A double dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine can’t stop the omicron virus, according to labs tests done in in South Africa and Germany, and either a booster or a new vaccine will be needed.  The omicron variant was detected in South Africa last month, and because it contains a large number of genetic changes,…

In the two years since OpenAI released its language model GPT-3, most big-name AI labs have developed language mimics of their own. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft—as well as a handful of Chinese firms—have all built AIs that can generate convincing text, chat with humans, answer questions, and more.  Known as large language models because of…

The global pandemic accelerated the trend toward a work-from-anywhere, distributed workforce. As we approach a post-pandemic world, companies—and employees—expect this trend to become the norm. While IT departments are rapidly configuring and deploying devices, infrastructure, and software to support the shift in a secure and productive way, employees are likewise having to reset priorities and…

There’s enough heat flowing from inside the earth to meet total global energy demand twice over. But harnessing it requires drilling deep underground and transforming that heat into a usable form of energy. That’s difficult and expensive, which is why geothermal power—sometimes called the forgotten renewable—makes up only about 0.3% of electricity generation worldwide.  Now,…

NASA plans to launch a new x-ray telescope this week to help answer questions like what’s inside a black hole and how bright pulsars can get.   On Thursday, December 9, the agency will launch the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, known as IXPE, on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will be the first x-ray telescope capable of measuring polarization, a property of…

Voice technology is one of the biggest trends in the healthcare space. We look at how it might help care providers and patients, from a woman who is losing her speech, to documenting healthcare records for doctors. But how do you teach AI to learn to communicate more like a human, and will it lead…

If all goes to plan, next month SpaceX will launch the largest rocket in human history. Towering nearly 400 feet tall, the rocket – Starship – is designed to take NASA astronauts to the moon. And SpaceX’s CEO, Elon Musk, has bigger ambitions: he wants to use it to settle humans on Mars. Much has already…

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) seems almost unbounded in its ability to derive and drive new sources of customer, product, service, operational, environmental, and societal value. If your organization is to compete in the economy of the future, then AI must be at the core of your business operations.  A study by Kearney titled “The Impact…

Kevin Cowley remembers many things about April 15, 1989. He had taken the bus to the Hillsborough soccer stadium in Sheffield, England, to watch the semifinal championship game between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool. He was 17. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon. The fans filled the stands. He remembers being pressed between people so tightly…

Countries are slamming their borders shut again. Since the omicron variant was discovered in southern Africa and reported to the World Health Organization last week, more than 50 countries have imposed border controls. They target mostly South Africa and Botswana, which reported the first cases, but also neighboring countries in the region.  The aim was…

How we built it. What the Department of Justice changed on its China Initiative webpage. How our database is organized. Our transparency and conflict-of-interest report. Since the US government launched the China Initiative in 2018, the main source of information about it has been press releases on the Department of Justice’s China Initiative webpage announcing…

A visiting researcher at UCLA accused of hiding his connection to China’s People’s Liberation Army. A hacker indicted for breaking into video game company servers in his spare time. A Harvard professor accused of lying to investigators about funding from China. And a man sentenced for organizing a turtle-smuggling ring between New York and Hong…

Construction of solar farms, wind turbines, and other sources of renewable power will soar over the next five years as nations set stricter climate policies and more ambitious emissions targets. New renewable electricity capacity will set another record this year, at 290 gigawatts, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency. That’s roughly…

The discovery of the omicron variant of covid-19 in southern Africa shows how sequencing the genes of a virus can give an early alert to dangerous-looking changes in its genome. Omicron has more than 30 mutations in the important “spike” gene, some of which have previously been seen in other variants and are thought to…

The news: A US Food and Drug Administration panel has voted by 13 to 10 to recommend that the government authorize Merck’s antiviral pill for patients with early covid-19 who are at high risk for severe infection. The drug, called molnupiravir, has been shown to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death, although by less…

The news: Just five days ago, South African scientists informed the World Health Organization that they’d identified a new covid-19 variant. The situation has escalated rapidly since then. The variant, known as B.1.1.529, has already been found in many countries across the world. On Friday it was designated a variant of “concern” by the WHO, which…

When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August, Mohammad Yasin had to make some difficult decisions very quickly. As the country reeled from the shock of the insurgent takeover, the 21-year-old—whose name has been changed to protect his safety—snuck into his small place of business and got to work.  He began erasing some of the…

In August 2022, a NASA probe called Psyche will set out to explore a giant metallic asteroid called Psyche 16, to help scientists learn more about how planets form. The way Psyche reaches its target, though, will be different from typical NASA missions.   Building on technology used in previous missions, including Dawn and Deep Space 1, solar power will help propel Psyche into deep space. If that proves successful, it could be the start of a…