Gnome sequencing of the mummy of a tiny, six-inch humanoid that was found in the Chilean town of La Noria has been completed, and although it had been determined that the individual had been human in a 2013 investigation, these new clues reveal that the nature of the tiny mummy, nicknamed "Ata", were far stranger than what the 2013 study determined.
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East Antarctica’s Totten Glacier has been revealed to be more unstable than previously anticipated. New research has found that portions of the glacier that were thought to be on stable ground are actually floating on seawater, prompting concerns over the ice sheet’s stability, and its potential to significantly contribute to the acceleration of sea level rise.
Totten Glacier is a flowing ice field that is more than three-quarters the size of Texas, and holds a massive volume of ice that could raise sea levels by 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) if it were to completely melt.
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As part of an in-depth investigation into the role big data company Cambridge Analytica played in influencing the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom and the presidential elections in the United States, The Guardian’s Observer magazine has published the story of whistleblower Christopher Wylie, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica that devised the behavioral analysis software used by the company says, "We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons."
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A joint team of researchers with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and private company Commonwealth Fusion Systems is predicting that they will have a viable nuclear fusion reactor generating electricity and attached to the electrical grid within the next fifteen years.
A recent breakthrough in superconductor technology that involves the use of steel tape coated with a compound called yttrium-barium-copper oxide (YBCO) allows reactor designers to shrink the size of the magnets that contain the super-hot plasma fuel within the reactor, making them more powerful, and thus lowering the amount of energy required to run the reactor.
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