Your wearable, be it an Apple Watch, Fitbit or other fitness tracker, can offer an early detection system for COVID-19, based on your heart rate variability (HRV). In a study at Mount Sinai, the researchers followed a group of 297 health professionals for about half a year and observed changes in heart rate that could indicate that someone has the coronavirus, a whole week before feeling sick. This would be particularly useful for asymptomatic people who can spread the virus and not look or feel bad.
A similar study by Stanford University with participants using trackers from Garmin, Fitbit, Apple and others found that 81 percent of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 also saw changes in their resting heart rate up to nine and a half days before symptoms. Some companies are even planning dedicated wearables for clinical environments to help treat and monitor COVID-19.
– Mat Smith
The IEA says that the sector’s emissions need to fall by more than 70% by 2030.
The COVID-19 pandemic has slowed the industry enough to create a small reduction in methane emissions, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The organization mainly attributed an approximately 10 percent drop in emissions from oil and gas companies to lower production amid reduced demand. However, it claimed that these operations still released more than 70 million tons (77 million tons) of methane into the atmosphere in 2020.
Agriculture remains the largest source of man-made methane emissions (about a quarter), followed by energy. According to the IEA, leaks in the natural gas value chain cause about 60% of industry emissions. These leaks are what the agency wants to address, suggesting that many could be corrected at no net cost after the sale of the retained methane. Keep reading.
But the service is not yet available.
A week after losing access to Amazon’s hosting servers, Parler’s website is back online, at least to a limited extent. For now, he hosts a message from CEO John Matze, saying, “We will resolve any challenges that lie ahead of us and we plan to welcome them back soon.”
According to CNN, Parler’s domain is currently registered with a DNS provider known to offer a safe haven for sites like 8chan and The Daily Stormer in the past. Putting a website online is just one of the challenges Parler needs to solve: without access to the App Store and Google Play, Parler users will not have an easy way to install the software on their phones. Keep reading.
It is lighter and more suitable for modern music production.
Last year, Korg announced a limited edition remake of the ARP 2600. Probably the most iconic synthesizer out there, it weighed around 30 kilos and would basically require its own table or desk. Therefore, Korg did its best to reduce the 2600, resulting in the ARP 2600 M. It is about half the size and weighs only 13 pounds, although it pushes the keyboard away to help gain weight.
It is not a 100% accurate recreation of the 1970s modular synthesizer, but Korg has expanded the feature set to make it work better in a modern music creation environment. It also has USB host features, so you can connect any USB MIDI controller if you need the keyboard back. Keep reading.
The discovery of the gravitational wave can help us understand the cosmos.
Scientists may have identified the gravitational waves that make up part of the universe’s backdrop, not just those from unusual events, such as black hole collisions. The NANOGrav research team found a “strong signal” that could represent the bottom of the gravitational wave. These are waves of mergers of supermassive black holes across the cosmos.
This is not a definitive result yet, but with more research, it can help to locate the sources of these waves and, perhaps, how these “hidden” forces shape the universe. Keep reading.