Chinese scientists released this image of a cotton plant germinating in its tank on the moon aboard the Chang’e 4 lander. The photograph was taken Jan. 7, 2019.
That makes it the first truly otherworldly plant in history. Astronauts onboard the International Space Station regularly tend plants to study how growth changes in microgravity (and to diversify astronaut diets in space), and plants and seeds have orbited Earth on and off throughout spaceflight history. But the closest that terrestrial vegetation has come to the moon before now was in 1971, when Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa carried hundreds of tree seeds to orbit the moon with him. Many of these seeds were later planted back on Earth, becoming “Moon Trees.”
In addition to cotton, the Chinese moon capsule also includes seeds to grow potatoes and a common lab plant called Arabidopsis, neither of which have sprouted so far. And even the cotton plant is looking pretty peaky compared to seedlings in a control setup the scientists established on Earth.
An image of the Chinese biology experimental capsule now on the far side of the moon aboard the Chang’e 4 lander.
Credit: Chongqing University
It’s not particularly surprising that the moon seeds are struggling, since they’ve been through a lot — the drama of launch, uncomfortable temperature swings, low gravity and high radiation.
The capsule and its seeds are stored on the Chang’e 4 lander, which is perched inside Von Kármán Crater on the far side of the moon. The lander is accompanied by the Yutu 2 rover, which has left its grounded counterpart to explore the neighborhood. Both robots are currently experiencing their first long, cold night on the moon, when daytime and nighttime each last about two Earth weeks.
The image above might suggest someone dropped a small planet in the middle of the Presumpscot River in Westbrook, Maine, but (shocker) that’s not the case. It’s actually a big disk made of ice that’s slowly rotating in place.
It would be reasonable to think the river’s current is propelling that rotation, but research suggests the object may be spinning all on its own. Giant disks like this form not infrequently during the cold winter months, and in 2016 some physicists decided to get to the bottom of the phenomenon. The group created a miniature ice disk and floated it in a tank, where they determined that the rotational force was generated by a vortex that formed beneath the disk. Water, you see, is at its most dense at 4°C (that’s 39.2°F). As the ice of the disk cools down the fluid surrounding it, that water reaches the four-degree mark and sinks. It flows down and horizontally, creating a swirling vortex. And the larger the temperature gradient—meaning the warmer the river water is compared to the frozen disk—the faster the cooling water will sink. That means the disk spins faster, too. it’ll spin because the cooling water will sink faster.
That also means spinning disks like this wouldn’t necessarily happen in any body of water. Some lakes may already be at 39.2°F or colder when water starts freezing, which means the cooled water next to the ice wouldn’t sink at all, and thus there wouldn’t be a vortex to rotate the disk.
We can all agree that the science behind this photo is the coolest thing about it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy watching this drone footage of the disk set to almost-over-the-top dramatic music:
via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now http://bit.ly/2k2uJQn
Real-time ray tracing on Battlefield V was pretty impressive when it came out in November 2018, but GeForce RTX series cards took a pretty big performance hit when turning on this new feature. The good news is that in December 2018 a patch for Battlefield V along with the latest GeForce drivers were able to improve DXR performance by up to 50% in some instances. This massive performance improvement was achieved when NVIDIA worked alongside EA and DICE to optimize DXR Ray Tracing in Battlefield V. No changes were done to the DXR quality levels, but rather the number of rays that are included in each scene as the ray tracing levels are increased. Variable rate ray tracing was also enabled, so surfaces that usually get reflections can be better targeted.
“GeForce RTX 2080 Ti users will now be able to play at over 60 FPS at 2560×1440 with DXR Raytraced Reflections set to Ultra. GeForce RTX 2080 users will be able to play at over 60 FPS at 2560×1440 with Medium DXR Raytraced Reflections. And GeForce RTX 2070 users will be able to play at over 60 FPS at 1920×1080 with Medium DXR Raytraced Reflections.” – NVIDIA PR
According to NVIDIA, you’ll be able to play at over 60 FPS on most RTX series cards at 1080P with DXR enabled. This is great news and something we experienced back in November 2018 when we used the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti to look at performance in BFV. We wanted to re-test the GeForce RTX series back in December 2018, but we got busy with the holidays and then the RTX 2060 arrived and took priority. Now that Legit Reviews made it back from CES 2019 we were able to re-test Battlefield V on the GeForce RTX 2060, 2070, 2080 and 2080 Ti at various DXR settings.
The exact cards that we will be using today:
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition ($1199)
To try out DXR in Battlefield V we turned to our GPU test system that is comprised of an Intel Core i7-8086K processor running on a Gigbyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard with 32GB of G.Skill DDR4-3200 RGB memory. All testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro v1809 with GeForce 417.54 video card drivers. All testing was done over January 12-13th, 2019 and all Battlefield V and Windows updates were applied.
Our test system has an Acer Predator X27 27-inch 4K UHD IPS monitor with NVIDIA G-Sync HDR and a 144Hz refresh rate ($1799.99 shipped), so we enabled High Dynamic Range (HDR) as well as DXR and set the graphics quality to Ultra. The frame rate limiter to 200 and Vertical Sync was disabled.
We then went down to the DXR Raytrace Reflections Quality setting and tested out the cards at low, medium, high and ultra DXR settings.
When we started doing out testing we noticed that the difference in performance between low/medium and high/ultra was minimal. Therefore, we will be focusing on low and ultra DXR settings for the rest of the article to keep things simple. Low is important to talk about as that is the starting point for real-time ray tracing and ultra should most certainly be looked at as that is as good as DXR gets.
Battlefield V at 1920 x 1080 is fairly forgiving to the latest GeForce RTX 20 series cards. With DXR disabled and the image quality set to ultra, we were able to average over 110 FPS on the four current cards. With DXR enabled and set to ‘low’ we found once again that we were able to average over 60 FPS on all of the models. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB GDDR6 Founders Edition model was able to average 68.9 FPS. With the DXR cranked up to ‘Ultra’ all of the cards took a decent performance hit and the RTX 2060 dipped below 60 FPS on average, but it was still averaging a respectable 56.6 FPS.
Back in November 2018 we were getting 87.7 FPS on the RTX 2080 Ti with DXR set to ‘low’ and now we are getting 94.7 FPS. So, we are seeing an 8% performance improvement with NVIDIA’s flagship RTX series card with the changes.
With the display resolution cranked up to 2560 x 1440 we found Battlefield V to be more than playable on the entire GeForce RTX series. Even the new entry-level RTX card, the RTX 2060, was able to average almost 80 FPS with Ultra IQ settings and DXR turned off. Once you enable DXR ‘Low’ we found the GeForce RTX 2060 FE dropped down to 45 FPS on average and the gaming experience wasn’t great. You’ll need a GeForce RTX 2070 or better to have an enjoyable real-time ray tracing gaming experience at 1440P. With the DXR set to ‘Ultra’ only the mighty RTX 2080 Ti could average over 60 FPS and deliver a good gaming experience with everything cranked up in Battlefield V.
Back in November 2018 we were getting 70.7 FPS on the RTX 2080 Ti with DXR set to ‘low’ and now we are getting 79.8 FPS. So, we are seeing a nice 13% performance improvement with the optimizations.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions:
The performance optimizations in Battlefield V are much welcomed and we saw an 8-13% performance improvement on the GeForec RTX 2080 Ti FE with ‘low’ ray-tracing settings. This is the first time that we have looked at all of the RTX 20 series cards in Battlefield V and we are pretty impressed with the performance. The new GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition card with 6GB of GDDR6 was able to average at nearly 70 FPS (1080p) with DXR enabled at its base setting. The game looked great and it just goes to show that a $349 graphics card can utilize the latest features.
via Legit Reviews Hardware Articles http://bit.ly/2BUcaU4
Microsoft and Walgreens announced today that they will be teaming up to help improve health care. The companies have entered into a seven-year agreement during which Walgreens plans to migrate most of its IT infrastructure over to Microsoft’s Azure cloud services. Microsoft is also providing Microsoft 365, a package of Windows 10 and Microsoft Office, to the 380,000 employees working at Walgreens stores around the world.
The two companies have set a vague goal to “transform health care delivery,” though the details on how they will achieve it are mostly vague. It mostly boils down to making data more accessible. The companies believe they can make information more readily available, it will enable more solutions that don’t require going to the doctor. That may take the form of virtual care or may be as simple as using a connected device to remind a person to take their medication each day. Essentially, it’s the simple stuff that can reduce emergency room visits and decrease instances of readmissions at hospitals.
Microsoft and Walgreens also have committed to a multi-year research and development investment to “build health care solutions, improve health outcomes and lower the cost of care.” They also plan on exploring the possibility of creating innovation centers, though didn’t go into detail on what those centers will do.
Microsoft’s move into health care follows Amazon’s major push into the field. Last year, the retail giant a partnered up with JPMorgan and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to work toward tackling growing expenses associated with health care. Amazon also reportedly launched new software tools for medical centers that can mine for medical records to help cut costs.
Netflix, the video streaming service no one can seem to quit despite its increasingly poor collection of titles, is about to hike up its prices.
Customers can expect a $1 to $2-per-month rise, depending on their plan of choice. Basic plans will go from $8 to $9; the next highest tier, which includes high-def streaming and multiple devices, will jump from $11 to $13; and the one absolutely no one pays for will cost $16 each month instead of $14—making it even more costly than HBO Now.
CNBC reports the changes will hit current subscribers within the next three months, while new subscribers get to cough up the extra buck or two immediately.
This is another reason to consider if it’s worth over $100 a year to half-heartedly leave Zumbo’s Just Desserts on for hours at a time.
