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Fri, 05 Nov 2021
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Meteor

Where can you find chunks of the meteor that blew up over Michigan?

Meteor over Michigan
© Mike Austin/YouTube
Reports have the meteor that streaked across southeast Michigan Tuesday night re-entering the atmosphere somewhere in Macomb County, with some pinpointing it to the area near 25 Mile Road and Card.

Phones at police stations and in newsrooms - including WWJ's - lit up with questions and concerns. Some joked that it was an extraterrestrial visitor, others worried a bomb had exploded.

Wolverine Lake Police Chief John Ellsworth was so shaken by the electricity he felt in the air followed by a blinding flash that he told WWJ he thought it was the 'beginning of the end.'

Comment: See also: Meteor fireball lights up night sky over Michigan; USGS registers impact as M2.0 earthquake (UPDATE)


2 + 2 = 4

Why feminist theory isn't responsible scholarship

papers missing trashcan
Let's be real about something important: nobody actually cares what feminist scholars think or why they think it. Truth be told, this isn't surprising. Feminist scholarship is a peculiar academic backwater that nobody should pay any attention to-and it's probable that nobody would if it weren't becoming so painfully influential.


Comment: This is an incredibly naive perspective.


That outsized influence is also unsurprising. People care very much about gender equality and about women's rights - in both the US and the UK, gender equality enjoys the support of roughly four out of five people. This sets up a problem. With the exception of other feminists, more or less the entire world completely ignores feminist theory, and they have done so for decades, which has let it go quite far down its own self-referential rabbit holes. That this scholarship has gone ignored while developing what looks like a storied academic pedigree, more than many other factors, is why feminist theory endures and exerts so much contemporary control over academia and society, which is to say it's a rather huge problem.


Comment: I think he is mistaking radical feminist theory for regular feminist theory.


Comment:


Fireball

'Potentially hazardous' asteroid predicted to pass close

asteroid
© Flickr/ Lwp Kommunikáció
You can run and you can hide, but there's no need to panic, as the "potentially hazardous" asteroid is predicted to miss our planet.

NASA has said that the Asteroid 2002 AJ 129 will pass quite close to Earth at a distance of 2,615,128 miles. At this close proximity, it has been classifies as dangerous.

Evil Rays

Consumers beware: Microwaves could be as bad for the environment as cars, suggests new research

Microwaves
© CC0 Public Domain
Microwaves usage across the EU alone emits as much carbon dioxide as nearly seven million cars according to a new study by The University of Manchester.

Researchers at the University have carried out the first ever comprehensive study of the environmental impacts of microwaves, considering their whole life cycle, from 'cradle to grave'.

The study found:
  • Microwaves emit 7.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year in the EU. This is equivalent to the annual emissions of 6.8 million cars.
  • Microwaves across the EU consume an estimated 9.4 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity every year. This is equivalent to the annual electricity generated by three large gas power plants.
  • Efforts to reduce consumption should focus on improving consumer awareness and behaviour to use appliances more efficiently.

Attention

Russia's Kaspersky Lab discovers WhatsApp virus with features not 'seen anywhere else'

WattsApp
© Anton Vergun/TASS
In addition, the virus allows hackers to collect and analyze traffic of a victim: visited sites, logins, passwords and credit card numbers
Russian developer of antivirus software Kaspersky Lab has detected a Skygofree virus, which spies on Android users.

According to the company's statement the malware can record conversations, read and steal sms, as well as messages from WhatsApp and events from the calendar.

In addition, the virus allows hackers to connect devices to Wi-Fi networks, they also control, and to collect and analyze traffic of a victim: visited sites, logins, passwords and credit card numbers.


Comment: Also See:


Fireball

Incoming: Massive house-sized asteroid will fly close to Earth next week

Asteroid
© YouTube
Unlike that false alarm in Hawaii, this potentially cataclysmic piece of news is real: an asteroid between 22 and 68 meters in diameter is going to swing past Earth on January 23 at around 12,300 miles an hour (around Mach 16). It's going to come within 1.1 million miles of Earth, but it's unclear whether its trajectory will cause it to hit Earth or fly past harmlessly.

The asteroid, named 2018 AJ, is just one of several asteroids that have suddenly popped up on NASA's radar without warning-the last one was 2017 YD7, which was spotted December 28 and flew past Earth on January 3.

The scary thing about these rocks is that once we spotted them, there's very little we can do to stop them: according to NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, we'd need a few decades of advance warning to deal with an asteroid 100 meters in size or larger. From there, a couple options open up, including knocking the asteroid off course with a "kinetic impactor" or using a "gravity tractor" to change its trajectory.

Meteor

Incoming: NASA warns another giant asteroid will hurtle past earth in early February

2002 AJ129 asteroid

The 2002 AJ129 asteroid has been classed a 'potentially hazardous' by Nasa and will fly past Earth on 4th February at speeds of 67,000mph (107,826kmh).
A gigantic asteroid which is larger than the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, will hurtle past our planet in around two weeks time.

The 2002 AJ129 asteroid has been classed a 'potentially hazardous' by Nasa and will fly past at speeds of 67,000mph (107,826kmh).

This makes it nearly 15 times faster than the world's quickest manned aircraft - the hypersonic North American X-15, which travelled at 4,520mph (7,300kmh).

The asteroid is around 0.7 miles (1.1km) wide - making it longer than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which stands at 0.5 miles high (0.8km).

Cut

Snip, snip: You may already be immune to CRISPR gene-editing technology

T-cell
© The Atlantic
Scanning electron micrograph of a T cell, colored blue
A human T cell as seen through a scanning electron microscope
2018 is supposed to be the year of CRISPR in humans. The first U.S. and European clinical trials that test the gene-editing tool's ability to treat diseases-such as sickle-cell anemia, beta thalassemia, and a type of inherited blindness-are slated to begin this year.

But the year has begun on a cautionary note. On Friday, Stanford researchers posted a preprint (which has not been peer reviewed) to the website biorXiv highlighting a potential obstacle to using CRISPR in humans: Many of us may already be immune to it. That's because CRISPR actually comes from bacteria that often live on or infect humans, and we have built up immunity to the proteins from these bacteria over our lives.

Comment: The very real dangers of CRISPR gene editing technology:

Unexpected complications: CRISPR gene editing can introduce hundreds of unintended mutations into the genome
The first clinical trial to deploy CRISPR is now underway in China, and a U.S. trial is slated to start next year. But even though CRISPR can precisely target specific stretches of DNA, it sometimes hits other parts of the genome. Most studies that search for these off-target mutations use computer algorithms to identify areas most likely to be affected and then examine those areas for deletions and insertions.

"These predictive algorithms seem to do a good job when CRISPR is performed in cells or tissues in a dish, but whole genome sequencing has not been employed to look for all off-target effects in living animals," says co-author Alexander Bassuk, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics at the University of Iowa.
Just in case human gene editing goes horribly wrong scientists fall back on "CRISPR off switch"
Perhaps one of the most concerning aspects about CRISPR-Cas9 was the inability for scientists to turn off the gene altering sequence. The potential for wrong genes to be snipped away and the consequential introduction of rogue genetic changes in human or animal DNA into the gene pool was (and still is) rather terrifying. Now, however, scientists claim that they have found a way to hopefully mitigate this tremendous risk. In a new study, researchers say that they have found a tiny protein that can actually turn off Cas9 and prevent it from creating unwanted gene alterations. They say that the protein works on human cells - at least if they are in a petri dish.



Camcorder

Creator tells Sputnik: Anti-CCTV glasses 'give us the option of autonomy'

surveillance
© pixabay
There are approximately 245 million surveillance cameras operating around the globe, London is the most watched city in the world while people living in Chicago are the most spied on in the United States.

The proliferation of CCTV cameras in Chicago caught the eye of creative designer Scott Urban, whose response was to develop spectacles preventing faces from being captured on camera.

Cell Phone

Hijacking children's brains: The era of 'Digital Addiction'

Cellphones
Opioid addiction has become so widespread in the U.S. that last August President Trump declared it to be a national emergency.

"Digital Addiction" may not be as serious as opioid addiction YET; however, the outcry and accusations made by Apple investors and former tech employees seems eerily similar to what has been reported as contributing to the current Opioid Crisis.

Because of Apple shareholders taking a stand last week, more news keeps pouring in about tech inventors who have been limiting their children's use of digital devices: "Bill Gates is surprisingly strict about his kids' tech use - and it should be a red flag for the rest of us."

Comment: It's shameful the kind of double standards tech industry experts are engaging in by creating and marketing a product to the next generation of children, while keeping their kids away from it. And it's not to say technology is 'bad' per say, but there needs to be responsible use of it, not dependency.