Month: February 2022
-
How to share your WiFi password with anyone
When a friend asks you to share your WiFi password, how long is your explanation? Saying “Oh, it’s a mess of letters and numbers taped to the router behind the refrigerator in the rental unit upstairs” doesn’t make things easy for them. There are better ways to share your WiFi. And sure, each of these…
-
How to back up files to the cloud to free up space
Disk space is always at a premium, so you should take every opportunity to free up as much of it as you can. One of the best ways to do this is to back up a bunch of files to the cloud, then remove them from your computer entirely. Stashing your data in the cloud…
-
Death spiral: a black hole spins on its side | HeritageDaily
Researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, found that the axis of rotation of a black hole in a binary system is tilted more than 40 degrees relative to the axis of stellar orbit. The finding challenges current theoretical models of black hole formation. The observation by the researchers from Tuorla Observatory in Finland is…
-
The dinosaur-killing asteroid hit Earth in spring
The dinosaur-killing asteroid that smashed into present-day Mexico 66 million years ago arrived in springtime, a new analysis suggests. Scientists examined fossilized fish that perished shortly after the impact and used the growth patterns and chemicals preserved within the bones to pin down the timing of the event. The researchers concluded that the asteroid strike…
-
Africa’s oldest human DNA helps unveil an ancient population shift
Ancient Africans in search of mates traded long-distance travels for regional connections starting about 20,000 years ago, an analysis of ancient and modern DNA suggests. That shift occurred after treks across much of Africa to find breeding partners had been the norm starting at least 50,000 years ago, the same analysis shows. These new findings…
-
How to use Google Drive’s Search Chips
The fact that it is hard to find a file on a platform owned by the company that runs the world’s largest search engine is just pure irony. We imagine this is not lost on Google, which is why they made it easier to search Google Drive by introducing Search Chips. This feature can help…
-
Seven from MIT named 2022 Sloan Research Fellows | MIT News
Seven members of the MIT faculty are among 118 early-career researchers recently named recipients of the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Representing the departments of Chemistry, Economics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics, the honorees will each receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship to advance their research. Including this year’s recipients,…
-
Sunlight helps clean up oil spills more than previously thought
Sunlight may have helped remove as much as 17 percent of the oil slicking the surface of the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. That means that sunlight plays a bigger role in cleaning up such spills than previously thought, researchers suggest February 16 in Science Advances. When sunlight shines on spilled…
-
Mathematician George Lusztig receives Wolf Prize | MIT News
George Lusztig, the Abdun-Nur Professor of Mathematics at MIT, has been awarded the prestigious 2022 Wolf Prize in Mathematics for his work on geometric representation theory and algebraic groups. The Israel-based Wolf Foundation cited the American-Romanian mathematician “for groundbreaking contributions to representation theory and related areas.” Lusztig is known for his work on representation theory, in…
-
Black Death mortality not as widespread as long thought | HeritageDaily
The Black Death, which plagued Europe, West Asia and North Africa from 1347-1352, is the most infamous pandemic in history. Historians have estimated that up to 50% of Europe’s population died during the pandemic and credit the Black Death with transforming religious and political structures, even precipitating major cultural and economic transformations such as the…