95 articles from FRIDAY 21.10.2022

Designing the trajectory of microsatellite swarms from the macro-micro perspective

As an emerging multi-satellite cooperative flight mode, the microsatellite swarm has become an important future research issue for distributed space systems. It offers low cost, rapid response, and collaborative decision-making. To address the coordination of swarms for autonomous agents, a probabilistic guidance approach has been investigated, which contained sub-swarms with different mission...

Why being rude to the waiter (or other staff) is the worst strategy

After James Corden was accused of being ‘nasty’, psychologists explain why rudeness doesn’t payWhether it is clicking their fingers at the waiter, talking loudly on their phone or letting the kids go feral, there are few things as unappealing as a rude dining companion in a restaurant. But mistreating the staff is perhaps the cardinal sin of eating out, and has long been seen as indicative...

After 30 years -- new guidelines for weight-loss surgery

Authorities on bariatric and metabolic surgery have issued new evidence-based clinical guidelines that among a slew of recommendations expand patient eligibility for weight-loss surgery and endorse metabolic surgery for patients with type 2 diabetes beginning at a body mass index (BMI) of 30, a measure of body fat based on a person's height and weight and one of several important screening...

Tire particles can impact fresh water

Ever wonder what happens to the rubber tread that wears off a vehicle's tires? New modelling suggests an increasing amount of microplastics -- fragments from tires and roadways -- are ending up in lakes and streams.

Hubble Views a Turbulent Stellar Nursery

Portal origin URL: Hubble Views a Turbulent Stellar Nursery Portal origin nid: 483422Published: Friday, October 21, 2022 - 08:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: The lives of newborn stars are tempestuous, as this image of the Herbig-Haro objects HH 1 and HH 2 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts.Portal image: 2 wispy, light blue, gas...

The secret behind spectacular blooms in world's driest desert

The Atacama desert, which stretches for approximately 1,600 km along the western coast of the cone of South America, is the driest place on Earth. Some weather stations there have never recorded rainfall throughout their existence. But it's far from barren: many species live here that occur nowhere else, adapted to its extreme conditions.

Starlink signals can be reverse-engineered to work like GPS—whether SpaceX likes it or not

Todd Humphreys’s offer to SpaceX was simple. With a few software tweaks, its rapidly growing Starlink constellation could also offer ultra-precise position, navigation, and timing. The US Army, which funds Humphreys’s work at the University of Texas at Austin, wanted a backup to its venerable, and vulnerable, GPS system. Could Starlink fill that role? When the idea was first proposed in...

How reproductive technology is changing what it means to be a parent

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Hello, and welcome back to the Checkup! This week I found myself back in the classroom, sitting on a small plastic chair and carefully noting down what the teacher told me. It was my first parent’s evening. By coincidence, just a few days...