Sunday, September 12, 2021

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Virgin Galactic delays its first commercial research space flight to mid-October

Posted: 11 Sep 2021 02:54 PM PDT

Virgin Galactic is dealing with yet more setbacks for its paid spaceflights. Reutersreports Virgin has delayed its first commercial research flight, Unity 23, to no sooner than mid-October. The mission was originally scheduled for late September or early October, but a supplier warned of a possible "manufacturing defect" in the flight control actuation system, Virgin said.

It's not certain if the defect is present in Virgin's vehicles or if any repairs are necessary. Virgin said it was only postponing the launch out of an "abundance of caution." The mission will see three Italian Air Force members study the effects of transitioning from regular Earth gravity to microgravity on both humans and the environment.

This wasn't connected to the FAA's investigation of a deviation from the cleared flight path, Virgin added. When the flight goes forward also depends on the FAA lifting a temporary ban on Virgin flights after it concludes the investigation.

It's not surprising Virgin would take an extra-careful approach. The company is still dealing with the repercussions of its 2014 crash, and it's under more pressure than ever now there are paying customers for research and, eventually, regular passengers. Delays like this may frustrate Virgin as it races to become a profitable business, but they may be worthwhile if they establish trust and lead to more customers.

Google One adds a middle-ground 5TB storage plan

Posted: 11 Sep 2021 01:38 PM PDT

Google One hasn't had great storage choices if you're a heavy-duty user — you've either had to 'settle' for 2TB at $10 per month or jump to 10TB at an eye-watering $50 per month. Thankfully, there's now an in-between option. 9to5Googlenoticed Google has quietly added a 5TB plan for $25 per month, or $250 per year. That's half what you'd pay for the 10TB tier, and certainly a better bargain if you didn't need that much more than the 2TB plan could offer.

You still get 2TB-level perks, including the Android VPN, 10 percent back in store credit for Google Store purchases and Google expert access. Not surprisingly, you're encouraged to add your family.

The timing is apt. Google ended Photos' free unlimited storage at the beginning of June, creating headaches for anyone who relies heavily on the service (or Drive as a whole). This could save you from having to sacrifice at least some backups if you know you're going to be tight on space. There's also a degree of futureproofing here. Even if 2TB is fine for your needs now, you can give yourself some headroom without paying five times more.

Google gave user data to Hong Kong officials despite moratorium promise

Posted: 11 Sep 2021 12:27 PM PDT

Google vowed that it would no longer directly respond to Hong Kong authorities' data requests after the Chinese government imposed a security law in June 2020, but it appears the company made a handful of exceptions. The Hong Kong Free Press reports Google provided "some data" for three out of 43 requests from Hong Kong authorities in the second half of 2020. One was for an emergency where life was at risk, while another two concerned human trafficking.

The internet firm stressed that neither of the trafficking requests were linked to national security, and were backed by signed search warrants as well as Google's worldwide policy on requests. None of the three handovers involved content. However, they also weren't made under a treaty with the US Justice Department that Google said would be necessary for requests going forward.

The responses aren't completely unexpected. Attempts to pursue cases through the treaty could take months. It just wouldn't be realistic to feed urgent, non-security requests through that system.

Nonetheless, this illustrates the problems Google and other tech giants (including Facebook and Twitter) have while trying to disengage with China over the security law and, more recently, privacy law changes. While the companies can stall requests, an absolute refusal to comply may be difficult without leaving Hong Kong entirely.

Perseverance rover samples hint Mars had water for a long time

Posted: 11 Sep 2021 10:30 AM PDT

The Perseverance rover's first rock samples from Mars are already providing insights. NASA researchers' early analysis of the samples indicates water was present in Jezero Crater for a "long time" — think tens of thousands or millions of years. That, in turn, suggests Mars' water was stable enough to make it relatively welcoming to microscopic life.

The mission team also detected crucial salts that might have formed when water flowed through the sampled rock. The salt might have not only trapped pockets of Mars' old water, but could have preserved signs of life.

The two samples so far come from just one rock. It will take much longer to develop a better sense of Mars' secrets. Perseverance won't even collect samples from its next location, South Séitah, until after a weeks-long break where all missions on the planet will go into a "protective" state until the end of a Mars solar conjuction. The pause should take effect for everyone by early October. The samples won't return to Earth until future missions collect the samples Perseverance left behind.

Even so, the early data bodes well for the Perseverance mission — the team has already discovered useful information about Mars' history. These and other findings could not only reshape humanity's understanding of the planet, but set the direction for future Mars exploration missions.

Disney's remaining 2021 movies will debut in theaters first

Posted: 11 Sep 2021 09:13 AM PDT

Don't expect to stream Disney's next movies at home the moment they're available. The Vergereports Disney has revealed that all its remaining 2021 movies will debut in theaters first, including the animated robot comedy Ron's Gone Wrong (October 22nd), the Marvel blockbuster Eternals (November 5th) and a new adaptation of West Side Story (December 10th).

Outside of the animated musical Encanto (November 24th), which has a 30-day window, all of the movies will have a "minimum" 45-day theatrical run before they're available elsewhere. Disney didn't say when you might expect on-demand versions of these titles, whether on Disney+ or rival services.

This is partly a reaction to the relatively strong theater-only releases of summer extravaganzas like Free Guy and Shang-Chi. While COVID-19 still hurt box office numbers (Shang-Chi's $75.5 million US opening paled in comparison to multiple Disney 2019 releases), the revenue may have been enough to justify returning to pre-pandemic distribution.

There's also the matter of placating key factions. Disney said it has a way to pay talent fairly for hybrid theater-and-digital relases, but it wouldn't be surprising if Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow lawsuit plays a role in considering Disney+ launches. The company might not want to risk further trouble with actors and others whose income depends on theatrical performance. And then there's the theaters themselves. When chains like AMC vowed to pull Universal movies even when many locations were closed, Disney might not be willing to provoke a similar confrontation as theaters resume business.

This and Warner Bros.' 2022 return to theaters supports the expectations of many cynics — that studios only saw day-one streaming access as a temporary necessity that would disappear the moment it was reasonably safe to watch on big screens. That's not completely shocking when the movie industry's business model still revolves around theaters, but any fundamental shifts in strategy might not happen for a long, long time.

Hitting the Books: How Florence Nightingale changed medicine using stats and 'rose charts'

Posted: 11 Sep 2021 08:30 AM PDT

During Crimean War, hospitals of the day weren't so much centers of healing or recovery as they were the places where injured combatants went to die slightly more slowly. Turkey's Scutari hospital was one such notorious example. Converted by the British Empire from army barracks, Scutari lacked every imaginable amenity, from basic sanitation to sufficient ventilation, this "hospital" served as a potent incubator for myriad infectious diseases — that is until Florence Nightingale and her team of volunteer nurses arrived in 1854. 

Maladies of Empire by Jim Downs explores how many aspects of modern medicine are borne on the backs of humanity's most abhorrent impulses, though in the excerpt below, Downs illustrates how one woman's unyielding tenacity and fastidious record keeping helped launch the field of preventative medicine.

Maladies of Empire
Belknap Press

Excerpted from MALADIES OF EMPIRE: HOW COLONIALISM, SLAVERY, AND WAR TRANSFORMED MEDICINE by JIM DOWNS, published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2021 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

While in Scutari, Nightingale developed a system of record keeping that tracked a variety of factors at the Barrack Hospital and the nearby General Hospital. She took notes on everything from cleanliness to the quantity of supplies to diet to the placement of latrines and graveyards.

She also carefully examined the physical space. She took careful note of the size of the wards, the condition of the roof, and the quality, size, and placement of the windows. In her book on the health of the British army, like Thomas Trotter and others who wrote about the importance of fresh air, she pointed to the problem of improper ventilation, and she devoted an entire section to "bad ventilation." She quoted the report of the sanitary commission, which remarked on the "defective state of the ventilation" in the Barrack Hospital. There were only "a few small openings here and there," so that there was no way for the "hot and foul" air to escape. As an adherent of the miasma theory, she believed that diseases were spread through the air and advocated for ventilation to release the "foul air" from hospitals.

In addition to inadequate ventilation, Nightingale pointed to poor drainage and badly designed sewers and plumbing. In her testimony to the royal commission, Nightingale reported on the filthy conditions she found in the Barrack Hospital when she arrived. "The state of the privies... for several months, more than an inch deep in filth, is too horrible to describe." She observed six dead dogs under one of the windows, and a dead horse lay in the aqueduct for weeks. The drinking water was dirty; once she saw used hospital uniforms in the water tank. Rats and insects abounded, and "the walls and ceilings were saturated with organic matter."

In the conclusion to her report on the health of the British Army, she explained, "We have much more information on the sanitary history of the Crimean campaign than we have upon any other, but because it is a complete exam (history does not afford its equal) of an army, after failing to the lowest ebb of disease and disaster from neglects committed, rising again to the highest state of health and efficiency from remedies applied.

"It is the whole experiment on a colossal scale." She pointed out that during the first seven months of the Crimean campaign, mortality exceeded that of the plague of 1665 as well as that of recent cholera epidemics. But during the last six months of the war, after sanitary reforms had been made, "we had... a mortality among our sick little more than that among our healthy Guards at home."

Using mortality data that she had collected during the war, along with domestic mortality statistics, Nightingale showed that between 1839 and 1853, mortality among soldiers was much higher than among civilian men: "of 10,000 soldiers [at the age of 20], 7,077 live to the age of 39, out of whom 135 die in the next year of age; whereas out of 10,000 civilians at the age of 20, 8,253 attain the age of 39, and of those 106 die in the year of age following." Nearly all mortality among soldiers was the result of disease; "actual losses in battle form a very small part of the calamities of a long war." Nightingale classified the causes of death as "zymotic diseases" (which in the nineteenth century referred to infectious diseases such as fevers, measles, and cholera), "chest and tubercular diseases," and "all other diseases (including violent deaths)." Nightingale was critical of the army's classification system for diseases. At the bottom of a chart, she notes, "Bronchitis and influenza have no place in the Army nomenclature. The chronic catarrh of the Army Returns is believed to be really phthisis, in the great majority of cases; acute catarrh comprehends both epidemic catarrh, or influenza and bronchitis."

Nightingale presented statistics using charts, tables, and diagrams, which were just beginning to appear in research reports, to make it easier for readers to visualize the comparison she was making. She developed a new kind of graphic, called a "rose chart," also known as a coxcomb chart or polar area diagram, to present mortality data from the Crimean War. Each chart, which is laid out like a pie, shows data from one year, with the slices representing months. Each slice is divided into colored segments whose area is proportional to the number of deaths.

One segment is for deaths from wounds, a second for "preventable or mitigable zymotic diseases," and a third for all other causes. A quick glance at the charts of deaths from April 1854 to March 1855 and April 1855 to March 1856 is enough to show that many more deaths were caused by disease than by combat, and that overall mortality decreased in the second year.

To further make visible the dangers of unsanitary hospitals, Nightingale gathered mortality data for matrons, nuns, and nurses working in fifteen London hospitals who died of the "zymotic diseases" of fever and cholera. She presented tables, which she notes William Farr compiled for her, showing that the mortality rate of the nursing staff was much higher than that of the female population in London; in addition, women working in hospitals were more likely to die of zymotic diseases than were other women. She used these figures to argue for the "very great importance" of hygiene in hospitals. "The loss of a well-trained nurse by preventible [sic] disease," she wrote, "is a greater loss than is that of a good soldier from the same cause. Money cannot replace either, but a good nurse is more difficult to find than a good soldier."

In her book Notes on Hospitals, she retold the story of the British prisoners of war who died in a crowded jail cell in India in 1756: "Shut up 150 people in a Black hole of Calcutta, and in twenty-four hours an infection is produced so intense that it will, in that time, have destroyed nearly the whole of the inmates." Nightingale's reference to the case is evidence for its status as the prototypical illustration of the need for ventilation. And the fact that it took place in India shows how British medical authorities used information from around the empire.

As a result of her work with large numbers of patients in the Crimean War, Nightingale framed her analysis like an epidemiologist, in terms of populations. She focused on how disease spread within a group. She devoted her energies not to changing bedpans or dressing wounds but to studying the structure of hospitals, analyzing statistics, and figuring out how to increase ventilation.

The war provided her the opportunity to compare mortality rates in varied settings: crowded hospitals, shabby tents, and wooden huts. It also underscored to her the importance of preventive measures, which constitutes one of the major tenets of modern epidemiology. By publishing her observations, her insights, and guidelines for hospitals to follow, she hoped to provide a set of rules and guidelines for physicians to follow to prevent the spread of disease. While efforts to ensure proper hygiene as a way to guard against illness can be traced to Mesopotamian civilization and Sanskrit writings from 2000 BCE, Nightingale's warnings, in particular, and sanitary reform, more generally, sparked a critical turning point in the middle of the nineteenth century that gave rise to preventive medicine. This transformed military medicine from an enterprise that largely focused on treatment and surgery to one that began to engage epidemiological questions and issues.

Tesla rolls out Full Self Driving 10 beta with more confident decision making

Posted: 11 Sep 2021 07:50 AM PDT

If Tesla's last big Full Self Driving beta was about enabling more semi-autonomous features off the highway, its newest release is focused more on helping you trust those features. Electreknotes Tesla has started rolling out a Full Self Driving 10 beta that, from early reports, appears to make smarter and more confident decisions off the highway. It won't necessarily "blow your mind," as Elon Musk claimed, but it appears to deliver smoother turns, roundabouts and merges. One driver found that it finally navigated San Francisco's twisty Lombard Street without requiring intervention.

Users have also noticed improved visuals. You won't always see as many stats as before, but they appear to be more accurate and stable without as much twitchiness. You'll have a better idea of what the car is seeing, and possibly trust its decisions more as a result.

Highway driving hasn't changed, but that's intentional. Musk said the production-level, non-beta highway navigation is still "more polished" than the Full Self Driving equivalent at the moment. You might not see a truly harmonized approach until the 10.1 release.

It's not clear when regular Tesla owners might see FSD 10. It could be easier to try pre-release versions before long, however. Musk hoped a public option to request the beta would be available along with the 10.1 release that might arrive in as little as two weeks. The improvements won't necessarily justify the steep prices for the FSD package, but you may well be happier with the purchase — if just because you can rely on not-quite-driverless features more often.
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