Watch Out, Jaws — There's a New Shark in Town
There’s a shark in the water! No, no, it’s good — we promise! The WasteShark is not actually a shark, but an autonomous robot that was built to tackle a big problem: plastic pollution in the water. Some estimates put the amount of plastic waste in the hundreds of millions of metric tons. Between canals, rivers, and oceans, waterways around the world are affected.
To make things worse, marine plastic is a relatively new problem, so the solutions haven’t caught up to the issue. The old methods of putting people in boats to fish out plastic isn’t enough, so Richard Hardiman, CEO of RanMarine Technology, took to the drawing board and built a robot.
The WasteShark is basically a vacuum that cruises around the water and sucks up trash, without needing a person to sit and drive it. It can be controlled remotely or put in autonomous mode, because of its sophisticated addition: software that helps it identify and avoid sucking up items that are not trash. The ducks and fish are very grateful. Despite its sophistication, there are still challenges with developing the robot, since scientists have to figure out how to program it to recognize and act on reflections, currents, and wind.
The shark can gather up to a ton of trash over a 24 hour period, which is just the beginning of what needs to be done to reverse the pollution issue. Luckily, the next step is already in the works: the MegaShark.
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End-to-end encryption prevents anyone from viewing online communications except the sender and the receiver. Or, it prevents anyone online from viewing it. Can’t do much about someone looking over your shoulder on the subway.
In 2019, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to roll it out across his suite of apps — you know, those Facebook and Instagram things you may have heard of? But that promise was met with mixed results. On one hand, many were happy that their private conversations could be kept, well, private. On the other hand, there was pushback from police and government groups that could use messages to catch criminals.
Implementing end-to-end encryption was a years-long process for Zuckerberg, until his platforms abandoned the concept just this year. The company tweaked their terms and conditions to suggest that not enough people were opting into the encryption, but critics have questioned that explanation, pointing out that private messaging is an important part of how platforms keep users engaged and can support their advertising business.
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In the 1980s, an Antarctic expedition recovered a fossil and recorded it simply as "vertebra of a large reptile" in a field notebook. That single line was all anyone knew about it for the next 40 years.
It wasn't until paleontologist Dr. Mark Evans revisited old research and notes that the fossil was properly identified — as the first dinosaur bone ever found in Antarctica. Its distinctive shape points to a Titanosaur, the largest dinosaur to ever walk the Earth.
The bone had been sitting in a collection the entire time. What changed wasn't the fossil — it was someone finally looking at it with the right knowledge asking the right questions.
The Major Oak has finally fallen. Figuratively. The famous tree still technically stands, but has been pronounced dead after a long life of as many as 1,200 years. The massive oak tree was well-known for being central to Robin Hood folklore, but it also stood out with its formidable trunk circumference of 11 meters, or 33 feet. That’s big enough for a large African elephant to hula hoop with.
The huge tree still stands tall, looking majestic with its craggly branches and massive reach, but it’s been in decline for years. This year is the first that it hasn’t put any leaves out, so experts deemed it deceased.
While it was certainly old, its demise was likely quickened by climate change, heat waves, and damage to the surrounding soil from people coming to admire the tree. Admirers may have meant well, but decades of foot traffic compacted the soil around the tree's roots, making it harder for the tree to absorb the water, nutrients, and minerals it needed.
It may not produce lush, green leaves anymore, but fans can still pay homage to The Major Oak. It will remain in its spot to decompose (which could take more than 100 years), and the legacy of the tree lives on in the form of saplings that have been grown from acorns and cuttings.
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End-to-end encryption prevents anyone from viewing online communications except the sender and the receiver. Or, it prevents anyone online from viewing it. Can’t do much about someone looking over your shoulder on the subway.
In 2019, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to roll it out across his suite of apps — you know, those Facebook and Instagram things you may have heard of? But that promise was met with mixed results. On one hand, many were happy that their private conversations could be kept, well, private. On the other hand, there was pushback from police and government groups that could use messages to catch criminals.
Implementing end-to-end encryption was a years-long process for Zuckerberg, until his platforms abandoned the concept just this year. The company tweaked their terms and conditions to suggest that not enough people were opting into the encryption, but critics have questioned that explanation, pointing out that private messaging is an important part of how platforms keep users engaged and can support their advertising business.
Sometimes a discovery doesn't happen in the field — it happens decades later, in a drawer.
In the 1980s, an Antarctic expedition recovered a fossil and recorded it simply as "vertebra of a large reptile" in a field notebook. That single line was all anyone knew about it for the next 40 years.
It wasn't until paleontologist Dr. Mark Evans revisited old research and notes that the fossil was properly identified — as the first dinosaur bone ever found in Antarctica. Its distinctive shape points to a Titanosaur, the largest dinosaur to ever walk the Earth.
The bone had been sitting in a collection the entire time. What changed wasn't the fossil — it was someone finally looking at it with the right knowledge asking the right questions.
The Major Oak has finally fallen. Figuratively. The famous tree still technically stands, but has been pronounced dead after a long life of as many as 1,200 years. The massive oak tree was well-known for being central to Robin Hood folklore, but it also stood out with its formidable trunk circumference of 11 meters, or 33 feet. That’s big enough for a large African elephant to hula hoop with.
The huge tree still stands tall, looking majestic with its craggly branches and massive reach, but it’s been in decline for years. This year is the first that it hasn’t put any leaves out, so experts deemed it deceased.
While it was certainly old, its demise was likely quickened by climate change, heat waves, and damage to the surrounding soil from people coming to admire the tree. Admirers may have meant well, but decades of foot traffic compacted the soil around the tree's roots, making it harder for the tree to absorb the water, nutrients, and minerals it needed.
It may not produce lush, green leaves anymore, but fans can still pay homage to The Major Oak. It will remain in its spot to decompose (which could take more than 100 years), and the legacy of the tree lives on in the form of saplings that have been grown from acorns and cuttings.
“Shoot for the Moon — if you miss, you’ll land among the stars,” won’t cut it for NASA, who says “Nah, Moon or bust.”
NASA’s got big plans, and their names are Moonbase 1, 2, and 3. They were too busy working on the science to put more into the names, okay? Moonbase 1 will be the first privately-funded lander to reach the lunar south pole, Moonbase 2 will deliver a record amount of equipment that would support astronauts at a lunar base, and Moonbase 3 will focus on gathering research and data.
But these are just glimpses of NASA’s lunar ambitions, namely to put a base on the Moon. It starts with sending dozens of rovers and lunar landers to scope out the perfect spot, followed by building small cabins for short missions, and then building larger structures sustained by nuclear power for the long term. That’s not until 2033, but NASA wants to send astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2028.