popular Mechanics.

It will also feature hands with fully articulated fingers and thumbs. A single hand, from fingertip to wrist, will stretch 6.5 feet.

The company behind the robot, Gundam Factory Yokohama, was planning to have a preview event this month, but it had to be cancelled due to the pandemic.

The robot was originally meant to go on display to the public in October. According to a notice on the company’s official website, that date has also been pushed back.

READ MORE: Watch Engineers Take Their 60-Foot-Tall Gundam for a Walk [Popular Mechanics]

More on the robot: Japan Is Building a Massive Walking Gundam Robot

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Watch a 60-Foot Mecha-Style Robot Take Its First Steps

Scientists: Climate Change Is Going to Suck, But It Won’t Be Armageddon

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

A new, comprehensive study found that the worst-case, doomsday climate models are unlikely. But best-case scenarios are also out of the question.

Middle Ground

A new study has both good and bad news for the future of the planet.

If atmospheric carbon dioxide levels double, things probably won’t get as bad as the doomsday, absolute worst-case projections some scientists have made — but, at the same time, we’ve already screwed the environment up too much for the best-case outcomes, Scientific American reports.

The study is “the most important climate science paper that’s come out in several years,” Texas A&M University’s Andrew Dessler, who didn’t work on the research, told SciAm.

Downstream Effects

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Reviews of Geophysics, doesn’t predict the future of carbon emissions — it’s still up to humanity to stop burning fossil fuels if we want to survive. Instead, it models how much global temperatures will rise as a result of increased emissions.

The study concluded that there’s a 66 percent chance the Earth will heat by 4.9 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s still devastating for civilization and the global ecosystem, but not quite as bad as some of the direst projections.

Cloud Cover

One of the biggest developments was figuring out how climate change will impact clouds, SciAm reports, which are shockingly important for keeping the planet cool. But Dessler says that honing these predictions isn’t really the point.

“It’s not clear to me how much we would gain from further decreases in the uncertainty,” Dessler told SciAm. “What this has done, in my opinion, is it’s really moved the game away from these questions about the physics of the climate system into questions about how are humans going to react to climate change.”

READ MORE: Worst- and Best-Case Scenarios for Warming Less Likely, Groundbreaking Study Finds [Scientific American]

More on climate change: Climate Change Is Eliminating Clouds. Without Them, Earth Burns

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SpaceX’s Starlink Satellites Ruined This Photo of the NEOWISE Comet

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Recent images taken of the spectacular NEOWISE comet by astrophotographer Daniel Lopez were

Over the past year, SpaceX has been launching hundreds of small broadband internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit as part of its Starlink constellation. The tally as of June: 540.

While the promise of reliable and fast satellite internet accessible from pretty much anywhere in the world sounds pretty promising, not everybody is happy. As it turns out, the tiny satellites are way brighter than anybody was expecting — and that’s bad news for astronomers.

Over the last couple of months, countless reports have emerged of frustrated astronomers having their observations ruined by Starlink satellites appearing as bright streaks of light.

In the latest instance, images taken of the spectacular NEOWISE comet by astrophotographer Daniel Lopez were “completely photobombed by Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites,” as Space Telescope Science Institute astronomer Julien Girard pointed out in a tweet.

17 30-second images of the comet added up by @cielodecanarias, completely photobombed by @elonmusk's #Starlink satellites. It's a few hundreds of them right now,there will be a few thousands in the near future. @SpaceX is committed to coating orienting them better but still…. pic.twitter.com/TYtTf5xwhc
— Julien Girard (@djulik) July 22, 2020

“If there are lots and lots of bright moving objects in the sky, it tremendously complicates our job,” Smith College astronomer James Lowenthal told The New York Times last November. “It potentially threatens the science of astronomy itself.”

They’re so bright, in fact, that some are visible to the naked eye. In fact, onlookers keep mistaking them for UFOs, according to news reports from December.

The brightness is due in part to the fact that the Starlink satellites are orbiting Earth at much closer distance than most — an operational altitude of roughly 550 kilometers, rather than the usual medium-Earth orbit (at 20,000 km) or geostationary orbit (at 36,000 km) used by other kinds of satellites, like those that provide GPS and communication services.

SpaceX has also claimed that they’re bright early on because they’re still climbing in orbit after launch, and will eventually spread out and become dimmer over a period of several months.

Luckily, SpaceX claims it’s working on a number of solutions.

Early attempts to paint the underside of each satellite with an anti-reflective coat of paint seem to have only been partially successful.

SpaceX is now trying out a new method: launching satellites with a cool pair of sunglasses. The space company is planning to mount retractable sunshades, called “VisorSat,” to each of the satellites to block sunlight from hitting its reflective parts — the main reason they’re so bright — SpaceNews reported in May.

The company’s latest batch of Starlink satellites, which launched back in June, included a just single unit with such a sunshade. It’s still unclear if the solution will appease astronomers.

SpaceX’s most recent Starlink launch, 57 satellites each equipped with a VisorSat sunshade, had to be delayed due to weather earlier this month. The launch is now planned for July 29.

If no solution is found, astronomers could be struggling with bright Starlink satellites ruining their observations for many years to come. SpaceX already has permission from the Federal Communications Commission to launch tens of thousands of Starlink satellites to bring global internet coverage to the world.

More on Starlink: SpaceX Is Now Taking Requests for Starlink Beta Testers

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NASA Wants to Watch Newborn Stars From a Ginormous, Stadium-Sized Balloon

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

NASA is planning to watch newborn stars from high up in the Earth’s atmosphere, using a gigantic football stadium-sized balloon.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is planning to kick off the mission, called ASTHROS, (Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths) in December 2023.

The plan is for a 400-foot wide balloon to float over Antarctica for about three weeks at an altitude of around 24.6 miles (40 kilometers) — well below the internationally agreed-upon edge of space, but high enough to observe far-infrared light that’s blocked by Earth’s thick atmosphere.

“Balloon missions like ASTHROS are higher-risk than space missions but yield high-rewards at modest cost,” JPL engineer Jose Siles, project manager for ASTHROS, said in a statement.

“With ASTHROS, we’re aiming to do astrophysics observations that have never been attempted before,” he added. “The mission will pave the way for future space missions by testing new technologies and providing training for the next generation of engineers and scientists.”

By observing far-infrared light, the team is hoping to measure the motion and speed of gas clouds surrounding newly-formed stars. The goal will be to create detailed 3D maps of how these gas clouds move and how they affect or impede the formation of new stars.

JPL is planning to integrate and test the 8.4 foot telescope, its science instrument, as well as other electronic systems in early August. These systems will hang underneath the massive balloon tucked inside a gondola.

If all goes according to plan, the team hopes to have the balloon circle around the South Pole three times over three to four weeks, carried on by wind currents. A parachute will then help the gondola come back to the ground for recovery.

More on high-altitude balloons: Startup Says It’ll Launch You Into the Stratosphere on a Balloon

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The Pentagon’s UFO Task Force Is Finally Ready to Report Findings

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

The Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force is set to begin reporting some of its findings to the public in a matter of months.

UFO Task Force

The Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) Task Force, a program dedicated to investigating UFO sightings, is ready to start reporting some of its findings to the public, The New York Times reports.

The news comes after the Senate released a committee report last month outlining spending for the unusual task force.

Adversarial Interference

Determining whether aliens exist is not the main objective, unfortunately. The main goal, as outlined in the report, is to investigate “any links [UFOs] have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations.”

Just last week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, suggested to local news station CBS Miami that another country like China or Russia could have made “some technological leap,” explaining previous sightings near US military bases.

Cat’s Out of the Bag

News about the Pentagon’s efforts to collect and investigate UAP encounters first broke in a 2017 New York Times investigation, accompanied by several videos of mysterious encounters with still-unexplained flying objects.

The report also found that the Defense Department had been running investigations as part of its Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program since 2007.

Over the last few years, the Pentagon has started officially releasing the videos and previously classified reports about the encounters as well.

Congress has also recently turned up the pressure on the task force in an effort to have all data relating to the mysterious encounters released to the public.

“It no longer has to hide in the shadows,” Luis Elizondo, the former military intelligence official, who was in charge of a preceding program dedicated to UAPs, told the Times. “It will have a new transparency.”

READ MORE: No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public [The New York Times]

More on the program: Congress Is Trying to Force the Military to Release More UFO Info

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23andMe Releases Devastating Analysis of Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

23andMe released a massive study that traced and revealed new apsects of the transatlantic slave trade through genetic ancestry reports.

By combining genetic ancestry reports with existing historical documentation, The New York Times reports, 23andMe and a team of historians were able to piece together new discoveries about the transatlantic slave trade.

During the trans-Atlantic slave trade, some 12.5 million African people were abducted from their homes and brought to America where they were sold into slavery. According to the Times, the new analysis is giving researchers a more complete understanding of the victims’ erased history, such as learning that people were kidnapped from more regions of Africa than previously thought.

For instance, the genetic study, which was published Thursday in The American Journal of Human Genetics, revealed that the slave trade was far more active in Nigeria than previously thought. The researchers were surprised by the level of Nigerian ancestry they detected in participants’ genetic profiles.

By combining the genetic analysis with existing historical knowledge, the NYT reports, the researchers are building a better picture of the period than with either one alone.

In a particularly grim example, the study also corroborated a disturbing level of sexual violence against enslaved people that’s long been established by historians: It found that most contributions to the contemporary gene pool of the descendants of enslaved people were from enslaved women rather than men, the result of a system in which slave owners used sexual assault to force women to bear children who in turn became slaves themselves.

Alondra Nelson, a social scientist at the Institute for Advanced Study, told the NYT that the research confirms “mistreatment, discrimination, sexual abuse, and violence that has persisted for generations.”

But Nelson also argued that the study had shortcomings, telling the NYT that it was “a missed opportunity to take the full step and really collaborate with historians.”

Genetics could reveal new discoveries like the prevalence of the slave trade in Nigeria, she argued, but without a more robust historical perspective, researchers leaning too heavily on genetics may overlook important context like how borders and geopolitical structures have changed over time.

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Thanks to COVID, the Earth’s Surface Is Shaking 50 Percent Less

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Researchers have found that seismic vibrations generated by humans fell by as much as 50 percent globally in 2020, according to a new paper.

The Big Quiet

The world has been both literally and figuratively standing still during the ongoing pandemic, scientists say. Lockdowns around the globe have drastically reduced human activity, and as a direct result, the ground is shaking far less — a silver lining for those studying seismic signals.

In fact, an international team of researchers have found that seismic vibrations generated by humans have fallen by as much as 50 percent globally, according to a new paper published in the journal Science yesterday.

“The 2020 seismic noise quiet period is the longest and most prominent global anthropogenic seismic noise reduction on record,” the researchers noted in their paper.

Silver Lining

Thanks to this quiet period, scientists were able to get an unprecedented listen to seismic signals from natural sources, including small earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

“While the reduction is strongest at surface seismometers in populated areas, this seismic quiescence extends for many kilometers radially and hundreds of meters in depth,” the researchers wrote. “This provides an opportunity to detect subtle signals from subsurface seismic sources that would have been concealed in noisier times and to benchmark sources of anthropogenic noise.”

Quieter Than Christmas

The researchers collected data from 268 seismic stations in 117 countries, examining frequency ranges normally associated with human activity. The quiet period started in China in late January 2020, coinciding with the spread of the coronavirus and shelter-in-place orders, with Europe and the rest of the world following in March to April 2020.

“The noise level we observe during lockdowns lasted longer and was often quieter than the Christmas to New Year period,” the researchers noted in their paper, a period that normally is the most seismically quiet.

More on the research: The Earth is Standing Still During the Pandemic. Literally.

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The Coronavirus Uses a “Camouflage” Enzyme to Merc Your Cells

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Danzig

Scientists just discovered one of the ways that the coronavirus sneaks into cells: a

Scientists just found out a crucial part of what makes SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, so infectious: It’s capable of sneaking into our cells totally under the radar.

It’s a devious biological trick. A team of scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio discovered that the coronavirus contains a particular enzyme, nsp16, that it uses to fool our cells into thinking it’s supposed to be there.

“It’s a camouflage,” lead author Yogesh Gupta said in a press release.

The enzyme allows SARS-CoV-2 to modify part of the RNA molecules that make up its genetic code, according to research published Friday in the journal Nature Communications — a tweak that tricks the host cell into accepting the virus as part of itself rather than triggering an immune system response.

“Because of the modifications, which fool the cell, the resulting viral messenger RNA is now considered as part of the cell’s own code and not foreign,” Gupta said.

Thankfully, now that scientists have uncovered the virus’ trick, they may be able to develop antiviral medications that block it from happening. That way, the virus would have a much harder time sneaking into our bodies without raising any alarms.

“This is a fundamental advance in our understanding of the virus,” study co-author Dr. Robert Hromas said in the release.

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