Latest News - Page 1069

A paper on the new torpedo system has been published in the Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems, run by the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation.

Researchers from Beijing have created designs for a small, cheap, and disposable nuclear reactor to power individual torpedoes. The torpedoes would be similar to the uncrewed Russian Poseidon submarine, the world's first nuclear-powered underwater drone. However, the torpedoes would be much smaller to enable mass production and deployable from a standard torpedo tube.

The torpedoes would have a range of ten thousand kilometers (6,200 miles) and reach a cruising speed of more than 32 knots (60km/h or 37mph), allowing them to cross the Pacific Ocean in roughly a week. The mini-reactor would be as heavy as two average adult males and use less than 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds) of low-concentration uranium fuel to generate over 1.4 megawatts of heat.

Astronomer Scott Sheppard has written a Perspective piece titled "In the glare of the Sun" in the journal Science.

Sheppard is an astronomer from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii and believes scientists need to search more closely for near-Earth objects (NEOs) in space in the direction of the Sun. He notes that most observations are often taken of the night sky, but NEOs like asteroids that pose a potential threat to Earth could lurk between the Sun and the Earth, some of which have been discovered recently.

One such near-Earth asteroid (NEA) was found inside Venus' orbit, and another was discovered with the shortest-known orbital period around the Sun. The night sky is surveyed more frequently as light from the Sun does not overwhelm observations. However, Sheppard notes the technology now exists to survey the sky in the direction of the Sun during twilight hours.

Glory to Arstotzka! Iconic dystopian indie game Papers, Please is coming to iOS and Android mobile devices next month.

Indie darling Papers, Please will arrive on smartphones and tablets on August 5, developer Lucas Pope today announced. Return of the Obra Dinn is also coming to mobiles: "iOS and Android, phone and tablet, all bases covered, there is no want for more," Pope said on Twitter.

Papers, Please garnered critical acclaim for its style and delivery that's unlike most games on the market today. The old-school retro style is matched with a dark and bleak atmosphere wherein players take on the role of a border guard of a fictional dictatorship in the 1980s. The game mechanics make for a great puzzle game that forces gamers to pay close attention to the smallest and most meticulous of details, lest they let in a bomber, spy, or other such saboteur into the glorious country-state of Arstotzka.

Tyler Ensrude, who worked on some of Halo Infinite's best maps, announced that he is leaving the studio.

343 Industries has lost yet another developer, and this time it's multiplayer level designer Tyler Ensrude: "After 5 years, I've made the decision to leave 343 Industries and Halo. It was an absolute honor to help build the franchise that built me. Thank you for playing and sharing your experiences with me! Love you all. Now it's time for a new journey," Ensrude said on Twitter.

Ensrude helped create some of Halo Infinite's best maps, including Catalyst, Behemoth, Deadlock, and my personal favorite 4v4 team slayer map, Aquarius.

Halo Infinite is chewing up lots of data with up to 1GB used per every two matches.

Users have found that Halo Infinite is using an incredible amount of data bandwidth that's not related to direct gameplay. The community has now advised gamers who have data caps to avoid playing Infinite in its current state. The main culprit is that Infinite is continually re-downloading a high-resolution image thousands upon thousands of times, causing a significant spike in data usage.

"Infinite downloads the Season 2 Banner image about 1000-2000 times, which amounts to around 1-1.5GBs of Data being wasted. Downloads stop while you're in a match, but after you quit into the menu it starts downloading again," reads a Reddit post. "This should be an easily-fixable issue on 343's side."

GameStop's NFT marketplace sparked extreme outrage today as one seller listed an NFT inspired by a haunting 9/11 image.

GameStop is once again in the news for all the wrong reasons. The company's NFT marketplace is under heavy fire for allowing a controversial NFT based on the horrifying Falling Man image from the 9/11 attacks. The NFT is literally called "Falling Man" and depicts an astronaut falling vertically face-first against a striped background. The similarities between the NFT and the sobering real-life image of the man who leapt to his death as the World Trade Center erupted in flames are quite obvious.

GameStop has since pulled the NFT from its marketplace following widespread outrage, but the listing remains archived on the Wayback Machine for all to see. The NFT was minted 11 days ago, meaning the controversial digital image was on GameStop's marketplace for nearly two weeks.

Respawn's new Jedi: Survivor sequel might pay respects to one of the best Star Wars games ever made.

Hasbro revealed a ton of new Star Wars action figures during the San Diego Comic-Con, including a Cal Kestis figure lifted right out of the new Jedi: Survivor game coming in 2023.

It looks like Cal is a gunslinger this time around; the figure includes a unique blaster pistol that's possibly based on the DE-10. Cal may use this blaster to blend in and hide his identity as a Jedi.

Marvel is officially reviving the X-Men animated series from the 1990s with a similar art style and a direct continuation where the show left off.

The X-Men animated series was one of the best parts of growing up in the 1990s. It ran for five years from 1992 - 1997 (I still have my original X-Men Beast shirt from way back when) and was a pivotal part of my childhood. Comics and action figures were everywhere back in those days, and Saturday morning cartoons dominated your weekends. It was a great time to be a kid...and now that old-school fun is coming back.

The new series is called X-Men '97 and will pick up right were the original animated series ended in 1997. Bolivar Trask is confirmed as a villain. Sentinels are back, of course, and it appears Magneto is leading the X-Men. The show is due out in Fall 2023 and has already been greenlit for a second season.

Yesterday Ubisoft announced that it had delayed two games: Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, and a new smaller unannounced game. Sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that the smaller game was the next Assassin's Creed title.

Ubisoft will not release a new Assassin's Creed game in 2022 as planned. The publisher has delayed the project, which is codenamed Rift, past its current Fiscal Year 2023 period. Rift, which will reportedly star Basim from Assassin's Creed Valhalla in a standalone adventure set in the Middle East, is now expected to launch in FY24.

Ubisoft will reveal the future of Assassin's Creed during a special event on September 10. Rift and the new Assassin's Creed Infinity live game may be announced. AC Infinity is a kind of central paid hub or platform that will host various different Assassin's Creed games with shifting locations and protagonists.

Sony officially debunks rumors that The Last of Us Part I will not have gameplay upgrades on PlayStation 5.

Naughty Dog has just released a new video that illustrates the major new tweaks, upgrades, and optimizations for the new Last of Us Part I remake on PlayStation 5. The developer's update comes just a day after circulated reports claimed the remake simply wouldn't have any gameplay changes...despite the fact that Sony had previously confirmed TLOU1 would have TLOU2-style combat overhauls.

"The tech of the PS5, it's like an open box of tools and goodies that we can play with and draw from. 4K, HDR, improved haptics, 60 frames...all help us to re-imagine The Last of Us," said creative director Shaun Escayg.

Bungie will reveal Destiny 2's next major expansion during a special August stream, the studio today announced.

Destiny 2's new Lightfall expansion should be revealed during the August 23 stream event, alongside the next season 18 update. Bungie was careful to say it will not be releasing new info in its weekly TWAB updates. Arc 3.0 might also be part of the showcase and Lightfall may also include a new subclass, according to Forbes' Paul Tassi.

"We also want to take this moment to set some expectations before the Showcase itself. Because we have a few exciting things set for next month, TWABs before that date will not be announcing any major news. We'll still be updating you all on what's going on in the live game itself, but we will not be sharing any ground-breaking revelations until everyone has witnessed (not you, Witness) the Showcase dropping next month."

The Department of Defense's (DoD) new office, called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), will focus on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).

The AARO was founded to expand the scope of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Group (AOIMSG). The AARO will coordinate efforts across the DoD and with other departments in the United States government and federal agencies to detect and identify "anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects."

The focus is on objects that operate in, on, or near military installations, operating and training areas, restricted airspaces, and "other areas of interest." The AARO's mission is to classify such objects and "mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security." Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick will lead the office as its director, after most recently being the chief scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency's Missile and Space Intelligence Center.

The price of Bitcoin has seen some growth, with the world's most valuable cryptocurrency moving up from the $20,000 price point to its current position of $23,000.

If you haven't been following the cryptocurrency market, the price of Bitcoin has been in decline since it reached its all-time high of $69,000 back in November 2021, and now traders are seeming a flicker of hope as it seems the price is climbing. One analyst named TechDev has put forward his prediction for Bitcoin's price over the coming months, and it's citing the price trend of the digital asset from 2011 to 2027.

TechDev points to the True Strength Index (TSI), which is a metric that is used to determine how much of the cryptocurrency is overbought or oversold. The analyst states that the downtrend traders are currently experiencing is on track with past years of Bitcoin bear markets (where the price goes down), and that by 2023 the top price of Bitcoin will fall between $80,000 and $120,000.

The new concept electric vehicle (EV) was made by students from the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Named the Zem, it is the TU/ecomotive team's seventh EV project, and an attempt by the team to create a carbon neutral EV. The frame and body panels of the vehicle were made using recycled plastics and 3D printing to reduce wastage. The windows are made from polycarbonate instead of glass for a more environmentally friendly option, according to the team. The interior further utilizes recycled plastics and other sustainable materials like pineapple leather.

As the car is electric, it produces zero emissions as it drives around. However, some carbon footprint is unavoidable when manufacturing any vehicle, so the team implemented a direct air capture technology to offset the vehicle's carbon footprint to surpass carbon neutrality, eventually making the vehicle carbon negative.

A study on the neurotoxin titled "A concise synthesis of tetrodotoxin" has been published in the journal Science.

Researchers from the New York University (NYU) have devised a new 22-step process for synthesizing tetrodotoxin (TTX), the most potent natural neurotoxin known to humanity. Pufferfish and other marine animals produce TTX, and researchers have attempted to synthesize the toxic molecule for over a century. While not the first synthesis of tetrodotoxin, Professor Dirk Trauner from NYU, one of the study's authors, told Interesting Engineering that their method "is the most efficient to date, improving on state of the art by 30 fold."

Though TTX is highly poisonous to humans, blocking nerves from sending signals to muscles and leading to paralysis, it is believed to serve other functions such as acting as a pheromone or a feeding stimulant in other organisms. However, the nerve-blocking action of TTX interests researchers for its potential to unlock a new class of painkillers, circumventing the need for opioids or similar painkillers with addictive properties.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express satellite captured the new images.

The Mars Express captured views of the Ius Chasma and Tithonium Chasma, comprising part of the Mars' Valles Marineris canyon system. Valles Marineris is 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) long, 200 kilometers (124 miles) wide, and up to 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) long. The canyon is almost ten times longer, twenty times wider, and five times deeper than the Grand Canyon in the United States.

The canyon system is the largest in the Solar System, and on Earth would reach from the northernmost point of Norway to the southernmost point of Sicily. The above high-resolution image was taken with the Mar Express' High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on 21 April 2022 and is a "true colour" image, appearing as it would to the human eye. The resolution captures about 25 meters (82 feet) per pixel.

Dutch company Land Life has inadvertently triggered a wildfire in Spain.

Land Life is a reforestation company that uses a technology-focused approach to scale up its tree planting efforts in areas that need to be reforested. This contrasts with afforestation, which plants trees to create forests where there never was one. Land Life helps companies offset their carbon footprint by planting trees to remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.

The company is currently working on a reforestation project in Ateca in Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. Unfortunately, Spain and many other European countries are currently experiencing widespread droughts and fires amidst a severe and ongoing heatwave. The poor conditions primed the area for disaster, and when contractors working for Land Life were working in the area, their activity on July 18th sparked a fire that led to roughly 35,000 acres of land being burnt.

A study on serotonin depression titled "The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence" has been published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Researchers from the University College London (UCL) have conducted a major review of the studies that have looked at serotonin activity and depression, including previous meta-analyses and reviews, and found no evidence of a link between the two. This suggests that depression is not the result of a chemical imbalance as is often claimed and raises questions about what antidepressants are actually doing.

Most antidepressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), designed to raise unusually low serotonin levels. The review looks at various mechanisms tested by many studies, with one approach artificially lowering serotonin levels by depriving individuals of specific amino acids in their diet required to make serotonin, which did not produce depression in hundreds of healthy participants.

A team of divers has stumbled across an ancient shipwreck full of treasure within the Bay of Abou Qir located near Alexandria.

The discovery was announced by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM), and according to reports, the ancient Greek shipwreck dates back to the Ptolemaic era (305 to 30 BC). The team of divers detected the ship with a prototype sonar ray, and when they approached, the divers noticed it was under approximately 15 feet of clay.

According to Franck Goddio, the president of IEASM, the ship sank in the depths after large blocks from the temple of Amun fell onto it. Notably, Goddio and his fellow colleagues believe that the ship was originally docked at a wharf before a cataclysmic event triggered the destruction of the Amun temple. Furthermore, the blocks that crushed the ship pinned it to the bottom of the canal and simultaneously provided it with the correct conditions to be preserved for such a long amount of time.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has only just begun its science operations, and it's already breaking records.

Since it began science operations, Webb has been making headlines for the phenomenal images it has produced, and now researchers believe the world's most advanced space telescope has snapped an image of the oldest galaxy ever observed. Reports indicate that NASA's newest space telescope has detected light from the galaxy called GLASS-z13, that's estimated to be 13.5 billion years old.

GLASS-z13 being 13.5 billion years old means that Webb has observed light from a galaxy that's age is only 300 million years after the Big Bang. Notably, Webb's recent observation has beaten the previous record holder for the oldest galaxy ever observed by 100 million years, which was a galaxy called GN-Z1 spotted by the famous Hubble Space Telescope in 2016.