Month: November 2018

Enlarge / High-five, Eevee! (credit: Nintendo)

The new (optional) Poké Ball-shaped controller was uncomfortable. The waggle-loaded capturing system was simplistic. The E3 demo's brief gameplay slice was repetitive. And the zone was one fans have played through a zillion times. Pokémon was coming to Nintendo Switch, alright, but this was not the "Generation 8" many fans had hoped for.

Yet something about that brief glimpse at Pokémon Let's Go put a little worm into my brain. (Probably a Weedle.) Weeks later, I wondered: Is there something here? Was Nintendo breaking down the sinewy tissue of age-old JRPGs in a way that seems boring in a crowded expo hall but might prove perfect for a lengthy, semi-portable adventure?

Especially for someone who—let's face it—never fit Pokémon into his gaming diet?

Enlarge / The Rocket Report is published weekly. (credit: Arianespace/Aurich Lawson)

Welcome to Edition 1.26 of the Rocket Report! This week, we have plenty of news to share about successes at Rocket Lab, as well as an important launch for India's space program. We also link to an in-depth feature on the past, present, and future of Japan's launch industry.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Rocket Lab enters its operational phase. Rocket Lab has moved from a company testing a rocket to one that has truly begun commercial operations. With the third flight of its Electron booster, the company delivered seven different satellites into orbit as part of its first fully commercial spaceflight. "The world is waking up to the new normal," the company's founder and chief executive, Peter Beck, said.

Enlarge / A whale earplug, showing the layers accumulated across a lifetime, and the corresponding cortisol levels. (credit: Nature Communications)

In a whale’s earwax lie clues to its entire life. Some species of whale build up large “earplugs” of fatty, waxy material that can trap hints about the hormones that coursed through the beast and the pollutants it swam through.

In a paper published this month in Nature Communications, researchers used earplugs recovered from 20 whales to explore how their stress levels have responded to changes over the last 200 years. They found that the whales’ stress levels moved in concert with being hunted, rising as whaling levels reached fever pitch, and plummeting as whaling levels reduced. But since the 1970s, stress levels have been steadily climbing again, keeping step with warming ocean waters.

The ear is the window to a whale’s soul

Tracking even the most obvious behaviors in wild animals can be a tricky business—for instance, nobody knows for sure where great white sharks go to breed. Even knowing how many animals there are in a population can be difficult. Figuring out how stressed whales have been is a near-impossible task, but a crucial one: stress affects the health of individual whales, which in turn affects the health of the population. So tracking stress levels could be useful for developing a comprehensive whale conservation strategy.