Month: September 2022

Enlarge (credit: d3sign via Getty Images)

We all know a “COVID virgin,” or “Novid,” someone who has defied all logic in dodging the coronavirus. But beyond judicious caution, sheer luck, or a lack of friends, could the secret to these people’s immunity be found nestled in their genes? And could it hold the key to fighting the virus?

In the early days of the pandemic, a small, tight-knit community of scientists from around the world set up an international consortium, called the COVID Human Genetic Effort, whose goal was to search for a genetic explanation as to why some people were becoming severely sick with COVID while others got off with a mild case of the sniffles.

After a while, the group noticed that some people weren’t getting infected at all—despite repeated and intense exposures. The most intriguing cases were the partners of people who became really ill and ended up in intensive care. “We learned about a few spouses of those people that—despite taking care of their husband or wife, without having access to face masks—apparently did not contract infection,” says András Spaan, a clinical microbiologist at Rockefeller University in New York.

Enlarge / BotW, meet TotK.

The next game in the Legend of Zelda series is called Tears of the Kingdom and will hit the Switch on May 12, 2023, Nintendo announced today during a livestreamed Nintendo Direct presentation.

It has been over three years since Nintendo first announced the follow-up to Breath of the Wild and over a year since we saw the first gameplay footage for the title.

A brief teaser shown during this morning's Nintendo Direct presentation didn't provide much detail that wasn't apparent in that previous showing, but it did put a lot of focus on Link falling through the sky and gliding through the air. The game seems to mimic the open-world, climbing-heavy gameplay of its predecessor.

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

Intel is working on making its Thunderbolt technology support a throughput of 80Gbps. That would put it on par with the upcoming USB4 Version 2.0 specification and double the throughput of today's Thunderbolt 4.

Intel showed a video of the "first test system" using a Thunderbolt connection running at 80Gbps today, Tom's Hardware reported from the Intel Development Center in Haifa, Israel. The demo was not live, and the company didn't provide a name or release date for the next generation of Thunderbolt, so we expect it to be a while before consumers start seeing this kind of performance in products.

The Thunderbolt connection reportedly hit 80Gbps by use of two Thunderbolt lanes, with each one running at 40Gbps. With USB-C becoming increasingly popular among gadgets and some countries considering, pushing for, or issuing USB-C mandates for electronics, it's not surprising to hear that the demo ran over the slim connector.

Enlarge (credit: Géza Bálint Ujvárosi / EyeEm via Getty)

Cooks love their gadgets, from countertop slow cookers to instant-read thermometers. Now, there’s increasing interest in magnetic induction cooktops—surfaces that cook much faster than conventional stoves, without igniting a flame or heating an electric coil.

Some of this attention is overdue: Induction has long been popular in Europe and Asia, and it is more energy-efficient than standard stoves. But recent studies have also raised concerns about indoor air emissions from gas stoves.

Academic researchers and agencies such as the California Air Resources Board have reported that gas stoves can release hazardous air pollutants while they’re operating, and even when they’re turned off.

Enlarge / Students listen to their teacher during their first day of transitional kindergarten at Tustin Ranch Elementary School in Tustin, Calif., on Wednesday, August 11, 2021. (credit: Getty | Media News Group)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning that a common respiratory virus in children is surging in several regions of the US, raising concern that an unusually large and alarming spike in a polio-like condition could soon follow.

The virus—a non-polio enterovirus called EV-D68—typically causes mild respiratory illness, much like a cold, and is often an indistinguishable drip in the constant stream of snotty childhood illnesses. But in recent years, experts have pinned EV-D68 to a rare but serious polio-like neurological condition called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM). In a small number of children (median age of 5 years), the condition trails an EV-D68 illness by around a week, causing muscle and limb weakness that can lead to long-term or even permanent paralysis.

In 2014, a surge in EV-D68 cases raised the virus's profile despite being identified in 1962. Since then, the CDC has recorded closely linked spikes of EV-D68 and AFM cases that follow a two-year pattern, landing in late summer and fall. Why every other year? While EV-D68 circulates continuously at low levels, epidemiological modeling suggests that two years is how long it takes for a large enough pool of susceptible children to build up and EV-D68 transmission to take off. (Adults are generally unfazed by the virus, following wave after wave of exposure to non-polio enteroviruses during childhood.)

Enlarge / Photograph of BE-4 "flight engine no. 2" on Blue Origin's test stand in Texas, as shared on Twitter by ULA chief executive Tory Bruno on August 26, 2022. (credit: Tory Bruno/Twitter)

Blue Origin shipped the first "flight" version of its BE-4 rocket engine to Texas for acceptance testing six weeks ago. These tests, scheduled to take less than a month, marked the final step before Blue Origin delivered the much-anticipated rocket engines to its customer, United Launch Alliance. A second flight engine followed the first out of the factory in mid-August.

These were hopeful signs for United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is using two of the large liquid oxygen-methane engines to power its new heavy lift Vulcan rocket. At the urging of the US Department of Defense, ULA has been pressing hard to make a 2022 launch date debut.

However, neither of these flight engines have yet been shipped from Texas to ULA's rocket factory in northern Alabama. There, ULA is eagerly awaiting the engines for pre-launch processing and installation onto the rocket.