Science and Technology

Thursday, 04 March 2021 16:43

Facebook to lift ban on political ads in United States

Facebook Inc said in a blog post on Wednesday that it would lift its temporary ban on political advertisements in the United States on Thursday. The social media giant imposed a months-long ban on political, electoral, and social advertising as part of an attempt to combat disinformation and violations in the run-up to the Nov. 3 elections. Facebook briefly lifted its ad pause in Georgia for the state’s runoff elections in January, but then reinstated it. Following the Jan. 6 siege at the US Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Alphabet Inc’s Google restored its own political ad…

Wednesday, 03 March 2021 03:30

The hot new thing in tech: Speaking into your phone

"This is my way to debrief and tell everybody what's going on," she told CNN Business. "It's not like it used to be where I would wait until I was going to see my friends over the course of the next week for drinks or for brunch." For years, Apple and others have offered the option to record short messages and send them via text and chat apps. But the format has gained new appeal for many in the United States during the pandemic as we approach a year of limited opportunities to socialize with friends, family and coworkers. Romina…

Friday, 26 February 2021 05:19

Self-cleaning underwear can allegedly be worn for weeks without becoming smelly

A Minnesota company has created what it calls “the world’s cleanest underwear”, an innovative self-cleaning undergarment that can be worn daily for weeks, even months, without becoming smelly. HercLéon, a material innovation group known for creating the world’s first self-cleaning socks, t-shirts and bedsheets, is now taking on the underwear industry with Kribi, a line of undergarments made from a bacteria-fighting fabric. This revolutionary material, called HercFiber continuously destroys all bacteria and stays clean without needing a wash. All you have to do is let the underwear “air out” for a bit after wearing them, and you can safely put…

Monday, 22 February 2021 05:22

Scientists unearth a consequence of solar panels in the Sahara

A giant solar farm sounds perfect, right? Not quite. The world’s most forbidding deserts could be the best places on Earth for harvesting solar power — the most abundant and clean source of energy we have. Deserts are spacious, relatively flat, rich in silicon – the raw material for the semiconductors from which solar cells are made — and never short of sunlight. In fact, the ten largest solar plants around the world are all located in deserts or dry regions. Researchers imagine it might be possible to transform the world’s largest desert, the Sahara, into a giant solar farm,…

Friday, 19 February 2021 06:22

NASA rover lands on Mars with mission to search out signs of ancient life

A NASA rover streaked through the orange Martian sky and landed on the planet Thursday, accomplishing the riskiest step yet in an epic quest to bring back rocks that could answer whether life ever existed on Mars. Ground controllers at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, leaped to their feet, thrust their arms in the air and cheered in both triumph and relief on receiving confirmation that the six-wheeled Perseverance had touched down on the red planet, long a deathtrap for incoming spacecraft. “Now the amazing science starts,” a jubilant Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission chief, said…

Friday, 19 February 2021 06:03

GPS only exists because of two people: Albert Einstein and Gladys West

Ethan Siegel Over the span of a single lifetime, the world has changed in ways that would have been virtually unimaginable in the first half of the 20th century. Two major breakthroughs that occurred in physics — relativity and quantum physics — suddenly made a number of previously unthinkable endeavors possible. From modern electronics to computers, smart phones, the internet, brain imaging and more, everyday life in 2021 is vastly different from what it was back when many of us were first born. One of those technologies that’s been revolutionary for our society is GPS: the Global Positioning System. From…

Friday, 19 February 2021 05:57

Tired of ‘Zoom University’? This is how remote learning at scale will happen

The rise of “Zoom University” was only possible because edtech wasn’t ready to address the biggest opportunity of the past year: remote learning at scale. Of course, the term encapsulates more than just Zoom, it’s a nod to how schools had to rapidly adopt enterprise video conferencing software to keep school in session in the wake of closures brought on by the virus’ rapid spread. Now, nearly a year since students were first sent home because of the coronavirus, a cohort of edtech companies is emerging, emboldened with millions in venture capital, ready to take back the market. The new…

Thursday, 11 February 2021 04:25

New studies show these two common drugs work against Covid-19

A commonly used asthma treatment appears to reduce the need for hospitalizations and recovery time for Covid-19 patients if given within seven days of symptoms appearing, researchers at the University of Oxford have found. The 28-day study of 146 patients found the inhaled steroid, budesonide, reduced the risk of urgent care, emergency room visits or hospitalization by 90% when compared with usual care. Patients treated at home with budesonide also had a quicker resolution of fever and fewer persistent symptoms. In a report posted on Monday on medRxiv ahead of peer review, the researchers said they undertook the trial because…

Tuesday, 09 February 2021 03:41

22-year-old man receives world's first successful transplant of face, hands

Joe DiMeo suffered severe burns to most of his body following a car wreck in 2018. DiMeo’s medical team began readying for the risky face and double hand transplant after it became clear traditional surgeries would not help him regain his vision or use of his hands. Six months after the complex surgery, medical experts say the surgery appears to be a success as DiMeo’s body has not shown any signs of rejecting his new hands or face. A 22-year-old New Jersey man who was badly burned in a fiery car wreck is the recipient of the first successful face…

Friday, 05 February 2021 04:20

5 apps you should delete right now

You probably have more than enough space on your phone to hold whatever you want. The bad news: Your phone is probably full of junk you never think to remove. Take your photo gallery. How many duplicates, screenshots, and memes are clogging things up? Cleaning it up isn’t so bad if you have the right tools. Then it’s time to tackle your apps. Don’t make the mistake of uninstalling apps without first deleting the associated account. When you’re ready to start deleting, tackle these apps first: 1. QR code scanners If you never heard of these codes before the COVID-19…

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Thursday, 04 February 2021 04:05

What a picture of AOC in a bikini tells us about the disturbing future of AI

Arwa Mahdawi New research on image-generating algorithms has raised alarming evidence of bias. It’s time to tackle the problem of discrimination being baked into tech, before it is too late Want to see a half-naked woman? Well, you’re in luck! The internet is full of pictures of scantily clad women. There are so many of these pictures online, in fact, that artificial intelligence (AI) now seems to assume that women just don’t like wearing clothes. That is my stripped-down summary of the results of a new research study on image-generation algorithms anyway. Researchers fed these algorithms (which function like autocomplete,…

Sunday, 31 January 2021 05:57

Eyeglass wearers 5x less likely to get Covid - Study

Can your glasses prevent Covid? Your favorite spectacles could also be one of your new defenses against contracting the novel coronavirus, according to a recent study conducted by researchers in China. This investigation looked at the proportion of glasses wearers with Covid-19 versus the general population of glasses wearers in the area, and the findings may surprise you. The study, published in September 2020, consisted of all 276 inpatients with Covid-19 in Suizhou Zengdu Hospital, Suizhou, China, a designated hospital for Covid-19 treatment in the area, between January 27 and March 13, 2020. The median age of the study cohort…

Saturday, 30 January 2021 05:23

The biggest threat to Facebook isn’t Apple, it’s Mark Zuckerberg

The CEO told analysts that Apple is one of its biggest competitors. That misses the point. During Facebook's earnings call, the company's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made a point of talking about the risk Apple's upcoming iOS 14 changes pose to its business. Those changes will require apps to ask permission before they are able to track users across apps and the internet. For Facebook, a company whose entire business model is built on the ability to track users, collect their data, and then sell targeted ads based on all of that information, losing the ability to track users…

Thursday, 28 January 2021 05:01

Japanese company creates ‘smart glasses’ that can cure eye disease

Japan’s Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings claims to have developed smart glasses that, if worn just an hour per day, can allegedly cure myopia. Myopia, or nearsightedness, is a common ophthalmological condition in which you can see objects near to you clearly, but objects farther away are blurry. To compensate for this blur, you have the option of wearing eyeglasses or contact lenses, or the more invasive refractive surgery. But a Japanese company claims to have come up with a new non-invasive way of dealing with myopia – a pair of “smart glasses” that project an image from the lens of the…

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