Sci-Tech

Scientists finally work out how Greenland sharks can live to 500 years old

Published

2 months ago

July 20, 2024

Experts think they have finally uncovered the secret of how Greenland sharks are able to live for so long.

The Greenland shark can live up to a mind blowing 500 years old, and it is hoped their longevity could hold the key to anti-ageing in humans.

Theories about their long lives have involved their super cold environment, as they inhabit Arctic and North Atlantic waters at depths of up to 8,684 feet (2,647 metres), and their minimal amount of movement.

Now, however, studies of the species suggest it could all be down to their constant metabolic activity.

New research was presented at the Society of Experimental Biology Conference and suggested that, unlike other animals, the metabolic rate of the Greenland shark doesn’t seem to change over time regardless of age.

Lead author Ewan Camplisson, a doctoral student at the University of Manchester, explained to Live Science: “This is important for us as it shows the sharks don’t show traditional signs of ageing.”

BBC

Metabolism refers to the chemical process by which enzymes break nutrients down into energy and use that energy for bodily repair. In most animals, metabolic rate decreases as we age, leading to a decrease in cell turnover, reduced energy production and slower repair.

As part of the study, muscle tissue was taken from 23 Greenland sharks. They were caught off the south coast of Disko Island in central Greenland and ranged in age from 60 to 200 years old, based on the length of their bodies.

Researchers then measured the activity of five enzymes in the tissue to determine each of the shark’s metabolic rates and were stunned to find that there was no difference across the ages.

“In most animals, you would anticipate seeing some enzymes have reduced activity over time as they degrade and become less efficient,” Camplisson explained.

But, for Greenland sharks, it seems that their stable metabolic rate means they do not degenerate in the same way other animals do, enabling them to have astonishing longevity.

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Sci-Tech

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says his arrest is ‘misguided’

Published

9 hours ago

September 6, 2024

Ali Abbas Ahmadi

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has hit out at French authorities, calling his arrest last week in relation to allegations of insufficient moderation on the messaging app “misguided”.

In his first public statement since he was detained, he denied claims that Telegram is “some sort of anarchic paradise” as “absolutely untrue”.

Mr Durov was arrested on 25 August at an airport north of Paris and has since been charged over suspected complicity in allowing illicit transactions, drug trafficking, fraud and the spread of child sex abuse images to flourish on his site.

In Mr Durov’s statement, which he published on Telegram, he said holding him responsible for crimes committed by third parties on the platform was both a “surprising” and “misguided approach”.

“If a country is unhappy with an Internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself,” the Russian-born billionaire, who is also a French national, said.

“Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.”

“Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools,” he added.

While he conceded that Telegram was not perfect, he said French authorities had several ways to get in touch with him and with Telegram, and that the app has an official representative in the EU.

“The claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue. We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day,” he insisted.

Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which critics have argued makes it easier for misinformation to spread, and for users to share conspiracist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic, or terror-related content.

Recently in the UK, the app has been scrutinised for hosting far-right channels that were instrumental in organising violent disorder in English cities last month.

Telegram did remove some groups, however cybersecurity experts say overall its system of moderating extremist and illegal content is significantly weaker than that of other social media companies and messenger apps.

In his statement on Thursday, Mr Durov admitted that an “abrupt increase” in the number of users on the messaging app – which he put at 950 million – had “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

He said he would aim to “significantly improve things in this regard”.

It comes after the BBC learned last week that Telegram has refused to join international programmes aimed at detecting and removing child abuse material online.

Pavel Durov, 39, was born in Russia and now lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based. He holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France.

Telegram, which he founded in 2013, is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states.

The app was banned in Russia in 2018, after a previous refusal by him to hand over user data. The ban was reversed in 2021.

Telegram is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.

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Sci-Tech

How airline seats became key tech products

Published

11 hours ago

September 5, 2024

Chris Baraniuk

It’s estimated that one third of the world’s airline seats are made in Northern Ireland

Chris Baraniuk Eoin Murray, operations manager at Thompson Aero Seating, stands next to a jig holding a partly assembled airline seat — It’s estimated that one third of the world’s airline seats are made in Northern Ireland

In a warehouse building in a quiet town in Northern Ireland, a robot arm is opening and closing an airplane meal table over and over again.

It has been programmed to carry out this mundane task no fewer than 28,000 times, day and night, for more than a week. And it won’t even get a bag of peanuts.

“We can measure the force that the robot’s having to apply to that,” says Gerald King, head of engineering at Thompson Aero Seating in Banbridge. “Is it increasing? Which means more friction.”

Thompson makes first class and business class seats – the expensive kind usually at the front of passenger aircraft, with their own privacy-simulating enclosures, built-in entertainment systems, and heaps of leg room.

The company has various machines for testing the longevity and safety of such seats. Including a new £7.5m facility, opened last autumn, where crash test dummies are strapped to a seat and shot down a short track at incredible speeds.

The idea is to ensure that the seat – and passenger – would survive a brief exposure to 16 g’s. It is the only facility of its kind on the island of Ireland.

Perhaps surprisingly, just under one third of the world’s aircraft seats are manufactured in Northern Ireland, according to Invest NI, an economic development agency. Thompson, which was bought by a Chinese company in 2016, is one of a few businesses in the region that specialise in this trade. The firm currently churns out roughly 1,500 seats per year.

Another major Northern Ireland-based supplier of seats is Collins Aerospace, in Kilkeel. There is also Alice Blue Aero, in Craigavon.

One of the largest seat manufacturing companies worldwide is Safran. It has facilities on six continents.

But, thanks to the pandemic, demand for aircraft seats has flip-flopped dramatically of late. When Covid-19 emerged, the aerospace manufacturing industry slowed to a crawl. Globally, companies laid off thousands of workers. Thompson, for one, cut its own workforce in half, and has faced financial losses running to many millions.

The world has at last opened up again, but seat manufacturers have not been able to find all the skilled workers they need, meaning that demand, globally speaking, is outstripping supply. It is a “very difficult situation”, Airbus’ chief executive said in June, referring to the slow supply of seats and other cabin parts.

“The industry lost that expertise, both in terms of direct, hands-on manufacturing, but also in terms of teaching younger people how to do the job,” explains Nick Cunningham, an analyst at Agency Partners who tracks the fortunes of another seat maker, Safran.

One of the problems, he adds, is that seat makers are finding it hard to get their seats tested and certified quickly by third-parties, since they are also facing labour shortages.

Testing and certifying airlines seats has held up production

Chris Baraniuk Crash test dummies sit on trolleys wearing orange jerseys. — Testing and certifying airlines seats has held up production

Thompson, however, can sidestep this problem with its in-house testing facilities, explains Colm McEvoy, vice president of corporate accounts. He says that the firm is able to meet its customers’ needs at present, though he adds, “We’re having to be very strategic with regards to the new customers.”

There are more than 650 people working at Thompson’s sites in Northern Ireland, but, at the time of writing, the company had more than a dozen job vacancies listed on its website. “We’re in competition with other manufacturing companies to try and secure the best talent,” says Mr McEvoy.

Despite this challenge, Thompson has a five-year plan to multiply its annual output of seats. Mr McEvoy shows me around the factory floor at the firm’s Portadown site, where workers are busy riveting aluminium seat parts together, and checking the complex wiring for the entertainment systems in these expensive structures – each seat costs “tens of thousands” to make, says Mr McEvoy.

“This seat in front of you is the most complex seat we make,” adds Eoin Murray, operations manager. It takes around 100 hours for the highly skilled workers here to assemble in full.

More Technology of Business

Mr Murray is determined to boost the rate of production on this factory floor. He shows off a jig, developed in-house, upon which a seat can be mounted and angled so that workers can easily access the sides or underside. “This allows us to hit like a rate 14,” says Mr Murray – 14 seats produced in one shift. “I need to get to 18. To 20,” he adds.

To that end, there’s another even more capable version of the jig in the room next door, a prototype that staff here hope will be even better. Mr Murray and his colleagues are also developing new working practices – such as utility belts with tools arranged in the sequence they are required.

If the worker is left-handed, that sequence can be reversed so that the process of picking a tool and carrying out a task with it is as rapid as possible.

Workers here rehearse and hone key stages of seat assembly, which helps them go faster. A bit like learning how to build the same piece of Ikea furniture over and over again until it becomes like muscle memory, I suggest – just a lot more complicated.

“We can seamlessly slot people in, and they can now work through these different stages with no computers,” says Mr Murray. “When I started working here, if you told me I would be working without a computer I’d have told you [that] you were crazy.”

More and more technology is going into airline seats

Chris Baraniuk A man holds a media controller, which looks a bit like a handheld games console. — More and more technology is going into airline seats

Besides volume, there is constant pressure to come up with new and better seat designs, says Mr McEvoy. Airlines want the latest and best entertainment technology, for example – 32 inch screens are now included in Thompson’s top seats.

“They’re striving for something different, something that makes them unique,” Mr McEvoy adds. Thompson uses leather and soft fabrics on selected parts of the seat and enclosure to provide a luxury feel, which is increasingly popular with airlines. The seats themselves can recline into two-metre long, fully flat beds.

One I try for myself is certainly comfortable – though I would probably have to lie in it for seven hours or so to test it properly, I think to myself.

“They’re good firms, very, very good firms – they know what they’re doing,” says Marisa Garcia, an aviation industry analyst who used to work in seat manufacturing herself, referring to the Northern Ireland-based companies who make aircraft seats. She has no commercial relationship with any of them, she adds.

Despite supply chain headaches, seat manufacturers are in a good position to clean up, if they prove themselves able to keep pace with industry requirements, says Ms Garcia: “The demand is there from passengers – and the demand is there from airlines.”

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Sci-Tech

Trump says Musk could head ‘government efficiency’ force

Published

14 hours ago

September 5, 2024

Kayla Epstein and Natalie Sherman

Donald Trump said he would enlist Elon Musk to run a “government efficiency commission” if he wins a second term as US president.

Speaking to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, Trump said the X owner had agreed to head a task force to conduct a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make “recommendations for drastic reforms.”

The two men have alluded to the idea for several weeks, but Thursday’s comments were Trump’s most direct indication yet that Mr Musk could play a role in his potential second administration.

“I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises,” Mr Musk posted on X Thursday morning. “No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.”

The two have not always seen eye-to-eye, but Mr Musk and Trump have recently forged a friendlier public relationship during the 2024 US presidential election.

The controversial tech billionaire endorsed the former president in July, after Trump was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania, and has said he is contributing money to a fundraising group that supports the Republican’s campaign.

“I think we need a government efficiency commission to say like, ‘Hey, where are we spending money that’s sensible. Where is it not sensible?’” Mr Musk said during an online conversation with Trump on 13 August, which he hosted on X. “We need to live within our means.”

A few days later, on 19 August, Mr Musk posted an apparently AI-generated image of himself at a podium labelled “Department of Government Efficiency” and declared in the caption, “I am willing to serve”.

Some internet users appreciated the hypothetical agency name as a joke, as the initials for the proposed task force spell “doge” – a long-running meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog which also inspired the name of a cryptocurrency.

But Trump has indicated he is serious about working with the outspoken SpaceX and Tesla boss should he retake the White House in November.

“When Elon started the conversation with the president, I think the president was very excited that somebody like Elon Musk is so dedicated to America’s future that he would be willing to be a part of something to help the government work more efficiently,” Trump campaign advisor Brian Hughes told CNBC.

The former president made his announcement in New York before a high-profile, members-only group of business leaders.

Founded in 1907, the Economics Club of New York has hosted speeches from figures such as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Trump last addressed the group in 2019, where he received a warm reception.

The former president mostly focused on the economy.

He repeated calls to cut taxes and regulation, open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and said he would raise tariffs to promote US manufacturing – at one point promising to restore auto industry employment to its peak decades ago.

He also proposed an especially low tax rate of 15% for companies that make products in the US, in contrast to the 20% general rate he proposed for companies. His opponent Kamala Harris has suggested a 28% rate.

Trump brushed off concerns that tax cuts might worsen the US budget deficit, saying the US would “make our money back on growth” and proposed creating a national investment fund with money collected from tariffs.

The audience was largely quiet, though many attendees clapped when Trump discussed Mr Musk’s endorsement.

During a question-and-answer session, Trump was asked if he would roll back sanctions to Russia, which he did not specifically address.

He did say, however, that he believes the Biden administration has used the tool too widely in general.

Trump said he prefers to use sanctions for short periods and “as little as possible”, so that countries are not encouraged to seek out international alternatives to the US financial system and the dollar.

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