Stuart tightening cyber security to protect city's computer networks
The city of Stuart is tightening up their cyber security, ensuring only authorized people can access the city's computer systems.
Prefer pen and paper to a smartphone or tablet? These smart notebooks will let you take notes the old-fashioned way and easily digitize them.From Popular Mechanics
The latest crop of NASA-backed concepts for far-out space exploration includes “borebots” that could drill as far as a mile beneath the Martian surface in search of liquid water, and a nuclear-powered spacecraft that could intercept interstellar objects as they zip through our solar system. Researchers in Washington state are behind both of those ideas. The borebots and the interstellar-object checker are among 16 proposals winning Phase I funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC. For more than two decades, NIAC (which started out as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts) has backed early-stage projects that could… Read More
For the first time ever, NASA has captured video of a rover landing on the surface of Mars, plus audio of the wind whistling past it after the landing — and Amazon Web Services is playing a key role in making all those gigabytes of goodness available to the world. The stars of the show are NASA’s Perseverance rover and the hundreds of scientists and engineers supporting the mission to Mars at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other institutions around the world. But the fact that thousands of images are being pumped out via NASA’s website with only a few… Read More
Twenty years after the first human genome sequence was published, an international research team has kicked the sequencing game to the next level with a set of 64 reference genomes that reflect much higher resolution and more genetic diversity. Since the Human Genome Project completed the first draft of its reference genome, decoding the human genetic code has been transformed from a multibillion-dollar endeavor into a relatively inexpensive commercial service. However, commercial whole-genome sequencing, or WGS, often misses out on crucial variations that can make all the difference when it comes to an individual’s health. “As a metric, 75% of… Read More
But first, scientists need to see if it's ready.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s targeting the fourth quarter of 2022 for the first flight of its orbital-class New Glenn rocket — which marks a major schedule shift. The company had previously planned to conduct its first New Glenn launch from Florida by the end of this year, although it was becoming increasingly clear that timeline wouldn’t hold. In a blog posting, Blue Origin said its team “has been in contact with all of our customers to ensure this baseline meets their launch needs.” Blue Origin noted that the updated timeline follows the U.S. Space… Read More
The Postal Service just decided it's time to get weird.
The shapes of fossilized teeth from 65.9 million-year-old, squirrel-like creatures suggest that the branch of the tree of life that gave rise to us humans and other primates flowered while dinosaurs still walked the earth. That’s the claim coming from a team of 10 researchers across the U.S., including biologists at Seattle’s Burke Museum and the University of Washington. In a study published by Royal Society Open Science, the team lays out evidence that an ancient group of primates known as plesiadapiforms must have emerged before the mass-extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs. (Technically, modern-day birds are considered the… Read More
Imagine charging your Apple Watch with ... yourself.
Stoke Space Technologies, the Renton, Wash.-based company founded by veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, has attracted $9.1 million in seed investments for extending rocket reusability to new frontiers. The first goal will be to develop a new kind of reusable upper stage, Stoke co-founder and CEO Andy Lapsa said. “That’s the last domino to fall in the industry before reusability is commonplace,” Lapsa told GeekWire. “Even right now, I think space launch is in a production-limited paradigm.” Rocket reusability is the watchword, to be sure — not only at Blue Origin, where Lapsa was an award-winning rocket… Read More
Because if it’s not a sharp knife, it’s not a good knife.
Expert-tested essentials for hunting deer, elk, ducks, birds, and beyondFrom Popular Mechanics
Christopher Havens got his number theory problem published in a college-level mathematics magazine.
Here's the sneaky way to find out where practically any picture came from.
An evaporative or ultrasonic humidifier will defend you from winter’s dry air.
Pictures just won’t do these places justice.From Popular Mechanics
Six-packs. For your six-pack. From Popular Mechanics
China's Ant Group is in talks with other shareholders in its new consumer finance unit to bolster the firm's capital as the fintech giant prepares to fold in its lucrative micro-lending businesses, people familiar with the matter said. Ant plans to bring most of its micro-lending businesses into the unit - equivalent to roughly 1 trillion yuan ($155 billion) in outstanding loans - a move which will allow it to maintain operations nationwide and expand more easily, said two sources. The plans reflect intense regulatory pressure on Ant to rein in some of its operations and subject them to rules and capital requirements similar to those for banks.
A sharp jump in U.S. Treasury yields this week has bond managers talking about a "tantrum", worrying about extreme moves and pockets of poor liquidity in the $20 trillion market. The selloff in U.S. Treasury bonds, which pushes prices down and yields up, has gathered steam in recent weeks due to rising expectations for economic growth - and fears inflation could spike if the economy overheats. Bond market investors and analysts drew parallels to the 2013 taper tantrum https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-2013/powell-sought-fast-end-in-2013-to-feds-bond-buying-program-idUSKCN1P522P, when bond yields rose dramatically after then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke told lawmakers the Fed could take a step down in its pace of purchases of assets that had been propping markets.