An early look at Sony’s next flagship phone shows it might be getting a more powerful zoom lens, thanks to some leaked renders posted by OnLeaks. The Xperia 1 III’s rear camera bump appears similar to its predecessor’s at first glance. But if you look closely at the bottom camera, it features a squared-off housing consistent with periscope designs. Previous Xperia phones have offered standard telephoto lenses with 2x or 3x optical zoom; a periscope design would allow for 5x or more of optical reach without sacrificing image quality.
OnLeaks also reports that the Xperia 1 III will include 5G, practically a requirement for any flagship phone in 2021. Unlike the Xperia 1 II, it seems likely that Sony will offer 5G support for 1 III devices sold in the US, given that the creator-focused Xperia Pro will offer it.
On the whole, it looks like the Xperia 1 III will stick with Sony’s minimalist approach. The 6.5-inch display’s bezels are very thin, and Sony is sticking with the tall 21:9 aspect ratio. The 1 III should also retain the 3.5mm headphone jack — a rarity among flagships — as well as a microSDXC card slot.
Despite being a major manufacturer of imaging hardware, Sony’s phones have lagged behind other flagships in the camera department with better software. When we reviewed the Xperia 1 II, we saw an opportunity for Sony to lean into the dedicated camera-like experience that the phone can offer, rather than trying to play catch-up on computational photography. Strengthening its hardware offerings with a good-quality zoom is a solid step in that direction.
HBO Max has unveiled its list of upcoming TV shows and films for February, which includes complete runs of Static Shock and Justice League.
HBO Max will soon be seeing an infusion of new TV shows and films, including the complete runs of Static Shock and Justice League.
Justice League and Justice League Unlimited will be available to stream starting on Feb. 1, while Static Shock will arrive on the service on Feb. 15. Other DC Comics-based shows and films slated to debut on HBO Max include Batman: Brave and the Bold, plus Aquaman on Feb. 5 and The Batman on Feb. 15.
RELATED: HBO Max ‘Same Day Premiere’ Trailer Showcases Sopranos Prequel & More
HBO Max will also see a pair of “Same Day Premieres” in February, as part of Warner Bros.’ plan to release its 2021 slate of films simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max. Those films include Judas and the Black Messiah, which premieres on Feb. 12, and Tom and Jerry on Feb. 26. Another DC Comics film is part of this slate, as The Suicide Squad will premiere on on Aug. 6, 2021.
Static Shock is based on the Milestone Media comic of the same name, and centers around teenager Virgil Hawkins after he gains electromagnetic abilities from an accident called “The Big Bang.” Virgil adopts the persona of Static to protect his hometown of Dakota from all manner of threats. A live-action Static Shock film is currently in development at Warner Bros., with Michael B. Jordan producing through his Outlier Society banner.
KEEP READING: Saved by the Bell Star Pitches Himself for Static Shock Movie Role
Source: WarnerMedia
Fear the Walking Dead Sets Midseason Premiere Date
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A freelance journalist based in Seattle, Collier enjoys all facets of pop culture, namely comics and anime. Spider-Man is his favorite fictional character of all time.
A team of researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital recently published a study linking social awareness to individual neuronal activity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time evidence for the ‘theory of mind‘ has been identified at this scale.
Measuring large groups of neurons is the bread-and-butter of neurology. Even a simple MRI can highlight specific regions of the brain and give scientists an indication of what they’re used for and, in many cases, what kind of thoughts are happening. But figuring out what’s going on at the single-neuron level is an entirely different feat.
According to the paper:
Here, using recordings from single cells in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, we identify neurons that reliably encode information about others’ beliefs across richly varying scenarios and that distinguish self- from other-belief-related representations … these findings reveal a detailed cellular process in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for representing another’s beliefs and identify candidate neurons that could support theory of mind.
In other words: the researchers believe they’ve observed individual brain neurons forming the patterns that cause us to consider what other people might be feeling and thinking. They’re identifying empathy in action.
This could have a huge impact on brain research, especially in the area of mental illness and social anxiety disorders or in the development of individualized treatments for people with autism spectrum disorder.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about it, however, is what we could potentially learn about consciousness from the team’s work.
[Read:How this company leveraged AI to become the Netflix of Finland]
The researchers asked 15 patients who were slated to undergo a specific kind of brain surgery (not related to the study) to answer a few questions and undergo an simple behavioral test. Per a press release from Massachusetts General Hospital:
Micro-electrodes inserted in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex recorded the behavior of individual neurons as patients listened to short narratives and answered questions about them. For example, participants were presented with this scenario to evaluate how they considered another’s beliefs of reality: “You and Tom see a jar on the table. After Tom leaves, you move the jar to a cabinet. Where does Tom believe the jar to be?”
The participants had to make inferences about another’s beliefs after hearing each story. The experiment did not change the planned surgical approach or alter clinical care.
The experiment basically took a grand concept (brain activity) and dialed it in as much as possible. By adding this layer of knowledge to our collective understanding of how individual neurons communicate and work together to emerge what’s ultimately a theory of other minds within our own consciousness, it may become possible to identify and quantify other neuronal systems in action using similar experimental techniques.
It would, of course, be impossible for human scientists to come up with ways to stimulate, observe, and label 100 billion neurons – if for no other reason than the fact it would take thousands of years just to count them much less watch them respond to provocation.
Luckily, we’ve entered the artificial intelligence age and if there’s one thing AI is good at it’s doing really monotonous things, such as labeling 80 billion individual neurons, really quickly.
It’s not much of a stretch to imagine the Massachusetts team’s methodology being automated. While it appears the current iteration requires the use of invasive sensors – hence the use of volunteers who were already slated to undergo brain surgery – it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that such fine readings could be achieved with an external device one day.
The ultimate goal of such a system would be to identify and map every neuron in the human brain as it operates in real time. It’d be like seeing a hedge maze from a hot air balloon after an eternity lost in its twists.
This would give us a god’s eye view of consciousness in action and, potentially, allow us to replicate it more accurately in machines.
This image, which shows the night side of Venus glowing in thermal infrared, was captured by Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft. Credit: JAXA/ISAS/DARTS/Damia Bouic
In September, a team led by astronomers in the United Kingdom announced that they had detected the chemical phosphine in the thick clouds of Venus. The team’s reported detection, based on observations by two Earth-based radio telescopes, surprised many Venus experts. Earth’s atmosphere contains small amounts of phosphine, which may be produced by life. Phosphine on Venus generated buzz that the planet, often succinctly touted as a “hellscape,” could somehow harbor life within its acidic clouds.
Since that initial claim, other science teams have cast doubt on the reliability of the phosphine detection. Now, a team led by researchers at the University of Washington has used a robust model of the conditions within the atmosphere of Venus to revisit and comprehensively reinterpret the radio telescope observations underlying the initial phosphine claim. As they report in a paper accepted to The Astrophysical Journal and posted Jan. 25 to the preprint site arXiv, the U.K.-led group likely wasn’t detecting phosphine at all.
“Instead of phosphine in the clouds of Venus, the data are consistent with an alternative hypothesis: They were detecting sulfur dioxide,” said co-author Victoria Meadows, a UW professor of astronomy. “Sulfur dioxide is the third-most-common chemical compound in Venus’ atmosphere, and it is not considered a sign of life.”
The team behind the new study also includes scientists at NASA’s Caltech-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the NASA Ames Research Center and the University of California, Riverside.
The UW-led team shows that sulfur dioxide, at levels plausible for Venus, can not only explain the observations but is also more consistent with what astronomers know of the planet’s atmosphere and its punishing chemical environment, which includes clouds of sulfuric acid. In addition, the researchers show that the initial signal originated not in the planet’s cloud layer, but far above it, in an upper layer of Venus’ atmosphere where phosphine molecules would be destroyed within seconds. This lends more support to the hypothesis that sulfur dioxide produced the signal.
Both the purported phosphine signal and this new interpretation of the data center on radio astronomy. Every chemical compound absorbs unique wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes radio waves, X-rays and visible light. Astronomers use radio waves, light and other emissions from planets to learn about their chemical composition, among other properties.
An image of Venus compiled using data from the Mariner 10 spacecraft in 1974. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
In 2017 using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, or JCMT, the U.K.-led team discovered a feature in the radio emissions from Venus at 266.94 gigahertz. Both phosphine and sulfur dioxide absorb radio waves near that frequency. To differentiate between the two, in 2019 the same team obtained follow-up observations of Venus using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA. Their analysis of ALMA observations at frequencies where only sulfur dioxide absorbs led the team to conclude that sulfur dioxide levels in Venus were too low to account for the signal at 266.94 gigahertz, and that it must instead be coming from phosphine.
In this new study by the UW-led group, the researchers started by modeling conditions within Venus’ atmosphere, and using that as a basis to comprehensively interpret the features that were seen—and not seen—in the JCMT and ALMA datasets.
“This is what’s known as a radiative transfer model, and it incorporates data from several decades’ worth of observations of Venus from multiple sources, including observatories here on Earth and spacecraft missions like Venus Express,” said lead author Andrew Lincowski, a researcher with the UW Department of Astronomy.
The team used that model to simulate signals from phosphine and sulfur dioxide for different levels of Venus’ atmosphere, and how those signals would be picked up by the JCMT and ALMA in their 2017 and 2019 configurations. Based on the shape of the 266.94-gigahertz signal picked up by the JCMT, the absorption was not coming from Venus’ cloud layer, the team reports. Instead, most of the observed signal originated some 50 or more miles above the surface, in Venus’ mesosphere. At that altitude, harsh chemicals and ultraviolet radiation would shred phosphine molecules within seconds.
“Phosphine in the mesosphere is even more fragile than phosphine in Venus’ clouds,” said Meadows. “If the JCMT signal were from phosphine in the mesosphere, then to account for the strength of the signal and the compound’s sub-second lifetime at that altitude, phosphine would have to be delivered to the mesosphere at about 100 times the rate that oxygen is pumped into Earth’s atmosphere by photosynthesis.”
The researchers also discovered that the ALMA data likely significantly underestimated the amount of sulfur dioxide in Venus’ atmosphere, an observation that the U.K.-led team had used to assert that the bulk of the 266.94-gigahertz signal was from phosphine.
“The antenna configuration of ALMA at the time of the 2019 observations has an undesirable side effect: The signals from gases that can be found nearly everywhere in Venus’ atmosphere—like sulfur dioxide—give off weaker signals than gases distributed over a smaller scale,” said co-author Alex Akins, a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
This phenomenon, known as spectral line dilution, would not have affected the JCMT observations, leading to an underestimate of how much sulfur dioxide was being seen by JCMT.
“They inferred a low detection of sulfur dioxide because of that artificially weak signal from ALMA,” said Lincowski. “But our modeling suggests that the line-diluted ALMA data would have still been consistent with typical or even large amounts of Venus sulfur dioxide, which could fully explain the observed JCMT signal.”
“When this new discovery was announced, the reported low sulfur dioxide abundance was at odds with what we already know about Venus and its clouds,” said Meadows. “Our new work provides a complete framework that shows how typical amounts of sulfur dioxide in the Venus mesosphere can explain both the signal detections, and non-detections, in the JCMT and ALMA data, without the need for phosphine.”
With science teams around the world following up with fresh observations of Earth’s cloud-shrouded neighbor, this new study provides an alternative explanation to the claim that something geologically, chemically or biologically must be generating phosphine in the clouds. But though this signal appears to have a more straightforward explanation—with a toxic atmosphere, bone-crushing pressure and some of our solar system’s hottest temperatures outside of the sun—Venus remains a world of mysteries, with much left for us to explore.
Scientists have re-analyzed their data and still see a signal of phosphine at Venus—just less of it
More information:
Jane S. Greaves et al. Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus, Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1174-4
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Purported phosphine on Venus more likely to be ordinary sulfur dioxide, new study shows (2021, January 27)
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Video created from a series of still images taken by Solar Orbiter. The brightest objects, from left to right, are Venus, Earth, and Mars.Gif: ESA/NASA/NRL/Solar Orbiter/SolOHI/Gizmodo
Well, here’s something you don’t see every day.
On November 18, 2020, the Solar Orbiter managed to capture three of our solar system’s eight planets in a single frame, according to a European Space Agency statement. The resulting four-second movie was stitched together from a series of still images taken across 22 hours.
Venus is the largest and brightest of the objects, followed by Earth and then Mars to the lower right of the frame. What’s particularly cool about this vantage point is that the probe is peering back into the solar system as it heads away from the Sun and towards Venus.
Venus, Earth, and Mars, as spotted by the Solar Orbiter.Image: ESA/NASA/NRL/Solar Orbiter/SolOHI
When the photos were taken, Solar Orbiter was 30 million miles (48 million km) from Venus, 156 million miles (251 million km) from Earth, and 206 million miles (332 million km ) from Mars. The Sun is out of frame to the lower right, but its glow is clearly visible.
The spacecraft, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, was en route to Venus for a gravitational assist when the images were taken using its Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) camera. Solar Orbiter eventually flew past Venus on December 27. A steady diet of flybys with Earth and Venus will bring the probe closer to the Sun and also tilt its axis of orbit such that it can observe the Sun from different angles.
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Launched in February 2020 and equipped with 10 different instruments, Solar Orbiter is a mission to study the Sun from up-close. The closest images ever taken of the Sun, made last July, showed previously unknown “campfires” on the surface of our star, uncovering stellar processes only dreamed about in theory.
The probe is also studying conditions in its immediate vicinity, namely the solar wind, or charged particles, pouring out from the Sun into space. The resulting data will help scientists to predict inclement space weather that can harm communications and technology on Earth.
Researchers studying the first-known fossils of tyrannosaur embryos suggest the dinosaurs were approximately three feet long when they hatched, according to a study from the University of Edinburgh, published Monday.
A team of paleontologists studied the fossilized remains of a tyrannosaurus embryo, namely a jaw bone and claw that were found in Canada and the US, respectively.
After producing 3D scans of the remains, researchers were able to predict that the dinosaurs would have hatched from eggs about 17 inches long.
Remains of tyrannosaurus eggs have never been found, but this finding could help paleontologists spot them in the future.
“Dinosaur babies are very rare,” lead study author Greg Funston, a paleontologist at the University Edinburgh, told CNN, explaining that larger specimens are better represented in the fossil record because their bones were more durable.
“Most dinosaurs didn’t nest in an area where their eggs could be easily buried,” Funston added, making the preservation of this kind of find even rarer. “It’s quite a big deal,” he said.
The claw is from an Albertosaurus and the jaw bone from a Daspletosaurus, both of which would have grown to around 35 feet in length.
They were slightly smaller than their more famous cousin, Tyrannosaurus rex, which grew up to 40 feet in length, Funston said.
Researchers found the jaw bone, which is just over an inch long, had features distinctive to the tyrannosaur group, including a pronounced chin.
While tyrannosaurs are known to have undergone many changes over their lifetime, this shows the embryos already had certain physical traits before they hatched, Funston said.
The discovery could help settle debates over whether other specimens in the fossil record come from new species or younger specimens of known species, he added.
Tyrannosaurs lived more than 70 million years ago. Little is known about their early development as most specimens that have been studied are from older animals, Funston said, but researchers now know they were born with a full set of teeth and could hunt for themselves, albeit on smaller prey than adults.
“These were animals that were hatching and were probably fairly active relatively soon after they hatched,” Funston said.
The study was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.
Funston said he plans to try to produce scans of the remains at a higher resolution, to enable the study of tooth development, which could reveal how long the tyrannosaurs spent inside the eggs before hatching.
Officer Reynaldo Contreras arrived at the home of Patrick Warren on January 10 after Warren’s family called for psychiatric help.
The police department said in a statement that, upon the officer’s arrival, Warren was “emotionally distressed,” and newly released body camera footage shows the tense moments that led to Contreras firing his weapon at Warren three times.
In the video, Contreras can be seen letting himself into the home after he is told by someone inside to “come on in.” Contreras quickly exits after Warren begins to yell and advance towards him.
Warren can be seen outside a residence advancing toward the officer in the front yard and ignoring verbal commands for him to lie down. After the officer steps backward and continues to issue warnings, like “You’re gonna get tased,” he uses his taser.
Warren initially falls down but then stands back up and continues to push toward the officer. Contreras uses the taser again, but Warren keeps advancing and Contreras deploys his firearm.
Warren, who was 52, was transported to a hospital and succumbed to his injures.
Family lawyer calls it ‘one of the worst officer-involved shootings that I’ve seen’
The family’s lawyer, Lee Merritt, has called for the officer to be fired. “This is one of the worst officer-involved shootings that I’ve seen,” Merritt told reporters earlier this week after the body camera footage was released, according to KWTX.
Merritt did not return calls from CNN Thursday and Friday after the footage was released.
Contreras, a five-year veteran of the department, is on administrative leave, according to the Killeen Police Department. An investigation is underway by the Texas Rangers, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Bell County District Attorney Henry Garza directed all inquiries to the Texas Rangers.
Police Chief Charles Kimble said this week that Contreras did everything he could to use non-lethal force against Warren before he deployed his firearm.
“I don’t see where he could have done anything else. I saw an officer try to handle a call, de-escalate a call,” Kimble told reporters on Tuesday.
“Given the same set of circumstances, I just don’t know what else we could do,” he added.
Kimble said Contreras had more than the minimum amount of mandated training, but he said the police department was looking at ways to better address psychiatric calls.
On Saturday, January 9, one day before the shooting, the county sent a mental health deputy to Warren’s house. Merritt previously told CNN that the meeting with the county deputy went well. Warren voluntarily went with that deputy to the hospital that night but declined to stay at the hospital for further treatment.
When the family called for another mental health check the next day, a police officer was dispatched. According to Merritt, the family wanted a mental health deputy again, rather than a police officer.
Asked why a police officer was deployed on Sunday, Kimble said the call taker raised concerns about what they heard on the call from the family.
“It was a call for a psychiatric person,” Kimble said. “But as the call taker was listening to the caller, if certain things are said, or certain things are heard, then it prompts a different response…It prompted a police response, and it prompted a response from fire and medics who were standing by.”
CNN has reached out to the Killeen Police Employee Association for comment but has not yet heard back.
Dave Chappelle has canceled performances scheduled at Stubbs in Austin, Texas after testing positive for COVID-19, TMZ reports and Chappelle’s representative confirmed to Pitchfork. The canceled dates were among a handful the comedian had booked through this weekend. He had already performed the first of the Austin gigs on Wednesday. Tickets are being refunded.
“Chappelle has safely conducted socially-distanced shows in Ohio since June 2020 and he moved those shows to Austin during the winter,” a statement from Chappelle’s representative reads. “Chappelle implemented COVID-19 protocols which included rapid testing for the audience and daily testing for himself and his team. His diligent testing enabled him to immediately respond by quarantining, thus mitigating the spread of the virus. Chappelle is asymptomatic.”
Chappelle began hosting outdoor, socially distanced performances in his current home state of Ohio since June. His guests included Common, Tiffany Haddish, John Mayer, and several others. After hosting a block party to celebrate the Fourth of July, Chappelle emceed the first post-election episode of Saturday Night Live at the beginning of November.
Earlier this week, Chappelle was photographed maskless with Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and Grimes. Grimes posted about her own recent experience with the virus on January 9.
Previous studies had suggested that being physically fit could mitigate the negative effects of being overweight on heart health, but this is not the case, according to a new study in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), published Thursday.
“One cannot be ‘fat but healthy.’ This was the first nationwide analysis to show that being regularly active is not likely to eliminate the detrimental health effects of excess body fat,” said study author Alejandro Lucia, a professor of exercise physiology at the European University of Madrid.
“Our findings refute the notion that a physically active lifestyle can completely negate the deleterious effects of overweight and obesity.”
Previous research provided some evidence that people who were “fat but fit” could have similar cardiovascular health to those who were “thin but unfit,” but Lucia said this has had unintended consequences.
“This has led to controversial proposals for health policies to prioritise physical activity and fitness above weight loss,” he said. “Our study sought to clarify the links between activity, body weight, and heart health.”
Researchers used data from 527,662 working adults from Spain insured by an occupational risk prevention company, with an average age of 42.
They were put into groups according to activity level and groups by body weight: 42% of participants were normal weight, with a body mass index (BMI) of 20-24.9; 41% were overweight, BMI 25-29.9; and 18% were obese, BMI 30 or above.
Then researchers looked at their cardiovascular health by categorizing them for diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, all of which are major risk factors for stroke and heart attack.
After investigating the associations between BMI, activity level and risk factors, researchers concluded that any level of activity meant it was less likely that an individual would have any of the three risk factors compared with no exercise, with the risk of high blood pressure and diabetes decreasing with increased activity levels.
“This tells us that everyone, irrespective of their body weight, should be physically active to safeguard their health,” Lucia said.
However, the study showed greater cardiovascular risk for overweight and obese participants compared with those of a normal weight, regardless of how much exercise they did.
Participants who were obese and active were twice as likely to have high cholesterol, four times as likely to have diabetes and five times as likely to have high blood pressure as those who were normal weight but inactive.
“Exercise does not seem to compensate for the negative effects of excess weight,” Lucia said. “This finding was also observed overall in both men and women when they were analysed separately.”
Lucia underlined that it is “equally important” to fight obesity and inactivity.
“Weight loss should remain a primary target for health policies together with promoting active lifestyles,” he said.
‘We don’t know what came first’
Questions remain, however, around the circumstances of those involved in the study.
“This is a cross sectional study — all we can talk about is associations, we cannot talk about causality,” Michael Pencina, vice dean for data science and information technology at Duke University School of Medicine, told CNN.
“Because it’s a cross sectional study, we don’t know what came first — what this study is not telling us is, did the person who is obese and active, did they become active when they realized they were obese, and their risk factors were high? Or were they active, and despite that, they became obese and their risk factors went up?” Pencina, who was not involved with the study, added.
“What we see is that the risk factor burden increases by weight category. Obese people have the highest burden of associated risk factors. That remains true according to the activity level,” he added.
The study adds to an extensive body of research on the topic.
Scientists at the University of Oxford released results of a large study on January 12. Physical exercise may be even more important for the prevention of cardiovascular disease than previously known — and the more activity the better, the report revealed.
And researchers at the Cleveland Clinic published a study in January 2019 showing a sedentary lifestyle is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes or heart disease.
“While the controversy about the precise contribution of weight versus exercise to cardiovascular health will likely continue, to optimize health and minimize the risk of cardiovascular disease, patients should pay attention to both: maintaining a healthy weight and being physically active,” said Dr. Anthony Rosenzweig, chief of the cardiology division at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
