Hackers are targeting the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain, IBM finds

Amelia Krales A global phishing campaign has been targeting organizations associated with the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines since September 2020, IBM security researchers say. In a blog post, analysts Claire Zaboeva and Melissa Frydrych of IBM X-Force IRIS announced that the phishing campaign spans six regions: Germany, Italy, South...

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Drone footage shows the shocking collapse of the Arecibo Observatory

Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released shocking footage of the collapse of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The video, captured on December 1st, shows the moment when support cables snapped, causing the massive 900-ton structure suspended above Arecibo to fall onto the observatory’s iconic 1,000-foot-wide dish. “the drone operator...

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Facebook will remove COVID-19 vaccine misinformation

Facebook’s existing anti-misinformation box for COVID-19. | Facebook In an update to their COVID-19 misinformation policy, Facebook will begin removing false claims about COVID-19 vaccines. The update comes as one COVID-19 vaccine has been authorized in the UK and other authorizations are expected to happen soon in the US and around the world....

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Climate change is already a disaster to health, doctors say

This picture, taken on June 25th, 2019, in Clermont-Ferrand, shows a personal care assistant holding the hand of an elderly person as she visits her house to help her to avoid heatstroke and dehydration during a heatwave. | Photo by Thierry Zoccolan / AFP via Getty Images Dangerously high temperatures put hundreds of thousands of people’s...

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Go read this report about EPA failures in air quality monitoring

The Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery after a massive fire in 2019. | Image: Xinhua/Liu Jie via Getty Images Key pieces of environmental monitoring equipment in the US often fail to provide accurate air quality measurements, even when toxic clouds are spewing out of an exploded oil refinery, according to a jaw-dropping new report from...

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The people saving our lives should get vaccinated first, experts say

An independent committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially recommended Tuesday that the limited first batch of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States go to health care workers and residents in long-term care facilities. “We expect a constrained supply environment for some months and need to make the best use of available...

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Go watch this video about an AI system that can predict how proteins fold

An AlphaFold prediction compared against an identified protein. | Image: DeepMind Within any living organism, there are thousands of different proteins, each with its own unique shape. For decades, the exact formation of those shapes has been a pain for scientists to figure out. How exactly does a protein, which starts as a string of amino...

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China’s Chang’e 5 mission lands on the Moon

Photo by Zhang Liyun/Xinhua via Getty Images China’s Chang’e 5 mission, tasked with bringing a sample of lunar dirt back to Earth, successfully landed on the Moon on Tuesday, marking the third time that China has placed a robotic spacecraft on the lunar surface. The lander will soon begin digging up samples of lunar soil, which will be returned...

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Facial recognition systems are getting better at recognizing masked faces

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facial recognition algorithms are getting better at recognizing faces in masks, according to data published on Tuesday by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Drawing on independent testing of more than 150 separate facial recognition algorithms, the new report suggests masks...

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Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapses as engineers feared

The Arecibo Observatory prior to the collapse. The 900-ton platform suspended above the dish fell overnight. | Photo by Ricardo Arduengo / AFP via Getty Images The massive Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed in on itself overnight. The catastrophic failure had been predicted by engineers after the telescope suffered two major cable...

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