List of All Articles with Tag 'tec'

Broadcom forecast fourth-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates on Thursday, on worries bleak enterprise spending and stiff competition

Dell Technologies beat quarterly revenue expectations on Thursday, as it benefited from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom and

Dell Technologies Inc. reported better-than-expected sales of personal computers and data center hardware, fueling hopes of a recovery

Blame it on seasonality, dwindling interest or traders away on holiday, but Bitcoin is ending on a down

Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said the chipmaker is on course to hit its third-quarter forecasts,

Microsoft Corp. shot for the sky with Starfield, its ambitious new space role-playing video game, and so far

Market-making firm Virtu Financial Inc. sued to block its former head of client technology from accepting a senior

Wild boar in southeastern Germany have long contained high levels of radioactive substances, which has been attributed to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. But as radioactivity levels have fallen in other animals, they have stayed much the same among boar. Now, scientists have worked out the secret behind the so-called “wild boar paradox”. Research shows there is another culprit for the high levels of radioactivity: nuclear weapons tests from the mid-20th century. And both the weapons and the nuclear reactor meltdown continue contaminating the boar because of their diet. While the muscular boar seem healthy, the dangerous levels of radioactive caesium, the main contaminator, have prompted people to stop hunting them. In turn, there is now an overpopulation issue. “Our work reveals deeper insights into the notorious radio-cesium contamination in Bavarian wild boars beyond the total radionuclide quantification only,” radioecologist Felix Stäger from Leibniz University Hannover wrote in a paper. After a nuclear incident, radioactive materials can pose a significant threat to ecosystems. This happened after the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, where there was an increase in radioactive caesium contamination. The main component of this, caesium-137, has a half-life of about 30 years, meaning it loses its radioactivity fairly quickly. However, caesium-135, which is created via nuclear fission, is far more stable. It has a half-life of more than 2m years. The ratio of cesium-135 compared to cesium-137 can help us work out where the cesium came from. A high ratio indicates nuclear weapon explosions, while a low ratio points to nuclear reactors like Chernobyl. So the researchers analysed caesium levels from 48 wild boar meat samples from 11 regions of Bavaria. It turns out that nuclear weapons testing was responsible for between 12 per cent and 68 per cent of the unsafe contamination in the samples. “All samples exhibit signatures of mixing,” wrote the researchers. “Nuclear weapons fallout and [Chernobyl] have mixed in the Bavarian soil, the release maxima of which were about 20−30 years apart.” So while Chernobyl remains the main source of caesium in wild boar, about a quarter of the samples showed enough contributions from weapons fallout to exceed safety limits even before the reactor meltdown comes into account. And because wild boar eat so many truffles, it has been exacerbated. The fungus absorbs high levels of contamination from both sources. Wild boars' diets, which include underground truffles, have absorbed varying levels of contamination from both sources, which has contributed to the animals' persistent radioactivity. “This study illustrates that strategic decisions to conduct atmospheric nuclear tests 60−80 years ago still impact remote natural environments, wildlife, and a human food source today,” the authors concluded. The study was published in Environmental Science & Technology. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

X, formerly known as Twitter, wants to start collecting “biometric information” about its users, as well as their employment history. Elon Musk’s company is seemingly giving itself permission to fingerprints or facial features, or the other kind of information about people’s bodies that are usually used in biometrics. That is according to a change to its privacy policy that was first reported by Bloomberg. “Based on your consent, we may collect and use your biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes,” the new rules state. They will go into effect at the end of the month. The policy also allows X to collect “your employment history, educational history, employment preferences, skills and abilities, job search activity and engagement”. The policy does not give any details about where the information will be used, and the company has not elaborated elsewhere. But it has been looking into using biometric data for some features. Earlier this month, for instance, security researcher Nima Owji found that the site was testing a way for users of the premium Twitter Blue service to verify who they are by using a government-issued ID and taking a selfie. A screenshot of the feature showed users being asked to click a button to confirm they “consent to X sharing images of my ID, including biometric data” with authentication companies. Elon Musk has also suggested that X could be used for hiring in the future, which may be the purpose of collecting employment information. Last week, X announced a new feature called “X Hiring” which allows companies that pay for the verified badge to include job ads on their profiles. That appears to be part of his plan to turn X into the “everything app”. He has suggested that it could include payments in the future, and he is soon to roll out audio and video calls that will be made with people’s username rather than their phone number. Read More Tesla reportedly under probe over mysterious project to build ‘glass house’ for Musk Elon Musk booed at video games contest as crowds shout: ‘Bring back Twitter!’ Meta could finally launch Threads feature everyone is waiting for

There are many predictions about our AI future that veer into Black Mirror territory, but perhaps the most

Having unlocked stock market riches in 2023, the “artificial intelligence” catchphrase faces a shift in sentiment — and

(Corrects company name HashKey with capitalisation of letter K) By Summer Zhen HONG KONG (Reuters) -The first secondary crypto market