Scientists examined rock cores taken from the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, site of the asteroid impact that triggered dinosaur extinction, and found iridium, a telltale sign of asteroids. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/asteroid-dust-iridium-chicxulub-crater-dinosaur-extinction…
Tag: labs
Flash Version Distributed in China After EOL is Installing Adware
Although the Flash Player app formally reached its end of life on December 31, 2020, Adobe has allowed a local Chinese company to continue distributing Flash inside China, where the application still remains a large part of the local IT ecosystem and is broadly used across both the public and private sectors. From a report: Currently, this Chinese version of the…
Resilient Teaching During Times of Change with Dr. Rebecca Quintana, University of Michigan
The pandemic has accelerated the global need for online learning. In the short term, educators mitigated disruption of campus closures by moving their courses, assessments, and even graduation ceremonies online. In many educational settings, the focus has shifted to adaptability—how can we design courses that withstand all kinds of changes, including a pandemic? It has […]
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3 Ways to Future-Proof Your University
By Shwetabh Mittal, Senior Director, Product Management This article was originally published in Campus Tech, January 2021. When the pandemic led to the initial shutdown of university campuses in early February, Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China, was among the first to move all its courses to an online format. By April, at the height […]
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Mars atmosphere shedding charged particles onto Phobos?
New research suggests that particles escaping from Mars’ atmosphere have been accumulating on the surface of the planet’s largest moon Phobos for billions of years. They could provide important new details about the history of both worlds. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mars-atmosphere-history-phobos-soil…
Mark Zuckerberg Wants Commuting Replaced with VR/AR
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wants commuting to work replaced with VR/AR telecommuting. Zuckerberg made the suggestion on a talkshow on Clubhouse, reports The International Business Times: “One of the things that [VR] will unlock is the ability to live anywhere you want and be present in another place and really feel like you are there,” the Facebook CEO said.”It is going…
Hey, kids! Meet the new Hot Wheels Mars rover!
Mattel, maker of Hot Wheels, has just released a new Hot Wheels Mars Perseverance Rover to celebrate the landing of the NASA Perseverance rover on Mars on February 18. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/hot-wheels-mars-perseverance-rover-mattel…
Quantum systems learn joint computing
Today’s quantum computers contain up to several dozen memory and processing units, the so-called qubits. Severin Daiss, Stefan Langenfeld, and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have successfully interconnected two such qubits located in different labs to a distributed quantum computer by linking the qubits with a 60-meter-long optical fiber. Over such a distance they realized…
US Intelligence Officials Say Chinese Government Is Collecting Americans’ DNA
schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: The largest biotech firm in the world wasted no time in offering to build and run COVID testing labs in Washington, contacting its governor right after the first major COVID outbreak in the U.S. occurred there. The Chinese company, the BGI Group, made the same offer to at least five other states, including New…
Brad Cox, Creator of Objective-C Programming Language, Dies At 76
We have learned that Brad Cox, computer scientist known mostly for creating the Objective-C programming language with his business partner Tom Love, died on January 2, 2021 at his residence. He was 76. From a Legacy.com post: Brad was born on May 2, 1944 in Fort Benning, Georgia, to the late Nancy Hinson Cox and Dewey McBride Cox of Lake City,…