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The new study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, entitled the "The rise and fall of rationality in language."

Researchers from Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Indiana University analyzed the language from millions of books. They identified trends in using words associated with rationality and intuition. They found words associated with reasoning such as "determine" and "conclusion" rose in relative frequency from the 1850s, while the use of more experiential terms such as "feel" and "believe" fell.

They also found that this trend has reversed in the last forty years and has been accompanied by a shift from collectivist language to individualist, shown through the ratio of singular to plural pronouns used, such as "I" and "we."

The study was published in the journal Nature on January 12th, 2022.

Researchers from the University of California, Davis, and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany sequenced and studied the genome of hundreds of Arabidopsis thaliana, the thale cress plant. Thale cress is commonly used for genetic experiments because of its relatively small, 120 million base pair genome, compared to the roughly 3 billion base pairs found in the human genome.

Growing hundreds of Arabidopsis thaliana plants at the Max Planck Institute allowed the researchers to cultivate plants that may not have survived in the wild after DNA mutations. From the DNA sequenced, the researchers identified over a million mutations, where a non-random pattern had also arisen.

The size of NASA's astronaut corps is its smallest since the 1970s.

As NASA expands its space endeavors beyond the International Space Station (ISS), NASA could need more astronauts to fulfill those missions. At present, all of its astronauts only fly to the ISS, aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsules and Russia's Soyuz vehicles. With the Artemis program set to take humanity back to the moon, NASA needs astronauts trained for that mission and other new ones on the horizon.

On Tuesday, an asteroid that is approximately the size of a house safely flew past Earth, and while it was passing by, it was photographed.

On January 11 at 12:19 am ET, an asteroid dubbed 2022 AC4 that measures anywhere between 14 and 31 feet in diameter cruised past Earth at 18,700 mph. NASA's database that tracks all Near-Earth-Objects (NEO), the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) indicates that the asteroid came within 58,000 miles from Earth, and while this sounds like a large distance, the moon is 221,500 miles away from Earth.

Additionally, NASA's database states that 2022 AC4 was the closest asteroid to approach Earth in the last two months. During its fly-by, Gianluca Masi, the manager of the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, tracked the asteroid in the sky and took a 120-second-long exposure shot that can be seen above. While asteroid 2022 AC4 was quite close to Earth, NASA doesn't classify the object as a "potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA)" as the agency only considers asteroids PHA's if they come within 4.6 million miles of Earth and are greater than 500 feet in diameter.

There are numerous asteroids floating about in space, and one in particular that is reasonably large will be making its approach with Earth soon.

All Near-Earth-Objects (NEO) are tracked by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory located in California. According to the database, an asteroid named 7482 (1994 PC1) will be making its closest approach with Earth next week on January 18 2022 at 4.51 p.m ET. The 3,400-foot-wide object will safely pass by Earth at five times the distance between Earth and the Moon (1.2 million miles).

1994 PC1 will be passing Earth at a ridiculous speed of 47,000 mph, and according to EarthSky, this safe passing of the asteroid will be its closest approach for the next 200 years. It should be noted that NASA considers any asteroid or comet that comes within 120.9 million miles as a Near-Earth-Object, per a mandate from Congress that required the agency to locate all NEOs 460 feet and larger by the end of 2020.

A restaurant chain has announced that it's the world's first "member's only private dining club", where members are required to own an NFT from the chains collection.

VRC Group, founded by media mogul Gary Vaynerchuck has announced "Flyfish Club", a new take on the restaurant industry that focuses on a private dining experience for Flyfish Club members who have purchased an NFT. The announcement states that Flyfish Club is the world's first member's only private dining club where membership is purchased on the blockchain.

So, how does it work? There are two tokens at Flyfish Club, a "Flyfish token" and a "Flyfish omakase token", the former will grant members access to the cocktail room, restaurant, and an outdoor space that features "iconic views of New York City." The Flyfish omakase token grants individuals access to everything that the Flyfish token gives access to, plus an omakase experience that is conducted by one of the best sushi masters in the United States.

AMD's next-gen AM5 socket has been teased, which will be the heart and soul of the new Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 series CPUs dropping later this year, with this representing AMD's first LGA socket for Ryzen CPUs.

Igor's Lab is behind the leak, with new drawings of AMD's new AM5 mounting system -- and while Igor didn't reveal who was behind the leak -- the new renders show a very Intel-like locking mechanism. We can see a lever that forces a frame onto the socket, making sure that the pressure is equally distributed, and is easy for the user to do.

There are some changes between the LGA 1718 socket here for AM5 and Intel's new LGA 1700 socket for its 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs. The new LGA 1718 socket in AM5 form will see the backplate attached to the Socket Actuation Mechanism (SAM) by 4 additional screws, which will make sure the cooler assembly is aligned with the socket, instead of just the backplate.

The final season of Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone Pacific is upon us, with Activision-Blizzard unleashing Attack on Titan in a new collaboration with Call of Duty.

The first bundle, which is inspired by Captain Levi Ackerman, acts as the first major update to Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone Pacific of 2022. The new bundle will be released as part of the midseason update, adding Daniel Yatsu from Attack on Titan, in his iconic Survey Corps outfit.

Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone Pacific's midseason update arrives tomorrow, with the Attack on Titan-themed goods dropping on January 20. There's a new Operator, a new weapon, new content for Zombies, various bug fixes, and as usual, oh-so-much more.

Firesprite Games, which includes veterans from former WipEout developer Sony Liverpool, is currently working on the new free-to-play Twisted Metal reboot.

Sony's new Twisted Metal game was originally in development at Lucid Games, the UK-based studio behind Destruction AllStars, but the project's lead has been handed off to Firesprite Games, sources tell VGC. Firesprite was acquired by Sony in 2021 and is very close to Lucid Games--both are in Liverpool--and it's possible the two studios are co-developing the project.

Lucid Games' Matt Southern has also joined Firesprite; Southern worked on MotorStorm for Sony.

A full build of Horizon Forbidden West has leaked early onto the internet--beware of spoilers!

Horizon Forbidden West has repeatedly been leaked out into the wild, sources tell Video Game Chronicle. The build is apparently an early version that's essentially content complete with all of the core gameplay features and mechanics intact, but isn't entirely finalized and is missing art assets and the like. This may make it easier for Guerrilla Games and Sony to track down.

Sony has responded to the leaks as any billion-dollar company protecting its IPs would: By issuing DMCA takedowns and strikes across social media. The leaked images have been scrubbed from Twitter, Imgur, and even 4Chan is feeling the pressure.

Sony will continue manufacturing PlayStation 4 consoles to help buoy sales and offset dwindling PlayStation 5 supply.

Sony originally planned to halt PS4 production in 2022. Due to chip shortages and restricted PS5 supply, Sony is keeping the aging PS4 alive for another year. Bloomberg reports that Sony will produce 1 million PS4s in 2022, presumably in calendar year, to help counter lower-than-expected hardware sales.

PS4 sales have dried up considerably over the past few quarters. In Q2'21, Sony shipped a paltry 200,000 PS4s, a figure representing a 87% decrease from the 1.5 million PS4s it shipped in Q2'20. Through FY21, Sony has shipped just 700,000 PS4 consoles to retailers as opposed to the 3.4 million PS4s it shipped in the same period a year ago.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is the first major game delay of 2022, developer GSC Game World announced.

Upcoming horror FPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has been delayed for 7 months and will now launch on December 8, 2022 on Xbox Series X and PC. This is the first major AAA delay made in 2022 and probably won't be the last, but it was made for good reason: The developers say they want more time to polish and test the game.

The news was made shortly after the developers reversed a particularly disastrous PR campaign centered around NFTs. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 team originally planned to launch its own metaverse complete with cryptographically-signed NFTs.

The new study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

All galaxies contain a black hole at their center, including Milky Way. Stars will orbit around these black orbits, but on occasion, they can stray too close and will be pulled into the black hole and consumed, undergoing a process known as spaghettification. The consumption of the star by the black hole is known as a tidal disruption event (TDE).

The new study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy on December 30th, 2021.

The researchers suggest that the rings of dust that may have existed around the sun, similar to those around Saturn, would have prevented Earth from becoming a "super-Earth." A super-Earth, according to NASA, is a type of planet about twice the size of Earth but up to ten times the mass, many of which have been found orbiting around thirty percent of the sun-like stars elsewhere in our galaxy.

To determine why our solar system doesn't have one, given their relatively common occurrence, the research team from Rice University in Houston, Texas, created simulated the formation of our solar system with computers. The simulations showed there were likely high-pressure regions of gas and dust, dubbed pressure "bumps," that would have surrounded the sun, creating three distinct zones where matter could accumulate.

The new study was published in the Journals of the American College of Cardiology on January 10, 2022.

The researchers analyzed 60,582 women and 31,801 men from the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, free of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer at the study baseline in 1990. A questionnaire was used every four years over the following 28 years to assess diet, asking how often they consumed specific foods and types and brands of fats and oils.

Compared to the participants who rarely or never consumed olive oil, the participants with the highest consumption had a 19% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality, 17% lower risk of cancer mortality, 29% lower risk of neurodegenerative mortality, and 18% lower risk of respiratory mortality. Substituting 10 grams per day of other fats (e.g., margarine, butter, mayonnaise, and dairy fat) with olive oil was associated with an 8-34% lower risk of total and cause-specific mortality.

The study was published in the Advances in Atmospheric Sciences journal on January 11th, 2022.

Twenty-three researchers from fourteen institutes summarized two international datasets relating to ocean heat content from the 1950s onward in their new report, one from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the other from the National Centers for Environmental Information of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The researchers found that in 2021, the upper 2,000 meters of all oceans absorbed 14 more Zettajoules than in 2020, equivalent to 145 times the electricity generated globally in 2020. The increased heat absorbed makes 2021 the sixth straight year of record-breaking temperatures. For context, human energy consumption only uses about half a Zettajoule each year.

The findings were published in the Journal of Global Antimicrobial Resistance.

The gene that was identified is the MCR-9 gene, which allows bacteria to become resistant to colistin, one of the world's most important antibiotics. The gene was detected in sewer water in Georgia collected by researchers from the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety (CFS). MCR-9 was found in the first sample they took in urban Georgia, surprising the research team.

The gene was found with the bacteria Morganella morgani, further concerning the lead scientist Issmat Kassem. It is the first time the gene has been identified in this bacteria. The M. morganii bacteria is not often studied, so there is potential for the gene to have spread to more species of bacteria than first thought.

According to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central banking system is "ready" to release its report on cryptocurrency.

Jim Powell dropped the news regarding the upcoming report during his re-nomination testimony that was held in front of the Central Banking Committee on Tuesday. Powell was asked about the status of the upcoming report by Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, and the Fed chairman replied by saying, "The report really is ready to go".

Powell has previously said that the Federal Reserve is looking into the possibility of creating its own digital dollar, following China launching its own digital yuan. Based on these and other previous statements from the Fed chair, it can be assumed that the report will focus on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) and touch on several other issues in cryptocurrency. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world just announced a nearly company-wide shutdown as it believes its employees are in need of a break.

Coinbase's chief people officer L.J Brock took to the company blog to announce that "nearly the entire company will shut down" in an effort to give employees time to recharge their batteries after completing long periods with intense workloads. Brock states that Coinbase employees aren't specifically limited to a 40-hour workweek and that depending on the progress timeline for the work, employees may have to "pivot at a moment's notice", which can risk employees burning out.

Brock writes that Coinbase is aware that during 2020 many of its employees were taking time off from work because they either didn't want to ask fellow employees to cover their shift or because they were afraid they would fall behind their work. To combat this, Coinbase implemented a single "recharge week" at the end of 2020 and two recharge weeks at the end of 2021. Now, the company plans on having "four weeks of coordinated recharge time" that will save employees from burnout.

NASA has taken to its Solar System Exploration website to detail 10 incredible missions to watch out for during 2022.

One of the projects is already making headlines around the world, and that is the launch and successful deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope. If you haven't heard already, NASA recently launched the JWST on Christmas Day, and since then, the observatory has been traveling to its distant destination, completing the major parts of its unfolding process during its commute.

NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in November 2021, and it's the very first planetary defense mission designed to test a kinetic impact on an asteroid. The mission hopes to prove that slamming a spacecraft into an asteroid at 15,000 mph can change its orbit. NASA has slated the impact date for the DART spacecraft on September 26, 2022. There are many more exciting NASA missions to watch out for in 2022, and they can be found listed below.