Month: November 2020

Enlarge / Vials in front of the AstraZeneca British biopharmaceutical company logo are seen in this creative photo taken on 18 November 2020. (credit: Getty| NurPhoto)

AstraZeneca announced in a press release on Monday that its COVID-19 vaccine showed positive results in an interim analysis of clinical trial data.

The announcement marks the third vaccine to show strong efficacy in late-stage trials against the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Though AstraZeneca’s vaccine efficacy numbers are not as impressively high as those for the vaccines before it—mRNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna—AstraZeneca's does offer some advantages over those vaccines.

In all, the news adds to ballooning optimism that effective vaccines could bring an end to the global crisis in the coming year.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Comcast's 1.2TB monthly data cap is coming to 12 more states and the District of Columbia starting January 2021. The unpopular policy was already enforced in most of Comcast's 39-state US territory over the past few years, and the upcoming expansion will for the first time bring the cap to every market in Comcast's territory.

Comcast will be providing some "courtesy months" in which newly capped customers can exceed 1.2TB without penalty, so the first overage charges for these customers will be assessed for data usage in the April 2021 billing period.

Comcast's data cap has been imposed since 2016 in 27 of the 39 states in Comcast's cable territory. The cap-less parts of Comcast's network include Northeastern states where the cable company faces competition from Verizon's un-capped FiOS fiber-to-the-home broadband service.

Enlarge (credit: Reuters)

Archaeologists found the remains of two men lying in an underground room in a large villa on the outskirts of the Roman city of Pompeii, in southern Italy, Reuters reports. Based on the condition of their skeletons and clues from preserved traces of clothing, one man appears to have been a wealthy person in his 30s, while the other was likely a slave or laborer in his early 20s. They died together at the villa of Civita Giuliana, probably while trying to flee or seek better shelter from a dense, fast-moving cloud of superheated volcanic gas and ash.

The rich man and the slave

The find brings the total number of human remains at Pompeii and Herculaneum (a few kilometers west along the Bay of Naples) to more than 1,500. Historians estimate that around 12,000 people lived in Pompeii and another 12,000 lived on the rich farmland nearby, but we don’t know how many of those people died in the eruption or its aftermath.

And we know a surprising amount about those 1,500 people, because the thick layer of volcanic ash that entombed them also preserved the details of their final moments, along with hints about the lives that led up to those moments. Like many of the other remains at Pompeii, the two men in the villa lay in soft volcanic ash, which hardened around them and preserved the shape of their bodies long after their soft tissues had decayed. By making plaster casts of those impressions, archaeologists could see details like facial expressions and even the folds and pleats of clothing.

Enlarge / Ford's new battery-electric Mustang Mach-E starts reaching customers in the next few weeks. (credit: Ford)

In the old days, people used to flaunt their 0-60mph times. But the instant torque of electric motors means that even sedate-looking electric vehicles will embarrass a 1960s muscle car off the line when the traffic light goes green. Today, range is king—the contemporary measurement of choice is how far your whip can go on a single charge. And on Monday, Ford revealed that its new Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle has met its range goals.

The Mustang Mach-E is available with either a 75.7kWh or 98.9kWh battery pack (although that is total capacity, rather than usable). Additionally, the Mach-E can be equipped with a single motor driving the rear wheels or separate electric motors for each axle. Accordingly, the US Environmental Protection Agency has looked at the data and has certified the four variants as follows:

• Standard-range rear wheel drive: 230 miles (370km)
• Extended-range rear wheel drive: 300 miles (483km)
• Standard-range all wheel drive: 211 miles (340km)
• Extended-range all wheel drive: 270 miles (435km)

Deliveries of the Mustang Mach-E are scheduled to begin in December.