Science and Technology

Tuesday, 16 November 2021 05:57

One of the world’s poorest countries found a better way to do stimulus

Atani Bamaze was working his small plot of land, scything weeds down to the rust-colored soil, when he received a lifeline in the form of a text message. It was late 2020, and though Bamaze still didn’t know anyone sickened by Covid-19, the pandemic had disrupted his life all the same. The village in Togo where he lives with his wife and infant daughter relied on trade and travelers from nearby Benin. When the border closed after the first recorded infection that spring, prices of basic foodstuffs began climbing precipitously. The 31-year-old typically earned money tutoring, but then local schools…

Saturday, 13 November 2021 06:02

Scientists identify 46 harmful effects of social media use

There are almost 50 harmful effects linked to the use of social media, a new study reveals – and they're not just mental health-related. Academics at the University of Technology Sydney report a hefty 46 harmful effects linked to the use of sites like , and Instagram. Among them are anxiety, , being harassed, incitement to suicide, cyberstalking, delinquency, jealously, information overload and lack of online safety, they reveal in a new paper. Overall, issues of social media range from physical and mental health problems to negative impacts on job and academic performance, as well as security and privacy issues,…

Wednesday, 10 November 2021 05:56

Harvesting energy with space solar panels could power the Earth 24/7

Solar power has been a key part of humanity's clean energy repertoire. We spread masses of sunlight-harvesting panels on solar fields, and many people power their homes by decorating their roofs with the rectangles. But there's a caveat to this wonderful power source. Solar panels can't collect energy at night. To work at peak efficiency, they need as much sunlight as possible. So to maximize these sun catchers' performance, researchers are toying with a plan to send them to a place where the sun never sets: outer space. Theoretically, if a bunch of solar panels were blasted into orbit, they'd…

Saturday, 06 November 2021 05:59

Gene linked to doubling risk of Covid-19 death found by UK scientists

British scientists have identified a gene that doubles the risk of dying from Covid-19, providing new insights into why some people are more susceptible to the disease than others, while opening up possibilities for targeted medicine. Around 60% of people with South Asian ancestry carry the high-risk gene, researchers at Oxford University said on Friday, adding the discovery partly explains the high number of deaths seen in some British communities, and the effect of Covid-19 in the Indian subcontinent. The scientists found that the increased risk is not because of a difference in genetic coding of the proteins, but because…

Saturday, 06 November 2021 05:58

Pfizer says its antiviral pill slashes risk of severe Covid-19 by 89 percent

Pfizer Inc's experimental antiviral pill to treat Covid-19 cut by 89% the chance of hospitalization or death for adults at risk of severe disease, the company said on Friday, as its CEO vowed to make this promising new weapon in the fight against the pandemic available globally as quickly as possible. The trial's results suggest that Pfizer's drug surpasses Merck & Co Inc's pill, molnupiravir, which was shown last month to halve the chance of dying or being hospitalized for Covid-19 patients at high risk of serious illness. Pfizer's pill, with the brand name Paxlovid, could secure U.S. regulatory approval…

Wednesday, 03 November 2021 06:00

Google just banned 150 dangerous Android apps. These are the apps, so you them from your phone immediately

No matter what device you’re using, you have to be on the lookout for scams. Any email you receive, text someone sends you, or app you download could be dangerous. We can’t even go a week without a new threat popping up, and this week’s is a collection of fake Android apps on Google Play. Cybersecurity software company Avast has been reporting on a scam campaign dubbed UltimaSMS in recent weeks. According to Avast, 151 apps were part of the premium SMS scam campaign. These fake Android apps disguise themselves as legitimate tools, from photo editors and camera filters to…

Wednesday, 03 November 2021 05:54

5 things Mark Zuckerberg said about his plan for Metaverse that should make you very worried

On Thursday, at Facebook's developer conference, Mark Zuckerberg outlined his vision for the metaverse. Of course, the details were somewhat lost in the midst of his announcement that the company he founded in his Harvard dorm room waschanging its name from Facebook to Meta, in an attempt to better define its mission as it moves beyond its core social media apps. I definitely have thoughts about the idea that Facebook is changing its name, but those will have to wait. There is far a far more important thread to pull on, which is what Zuckerberg had to say about the…

Friday, 29 October 2021 05:54

Facebook changes name to Meta in move towards its ‘metaverse’ vision

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company is rebranding itself as Meta in an effort to encompass its virtual-reality vision for the future, what Zuckerberg calls the “metaverse.” Skeptics point out that it also appears to be an attempt to change the subject from the Facebook Papers, a leaked document trove that has revealed the ways Facebook ignored internal reports and warnings of the harms its social network created or magnified across the world. Zuckerberg says he expects the metaverse to reach a billion people within the next decade. The metaverse, he says, will be a place people will be…

Thursday, 21 October 2021 05:45

Pig-to-human transplants come a step closer with new test

Scientists temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage, but among the hurdles: A sugar in pig cells, foreign to the human body, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited animal, engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid an immune system attack. Surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of…

Wednesday, 20 October 2021 05:55

Israeli startup AIR unveils flying vehicle to be used 'like cars'

Israeli startup AIR on Tuesday unveiled its first “easy-to-operate” electric, vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that it aims to sell directly to consumers predominantly in the United States starting in 2024. AIR has been working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) for two years and expects to obtain certification by the end of 2023 for the AIR ONE, a two-seater, 970 kg (2,138 lb) eVTOL, which will have a flight range of 110 miles (177 km), Chief Executive Rani Plaut told Reuters. AIR raised seed funding of under $10 million last year and has been running unmanned tests…

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Wednesday, 20 October 2021 05:52

Facebook to announce name change soon

Social media giant Facebook Inc is planning to rebrand itself with a new name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, the Verge reported on Tuesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about the name change at the company's annual Connect conference on Oct. 28, but it could be unveiled sooner, the Verge reported. A metaverse refers to shared virtual world environments, which people can access via the internet. The term can refer to digital spaces, which are made more lifelike by the use of…

Monday, 18 October 2021 05:48

WhatsApp rolls out encryption for chats backed up in the cloud

WhatsApp is the mobile messaging backbone of much of the global population, and all of its users just got an added layer of privacy protection. On the WhatsApp blog, the Facebook-owned messaging app confirmed that end-to-end encryption for backed up chats in the cloud will roll out "slowly" to all of its two billion (!) users starting now. This was previously announced in September, but without a specific release date. All you need to do is have the latest version of the WhatsApp mobile app installed to get access to the feature. Here's how it works: Let's say you're getting…

Tuesday, 12 October 2021 05:42

China has won AI battle with U.S., Pentagon's ex-software chief says

China has won the artificial intelligence battle with the United States and is heading towards global dominance because of its technological advances, the Pentagon's former software chief told the Financial Times. China, the world’s second largest economy, is likely to dominate many of the key emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics within a decade or so, according to Western intelligence assessments. Nicolas Chaillan, Pentagon's first chief software officer who resigned in protest against the slow pace of technological transformation in the U.S. military, said the failure to respond was putting the United States at risk. "We have…

Monday, 11 October 2021 05:47

FG approves home-grown genetically modified maize

Federal government has granted environmental approval for evaluation and open cultivation of TELA Maize, a new maize variety developed by researchers at the Institute for Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, that resists fall armyworm, stem borers, and tolerates moderate drought. The government’s decision was contained in a certificate issued to IAR by the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA), the federal government agency mandated to regulate genetically modified products in the country. The Certificate dated October 8, 2021, with permit code no. NBMA/CM/003, was issued to IAR for General\Commercial Release of TELA Maize Genetically Modified for Drought Tolerance, Resistance to…

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