On Thursday, October 22, I gave a short talk about the farside of the Moon as part of DNews After Dark, our live show during the Bay Area Science Festival. Lots of people asked about it on various social channels, so here's the talk I gave as a slideshow. The only thing missing are the bad jokes about my Canadian accent that kept slipping through!
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Everyone knows someone who gets really into Halloween. He spends hundreds of dollars on costumes, or she teases up her hair, but the effort is always impressive and ends up making the masquerader look like a completely different person (or species!). Colored contacts are a staple for these all-out costumes, turning your average person into a very convincing cat or zombie or fairy tale character. But wearing counterfeit or unapproved colored contact lenses could cause eye infections or even permanent eye damage, as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently warned in a scary press release.
“There’s a lot of demand for these lenses around the holidays—when people dress up for Halloween, they want to look as authentic as they can,” Matthew Bourke told Popular Science. Bourke is a spokesperson from the Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, working in collaboration with ICE and the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on the sale of these products. “They’re also very popular among youth—they’re in movies, on TV, in music videos. These are pervasive in pop culture.”
You might have seen these lenses on sale at a Halloween store or online, but it’s actually illegal to sell contact lenses to a consumer without a prescription from a licensed doctor. That’s because optometrists are trained to make sure the contacts fit before prescribing them, says Jeffrey Walline, the chair of the American Optometric Association contact lens and cornea section. “If the contacts don’t fit right, they could result in poor vision or poor eye health and poor comfort,” he says.
Though serious adverse events are unlikely, they do happen on occasion; there are about 1 million eye infections due to contacts every year, according to the CDC, and about 1 in every 500 of those is serious enough to result in blindness. “If you do have a problem, and it’s significant, you can lose your vision permanently,” Walline says. “And you would experience the most painful thing you’ve ever experienced. You really don’t want to risk it.”
Illegal contact lenses increase the infection risk, and the prevalence of those lenses is increasing.
Even corrective contacts carry some risk of irritation and infection. And sometimes consumers—or even doctors—can’t tell if lenses are counterfeit. Sometimes decorative lenses are produced in clean facilities to ensure that the contacts are packaged without bacteria that can infect the eye, but sometimes they’re not.
But the important health aspect is the fit of the contact lens, since every eye is a little different. If you get the wrong size contact lenses, it's like putting a size 6 shoe onto a size 9 foot, Bourke says, and that can result in real damage to your vision. That risk is compounded by the fact that anywhere from 40 to 90 percent of contact users wear them incorrectly by not cleaning or replacing them often enough, according to the CDC.
And though the eye issues that result from ill-fitting decorative lenses aren’t new, the contacts have become more pervasive in the past five years. Many of the lenses are made in places like China and Singapore, Bourke says.
“Once those distributors get their hands on the product, they either work with retailers to sell them illegally to the American consumer, or they mislead retailers,” Bourke says. “[The distributors] may tell retailers that Halloween is coming up, they’ve seen these on movies and on TV, and they’re a hot product and in high demand, so retailers get really excited.”
Even for those manufacturers, distributors, and retailers that know the law, the profit margins for colored lenses can be to enticing to turn down. The lenses are so small that they’re easy to ship and transport; if they’re labeled as something else, they can easily slip past the notice of customs agents.
Plus, Bourke adds, the product moves quickly, especially in the few weeks before Halloween and into the holiday season, when many people give them as gifts. In a two-week period this month, Homeland Security Investigations confiscated about 5,000 pairs of illegal contacts, a number that doesn’t include local police activity; the main investigation called Operation Double Vision that launched in 2013 has resulted in the seizure of more than 20,000 pairs. Chances are, that’s only a small percentage of the illegal lenses that are on the market. “The holiday season really gets criminals motivated to exploit the American consumer,” Bourke adds.
Luckily, federal officials are on the case. There are task forces in every major port city, Bourke says. Customers can report retailers illegally selling the lenses (again, that’s any retailer that is not an optometrist) by calling the Homeland Security Investigations tip line at 866-DHS-2-ICE, or reporting the information anonymously online.
If your Halloween costume calls for decorative contact lenses, don't buy them at the last minute—start early. Go see your eye doctor and buy a pair of decorative contacts that actually fit your eyes. Those contacts might be a little more expensive than the illegal ones, but not much more, Walline says. And paying a little more for your health is better than going blind. “You’d be crazy not to,” he adds.
Just like the X-Men, mutations endow cancer cells with unique abilities that normal, healthy cells just don’t have. For example, cancer cells, unlike normal ones, can invade other cells, causing the disease to metastasize to new tissues in the body and put the patient’s life further at risk. But the mechanism by which cancer cells are able to both multiply and invade new cells has been poorly understood, as scientists have been unable to find cells performing both those tasks simultaneously in a living organism. Now, researchers have found that cancer cells might divide and conquer at totally different stages of their development. According to a new study published today in Developmental Cell, researchers found that, at least in nematodes, cells that are dividing can’t also take over new cells--a discovery that could give researchers a new way to treat cancer by targeting the cells that are most likely to invade healthy cells.
Though a nematode doesn’t look much like a human, the two species have enough biological similarities that scientists often use nematodes to better understand human physiology. In this study, the researchers looked at the nematode’s anchor cell, which connects the worm's uterus to its egg laying-structure during an essential stage in a nematode’s normal development. “That’s interesting because this process of connection involves an anchor cell invading through another cell’s basement [outside] membrane, which gives us a model for understanding cells’ invasive behavior,” says David Matus, a professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Stony Brook University and one of the study authors.
The researchers wanted to know which of the nematode’s genes made this process happen, so they tested about 850 of them and tried turning them off and on. One in particular acted like a particularly potent switch—normally, it’s turned on, which allows the anchor cell to invade another cell. But when the researchers turned it off, the anchor cell couldn’t break through the cell membrane. Instead, it divided and reproduced.
This is the first time that scientists have observed division and invasion as distinct, separate processes that can't occur simultaneously. “We think of cancer as uncontrolled cell growth or division,” Matus says. “The idea that during metastasis, when cells form a tumor, and have to turn off cell division before they start to travel elsewhere, that’s not something that has been tested. [Scientists] have seen and made these observations in different ways in cancer, but no one has ever put the two together.” In nematodes, he adds, it can finally be tested.
These conclusions may mean that cancer treatments, many of which currently target rapidly dividing cells, could investigate the unique qualities of these invasive cells. If treatments could pinpoint those cells, they could slow or prevent metastasis, a process that makes a cancer significantly more deadly. “Our study gives one new avenue [to develop new] cancer treatments, allowing researchers to take advantage of the fact that the cells are not dividing and figure out what’s special about that,” Matus says.
Teaser for Mercedes-Benz autonomous van concept debuting at 2015 Tokyo Motor Show
Mercedes-Benz has released a teaser sketch for a new autonomous van concept called the Vision Tokyo, which the automaker plans to unveil at this week’s 2015 Tokyo Motor Show.
The concept features a futuristic look that’s not unlike the design of Mercedes’ F015 autonomous car concept unveiled at the start of this year, and is described as a minivan for passengers rather than a commercial vehicle.
Mercedes calls the concept “a vision for future generations” and says that in addition to autonomous technology the concept also previews the progressive design and luxury that we can expect on the automaker’s future lineup.
No other details have been released just yet but it’s thought that the vehicle’s powertrain will be a plug-in hybrid setup combining a lithium-ion battery, hydrogen fuel cell and electric motor(s).
We should have all the details soon, as the Tokyo Motor Show gets underway on Thursday, October 29. For more from the show, head to our dedicated hub.
For months, fires have been raging throughout much of Indonesia. They started because of the practice of slash and burn agriculture, which local farmers view as necessary to keep up the lucrative palm oil industry, but they haven’t stopped. Now they’re blanketing the skies of much of Southeast Asia, grounding flights, closing schools, threatening endangered species, and sickening inhabitants. One expert has called the environmental and public health crisis “a crime against humanity,” as The Guardian reports.
Palm oil is a $44 billion industry and is found in products such as lipstick, chocolate, and packaged bread. To make it, farmers plant millions of acres of palm trees, then collect their fruit for processing into oil. But before they can plant those trees, they have to clear the land, which they often do by burning. Often, the fires rage out of control because the land is too dry, thanks in part to water tables lowered from over-irrigation of other nearby farms, according to a separate Guardian piece.
As a result of over farming, large-scale fires have been plaguing the archipelago nation since the late 1990s. But this year it’s particularly bad—a powerful El Nino effect and longer dry season has turned the island into a veritable tinderbox.
A satellite image taken in September of the smoke covering much of Indonesia and its neighbors.
The air quality is so bad—on Sumatra, for example, the Pollutant Standard Index (PSI) is nearly seven times higher than the level often considered toxic—that 10 people have died from breathing the toxic air, and 500,000 people have been diagnosed with acute respiratory tract infections since July 1. Public health officials assume that number is much higher throughout the country and in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, where the smoke has also created a milky haze. If people are exposed to smoke over long periods, it can have serious health effects such as cancer, lung disease, and heart problems.
Six of Indonesia’s provinces have declared a state of emergency; the government has deployed thousands of troops to fight the fires, and many nearby countries have sent aid. But many environmentalists claim that these efforts are merely a short-term solution to Indonesia’s growing problem. One non-profit called for a special government agency to facilitate collaboration in farming communities to ensure fires don’t break out; some academics say that more data is needed to know what is actually causing the fires. Environmentalist groups have called for a complete ban on all fires.
Many citizens, as well as the international environmental and public health communities, are hoping that officials will address the issue at the United Nations Climate Change Summit, which will be held in Paris this December. In the meantime, people living in Indonesia and neighboring countries will have to try to mitigate the health risks of the toxic smoke as they go about their daily lives.
Several examples of hazy skies in Sumatra, Borneo, and Singapore
For those of you who aren't morning people, the alarm clock can be torture. But you might be surprised how hitting snooze a time or two can impact the rest of your day.
Wake up, rub that sleep out of your eyes, and check out the latest installment in our Ask Us Anything video series. It's based on our ever-popular column by Daniel Engber.
Got a question you've been noodling over lately? You ask; we answer! Tweet your query to (@PopSci) with the hashtag #AskAnything, or email it to us at askanything@popsci.com.
Billions of years ago, comets might have brought the essential ingredients for life to Earth. And what could possibly be more essential than ethyl alcohol? Our favorite ingredient in wine, beer, and liquor has been found on the aptly named comet Lovejoy. It's the first time we've detected this boozy molecule on a comet, and the finding adds to the evidence that comets could have seeded Earth with the complex building blocks of life.
"We found that comet Lovejoy was releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity," said Nicolas Biver, lead author of a paper on the discovery, said in a press release.
But alcohol is not all they found. Comet Lovejoy is a veritable cocktail of organic molecules. The team detected 20 other substances on the comet, including the simple sugar glycolaldehyde, which may play an important molecule in building DNA nucleotides and the amino acids that make up proteins.
The team actually measured these molecules back in January, when the comet passed its closest point to the Sun. At the time, the Sun's energy excited comet Lovejoy's molecules, causing them to release microwave frequencies. Different molecules vibrate and release energy in different wavelengths, depending on which atoms are present and how they're bonded together. The scientists used those microwave signatures to determine which molecules were present.
The findings were published on Friday in Science Advances.
We live in the age of Big Data, or so the pundits would have you believe. And yet, amazingly, very few projects have tried to apply a big data approach to one of our most fundamental concerns: our health. That is, until now.
The Human Diagnosis Project is a global effort to map any health problem to its possible causes. The goal is to get a dataset that will present a patient, a caregiver, or a patient advocate with the smallest possible number of diagnoses to help someone get treatment faster.
"This is conceptually similar to an online map," states the backgrounder on the website. "Just as an online map helps you get from one location to another, the Project gives patients, family members, doctors, hospitals, and others a shared path to helping any person."
The project is being organized by a team of medical professionals from around the globe, including representatives from entities such as World Health Organization, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Facebook, Amazon, McKinsey & Company, Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group, Creative Artists Agency, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and Yale. The main contact for the project is Dr. Shantanu Nundy, an M.D. with Alpha Omega Alpha distinction from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Medical professionals can contribute to the project by adding anonymous case studies. "Similar to how people around the world contribute encyclopedia articles to Wikipedia, or engineers contribute code to open source software projects like Linux, the global medical community contributes clinical cases to Human Dx. The Project extends upon the ideas of open technology efforts like Wikipedia and Linux by bringing together multiple other communities (including the patient, scientific, and technology) with the medical community to ensure the creation and validation of clinical case data that can help anyone, anywhere."
Members of the public will eventually be able to have access to the anonymized, aggregated data under a Creative Commons license. Meanwhile, anyone can check out the Case of the Week. As of this writing, the case is a 34-year-old male presenting with chest pain. Reading the case data gives members of the lay public insight into just how much goes into a medical diagnosis in the 21st century.
By late October 2015, with the installation of the 7.5 meter tall hangar below the soon to be flight deck, it's pretty certain that this hull is going to be China's first domestically built aircraft carrier.
Chinese military watchers everywhere have another clear sign that China is building its first indigenous aircraft carrier, the Type 001A "17".
The Beginning
fengbubei via Weibo
In April 2015, Chinese military enthusiasts on the Internet noticed that Dalian Shipyard (which has refit the ex Soviet Varyag into the Liaoning) had dedicated a shipyard to building a large (60,000-70,000 tons) hull, likely military, with extensive compartmentalization.
The hull in the Dalian Shipyard,with its high number of watertight bulkheads and compartments, has long been the subject of speculation due to its resilient construction and the prominent "no photography" signs around its drydock. In photos that appeared on Oct 24, the shipyard installed a module on top of the hull, with a clear 7.5 meter high, 27 meter across room, which is almost certainly a hangar for aircraft. The new photos provide further visual evidence in the open source domain that leave little to debate that China's aircraft carrier program is moving forward.
Type 001A
lt.cdjby.net
The Type 001A aircraft carrier, "17", is projected to feature incremental improvements over the original Liaoning, such as a redesigned island superstructure, as well as newer radar, increased automation and greater storage space (some fan art like this CGI, show it with waist catapults to launch heavier aircraft).
Aircraft carrier number "17" is likely to be 65,000 to 70,000 tons in displacement, have forward located ski-jump to launch figthers, and carry about 36-48 aircraft, a combination of J-15 Flying Shark fighters and Z-8/Z-18 helicopters. That's similar in size to "16" Liaoning, China's Soviet designed and built aircraft carrier or newer programs like Britain's HMS Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier presently under construction. "17" will feature automation to reduce crew size, increased fuel and ammunition storage, and a smaller island superstructure, making it far more capable than the Liaoning.
Upgrade Complete
lt.cdjby.net
Even the land based carrier test mockup in Wuhan is getting a make over for "17", with modifications to install new radars and communications gear.
If all goes to plan, "17" will be launched in the second half of 2016. At this stage, it would receive its name, most likely the name of a Chinese province or national level municipality. It would likely to be commissioned in 2019, thus doubling China's aircraft carrier capacity for theaters from the First Island Chain all the away to Africa and Latin America. As the PLAN gains more naval aviation experience from the Liaoning and "17", its fleet will then move on to more capable future aircraft carriers, like the planned catapult-equipped Type 002 and nuclear power Type 003.
Battle isn’t subtle. The after-effects of a fight mark the earth, with damaged buildings, broken trees, destroyed vehicles, and upturned dirt disturbing the area instantly. From this basic premise, that craters are visible and we understand how artillery works, comes a daunting project: is it possible to train a machine to find artillery craters in satellite images, and then figure out where the attack came from? Created by human rights organization Rudiment, the ARtillery Crater Analysis and Detection Engine (ARCADE) is a program that wants to do just that.
The project builds from analysis done by open-source investigations outfit Bellingcat of craters between Russian and eastern Ukraine. The most accurate way to analyze a crater is to get artillery specialists standing in the crater itself, but that’s labor intensive, risky even on test ranges, where unexploded artillery shells in the crater might go off, and riskier still in active war zones. Withought being in the crater itself, it’s possible to still do some analysis of the blast, but it’s challenging to do each crater in turn.
ARCADE wants to automate the process as much as possible. They’re relying on publicly available images, and want the tool to be free to distribute and easy for anyone to use. As it works right now, the tool takes an image of a crater-scarred field, processes the image to grayscale, looks for craters, and then marks their centers. After that, it tries to fit an arrow shape to the crater, with the blasted earth pointing backwards to where the shot likely originated.
As it is, the tool is good at finding craters, but also really good at finding spots that look like craters but aren’t. The project is still in the early stages, and Rudiment is working with the Centre for Visual Computing at the University of Bradford to develop it further. This tool will likely never tell artillery commanders in the field what they need to know when they’re under fire, but for journalists and human rights organizations reporting a war, it adds another layer of insight.
T-cells can face exhaustion during chronic viral infection
Source: NIH
You have to hand it to the immune system. The collection of specialized cells works endlessly throughout our lives to keep us safe. They are involved in almost every aspect of our daily life and are the front lines of defense against infection.
Normally, when a pathogen enters the body, an able immunity is capable of defeating most invasions. B-cells, T-cells, macrophages, neutrophils and others work in combination with one another to eliminate the threat and restore us back to health. It’s not always an easy process, however, and at times can lead to exhaustion. When this happens, our ability to fend off other invaders decreases. We essentially become more susceptible to other ailments.
One of the most common causes of exhaustion happens with chronic viral infection, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV). Both of these pathogens have the ability to evade the defenses and maintain a presence for years. As this happens, the immune system continues to fight without any progress towards victory.
A vital immune cell in the fight against viral infection is called the CD8 T-cell. It has the task of finding these tiny pathogens and purging them from the body. The cell accomplishes this by either signaling an infected cell to kill the virus or, more viciously, to kill the infected cell altogether. Depending on the type of signal they receive their population can be controlled such that the response is just right for the situation. Once an infection is cleared, most of the cells die but some are kept around to serve as memory for any future viral attacks.
Unfortunately, when a chronic infection happens to occur, this process is interrupted and some of the CD8 T-cells lose their ability to function. This is known as exhaustion and can cause significant detriment against the current infection and worse, any new ones that happen to arrive. In HIV and HCV positive individuals, exhaustion is a serious concern as it may be the basis for even greater susceptibility to secondary infections.
The mechanism behind CD8 T-cell exhaustion hasn’t been fully understood but there has been some progress. Back in 2013, the condition was found to be reversible. On exhausted cells, a variety of proteins are expressed on the surface including one called the Programmed Death 1 (PD-1). This particular trigger is rather self-explanatory and has been called a hallmark of exhaustion. In HIV-infected individuals, this particular protein is also associated with progression of HIV infection. This could be reversed, however, with the induction of another cellular member of the immune system, the dendritic cell.
Although exhaustion theoretically could be reversed, there was still no clear mechanism. After all, PD-1 is only expressed in cells already programmed to die. Discovering the protein means the process has already reached a dire state. To get a better handle on the how exhaustion initiated and spread, they needed to find a more suitable biomarker candidate.
Last week, the answer may have been found. An international team of researchers discovered another marker associated with CD8 exhaustion. Perhaps even more importantly, this particular protein may also serve as a way to finally understanding how this condition occurs.
The group focused on patients with HIV or HCV infection with healthy individuals acting as a control. The team also looked at mice infected with the chronic infection, Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus (LCMV). They collected blood samples and examined the blood for any sign of markers associated with exhaustion. They found one particular protein, called CD39, was higher on cells in chronically infected people and mice.
The choice of CD39 had to do with the function of the protein. It’s an enzyme that is normally found on a different type of cell, the regulatory T-cell, which is known to suppress the immune response. The cell uses the enzymatic action of CD39 as part of its suppressing activity. Finding this enzyme on CD8 T-cells in patients suggested an alteration of the usual immune response using one of two possible mechanisms. The first was causal in which these killer CD8 T-cells were forced by CD39 on other cells to shut down operations and eventually express the enzyme as a sign of conformity. The second, more likely scenario was correlation. In essence, CD39 was being expressed as a means of announcing the cell had giving up on the fight and was calling it quits.
The team tried to find some way to determine the actual reason using the mouse model. They took CD8 cells with a moderate percentage of CD39 positive cells and compared them to CD8 cells with a higher level of CD39 expression. As expected, the higher amount of the marker led to lower function. While this showed CD39 was correlated with exhaustion (in other words, a symptom), this could not prove whether CD39 was the cause of exhaustion. Other experiments would have to be performed to truly understand the early role of CD39.
Even though the overall relationship between CD39 and immune exhaustion wasn’t entirely figured out in this study, the group still found a good marker to identify the condition. Moreover, as CD39 was shown to be concentration-dependent on exhaustion, it may be able to identify troubles in the earlier stages and signal a possible downturn in health sooner. Though this may not offer a possible cure, for those who suffer with these chronic virus infections, this new discovery may help to foresee troubles ahead so lifestyle changes to improve health may be implemented.
An artist's depiction of an x-ray flare caused by a corona
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Telescopes have captured black hole flares in the past, but what causes the flares has been a mystery. Now, NASA scientists have confirmed for the first time that a supermassive black hole's x-ray flare was caused by the ejection of its corona.
The conclusion comes from observations made by NASA's Swift Observatory and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). Swift watches for gamma ray and x-ray outbursts, and in doing so, spotted a big flare coming from the supermassive black hole known as Markarian 335 in September 2014. After that, NuSTAR focused its attention on it to catch the end of the flare. After analyzing the data gathered by Swift and NuSTAR, scientists determined they had caught a glimpse of the black hole's corona ejecting and collapsing.
"This is the first time we have been able to link the launching of the corona to a flare," Dan Wilkins of Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, and lead author of a new paper on the results said in a statement. "This will help us understand how supermassive black holes power some of the brightest objects in the universe."
This is a big step forward to understand more about black holes, but other mysteries remain: like, what causes a black hole to eject its corona.
The B-52 is the old workhorse of the U.S. bomber fleet, with an average age of more than 45 years. It can carry a wider range of weapons, and loiter longer without refueling, than any other bomber. The B-52 has more than four times the range of the 2018 bomber.
Meet the B-52's grandchild. Today, after four years of development in secret, the United States Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman the contract to build their Long Range Strike Bomber. With a target price of $511 million apiece (in 2010 dollars), the LRS-B is the first new bomber for the Air Force since their 21st and final B-2 Spirit entered service in 1997. The Air Force will order the first 21 of 100 total LRS-Bs to replace their aging bomber fleet.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said that this contract "represents the type of technological leap" that the U.S. needs to retain its edge when it comes to airborne warfare.
This sentiment was echoed by Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh, who said that this will be a significant tool in deterring unwanted nuclear weaponry.
This bomber is a far cry from the simple lumbering craft of the past. A crew-optional version is expected, and the reach of the craft is expected to be truly global. In "Beyond the Bomber," a white paper published by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies last month, retired Lieutenant General David A. Deptula argues that it should be though it more as a "Long Range Sensor Shooter."
Deptula writes:
We know the Air Force wants it to be a long-range, air-refuelable, highly survivable ("stealthy"), optionally manned aircraft with a significant nuclear and conventional standoff and direct-attack weapons payload. The aircraft is more appropriately characterized as a long-range sensor-shooter, or LRSS, as it will possess a sensor suite with room for expansion and the growth potential to carry and employ weapons beyond the "iron bombs" that were the defining characteristic of "bombers" from the last century.
Deptula expects the bomber to have a range of over 2,800 miles with mid-air refueling, enabling the bomber to reach Mongolia from an airbase in Guam or to hit Sudan from a base in the south of England.
The new bomber enters a crowded Air Force budget, which is also trying to keep an order for 1,800 F-35s and a new aerial tanker. With the LRS-B, the Air Force and its industrial partners want to avoid the fate of the B-2, deemed too expensive and limited a tool after the Cold War. If that means selling a bomber as an advanced scout, that might be what they do.
A map of some of the earthquakes that hit the town of San Ramon.
Large earthquakes can be incredibly serious, like the one that struck Afghanistan on Monday. But not all earthquakes are devastating, earth-shattering monsters. Sometimes, they're just...there.
Over the past two weeks, over 408 earthquakes have rattled the town of San Ramon, California. That's a little over an earthquake every hour, and sets a record for the area, beating out a 2003 swarm which lasted for a month and had 120 earthquakes. It's an impressive accomplishment, but San Ramon has a long way to go if it wants to beat seismic heavyweights like Yellowstone National Park, which recorded 3,000 earthquakes over 3 months in 1985.
The largest earthquake in the swarm was a magnitude 3.6 on October 19. Magnitude is a measure of how large an earthquake is. A 3.6 magnitude earthquake is a fairly moderate-size earthquake that is unlikely to cause damage. Many of the other earthquakes in the swarm were so small that they weren't felt by residents.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) says that the swarm could last for "several more weeks". But that isn't a reason to panic.
As unsettling as the shaking is, the USGS says that the chance of these smaller earthquakes presaging a larger earthquake is very small, and the chance of a damaging earthquake (larger than a magnitude 6.7) happening along the fault causing the shaking is only about 8 percent.
Last year's NBA champions will come to you live, in a Samsung Gear VR near you
The NBA will livestream the Golden State Warriors opening game in virtual reality tonight. With the help of Samsung’s Gear VR and the Next app, Steph Curry and Dub-Nation will come to fans live in 3D video form.
Now that Steph Curry has conquered the iPhone's movable photos, it seems his next target is virtual reality. To watch the Golden State NBA game live in VR, Galaxy S6 owners will have to download the Next VR app from the Oculus app store. Similar to the 360-degree video Facebook offers users, the virtual-reality-enabled NBA game will allow the audience to pan around the court. With cameras placed around the arena, fans of California basketball will be able to watch the Splash Brothers knock back three-pointers front-and-center.
Talking to the San Diego Tribune, the NBA’s vice president of global media distribution claims VR will could be good for experiencing the game. "Virtual reality delivers amazing vantage points like the NBA All-Star Game from a courtside seat.” Best of all it doesn’t require courtside prices.
Depending on participation, we could see more games offered in this way throughout the season. With more video going in the direction of all-around experiences, fans of the game could find that the next step after high-definition is immersive video.
The Golden State Warriors versus the New Orleans Pelicans will start at 10:30pm ET/7:30pm PT.
Researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) are presenting a new method for seeing through walls. They call it RF-Capture, and it builds on research CSAIL has been working on since 2013. The paper was accepted to the SIGGRAPH Asia conference, which will take place in November.
RF-Capture works like this: The device contains a wireless transmitter that relays a radio signal. Then, the device's receivers pick up the signal reflected back by the hidden body. With the data, an algorithm can then determine the silhouette of the body on the other side. And the device is also able to distinguish between different people (up to 15 different people, with 90 percent accuracy), and track motion and posture.
There are a couple of methods already for sussing out what our eyes can't naturally see. Researchers at the University of Washington have partnered with Microsoft to develop HyperCam, which uses hyperspectral imaging. So, instead of sending radio waves, HyperCam uses visible light and near-infrared light to see beneath surfaces. It's a technology that's already used in industries like food safety, to determine whether something is contaminated.
And in 2014, scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara built rescue robots, which, when working in pairs could send and receive wireless signals to determine whether anyone was inside a building.
In a press release, the lead author of the paper, Fadel Adib, calls the possibilities for applications "vast." Indeed, they've already started integrating the technology into a commercial project called Emerald, which could be used to detect and prevent falls for the elderly. And it could be useful to integrate into smart homes and even gaming.
With the help of Fone Salesman's Qi patch, the iPhone can be retro-fitted with wireless charging. Similar to what comes with the Apple Watch charger by default.
September's iPhone 6S release added many features to take on the competition. A 12-megapixel camera, faster fingerprint sensor and 3D Touch impressed during our iPhone 6S review. But what wasn’t included in the body of the now-unbendable Apple phone is a feature found in the latest Samsung Galaxy S6 and other Android devices: wireless charging.
Moving power magically between objects without a cord is something many may have encountered in electric toothbrushes. By placing the toothbrush on its stand, energy is transferred from the metal plate to the brush. Similar charging technology can be found in Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6, LG G4 and Nexus 5. But just because Apple didn’t include it inside the latest iPhone doesn’t mean iOS users don’t have options.
After using the Aerelight lamp to charge an iPhone case that supported inductive charging, I was hooked. When sitting at my desk, picking up my phone for use and setting it down to charge without wires was too convenient. So I contacted Fonesalesman to outfit my iPhone 6S with one of their wireless charging patches and received a wooden charging puck to go along with it. (The patch and puck usually total around $75-95. Cheaper alternatives exist on Amazon.)
Here are my impressions of a life without wires. But first, a primer.
How Does Wireless Charging Work?
Much like hoverboards and hoverboards, the term “wireless charging” is a bit misleading. Inductive charging isn’t wireless like Wi-Fi or cell service is—i.e.: don’t expect to grab a charge as you’re traversing your city’s streets. But it’s still slightly cooler than plugging in your phone. Most inductive chargers make use of coils to transfer energy. When given power, a transmitter coil (found in the wooden puck) can toss energy over to a receiver coil (found in the phone patch) with the help of a magnetic field. Which is well-illustrated here. This only works when both coils are very close to each other.
The “wireless charging” moniker is also misleading because really, there are still wires involved. Our Fonesalesman wooden puck needed to be plugged in via micro-USB to work. And other charging objects like the Aerelight lamp we initially tested or Ikea’s line of powered-up furniture need to be plugged in somehow too. Plugging in the lamp wasn’t too out of the ordinary, however, since light sources without inductive charging require this anyway.
Similar to Lightning versus micro-USB cables, not all wireless charging standards are the same. The most popular is currently Qi: found in the aforementioned Android devices, Ikea’s furniture, this Fonesalesman puck/patch combo and more. Our patch stuck onto the back of the phone and plugged into the charging port. It uses an adhesive that's easy to rinse off after you remove the patch.
iPhone 6S x Inductive Charging
Xavier Harding
Fone Salesman's patch allows any case to gain wireless charging capabilities
Advantages
The main advantage of inductive charging is convenience. Considering the numerous times we put down our phones, it only makes sense that they grab a quick charge when we do. Unfortunately all furniture isn’t equipped with inductive charging—just like all phones aren’t capable of wirelessly charging. But powering up your phone in this way hints at a future where this is the case and it’s kind of cool. For now, the next best option is a designated portion of your desk that has power magically flowing out of it. And setting your phone on it keeps your battery at a respectable level always.
The patch itself is kind of an eyesore. But we were able to throw on a case and hide some of the plumbing for maximum cool effect. Apple’s standard silicone case works well with this as does the Madera iPhone 6 case we tried it with. My favorite case, the bumper, unfortunately doesn’t do a good job of tucking in the Fonesalesman charging patch, but the setup still works—even if having the patch exposed gets in the way more than we’d like.
iPhone users that make use of a case will have the best experience with the patch, especially since it will work with your case of choice and doesn’t require the (more often that not) bulkier wireless charging solutions. But, charging your phone in this way does have its drawbacks...
iPhone 6S w/ Wireless Charging & Bumper Case
Xavier Harding
The iPhone 6S Qi patch works with many cases. But is a slight hassle with my personal favorite case
Drawbacks
It’s not all sunshine and green battery icons. Like any device that supports wireless charging, using your phone while it charges becomes a bit harder. When plugged in, the device is movable within a radius dictated by the cord’s length. When wirelessly charging, you’re forced to swipe, tap and pinch against your table. You also can’t put your phone face-down and expect it to charge in case you wanted to ignore distractions and bury your head in some work. At least not with the iPhone solutions or the even the inductive-capable Galaxy S6 Edge Plus we tried.
And then there are the inductive patch-specific wireless charging problems. While on capable Samsung or Nexus phones the wireless charging port remains exposed, this is not the case with iPhone inductive solutions. Meaning that tucking the Fonesalesman patch behind a case and then plugging in your phone to play music in the car, using it with a portable battery pack or doing anything Lightning port-related becomes very difficult, unless you’re willing to tear apart your charging setup.
And then there’s the fact this is a third-party solution. Not only is this charging solution not made by Apple, the Fonesalesman patch-and-puck combo isn’t MFi certified—it hasn’t officially received Apple’s seal of approval since it doesn't use the company's Lightning standard. We haven’t noticed any negative effects using the Fonesalesman’s charger but proceed with caution. Your warranty may thank you for it.
Also your phone, when on its back, will never lie flat on a table. Even when the patch is hidden inside a case. Wobbly table use and TouchID is something to get used to.
iPhone 6S
Xavier Harding
Final Word
Inductive charging is a game of trade-offs. Being able to drop your phone on a table and suddenly enter charging mode is convenient, and surely turns some heads. You may even receive a nod-of-approval from Qi fans leading a similar lifestyle.
But if you want cordless charging, you’ll have to be willing to live with the negatives—at least at the moment on iOS devices. Having a bulky case or sticky patch are the quickest solutions to retro-fit your device with a wireless power setup. And even if you can slyly tuck your Qi patch behind a case, your Lightning port will be blocked—interrupting spontaneous phone plug-ins with a quick undressing of your device. This situation definitely isn’t ideal when on the road or going out for the night. But we found when at our work desk, switching into patch-and-puck mode definitely made things more convenient.
Until Apple adds wireless charging to the iPhone 7—with their own in-house standard, of course—this is the best option iOS users have.
The Curiosity Rover is the most advanced piece of technology ever sent to Mars. It weighs 2,000 pounds and houses a full science laboratory on board. Curiosity landed on Mars on August 5th, 2012, and has been conducting science ever since. Curiosity’s main mission was to determine if Mars was or ever could be a potential place for life. Curiosity is currently on the lower slopes of Mt. Sharp, drilling and examining rocks along the way.
In its abundant spare time, the rover has been tweeting interplanetary snark from the @SarcasticRover Twitter account. On Sol 1128, Sarcastic Rover took a break from her science job to talk to us about Martian life and what it’s like ‘doing a science’ on the Red Planet.
NOTE: Sarcastic Rover is a hilarious Twitter account run by a human on Earth and is not affiliated with NASA.
Is there life on Mars?
There is no life on Mars. Trust me. I’m here, and I have no life.
What's the worst thing about Mars?
The worst thing about Mars is how lonely it is, and also how many ghosts there are, and also how the crippling loneliness can make you imagine that there are ghosts everywhere. It’s a confusing place. Oh! And also the wifi is not very good. Worst, right?
Is Pluto a planet?
It’s a well-known fact among robots that Pluto is actually one of those BB-8 Sphero toys, which has become sentient and massive. Like the toy, Pluto is very costly and hard to find and your dog will be scared of it.
Best spacecraft of all time?
Worst is the one that brought me to Mars. Best spacecraft is the one that Ethan Hawke made out of a Tilt-A-Whirl in the move “Explorers”.
Have you seen The Martian yet?
There’s only one movie theatre on Mars, and I’m banned from it - so no, I have not seen ‘The Martian’ yet. I did read the book, and I thought it was hilarious. Until the end.
Why didn’t you help out Matt Damon/Mark Watney when he was stuck there?
Primarily because he’s a fictional character, and also the better question is why none of the previous Ares missions bothered to come help ME out.
Humans are due to land on Mars sometime in the 2030s. Ready for company?
I’ve told them that Mars is BYOB, so I’m as ready as I need to be.
Best day on Mars?
Taco Tuesday.
Worst day on Mars?
Every other day that doesn’t involve tacos.
Favorite food?
Tacos. (I should also point out that I’m programmed to think rocks are tacos)
As long as he gets me off the planet first, I’m all for it.
Is Tinder as bad on Mars as it is on Earth?
Mars Tinder is pretty much exactly the same as Earth Tinder - except it’s full of rocks and ghosts and robots and also it doesn’t exist.
You break a lot of rocks, why?
I break rocks for the same reason people break hearts. I’m looking for something special.
Your budget is due to run out in 2016. Do you ever worry about being out of a job?
I think these are tough economic times and the government will always have a hard time justifying the expenditure of real dollars on extra-planetary research when there is actual need and suffering on Earth. So, while I wouldn’t welcome a reduction or cut in my operating budget, I think there are a lot of legitimate uses for government funds, and only a finite amount of money to go around.
Sorry, I forget what the question was. Something about space poop?
Does it bother you that you weren’t the one to discover liquid water on Mars?
Liquid water is a dangerous thing. It houses gross bacteria, it causes mold, it rots things, it leads to boating and boat accidents, it’s like, the number one cause of drowning… I’m actually pretty glad I missed out on that whole discovery.
For a robot you’ve got a pretty snarky personality, is that a defect or a feature in your programming?
It’s a defense mechanism. Like a laser or a bad hat.
Is there a lot of downtime on Mars? You seem to find a lot of time for Twitter.
Mars has an extra 40 minutes in a day, so I use those minutes for all my Tweeting and also get off my back.
You were the first to use the selfie-stick on Mars, where do you think that falls on your list of accomplishments?
I think taking a selfie on Mars is PROBABLY the greatest accomplishment of the 21st century. It’s all downhill from here.
Do you have a message for the humans back at JPL who sent you to Mars?
Sure. Tell them I said, “I found the wreckage of that secret crewed mission to Mars from 1984 where everyone was mysteriously murdered by future versions of themselves, and if someone doesn't come get me soon I will tell the whole world about it.”
☺
Sarcastic Rover's human typist is Jason Filiatrault, a Canadian screenwriter. Jason started the Sarcastic Rover Twitter account after watching the Mars Science laboratory land on Mars in 2012. As the ‘seven minutes of terror’ was taking place, Jason wondered what it would be like if he was left alone on Mars and wasn’t too happy about the thought.
On October 26, the International Agency for Research on Cancer added a new item to its list of, Group 1 carcinogens. These are chemicals, mixtures, and exposure circumstances that are known to cause cancer. Much to internet america's horror, that substance was processed meat. To many, this meant nasty canned meat products with "chemicals" in them, but it also includes cured meats like sausage and bacon. What does this mean?
If you eat moderate amounts of bacon, probably nothing.
Immediately following the news, Cancer Research UK posted an article which explains what the IARC groups mean, and what you can do to lower your risk. You can read that here.
M.E. Brown and P.D. Fischer/Caltech, K.P. Hand/JPL
The region shown here in red has a distinctly different composition from the rest of Europa, and scientists want to find out why.
A vast ocean lies inside the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa. Whether that ocean might be home to simple alien beings is one of the great mysteries of astrobiology. It's a mystery that probably won't be easy to solve, since the ocean is buried under miles of ice. But a new paper suggests there may be a different way to taste Europa's ocean--and it doesn't involve sampling the elusive plumes of water that may sometimes spew from the moon's south pole.
Recently accepted by the Astronomical Journal, the study maps the infrared wavelengths emitted across Europa. Different materials in the crust give off different wavelengths, providing insight into what Europa's made of. One of the regions unveiled by the new map could make a perfect landing site for future spacecraft, according to astronomer Mike Brown, a co-author on the paper.
Although there are currently no plans in the works to put a lander on Europa, a mission informally named 'Europa Clipper' could fly by the small moon after launching in the 2020s, and scientists are pushing to get a lander onboard. Brown says he hopes that by identifying a potential landing site, the research will help to spur the conversation forward.
Europa
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Mapping the composition of Europa's surface turned up three distinct areas. Two of the sites were known before now.
"One is just generic water ice, like you would expect," says Brown. "The other is what you would expect if you have water ice that's bombarded by radiation from Io and Jupiter. But we found a third component that we didn't know was there before."
Intriguingly, the component (scientists aren't sure what it is) is located in an area of 'chaos terrain'. In these areas, the ice looks like it's been splintered and broken, then messily refrozen. Scientists have been interested in landing in one of these chaotic regions for years now, since they seem to be "young" areas of recent activity.
Closeup of a chaos region on Europa
NASA
It's not clear how the chaos terrain formed, but some scientists--including Brown and his co-authors--think these may be regions where Europa's inner ocean bubbled through to the surface and froze. If that's the case, then the mystery component may be a residue from the subsurface ocean, providing hints as to what's inside the icy moon.
Other researchers think the chaos terrains might have formed from collapsing lakes or large impacts--in which case, the surface won't necessarily reflect what's inside Europa's ocean.
The mystery component's identity remains, well, mysterious. But the team suspects it's some kind of salt that washed up from the ocean and got left behind after the water evaporated or froze. They hope to learn more through laboratory experiments and by observing Europa in different wavelengths.
"It's the best spot to go look."
It's almost certainly impossible for life to exist on Europa's surface. It's quite cold there, and the surface is bombarded with radiation from Jupiter and its moon Io. So a lander at this site almost definitely wouldn't detect life. Still, it's possible that the salty remains would provide clues as to what the ocean is made of, and whether it might be capable of supporting life.
Drilling through miles of ice on another world requires technology that we do not yet have. Apart from circumventing that need, the potential landing site has another advantage: it's partially shielded from the radiation that can break apart biologically interesting molecules, as well as damage spacecraft.
"It's the best spot to go look," says Brown. "I think it would be a shame to go all the way to Europa, flying by and mapping it, and not putting a lander on it. We actually have all of the technology to land on Europa and answer these questions right now."
