ALiEn: Artificial Life Environment
June 11th, 2021Via: https: Alien-Project:
ALiEn is an artificial life simulation program based on a specialized physics and rendering engine in CUDA. It is designed to simulate digital organisms embedded in artificial ecosystems and to mimic conditions for (pre-)biotic evolution.
Lake Mead Falls to Lowest Water Level Since Hoover Dam’s Construction in 1930s
June 11th, 2021Via: USA Today:
Lake Mead has declined to its lowest level since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s following the construction of Hoover Dam, marking a new milestone for the water-starved Colorado River in a downward spiral that shows no sign of letting up.
The reservoir near Las Vegas holds water for cities, farms and tribal lands in Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico. Years of unrelenting drought and temperatures pushed higher by climate change are shrinking the flow into the lake, contributing to the large mismatch between the demands for water and the Colorado’s diminishing supply.
The lake’s rapid decline has been outpacing projections from just a few months ago. Its surface reached a new low Wednesday night when it dipped past the elevation of 1,071.6 feet, a record set in 2016. But unlike that year, when inflows helped push the lake levels back up, the watershed is now so parched and depleted that Mead is projected to continue dropping next year and into 2023.
Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country, now stands at just 36% of full capacity.
CDC Plans “Emergency Meeting” On Rare Heart Inflammation Following COVID-19 Vaccines
June 10th, 2021Mmm hmm.
Via: CBS:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it will convene an “emergency meeting” of its advisers on June 18th to discuss rare but higher-than-expected reports of heart inflammation following doses of the mRNA-based Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
So far, the CDC has identified 226 reports that might meet the agency’s “working case definition” of myocarditis and pericarditis following the shots, the agency disclosed Thursday. The vast majority have recovered, but 41 had ongoing symptoms, 15 are still hospitalized, and 3 are in the intensive care unit.
Related: Young People Being Forced to Get COVID Vaccine, May Harm Them More Than COVID
Physicists Measure the Gravitational Force Between the Smallest Masses Yet
June 10th, 2021Via: Scientific American:
The research effort born on that day has now produced its first result: a measurement of the gravitational force between two tiny gold spheres, each about the size of a sesame seed and weighing as much as four grains of rice—the smallest masses whose gravity has been measured to date.
…
It is hard to fathom just how extraordinarily weak gravity is for such small masses. The gravitational pull of one sphere (the “source mass”) on the other (the “test mass”) a few millimeters away is more than 10 million times smaller than the force of a falling snowflake. The central challenge facing Aspelmeyer’s team was to design a detector exquisitely sensitive to this gravitational force yet totally insensitive to much larger background forces pushing and pulling on the test mass from all sides.
The researchers achieved this sensitivity using a detector called a torsion pendulum, which looks like a miniature version of a mobile hanging above a child’s crib.
…
They then repeated this process many times, changing the average separation between the masses, and measured forces as small as 10 femtonewtons at separations between 2.5 and 5.5 millimeters.
Half Of Pandemic Unemployment Funds May Have Been Stolen
June 10th, 2021Via: ZeroHedge:
As much as half of the unemployment benefits paid by the US government over the past year may have been stolen through fraud, with the bulk ultimately ending up outside the country – likely into the hands of foreign crime syndicates in China, Nigeria, Russia and elsewhere, according to Axios’ Felix Salmon.
According to some estimates, unemployment fraud during the pandemic could ‘easily reach $400 billion,’ as states weren’t prepared for the unprecedented wave of unemployment claims.
States knew that fraud was inevitable, but opted to rush money out to people with minimal oversight, as opposed to laboriously vetting each application.
Solar Modules Degrading Faster Than Expected
June 10th, 2021Via: PV Tech:
Solar asset underperformance continues to worsen, with projects “chronically underperforming” P99 estimates and modules degrading faster than previously anticipated, risk management firm kWh Analytics has found.
…
Perhaps the most notable finding from the report, which builds on a finding from last year’s edition, is that operational solar assets are continuing to experience higher than expected rates of degradation, with annual degradation in the field observed at around 1%.
It cites recent research conducted by both National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as kWh Analytics, as demonstrating that assumptions made in 2016 – that annually solar modules would degrade by around 0.5%, is outdated and underestimates annual degradation by as much as 0.5%.
kWh Analytics’ most recent figures place the median annual degradation for residential solar systems as 1.09% and non-residential systems at 0.8%. The report states that over a 20-year asset life, project degradation could therefore be underestimated by as much as 14%, resulting in severally overestimated performance and revenue forecasts produced within a P50 model.
Starlink Ground Stations
June 9th, 2021Here’s another one for your herniating Physically Vulnerable Critical Infrastructure file folder.
Holy shit.
Via: Eliana Sheriff:
Cleveland Clinic: Already Had COVID? Vaccine Provides No Added Benefit
June 9th, 2021Via: The Defender:
A new preprint study by the Cleveland Clinic found people previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 were less likely to be reinfected than fully vaccinated individuals who never had the virus — suggesting the vaccine is of no benefit to people who already had COVID.
Yield-Chasing Investors Buying Entire Neighborhoods
June 9th, 2021
Via: Wall Street Journal:
A bidding war broke out this winter at a new subdivision north of Houston. But the prize this time was the entire subdivision, not just a single suburban house, illustrating the rise of big investors as a potent new force in the U.S. housing market.
D.R. Horton Inc. built 124 houses in Conroe, Texas, rented them out and then put the whole community, Amber Pines at Fosters Ridge, on the block. A Who’s Who of investors and home-rental firms flocked to the December sale. The winning $32 million bid came from an online property-investing platform, Fundrise LLC, which manages more than $1 billion on behalf of about 150,000 individuals.
The country’s most prolific home builder booked roughly twice what it typically makes selling houses to the middle class—an encouraging debut in the business of selling entire neighborhoods to investors.
“We certainly wouldn’t expect every single-family community we sell to sell at a 50% gross margin,” the builder’s finance chief, Bill Wheat, said at a recent investor conference.
El Salvador Becomes First Country to Adopt Bitcoin as Legal Tender
June 9th, 2021Via: New York Post:
El Salvador on Wednesday officially became the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender.
President Nayib Bukele announced on Twitter just after 2 a.m. ET that the Central American country’s legislative body voted in favor of the so-called Bitcoin Law — making the digital currency the nation’s official legal tender, along with the US Dollar.
The law received 62 out of 84 votes, according to Bukele, Latin America’s youngest president.
“The purpose of this law is to regulate bitcoin as unrestricted legal tender with liberating power, unlimited in any transaction, and to any title that public or private natural or legal persons require carrying out,” the law reads.
That means prices for goods and services across the country can now be shown in bitcoin, taxes can be paid with the crypto, and transactions in bitcoin will not be subject to capital gains tax, the law says.
