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The Oxford study has quite a few things going for it. Unlike most previous studies, they collaborated with game publishers in order to get actual player data rather than relying on self-reported gaming time. Working with Nintendo, EA, CCP Games, Microsoft, Sony, and Square Enix, the study recruited 38,935 Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Apex Legends, Eve Online, Forza Horizon 4, Gran Turismo Sport, Outriders, and The Crew 2 players. Each participant was asked to fill out three surveys, sent to them via email....

Virgin Galactic is promising some unique experiences in exchange for that hefty fee. Ticketed passengers will spend several days preparing for their flight in New Mexico, staying at custom accommodations with “world-class amenities” as they get in astronaut shape. The actual journey itself will be 90 minutes, including a “signature air launch and Mach-3 boost to space” that will propel passengers into “several minutes” of suborbital weightlessness and a chance to gaze down at Earth from the 17 windows lining the spaceship....

The study was run by Professors S. Adam Brasel and James Gips of the Carrol School of Management at BC. They concluded that if the brand information (ie: the Pizza Hut logo or the Nike swoosh) is placed smack in the middle of the screen, viewers will not only see it, but remember it. In fact, they pay more attention to the screen than people who watch commercials at regular speed....

While it sounds great in theory to be standing on stage with the presidential hopefuls, several problems arose, the first of which is the weight of the Gear headset itself and the heat it produced. Some found the experience was isolating; they missed the interactivity that comes with a dual-screen set up (watching the debate on one screen while following along on social media on another, usually a phone or computer)....

This week, utility company D.C. Water unveiled a brand new bioenergy facility that turns D.C. residents’ wastewater (from sinks, showers, and yes, toilets) into clean energy. Here’s how it works. Wastewater, including solid sewage, travels to the plant, where the liquid is separated out and sent to a traditional wastewater treatment plant. The solids that are left over are heated, sterilized, and mixed into an easily digestible mass. That mixture is then sent into a digester, where a certain mix of microbes chows down on the waste, producing methane as they digest their meal....

[YouTube, Gizmag]

Should a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket malfunction on the launchpad, the company’s abort system is designed to carry the Dragon capsule—and any space travelers inside—to safety. The abort system uses thrusters to maneuver the Dragon away from the rocket and a parachute to land softly, and it was successfully tested in May. Since then we’ve seen some great footage of the test… …as well as a firsthand view of what it would be like to ride along with the retreating spacecraft....

The University of Texas at Austin biology professor, along with researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, imaged the process of the T7 virus infecting an E. coli bacterium for the first time. Their findings were published in Science Express last week. To view the infection process, they used genetics and cryo-electro tomography — essentially a CT scan made for objects a thousandth the diameter of a human hair — to watch as the virus inserted its genetic material into a host bacterium....

The District of Columbia was an unlikely place for a dust storm. Though the Midwest had been shrouded in clouds of dust since 1932, the lawmakers discussing the Dust Bowl in March 1935 were more than 1,000 miles away from the disaster. Then, something uncanny happened: As lawmakers deliberated the very issue of how to stem a series of droughts and the erosion and catastrophic dust storms that followed, a literal cloud fell on the city....

One solution that many scientists and the food industry have studied is developing lab-grown meat—that’s where actual animal cells are taken from an animal and are grown independently in a lab setting. So, real chicken cells would be in those nuggets, but no actual chicken has to die in order to get your savory snack. And these lab-grown foods have already been made—California start-up Eat Just’s no-kill chicken meat was approved for sale in Singapore in 2020, and Hong Kong-based Avant Meats developed lab-grown edible fish maw....

Full disclosure: This trip was paid for by Twentieth Century Fox, the makers of The Martian movie, which comes out on Blu-Ray/DVD on January 12. NASA’s Space Exploration Vehicle is a just a prototype for now, but future solar-powered versions might one day fly to Mars, arriving on one of several pre-supply missions that will deliver food heavy equipment ahead of the astronauts’ arrival. The rover has twelve wheels, arranged in six sets of two, and each pair rotates 360 degrees....

Despite the historic weight of one million deaths, it can be impossible to wrap one’s head around the figure. “There was one human that put us over the edge of that number,” Maitely Weisman, a cofounder of the Essential Caregivers Coalition, puts it. To focus on the total can mean moving “too far from the Earth to see the individuals inside of it.” Thousands of those deaths have taken place in the lull between COVID surges....

Just add an old song (swing, of course) and you’ve got this excellent video from NPR (see below) showing what the U.S. looks like to superPACs and other groups during election season. Sans video, it’s a little like this. First, the electoral college as it actually looks. Here the states have been resized proportionally based on their votes in the electoral college. They’ve also been reshaded according to how blue or red they leaned in the 2008 election....

“I came out here to be part of space,” he says, leaning back in the seat, as if he’s ready for takeoff. “Let’s go to space.” This SpacePort permanently employs around 2,000 people like Riggs, people who want to run their fingers along the bleeding edge of the private aerospace industry. They work for 70 companies, up from just 14 in 2002, ranging from celebrity-gossip-level operations like Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch Systems, to scrappier startups hoping to “disrupt” the industry, to record-setting aero-innovators making ultraefficient planes....

The crater illusion is a phenomenon where indentations—such as craters, footprints, or even sectioned dinner plates—suddenly look like a button is popping out at you when the image is flipped horizontally or vertically, and the light source no longer seems as if it’s coming from above. Satellite photos of craters are taken from overhead, and, typically, a shadow is only cast inside the cavity when the sun’s rays are parallel to the surface....

The study consisted of 775 recently diagnosed COVID patients, all of whom were at risk of severe disease. Patients took two pills a day for four days, and then were monitored for about the following month. Among those patients, the drug appears to have dramatically reduced the incidence of severe disease, according to a Merck press release. Patients who received the real drug were half as likely to be hospitalized as those who got a placebo: 14....

FACT: Trading blood could actually make you “young” again By Corinne Iozzio Scientists have long thought that blood has the power to reshape us—to make an old person feel young, an ill person well again, and an agitated person find calm. Some of the earliest experiments to test this notion, though, did not have stellar results. When Robert Lower developed a crude transfusion technique that he tested on dogs, the donating puppers didn’t survive....

Until the ’90s, it was rare to find someone in the middle seat; most flights were less than two-thirds full, and people (naturally) grab windows and aisles first. That empty space meant passengers had more room to stretch out, boarding moved more quickly, and bin shortages were blessedly uncommon. Today, cheaper fares mean nearly nine out of 10 spots are taken on an average flight. Bygone amenities How to use a tiny bathroom And yet, you grow As legroom contracts and seats narrow, passengers’ bodies are going in the opposite direction....

Officials hope the move will make STI testing more affordable and accessible. Sexually transmitted infections such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia have been on the rise for years across the United States, and the pandemic has only worsened the situation. “We’re hoping that these test kits done at home will assist [those] individuals that just don’t feel comfortable going into a clinic,” Leticia Berber, a Fresno County Department of Public Health health educator, told ABC30 (KFSN-TV)....

One reason became clear when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released its Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the new standards last week. Buried in the 414-page report is a “sensitivity analysis” of the economic costs and benefits that would result from raising fuel economy standards. For this analysis, NHTSA relied on a “high-case” gasoline price of $3.37 per gallon for the years 2011-2015, and a “low-case” scenario of $2....