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When dust whirls into the air in the southwestern desert of the United States, NASA takes interest. The dervishes are miniature versions of the kilometers-tall storms that physically morph the surface of Mars. Now, researchers have measured a basic property of earthly dust devils for the first time: their electric current signature. Physicists created a sensor with a simple 7-centimeter-tall antenna to detect currents carried through the air between a dust devil (such as the one pictured above in the Australian outback) and the sensor. They placed several of these devices in a bone-dry federal land management research site in New Mexico for 40 days in summer 2016. The instruments captured the atmospheric pressures and electrical currents of 11 dust devils that swept directly over one of the sensors or close by. The data revealed positive-to-negative “heartbeat” pulses in the current as the vortices approached and receded, the team reports this month in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. Currents were strongest for the most intense dust devils, as gauged by their internal pressures. Previous studies, using more complicated sensors, had only seen hints of that connection. This information is useful for helping researchers understand how dust devils can affect climate on Earth and Mars. Furthermore, these instruments could show whether electrical charges in powerful dust storms on Mars modify the organic composition of the planet, possibly impacting our ability to detect signs of life.

(VIDEO): Microsoft’s Surface Studio wasn’t supposed to arrive until December 15 but the Redmond-based company seemingly got into the holiday spirit a bit early. I say that because some of the first customers that placed pre-orders for the versatile all-in-one are receiving them ahead of schedule. Among those to score a Surface Studio early was the team over at iFixit and we all know what that means… teardown time! After a quick tour of the exterior, the teardown crew flipped the AIO over and removed the rubber feet hiding Torx screws. With some help from a suction cup, the clips let loose of the bottom panel and they were inside the machine… well, sort of. Before digging any deeper, iFixit had to lift away the mid-frame which brought with it an attached speaker. With that out of the way, they were able to remove two Delta-branded brushless cooling fans and gain access to the meat and potatoes of the Surface Studio. It’s smooth sailing from here as the team came across a standard, removable M.2 SSD as well as a standard 2.5-inch SATA hard drive. The HDD inside their machine was a Seagate Spinpoint M8 ST1000LM024 1TB drive spinning at just 5,400 RPM that's begging to be replaced by a faster flash-based drive. Turning their attention to the screen, the team reports that it’s one of the easiest replacement jobs on the Studio as the entire display assembly can be replaced as a single unit without having to fully dismantle it or the base. All things considered, iFixit awarded the Microsoft Surface Studio a repairability score of five out of 10 (the higher the number, the easier it is to repair). The desirable AIO was praised for how easy it is to replace the display as mentioned above and earned high marks for its liberal use of common modular components that can be swapped out without even touching the display (I mention this again for the simple fact that most AIOs have their internals built into the back of the display, not in the base as seen here). Unfortunately, key components like the CPU, GPU and RAM come soldered onto the motherboard and thus, can’t be replaced individually. As such, iFixit wisely urges perspective buyers to think twice about purchasing the entry-level 8GB configuration. I’d personally recommend the 32GB option which also includes a 2TB hybrid drive and GeForce GTX 980M graphics although considering it tacks on an additional $1,200 onto an already expensive $3,000 base system, it’s understandable if you elect to pass. There’s also a mid-tier option that includes an Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, an Nvidia GTX 960M graphics card and a 1TB hybrid drive for $3,500 that’s a bit easier on the wallet.

AMD is set to give a public demonstration of their upcoming Zen CPU on December 13th, when they'll host a live-streamed web event called 'New Horizon' that will show off the processor's gaming capabilities. New Horizon will be hosted by well-known video game presenter Geoff Keighley, and will feature e-sports pro-gamer PPD from Evil Geniuses. AMD also says the event will include special guest appearances and giveaways, so there could be a few extra incentives to tune in from 3pm CST, aside from seeing Zen in action of course. As this event is mostly focused on the general gaming public, it's unlikely that we'll get any detailed specifications or benchmarks of Zen. Those details will become available closer to launch, which AMD says is scheduled for Q1 2017. Leaked benchmarks have revealed promising performance for Zen, which is AMD's first major revamp of their processor line in years. One test showed Zen performing in-line with Intel's 8- and 10-core Xeon processors, while another benchmark indicated performance from an 8-core Zen CPU was roughly in line with Intel's 6-core Skylake processors. If AMD can achieve a decent level of performance from Zen while competing with Intel's prices, we may finally have some competition in the CPU space once more.

In the light of a neutron star, astronomers have found evidence for a quantum effect discovered in the 1930s. A simple observation of an extremely dim star may point to, literally, the biggest manifestation of weird quantum phenomena yet. Light from a lonely neutron star 400 light-years away is polarized, just like light reflecting off a pond, a team of astronomers reports. This suggests that, as predicted, the neutron star's ultraintense magnetic field is distorting empty space through a quantum mechanical effect involving ghostly “virtual” particles lurking in the vacuum—the sort of thing usually seen only on the atomic scale. “It’s really cool,” says Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who predicted the astrophysical effect in 2000 but was not involved in the current work. “This is a macroscopic manifestation of quantum field,” adds Jeremy Heyl, an astrophysicist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who, along with Shaviv, made the prediction. “It’s manifest on the scale of a neutron star.” The photons that make up light are electromagnetic waves rippling through space. When light is polarized, the photons oscillate back and forth in the same direction—say, up and down for vertically polarized light or side to side for horizontally polarized light. Now, new observations show that light from a nearby neutron star is significantly polarized, reports a team led by Roberto Mignani, an astronomer at the Institute for Spatial Astrophysics in Milan, Italy, reports. The researchers studied the neutron star, known as RX J1856.5-3754 with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope array on Cerro Paranal in Chile, in May and June of 2015. They found that the light from the neutron star is polarized to about 16.4%, as they report today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Simply making that measurement was a substantial feat. The neutron star shines much brighter in x-rays than in visible light. But the scientists wanted to search for the polarization effect, and there currently are no x-ray instruments with sufficient polarization sensitivity. So, instead, the researchers had to study its faint optical glow, Mignani explains. That task was similar to spotting a candle place halfway between Earth and the moon, he says. Though challenging, measuring that polarization would be a validation of an important quantum mechanical effect. Since the invention of quantum theory in the 1920s, physicists have known that the vacuum of empty space is not a sterile, static thing. Thanks to quantum uncertainty, the vacuum roils with particle-antiparticle pairs that pop in and out of existence too quickly to be seen. Although these virtual particles cannot be captured directly, they can affect the properties of the vacuum. For example, by interacting with those pairs a strong electric field can change the vacuum and, hence, the inner workings of atoms. In the 1930s physicists realized that a very strong magnetic field would affect the virtual particles in the vacuum and make light travel at different speeds depending on the direction of polarizations. The two-speed effect is known as birefringence and it is used in many optical devices. It gives the crystal calcite its famous ability to produce double images of objects. But the effect arises through quantum effects. In the vacuum, the virtual particle pairs can move more easily along the magnetic field than perpendicular to it, Heyl explains. So light polarized along the magnetic field interacts more strongly with the virtual particles and is slowed ever so slightly compared with light polarized perpendicular to the field, Heyl says. In 2000, Heyl and Shaviv predicted that the magnetic field of a neutron star—which is 10 trillion times stronger than Earth’s—would be strong enough to induce birefringence in the neighborhood of a neutron star. The birefringence would then lead to an overall polarization of the light from a neutron star, they argued. Now, Mignani and his colleagues say they have spotted the effect. To draw that conclusion, the researchers had to rule out other effects, such as polarization that could arise from dust particles along the line of sight. The star is somewhat close to a molecular cloud, Mignani notes. But the cloud appears behind the star and not in front of it, he says. Even if it were in front of the neutron star, calculations suggest it would produce only a polarization of 1%. “We are confident that there is no effect of the interstellar medium,” Mignani says. “The physics we see is intrinsic to the neutron star.” Shaviv agrees that it looks like Mignani and colleagues have spotted the effect. “It definitely looks like it, smells like it,” he says. However, Heyl says the result is not definitive, as it might be possible to explain away the polarization by assuming an unexpectedly thick haze of plasma around the neutron star. Researchers should repeat the observation at other wavelengths, he says, as the quantum effect would get stronger at shorter wavelengths, but the plasma effect would get weaker. The real payoff could come with a space-based telescope that could measure polarization for x-ray light. In that case, the polarization from the quantum effect should be essentially 100%, Heyl says. Studying the polarization would then enable astrophysicists to infer properties such a neutron star’s size and the strength of its gravity at its surface. U.S. and European researchers are proposing to launch in the next decade x-ray telescopes capable of making such polarization measurements, Heyl says. “Hopefully in the next 10 years it will go from discovery—of which we have the first hint—to using this as a tool.”

Earlier this year, Zotac showed off a prototype backpack that included a Zbox Mini PC suitable for virtual reality gaming without annoying tethers. Today the company has shown off the final version, now named the VR GO, which joins a number of VR backpack PCs unveiled over the last few months. Like the prototype version, the VR GO includes a modified mini-PC and several batteries in an enclosure that straps to your back. Zotac has ditched the basic backpack-like exterior used in the prototype for something that looks more like a standard PC case, complete with large cooling vents and ports on the top and right-hand sides. Hardware-wise the backpack includes an Intel Core i7 CPU, presumably from their mobile H-series line, as well as an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card. You'll also find space for two sticks of DDR4, an M.2 PCIe SSD and a 2.5-inch storage drive inside, plus there's Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 support. The top edge features a HDMI port, two USB 3.0 ports and a power port that connect directly to the HTC Vive via short, comfortable cables. The right side has an additional three USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI ports, two DisplayPorts, dual Gigabit Ethernet, and SD card slot and some audio jacks. The hardware is all powered by two hotswappable batteries that send juice to around 150 W of components. Zotac hasn't listed the exact battery capacity or how long you can expect to play VR games using the VR GO, but the battery would need to be fairly sizable to get a few hours of usage. There's also a battery indicator on the rear of the backpack, though it's unclear how you're supposed to read the indicator while the backpack is on your back. At this stage there's no word on pricing for the VR GO, although it will be available before the end of the year.

On a promontory high above the sweeping grasslands of the Georgian steppe, a medieval church marks the spot where humans have come and gone along Silk Road trade routes for thousands of years. But 1.77 million years ago, this place was a crossroads for a different set of migrants. Among them were saber-toothed cats, Etruscan wolves, hyenas the size of lions—and early members of the human family. Here, primitive hominins poked their tiny heads into animal dens to scavenge abandoned kills, fileting meat from the bones of mammoths and wolves with crude stone tools and eating it raw. They stalked deer as the animals drank from an ancient lake and gathered hackberries and nuts from chestnut and walnut trees lining nearby rivers. Sometimes the hominins themselves became the prey, as gnaw marks from big cats or hyenas on their fossilized limb bones now testify. "Someone rang the dinner bell in gully one," says geologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in Denton, part of an international team analyzing the site. "Humans and carnivores were eating each other." This is the famous site of Dmanisi, Georgia, which offers an unparalleled glimpse into a harsh early chapter in human evolution, when primitive members of our genus Homo struggled to survive in a new land far north of their ancestors' African home, braving winters without clothes or fire and competing with fierce carnivores for meat. The 4-hectare site has yielded closely packed, beautifully preserved fossils that are the oldest hominins known outside of Africa, including five skulls, about 50 skeletal bones, and an as-yet-unpublished pelvis unearthed 2 years ago. "There's no other place like it," says archaeologist Nick Toth of Indiana University in Bloomington. "It's just this mother lode for one moment in time." Until the discovery of the first jawbone at Dmanisi 25 years ago, researchers thought that the first hominins to leave Africa were classic H. erectus (also known as H. ergaster in Africa). These tall, relatively large-brained ancestors of modern humans arose about 1.9 million years ago and soon afterward invented a sophisticated new tool, the hand ax. They were thought to be the first people to migrate out of Africa, making it all the way to Java, at the far end of Asia, as early as 1.6 million years ago. But as the bones and tools from Dmanisi accumulate, a different picture of the earliest migrants is emerging. By now, the fossils have made it clear that these pioneers were startlingly primitive, with small bodies about 1.5 meters tall, simple tools, and brains one-third to one-half the size of modern humans'. Some paleontologists believe they provide a better glimpse of the early, primitive forms of H. erectus than fragmentary African fossils. "I think for the first time, by virtue of the Dmanisi hominins, we have a solid hypothesis for the origin of H. erectus," says Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The trail of the little people Short and small-brained, even compared with classic Homo erectus, the Dmanisi people or their immediate ancestors emerged from Africa and migrated thousands of kilometers into Asia. This fall, paleontologists converged in Georgia for "Dmanisi and beyond," a conference held in Tbilisi and at the site itself from 20–24 September. There researchers celebrated 25 years of discoveries, inspected a half-dozen pits riddled with unexcavated fossils, and debated a geographic puzzle: How did these primitive hominins—or their ancestors—manage to trek at least 6000 kilometers from sub-Saharan Africa to the Caucasus Mountains? "What was it that allowed them to move out of Africa without fire, without very large brains? How did they survive?" asks paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson of Arizona State University in Tempe. They did not have it easy. To look at the teeth and jaws of the hominins at Dmanisi is to see a mouthful of pain, says Ann Margvelashvili, a postdoc in the lab of paleoanthropologist Marcia Ponce de León at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi. Margvelashvili found that compared with modern hunter-gatherers from Greenland and Australia, a teenager at Dmanisi had dental problems at a much younger age—a sign of generally poor health. The teen had cavities, dental crowding, and hypoplasia, a line indicating that enamel growth was halted at some point in childhood, probably because of malnutrition or disease. Another individual suffered from a serious dental infection that damaged the jawbone and could have been the cause of death. Chipping and wear in several others suggested that they used their teeth as tools and to crack bones for marrow. And all the hominins' teeth were coated with plaque, the product of bacteria thriving in their mouths because of inflammation of the gums or the pH of their food or water. The dental mayhem put every one of them on "a road to toothlessness," Ponce de León says. To the ends of earth By following a trail of stone tools and fossils, researchers have traced possible routes for the spread of early Homo out of Africa to the far corners of Asia, starting about 2 million years ago. They did, however, have tools to supplement their frail bodies. Crude ones—but lots of them. Researchers have found more than 15,000 stone flakes and cores, as well as more than 900 artifacts, in layers of sediments dating from 1.76 million to 1.85 million years ago. Even though H. erectus in East Africa had invented hand axes, part of the so-called Acheulean toolkit, by 1.76 million years ago, none have been found here at Dmanisi. Instead, the tools belong to the "Oldowan" or "Mode 1" toolkit—the first tools made by hominins, which include simple flakes for scraping and cutting and spherical choppers for pounding. The Oldowan tools at Dmanisi are crafted out of 50 different raw materials, which suggests the toolmakers weren't particularly selective. "They were not choosing their raw material—they were using everything," says archaeologist David Zhvania of the Georgian National Museum. That simple toolkit somehow enabled them to go global. "They were able to adjust their behavior to a wide variety of ecological situations," Potts says. Perhaps the key was the ability to butcher meat with these simple tools—if hominins could eat meat, they could survive in new habitats where they didn't know which plants were toxic. "Meat eating was a big, significant change," says paleoanthropologist Robert Foley of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Even with their puny stone flakes, "these guys were badass," competing for meat directly with large carnivores, Toth says. At the meeting, he pointed to piles of cobblestones near the entrance of an ancient gully, which suggest the hominins tried to fend off (or hunt) predators by stoning them. Simple stone flakes, like those removed from this core, enabled the Dmanisi hominins to butcher meat. They set their own course as they left Africa. Researchers had long thought that H. erectus swept out of their native continent in the wake of African mammals they hunted and scavenged. But all of the roughly 17,000 animal bones analyzed so far at Dmanisi belong to Eurasian species, not African ones, according to biological anthropologist Martha Tappen of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The only mammals not of Eurasian origin are the hominins—"striking" evidence the hominins were "behaving differently from other animals," Foley says. Perhaps venturing into new territory allowed the hominins to hunt prey that would not have known to fear and flee humans, suggests paleoanthropologist Robin Dennell of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Tappen calls that an "intriguing new idea" but thinks it should be tested. Checking the types of animal bones at other early Homo fossil sites out of Africa could show whether the mix of prey species changed when hominins colonized a new site, supporting a "naïve prey" effect. Whatever impelled them, the migrants left behind a trail of tools that have enabled researchers to trace their steps out of Africa. There, the oldest stone tools, likely fashioned by the first members of early Homo, such as small-brained H. habilis, date reliably to 2.6 million years ago in Ethiopia (and, possibly, 3.3 million years in Kenya). New dates for stone tools and bones with cutmarks at Ain Boucherit, in the high plateau of northeastern Algeria, suggest that hominins had crossed the Sahara by 2.2 million years ago when it was wetter and green, according to archaeologist Mohamed Sahnouni of the National Centre for Research on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. His unpublished results, presented at the Dmanisi meeting, are the earliest evidence of a human presence in northern Africa. The next oldest tools are those from Dmanisi, at 1.85 million years old. The trail of stone tools then hopscotches to Asia, where Mode 1 toolkits show up by nearly 1.7 million years ago in China and 1.6 million in Java, with H. erectus fossils. "We pick up little fractions of a current" of ancient hominin movements, Foley says. Now the site of a medieval church, the promontory at Dmanisi has been a crossroads for humans and animals for at least 1.8 million years. The identity of the people who dropped these stone breadcrumbs is a mystery that has only deepened with study of the Dmanisi fossils. The excavation team has classified all the hominins at the Georgia site as H. erectus, but they are so primitive and variable that researchers debate whether they belong in H. erectus, H. habilis, a separate species, H. georgicus—or a mix of all three, who may have inhabited the site at slightly different dates. A new reanalysis of the Dmanisi skulls presented at the meeting added fuel to this debate by underscoring just how primitive most of the skulls were. Using a statistics-based technique to compare their shape and size with the skulls of many other hominins, Harvard University paleoanthropologist Philip Rightmire found that only one of the Dmanisi skulls—at 730 cubic centimeters—fits "comfortably within the confines of H. erectus." The others—particularly the smallest at 546 cc—cluster more closely with H. habilis in size. Nor did the Dmanisi hominins walk just like modern humans. A new analysis of cross sections of three toe bones found that the cortical bone—the dense outer layer—wasn't buttressed in the same way as it is in the toes of modern humans. When these hominins "toed off," the forces on their toes must have been distributed differently. They may have walked a bit more like chimps, perhaps pushing off the outside edge of their foot more, says Tea Jashashvili of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the Georgian National Museum. "If there are so many primitive traits, why are they calling it H. erectus?" asks Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "People are avoiding the question of what H. erectus is. Every time new stuff comes up, they're enlarging the taxon to fit new stuff in." Foley ventures: "I haven't the slightest idea of what H. erectus means." Fossils and scientists mingle at the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi. Indeed, H. erectus now includes the 1-million-year-old type specimen from Trinil on the island of Java as well as fossils from South Africa, East Africa, Georgia, Europe, and China that span roughly 300,000 to 1.9 million years. "They're putting everything into H. erectus over huge geographical distances, essentially spread throughout the whole world, and over a vast number of years," Johanson says. Yet no other species matches the Dmanisi specimens better, Rightmire says. For example, the shapes of their dental palate and skulls match those of H. erectus, not H. habilis. And the variation in skull size and facial shape is no greater than in other species, including both modern humans or chimps, says Ponce de León—especially when the growth of the jaw and face over a lifetime are considered. Though the fossils' small stature and brains might fit best with H. habilis, their relatively long legs and modern body proportions place them in H. erectus, says David Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgian National Museum and head of the Dmanisi team. "We can't forget that these are not just heads rolling around, dispersing around the globe," Potts adds. Like Rightmire, he thinks the fossils represent an early, primitive form of H. erectus, which had evolved from a H. habilis–like ancestor and still bore some primitive features shared with H. habilis. Regardless of the Dmanisi people's precise identity, researchers studying them agree that the wealth of fossils and artifacts coming from the site offer rare evidence for a critical moment in the human saga. They show that it didn't take a technological revolution or a particularly big brain to cross continents. And they suggest an origin story for first migrants all across Asia: Perhaps some members of the group of primitive H. erectus that gave rise to the Dmanisi people also pushed farther east, where their offspring evolved into later, bigger-brained H. erectus on Java (at the same time as H. erectus in Africa was independently evolving bigger brains and bodies). "For me, Dmanisi could be the ancestor for H. erectus in Java," says paleoanthropologist Yousuke Kaifu of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. In spite of the remaining mysteries about the ancient people who died on this windy promontory, they have already taught researchers lessons that extend far beyond Georgia. And for that, Lordkipanidze is grateful. At the end of a barbecue in the camp house here, he raised a glass of wine and offered a toast: "I want to thank the people who died here," he said.

Nvidia has launched a new set of WHQL-approved GeForce graphics drivers today, bringing support for Ubisoft's upcoming snowboarding game Steep. We haven't heard a lot about Steep in this year's holiday gaming period, however the extreme sports title will be released on December 2nd following an open beta this weekend. The GeForce 375.86 drivers also include Game Ready support for the latest updates to Battlefield 1, Civilization VI, and The Division. According to Nvidia, all three games will shortly receive updates that require this new driver, which features enhanced optimization for the best gaming experience. It's good news for those experiencing flickering on their 144 Hz and 165 HZ G-Sync monitors as well: this driver includes a fix that finally resolves this issue. Nvidia has also added a Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare temporal SLI profile and fixed issues with Nvidia Surround on GeForce 10 series SLI setups using the SLI HB bridge.

HP has unveiled a mini workstation aimed at architects, engineers, and other professionals that rely on graphics-intensive computer-aided design (CAD) software. The HP Z2 Mini measures a mere 2.3 inches tall and 8.5 inches wide, but packs workstation-class parts like Intel Xeon processors and powerful NVIDIA Quadro M620 professional graphics. HP says the Z2 is “90 percent smaller than a traditional business-class tower" and is twice as powerful as any mini PC on the market. It is also 63 percent quieter than HP's business-class mini PCs, according to the company, thanks to a custom cooling system. HP says that the Z2 Mini Workstation will go on sale in December worldwide for $699. There aren’t many details regarding specific configurations but the system will be available with Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon E3-1200v5 processor options, support for up to 32GB of RAM and 1.5TB of M.2 SSD storage. It also supports Quadro M620 professional graphics, which is a mobile graphics chip but it’s still more powerful than integrated Intel HD graphics. Other features include three DisplayPort ports and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports for entry-level models, while higher-priced variants will feature an extra DisplayPort port and two USB 3.1 Type-C ports.

In 1945, a year after the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, the ocean was busy establishing a beachhead of its own, burrowing beneath a fortified section of an important Antarctic glacier. Pine Island Glacier, a Texas-sized, 2-kilometer-thick ice sheet (pictured), is the linchpin of the rapidly disappearing West Antarctic Ice Sheet—one of the largest drivers of uncertainty for sea level rise this century. No glacier has lost more water to the ocean in recent years: It is thinning by more than a meter each year as warm ocean water creeps in and melts it from underneath, hollowing out a vast ice shelf. Now, scientists can trace the beginning of this accelerated melting to a surge of warming in the Pacific Ocean more than 70 years ago. Researchers already knew that in the 1970s the glacier lost contact with an undersea ridge that had held ocean water at bay. But how long did it take for the ocean to worm its way through? Working in remote conditions, researchers in the winter of 2012 ran a drill through 450 meters of ice and 500 meters of ocean to collect seafloor sediments on either side of this lost bulwark. Analyzing and dating these rocks, they found that ocean water began to appear on the ridge's land-facing side in 1945, even as the ice sheet remained grounded on the ridge’s summit, scientists report online today in Nature. Furthermore, they found that the incursion of ocean water followed a notably warm El Niño in the Pacific Ocean between 1939 and 1942. It would be nearly a half-century before the oceans around Antarctica saw such warmth again. Yet the water in the cavity never refroze, suggesting that the melting of some ice sheets will be difficult to reverse, even if human-driven warming is curbed.

AMD has launched a new set of Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers, version 16.11.4, that introduce updated optimizations for Civilization VI. As you might remember, driver version 16.10.2 first included Civilization VI support, but this new set of drivers is ready for a major update set to hit the game shortly. There's not a whole lot else to get excited about in this driver update. AMD has also addressed two minor issues in version 16.11.4: problems with H.264 video playback in hardware accelerated browsers, and graphical corruption in Titanfall 2 on Radeon R9 Fury cards. It's great to see AMD maintain such fast graphics driver updates for Radeon products this year. It's an area where the company fell far behind Nvidia several years ago, but these days both graphics vendors tend to release extremely fast driver updates ahead of new game launches. As always, you can download the Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.11.4 drivers automatically through Radeon Settings, or you can grab a manual installer.

MSI has revealed a new small form factor gaming PC called the Trident, aimed at gamers who want to enter the world of virtual reality without building a massive desktop system. The Trident comes with either an Intel Core i5-6400 or Core i7-6700 CPU on a custom-made MSI motherboard with an Intel H110 chipset. The motherboard and CPU sit on one side of the small enclosure, while on the other side is a mini-ITX variant of MSI's GeForce GTX 1060 in either 3GB or 6GB configurations. The entire system takes up just 4.7 liters of space, and weighs 3.2 kilograms, making it the perfect system to bring along to a LAN party or other event. MSI claims the Trident will be fairly quiet: the Silent Storm Cooling 2 solution is apparently just 31 dB under full load. The gamer-styled case packs RGB LED lighting as well. Internally you'll find space for two DDR4-2133 SO-DIMM sticks, a 2.5-inch SATA drive, and an M.2 SSD, although these slots will be filled for you if you opt for MSI's full system configuration. I/O consists of a USB 3.1 Type-A port along with four USB 2.0 ports on the rear, plus a single USB-C port and two USB 3.1 Type-A ports on the front. The Trident will be available this month starting at $899 as a pre-configured system, or $599 as a barebones kit. The starting price here is a fair bit cheaper than Zotac's competing Magnus EN1060 barebones compact GTX 1060 gaming PC, however Zotac's system is smaller despite MSI's claims of the "world’s smallest true gaming PC."

Congress is poised to approve a massive piece of legislation that would provide the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with $4.8 billion over the next decade for a set of research initiatives, including brain and cancer research and efforts to develop so-called precision medicine treatments that are tailored to an individual’s genetic make-up. The bill, known as 21st Century Cures, also includes a number of other provisions that could shape how federally funded researchers do their work. It would, for instance, establish a new, quasi-governmental Research Policy Board that would advise the government on how to streamline regulations that affect federally funded researchers. Roughly half of the appointees to the board, which could have up to 22 members, would come from academia and nonprofit groups. Creation of the board follows decades of complaints about burdensome federal regulations from researchers. 21st Century Cures has been in development for more than two years. Originally spurred by a desire among many members of Congress to finds ways to speed the development of new treatments, the bill focuses primarily on shaping policy at NIH and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It also became a vehicle for those hoping to boost NIH funding, including through so-called mandatory funding mechanisms, which create a dedicated funding stream that is not vulnerable to the vagaries of the annual appropriations process. A version of the bill passed by the House of Representatives included some $8 billion in new NIH funding, for instance. The final version released 25 November, however, includes about $3 billion less, according to The Hill newspaper. “How to pay for that funding in a bipartisan way was the subject of months of tough negotiations,” The Hill reports. “The new spending is paid for in part through cutting $3.5 billion from ObamaCare’s Prevention and Public Health Fund, a cut that had drawn some resistance from Democrats. The measure also raises some money by selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.” Although Congressional leaders are still negotiating portions of the bill, a final vote is expected before Congress adjourns in December.

If you’ve been holding off on making your next game purchases until a big sale comes along, now’s the time to act as Valve has launched its annual Steam Autumn (Black Friday) Sale. With discounts on nearly 13,000 titles, you’re almost guaranteed to find something appealing regardless of your preferred genre. A snippet of noteworthy deals from this year’s sale include: Doom: $19.79 (67 percent off) Grand Theft Auto V: $29.99 (50 percent off) Fallout 4: $19.79 (67 percent off) Far Cry 4: $14.99 (50 percent off) Just Cause 3: $14.99 (75 percent off) Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: $40.19 (33 percent off) Quantum Break: $29.99 (25 percent off) Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: $53.99 (10 percent off) Cities: Skylines: $7.49 (75 percent off) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: $29.99 (50 percent off) As has been the case lately, this sale does not feature any flash or lightning-style deals – everything is available from day one. In related news, Valve for the first time is letting the Steam community decide the nominees for its Steam Awards. Gamers will get to nominate games across the following eight categories – the Test of Time award, the I’m Not Crying award, the There’s Something in My Eye award, the Just 5 More Minutes award, the Whoooaaaaaaa, Dude! award, the Game Within a Game award, the I Thought This Game Was Cool Before It Won An Award award, the Best Use of a Farm Animal award and last but not least, the We Didn’t Think of Everything award.

No plans to update AirPort Extreme, Time Capsule and AirPort Express Apple is reportedly getting out of the wireless router business in a move to focus more on consumer products that generate the bulk of its revenue. According to Bloomberg, the company has disbanded the team that was working on wireless routers and moved engineers to other projects. People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Apple began shutting down the wireless router team over the past year, dispersing engineers to other product development groups, including the one handling the Apple TV. Although the decision hasn’t been publicly announced, the internal changes suggest Apple has no plans to update the AirPort Extreme, Time Capsule, and AirPort Express products. Apple hasn’t refreshed its routers since 2013 when it renamed the Time Capsule as AirPort Time Capsule and added support for the 802.11ac standard. Their portable AirPort Express on the other hand remains available to this day with last-generation 802.11n performance. While the routers likely never sold in huge numbers they helped Apple deliver things like AirTunes (the tiny AirPort Express plugged directly into an outlet and had a headphone jack to plug to your speakers to sent music to another room over wireless) as well as seamless Time Machine backups (putting a hard drive into your its Wi-Fi router with the Time Capsule ) before there was AirPlay and iCloud. Today, companies like Eero, Luma and Google are trying to innovate in the wireless routers scene with modular designs that work as part of a mesh network to cover larger homes, as well as more consumer friendly management through smartphone apps. It looks like Apple won’t be joining them in the fun.

It’s all over but the driving at this point. With this whole Bentayga thing, Bentley has teased us with the unceasing tenacity of Elisabeth Báthory under a bad moon. It started with the EXP 9 F concept unveiled at the Geneva auto show back in 2012. The conventional wisdom was that there was certainly a hole in the market large enough for Bentley to park an SUV in, but the reaction to what Crewe came up with was mixed, to put it rather charitably. And instead of the EXP 9 F’s vaguely Mulsanne-ish demeanor, we now have the Conti-fied new Bentayga. To put it bluntly, we’re not entirely sure if the Bentayga is an aesthetic improvement over the EXP 9 F. The artist’s conception we ran earlier this year was close to spot-on, save for the production vehicle’s haloed headlamp washers. We like the fact that it has pop-out headlamp washers. As children of the ’70s and ’80s, pop-up or –out anything on the nose of a car strikes our fancy. We’re just not sure if Bentley’s implementation is what we were after when we fell asleep, hoping to dream of something, anything, to succeed the Cizeta V16T in oddball lights-and-actuators glory. Mechanical Fanciness Washers aside, Bentley has packed the Bentayga to the rafters with bells and whistles. Courtesy of the company’s Drive Dynamics Mode and its optional Responsive Off-Road Setting, up to eight drive modes can be activated. Whether they actually will be probably has something to do with whether you’re a dune-hooning sheik or merely Newport Beach chic. Responsive Off-Road mode allows you to pick the surface closest to the one you’re currently motoring on. It’s accompanied by a handy display of pitch, roll, wheel articulation, steering angle, altitude, and direction. Perfect for those, “Hey! Earl of March! Hold my Lagavulin!” moments. Bentley’s Dynamic Ride system uses a 48-volt system to adjust the air suspension to offer various heights—the ute can be lowered while standing at the tailgate—and Hill Descent Control makes traversing steep grades one-touch simple. While diesel and hybrid options are on the horizon—and we wouldn’t be surprised to see an eventual V-8–powered Bentayga—at launch, power comes exclusively from the Volkswagen Group’s W-12 engine, routed through an eight-speed automatic transmission. Tuned in this application to crank out 600 horsepower and 663 lb-ft of torque, the updated W-12 now features cylinder deactivation. Bentley claims the Bentayga will hit 60 in four seconds flat and press on to 187 mph. Be on the lookout for undercover cops. Crewe will happily point out to you that these numbers make it the most powerful and fastest SUV on the planet. We wonder, however, how long that might stand, especially given Bentley’s speedy, luxurious VW Group relatives. After all, the Lamborghini Urus is on the way, and would it do to have Sant’Agata’s hot, hot heat tempered by its cool, Brit cousin? And might not Zuffenhausen go to Weissach and say, “You must engineer harder, for the Cayenne Turbo S cannot be trumped by others within our group!” Future Porsche Cayenne GT2, anybody? Just because. What will not be trumped, however, is the Bentayga’s interior. We had a chance to sit in it, and the innards are good enough to make one forget the exterior aesthetics. Fifteen veneered pieces of wood trim go into the cabin, and customers can choose among seven different varieties of dead tree to accent one of 15 shades of naturally tanned bull hide. The leather covers 22-way adjustable front chairs with massage functionality, as well as 18-way adjustable rear seats in the four-place models. A rear bench also is available. And if you’re inclined to enjoy an especially lovely sunset or an impromptu shooting match, a folding “event seat” is available, upholstered to match your Bentayga’s interior and easily stowed in the boot. Bentley’s extra-care Mulliner division offers a host of further customizations at the buyer’s request. As of launch, the opulence includes a “hamper set,” with custom Linley china, utensils and crystal, a fridge, and a storage area for dry goods. Sections of it can be removed and used for seats for impromptu al fresco dining. That, friends, is one heck of a pic-a-nic basket. But perhaps the best interior option—in fact, it is very likely the best option, period—is the Mulliner Tourbillon by Breitling clock. Featuring a mechanical movement, the Mulliner Tourbillon is actually wound by the car. Oh, your Mercedes has an IWC timepiece? Is it machined from either white or rose gold? Does it have eight diamond indexes on the face? Might we ask you one last thing? Does your automobile wind your freaking clock? Chump, we heard our footman mention that there’s a sale at Kohl’s. You’d best be on your way. As Always, the Most Opulence Is Inside

The artisans of Deir el-Medina hiked across the Theban hills to work in the Valley of the Kings every week, leading them to suffer from osteoarthritis in the knees and ankles. Commuting to work can be a real pain, and it was no different in ancient Egypt. About 3500 years ago, the artisans who dug out and decorated the rock-cut royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings—the burial ground of Egypt's New Kingdom pharaohs—had to walk about 2 kilometers from their homes, over the Theban hills, to the royal necropolis for work. It was a steep climb, repeated week after week for years, leaving them suffering from osteoarthritis in the knees and ankles, according to a new study. Egyptologists already knew a great deal about the village where the workers lived—Deir el-Medina, in modern Luxor—because of the vast amount of written material found there in the early 20th century. But they had paid little attention to the physical remains of the artisans and their families, found interred in tombs beside the village, their bones commingled after thousands of years of robbery. This has now changed thanks to research undertaken by Anne Austin, an osteologist and Egyptologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Working in Egypt, Austin separated the commingled bones, estimated age and sex, and analyzed the joints for signs of osteoarthritis, which can cause pain and stiffness. She also compared them to remains found at other ancient Egyptian sites. She reports in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology that many of the men at Deir el-Medina showed higher rates of osteoarthritis in the knees and ankles than did the women. The location of the disease, and its higher occurrence among men, struck Austin as odd. Although the artisans' work in the Valley of the Kings was hard—involving digging, carving, and painting in the rock-cut royal tombs that descend into the Theban hills—this would mainly affect the upper body, not the knees and ankles. To explain this, Austin examined the textual evidence from the village—administrative records that detail the artisans' daily attendance at work, and even their absences—and the artisans' physical environment. While their female relatives remained in the village, each week, the artisans hiked from Deir el-Medina over the Theban hills to stone huts, which are still standing as ruins just above the Valley of the Kings. They lived in these huts during the work week, descending and ascending the hill to the valley each day. At the end of the week, they returned to Deir el-Medina. Although the journey was short, it was steep, Austin observes: a rise of 151 meters from Deir el-Medina to the huts, and 93 meters from the huts to the Valley of the Kings. On top of that, the ancient records show that the workers would have hiked on average about 161 days each year. With a career lasting on average about 25–35 years, that's a lot of hiking—enough to likely cause the osteoarthritis found in the artisans' lower limbs, Austin argues. "Her work is an intriguing new way of looking at occupation-related injuries,” says Kristina Killgrove, a biological anthropologist at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, who was not involved in the research. And as Austin herself comments, this information will be useful for those attempting to understand osteoarthritis not only in past po[CENSORED]tions, but in people today. Yet because the bones were jumbled together at Deir el-Medina, Austin notes, it’s hard to tell specifically when each of the villagers died and at which point in their lives they first developed osteoarthritis. "It will be important in the future to attempt to control for age-at-death, as osteoarthritis frequencies increase with age," Killgrove says.

Last month, researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico hoped to reach the top of Popocatépetl, a 5400-meter-tall volcano near Mexico City, to install monitoring equipment at its summit crater. But El Popo, as locals call it, rebuffed them with ash and belches of acrid gas—precisely what the scientists wanted to measure. They settled for installing the sensor lower down the mountain, and hope to move it higher next year. The goal is to measure just what—and how much—El Popo has been smoking, because the fumes may hold a promising way to forecast eruptions. A growing body of monitoring data suggests that a sharp jump in the ratio of carbon to sulfur gases emanating from a volcano can provide days to weeks of warning before an impending outburst. The latest evidence comes from three recent studies, focusing on volcanoes monitored as part of the Volcano Deep Earth Carbon Degassing (DECADE) initiative. They offer hope that geochemical monitoring of gases could someday join the two geophysical mainstays of forecasting: tracking the swelling of Earth’s surface and the rise in earthquakes that typically precede eruptions. “It’s statistically robust as a forecasting tool,” says Tobias Fischer, a volcanologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and chair of the DECADE project. The idea of sniffing out restlessness in volcanic fumes has been around for decades. For instance, a sharp rise in sulfur emissions helped scientists anticipate the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. Scientists have also keyed in on the carbon-to-sulfur (C-S) ratio in volcanic gases as a particularly helpful metric. In principle, it can signal when a fresh injection of magma is rising from deep in the crust—a prelude to an eruption. The ratio changes because carbon dioxide (CO2) dissolved in rising magma bubbles out at depths of 10 kilometers or more, as the pressure drops. Sulfur-rich gases, in contrast, stay in solution up to shallower depths. A spike in the ratio can thus provide warning that a new batch of magma has risen above a deep threshold. A subsequent drop in the C-S ratio could indicate that the magma has climbed further, to depths where sulfur gases are released, but Fischer says this hasn’t been observed enough to be reliable. Despite the simple mechanism, establishing a clear link between the ratios and eruptions requires constant monitoring. Historically, researchers just bottled a few gas samples during a visit to a volcano or used airplanes or remote-sensing tools to watch a volcano for several days or weeks, says Christoph Kern, a physicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Vancouver, Washington. Either way, Kern says, it was hard to catch an eruption in the act. But that changed in the early 2000s, when scientists began to develop new devices that could be left on volcanoes to make continuous measurements and transmit the data to researchers. They were solar powered, hardy enough to survive the elements, and cheap enough to risk sacrificing in an eruption. “They’re essentially expendable,” says Marie Edmonds, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Italian scientists were the first to deploy these instruments at volcanoes like Etna and Stromboli, and they began to notice changes in the C-S ratio in the days and hours prior to eruptions. Since then, U.S. and Japanese geologists have installed instruments at a handful of volcanoes in those countries, and the DECADE project has added them at nine more around the world, including El Popo. Overall, changes in C-S gas ratios seem to be a powerful portent, Fischer says. “Now, we’re seeing it at many different volcanoes.” Perhaps the clearest illustration comes from Turrialba in Costa Rica, a volcano that poses a threat to the city of San José, 30 kilometers to the west. Maarten de Moor, a researcher at the Volcanic and Seismic Observatory of Costa Rica, helped install gas sensors on Turrialba in early 2014, just in time for the volcano to start erupting. He led a study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in August, reporting sharp increases in the C-S ratio of gases a few weeks before each outburst over two eruption cycles (see chart, above). “What we’ve seen is quite mind-blowing,” he says. “These signals are eye-opening.” But for monitoring gas ratios to become a widely used forecasting tool, researchers will need to understand many complicating factors, says Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge. “The interpretation of gas chemistry, particularly for the purposes of forecasting, is not an exact science,” he says. “Very far from it.” At Turrialba, for instance, there were different sulfur gases in the mix. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas from the magma interacted with underground water to produce hydrogen sulfide during the first eruptive episode, but not the second. De Moor says these observations could indicate that the water eventually boiled off, or that new volcanic conduits formed, bypassing the water reservoirs. At Poás, another Costa Rican volcano, the summit crater contains an acid lake that normally absorbs the SO2 percolating through it but allows the CO2 to pass through unimpeded—keeping the C-S ratio relatively high even when an eruption isn’t imminent. But DECADE’s monitoring efforts have revealed that, in the days before an eruption at Poás, the emissions of sulfur gases spike, exceeding the lake’s ability to scrub out the sulfur and causing the C-S ratio to plummet. It’s the opposite signal from the one seen at places like Etna and Turrialba, but it’s equally reliable, Fischer says. Satellites could theoretically help researchers monitor many of the world’s 550 historically active volcanoes from orbit. Instruments aboard NASA’s Terra satellite, for instance, can already measure volcanic sulfur emissions reasonably well. But researchers are still working to measure SO2 and CO2 at the same time, and measuring point sources of CO2 is challenging because of high background levels in the atmosphere. Even a big CO2 burp from a volcano only increases the concentration measured by satellites by less than a percent, says Florian Schwandner, a geochemist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. For now, the scientists who want to explore the forecasting power of the C-S ratio must wait for ground-based monitors to capture more eruptions. And maintaining these sensors can be a hassle, De Moor says. Even small dustings of ash can cover up solar panels or damage electronics. That’s what caused a sensor on Turrialba to stop transmitting data in May, forcing De Moor to visit once a week to download it in person—sometimes in dangerous conditions. But he says he’s always careful, and tries to remember a bit of wisdom passed down from Fischer, his Ph.D. supervisor, about taking risks in the name of science. “You are going to make more contributions if you actually survive this.”

It has nothing to do with Star Trek, but this track-oriented hypercar is definitely fascinating. Let’s start with the name of Aston’s new megapowered track star first. It almost certainly has you thinking of Mr. Spock, or possibly—if you’re too sad to be seen in public—another more obscure Star Trek character, like T’Pau. But Aston Martin’s Britishness means the Vulcan name is more likely a reference to the astonishingly loud Cold War bombers. Regardless of its namesake, the Vulcan is set to be the most extreme not-quite-roadgoing Aston Martin yet, a limited-edition, track-only hypercar that’s clearly aimed at the same bit of the market as the Ferrari FXX K and the McLaren P1 GTR. You know, the bit where the billionaire adrenaline junkies hang out. Only 24 Vulcans will be produced, and buyers will also get, according to the official release, “the opportunity to precisely tailor their track-day experience through a graduating scale of detailed power and dynamic performance adjustments.” Power comes from a version of the company’s familiar V-12 engine that’s been developed with assistance from Aston Martin Racing. It displaces 7.0 liters and produces “800-plus” horsepower. For reference, the Aston One-77, which was rarely accused of being a slouch, managed 750 horsepower from 7.3 liters. The rest of the Vulcan’s specifications are similarly unobtanium-grade. It’s built around a carbon-fiber monocoque and has carbon bodywork. The engine is connected to a magnesium torque tube and a carbon-fiber driveshaft that channels power to a racing-spec Xtrac six-speed sequential gearbox. Braking is accomplished by Brembo racing calipers gripping carbon-ceramic discs at all four corners (15.0 inches in diameter at the front, 14.2 at the rear), and the car sits on Michelin racing tires. The Vulcan apparently has been built to FIA safety standards, and the chassis also has a racing-style pushrod-operated suspension, adjustable spool-valve dampers all around, and adjustable anti-roll bars. It also gets driver-adjustable anti-lock brakes and traction control. There’s no mention of any roadgoing or full-bore competition variants, although the design certainly looks as if it could spawn a street-legal version. Aston insiders have previously indicated that design cues from these “special” models are likely to be seen in the company’s more-affordable models in the medium-term. Color and trim options seem to be fully negotiable, with Aston’s bespoke “Q” division charged with making sure each customer gets exactly what they want, presumably up to and including “Blood of My Enemies” paintwork or Chihuahua-hide trim. The official release is noticeably silent on the matter of money. This means, we presume, that the Vulcan will be sold at a substantial discount to Aston’s other models on account of the fact that you won’t be able to drive it anywhere except on a racetrack. What sounds fair? $80,000? $60,000? We kid, of course. The lack of price is almost certainly explained by that old line about your need to know being inversely proportionate to your ability to afford. Don’t be at all surprised if the Vulcan ends up costing more than even the One-77 did, which commanded just shy of $2 million. (UPDATE: We’ve now learned that the Vulcan will cost £1.5 million, which converts to $2.3 million as of this writing.) Owners will get the chance to have a range of tuition options to help them get the best out of the car, up to and including time in Aston’s GT racers and professional motorsports simulators. Thereafter the company is planning “a series of exclusive track-day events . . . that will offer the opportunity for these customers to explore their driving capabilities, and the car’s performance potential, on some of the world’s most famous and glamorous race circuits.” Or, in short, pretty much the same deal offered to buyers of the FXX K and the P1 GTR. Let’s just hope that some freak triple-booking incident sees all three makers bringing their cars to the same track at the same time.

Using only the DNA from sloughed-off cells floating in the ocean, scientists have been able to determine the po[CENSORED]tion size and genetic properties of one of the world’s largest and most mysterious animals: the whale shark. The work marks the first time researchers have been able to use so-called environmental DNA (eDNA) to estimate the genetic characteristics of an aquatic species, and it could help scientists study the po[CENSORED]tion and health of a wide range of marine animals without ever setting foot in the water. The results are a “conceptual advance,” says marine biologist Ryan Kelly of the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, who was not involved with the research. They “push the boundaries of what is possible to do with environmental DNA.” The research traces its origins to one summer day in 2007, when a worker on a Maersk Oil platform in the Al Shaheen oil field off the coast of Qatar saw a surprising sight: a group of roughly 100 whale sharks feeding near the surface. Scientists hadn’t realized that the fish—the world’s largest at roughly the size of a school bus—frequented these waters, and the gas field soon became a hotbed for studying this endangered species. Whale sharks can be difficult to locate, however, because they are often far out at sea. Those at the Al Shaheen oil field were more than 80 kilometers from the coast in the Arabian Gulf. Biologist Eva Egelyng Sigsgaard at the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen and her team collected seawater containing skin cells—along with cells from urine and feces—naturally shed by the whale sharks and other animals. The researchers isolated the cells, extracted and sequenced the DNA within them, and then used software to assign some of the DNA to whale sharks, based on the presence of certain gene groups. Sigsgaard and her team also showed that the cells were a good indicator of recent fish activity. Because ultraviolet light and microbes break whale shark eDNA into undetectably small pieces within only a few days, their samples likely traced whale sharks that had passed by recently. The researchers then used the DNA to estimate the number of reproductive female whale sharks—roughly 71,000. This was broadly consistent with estimates from actual tissue samples, the team reports online today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Whale sharks appear to be genetically split between two po[CENSORED]tions, and the new study also revealed that Al Shaheen’s whale sharks were more similar to the Indo-Pacific group than the Atlantic group. In a related study published this month in PLOS ONE, scientists showed that eDNA collected off Greenland revealed which fish were most likely to be caught by deep-water trawling, a finding that could revolutionize how marine species are studied. That’s because using eDNA is a cheaper, easier option than dragging nets across the ocean bottom to collect tissue samples. “We can get a quite detailed and precise picture of fish fauna using only environmental DNA,” says team member Peter Rask Møller, fish curator at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. In the future, scientists like UW’s Kelly envision using eDNA to determine marine biodiversity in difficult-to-sample habitats like rocky ocean bottoms that cannot be trawled. “Does environmental DNA give us useful information about the world that we could not have gotten otherwise?” he asks. “I think the answer is yes.”

Google at its annual Chrome Dev Summit in San Francisco has revealed that there are now two billion Chrome installs in active use across desktop and mobile. Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher shared the numbers during a keynote although as TechCrunch notes, Fisher didn’t announce any new user numbers for Chrome. The most recent statistic for active Chrome users remains at one billion as of this past April. That figure is no doubt higher today but again as the publication highlights, Google at the Chrome Dev Summit decided to focus only on active browser installs. In announcing the number, Fisher said that what’s exciting about this (for developers in attendance) is that when you think about building for the web, there are a lot of (Chrome) browsers out there that implement the latest web standards and thus, the latest and greatest web features. While no doubt impressive (and backed up by recent data from NetMarketShare), the figures may be artificially inflated a bit when you consider that Chrome comes pre-installed on a slew of Android mobile devices. Again, the achievement shouldn’t be discredited as Chrome is an excellent browser (even if it can be a bit of a resource hog at times). Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that Google now has seven services that are used by more than a billion people (Android, Chrome, Gmail, the Google Play Store, Maps, Search and YouTube).

In a move that harkens back to the early days of overclocking, Intel is reportedly preparing to launch a seventh-generation Core i3 “Kaby Lake” desktop processor as an unlocked K-Series variant. Wccftech is reporting that the Intel Core i3-7350K, a dual-core / four threaded processor with a base clock of 4.0GHz (boost up to 4.2GHz), 4MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 91 watts, will ship unlocked and thus, ready to be overclocked. What’s the big deal about an unlocked Core i3 chip, you ask? During the heyday of overclocking when there was a significant performance gap between different processor lines, it was possible to purchase a budget chip like Intel’s Celeron 300A or one of AMD’s Athlon Slot A processors and overclock them by a couple hundred megahertz or so. The first enthusiast processor I purchased, for example, was a 500MHz Slot A Athlon with a 600MHz core (AMD underclocked it to meet demand) that I overclocked to 800MHz using a Golden Fingers device (my actual processor pictured above). I then moved to a 700MHz Slot A chip with a 900MHz core that I pushed to 1GHz. That may not sound like much today but back then, a few hundred megahertz made a huge difference, separating budget CPUs from much more expensive Pentium-branded chips. AMD pulled out of the consumer CPU race years ago which allowed Intel to take its foot off the accelerator of innovation and minimize the performance gain that each new processor generation affords. Worse yet, Intel eventually fought back against overclockers by unlocking all but a handful of their most expensive processors, effectively putting the technique out of hand of budget builders. Intel is expected to unveil its Kaby Lake desktop lineup in the near future.

Mazda would like you to believe the 2017 CX-5 is all new. It isn’t. This latest version of the compact crossover SUV is, for the most part, mechanically identical to the vehicle that first arrived on our shores as a 2013 model. Riding on an updated version of the same platform as before, the CX-5 sees the biggest changes in its exterior and interior styling. Outside, the crossover wears the latest evolution of Mazda’s Kodo design language, including a striking (and massive) grille up front. Chrome detailing surrounds the lower portion of the new maw and merges with the lower portion of the headlights. Aside from its mug, the rest of the 2017 CX-5’s design is much tamer. The front fender lines flow into the doors in a way that’s reminiscent of the smaller Mazda CX-3, a thick chrome piece defines the lower portion of the CX-5’s window line, and the A-pillars are now pushed slightly farther rearward. At the rear, the changes are so minor as to be insignificant. In spite of its new body panels, exterior dimensions are largely the same. Sitting on the same 106.3-inch wheelbase as its predecessor, the new CX-5 sees a minuscule growth spurt of 0.4 and 0.1 inch to its overall length and width, respectively. Mazda, however, claims that the vehicle’s center of gravity has been lowered, which should make the already fun-to-drive CX-5 that much more of a thrill to pilot. Inside, an updated cabin shares design details with the larger Mazda CX-9, while the rear seats gain a new reclining function, available seat heaters, and HVAC vents located at the rear of the center console. Other new features include a 4.6-inch color display in the gauge cluster as well as a head-up display. A lower beltline should improve upon the current CX-5’s excellent visibility. Interior dimensions are said to be much the same as before; however, the new CX-5’s packaging does result in a slightly larger cargo hold. Power for the new CX-5 comes courtesy of Mazda’s familiar 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine, which makes 184 horsepower and 185 lb-ft of torque in the current model, as well as a new-to-our-shores 2.2-liter four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine. The latter will be available in late 2017. Currently available in non-U.S.-spec CX-5s, the engine shovels out approximately 170 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque in its most powerful form. No matter the engine, a six-speed automatic transmission is expected to be the sole gearbox offered, while Mazda’s trick G-Vectoring Control, a system that improves steering response by gently reducing torque to the drive wheels on initial turn-in, is added to the mix. We’ve been told that the 2.0-liter engine from the last CX-5 won’t be offered here this time around; we have heard, however, that the six-speed manual transmission (which was exclusive to the 2.0-liter) may still be offered. Although the 2017 Mazda CX-5 may not be completely new, that’s not a bad thing. Given our appreciation of the current CX-5’s smooth ride, lively dynamics, and comfortable and ergonomically friendly interior, the latest model’s fresh looks and revised technologies may be change enough for one of our favorite compact crossovers.

UPDATE: Today, scientists published their first results from a drilling expedition into Chicxulub crater, the buried remnants of an asteroid impact off the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Their discovery of shocked, granite rocks from deep in the crust placed “out of order” on top of sedimentary rocks validates the dynamic collapse theory of formation for Chicxulub’s peak ring, the scientists says. Chicxulub is the only well-preserved crater on Earth with a peak ring, but they abound elsewhere in the inner solar system. Last month, scientists using instruments on a NASA lunar mission showed that the peak rings within the Orientale impact basin were likely to have formed in a similar way as at Chicxulub. Here is our original story: Scientists have reached ground zero for one of the world’s most famous cataclysms. Burrowing into the impact structure responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs, a team of researchers has achieved one of its main goals, with rocks brought up from 670 meters beneath the sea floor off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. These core samples contain bits of the original granite bedrock that was the unlucky target of cosmic wrath 66 million years ago, when a large asteroid struck Earth, blasted open the 180-kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater, and led to the extinction of most life on the planet. “We’re feeling pretty good,” said co–chief scientist Sean Gulick in an interview from the deck of a drilling platform 30 kilometers offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. “I’m not getting much sleep out here, so we’re little delirious.” Although scientists have drilled into the buried crater before on land, this is the first offshore effort, and also the first to go after the crater’s “peak ring”—a circular ridge inside the crater rim that’s characteristic of the solar system’s largest impact craters. Astronomers see peak rings on the moon, Mars, and Mercury, but they have never been able to sample one on Earth until now. The team has already been charting the return of life after the worldwide die-off in cores from higher up in the hole. By examining peak ring rocks closely, they hope to test models of crater formation and determine whether the crater itself was one of the first habitats for microbial life after the impact. The peak ring formed in a matter of minutes. Just after the impact, deep granite bedrock, flowing like a liquid, rebounded into a central tower as tall as 10 kilometers before collapsing into the circular ridge. Next, the peak ring was covered by a layer of jumbled-up rocks, called a breccia, that contains chunks of blasted-up rock and impact melt. Then, in the hours that followed, ocean tsunamis dumped huge amounts of sandy sediment in the giant hole in Earth. Further deposition would come slowly, as life returned to the seas, and layers of limestone were built up in the ensuing millions of years. Last week, researchers brought up a 3-meter core section from a depth of 670 meters that contained bits of granite along with minerals originally deposited in hot, fluid-filled cracks—the first sign that the team had entered the peak ring. “We predicted the peak ring would be a big hydrothermal system,” says Gulick, a geophysicist at the University of Texas, Austin. He says it may be several more days of drilling before granite dominates the core samples and the team can declare itself entirely within the peak ring. However, Joanna Morgan, the other chief scientist at Imperial College London, thinks the presence of any granite at all signifies that the team is now working within the peak ring layer. “How far down into the peak ring is the peak ring?” Gulick asks. “It’s almost a semantic argument.” Another bone of contention for the team concerns the boundary between the Cretaceous—the last age of the dinosaurs—and the Paleogene, the period that began 66 million years ago. Traditionally, Morgan says, the K-Pg boundary, as it is known, has been defined by appearance of fossils of small shelled creatures called foraminifera. By that definition, the team crossed the K-Pg boundary last week, at a depth of 620 meters, when drillers left fossil-containing limestone layers and entered sandy tsunami deposits. But Gulick points out that the tsunami deposits and impact breccia found between 620 and 670 meters all came after the impact itself, so they could technically be considered part of the Paleogene. He suggests that scientists instead call this thick section between the Cretaceous and Paleogene an “event layer.” The team of scientists living on board the drilling platform is now investigating the fractures and veins of minerals that precipitated out of hot solutions in the wake of the impact. Some of the minerals they’ve found suggest that, initially at least, the fluid-filled cracks were way too hot for life. But they are hoping to find signs of ancient and modern DNA. As hellish as the impact was, the team suspects that the buried peak ring itself may have been an early place for life to return, because of the nutrients in the hot fluid-filled fractures. As of 1 May, the team has reached a depth of 700 meters. It is funded to drill through the first week of June, and hopes to go as deep as 1500 meters. As the researchers move deeper into the harder granites of the peak ring, they will core more slowly, obtaining a 3-meter core about every 2 hours. They will look for evidence that the peak ring rocks are flipped “out of order,” with deeper rocks lying on top of rocks that originally sat more shallowly and contain minerals with higher levels of shocking. This would confirm one of the main models for peak ring formation. The drilling effort began at the beginning of April and is sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). To avoid choppy ocean waters, the scientists are using a special vessel called a lift boat that has jacked itself up off the sea floor on three pylons. Morgan, who just arrived on the drilling platform over the weekend, says the mission is the culmination of years of effort that began with her first proposal to IODP in 1998. “I had this dream we would drill this impact crater many years ago,” she says. “To see this immense structure and all the people here, it’s been really amazing.”

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