Last year nearly 400 million people experienced Dengue fever, according to All Things Considered. (Just Brazil alone had more than 2 million cases.) But The World Mosquito Project is trying an interesting solution: Scientists are cultivating and releasing mosquitoes, except these mosquitoes are special: They’ve been infected with a bacterium called Wolbachia. Wolbachia occurs naturally in many insects, but not normally…
Tag: Indonesia
Transit of Mercury on November 11, 2019
Our solar system’s innermost planet, Mercury passes directly in front of the sun on November 11, 2019. Who will see it, how to watch, equipment needed, transit times. Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/transit-of-mercury-on-november-11-2019…
Delays in Boeing Max Return Began With Near-Crash in Simulator
Boeing engineers were nearly done redesigning software on the grounded 737 Max in June when some pilots hopped into a simulator to test a few things. It didn’t go well. From a report: A simulated computer glitch caused it to to dive aggressively in a way that resembled the problem that had caused deadly crashes off Indonesia and in Ethiopia months…
Medium Investigates The Secret Supply Chain Behind AmazonBasics
“I heard the ‘pop!’ from my living room as a brand-new pack of Amazon batteries spontaneously exploded on the kitchen counter, oozing a gritty black substance in fits and spurts,” reports the staff writer for Medium’s new tech site, OneZero. But that was just the beginning of a larger mystery, according to their article (shared by Slashdot reader peterthegreat321): The small,…
Is Earth on fire?
The European Space Agency was asking this question late last week, as multiple fires burned across the globe. Read more about 2019 fires, and fire-tracking via satellite, here. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/wildfires-summer-2019-esa-world-fire-atlas…
Tiny stature of extinct ‘Hobbit’ thanks to fast evolution
New research suggests that the tiny human species – that survived until about 18,000 years ago, later than any human species other than our own – evolved its small size remarkably quickly while living on an isolated island. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/tiny-extinct-hobbit-human-species-fast-evolution…
Boeing and FAA Faulted In Damaging Report On 737 Max Certification
A new report from a task force convened by the FAA found that Boeing failed to adequately explain to regulators a new automated system that contributed to two crashes of the 737 Max, and that the FAA lacked the capability to effectively analyze much of what Boeing did share about the new plane. The New York Times reports: The review scrutinized…
US Using Trade Deals To Shield Tech Giants From Foreign Regulators
The Trump administration has begun inserting legal protections into recent trade agreements that shield online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube from lawsuits, a move that could help lock in America’s tech-friendly regulations around the world even as they are being newly questioned at home. From a report: The protections, which stem from a 1990s law, have already been tucked into…
Facebook Removes Hundreds of Propaganda Accounts Targeting Iran and Qatar
According to BuzzFeed News, a network of websites and accounts have been using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social platforms to sow propaganda targeting Iran and Qatar. “The accounts, which have now been taken down, appear to have been professionally run by PR firms based in the Middle East and Africa,” the report says. From the report: In August, Facebook announced…
Boeing Rejected 737 MAX Safety Upgrades Before Fatal Crashes, Whistleblower Says
The Seattle Times: Seven weeks after the second fatal crash of a 737 MAX in March, a Boeing engineer submitted a scathing internal ethics complaint alleging that management — determined to keep down costs for airline customers — had blocked significant safety improvements during the jet’s development. The ethics charge, filed by 33-year-old engineer Curtis Ewbank, whose job involved studying past…