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Pictures just won’t do these places justice.From Popular Mechanics
Maybe aliens are just better engineers.
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
Older doesn’t mean better.
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
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
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
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
Six-packs. For your six-pack. From Popular Mechanics
Couple to discuss ‘breaking point’ in decision to step back from royal life
The U.S. government on Saturday authorized Johnson & Johnson's single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, enabling millions more Americans to be vaccinated in the coming weeks and setting the vaccine up for additional approvals around the world. The J&J vaccine is the third authorized in the United States, following ones from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, both of which require two doses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the emergency use authorization of the J&J vaccine for adults aged 18 and older following Friday's unanimous endorsement by the agency's panel of outside experts.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday signed into law a bill that gives indemnity to vaccine makers if their COVID-19 shots cause adverse side-effects, days before the country starts its lagging inoculation programme. Despite having one of the highest number of coronavirus infections in Asia, the Philippines will be the last Southeast Asian nation to receive its initial set of vaccines. It covers the creation of a 500 million pesos ($10.26 million) indemnity fund to cover compensation for potential serious adverse effects stemming from the doses' emergency use.
Incident is latest in string of attacks in Oakland’s Chinatown
The 59-year-old motorcyclist was heading north on Boiling Springs Road in Lexington Wednesday when he struck the rear of a van that had slowed to make a turn, officials said.
Mike Pence is returning to his home state of Indiana to decide his future, but residents in his home town of Columbus are torn on his legacy, reports Richard Hall.
Chinese officials have signalled that Beijing plans sweeping electoral changes for Hong Kong, possibly as soon as next week, when China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), opens in Beijing. WHAT IS BEIJING PLANNING? Xia Baolong, director of China's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, has said the electoral system in the global financial hub needs to be changed to allow only "patriots" to govern.
Republicans point to wages they earned as young people decades ago despite rising inflation that has outpaced Americans’ earnings
More than 850 cows that spent months aboard a ship wandering across the Mediterranean are not fit for transport anymore and should be killed, according to a confidential report by Spanish government veterinarians seen by Reuters. The cows were kept in what an animal rights activist called "hellish" conditions on the Karim Allah, which docked in the southeastern Spanish port of Cartagena on Thursday after struggling to find a buyer for the cattle during the past two months. The beasts were rejected by several countries over fears they had bovine bluetongue virus.
This will be the cult leader’s tenth year speaking at the event