Science

Ars Technica reports: Meet ANYmal, a four-legged dog-like robot designed by researchers at ETH Zürich in Switzerland, in hopes of using such robots for search-and-rescue on building sites or disaster areas, among other applications. Now ANYmal has been upgraded to perform rudimentary parkour moves, aka “free running.” Human parkour enthusiasts are known for their remarkably agile, acrobatic feats, and while …

The New York Times reports: The third try was closer to the charm for Elon Musk and SpaceX, as the company’s flight test of the mammoth Starship rocket launched on Thursday and traveled almost halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere. The flight achieved some key milestones in the development of the vehicle, which …

CBC News reports: SpaceX’s huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket, by far the most powerful ever built, blasted off on its third test flight Thursday morning. The test aimed to boost the unpiloted upper stage into space on a sub-orbital hop to a controlled re-entry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The giant rocket’s 33 Raptor engines, gulping 40,000 pounds of liquid …

From Florida’s Department of Health: Today, Florida is providing an update on the measles outbreak in southeast Florida. Since January 2024, sixteen states have reported measles cases including: California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Washington, Indiana, and Arizona. Unfortunately, the measles cases in Florida have received disproportionate attention for political reasons. The national medical health establishment and the media lost …

The Los Angeles Times reports: What are the chances that the noted anti-vaxxers Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would make common cause to undermine Americans’ health in their pursuit for the presidency? It didn’t take much hindsight to say the answer is 100%. But there’s no need to speculate any longer — not since this weekend, when Trump …

USA Today reports: Two more Florida children have contracted measles after the state’s top health official defied federal guidance to contain an outbreak at an elementary school. Six children at Manatee Bay Elementary School, in Westin near Fort Lauderdale, caught the disease over a week ago. New state health data show two more cases in Broward County, of a child …

Yahoo News reports: An unmanned, robotic lunar lander launched by a private U.S. company landed on the moon Thursday evening. “We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” said Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that operated the Odysseus spacecraft. “Welcome to the moon.” Altemus had estimated that Odysseus …

The Daily Beast reports: While measles cases are popping up across the country, nowhere has been hit as hard as Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston, just west of Fort Lauderdale. There, a single case reported Thursday spiraled into a half-dozen infected students by Tuesday evening. John J. Sullivan, a spokesperson for Broward County Public Schools, said the school underwent …

Miami’s ABC affiliate reports: Officials with Broward County Public Schools announced a fifth confirmed measles case at an elementary school in Weston Monday. The additional case at Manatee Bay Elementary School, located at 19200 Manatee Isles Drive, adds to the four reported since Friday. The Florida Department of Health is working to track down the origin of the case cluster. …

The Hill reports: Advocates and lawmakers across the political spectrum are optimistic about its chances for approval and pushing for a speedy rollout of so-called “MDMA-assisted therapy,” which they say could finally reduce the more than 6,000 veterans who die by suicide each year. “Having served our Nation in combat I keenly understand the toll it takes on a Service …

USA Today reports: U.S. health officials are warning clinicians to be alert for cases of measles following several outbreaks, largely among children who were eligible for the vaccine but did not receive it. The CDC urged vigilance among health providers across the U.S. following reports of nearly two dozen cases of the preventable virus since December. Most cases were in …

The BBC reports: The world’s first routine vaccine programme against malaria has started in Cameroon, in a move projected to save thousands of children’s lives across Africa. The symbolic first jab was given to a baby girl named Daniella at a health facility near Yaoundé on Monday. Every year 600,000 people die of malaria in Africa, according to the World …

Nexstar reports: A geomagnetic storm watch has been issued for Monday and Tuesday this week after an eruption of solar material was detected early Sunday morning. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) warned about the eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) in a post to X. The northern lights, otherwise known as the aurora, are often associated with …

The New York Times reports: Marijuana is neither as risky nor as prone to abuse as other tightly controlled substances and has potential medical benefits, and therefore should be removed from the nation’s most restrictive category of drugs, federal scientists have concluded. The recommendations are contained in a 250-page scientific review provided to Matthew Zorn, a Texas lawyer who sued …

From the Philadelphia Enquirer editorial board: From so-called vaccine skeptics like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to anti-vaccine advocates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., some politicians are hoping to gain political power by exploiting the misguided fears of worried parents and the curdled selfishness of American individualism exemplified by the anti-vaxxer movement. Although these candidates’ chances of reaching the presidency are …

Politico Europe reports: Nearly 17,000 people may have died after taking hydroxycholoroquine during the first wave of COVID, according to a study by French researchers. The anti-malaria drug was prescribed to some patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, “despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits,” the researchers point out in their paper, published …

USA Today reports: Owning a pet may help slow cognitive decline among older people who live alone, according to a study published this week. A large cohort study of adults ages 50 and older living in the United Kingdom showed pet owners had less verbal memory and verbal fluency declines compared to people who lived alone without a pet. The …

The New York Times reports: As the holiday season winds down and Covid-19 cases start to pick up, a variant called JN.1 has now become the most common strain of the virus spreading across the United States. JN.1, which emerged from the variant BA.2.86 and was first detected in the United States in September, accounted for 44 percent of Covid …

Mashable reports: Ancient Mars wasn’t simply just wet. It experienced momentous floods. As clear evidence of this water-filled past, NASA released an image snapped by its Perseverance rover, showing large heavy boulders absolutely blanketing part of the Jezero Crater, a dried-up river delta. “The rounded boulders seen here are believed to have been washed into Jezero Crater, which Perseverance is …

Mashable reports: NASA has a lot on its plate, between staring at strange things on Uranus, monitoring solar flares, investigating Enceladus, visualising Mars’ wet past, probing dead stars, recovering space rock, figuring out what’s going on with Voyager, and generally preparing to get humans on the moon. But there’s always time for a cat video,  On Monday, NASA announced it …