Sci-Tech

Musk shows off progress merging brains and machines

  by Glenn CHAPMAN Agence France Presse Futurist entrepreneur Elon Musk late Friday demonstrated progress made by his Neuralink startup in meshing brains with computers, saying the work is essential to the future of humanity. Musk has long contended that a neural lace merging minds with machines is vital if people are going to avoid being so outpaced by artificial intelligence that, under the best of circumstances, humans would be akin to “house cats.” “It’s […]

Robot eases loneliness of Mexican virus patients

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) — A robot at a hospital in the Mexican capital is providing a lifeline for coronavirus patients separated from their relatives and reducing the risk of infection for medical workers. “Hi, I’m LaLuchy Robotina! What’s your name?” the 1.4-meter-tall (4.6 feet) robot asks patients as it goes from room to room. It moves around on wheels and has a camera and display screen enabling relatives and doctors to chat with patients […]

Blue planet: Study proposes new origin theory for Earth’s water

by Issam AHMED Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON D.C., United States (AFP) — Water covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and is crucial to life as we know it, but how it got here has been a longstanding scientific debate. The puzzle was a step closer to being solved Thursday after a French team reported in the journal Science they had identified which space rocks were responsible, and suggested our planet has been wet ever since […]

Thousands of Taiwan government email accounts ‘hacked by China’

  TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — Chinese hackers infiltrated at least 10 Taiwan government agencies and gained access to around 6,000 email accounts in an attempt to steal data, officials said Wednesday. The damage done was “not small”, according to a top Taiwan cyber official, who said the full impact was still being assessed. Taipei has accused Beijing of stepping up a cyber campaign since 2016 when Taiwan elected President Tsai Ing-wen, who refuses to acknowledge […]

Small asteroid becomes closest ever seen passing Earth: NASA

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — An asteroid the size of an SUV passed 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above Earth, the closest asteroid ever observed passing by our planet, NASA said Tuesday. If it had been on a collision course with Earth, the asteroid — named 2020 QG — would likely not have caused any damage, instead of disintegrating in the atmosphere, creating a fireball in the sky, or a meteor, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) […]

Ariane rocket puts telecom satellites into orbit

PARIS, France (AFP) — A rocket that blasted off from French Guiana successfully placed two communications satellites into orbit Saturday, launch firm Arianespace said. The Ariane 5 rocket took off at 2204 GMT from Kourou, the European Space Agency’s space centre in the South American territory, the company said in a statement. Two satellites on board — belonging to the intergovernmental provider Intelsat and Japan’s Broadcasting Satellite System Corporation — were later successfully placed into […]

WHO urges countries to gamble on shared vaccine search

  by Robin MILLARD Agence France Presse GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The WHO on Thursday urged countries to invest billions of dollars in searching for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments — calling it a snip compared to the vast economic cost of the coronavirus crisis. The World Health Organization insisted it was a smarter bet than the trillions of dollars being thrown at handling the consequences of the global pandemic. The UN agency’s chief Tedros Adhanom […]

‘Baby’ Milky Way discovered 12 bln light years away

by Laurence COUSTAL PARIS, France (AFP) — A golden halo glinting 12 billion light years away is the farthest galaxy resembling our Milky Way yet spotted, astronomers said Wednesday, adding the “surprisingly unchaotic” infant star system challenges our understanding of the early years of the Universe. The galaxy, called SPT0418-47, is so far away that it took billions of years for its light to reach Earth and so our image of it is from deep […]

Road test: Chinese ‘robotaxis’ take riders for a spin

by Dan Martin / Beiyi SEOW Agence France-Presse SHANGHAI, China (AFP) — Chinese entrants in the race to put autonomous vehicles on the road are bringing “robotaxis” online in hopes that a hired-car format can be the key to unlocking wide acceptance of the futuristic technology. It is expected to be years before cars that operate completely without human intervention are unleashed owing to lingering technological, regulatory, and safety hurdles. But as China challenges US […]

Gov’t approves establishment of first ever virus research institute at New Clark City

  (Eagle News) – The country’s very own premier research institute in the field of virology will soon rise in New Clark City, according to COVID-19 testing czar and Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) president Vince Dizon. In a statement, Dizon said that the Philippines’ first virology research institute building will be built by nexr year after this proposal by the Department of Science and Technology was included in the administration’s list of infrastructure […]

SpaceX completes test flight of Mars rocket prototype

HOUSTON, United States (AFP) — SpaceX on Tuesday successfully completed a flight of less than a minute of the largest prototype ever tested of the future rocket Starship, which the company hopes to use one day to colonize Mars. “Mars is looking real,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted in response to a fan. The current Starship prototype is fairly crude: it’s a large metallic cylinder, built in a few weeks by SpaceX teams on the […]

US announces clinical trial of antibody treatment for COVID-19

  WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The US has begun late stage clinical trials into a drug formulated to fight COVID-19, officials said Tuesday. The medicine is an antibody against the new coronavirus called LY-CoV555, which was identified in the blood sample of a recovered patient by Canada’s Abcellera Biologics. It was then developed synthetically for mass production by US-based Lilly Research Laboratories in partnership with Abcellera. The Phase 3 trial will initially enroll some […]