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are-you-a-workaholic?-here’s-how-to-spot-the-signs

Are you a workaholic? Here’s how to spot the signs

Science, syndication, workaholic / /

bad for business —

Psychologists now view an out-of-control compulsion to work as an addiction.

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Man works late in dimly lit cubicle amid a dark office space

An accountant who fills out spreadsheets at the beach, a dog groomer who always has time for one more client, a basketball player who shoots free throws to the point of exhaustion.

Every profession has its share of hard chargers and overachievers. But for some workers—perhaps more than ever in our always-on, always-connected world—the drive to send one more email, clip one more poodle, sink one more shot becomes all-consuming.

Workaholism is a common feature of the modern workplace. A recent review gauging its pervasiveness across occupational fields and cultures found that roughly 15 percent of workers qualify as workaholics. That adds up to millions of overextended employees around the world who don’t know when—or how, or why—to quit.

Whether driven by ambition, a penchant for perfectionism, or the small rush of completing a task, they work past any semblance of reason. A healthy work ethic can cross the line into an addiction, a shift with far-reaching consequences, says Toon Taris, a behavioral scientist and work researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

“Workaholism” is a word that gets thrown around loosely and sometimes glibly, says Taris, but the actual affliction is more common, more complex, and more dangerous than many people realize.

What workaholism is—and isn’t

Psychologists and employment researchers have tinkered with measures and definitions of workaholism for decades, and today the picture is coming into focus. In a major shift, workaholism is now viewed as an addiction with its own set of risk factors and consequences, says Taris, who, with occupational health scientist Jan de Jonge of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, explored the phenomenon in the 2024 Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior.

Taris stresses that the “workaholic” label doesn’t apply to people who put in long hours because they love their jobs. Those people are considered engaged workers, he says. “That’s fine. No problems there.” People who temporarily put themselves through the grinder to advance their careers or keep up on car or house payments don’t count, either. Workaholism is in a different category from capitalism.

The growing consensus is that true workaholism encompasses four dimensions: motivations, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, says Malissa Clark, an industrial/organizational psychologist at the University of Georgia in Athens. In 2020, Clark and colleagues proposed in the Journal of Applied Psychology  that, in sum, workaholism involves an inner compulsion to work, having persistent thoughts about work, experiencing negative feelings when not working, and working beyond what is reasonably expected.

Some personality types are especially likely to fall into the work trap. Perfectionists, extroverts, and people with type A (ambitious, aggressive, and impatient) personalities are prone to workaholism, Clark and coauthors found in a 2016 meta-analysis. They had expected people with low self-esteem to be at risk, but that link was nowhere to be found. Workaholics may put themselves through the wringer, but it’s not necessarily out of a sense of inadequacy or self-loathing.

Are you a workaholic? Here’s how to spot the signs Read More »

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It’s not just us: Other animals change their social habits in old age

animal behavior, animal psychology, Science, syndication / /

out to pasture —

Long-term studies reveal what elderly deer, sheep, and macaques are up to in their later years.

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A Rhesus macaque on a Buddhist stupa in the Swayambhunath temple complex in Kathmandu, Nepal

Enlarge / As female macaques age, the size of their social network shrinks.

Walnut was born on June 3, 1995, at the start of what would become an unusually hot summer, on an island called Rum (pronounced room), the largest of the Small Isles off the west coast of Scotland. We know this because since 1974, researchers have diligently recorded the births of red deer like her, and caught, weighed and marked every calf they could get their hands on—about 9 out of every 10.

Near the cottage in Kilmory on the northern side of the island where the researchers are based, there has been no hunting since the project began, which allowed the deer to relax and get used to human observers. Walnut was a regular there, grazing the invariably short-clipped grass in this popular spot. “She would always just be there in the group, with her sisters and their families,” says biologist Alison Morris, who has lived on Rum for more than 23 years and studies the deer year-round.

Walnut raised 14 offspring, the last one in 2013, when she was 18 years old. In her later years, Morris recalls, Walnut would spend most of her time away from the herd, usually with Vanity, another female (called a hind) of the same age who had never calved. “They were often seen affectionately grooming each other, and after Walnut died of old age in October 2016, at the age of 21—quite extraordinary for a hind—Vanity spent most of her time alone. She died two years later, at the grand age of 23.”

Are old hinds left behind?

Such a shift in social life is common in aging red deer females, says ecologist Gregory Albery, now at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, who spent months on the island studying the deer during his PhD training. (Males roam around more and associate less consistently with others, so they are harder to study.) “Older females tend to be observed in the company of fewer others. That was easy to establish,” he says. “The more difficult question to answer has been why we are seeing this pattern, and what it means.”

The first question one should ask, Albery says, is whether individual deer alter their behavior to associate with fewer others as they age, or whether individuals that associate with fewer others tend to live to an older age. This is the kind of question that many researchers are unable to answer when simply comparing individuals of different ages. But long-term studies like the one at Rum can do so through long-term tracking of populations. Forty times a year, the deer are censused by fieldworkers like Morris who recognize the deer on sight and meticulously note where they are and with whom.

When they accounted for the age and survival of the deer in their analysis, Albery and colleagues found that the link between age and number of associates remained solid: Social connections do, indeed, decrease as individuals age. Might this be because many of the older deer’s friends have died? On the contrary, Albery and colleagues found that older deer who had recently lost friends tended to hang out with others more often.

So why do old hinds have fewer contacts? Part of the explanation may be that they don’t range as widely as they grow older. Studying the deer for a couple of months would not have exposed this trend, says Albery: It was only revealed by tracking the same individuals through time. “Deer with a larger home range generally live longer,” he explains, so an analysis at any single point in time would show larger ranges for older deer and suggest that home ranges expand with age. Tracking individuals through time reveals the opposite is true. “Their home ranges decrease in size as they age,” Albery says.

It is unlikely that older deer move around less because they are concentrating on the core of their favorite habitat, says Albery. The center of their range shifts with age, and they are observed more often in taller and probably less nutritious vegetation, away from the most popular spots. This indicates there might be some kind of competitive exclusion going on: Perhaps more energetic, younger deer with offspring to feed are colonizing the best grazing patches.

On the other hand, older deer may also have different preferences. “Perhaps the longer grasses are easier to eat when your incisors are too worn to clip the short grass everyone else is after,” Albery says. Plus the deer don’t have to bend over as far to reach the longer grass.

A recent study by Albery and colleagues in Nature Ecology & Evolution  found that older deer reduce their contacts more than you’d expect if their shrinking range was the only cause. That suggests the behavior may have evolved for a reason—one that Albery prosaically summarizes as, “Deer shit where they eat.”

Gastrointestinal worms are rampant on the island. And though the deer do not get infected through direct contact with others, being at the same place at the same time probably does increase their risk of ingesting eggs or larvae in the still-warm droppings of one of their associates.

“Younger animals need to put themselves out there to make friends, but perhaps when you’re older and you already have some, the risk of disease just isn’t worth it,” says study coauthor Josh Firth, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Oxford.

In addition, says ecologist Daniel Nussey of the University of Edinburgh, another coauthor, “there are indications that the immune system of aging deer is less effective in suppressing worm infections, so they might be more likely to die from them.”

It’s not just us: Other animals change their social habits in old age Read More »

at-the-olympics,-ai-is-watching-you

At the Olympics, AI is watching you

2024 olympics, AI, AI surveillance, Biz & IT, Security, syndication / /

“It’s the eyes of the police multiplied” —

New system foreshadows a future where there are too many CCTV cameras for humans to physically watch.

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Police observe the Eiffel Tower from Trocadero ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Enlarge / Police observe the Eiffel Tower from Trocadero ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 22, 2024.

On the eve of the Olympics opening ceremony, Paris is a city swamped in security. Forty thousand barriers divide the French capital. Packs of police officers wearing stab vests patrol pretty, cobbled streets. The river Seine is out of bounds to anyone who has not already been vetted and issued a personal QR code. Khaki-clad soldiers, present since the 2015 terrorist attacks, linger near a canal-side boulangerie, wearing berets and clutching large guns to their chests.

French interior minister Gérald Darmanin has spent the past week justifying these measures as vigilance—not overkill. France is facing the “biggest security challenge any country has ever had to organize in a time of peace,” he told reporters on Tuesday. In an interview with weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, he explained that “potentially dangerous individuals” have been caught applying to work or volunteer at the Olympics, including 257 radical Islamists, 181 members of the far left, and 95 from the far right. Yesterday, he told French news broadcaster BFM that a Russian citizen had been arrested on suspicion of plotting “large scale” acts of “destabilization” during the Games.

Parisians are still grumbling about road closures and bike lanes that abruptly end without warning, while human rights groups are denouncing “unacceptable risks to fundamental rights.” For the Games, this is nothing new. Complaints about dystopian security are almost an Olympics tradition. Previous iterations have been characterized as Lockdown London, Fortress Tokyo, and the “arms race” in Rio. This time, it is the least-visible security measures that have emerged as some of the most controversial. Security measures in Paris have been turbocharged by a new type of AI, as the city enables controversial algorithms to crawl CCTV footage of transport stations looking for threats. The system was first tested in Paris back in March at two Depeche Mode concerts.

For critics and supporters alike, algorithmic oversight of CCTV footage offers a glimpse of the security systems of the future, where there is simply too much surveillance footage for human operators to physically watch. “The software is an extension of the police,” says Noémie Levain, a member of the activist group La Quadrature du Net, which opposes AI surveillance. “It’s the eyes of the police multiplied.”

Near the entrance of the Porte de Pantin metro station, surveillance cameras are bolted to the ceiling, encased in an easily overlooked gray metal box. A small sign is pinned to the wall above the bin, informing anyone willing to stop and read that they are part of a “video surveillance analysis experiment.” The company which runs the Paris metro RATP “is likely” to use “automated analysis in real time” of the CCTV images “in which you can appear,” the sign explains to the oblivious passengers rushing past. The experiment, it says, runs until March 2025.

Porte de Pantin is on the edge of the park La Villette, home to the Olympics’ Park of Nations, where fans can eat or drink in pavilions dedicated to 15 different countries. The Metro stop is also one of 46 train and metro stations where the CCTV algorithms will be deployed during the Olympics, according to an announcement by the Prefecture du Paris, a unit of the interior ministry. City representatives did not reply to WIRED’s questions on whether there are plans to use AI surveillance outside the transport network. Under a March 2023 law, algorithms are allowed to search CCTV footage in real-time for eight “events,” including crowd surges, abnormally large groups of people, abandoned objects, weapons, or a person falling to the ground.

“What we’re doing is transforming CCTV cameras into a powerful monitoring tool,” says Matthias Houllier, cofounder of Wintics, one of four French companies that won contracts to have their algorithms deployed at the Olympics. “With thousands of cameras, it’s impossible for police officers [to react to every camera].”

At the Olympics, AI is watching you Read More »

waymo-is-suing-people-who-allegedly-smashed-and-slashed-its-robotaxis

Waymo is suing people who allegedly smashed and slashed its robotaxis

alphabet, Cars, driverless taxi, San Francisco, syndication, waymo / /
Waymo car is vandalized in San Francisco

The people of San Francisco haven’t always been kind to Waymo’s growing fleet of driverless taxis. The autonomous vehicles, which provide tens of thousands of rides each week, have been torched, stomped on, and verbally berated in recent months. Now Waymo is striking back—in the courts.

This month, the Silicon Valley company filed a pair of lawsuits, neither of which have been previously reported, that demand hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from two alleged vandals. Waymo attorneys said in court papers that the alleged vandalism, which ruined dozens of tires and a tail end, are a significant threat to the company’s reputation. Riding in a vehicle in which the steering wheel swivels on its own can be scary enough. Having to worry about attackers allegedly targeting the rides could undermine Waymo’s ride-hailing business before it even gets past its earliest stage.

Waymo, which falls under the umbrella of Google parent Alphabet, operates a ride-hailing service in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles that is comparable to Uber and Lyft except with sensors and software controlling the driving. While its cars haven’t contributed to any known deadly crashes, US regulators continue to probe their sometimes erratic driving. Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp says the company always prioritizes safety and that the lawsuits reflect that strategy. She declined further comment for this story.

In a filing last week in the California Superior Court of San Francisco County, Waymo sued a Tesla Model 3 driver whom it alleges intentionally rear-ended one of its autonomous Jaguar crossovers. According to the suit, the driver, Konstantine Nikka-Sher Piterman, claimed in a post on X that “Waymo just rekt me” before going on to ask Tesla CEO Elon Musk for a job. The other lawsuit from this month, filed in the same court, targets Ronaile Burton, who allegedly slashed the tires of at least 19 Waymo vehicles. San Francisco prosecutors have filed criminal charges against her to which she has pleaded not guilty. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

Burton’s public defender, Adam Birka-White, says in a statement that Burton “is someone in need of help and not jail” and that prosecutors continue “to prioritize punishing poor people at the behest of corporations, in this case involving a tech company that is under federal investigation for creating dangerous conditions on our streets.”

An attorney for Burton in the civil case hasn’t been named in court records, and Burton is currently in jail and couldn’t be reached for comment. Piterman didn’t respond to a voicemail, a LinkedIn message, and emails seeking comment. He hasn’t responded in court to the accusations.

Based on available records from courts in San Francisco and Phoenix, it appears that Waymo hasn’t previously filed similar lawsuits.

In the Tesla case, Piterman “unlawfully, maliciously, and intentionally” sped his car past a stop sign and into a Waymo car in San Francisco on March 19, according to the company’s suit. When the Waymo tried to pull over, Piterman allegedly drove the Tesla into the Waymo car again. He then allegedly entered the Waymo and later threatened a Waymo representative who responded to the scene in person. San Francisco police cited Piterman, according to the lawsuit. The police didn’t respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Waymo is suing people who allegedly smashed and slashed its robotaxis Read More »

can-the-solar-industry-keep-the-lights-on?

Can the solar industry keep the lights on?

climate change, Policy, solar panels, syndication / /
Image of solar panels on a green grassy field, with blue sky in the background.

Founded in Dresden in the early 1990s, Germany’s Solarwatt quickly became an emblem of Europe’s renewable energy ambitions and bold plan to build a solar power industry.

Its opening of a new solar panel plant in Dresden in late 2021 was hailed as a small victory in the battle to wrestle market share from the Chinese groups that have historically supplied the bulk of panels used in Europe.

Now, Solarwatt is preparing to halt production at the plant and shift that work to China.

“It is a big pity for our employees, but from an economic point of view we could not do otherwise,” said Peter Bachmann, the company’s chief product officer.

Solarwatt is not alone. A global supply glut has pummelled solar panel prices over the past two years, leaving swaths of Europe’s manufacturers unprofitable, threatening US President Joe Biden’s ambition to turn America into a renewable energy force and even ricocheting back on the Chinese companies that dominate the global market.

“We are in a crisis,” said Johan Lindahl, secretary-general of the European Solar Manufacturing Council, the European industry’s trade body.

Yet as companies in Europe, the US, and China cut jobs, delay projects, and mothball facilities, an abundance of cheap solar panels has delivered one significant upside—consumers and businesses are installing them in ever greater numbers.

Electricity generated from solar power is expected to surpass that of wind and nuclear by 2028, according to the International Energy Agency.

The picture underlines the quandary confronting governments that have pledged to decarbonise their economies, but will find doing so harder unless the historic shift from fossil fuels is both affordable for the public and creates new jobs.

Governments face a “delicate and difficult balancing act,” said Michael Parr, director of trade group Ultra Low Carbon Solar Alliance. They must “maximize renewables deployment and carbon reductions, bolster domestic manufacturing sectors, keep energy prices low, and ensure energy security.”

The industry, which spans wafer, cell, and panel manufacturers, as well as companies that install panels, employed more than 800,000 people in Europe at the end of last year, according to SolarPower Europe. In the US almost 265,000 work in the sector, figures from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council show.

“There is overcapacity in every segment, starting with polysilicon and finishing with the module,” said Yana Hryshko, head of global solar supply chain research at the consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

According to BloombergNEF, panel prices have plunged more than 60 percent since July 2022. The scale of the damage inflicted has sparked calls for Brussels to protect European companies from what the industry says are state-subsidized Chinese products.

Europe’s solar panel manufacturing capacity has collapsed by about half to 3 gigawatts since November as companies have failed, mothballed facilities, or shifted production abroad, the European Solar Manufacturing Council estimates. In rough terms, a gigawatt can potentially supply electricity for 1mn homes.

The hollowing out comes as the EU is banking on solar power playing a major role in the bloc meeting its target of generating 45 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. In the US, the Biden administration has set a target of achieving a 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity grid by 2035.

Climate change is a global challenge, but executives said the solar industry’s predicament exposed how attempts to address it can quickly fracture along national and regional lines.

“There’s trade policy and then there’s climate policy, and they aren’t in sync,” said Andres Gluski, chief executive of AES, one of the world’s biggest developers of clean energy. “That’s a problem.”

Brussels has so far resisted demands to impose tariffs. It first levied them in 2012 but reversed that in 2018, partly in what proved a successful attempt to quicken the uptake of solar. Chinese imports now account for the lion’s share of Europe’s solar panels.

In May, the European Commission introduced the Net Zero Industry Act, legislation aimed at bolstering the bloc’s clean energy industries by cutting red tape and promoting a regional supply chain.

But Gunter Erfurt, chief executive of Switzerland-based Meyer Burger, the country’s largest solar panel maker, is skeptical it will be enough.

“You need to create a level playing field,” he said. Meyer Burger would benefit if the EU imposed tariffs because it has operations in Germany.

Can the solar industry keep the lights on? Read More »

will-burying-biomass-underground-curb-climate-change?

Will burying biomass underground curb climate change?

biomass, climate change, Science, syndication / /

stacking bricks —

Though carbon removal startups may limit global warming, significant questions remain.

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Will burying biomass underground curb climate change?

On April 11, a small company called Graphyte began pumping out beige bricks, somewhat the consistency of particle board, from its new plant in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The bricks don’t look like much, but they come with a lofty goal: to help stop climate change.

Graphyte, a startup backed by billionaire Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, will bury its bricks deep underground, trapping carbon there. The company bills it as the largest carbon dioxide removal project in the world.

Scientists have long warned of the dire threat posed by global warming. It’s gotten so bad though that the long-sought mitigation, cutting carbon dioxide emissions from every sector of the economy, might not be enough of a fix. To stave off the worst—including large swaths of the Earth exposed to severe heat waves, water scarcity, and crop failures—some experts say there is a deep need to remove previously emitted carbon, too. And that can be done anywhere on Earth—even in places not known for climate-friendly policies, like Arkansas.

Graphyte aims to store carbon that would otherwise be released from plant material as it burns or decomposes at a competitive sub-$100 per metric ton, and it wants to open new operations as soon as possible, single-handedly removing tens of thousands of tons of carbon annually, said Barclay Rogers, the company’s founder and CEO. Nevertheless, that’s nowhere near the amount of carbon that will have to be removed to register as a blip in global carbon emissions. “I’m worried about our scale of deployment,” he said. “I think we need to get serious fast.”

Hundreds of carbon removal startups have popped up over the past few years, but the fledgling industry has made little progress so far. That leads to the inevitable question: Could Graphyte and companies like it actually play a major role in combating climate change? And will a popular business model among these companies, inviting other companies to voluntarily buy “carbon credits” for those buried bricks, actually work?

Whether carbon emissions are cut to begin with, or pulled out of the atmosphere after they’ve already been let loose, climate scientists stress that there is no time to waste. The clock began ticking years ago, with the arrival of unprecedented fires and floods, superstorms, and intense droughts around the world. But carbon removal, as it’s currently envisioned, also poses additional sociological, economic, and ethical questions. Skeptics, for instance, say it could discourage more pressing efforts on cutting carbon emissions, leaving some experts wondering whether it will even work at all.

Still, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s forefront group of climate experts, is counting on carbon removal technology to dramatically scale up. If the industry is to make a difference, experimentation and research and development should be done quickly, within the next few years, said Gregory Nemet, professor of public affairs who studies low-carbon innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Then after that is the time to really start going big and scaling up so that it becomes climate-relevant,” he added. “Scale-up is a big challenge.”

Will burying biomass underground curb climate change? Read More »

the-struggle-to-understand-why-earthquakes-happen-in-america’s-heartland

The struggle to understand why earthquakes happen in America’s heartland

earthquakes, New Madrid fault, Science, seismology, syndication / /
Top: A view of the downtown Memphis skyline, including the Hernando De Soto bridge which has been retrofitted for earthquakes. Memphis is located around 40 miles from a fault line in the quake-prone New Madrid system.

Enlarge / Top: A view of the downtown Memphis skyline, including the Hernando De Soto bridge which has been retrofitted for earthquakes. Memphis is located around 40 miles from a fault line in the quake-prone New Madrid system.

iStock via Getty Images

The first earthquake struck while the town was still asleep. Around 2: 00 am on Dec. 16, 1811, New Madrid—a small frontier settlement of 400 people on land now located in Missouri—was jolted awake. Panicked townsfolk fled their homes as buildings collapsed and the smell of sulfur filled the air.

The episode didn’t last long. But the worst was yet to come. Nearly two months later, after dozens of aftershocks and another massive quake, the fault line running directly under the town ruptured. Thirty-one-year-old resident Eliza Bryan watched in horror as the Mississippi River receded and swept away boats full of people. In nearby fields, geysers of sand erupted, and a rumble filled the air.

In the end, the town had dropped at least 15 feet. Bryan and others spent a year and a half living in makeshift camps while they waited for the aftershocks to end. Four years later, the shocks had become less common. At last, the rattled townspeople began “to hope that ere long they will entirely cease,” Bryan wrote in a letter.

Whether Bryan’s hope will stand the test of time is an open question.

The US Geological Survey released a report in December 2023 detailing the risk of dangerous earthquakes around the country. As expected on the hazard map, deep red risk lines run through California and Alaska. But the map also sports a big bull’s eye in the middle of the country—right over New Madrid.

The USGS estimates that the region has a 25 to 40 percent chance of a magnitude 6.0 or higher earthquake in the next 50 years, and as much as a 10 percent chance of a repeat of the 1811-1812 sequence. While the risk is much lower compared to, say, California, experts say that when it comes to earthquake resistance, the New Madrid region suffers from inadequate building codes and infrastructure.

Caught in this seismic splash zone are millions of people living across five states—mostly in Tennessee and Missouri, as well as Kentucky, Illinois, and Arkansas—including two major cities, Memphis and St. Louis. Mississippi, Alabama, and Indiana have also been noted as places of concern.

In response to the potential for calamity, geologists have learned a lot about this odd earthquake hotspot over the last few decades. Yet one mystery has persisted: why earthquakes even happen here in the first place.

This is a problem, experts say. Without a clear mechanism for why New Madrid experiences earthquakes, scientists are still struggling to answer some of the most basic questions, like when—or even if—another large earthquake will strike the region. In Missouri today, earthquakes are “not as front of mind” as other natural disasters, said Jeff Briggs, earthquake program manager for the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency.

But when the next big shake comes, “it’s going to be the biggest natural disaster this state has ever experienced.”

The struggle to understand why earthquakes happen in America’s heartland Read More »

report:-alphabet-close-to-$23-billion-deal-for-cybersecurity-startup-wiz

Report: Alphabet close to $23 billion deal for cybersecurity startup Wiz

alphabet, antitrust, syndication, Tech, Wiz / /

buy all the things —

Deal of this size would draw scrutiny from antitrust regulators around the world.

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wiz logo

Timon Schneider/Dreamstime

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is in talks to buy cybersecurity start-up Wiz for about $23 billion, in what would be the largest acquisition in the tech group’s history, according to people familiar with the matter.

Alphabet’s discussions to acquire Wiz are still weeks away from completion, said one person with direct knowledge of the matter, while people briefed about the transaction said there was still a chance the deal would fall apart, with a number of details still needing to be addressed in talks.

If a deal were to be reached it would be a test case for antitrust regulators, which in recent years have been cracking down on tech groups buying out emerging companies in the sector. Alphabet’s last big deal came more than a decade ago with the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

The acquisition of Wiz would mark a further big push into cyber security for Alphabet, two years after it acquired Mandiant for $5.4 billion.

New York-headquartered Wiz has raised about $2 billion from investors since its founding four years ago, according to data provider PitchBook. The start-up, led by Israeli founder and former Microsoft executive Assaf Rappaport, was most recently valued at $12 billion. Its backers include venture capital firms Sequoia and Thrive.

Wiz, which counts multinational groups including Salesforce, Mars, and BMW as customers, helps companies secure programs in the cloud. That has led to a surge in revenue as corporations increasingly operate their software and store data online—Wiz has said it has hit about $350 million in annual recurring revenue, a metric often used by software start-ups.

A deal would be among the largest acquisitions of a company backed by venture capital.

Wiz declined to comment on the talks, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

Report: Alphabet close to $23 billion deal for cybersecurity startup Wiz Read More »

animals-use-physics?-let-us-count-the-ways

Animals use physics? Let us count the ways

biological physics, Science, syndication / /
kitten latches on to a pole with its two front paws

Isaac Newton would never have discovered the laws of motion had he studied only cats.

Suppose you hold a cat, stomach up, and drop it from a second-story window. If a cat is simply a mechanical system that obeys Newton’s rules of matter in motion, it should land on its back. (OK, there are some technicalities—like this should be done in a vacuum, but ignore that for now.) Instead, most cats usually avoid injury by twisting themselves on the way down to land on their feet.

Most people are not mystified by this trick—everybody has seen videos attesting to cats’ acrobatic prowess. But for more than a century, scientists have wondered about the physics of how cats do it. Clearly, the mathematical theorem analyzing the falling cat as a mechanical system fails for live cats, as Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek points out in a recent paper.

“This theorem is not relevant to real biological cats,” writes Wilczek, a theoretical physicist at MIT. They are not closed mechanical systems, and can “consume stored energy … empowering mechanical motion.”

Nevertheless, the laws of physics do apply to cats—as well as every other kind of animal, from insects to elephants. Biology does not avoid physics; it embraces it. From friction on microscopic scales to fluid dynamics in water and air, animals exploit physical laws to run or swim or fly. Every other aspect of animal behavior, from breathing to building shelters, depends in some way on the restrictions imposed, and opportunities permitted, by physics.

“Living organisms are … systems whose actions are constrained by physics across multiple length scales and timescales,” Jennifer Rieser and coauthors write in the current issue of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics.

While the field of animal behavior physics is still in its infancy, substantial progress has been made in explaining individual behaviors, along with how those behaviors are shaped via interactions with other individuals and the environment. Apart from discovering more about how animals perform their diverse repertoire of skills, such research may also lead to new physics knowledge gained by scrutinizing animal abilities that scientists don’t yet understand.

Critters in motion

Physics applies to animals in action over a wide range of spatial scales. At the smallest end of the range, attractive forces between nearby atoms facilitate the ability of geckos and some insects to climb up walls or even walk on ceilings. On a slightly larger scale, textures and structures provide adhesion for other biological gymnastics. In bird feathers, for instance, tiny hooks and barbs act like Velcro, holding feathers in position to enhance lift when flying, Rieser and colleagues report.

Biological textures also aid movement by facilitating friction between animal parts and surfaces. Scales on California king snakes possess textures that allow rapid forward sliding, but increase friction to retard backward or sideways motion. Some sidewinding snakes have apparently evolved different textures that reduce friction in the direction of motion, recent research suggests.

Small-scale structures are also important for animals’ interaction with water. For many animals, microstructures make the body “superhydrophobic”—capable of blocking the penetration of water. “In wet climates, water droplet shedding can be essential in animals, like flying birds and insects, where weight and stability are crucially important,” note Rieser, of Emory University, and coauthors Chantal Nguyen, Orit Peleg and Calvin Riiska.

Water-blocking surfaces also help animals keep their skins clean. “This self-cleansing mechanism … can be important to help protect the animal from dangers like skin-borne parasites and other infections,” the Annual Review authors explain. And in some cases, removing foreign material from an animal’s surface may be necessary to preserve the surface properties that enhance camouflage.

Animals use physics? Let us count the ways Read More »

in-the-south,-sea-level-rise-accelerates-at-some-of-the-most-extreme-rates-on-earth

In the South, sea level rise accelerates at some of the most extreme rates on Earth

climate change, coastal flooding, Florida, rising sea level, Science, syndication / /

migrating inland —

The surge is startling scientists, amplifying impacts such as hurricane storm surges.

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Older man points to the rising tide while standing on a dock.

Enlarge / Steve Salem is a 50-year boat captain who lives on a tributary of the St. Johns River. The rising tides in Jacksonville are testing his intuition.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. 

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—For most of his life, Steve Salem has led an existence closely linked with the rise and fall of the tides.

Salem is a 50-year boat captain who designed and built his 65-foot vessel by hand.

“Me and Noah, we’re related somewhere,” said Salem, 75, whose silver beard evokes Ernest Hemingway.

Salem is familiar with how the sun and moon influence the tides and feels an innate sense for their ebb and flow, although the tides here are beginning to test even his intuition.

He and his wife live in a rust-colored ranch-style house along a tributary of the St. Johns River, Florida’s longest. Before they moved in the house had flooded, in 2017, as Hurricane Irma swirled by. The house flooded again in 2022, when Hurricane Nicole defied his expectations. But Salem believes the house is sturdy and that he can manage the tides, as he always has.

“I’m a water dog to begin with. I’ve always been on the water,” said Salem, who prefers to go by Captain Steve. “I worry about things that I have to do something about. If I can’t do anything about it, then worrying about it is going to do what?”

Across the American South, tides are rising at accelerating rates that are among the most extreme on Earth, constituting a surge that has startled scientists such as Jeff Chanton, professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University.

“It’s pretty shocking,” he said. “You would think it would increase gradually, it would be a gradual thing. But this is like a major shift.”

Worldwide sea levels have climbed since 1900 by some 1.5 millimeters a year, a pace that is unprecedented in at least 3,000 years and generally attributable to melting ice sheets and glaciers and also the expansion of the oceans as their temperatures warm. Since the middle of the 20th century the rate has gained speed, exceeding 3 millimeters a year since 1992.

In the South the pace has quickened further, jumping from about 1.7 millimeters a year at the turn of the 20th century to at least 8.4 millimeters by 2021, according to a 2023 study published in Nature Communications based on tidal gauge records from throughout the region. In Pensacola, a beachy community on the western side of the Florida Panhandle, the rate soared to roughly 11 millimeters a year by the end of 2021.

“I think people just really have no idea what is coming, because we have no way of visualizing that through our own personal experiences, or that of the last 250 years,” said Randall Parkinson, a coastal geologist at Florida International University. “It’s not something where you go, ‘I know what that might look like because I’ve seen that.’ Because we haven’t.

“It’s the same everywhere, from North Carolina all the way down to the Florida Keys and all the way up into Alabama,” he said. “All of these areas are extremely vulnerable.”

The acceleration is poised to amplify impacts such as hurricane storm surges, nuisance flooding and land loss. In recent years the rising tides have coincided with record-breaking hurricane seasons, pushing storm surges higher and farther inland. In 2022 Hurricane Ian, which came ashore in southwest Florida, was the costliest hurricane in state history and third-costliest to date in the United States, after Katrina in 2005 and Harvey in 2017.

“It doesn’t even take a major storm event anymore. You just get these compounding effects,” said Rachel Cleetus, a policy director at the Union for Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “All of a sudden you have a much more impactful flooding event, and a lot of the infrastructure, frankly, like the stormwater infrastructure, it’s just not built for this.”

In the South, sea level rise accelerates at some of the most extreme rates on Earth Read More »

new-app-releases-for-apple-vision-pro-have-fallen-dramatically-since-launch

New app releases for Apple Vision Pro have fallen dramatically since launch

Apple, apple vision pro, syndication, Tech, vision pro / /
Vision Pro, seen from below, in a display with a bright white light strip overhead.

Samuel Axon

Apple is struggling to attract fresh content for its innovative Vision Pro headset, with just a fraction of the apps available when compared with the number of developers created for the iPhone and iPad in their first few months.

The lack of a “killer app” to encourage customers to pay upwards of $3,500 for an unproven new product is seen as a problem for Apple, as the Vision Pro goes on sale in Europe on Friday.

Apple said recently that there were “more than 2,000” apps available for its “spatial computing” device, five months after it debuted in the US.

That compares with more than 20,000 iPad apps that had been created by mid-2010, a few months after the tablet first went on sale, and around 10,000 iPhone apps by the end of 2008, the year the App Store launched.

“The overall trajectory of the Vision Pro’s launch in February this year has been a lot slower than many hoped for,” said George Jijiashvili, analyst at market tracker Omdia.

“The reality is that most developers’ time and money will be dedicated to platforms with billions of users, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands.”

Apple believes the device will transform how millions work and play. The headset shifts between virtual reality, in which the wearer is immersed in a digital world, and a version of “augmented reality” that overlays images upon the real surroundings.

Omdia predicts that Apple will sell 350,000 Vision Pros this year. It forecasts an increase to 750,000 next year and 1.7 million in 2026, but the figures are far lower than the iPad, which sold almost 20 million units in its first year.

Estimates from IDC, a tech market researcher, suggest Apple shipped fewer than 100,000 units of Vision Pro in the first quarter, less than half what rival Meta sold of its Quest headsets.

Because of the device’s high price, Apple captured more than 50 percent of the total VR headset market by dollar value, IDC found, but analyst Francisco Jeronimo added: “The Vision Pro’s success, regardless of its price, will ultimately depend on the content available.”

Early data suggests that new content is arriving slowly. According to Appfigures, which tracks App Store listings, the number of new apps launched for the Vision Pro has fallen dramatically since January and February.

Nearly 300 of the top iPhone developers, whose apps are downloaded more than 10 million times a year—including Google, Meta, Tencent, Amazon, and Netflix—are yet to bring any of their software or services to Apple’s latest device.

Steve Lee, chief executive of AmazeVR, which offers immersive concert experiences, said that the recent launch of the device in China and elsewhere in Asia resulted in an uptick in downloads of his app. “However, it was about one-third of the initial launch in the United States.”

Lee remains confident that Vision Pro will eventually become a mainstream consumer product.

Wamsi Mohan, equity analyst at Bank of America, said the Vision Pro had “just not quite hit the imagination of the consumer.”

“This is one of the slower starts for a new Apple product category, just given the price point,” he said. “It seems management is emphasizing the success in enterprise a lot more.”

Nonetheless, some app developers are taking a leap of faith and launching on the Vision Pro. Some are betting that customers who can afford the pricey headset will be more likely to splurge on software, too.

Others are playing a longer game, hoping that establishing an early position on Apple’s newest platform will bring returns in the years to come.

New app releases for Apple Vision Pro have fallen dramatically since launch Read More »

to-help-with-climate-change,-carbon-capture-will-have-to-evolve

To help with climate change, carbon capture will have to evolve

carbon capture, climate change, Science, syndication / /

gotta catch more —

The technologies are useful tools but have yet to move us away from fossil fuels.

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Image of a facility filled with green-colored tubes.

Enlarge / Bioreactors that host algae would be one option for carbon sequestration—as long as the carbon is stored somehow.

More than 200 kilometers off Norway’s coast in the North Sea sits the world’s first offshore carbon capture and storage project. Built in 1996, the Sleipner project strips carbon dioxide from natural gas—largely made up of methane—to make it marketable. But instead of releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere, the greenhouse gas is buried.

The effort stores around 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year—and is praised by many as a pioneering success in global attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Last year, total global CO2 emissions hit an all-time high of around 35.8 billion tons, or gigatons. At these levels, scientists estimate, we have roughly six years left before we emit so much CO2 that global warming will consistently exceed 1.5° Celsius above average preindustrial temperatures, an internationally agreed-upon limit. (Notably, the global average temperature for the past 12 months has exceeded this threshold.)

Phasing out fossil fuels is key to cutting emissions and fighting climate change. But a suite of technologies collectively known as carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, are among the tools available to help meet global targets to cut CO2 emissions in half by 2030 and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. These technologies capture, use or store away CO2 emitted by power generation or industrial processes, or suck it directly out of the air. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body charged with assessing climate change science, includes carbon capture and storage among the actions needed to slash emissions and meet temperature targets.

Carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies often capture CO2 from coal or natural gas power generation or industrial processes, such as steel manufacturing. The CO2 is compressed into a liquid under high pressure and transported through pipelines to sites where it may be stored, in porous sedimentary rock formations containing saltwater, for example, or used for other purposes. The captured CO2 can be injected into the ground to extract oil dregs or used to produce cement and other products.

Enlarge / Carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies often capture CO2 from coal or natural gas power generation or industrial processes, such as steel manufacturing. The CO2 is compressed into a liquid under high pressure and transported through pipelines to sites where it may be stored, in porous sedimentary rock formations containing saltwater, for example, or used for other purposes. The captured CO2 can be injected into the ground to extract oil dregs or used to produce cement and other products.

Governments and industry are betting big on such projects. Last year, for example, the British government announced 20 billion pounds (more than $25 billion) in funding for CCUS, often shortened to CCS. The United States allocated more than $5 billion between 2011 and 2023 and committed an additional $8.2 billion from 2022 to 2026. Globally, public funding for CCUS projects rose to $20 billion in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which works with countries around the world to forge energy policy.

Given the urgency of the situation, many people argue that CCUS is necessary to move society toward climate goals. But critics don’t see the technology, in its current form, shifting the world away from oil and gas: In a lot of cases, they point out, the captured CO2 is used to extract more fossil fuels in a process known as enhanced oil recovery. They contend that other existing solutions such as renewable energy offer deeper and quicker CO2 emissions cuts. “It’s better not to emit in the first place,” says Grant Hauber, an energy finance adviser at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonpartisan organization in Lakewood, Ohio.

What’s more, fossil fuel companies provide funds to universities and researchers—which some say could shape what is studied and what is not, even if the work of individual scientists is legitimate. For these reasons, some critics say CCUS shouldn’t be pursued at all.

“Carbon capture and storage essentially perpetuates fossil fuel reliance. It’s a distraction and a delay tactic,” says Jennie Stephens, a climate justice researcher at Northeastern University in Boston. She adds that there is little focus on understanding the psychological, social, economic, and political barriers that prevent communities from shifting away from fossil fuels and forging solutions to those obstacles.

According to the Global CCS Institute, an industry-led think tank headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, of the 41 commercial projects operational as of July 2023, most were part of efforts that produce, extract, or burn fossil fuels, such as coal- and gas-fired power plants. That’s true of the Sleipner project, run by the energy company Equinor. It’s the case, too, with the world’s largest CCUS facility, operated by ExxonMobil in Wyoming, in the United States, which also captures CO2 as part of the production of methane.

Granted, not all CCUS efforts further fossil fuel production, and many projects now in the works have the sole goal of capturing and locking up CO2. Still, some critics doubt whether these greener approaches could ever lock away enough CO2 to meaningfully contribute to climate mitigation, and they are concerned about the costs.

Others are more circumspect. Sally Benson, an energy researcher at Stanford University, doesn’t want to see CCUS used as an excuse to carry on with fossil fuels. But she says the technology is essential for capturing some of the CO2 from fossil fuel production and usage, as well as from industrial processes, as society transitions to new energy sources. “If we can get rid of those emissions with carbon capture and sequestration, that sounds like success to me,” says Benson, who codirects an institute that receives funding from fossil fuel companies.

To help with climate change, carbon capture will have to evolve Read More »