Month: November 2023

Enlarge (credit: USGS)

With Europa and Enceladus getting most of the attention for their subsurface oceans and potential to host life, other frozen worlds have been left in the shadows—but the mysterious Jovian moon Ganymede is now making headlines.

While Ganymede hasn’t yet been observed spewing plumes of water vapor like Saturn’s moon Enceladus, Jupiter’s largest moon is most likely hiding an enormous saltwater ocean. Hubble observations suggest that the ocean—thought to sit under 150 km (95 miles) of ice—could be up to 100 km (60 miles) deep. That’s 10 times deeper than the ocean on Earth.

Ganymede is having a moment because NASA’s Juno mission observed salts and organic compounds on its surface, possibly from an ocean that lies beneath its crust of ice. While Juno’s observations can't provide decisive evidence that this moon has an ocean that makes Earth look like a kiddie pool, the Juno findings are the strongest evidence yet of salts and other chemicals making it to the exterior of Ganymede.

Enlarge / Climate change presents risks while action to limit warming and reduce risks presents opportunities for the US. (credit: 2023 National Climate Assessment)

In a sprawling, multimedia report that stresses it is not too late to act, the Biden administration on Tuesday delivered a sobering catalog of climate change’s impacts in every corner of the United States—from battered coasts to parched cornfields to blazing forests. It measures the human toll, including at least 700 people dying of heat-related illness each year, in a nation warming 60 percent more quickly than the world as a whole.

“The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States,” the report says. But it adds that each increment of warming avoided through cutting carbon emissions will reduce the risks and harmful impacts.

“While there are still uncertainties about how the planet will react to rapid warming, the degree to which climate change will continue to worsen is largely in human hands,” the report says.

Enlarge / Climate change presents risks while action to limit warming and reduce risks presents opportunities for the US. (credit: 2023 National Climate Assessment)

In a sprawling, multimedia report that stresses it is not too late to act, the Biden administration on Tuesday delivered a sobering catalog of climate change’s impacts in every corner of the United States—from battered coasts to parched cornfields to blazing forests. It measures the human toll, including at least 700 people dying of heat-related illness each year, in a nation warming 60 percent more quickly than the world as a whole.

“The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States,” the report says. But it adds that each increment of warming avoided through cutting carbon emissions will reduce the risks and harmful impacts.

“While there are still uncertainties about how the planet will react to rapid warming, the degree to which climate change will continue to worsen is largely in human hands,” the report says.

Enlarge / The three pouches so far linked to lead contamination. (credit: FDA)

At least 22 toddlers across at least 14 states have suffered acute lead poisoning linked to recalled apple cinnamon fruit puree pouch products found to contain "extremely high levels of lead."

The products contained such high lead levels that some of the poisoned toddlers showed blood lead levels as high as 29 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL), roughly eight-fold above the federal reference level of 3.5 µg/dL to identify children at high exposure.

Given that at least one of the recalled products (WanaBana) was sold nationally and through multiple retailers, including Amazon and Dollar Tree, it's likely that there are more cases in more states.

Enlarge / GM says the only way Cadillac enters F1 is in the back of an Andretti car. (credit: Cadillac)

At the start of the year, we got the surprising news that Andretti Global was partnering with Cadillac to try to field a team in Formula 1. That has been a contentious process, exposing a rift between the sport's stakeholders, some of whom aren't keen to add a new fish to the pond.

But on Tuesday, the Andretti Cadillac program got even more serious with the news that General Motors, which owns Cadillac, has now registered as an official F1 powertrain constructor—although only from the 2028 season.

"We are thrilled that our new Andretti Cadillac F1 entry will be powered by a GM power unit," said GM President Mark Reuss. "With our deep engineering and racing expertise, we're confident we'll develop a successful power unit for the series and position Andretti Cadillac as a true works team. We will run with the very best, at the highest levels, with passion and integrity that will help elevate the sport for race fans around the world."

OpenAI plans to secure further financial backing from its biggest investor Microsoft as the ChatGPT maker’s chief executive Sam Altman pushes ahead with his vision to create artificial general intelligence —computer software as intelligent as humans.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Altman said his company’s partnership with Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella was “working really well” and that he expected “to raise a lot more over time” from the tech giant among other investors, to keep up with the punishing costs of building more sophisticated AI models.

Microsoft earlier this year invested $10 billion in OpenAI as part of a “multiyear” agreement that valued the San Francisco-based company at $29 billion, according to people familiar with the talks.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

What do Boeing, an Australian shipping company, the world’s largest bank, and one of the world’s biggest law firms have in common? All four have suffered cybersecurity breaches, most likely at the hands of teenage hackers, after failing to patch a critical vulnerability that security experts have warned of for more than a month, according to a post published Monday.

Besides the US jetliner manufacturer, the victims include DP World, the Australian branch of the Dubai-based logistics company DP World; Industrial and Commercial Bank of China; and Allen & Overy, a multinational law firm, according to Keven Beaumont, an independent security researcher with one of the most comprehensive views of the cybersecurity landscape. All four companies have confirmed succumbing to security incidents in recent days, and China’s ICBC has reportedly paid an undisclosed ransom in exchange for encryption keys to data that has been unavailable ever since.

Citing data allowing the tracking of ransomware operators and people familiar with the breaches, Beaumont said the four companies are among 10 victims he’s aware of currently being extorted by LockBit, among the world’s most prolific and damaging ransomware crime syndicates. All four of the companies, Beaumont said, were users of a networking product known as Citrix Netscaler and hadn’t patched against a critical vulnerability, despite a patch being available since October 10.