Lifeboat Foundation

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A newly confirmed layer of the Earth could give scientists a better understanding of plate tectonics and could help them better predict earthquakes, according to research published by the University of Texas.

The work, published in the scientific journal Nature Geosciences, was led by Junlin Hua, a post-doctoral student at UT Austin. Hua began his research while attending Brown University.

“Earthquakes (are) directly the cause of plate tectonics,” Hua said. Plate tectonics is the movement of the plates that make up the Earth’s crust. “It’s just kind of like a boat, like traveling on water.”

The Volkswagen models seen here are among many that will disappear from our roads as internal combustion engines go the way of the dinosaur.

There are over 1.4 billion cars on the road today. A small but growing number are no longer powered by the internal combustion engine.

The tech giant — which laid off 11,000 people in November and promised that 2023 is to be a “year of efficiency” — is gearing up for a new round of layoffs that might be wreaking havoc with some of the teams’ productivity, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing two employees familiar with the situation.

There’s been a lack of clarity about some budgets — which would typically get finalized by the end of the year — and future head count in recent weeks. Hence, projects and decisions that typically take days to sign off are taking up to a month, the Meta staffers told the FT.

That has caused some staff to do “zero work” because managers have not been able to plan their schedules.

Meta Platforms Inc.’s shares soared more than 20%, on track for their biggest gain in 10 years, after Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to make the social media giant leaner, more efficient and more decisive.

The stock rose in trading after New York markets closed on Wednesday. If the gains hold, the move would be the biggest intraday jump since July 2013. Meta is the best performer in the S&P 500 Index since the stock’s recent November 3 closing low of $88.91, and is poised to more than double in value since then.

Engineers from Caltech have discovered that Leonardo da Vinci’s understanding of gravity—though not wholly accurate—was centuries ahead of his time.

In an article published in the journal Leonardo, the researchers draw upon a fresh look at one of da Vinci’s notebooks to show that the famed polymath had devised experiments to demonstrate that gravity is a form of acceleration—and that he further modeled the gravitational constant to around 97 percent accuracy.

Da Vinci, who lived from 1,452 to 1,519, was well ahead of the curve in exploring these concepts. It wasn’t until 1,604 that Galileo Galilei would theorize that the distance covered by a falling object was proportional to the square of time elapsed and not until the late 17th century that Sir Isaac Newton would expand on that to develop a law of universal gravitation, describing how objects are attracted to one another. Da Vinci’s primary hurdle was being limited by the tools at his disposal. For example, he lacked a means of precisely measuring time as objects fell.

Meta is preparing a fresh round of job cuts, according to a report from the Financial Times. Two people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that there has been a lack of clarity around budgets and the future headcount at the company. The job cuts are expected to take place around March, but it’s unknown how people could be affected.

The lack of clarity has resulted in staff noting that not much work is getting done, as managers have been unable to plan ahead, the report says. Certain budgets that would normally be finalized by the end of the year still haven’t been finalized, and decisions that would usually take days to be signed off on are now taking a month in some cases.

Meta did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Search is the brain computer interface of today, and how we access A.I. as a civilization. Let’s 🥳 democratize it.

Hybrid.

Coolest stuff on the planet. Interesting posts/articles about Earth – nature, animals, geography, science, history and more.