schwit1 shares a report from the Kathmandu Post: In Nepal, helicopter rescue on high altitude is, by any measure, a genuine lifesaving operation. At high altitude, where oxygen thins and weather changes without warning, the ability to airlift a stricken trekker to Kathmandu within hours has saved countless lives. But threaded through that legitimate system, exploiting its urgency, its opacity, and its distance from oversight, is one of the most sophisticated insurance fraud networks in the world. Nepal's fake rescue scam is not new. The Kathmandu Post first exposed it in 2018. Months later, the government convened a fact-finding committee, produced a 700-page report, and announced reforms. In February 2019, The Kathmandu Post published a long investigative report. Last year, Nepal Police's Central Investigation Bureau reopened the file, and what they found is that the fraud did not stop -- instead it was growing.

The mechanics of the fake rescue racket are straightforward: stage a medical emergency, call in a helicopter, check a tourist into a hospital, and file an insurance claim that bears little resemblance to what actually happened. But the sophistication lies in how each link in the chain is compensated, and how difficult it is for a foreign insurer -- operating from Australia and the United Kingdom -- to verify events that occurred at 3,000 metres in a remote Himalayan valley. The CIB investigation identifies two primary methods for manufacturing an "emergency." The first involves tourists who simply don't want to walk back. After completing a demanding trek -- an Everest Base Camp trek, for instance, can take up to two weeks on foot -- guides offer an alternative: pretend to be sick, and a helicopter will come. The guide handles the rest. The second method is more troubling. At altitudes above 3,000 meters, mild symptoms of altitude sickness are common. Blood oxygen saturation can drop, hands and feet tingle, headaches develop. In most cases, rest, hydration or a gradual descent is all that is needed. But guides and hotel staff, according to the CIB investigation, have been trained to terrify trekkers at precisely this moment. They tell them they are at risk of dying, that only immediate evacuation will save them. In some cases, investigators found that Diamox (Acetazolamide) tablets, used to prevent altitude sickness, were administered alongside excessive water intake to induce the very symptoms that would justify a rescue call.

In at least one case cited in the investigation, baking powder was mixed into food to make tourists physically unwell. Once a "rescue" is called, the financial choreography begins. A single helicopter carries multiple passengers. But separate, full-price invoices are submitted to each passenger's insurance company, as if each had their own dedicated flight. A $4,000 charter becomes a $12,000 claim. Fake flight manifests and load sheets are fabricated. At the hospital, medical officers prepare discharge summaries using the digital signatures of senior doctors who were never involved in the case. In some cases, these are done without those doctors' knowledge. Fake admission records are created for tourists who were, in some documented instances, drinking beer in the hospital cafeteria at the time they were supposedly receiving treatment. In one case, an office assistant at Shreedhi Hospital admitted that he had provided his own X-ray report taken about a year ago at a different hospital, to be used as a case for treatment of foreign trekkers to claim insurance. The commission structure that holds the network together was described in detail during police interrogations. Hospitals pay 20 to 25 percent of the insurance payment to trekking companies and a further 20 to 25 percent to helicopter rescue operators in exchange for patient referrals. Trekking guides and their companies benefit from inflated invoices. In some cases, tourists themselves are offered cash incentives to participate.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Iran-linked hackers have broken into FBI Director Kash Patel's personal email inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday. On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel "will now find his name among the list of successfully hacked victims." The hackers published a series of personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible, and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum.

The FBI confirmed that Patel's emails had been targeted. In a statement, bureau spokesman Ben Williamson said, "we have taken all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks associated with this activity" and that the data involved was "historical in nature and involves no government information." Handala, which presents itself as a group of pro-Palestinian vigilante hackers, is considered by Western researchers to be one of several personas used by Iranian government cyberintelligence units. [...] Alongside the photographs of Patel, the hackers published a sample of more than 300 emails, which appear to show a mix of personal and work correspondence dating between 2010 and 2019.

Walmart has secured patents for systems that use machine learning to forecast demand and automate pricing decisions, "pushing the U.S. retail behemoth into a debate over the use of algorithms to adjust product costs," reports the Financial Times. From the report: In January Walmart obtained a U.S. patent for a "system and method for dynamically and automatically updating item prices" to carry out markdowns in its ecommerce unit, a rapidly growing division that generated more than $150 billion in sales last year. Last week it received another patent for using machine learning to predict demand and recommend prices for goods. [...] Walmart said that both patents were "unrelated to dynamic pricing," as the patent issued in January was specific to markdowns and last week's patent was designed for merchant teams to make decisions, not the technology.

The patent granted in January involves an "end-to-end price markdown system" for ecommerce platforms such as Walmart.com based on data including predicted demand and consumers' price sensitivity. Last week's approved patent outlines ways to forecast demand and set prices at levels that will move stock over periods such as a week, a month or a quarter. "Example categories may include, for example, a food item, outdoor equipment, clothing, housewares, toys, workout equipment, vegetables, spices," according to the filing. The "demand forecasting and price recommendation" tool envisaged in the patent would incorporate sources including purchases, prices, methods of payment and customer ID, such as a passport or driver's license number. "Dynamic pricing or anything that smells like it is playing with fire," said Matt Hamory, a grocery industry consultant at AlixPartners, who cited "the goodwill that you can lose by getting customers to think or suspect or worry even slightly that you are doing things with pricing that are to your benefit and their detriment."

"Within 24 hours of the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, ships in the region's waters found their navigation systems had gone haywire," reports CNN, "erroneously indicating that the vessels were at airports, a nuclear power plant and on Iranian land.

"The location confusion was a result of widespread jamming and spoofing of signals from global positioning satellite systems." Used by all sides in conflict zones to disrupt the paths of drones and missiles, the process involves militaries and affiliated groups intentionally broadcasting high-intensity radio signals in the same frequency bands used by navigation tools. Jamming results in the disruption of a vehicle's satellite-based positioning while spoofing leads to navigation systems reporting a false location. Though commercial vessels are not the target, the electronic interference disrupted the navigation systems of more than 1,100 commercial ships in UAE, Qatari, Omani and Iranian waters on February 28, according to a report from Windward, a shipping intelligence firm. Jamming and spoofing also slowed marine traffic moving through the Strait of Hormuz, a congested shipping lane that handles roughly 20% of the world's oil and gas exports and where precise navigation is essential, Windward's data showed.... Daily incidents have more than doubled, rising from 350 when the conflict began to 672 by March 2, the firm reported.

As use of this warfare tactic grows, experts worry the impacts could reach far beyond battlespaces.... In June 2025, electronic interference with navigation systems was thought to be a factor in the collision between two oil tankers, Adalynn and Front Eagle, off the coast of the UAE... The number of global positioning system signal loss events affecting aircraft increased by 220% between 2021 and 2024, according to data from the International Air Transport Association. Last year, IATA said that the aviation industry must act to stay ahead of the threat.

Cockpits are seeing their navigation displays "literally drift away from reality," said a commercial pilot, who didn't want to be identified because he was not permitted to speak publicly. He said that he and his colleagues have experienced map shifts, where the aircraft location appears to move up to 1 mile away from the actual flight path, false altitude information that leads to phantom "pull up" commands, and systems suggesting an aircraft was on a taxiway, a path that connects runways with various airport facilities, when taking off. These incidents force pilots to rely on manual actions that increase workload, often during the most exhausting points of long-haul flights, he said.
"Alternative navigational tools that don't rely on GPS, but instead harness quantum technology, are also in development," the article points out, "but remain a long way off operational use."

"Reservation holders, it's finally time to get ready," writes long-time Slashdot reader AirHog. The EV news site Electrek reports: Aptera Motors, "the little startup that could," announced another important milestone... completing the first example of its flagship solar EV on its validation assembly line in Southern California...

While the validation line at its headquarters remains a low-volume assembly process, its successful operation represents the startup's transition from hand-built validation SEVs to a more structured assembly line process that will be fine-tuned for mass production... With low-volume assembly now being validated, Aptera is starting to publicly utter encouraging terms like "EPA certification" and, better yet, that holy grail of "initial customer deliveries." Before then, however, the Aptera Solar EVs built on this low-volume validation line will be used for testing programs such as thermal validation, brake performance, and "some destructive testing." Aptera shared that its assembly and integration team has grown to become the largest at the startup, "reflecting the beginning of its transition from engineering development to testing and production execution"...

As of March 2026, Aptera says it has over 50,000 reservations totaling over $2 billion in sales if all were to solidify following the launch of a deliverable vehicle.
Clean Technica notes the vehicles' "generous cargo space that comes out to 60% more storage than a Honda Accord and 20% more storage than a Prius, according to the company." "Built with recyclable materials, this eco-friendly vehicle features a lightweight carbon fiber structure and no-welding assembly for maximum cost and production efficiency," Aptera adds. The emphasis on lightweighting supports the goal of engineering a car that can travel on the electricity provided by its onboard solar panels.

The company currently advertises that the vehicle can travel 40 miles on solar power alone, with the battery providing extra juice as needed. Ideally, the car can keep recharging itself with sunlight, further elongating the time between charging sessions... [Its range is up to 1,000 miles with plug-in charging.] The new autocycle could also appeal to drivers who enjoy the challenge of hypermiling, which involves deploying a suite of driving techniques to minimize fuel consumption. Hypermiling can apply to gas-powered cars, but the magic really kicks in with the regenerative braking capability of EVs. Aptera's onboard solar panels add another dimension to the fun.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Last July, as Microsoft pledged $4 billion to advance AI education in K-12 schools, Microsoft President Brad Smith told nonprofit Code.org CEO/Founder Hadi Partovi it was time to "switch hats" from coding to AI. He added that "the last 12 years have been about the Hour of Code, but the future involves the Hour of AI." On Friday, Code.org announced leadership changes to make it so.

"I am thrilled to announce that Karim Meghji will be stepping into the role of President & CEO," Partovi wrote on LinkedIn. "Having worked closely with Karim over the last 3.5 years as our CPO, I have complete confidence that he possesses the perfect balance of historical context and 'founder-level' energy to lead us into an AI-centric future."

In a separate LinkedIn post, Code.org co-founder Cameron Wilson explained why he was transitioning to an executive advisor role. "Our community is entering a new chapter as AI changes and upends computer science as a discipline and society at large. Code.org's mission is still the same, however, we are starting a new chapter focused on ensuring students can thrive in the Age of AI. This new chapter will bring new opportunities, new problems to solve, and new communities to engage."

The Code.org leadership changes come just weeks after Code.org confirmed laid off about 14% of its staff, explaining it had "made the difficult decision to part ways with 18 colleagues as part of efforts to ensure our long-term sustainability." January also saw Code.org Chief Academic Officer Pat Yongpradit jump to Microsoft where he now helps "lead Microsoft's global strategy to put people first in an age of AI by shaping education and workforce policy" as a member of Microsoft's Global Education and Workforce Policy team.

Cord Cutters News reports: In a move that has delighted fans of classic science fiction, Warner Bros. Discovery has begun uploading full episodes of the iconic series Babylon 5 to YouTube, providing free access to the show just as it departs from the ad-supported streaming platform Tubi... Viewers noticed notifications on Tubi indicating that all five seasons would no longer be available after February 10, 2026, effectively removing one of the most accessible free streaming options for the space opera. With this shift, Warner Bros. Discovery appears to be steering the property toward its own digital ecosystem, leveraging YouTube's vast audience to reintroduce the show to both longtime enthusiasts and a new generation.

The uploads started with the pilot episode, "The Gathering," which serves as the entry point to the series' intricate universe. This was followed by subsequent episodes such as "Midnight on the Firing Line" and "Soul Hunter," released in sequence to build narrative momentum. [Though episodes 2 and 3 are mis-labeled as #3 and #4...] The strategy involves posting one episode each week, allowing audiences to experience the story at a paced rhythm that mirrors the original broadcast schedule...

For Warner Bros. Discovery, this initiative could signal plans to expand the franchise's visibility, especially amid ongoing interest in reboots and spin-offs that have been rumored in recent years.
Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2014.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger offers this summary of the show "for those not in the know... In the mid-23rd century, the Earth Alliance space station Babylon Five, located in neutral territory, is a major focal point for political intrigue, racial tensions, and a major war as Earth descends into fascism and cuts off relations with its allies."

"A new variation of the fake recruiter campaign from North Korean threat actors is targeting JavaScript and Python developers with cryptocurrency-related tasks," reports the Register. Researchers at software supply-chain security company ReversingLabs say that the threat actor creates fake companies in the blockchain and crypto-trading sectors and publishes job offerings on various platforms, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit. Developers applying for the job are required to show their skills by running, debugging, and improving a given project. However, the attacker's purpose is to make the applicant run the code... [The campaign involves 192 malicious packages published in the npm and PyPi registries. The packages download a remote access trojan that can exfiltrate files, drop additional payloads, or execute arbitrary commands sent from a command-and-control server.]

In one case highlighted in the ReversingLabs report, a package named 'bigmathutils,' with 10,000 downloads, was benign until it reached version 1.1.0, which introduced malicious payloads. Shortly after, the threat actor removed the package, marking it as deprecated, likely to conceal the activity... The RAT checks whether the MetaMask cryptocurrency extension is installed on the victim's browser, a clear indication of its money-stealing goals...

ReversingLabs has found multiple variants written in JavaScript, Python, and VBS, showing an intention to cover all possible targets.
The campaign has been ongoing since at least May 2025...

Ars Technica's Benj Edwards reports: On Saturday, tech entrepreneur Siqi Chen released an open source plugin for Anthropic's Claude Code AI assistant that instructs the AI model to stop writing like an AI model. Called "Humanizer," the simple prompt plugin feeds Claude a list of 24 language and formatting patterns that Wikipedia editors have listed as chatbot giveaways. Chen published the plugin on GitHub, where it has picked up over 1,600 stars as of Monday. "It's really handy that Wikipedia went and collated a detailed list of 'signs of AI writing,'" Chen wrote on X. "So much so that you can just tell your LLM to... not do that."

The source material is a guide from WikiProject AI Cleanup, a group of Wikipedia editors who have been hunting AI-generated articles since late 2023. French Wikipedia editor Ilyas Lebleu founded the project. The volunteers have tagged over 500 articles for review and, in August 2025, published a formal list of the patterns they kept seeing.

Chen's tool is a "skill file" for Claude Code, Anthropic's terminal-based coding assistant, which involves a Markdown-formatted file that adds a list of written instructions (you can see them here) appended to the prompt fed into the large language model (LLM) that powers the assistant. Unlike a normal system prompt, for example, the skill information is formatted in a standardized way that Claude models are fine-tuned to interpret with more precision than a plain system prompt. (Custom skills require a paid Claude subscription with code execution turned on.)

But as with all AI prompts, language models don't always perfectly follow skill files, so does the Humanizer actually work? In our limited testing, Chen's skill file made the AI agent's output sound less precise and more casual, but it could have some drawbacks: it won't improve factuality and might harm coding ability. [...] Even with its drawbacks, it's ironic that one of the web's most referenced rule sets for detecting AI-assisted writing may help some people subvert it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta's Oversight Board is tackling a case focused on Meta's ability to permanently disable user accounts. Permanent bans are a drastic action, locking people out of their profiles, memories, friend connections, and, in the case of creators and businesses, their ability to market and communicate with fans and customers. This is the first time in the organization's five-year history as an oversight body that permanent account bans have been a subject of the Oversight Board's focus, the organization notes.

The case being reviewed isn't exactly one of an everyday user. Instead, the case involves a high-profile Instagram user who repeatedly violated Meta's Community Standards by posting visual threats of violence against a female journalist, anti-gay slurs against politicians, content depicting a sex act, allegations of misconduct against minorities, and more. The account had not accumulated enough strikes to be automatically disabled, but Meta made the decision to permanently ban the account. The Board's materials didn't name the account in question, but its recommendations could impact others who post content that targets public figures with abuse, harassment, and threats, as well as users who have their accounts permanently banned without receiving transparent explanations.

Meta referred this specific case to the Board, which included five posts made in the year before the account was permanently disabled. The Board says it's looking for input about several key issues: how permanent bans can be processed fairly, the effectiveness of its current tools to protect public figures and journalists from repeated abuse and threats of violence, the challenges of identifying off-platform content, whether punitive measures effectively shape online behaviors, and best practices for transparent reporting on account enforcement decisions. [...] Whether the Oversight Board has any real sway to address issues on Meta's platform continues to be debated, of course. [...] After the Oversight Board issues its policy recommendations to Meta, the company has 60 days to respond. The Board is also soliciting public comments on this topic. The report notes that Meta's Oversight Board is able to overturn individual moderation decisions and offer recommendations, but largely sidelined from major policy shifts driven by Mark Zuckerberg.

Netflix has begun asking filmmakers to adjust their storytelling approach to account for viewers who are scrolling through their phones while watching, according to Matt Damon. The traditional action movie formula involves three major set pieces distributed across the first, second, and third acts. Netflix now wants a large action sequence in the opening five minutes to hook viewers.

The streamer has also suggested that filmmakers reiterate plot points "three or four times in the dialogue" to accommodate distracted audiences, he said. "It's going to really start to infringe on how we're telling these stories," Damon said.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Monsanto's argument that federal pesticide law should shield it and parent company Bayer from tens of thousands of state lawsuits over Roundup since the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning label. The case could determine whether federal rules preempt state failure-to-warn claims without deciding whether glyphosate causes cancer. The Los Angeles Times reports: Some studies have found it is a likely carcinogen, and others concluded it does not pose a true cancer risk for humans. However, the court may free Monsanto and Bayer, its parent company, from legal claims from more than 100,000 plaintiffs who sued over their cancer diagnosis. The legal dispute involves whether the federal regulatory laws shield the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers.

[...] "EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide, does not cause cancer. EPA has consistently reached that conclusion after studying the extensive body of science on glyphosate for over five decades," the company told the court in its appeal. They said the EPA not only refused to add a cancer warning label to products with Roundup, but said it would be "misbranded" with such a warning.

Nonetheless, the "premise of this lawsuit, and the thousands like it, is that Missouri law requires Monsanto to include the precise warning that EPA rejects," they said. On Friday, the court said in a brief order that it would decide "whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning." The court is likely to hear arguments in the case of Monsanto vs. Durnell in April and issue a ruling by late June.

A researchers' propensity for risky projects is passed down to their doctoral students -- and stays with trainees after they leave the laboratory, according to an analysis of thousands of current and former PhD students and their mentors. From a report: Science involves taking risks, and some of the most impactful discoveries require taking big bets. However, scientists and policymakers have raised concerns that the current academic system's emphasis on short-term outcomes encourages researchers to play it safe. Studies have shown, for example, that risky research is less likely to be funded. Anders Brostrom, an economist studying science policy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and his colleagues decided to examine the role of doctoral education in shaping risk-related behaviour -- an area that Brostrom says has been largely overlooked.

"We often focus on thinking about how we can change the funding systems to make it more likely for people to take risks, but that's not the only lever we have," says Chiara Franzoni, an economist at the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy. This study is "refreshing" because "we've discussed policy interventions a lot, but we haven't discussed training," she adds. [...] The team found that students' risk-taking dispositions matched those of their supervisors. This link was stronger when students and their supervisors communicated frequently, and weaker when students were also mentored by scientists outside their lab.

"Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety," announced Michael Nicolls, Starlink's vice president of engineering: "We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM. Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways... Starlink satellites have extremely high reliability, with only 2 dead satellites in its fleet of over 9000 operational satellites. Nevertheless, if a satellite does fail on orbit, we want it to deorbit as quickly as possible. These actions will further improve the safety of the constellation, particularly with difficult to control risks such as uncoordinated maneuvers and launches by other satellite operators.
But orbits are being lowered for another reason (besides quick de-orbiting), notes Space.com. Within the next four years the period of least solar activity is expected, a period which coincides with decreased atmospheric density, Nicolls added, "which means the ballistic decay time at any given altitude increases." [Bringing the satellites lower] will mean a >80% reduction in ballistic decay time in solar minimum, or 4+ years reduced to a few months," Nicolls wrote in his X post. "Correspondingly, the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision...." The downward migration in 2026 involves roughly half of SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of nearly 9,400 operational spacecraft (though that number is always growing).

"If I get to do another Avatar film, it'll be because the business model still works," James Cameron tells CNN in a video interview — adding "That I can't guarantee, as I sit here today. That'll play out over the next month, really." He says theatre is a "sacred space," and while it will never go away, "I think that it could fall below a threshhold where the kinds of movies that I like to make and that I like to see... won't be sustainable, they won't be economically viable. And that can happen. We're very close to that right now."

The Wrap notes he filmed his new movie at the same time as its predecessor, The Way of Water." "We did all the performance capture in an 18-month period for both films. Then we did a lot of the virtual camera work to figure out exactly how we were going to do the live-action," Cameron explained. "Then we did all live-action together for both films. Then we split it and said, All right, now we just got to finish [movie] two....." While Cameron has been iffy about whether the previously announced fourth and fifth films will actually happen, he has already shot some of the fourth movie. "We're in a fluid scenario. Theatrical's contracting, streaming is expanding. People's habit patterns are changing. The teen demo consumes media differently than what we grew up with. And how much is it changing? Does theatrical contract to a point where it just stops right and doesn't get any smaller because we still value that, or does it continue to wither away?" Cameron said.
It's a theme he continued in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter" "This can be the last one. There's only one [unanswered question] in the story. We may find that the release of Avatar 3 proves how diminished the cinematic experience is these days, or we may find it proves the case that it's as strong as it ever was — but only for certain types of films. It's a coin toss right now. We won't know until the middle of January."

I ask something that might sound odd: What do you want to happen? But Cameron gets the implication. "That's an interesting question," he says. "I feel I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Do I want it to be a wild success — which almost compels me to continue and make two more Avatar movies? Or do I want it to fail just enough that I can justify doing somethingelse...?"

"What won't happen is, I won't go down the rabbit hole of exclusively making only Avatar for multiple years. I'm going to figure out another way that involves more collaboration. I'm not saying I'm going to step away as a director, but I'm going to pull back from being as hands-on with every tiny aspect of the process..." Cameron won't reveal his next project — and he might even be unsure himself — but will give intriguing hints. In addition to co-directing Billie Eilish's upcoming 3D concert documentary, Hit Me Hard and Soft, Cameron has another globe-trotting documentary adventure in the works, the details of which are under wraps. His next narrative film probably won't be Ghosts of Hiroshima, which has generated considerable press after Cameron acquired the rights to Charles Pellegrino's book chronicling the true story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who in 1945 survived the nuclear blasts at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cameron promised Yamaguchi on his deathbed in 2010 that he'd makethefilm. "The postapocalypse is not going to be the fun that it is in science fiction," he says. "It's not going to have mutants and monsters and all sorts of cool stuff. It's hell...."

Cameron first portrayed the apocalypse in his 1984 debut, The Terminator, a franchise he's quietly working on revisiting. "Once the dust clears on Avatar in a couple of months, I'm going to really plunge into that," he says. "There are a lot of narrative problems to solve. The biggest is how do I stay enough ahead of what's really happening to make it science fiction?" Asked whether he's cracked the premise, Cameron replies, "I'm working on it," but his sly smile suggests that he has.... There needs to be a broader interpretation of Terminator and the idea of a time war and super intelligence. I want to do new stuff that people aren't imagining."
Maybe Cameron's best response was what he told USA Today: "Let's do another interview in a year and then I'll tell you what my plans are," Cameron, 71, says with a grin. For now, he's still catching his breath.

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A new study adds to the growing body of evidence that swearing can help us unleash our inner strength, improving physical performance, it seems, by helping people break through certain psychological barriers. [...] [Psychology researcher Richard Stephens of Keele University in the UK] and his colleagues at Keele and the University of Alabama wanted to test whether swearing could not only improve physical performance, as they had done in previous research, but also see whether it does so by changing a person's psychology in the moment, especially when it comes to letting go of inhibitions.

Eighty-eight participants, aged 18 to 65, all in good enough shape to exert themselves physically, were recruited at a university campus to participate in the first experiment. They each selected a pair of words based on the following prompts: a swear word you might utter after bumping your head, and a neutral word you might use to describe a table. Then, they undertook a chair push-up, which involves sitting in a chair and, holding each side of the seat, using your arms to lift your entire body weight (bottom off the chair, feet off the floor). [...]

Both experiments suggested that swearing offers an advantage in physical performance, with participants achieving longer chair push-up hold times as they repeated their foul-mouthed mantras. Scores for positive emotion, humor, distraction, and novelty were also elevated in the swearing tests, which suggests invoking their favorite four-letter word might enable people to transition into more action-oriented states, and perhaps actually enjoy their workout more. The research is published in American Psychologist.

alternative_right quotes a report from Phys.org: To teach robots how to become tomato pickers, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga, Graduate School of Engineering, programmed them to evaluate the ease of harvesting for each tomato before attempting to pick it. Fujinaga's new model uses image recognition paired with statistical analysis to evaluate the optimal approach direction for each fruit. The system involves image processing/vision of the fruit, its stems, and whether it is concealed behind another part of the plant. These factors inform robot control decisions and help it choose the best approach.

The model represents a shift in focus from the traditional 'detection/recognition' model to what Fujinaga calls a 'harvest-ease estimation.' "This moves beyond simply asking 'can a robot pick a tomato?' to thinking about 'how likely is a successful pick?', which is more meaningful for real-world farming," he explained. When tested, Fujinaga's new model demonstrated an 81% success rate, far above predictions. Notably, about a quarter of the successes were tomatoes that were successfully harvested from the right or left side that had previously failed to be harvested by a front approach. This suggested that the robot changed its approach direction when it initially struggled to pick the fruit. "This is expected to usher in a new form of agriculture where robots and humans collaborate," said Fujinaga. "Robots will automatically harvest tomatoes that are easy to pick, while humans will handle the more challenging fruits."

The findings are published in Smart Agricultural Technology.

Europe's Airbus said on Friday it was ordering immediate repairs to 6,000 of its widely used A320 family of jets in a sweeping recall affecting more than half the global fleet, threatening upheaval during the busiest travel weekend of the year in the United States and disruption worldwide. From a report: The setback appears to be among the largest recalls affecting Airbus in its 55-year history and comes weeks after the A320 overtook the Boeing 737 as the most-delivered model. At the time Airbus issued its bulletin to the plane's more than 350 operators, some 3,000 A320-family jets were in the air.

The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple, but must be carried out before the planes can fly again, other than repositioning to repair centres, according to the bulletin to airlines seen by Reuters. Airlines from the United States to South America, Europe, India and New Zealand warned the repairs could potentially cause flight delays or cancellations.

The Washington Post reports: Scientists in Switzerland have created a robot the size of a grain of sand that is controlled by magnets and can deliver drugs to a precise location in the human body, a breakthrough aimed at reducing the severe side effects that stop many medicines from advancing in clinical trials... "I think surgeons are going to look at this," [said Bradley J. Nelson, an author of the paper in Science describing the discovery and a professor of robotics and intelligent systems at ETH Zurich]. I'm sure they're going to have a lot of ideas on how to use" the microrobot. The capsule, which is steered by magnets, might also be useful in treating aneurysms, very aggressive brain cancers, and abnormal connections between arteries and veins known as arteriovenous malformations, Nelson said. The capsules have been tested successfully in pigs, which have similar vasculature to humans, and in silicone models of the blood vessels in humans and animals... Nelson said drug-ferrying microrobots of this kind may be three to five years from being tested in clinical trials. The problem faced by many drugs under development is that they spread throughout the body instead of going only to the area in need... A major cause of side effects in patients is medications traveling to parts of the body that don't need them. The capsules developed in Switzerland, however, can be maneuvered into precise locations by a surgeon using a tool not that different from a PlayStation controller. The navigation system involves six electromagnetic coils positioned around the patient, each about 8 to 10 inches in diameter... The capsules are made of materials that have been found safe for people in other medical tools...

When the capsule reaches its destination in the body, "we can trigger the capsule to dissolve," Nelson said.

Authorities in Iran have sprayed clouds with chemicals to induce rain, in an attempt to combat the country's worst drought in decades. From a report: Known as cloud-seeding, the process was conducted over the Urmia lake basin on Saturday, Iran's official news agency Irna reported. Urmia is Iran's largest lake, but has largely dried out leaving a vast salt bed. Further operations will be carried out in east and west Azerbaijan, the agency said.

Rainfall is at record lows and reservoirs are nearly empty. Last week President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that if there is not enough rainfall soon, Tehran's water supply could be rationed and people may be evacuated from the capital. Cloud seeding involves injecting chemical salts including silver or potassium iodide into clouds via aircraft or through generators on the ground. Water vapour can then condense more easily and turn into rain. The technique has been around for decades, and the UAE has used it in recent years to help address water shortages. Iran's meteorological organisation said rainfall had decreased by about 89% this year compared with the long-term average, Irna reported.