Enlarge / Four vector drawings show the five-slit spiral lock mechanism used by Mary, Queen of Scots; the front and back of a locked letter packet using this method; and an unfolded lock. Sections are numbered 1-20 to show the different areas created by folding. (credit: Unlocking History Research Group) On the eve of her […]
Enlarge / Intensive Care Unit nurse monitors patients in the ICU ward at Roseland Community Hospital on December 14, 2020, in Chicago, Illinois. (credit: Getty | Scott Olson) Illinois Representative Jonathan Carroll is scrapping his proposed legislation to make willfully unvaccinated people pay COVID-19 hospital bills out of pocket after he received violent threats that also […]
Enlarge / Eric Schmitt, Missouri Attorney General. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg ) As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rise sharply in Missouri, local health departments are abandoning efforts to stop the spread of the pandemic disease, saying their hands have been tied by the state’s attorney general and a recent court ruling. One local agency, the […]
Enlarge / The cockpit of the restored space shuttle motion simulator. (credit: Carl Brainerd) Every NASA astronaut who ever rode aboard the space shuttle, more than 350 of them, first sat in its full-motion simulator. And even though the simulator was firmly on the ground, anchored inside Building 5 at the Johnson Space Center, it […]
Enlarge / SpaceX launched NASA’s IXPE mission on a Falcon 9 first stage that had previously flown four times. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann / Ars Technica) Welcome to Edition 4.26 of the Rocket Report! Don’t look now, but we’re less than two weeks from the momentous launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope is […]
Enlarge / Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing, smirked his way through a Congressional hearing. (credit: CSPAN) A pharmaceutical company once owned by Martin Shkreli will pay up to $40 million in a settlement that will also finally end his infamous price-gouging scheme involving the antiparasitic drug Daraprim. The Federal Trade Commission and its state […]
Enlarge / A nurse in the ICU looks into a COVID patient’s room filled with flowers and balloons at CentraCare St. Cloud Hospital in St. Cloud, Minn., on Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. (credit: Getty | The Washington Post) The wave of COVID-19 driven by the hypertransmissible delta variant continues to rampage through the US, with […]
Enlarge / The Curta mechanical calculator. (credit: Getty Images) It’s no bigger than a drinking glass, and it fits easily in the palm of the hand. It resembles the pepper grinder—or perhaps a hand grenade. The diminutive “Curta” is a striking machine, a mechanical calculator that combines the complexity of a steamship engine and the […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty | Noam Galai ) The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use as a single booster dose in teens ages 16 and 17 . The particular authorization stands to expand access to boosters amid a crushing wave of delta transmission, fears over the looming omicron variant, […]
Enlarge / The mushroom cloud from the Soviet detonation of “Tsar Bomba” on October 30, 1961, was so large that the photographers had a hard time capturing its full dimensions. (credit: New York Times) The detonation of the first nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is seared into our collective memory, and […]