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Jun 9, 2020

SpaceX drops plans for Port of Los Angeles facility again

Posted by in categories: finance, space travel

WASHINGTON — For the second time in less than 18 months, SpaceX has abandoned plans to build a manufacturing facility at the Port of Los Angeles for its next-generation Starship launch vehicle.

In a March 27 letter obtained by SpaceNews, SpaceX notified the Port of Los Angeles that it was terminating a lease approved just a month earlier for a parcel of land at the port. News of the lease termination was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

The letter, signed by Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s chief financial officer, served as a 45-day notice of SpaceX’s intent to terminate the lease, making the effective end date of the lease May 11. The letter did not explain why the company was terminating the lease.

Jun 9, 2020

The ‘Useless’ Perspective That Transformed Mathematics

Posted by in category: mathematics

Representation theory was initially dismissed. Today, it’s central to much of mathematics.

Jun 9, 2020

How the brain controls our speech

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Speaking requires both sides of the brain. Each hemisphere takes over a part of the complex task of forming sounds, modulating the voice and monitoring what has been said. However, the distribution of tasks is different than has been thought up to now, as an interdisciplinary team of neuroscientists and phoneticians at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics Berlin has discovered: it is not just the right hemisphere that analyzes how we speak—the left hemisphere also plays a role.

Until now, it has been assumed that the spoken word arises in the left side of the brain and is analyzed by the right side. According to accepted doctrine, this means that when we learn to speak English and for example practice the sound equivalent to ‘th,’ the left side of the brain controls the motor function of the articulators like the tongue, while the right side analyzes whether the produced sound actually sounds as we intended.

The division of labor actually follows different principles, as Dr. Christian Kell from the Department of Neurology at Goethe University explains: “While the left side of the brain controls temporal aspects such as the transition between speech sounds, the right is responsible for the control of the sound spectrum. When you say ‘mother,’ for example, the left hemisphere primarily controls the dynamic transitions between ‘th’ and the vowels, while the right hemisphere primarily controls the sounds themselves.”

Jun 9, 2020

1.35 Cents/kWh: Record Abu Dhabi Solar Bid Is A Sober Reminder To Upbeat Fossil Fuel Pundits

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Clean Tech News & Views: Solar Energy News. Wind Energy News. EV News. & More.

Jun 9, 2020

Help for Nicholi

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, lifeboat

Posted with permission by Eric Klien.

Hello everyone, as some of you may be aware about 6 years ago I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and I published about it on Lifeboat Foundation’s blog. I was in remission but relapsed about a year ago. Going through radiation therapy as well as chemotherapy has taken its toll on my health and with the recent outbreak of Covid-19 has really put a lot of us in the high risk category. In order to stay safe i have avoided working for 3 months. Because of these unfortunate circumstances I am kindly requesting that anyone who is willing to help me get back on my feet to please help donate to my GoFund me page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-for-nicholi

I sincerely appreciate any and all help available. Thank you! I will post a link to my journey with cancer published on Lifeboat Foundation’s blog.

Continue reading “Help for Nicholi” »

Jun 9, 2020

Using CRISPR to switch off pain gene becomes a possibility with new study

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A pathbreaking study reports success in disabling an important gene that is responsible for inducing the sensation of pain. This discovery could be of invaluable assistance to millions of patients with chronic pain, helping them to manage their condition better and live with a vastly better quality of life.

Image Credit: nobeastsofierce / Shutterstock.com Image Credit: nobeastsofierce / Shutterstock.com

Jun 9, 2020

Millions of WordPress accounts targeted in major cyberattack

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

O,.o!


Attackers exploited XSS vulnerabilities in WordPress themes and plugins to steal database credentials.

Jun 9, 2020

Novel photovoltaics generate electrical power from thermal sources

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nuclear energy

Devices based on photon-assisted tunnelling could harvest energy from nuclear power stations, chemical manufacturing facilities and other sources of waste heat.

Jun 9, 2020

Scientists Apply Revolutionary 30 Year-Old Principle and Find Black Holes Could Be Like Holograms

Posted by in categories: cosmology, holograms, quantum physics

According to new research, black holes could be like a hologram, where all the information is amassed in a two-dimensional surface able to reproduce a three-dimensional image.

We can all picture that incredible image of a black hole that traveled around the world about a year ago. Yet, according to new research by SISSA, ICTP and INFN, black holes could be like a hologram, where all the information is amassed in a two-dimensional surface able to reproduce a three-dimensional image. In this way, these cosmic bodies, as affirmed by quantum theories, could be incredibly complex and concentrate an enormous amount of information inside themselves, as the largest hard disk that exists in nature, in two dimensions. This idea aligns with Einstein’s theory of relativity, which describes black holes as three dimensional, simple, spherical, and smooth, as they appear in that famous image. In short, black holes “appear” as three dimensional, just like holograms. The study which demonstrates it, and which unites two discordant theories, has recently been published in Physical Review X.

The mystery of black holes.

Jun 9, 2020

How Covid-19 changes the geopolitics of semiconductor supply chains

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Devoted to the principle of comparative advantage in the pursuit of efficiency, this industry had forsaken resilience. As a result, this lean and agile supply chain made itself vulnerable not just to a global risk event such as Covid-19 but also to export controls such as the ones directed against Huawei. The events of the past six months are likely to force a re-evaluation of this trade-off towards building more redundancy.

Specifically, the semiconductor supply chain is susceptible to four risks.


Covid-19 is likely to accelerate the move towards more resilience in the semiconductor industry.

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