Science

Roughly half of customers lost power yesterday. As of this morning, more than 30 percent of customers are still without service, according to power utility Luma Energy.

It shows how vulnerable the US territory’s grid is after Hurricane Maria hit in 2017 and left residents without electricity for up to 11 months. In July, Puerto Rico filed a $1 billion suit against fossil fuel companies.

The World Health Organization made the declaration today after a new strain of the virus spread across the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring countries that hadn’t previously reported cases of mpox.

It’s deadlier this time around compared to 2022, when it was called monkeypox. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US also warned clinicians to stay on alert for the virus.

In the meantime, NASA officials said on a media call that they will weigh the risks of bringing Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams home on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

The spacesuits they brought wouldn’t work, so they’d have to return without the protection of wearing one. Staying in space longer, however, could expose the astronauts to extra radiation.

They’re on different sides of a debate over how to counteract pollution from data centers’ energy use, Financial Times reports.

Amazon and Meta are part of a lobby group that wants more lax standards for renewable energy certificates, which can pose similar risks as carbon offset credits. Google, meanwhile, backs a different strategy for bringing more renewables online wherever data centers operate.

The breakup of a Chinese Long March 6A rocket resulted in “over 300 pieces of trackable debris in low-Earth orbit,” according to US Space Command. The agency has “observed no immediate threats” as a result of the breakup.

Space.com has a good story about the situation.

The warning says that the possibility of a massive earthquake is higher than usual — not that it will definitely occur within a certain timeframe. It follows a 7.1-magnitude earthquake earlier today that also triggered a tsunami warning.

Byron Bernstein had six livestreamed conversations with Alok Kanojia, a psychiatrist. Then Bernstein died by suicide. Were those conversations ethical?

Yesterday, we got a cetacean entry in the annals of photobombing. Congratulations to everyone involved, and also to me, since I have watched this clip like 10 times.

SunPower helped kick off a solar boom in the US, Canary Media explains. But the company was hit hard by soaring interest rates and faced allegations of mismanagement, CNBC reports. Solar companies in the US have grappled with inflation and supply chain kinks pushing up projects costs in recent years, and have struggled to compete with more affordable panels made in China.

The state-backed Shanghai Yuanxin Satellite Technology Company successfully launched 18 satellites on Tuesday, with goals of bringing 648 satellites into orbit by the end of 2025, according to the South China Morning Post.

The company, which aims to operate 14,000 satellites by 2030, still has ways to go to catch up to Starlink’s growing constellation of more than 6,000 satellites.

Just as in Twisters, Reed Timmer custom built his truck to get as close to tornadoes as possible. But where Glen Powell was shooting roman candles at tornadoes, Timmer shoots rockets full of sensors at them.

“I don’t want to jinx it, but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant,” Elon Musk said on the Lex Fridman podcast. “There’s a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes.” The wires on Neuralink’s first human brain implant retracted, resulting in fewer electrodes that could measure brain signals. 10 more implants could come before the end of this year if regulators approve.

Several recent studies found an association between eating “ultraprocessed foods” — made with ingredients not found in a home kitchen — and cognitive decline. New preliminary research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference suggests that regularly eating processed meats like hot dogs, bacon, and bologna increases the risk of developing dementia later in life.

The study tracked more than 130,000 adults in the United States for up to 43 years. During that period, 11,173 people developed dementia. Those who consumed about two servings of processed red meat per week had a 14 percent greater risk of developing dementia compared to those who ate fewer than three servings per month.

Conversely, eating unprocessed red meat did not significantly increase the risk for dementia.

AES has given its Atlas solar robot some AWS smarts and redubbed it “Maximo.” It helped complete an Amazon-backed solar farm in Louisiana and is now moving on to Bellefield, California, home of the largest solar-plus-storage project in the US. According to Amazon, it can “reduce solar installation timelines and costs by as much 50 percent:”

Besides automating heavy lifting, Maximo can also perform in nearly any weather or lighting condition, which is especially useful for the Bellefield project, which is located in a sandy desert area known for extreme heat. Once Maximo arrives there later this year, the robot will work alongside crews to lift hundreds of heavy solar panels into place.

Bullying works: after TikTok users complained about Chipotle’s inconsistent portion sizes, the company announced this week it is “doubling down” on training to ensure customers get “correct and generous portions.” It will cost the company $50 million, executives told analysts.

Researcher Alex Hanna, of Distributed AI Research Institute and previously of Google, reflects on what might come next:

After the dust settles and NVIDIA has stopped churning out shovels (e.g. H100s) for the gold rush, what will be left behind? Will data centers go the way of shopping malls? Likely not—they’ll be repurposed for other massive computing projects. But what about those climate pledges?