Inner ring: What it actually is
A person’s math skills are about half inherited and half due to schooling and other non-biological factors. This is important since math skills positively correlate with income and odds of completing college, and in fact there is probably some causal relationship.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-020-0060-2
Autism is slightly heritable.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.932327v1
Police are now using genealogy websites to identify long-dead Jane and John Does.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/dna-genetic-genealogy-identifying-bodies-in-decades-old-john-and-jane-doe-cold-cases
British government tests show that 5G data transmissions don’t contain enough radiation to damage human DNA. The technology is safe.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51613580
Robotic surgery machines are improving: ‘It’s the first human trial of a robot for “supermicrosurgery,” a term referring to surgery on vessels that range from 0.3 to 0.8 millimeters…The system is activated by foot pedals, and a surgeon controls the high-precision surgical instruments using forceps-like joysticks, mounted to the operating table. This setup basically cancels out small tremors in the surgeons’ hands and scales down their hand movements into more refined and subtle versions. For example, if the surgeon moves one of the joysticks by one centimeter, the robot arm moves a tenth of a millimeter.’
https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615179/robot-assisted-high-precision-surgery-has-passed-its-first-test-in-humans/?
“[Cervical] cancer can be eliminated as a public health problem by the end of the century…”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30068-4/fulltext
“In a world first, a woman rendered infertile by cancer treatment gave birth after one of her immature eggs was matured, frozen, and then – five years later – thawed and fertilised…”
https://www.sciencealert.com/cancer-survivor-has-given-birth-to-a-baby-developed-from-a-frozen-lab-matured-egg
The FDA has approved a new, non-statin drug that lowers cholesterol. Its effects add to those of any statins a person may be taking.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/21/health/fda-cholesterol-lowering-drug-approved/index.html
The world looks more detailed to most birds than it does to humans because they can see the visible part of the light spectrum as well as ultraviolet. In the far future, humans will be able to see a broader swath of the light spectrum.
https://sciencephiles.com/scientists-show-how-birds-see-the-world-compared-to-humans/
Famed physicist Freeman Dyson is dead.
www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/freeman-dyson-legendary-theoretical-physicist-dies-at-96/
A new Twitter add-on can detect and block incoming, unsolicited nude photos.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51511756
Samsung has released a second, foldable smartphone called the “Galaxy Z Flip.”
https://youtu.be/WxbHs1QBs_4
The “HOLOPORTL” is a refrigerator-sized device that displays a seemingly 3D video image. I don’t think it’s practical for average people, but it probably has some business uses. The technology is impressive in any case.
https://portlhologram.com
“Monocular passive ranging” can be an accurate way to find how far away an object is. If you’re looking at camera footage of the object, it’s obviously better to have a higher resolution camera so the object appears as many pixels.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.00912
A lens-less, single-pixel digital camera can produce highly detailed images of what it sees. “The reason the single-pixel camera can make do with one light sensor is that the light that strikes it is patterned. One way to pattern light is to put a filter, kind of like a randomized black-and-white checkerboard, in front of the flash illuminating the scene. Another way is to bounce the returning light off of an array of tiny micromirrors, some of which are aimed at the light sensor and some of which aren’t. “
I wonder if we could use this technology to vision distant exoplanets without having to build gigantic telescopes in space.
http://news.mit.edu/2017/faster-single-pixel-camera-lensless-imaging-0330
Thanks to the Earth’s periodic wobble on its axis, all of the zodiac signs are now linked to incorrect dates. See the article to figure out what your sign really is.
http://apkmetro.com/youre-a-scorpio-why-the-earths-wobble-means-your-zodiac-sign-isnt-what-you-think/
“Ocean Infinity” has bought 11 robot ships and will use them to map the entire seafloor by 2030. Humans will remotely control the ships from land bases.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51451577
If all human-driven vehicles were banned from Manhattan and only autonomous taxis were allowed, the city could meet its surface transit needs with only half as many cars as today. I think it would be even more efficient if the taxis were mostly Smartcars since their footprints are only half as big as the footprints of fullsize cars that currently serve as taxis, meaning they would almost double the capacity of the city’s existing road network.
http://senseable.mit.edu/MinimumFleet/
The NTSB has found that the fatal 2018 crash of a Tesla was only partly due to the limitations of the car’s autopilot feature, which was on at the time. The human driver was playing a game on his smartphone at the moment of impact even though he knew the car had problems negotiating that stretch of the road, and the crash attenuator that the vehicle plowed into had been compacted by a previous car accident and not promptly replaced by the state highway administration.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/25/21153320/tesla-autopilot-walter-huang-death-ntsb-probable-cause
“As I envision the process, whoever is sending a package will simply place it on their front doorstep and take a photo of it with a special shipping app on their phone. This will start the process, detailing the package size, dimensions, and GPS coordinates, and the sender will add particulars such as destination, level of urgency and weight category (i.e. under 10 lbs). Within a short while, a robotic pickup service will arrive, retrieve the package, and load it onto a drone delivery vehicle.”
https://futuristspeaker.com/business-trends/creating-the-self-delivering-package/
Are “smart transactions” coming?
https://futuristspeaker.com/future-scenarios/disrupting-transactions-7-examples-of-ai-driven-smart-transactions-that-will-mess-with-your-mind/
A 35-mile long tunnel through the Swiss Alps has just opened, allowing faster, cheaper train travel between Germany and Italy.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/trans-alpine-rail-tunnels/index.html
“Stereolithographic” 3D printers “built up layer by layer, but instead of extruding melted plastic, a high definition beam of light hardens a photosensitive liquid resin into thin layers.”
https://gizmodo.com/3d-printers-are-finally-starting-to-work-more-like-star-1841663582
The dreaded “runaway greenhouse effect” positive-feedback doomsday scenario is highly unlikely to happen. The melting of the Arctic permafrost will release much less methane into the atmosphere than was previously estimated.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/climate-destabilization-unlikely-cause-methane-burp
China is cleaning up its polluted rivers. It has also made major progress reducing air pollution.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2228822-china-has-made-huge-strides-cleaning-up-its-polluted-rivers/
“Phytomining” is a practice in which certain species of plants are grown in a patch of ground to extract metals from the soil. Different kinds of plants are known to preferentially suck up different types of metals dissolved in the soil into their roots and up to their stems and leaves. After some time, the farmer cuts down the plants and uses chemicals to leech out and purify the metals in them. Phytomining could be used to clean toxic metal residues from soils and to mine precious metals like gold.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/science/metal-plants-farm.html
Because Mars is farther away from the Sun, the planet receives less sunlight than Earth does. Put simply, the Sun always looks dimmer on Mars.
“The maximum solar irradiance on Mars is about 590 W/m2 compared to about 1000 W/m2 at the Earth’s surface.”
https://www.firsttheseedfoundation.org/resource/tomatosphere/background/sunlight-mars-enough-light-mars-grow-tomatoes/
More on the Pentagon’s secret UFO research program.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a30916275/government-secret-ufo-program-investigation/
The Germans were smart enough to build four-engine bombers like the U.S. and Britain had, but they never did thanks to bad doctrinal decisions made before WWII. The four-engine-but-only-two-propeller He-177 was the best they had.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/hitlers-only-long-range-heavy-bomber-was-joke-127057
Older tanks like the U.S. M-60 and the Soviet T-55 will never be as good as newer tanks because of their armor. The older tanks’ armor was just made of steel. As anti-tank weapons got more potent, the solution was to simply thicken the steel armor. Engineers realized that this trend was unsustainable since it would lead to future tanks that were too heavy to move, so they shifted to a new paradigm by inventing “composite tank armor,” which is a material made of multiple layers of different materials like quartz, ceramic, and relatively thin steel. It was lighter and more protective than thick, solid steel alone. The U.S. M1 Abrams and Soviet T-64 were the first tanks to have composite armor. Since armor is integral to a tank in the same way that your skin and flesh are integral to your body, there’s no way to “upgrade” older tanks like the M-60 that are made of solid steel in a way that will put their armor protection on par with new tanks that have composite armor. Thus, the M-60 is, on the modern battlefield, effectively carrying around many tons of dead weight that can’t be removed.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/could-americas-old-m60-patton-tank-fight-war-right-now-123471
The U.S. Army plans to switch to a plastic helmet that is actually lighter but just as strong as its current Kevlar helmet. Anyone still using steel helmets will be two technology paradigms behind.
https://www.army.mil/article/184898/soldiers_to_receive_lighter_combat_helmet
The U.S. Navy is crying uncle and wants to start retiring its expensive, disastrous “Littoral Combat Ships.”
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32148/the-navy-now-wants-to-retire-the-first-four-of-its-troublesome-littoral-combat-ships
The U.S. will resume very controlled use of land mines. The Obama administration banned their use outside the Korean peninsula, which critics said put the U.S. at a military disadvantage since Russia and China still used mines.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/480919-trump-administration-loosens-restrictions-on-use-of-land-mines
China’s air defense technology is pulling ahead of Russia’s. Soon, the Chinese won’t gain anything by buying Russian weapons.
https://www.rusi.org/publication/occasional-papers/modern-russian-and-chinese-integrated-air-defence-systems-nature
China makes high-quality copies of many American weapons.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chinas-military-stealing-its-way-superpower-status-127072
Everything you need to know about blowing up modern Russian tanks.
https://youtu.be/Kn4elQ1WknM
“Stowed kills” is the word of the day. It is a numerical value that averages the amount of ammunition a tank has with the power of those rounds to express how many enemy vehicles it can destroy before running out. There’s a simple tradeoff: Bigger ammunition hits harder and has longer range, but because of its size, you can’t fit as much of it in your tank. Larger ammunition can also accommodate internal, programmable sensors and computers the smaller ammo can’t (yet).
https://below-the-turret-ring.blogspot.com/2016/04/bigger-guns-are-not-always-better.html
Turkey and Syrian government troops are basically in open warfare against each other in Syria now.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7990809/Syrian-military-helicopter-shot-Turkey-backed-rebels-Idlib.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51667717
https://youtu.be/T56hkIK2koY
Also, U.S. and Russian military vehicles nearly rammed each other during patrols in Syria.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32290/crazy-video-emerges-of-american-and-russian-armored-vehicle-road-rage-incident-in-syria