Scientists briefly estimated that Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, as it's now known, was the largest such icy body identified to date, perhaps more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) across. Additional observations have cast that into doubt, but given the "megacomet" a new distinction: it sprouted a tail remarkably far from the sun, suggesting more revelations to come. All told, the object offers astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to watch the antics of a comet.
BFI4, located in exurban Kent, Wash., is Amazon’s flagship fulfillment center and regularly hosts senior company leaders—Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy dropped by recently—who want a better understanding of what happens after a shopper clicks “Buy Now.” It was the first facility of its kind capable of processing more than 1 million items a day, three times what was possible at the company’s state-of-the-art warehouses a decade ago. Improving technology means Amazon can stay several steps ahead of brick-and-mortar rivals Walmart Inc. and Target Corp., which are now adopting many of the practices Amazon has worked on for years.
More than the physical robots, the stars of Amazon’s facilities are the algorithms—sets of computer instructions designed to solve specific problems. Software determines how many items a facility can handle, where each product is supposed to go, how many people are required for the night shift during the holiday rush, and which truck is best positioned to get a stick of deodorant to a customer on time. “We rely on the software to help us make the right decisions,” says Shobe, BFI4’s general manager.
eBird, which allows birders to note which species they’ve spotted—and where—had a more than 40 percent increase in sightings in April 2020 over the previous year. That’s more than double the app’s normal annual growth, according to data provided by Farnsworth. This February, 140,000 users logged on, to date the greatest number of users in a single month and a 50 percent increase over last February. Now, there are over a billion entries.
Farnsworth says this citizen data is crucial. Scientists can monitor migration using weather surveillance radar, and they’re experimenting with acoustic sensing that uses microphones to record bird calls. (Machine learning can identify which species are migrating, based on the captured songs.) But there are still no devices that can replace in-person observation. “We actually really want humans involved,” he says. “Going out and using your ears and eyes, and your own sensory abilities—we want people doing that because it engenders a much, much closer relationship with what’s happening around you.”
But this flood of new data presents a conundrum: Scientists can’t always tell whether changes in the data are due to animal behavior or just an increase in the amount of information available. Take the data about how many birds are injured or die after flying into buildings. Twice a year, millions of songbirds, raptors, hummingbirds, and shorebirds travel through New York City along the Atlantic Flyway, from their summer homes in Canada and the northeast to their winter habitats in Florida and the Caribbean. They can get disoriented by bright lights or by window glass, which they often can’t perceive as a barrier. Last year, the count of dead and injured birds in New York rose precipitously during the fall—but so did the number of bird-watchers.
According to the U.S. National Park Service’s Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, which has sent researchers to measure the acoustics of more than 600 outdoor American sites for the past 15 years, noise pollution is growing faster than the U.S. population and is more than doubling every 30 years. One writer’s calculations even show that more than 145 million Americans—roughly 44 percent of the population—are exposed to noise exceeding the recommended limits. Anything over 85 decibels can harm a person’s ears, like lawn mowers (90 decibels), trains (90 to 115 decibels), the wail of a siren (120 to 140 decibels), and loud concerts, at around 110 to 120 decibels. All told, more than 97 percent of the U.S. population is constantly exposed to noise from planes and highways at around 50 decibels—comparable to the buzz of a humming refrigerator—but the loudest sounds appear most frequently in low-income neighborhoods.
Though noise really is all around us, from rustling leaves (20 to 30 decibels) to a thunderclap (120 decibels), it is this man-made noise that affects human health, leading to hypertension, stress, and heart disease. Alarmingly, according to Hempton, there are now fewer than 10 places in the U.S. where you can avoid noise pollution for longer than 15 minutes.
To augment coverage, Aristotle is turning increasingly to Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), a wireless spectrum historically used by U.S. Navy aircraft carriers for radar transmissions. In recent years the Federal Communications Commission has opened a slice of this spectrum for commercial use, enabling Aristotle to beam broadband as far as 6 miles to distant Arkansans over signal stations—installed atop cell towers, barns, even a prison—that are sort of like massive Wi-Fi routers. The network is fast enough to stream movies and costs a fraction of what fiber costs to build. “We are one of the poorest states in the country, and the Delta is the poorest area of the state,” Bowles says. “If we can solve the problem here, we can solve it anywhere.”
BusinessWeek (sub required) on mining and lab based alternatives to cobalt, a critical metal in making EV batteries
KoBold’s 35 employees come from places like Google, Microsoft Corp., and Slack and tend to be coders who also have doctorates in the physical sciences. Asked why they joined the startup, they mention the satisfaction of speeding the energy transition, of course, but they also mention the opportunity to see if they’re really right about something. KoBold isn’t making software to sell to someone else. It’s staked claims, either solely or in joint ventures, in around 20 areas across Australia, Canada, the Central African Copperbelt, Greenland, and the U.S. In early September it announced an exploration alliance with BHP Group Ltd., the world’s second-largest mining group. Those ventures will either turn up ore or they will not. “What I love about KoBold,” says Jef Caers, a Stanford geophysics professor who is a research partner and shareholder in the company, “is that they will face the consequences of their machine learning.”
The service is planning to build three more flat-tops after Ford: John F. Kennedy, Enterprise, and Doris Miller. At the same time, the service is planning to introduce the MQ-25A Stingray aerial refueling drone in the late 2020s and the Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet starting in the 2030s. At this rate Ford-class carriers will replace the existing Nimitz-class carriers currently in the fleet, in a process that will stretch to 2050--and beyond.
Ford-class carriers are also equipped with technology that will allow the platform to grow with the times, such as electromagnetic aircraft catapults that allow for the launch of smaller, lighter, unmanned drones. Additionally, the ships are built with increased power generation capability to handle elec with increased capability to generate increased electrical power for weapons such as defensive lasers and railguns.
The launch, which will propel the (James Webb Space Telescope) to nearly a million miles away, is now scheduled for December 18, 2021. When it fully deploys in space, the Webb will usher in a new age of astronomy, scientists say, and show humanity things it has never seen before.
“The Webb represents the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomy,” says Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and astrophysicist at MIT. “We’ve been waiting for this a very long time.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the decadent Georgia spa town of Tskaltubo fell off the map. Once an elegant Soviet destination that attracted the elites of the Communist Party, including Joseph Stalin himself, for its natural springs, Tskaltubo is now an array of crumbling hotels, bath houses, and sanitoriums—ornamental health resorts designed for both rest and medical treatments. But 30 years after the resort town’s closure, photographs of these abandoned buildings are attracting new travelers.
Amazon.com Inc.’s planned department stores will aim to boost its apparel sales by offering shoppers a chance to try on clothes from its own private-label brands in technology-fueled dressing rooms, according to people familiar with the matter.
One idea that has been tested is for customers to scan QR codes of items they want to try on by using a smartphone app and for associates in the store to gather the items and place them in fitting rooms.
Once there, customers could ask for more items using a touch screen, which might be capable of recommending additional clothing based on the pieces shoppers liked. The rooms could use sliding doors for associates to bring more clothes without seeing shoppers, the people said. Robots or other forms of automation could eventually be deployed in the stores, one of the people said.
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