TechnologyRings

By Jane A. Flegal and Andrew Maynard/The Conversation October 22, 2017   Hollywood’s latest disaster flick, “Geostorm,” is premised on the idea that humans have figured out how to control the Earth’s climate. A powerful satellite-based technology allows users to fine-tune the weather, overcoming the ravages of climate change. Everyone, everywhere can quite literally “have a nice day,” until—spoiler alert!—things do not go as planned. Admittedly, the movie is a fantasy set in a deeply unrealistic near-future. But coming on the heels of one of the most extreme hurricane seasons in recent history, it’s tempting to imagine a world where we could regulate the weather. Despite a long history of interest in weather modification, controlling the climate is, to be frank, unattainable with current technology. But underneath the frippery of “Geostorm,” is there a valid message about the promises and perils of planetary management? Fiddling with our global climate The tec...

A flu shot does not guarantee you will be flu-free. You should get it anyway. Halfpoint via  Depositphotos You should get a flu shot. It’s not too late to get a flu shot. You can get the flu in every month of the year. It’s never too late to get a flu shot. Flu season—the time when our cases of the virus peak—lasts from around October through March, and it takes about two weeks for our bodies to develop all the antibodies we’ll reap from vaccination. So yes, in a perfect world, you’d have gotten your flu shot in October. “But that doesn’t mean it’s too late,” Mary Beth Griggs  wrote for  Popular Science  last February . “It’s not like all flu activity instantly ceases the second the clock strikes 12:01 on March 1.” “The CDC recommends that everyone over six months old get the flu shot. Infants are exempt because their immune systems haven’t fully developed, but the rest of you have no excuse. Yeah, even you,  lady with an egg allergy .” ...

The interstitium, a layer of tissue around our organs, has always been in the human body. Some scientists say it should be considered its own organ. Deposit Photos The human body is incredibly complicated, and it’s no surprise that we haven’t cracked every code that makes our fleshy forms run smoothly. Researchers are constantly finding new mechanisms by which our immune systems work, our cells function, and our muscles move. But far less often—if ever—do we hear that scientists have identified a new organ. But in a report out last week in the journal  Scientific Reports ,  doctors identified  what they think could be a previously unrecognized organ. The structure is a network of tissues which is found throughout the body, wrapping around the entire digestive tract,the lungs, and every artery and vein. The medical researchers dubbed the network the interstitium, and they argue should be deemed its own organ. Whether it will make the cut as a stand al...

WOMAN EATING SALAD Computer vision technology will help you find the best stock images of whatever strikes your fancy. Like the classic "woman eating salad." Freestockphotos.biz I’m picturing a bike next to a fence. It’s in a European city somewhere, with narrow cobblestone streets, and the fence is in front of an old-looking brick building. The bike is shiny and blue, with a basket, sort of old fashioned. You can’t see the sky, but you can tell it’s a somewhat sunny day. There’s no way I could possibly find a picture of a scene like this one on the Internet. Sure, I can type in keywords like “blue bike next to fence in Europe” and it will show me some results that are tangentially related if I’m lucky. My chances are slightly better if I happen to have such an image already at my disposal—that way, I can do a reverse image search and can crawl across sites not limited to English. But oftentimes the results will seem weird, with the wrong feeling or missing key com...