Jul 8, 2019
Northern Arizona's fields of volcanic cinders and craters have been a training ground for every astronaut who has walked on the moon
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin knew they'd be the first to walk on the moon, they took crash courses in geology in northern Arizona.
They hiked the Grand Canyon and visited a nearby impact crater to learn about layers of rocks and taking samples.
Astronauts on later Apollo missions studied volcanic cinder fields east of Flagstaff where hundreds of craters were blown from the landscape intentionally to replicate the lunar surface and tested rovers.
Today, astronaut candidates still train in and around Flagstaff.
The city is joining others nationwide in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing on July 20, 1969, with tours, exhibits, talks and moon-themed food and art.
Apollo 17 astronaut Charlie Duke will be the keynote speaker at a Flagstaff science festival later this year.
IKEA has launched a new collection worldwide that explores a less familiar approach to home decor. For the new Konstrunda collection, seven creators came together to produce 18 distinctive art pieces, suggesting how art can be used to style everyday living spaces at affordable prices. Karin Gustavsson, creative director for the collection that was unveiled earlier this month, said the project is “democratization” of art, emphasizing the pieces’ comparatively low prices, ranging from 29,900 won ($21.50) to 349,000 won. Setting affordability as a key condition for the collection, she gave the artists broad creative freedom in how they expressed their ideas. As the leader for Range Identity at IKEA Sweden, Gustavsson said preserving each artist’s spirit and ideas was just as important as keeping the works affordable. “When I choose people to work with, I make sure that they understand the ethos of IKEA, and even if there is freedom to design, we do work on an entirely different scale and have other factors to consider — affordability being one of the most important,” said Gus
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office announced Friday it reached a minimum $100 million settlement deal with TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, days before a state court was set to hear arguments surrounding the app's potential mental health effects on minors. TikTok has 45 days to respond to the settlement, which could balloon to $300...
The Xbox Ally X20 comes with quality-of-life improvements including an OLED display and drift-resistant TMR joysticks.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the prediction market Kalshi on Friday, determining states can regulate prediction market platforms like gambling in the latest blow to the industry. In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel sided with Ohio and Tennessee, finding Kalshi did not show its sports-event contracts are "swaps" that typically...
President Trump said Friday he is ruling out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to serve as his artificial intelligence czar amid speculation the Cabinet member was under consideration. Trump, in a Truth Social post, said Bessent will not be the "Super Intelligence (SI) Czar," referring to his proposed rebranding of AI, because he "doesn't want to."...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Trump administration in its blacklisting of the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, allowing the Pentagon to label the AI firm a supply chain risk. The 2-1 ruling, issued Friday, rejected Anthropic's challenge of the designation, finding the Department of Defense had "ample support" for...
MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Friday called for a balanced approach to a proposal to require social media platforms to obtain a congressional franchise to operate in the Philippines. Palace Press Officer Claire Castro said the proposal needed careful study because young people, businesses and other sectors use social media. “We must study it. There
Hyundai Motor Group is poised to overtake Ford Motor in quarterly vehicle sales in the United States for the first time, underscoring the growing presence of the Korean automaker in the world’s largest car market. Cox Automotive estimates that the group’s three brands — Hyundai Motor, Kia and Genesis — will sell 511,421 vehicles in the U.S. between July and September, up 6.5 percent from a year earlier. By contrast, Ford is projected to sell 504,172 vehicles, down 7.1 percent, according to the market researcher’s latest forecast. If the estimates hold, Hyundai Motor Group would rank third in quarterly U.S. sales behind General Motors, with 671,706 vehicles, and Toyota Motor, with 642,707. The result would mark the first time the Korean group has surpassed Ford on a quarterly basis. The shift comes as U.S. consumers increasingly favor fuel-efficient vehicles amid elevated gasoline prices. Utilizing the market condition, Hyundai Motor Group has been going all-out to expand hybrid sales in the U.S. However, Ford sells much fewer hybrid or fuel-efficient vehicles there. Cox Automotiv
China is emerging as a critical earnings lifeline for Korea’s struggling low-cost carriers (LCCs), offering them access to fast-growing passenger demand and lucrative business traffic as growth in other short-haul markets loses steam. Some 2.13 million passengers traveled between Korea and China in August, surpassing the previous monthly record of about 2.07 million set in August 2016, before the fallout from the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in Korea severely disrupted bilateral tourism. The August figure was up 27.5 percent from a year earlier and 9.7 percent from July, according to data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. The rebound comes as Korean airlines are gaining access to some of the most commercially attractive China routes. In the latest allocation of traffic rights, the government gave major LCCs additional slots on routes linking Seoul with Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Guangzhou, Dalian and other Chinese cities. Jeju Air and Eastar Jet each secured seven weekly flights on the Incheon-Beijing route, while Parata Air and Air Premia re
Korean regulators’ hardline stance toward Coupang is complicating Seoul’s talks with Washington over the next stages of its planned $350 billion investment in the United States. The latest development came Wednesday when the Seoul High Court rejected Coupang’s request to suspend the effect of a Fair Trade Commission (FTC) decision ordering an on-site inspection of the U.S.-headquartered e-commerce firm’s alleged violations of a local fair transaction act. Coupang had refused to cooperate with the probe, arguing that the FTC failed to provide advance notice. The court ruling allows the FTC to proceed with the investigation. FTC Chairman Ju Biung-ghi has vowed to review the agency’s internal rules to close what he described as loopholes that allow companies to delay or evade investigations through court injunctions. He has also rejected U.S. criticism that the regulator is discriminating against American companies, saying the FTC will continue to enforce Korean law without regard to nationality. The confrontation is particularly sensitive, as Korea and the U.S. work to flesh out t
President Trump said on Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared to like referring to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” days after Trump announced the U.S. would be using the new name in official documents and communications. Trump made the observation in a Truth Social post in which he referred to his meeting with the...
AlphaGenome Atlas contains predictions for the molecular effects of all roughly 9 billion possible single-letter changes in human DNA. Researchers can search the database to see how individual variants are predicted to affect processes such as gene expression, RNA splicing, and chromatin accessibility across different cell types and tissues. That gives researchers something they have