Science and Tech

The Middle Pleistocene (also called the Chibanian), which took place from 774,000 to 129,000 years ago, is a complicated period in paleoanthropological history. Although it saw the rise of Homo sapiens in Africa and Homo neanderthalensis in Europe, along with many of their contemporaries, little is known about it, and to make matters worse, the terminology used is often vague and contradictory.

On November 15th, 2021, the Russian government blew up their own satellite, the Cosmos 1408. The debris caused by the explosion has already endangered the lives of astronauts in outer space. Following the explosion, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) received commands to find shelter in case of collison with oncoming space debris from the satellite. The ISS was unharmed, but this crisis serves as a warning of what similar decisions could mean for the future of satellites orbiting our Earth.

The Ship of Theseus is one of the most famous paradoxes in history. It raises the question: if the entire ship was replaced with new parts, then is it still the same ship?

Each year, the national blood supply shortage grows, so much that we have now reached a critical status; so, here’s how Stanford Researchers plan to fix that.

On September 24th, Apple released the iPhone 13 along with the 13 mini, 13 Pro, and the 13 Pro Max. Apple provided many new colors with the iPhone 13, including shades of blue, pink, and white. Similar to previous iPhones, beginning with the iPhone 7, the iPhone 13 is water-resistant. The iPhone 13 looks a lot like the iPhone 12 but with two main updates -- display and cameras. 

In mid-October, the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics recipients were announced to be Professors David Card (UC Berkeley), Joshua Angrist (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Guido Imbens (Stanford). Their 1:1:2 split of an over-one-million-US-dollar prize is their reward for their pioneering work of “natural experiments” in economic sciences. 

In May of 2014, Google released its cutting-edge smart glasses-- capable of recording audio and video from the user’s perspective, as well as connecting to the internet - in the form of what we now know as a dismal marketing failure: Google Glass.

People have suffered from malaria for thousands of years, with the first recordings of the serious disease being in ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. It then heightened during the Roman Empire, due to major ecological changes that were caused by the rapid rise of deforestation. This brought up the question of how the disease is transmitted. Initial theories included, drinking swamp water, respiratory transmission from swamp vapors. This ultimately led to the draining of many swamps in the Roman Empire.  

Two scientists have received the 2021 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries of molecular receptors that detect temperature and touch. Nearly two decades ago, David Julius, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, used capsaicin, the ‘spicy’ compound found in chili peppers, to figure out how the nervous system responds to and registers changes in body temperature. His team searched for a certain gene that induces this response, finally locating it after scouring millions of DNA fragments. Simultaneously, in 2002, Ardem Patapoutian, a scientist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, independently discovered another receptor that responds to low temperatures. The discovery of these receptors cascaded into the identification of numerous other receptors for temperature change. 

Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering Xiulin Ruan and his students have created the whitest paint on record, which scientists claim could potentially lower or remove the need for air conditioning.