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A US commercial court has banned Google  from importing products that infringe the smart speaker patents of the home audio company Sonos.

The US International Trade Commission upheld a ruling in August  that Google's audio products infringe five Sonos patents and have banned Google from importing "network speaker devices" and devices that can control them, such as cell phones and laptops.
The ruling says it won't stop Google  from importing products that it has redesigned to avoid patent infringement. A Google spokesman said he didn't expect the decision to affect his ability to import or sell its products.
"We will  continue to investigate and defend ourselves against the frivolous claims by Sonos regarding our association and our intellectual property," said the company.
Eddie Lazarus, Sonos' chief legal officer, called the verdict a "crusader" victory. Google's products still infringe  patents even though they tried to develop them.

Sonos' stock was up 1.5% in late morning trading on Friday, having earlier risen more than 3%.

The parties have been embroiled in a global patent war over multi-room audio technology since 2020 that includes court cases in California, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands, according to a Sonos regulatory filing.

Sonos first sued Google in Los Angeles, alleging the company misused its technology in "more than a dozen different infringing products", including Google Home speakers and Pixel phones, tablets, and laptops.

Google reacted with its own lawsuit in San Francisco, creating Sonos "substantial quantities" of its technology without permission for multiple products, including controller applications and radio Sonos service.

At the ITC, Sonos had been trying to block Google from importing Home speakers, Pixel phones and other products from China.

Shares of GameStop Corp (GME.N) rose on Friday after  the video game retailer announced plans to expand its non-fungible token (NFT) market and partner with crypto companies.
The company's shares soared last year as they were at the center of a battle between small investors coordinating on online forums and Wall Street hedge funds that had taken short positions. Since mid-November, its shares have mostly fallen.
GameStop jumped 7.3% to $ 140.62 on Friday after  the company reportedly built an online NFT trading center for virtual game collectibles and  cryptocurrency partnerships on Thursday. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters about GameStop's plans, which were reported by the Wall Street Journal.

GameStop declined to comment on the reports.

NFTs, which use blockchain to record the ownership of digital items such as images and videos, surged in popularity in 2021, leaving many confusedabout why so much money was being spent on copiable digital items that do not physically exist.

Highly volatile crypto assets have tumbled in recent months, with bitcoin plummeting to a more than three-month low of $42,001.97, down about 38% from its $69,000 all-time high in November.

Ether , used to buy NFTs, has slumped to $3,219.77, levels last seen in early October.

"Stocks themselves are speculative rather than fundamental, and to some extent cryptocurrencies are also not very speculative in nature . excessive exposure to cryptocurrencies could have an effect on the balance sheets of these companies." , warned analyst Mirabaud  Neil Campling. Short sales against GameStop increased by roughly 1 million shares  in the past 30 days to 8.4 million, now worth $ 1.11 billion and equal to 13% of GameStop's free float , according to data from S3 Partners.

Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners, said Friday's stock move is unlikely to be a small hedging rally.

 
"We would first need to erase recent market earnings on the short side, which means reverting to levels in the range of $ 170 $ 200 per share," for a short squeeze to occur, said said Dusaniwsky.

Chinese authorities rapped Walmart for allegedly breaking cybersecurity laws, according to local media, the latest issue for retailer U.S which is already the subject of allegations in the country for allegedly halting sales of products from the Xinjiang.

Police in southern China's Shenzhen city discovered 19 "vulnerabilities" in Walmart's network system (WMT.N) in late November and accused them of taking a long time to fix the flaws the China Quality News, backed by the country's market regulator, reported on Wednesday.
Walmart was ordered to make fixes, the report said, without mentioning fines or details of the vulnerabilities.
The retail giant and the Shenzhen police did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

This marks a fresh set of troubles in China for Walmart, which in the past month has faced criticism for what local media has said was its deliberate removal of products sourced from Xinjiang from its apps and stores.

Xinjiang is a growing point of conflict between the Western governments and China, as U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps there.

China has rejected accusations of forced labour or any other abuses in the far western region.
Walmart has seen a wave of  membership cancellations of its  arm Sam's Club branch in China since the Xinjiang problem.
The Chinese transplant agency also accused the retailer and the Sam's Club of "stupidity and myopia".
Although Walmart has not commented publicly  on the matter, Reuters reported that a Sam's Club executive told analysts during a phone call that it was a "misunderstanding" and that there had been no deliberate withdrawal of products from Xinjiang fined 10,000 yuan ($ 1,568) in Shanghai by the city's market regulator for violating food safety laws after discovering that a frozen plant product did not have a production date or of expiration date, according to a separate report released by local media.

India's competition regulator on Friday ordered an investigation into Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google following allegations by news publishers, saying its initial view was that the tech giant had violated certain antitrust laws.

In its order, the Competition Commission of India (ICC) said Google dominates some online search services in the country and may have imposed unfair conditions on news publishers.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The complainant, the Digital News Publishers Association, which includes the digital weapons of some of India's largest media companies, said Google denies its members fair advertising revenue.
“In a well-functioning democracy, the essential role played by the media cannot be compromised,” the ICC order said.
"It appears that Google is using its dominant position in the relevant markets to enter / protect its position in the market for information aggregation services.

News organisations, which have been losing advertising revenue to online aggregators such as Google, have complained for years about tech companies using stories in search results or other features without payment.

The CCI order also mentioned new rules in France and Australia - fuelled by media lobbying and public pressure - that have led to licensing deals around the world collectively worth billions of dollars.

Social media platform Reddit Inc, whose message boards became the center of the stock trading frenzy in 2021, relies on Wall Street banks Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Goldman Sachs Group (GS. N) for its initial public offering, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. 

Reddit had confidentially filed for an IPO in December and is aiming for a valuation of more than $15 billion at the time of its listing. It was valued at $10 billion in a private fundraiser led by Fidelity Management in August. 

A second source familiar with the matter said JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) is also one of the top underwriters on the deal.

Goldman Sachs and Reddit did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase declined to comment. Reddit, founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, has over 50 million daily active users and over 100,000 communities. 

Its message boards, most notably the WallStreetBets thread, have been at the center of a pitched battle between small traders and large hedge funds, and have helped make big gains in very short stocks of companies like GameStop (GME. N) and AMC (AMC .N), while popularizing the term  meme stocks. 

Globally, IPOs  raised a record $594 billion in 2021, in the wake of stock rallies, with technology and healthcare  the biggest sectors driving IPO volumes in stock exchange.

There were 426 technology IPOs last year and 332 healthcare-related deals, collectively accounting for almost 42% of IPO proceeds raised by companies globally, according to Refinitiv

Head of communications for Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O), John Pinette, will be leaving the company, the social media company said  on Friday. 

Chris Norton, vice president of international communications, will fill the acting role, a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters. 

"John Pinette has left Meta. We are grateful for his positive contributions during an intense and significant time in the company's history and  wish him well," the statement said.

The spokesperson declined to say the reason for Pinette's departure, citing Meta's policy of not commenting on personnel matters. The Wall Street Journal first reported the departure of Pinette on Friday.Pinette was appointed vice president of global communications in April 2019, according to the company's website. 

Before Joining the company, Pinette led communications for Gates Ventures, Bill Gates' private office and innovation lab, for five years and was  Asia Pacific Communications Manager for Google. Corp (MSFT.O).

Google has been publicly building tiny radar chips since 2015. They can tell you how well you sleep, control a smartwatch, count sheets of paper, and have you play the world's smallest violin. But the company's Soli radar hasn't necessarily seen commercial success, primarily in an ill-fated Pixel phone. Now Google has launched an open source API standard called Ripple that could theoretically bring the technology to additional devices outside of Google, possibly even a car, as Ford is one of the participants in the new standard.

Technically, Ripple is under the auspices of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the same industry body that hosts the CES show in Las Vegas each January, but there's no doubt who is actually behind the project. "Ripple will unlock useful innovations for the benefit of all. General Purpose Radar is a key emerging technology for solving critical use cases while respecting privacy," read a quote from Ivan Poupyrev, The man who led the team through G oogle's ATAP skunkworks. who invented Soli in the first place.

"Standard Radar Api" seems to be the original Name.

Adritionally, the Github ripple project  is filled with  references to Google, including different instances of "Copyright 2021 Google LLC" and contributors must sign a Google Open Source license agreement to participate. (One commit points out that the project was updated “to include CTA.”) Ripple appears to be a rebranding of Google’s “Standard Radar API,” which it quietly proposed one year ago (PDF).

None of that makes it any less exciting that Soli might find new life, though, and there may be something to the idea that radar has privacy benefits. It’s a technology that can easily detect whether someone’s present, nearby, and/or telling their device to do something without requiring a microphone or camera.

Ford, for its part, tells The Verge that indoor radar might become part of its driver-assistance technologies. Right now, the automaker says it’s using “advanced exterior radars” to research those features instead (which sounds expensive to me). Here’s a statement from Ford’s Jim Buczkowski, who’s currently heading up the company’s Research and Advanced Engineering team:

We are investigating how to use indoor radar as a  source of sensors to improve various customer experiences in addition to our  Ford CoPilot360 driver assistance technologies which now use advanced exterior radars. A standard API, with input from the semiconductor industry, will allow us to develop hardware-independent software purchases and give  software teams the freedom to innovate across multiple radar platforms.

 
Other companies are also exploring radar: Amazon is also investigating whether radar could help it track your sleep patterns; This smart dog collar uses miniature radar to monitor vital signs, even if your dog is very hairy or furry, and this  bulb does the same  for humans.
But most of the participants listed in Google's initiatives so far are chip and sensor vendors, with only Ford and Blumio, which have a development kit for a radar-based blood pressure sensor, stand out.

When multiple generations of Spider-Man come together as they did in the recent Spider-Man: No Way Home, it's only natural for the actors behind the mask to compare their different Spidey costumes, with Amazing SpiderMan actor Andrew Garfield recalling the 'one of his companions. SpiderMen is jealous of a particularly useful item included in his costume. Remembering the first time they were all in their respective costumes, Garfield discussed what it was like on the set of No Way Home with three live SpiderMens.

“[Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire and I] talked about what worked for each of us,” Garfield said in an interview with Variety. “[Holland] was jealous because I have little zippers in it. my dress that I can take off my hands  very easily. ”In fact, Garfield recalled how Holland was forced to resort to a workaround  to use the phone while he was dressed, saying,“ So that the phone works, he had to use his nose because he couldn't access his hands.
Garfield brought back other memories during his time with Holland and Maguire while working at No Way Home, as Garfield discussed what he was  not just as as a SpiderMan fan himself, but as one of the many. Actors who played the character on the big screen. “I think the first time we  all put the costume together,” 

Garfield said, “it was hilarious because it's just three normal guys who were just actors who had just come outside. But then  you too become a fan and say, "Oh my God, we are all dressed together  and  doing as it says!"We would also have deeper conversations and talk about our experiences with the character.
Garfield recalled other memories during his time with Holland and Maguire while working on No Way Home, as Garfield discussed what it was like not only as a fan of Spider-Man himself but as one of several actors who have portrayed the character on the big screen. 

"I think the first time we were all in the suit together," Garfield said, "it was hilarious because it’s like just three ordinary dudes who were just actors just hanging out. But then also, you just become a fan and say, 'Oh my god we’re all together in the suits and we’re doing the pointing thing!'...  We would have deeper conversations, too, and talk about our experiences with the character."

Garfield summed up his experience with his fellow Spider-Men, as the actor went on the reveal the origins behind one of his improvised lines in No Way Home. "There's a line I improvised in the movie, looking at [Maguire and Holland] and I tell them I love them," Garfield said. "That was just me loving them."

Although it's been almost a decade since Garfield last donned the Spidey suit in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the actor  recently spoke about returning to the role on a possible future project.
Garfield also spoke about what got him aboard the multiversal cast of No Way Home, including how one scene in particular convinced him to dress up as a WebSlinger again.

Garfield has elaborated further on the initial pitch for the film when he was approached by Sony and Marvel, detailing the concept that would allow him to explore an old character in a new way.

SpaceX engineer Jessie Anderson said during a webcast of the company's first launch of the year that Starlink now has more than 145,000 users in 25 countries around the world. It fell from 140,000 users in early November, but represents a slowdown in user growth. 

On Thursday, the company launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, carrying 49 Starlink satellites into orbit. 

Starlink is the company's plan to build an interconnected Internet network with thousands of satellites - known in the space industry as a constellation. 

It is designed to provide high speed Internet access to consumers all over the planet. SpaceX has approximately 1,800 Starlink satellites in orbit.

The increase of 5,000 users in two months represents slower growth. As of November, SpaceX had added about 11,000 users per month since the service began in October 2020.

 Late last year, SpaceX noted on its website that the "silicon shortage has delayed production" of Starlink user terminals, “which  impacted our ability to fulfill orders. 

SpaceX's valuation has reached over $100 billion, which industry analysts attribute largely to the market potential of its Starlink service.

Ground-based telescopes provided the first real-time look at the death throes of a red supergiant star.
While these aren't the  the brightest or most massive stars, they are the largest by volume. A popular red supergiant, which has attracted interest due to its irregular eclipsing, is Betelgeuse.
This star is located in the galaxy NGC 5731, about 120 million light years from Earth distant it was ten times as massive as the sun. Before they go out in splendor, some stars experience violent eruptions or release bright layers of hot gas.
Until astronomers witnessed this event, they believed that red supergiants were relatively calm. before they explode in a supernova or collapse into a dense neutron star.

Instead, scientists watched the star self-destruct in dramatic fashion before collapsing in a type II supernova. This star death is the rapid collapse and violent explosion of a massive star after it has burned through the hydrogen, helium and other elements in its core.

All that remains is the star's iron, but iron can't fuse so the star will run out of energy. When that happens, the iron collapses and causes the supernova. A study detailing these findings published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal.

"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die," said lead study author Wynn Jacobson-Galán, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at University of California, Berkeley, in a statement.

"Direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary type II supernova. For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode."

Astronomers were first alerted to the star's unusual activity 130 days before it went supernova. Bright radiation was detected in the summer of 2020 by the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS telescope on Maui's Haleakalā.

Then, in the fall of that year, the researchers witnessed a supernova in the same spot.

They observed it using the W.M. Keck Observatory's Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Maunakea, Hawai'i, and named the supernova 2020tlf. Their observations revealed that there was material around the star when it exploded -- the bright gas that the star violently kicked away from itself over the summer.

"It's like watching a ticking time bomb," said senior study author Raffaella Margutti, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Berkeley, in a statement. "We've never confirmed such violent activity in a dying red supergiant star where we see it produce such a luminous emission, then collapse and combust, until now."

Some of these massive stars likely experience consequential internal changes that cause the tumultuous release of gas before they die, the finding has shown.

The work was conducted while Jacobson-Galán and Margutti were still at Northwestern University. They had remote access to the Keck Observatory's telescopes in Hawai'i, which was "instrumental in providing direct evidence of a massive star transitioning into a supernova explosion," Margutti said.

"I am most excited by all of the new 'unknowns' that have been unlocked by this discovery," Jacobson-Galán said. "Detecting more events like SN 2020tlf will dramatically impact how we define the final months of stellar evolution, uniting observers and theorists in the quest to solve the mystery on how massive stars spend the final moments of their lives."

Source: CNN

The Apple Park campus stands in this aerial photograph taken above Cupertino in October 2019.Sam Hall/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As Apple heads to the end of its self-imposed two-year transition from Intel to its own Apple Silicon, the company  lost the head of his M1 development team. 

Jeff Wilcox originally joined Apple from Intel in 2013 and is now returning to the company while working on  new processors. "After eight great years, I  decided to leave Apple and look for another opportunity," wrote Wilcox on his LinkedIn page. "It's been an incredible journey and I couldn't be more proud of all that we did during my time that culminates in the move from Apple Silicon to the M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max systems and SOCs. 

I will  miss all  my  colleagues and friends at Apple very much. "I am pleased to announce that I have  a "Engineering Group CTO, Client SoC Architecture at Intel Corporation," he said. Big things are still to come!

Wilcox returned to Intel in early January 2022.It's not yet known who Apple intends to replace him with as Director, Mac System Architecture.

Nor is it known whether Apple tried to keep Wilcox. Separately, Apple has recently been offering $180,000 bonuses to engineers to prevent them leaving.

Hyundai executives, led by Chief Executive Euisun Chung, elaborated on the vision during a press conference at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

 Buzzwords aside, Hyundai plans to leverage its growing expertise in robotics and artificial intelligence to build  a future mobility network that connects humans in the real world with objects and tasks in the virtual world. 

The concept is linked to the so-called metaverse, a term coined 30 years ago by author Neal Stephenson, but which recently gained attention  when social media company Facebook changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc. 

It refers to shared virtual environments. world that people can access through the Internet and that they can  use  virtual reality or augmented reality. Hyundai offered several examples of how it could connect the metaverse and the real world:

– A vehicle that can be transformed into a work space or an entertainment room that includes a 3D video game platform.

– A “smart” factory where humans outside the plant remotely control robots that interact with machines and products inside the plant.

– Automated personal transportation devices for people with disabilities or individuals who want to maintain social distances while traveling.

To make all this work, the automaker said it was building a Mobility of Things ecosystem that will link modular robotic platforms to perform different mobility services.

One module called Plug & Drive or PnD is a single-wheel robotics platform that combines intelligent steering, braking and suspension with in-wheel electric drive, cameras and lidar sensors for automated operation.

For larger logistics tasks and other mobility services, Hyundai can bundle four PnD modules, including one application that pairs with a robot dog called – what else? – Spot.

 People wearing protective face masks walk in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in France, January 5, 2022. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

Macron told Le Parisien  earlier this week. that he wanted to make life so difficult for those who opposed the COVID-19 vaccine  by leading them away from public places that they would end up being jabbed.
Macron's coarse language barely three months before a presidential election was widely seen as a politically calculated, tapping into a intensifying public frustration against the unvaccinated.

More than 90% of over-12s have received at least two doses, government data shows. Health Minister Olivier Veran said a record number of people since Oct. 1 received a first shot on Wednesday after Macron's comments were published.

Lawmakers in the lower house passed draft legislation including the vaccine pass shortly after 5 a.m. after an all-night session by a margin of 214 to 93. Many of those who voted against the bill were from the far-right or left-wingers.

The legislation will go to the Senate before a final vote in the National Assembly.

People in France have for several months had to show either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to enter venues such as cinemas and cafes and use trains. But with Delta and Omicron variant infections surging, the government decided to drop the test option in the new bill.

The vaccine pass rules will apply to over-16s and not over-12 as the government had initially sought.
European countries have grappled with the possibility of mandating citizens to force them to vaccinate. Italy on Wednesday made the COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for people aged 50 and over,  teachers and public health workers are already required to get vaccinated. , Prime Minister Jean Castex said.
Countries that had switched to compulsory vaccination, such as Italy and Austria, had lower vaccination rates than France.
Castex also said France would be ready to move on to a fourth COVID vaccine shot when the time was right.
On Wednesday, France set a record of more than 332,000 new ones. COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours and an additional 246 COVID-19 deaths in hospitals, as the country.

Vehicles are stuck in gridlock in the morning on the Interstate Highway I-95 near Stafford, Virginia, U.S., January 4, 2022 in this still image obtained from a social media video. Susan Phalen/via REUTERS (Susan Phalen/via REUTERS / Reuters Photos)

A viral video from TikTok  shows how a bread truck  driver was able to provide much needed help to  dozens of unsuspecting drivers who were  stranded on I95 in Virginia for more than 24 hours due to snowy weather and freezing temperatures this week they ate nothing for 37 hours stuck on that frozen Virginia freeway, so they called the bread company whose truck was right in front of them, asking if they could have what was in it, ” said the narrator of the video. showing a photo of Casey Holihan and her husband, John Noe, and the Schmidt Baking Company truck.
“To their surprise, the driver of the truck was contacted and  given the green light to start distributing bread to 50 starving motorists,” they added, as the video shows the gloved driver  handing out bags of bread from the  truck. Baltimore-based company truck.
It is not known how many people were fed by the gesture or how long the drivers were stuck in the roadblock before being rescued.
The blocked traffic prompted Virginia state transportation officials to shut down the entire freeway, including the mostly congested areas between exits 152 and 104.

The incident began Monday before pouring into Tuesday evening but, despite the chaos, there were no reported deaths, injuries, or serious accidents.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., shared on Twitter that he was stuck on the interstate and that it took him 27 hours to travel the 110 miles between Richmond and Washington.

Hundreds — if not thousands — of drivers were affected before their eventual help came from law enforcement vehicles, who were also impeded and delayed by the storm, and the generosity of Schmidt Baking company and its delivery truck driver.
There have been other reports of people helping stranded people, including a family who handed over oranges to the US Senator.
Governor Ralph Northam has declared a state of emergency, after initially choosing not to do so as another winter storm is expected to hit Virginia in the coming days.

The winning ticket for the last Powerball was sold at a  convenience store in Sacramento. According to the lottery site, the ticket was sold at 7 Eleven on Wyndham Drive. 

The ticket price is $315 million. 

The other  winning ticket, which hit five out of five numbers, was sold to a Chevron in South Pasadena. This person made about $1.3 million. Powerball's last big  winning ticket was sold at an Albertsons in Morro Bay in October, for a price of $685 million. 

This winner was able to choose between the 29-year paid annuity option  or the $ 496 million cash option. Both reward options are subject to tax.

How did flurona come about?

As the name suggests, flurona describes a rare double infection of both coronavirus and influenza. The term has emerged over recent days following the finding of a patient in Israel who tested positive for both diseases when she came into hospital on Thursday - the first recorded case in the world. 

The young woman is pregnant and is reported to only have mild symptoms, but health officials have quickly started studying her case to determine whether the combination causes any greater severity of illness. 

“She was diagnosed with the flu and coronavirus as soon as she arrived,” Professor Arnon Vizhnitser, director of the hospitals’ Gynaecology Department, told Jewish newspaper Hamodia. 

“Both tests came back positive, even after we checked again. The disease is the same disease. They’re viral and cause difficulty breathing since both attack the upper respiratory tract.”

According to latest reports, the patient is expected to be discharged on Thursday. 

What are the symptoms?

It is difficult for scientists to pinpoint an exact set of symptoms, but flurona’s most common effects are likely to be a combination of those of Covid and influenza. 

Related: First Case Of Flurona Emerges in France

The Israeli patient did reportedly exhibit breathing difficulties and since Omicron already exhibits many of the same symptoms as the flu or a cold, the main effects are likely to include a high temperature, fatigue, aches, sneezing, a dry cough and/or scratchy throat. 

Prof Vizhnitser confirmed that both infections are viral and cause difficulty breathing. “The disease is the same disease,” he said. “They’re viral and cause difficulty breathing since both attack the upper respiratory tract.”

How likely is it to spread?

Much about the infectiousness and seriousness of flurona remains unknown, but doctors have confirmed that other cases are likely to emerge - a result of rising flu cases as restrictions ease along with the fast spread of the Omicron variant.

 Related: First Case Of Flurona Emerges in France

“We are seeing more and more pregnant women with the flu,” said Prof Vizhnitser. “It is definitely a great challenge dealing with a woman who comes in with a fever at childbirth.

“This is especially when you do not know if it’s coronavirus or the flu, so you refer to them the same. Most of the illness is respiratory.”

Source: Yahoo News

According to the screenshot shared with the report, the new feature will allow you to see small photos of the sender in the notification when you receive a new message from a single user or group.

The report also reveals that the feature is only available to  a few beta testers running the iOS 15 operating system because the feature uses iOS 15 APIs. 

The Facebook-owned platform is reportedly releasing the feature for more users with the upcoming updates.As the feature is still in beta, WhatsApp may experience  issues showing profile photos on specific notifications, but these issues will likely be resolved whenever the feature is rolled out to the public.

Last week WhatsApp also started rolling out a 2.22.1.1 beta update  for iOS users. The update supposedly contains hidden references to a feature that will allow users to create communities in future updates. 

A similar hidden notice was also discovered in the beta update released two weeks ago for Android smartphones. For those of you who don't know, Facebook's own messaging platform has been working on a community feature for a while.

Object 90377 Sedna - a distant transneptunian object best known  for its highly elliptical, 11,390-year-old orbit - is currently en-route to perihelion (its closest approach to the Sun) in 2076. After that, Sedna will return to the 'space. deep  and will not return for millennia, making this overview a unique (or, once in ~ 113 lifetimes) opportunity to study an object from the far reaches of our solar system. There are no Sedna missions  in the works  yet, but astronomers are starting to plan for the possibility and  ideal launch date for such a mission is fast approaching, with two of the best launch windows coming  in 2029 and 2034.
Sedna was discovered in 2003 by Caltech astronomer Mike Brown and his team, and was one of a series of potential dwarf planets (alongside similar-sized bodies like Haumea, Makemake, and Eris) whose discovery led to the demotion of Pluto in 2006. As best we can tell from a distance, Sedna is about the same size as Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, but its composition and origins are very different. Its chemical makeup suggests it may be covered in deep reddish organic compounds known as tholins, the same material seen on Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects. Unlike Pluto, it is usually too cold for the methane abundant on its surface to evaporate and fall back as snow, though Sedna may briefly gain an atmosphere of nitrogen as it approaches the Sun.
What really sets Sedna apart from the other known dwarf planet candidates is its enormous orbit, which takes it out towards the inner edge of the Oort cloud, the most distant region of the Solar System, where long-period comets lurk. There are several competing theories to explain how Sedna ended up in this position. Perhaps the most high-profile theory is the possibility that a yet unknown ninth planet, perhaps ten times the size of Earth, disrupted Sedna’s orbit and swept it and several other objects out into highly elongated orbits. Visiting Sedna probably won’t solve this particular mystery, but it will tell us a lot about the composition of these extreme trans-Neptunian objects.

In planning a mission to Sedna, the Voyager spacecraft are not bad places to look for inspiration. They famously took advantage of a lucky alignment of planets to take a grand tour of the outer Solar System, stealing energy from Jupiter to pick up speed and reach their more distant targets. Similar gravity assists will be required to make the trip to Sedna manageable. A team of scientists led by Vladislav Zubko from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences recently modeled a series of possible trajectories  to Sedna, favoring a 2029 launch date as the most feasible option.

The 2029 trajectory, they determined, would take the spacecraft to Venus first, then back to Earth (twice), before passing Jupiter on the way to Sedna, with flight times as short as 20 years but more optimally in the 30-year range. The longer flight time would increase the altitude of the spacecraft over Jupiter during the gravity assist, reducing the time spent exposed to the gas giant’s harmful radiation.

A 30-year flight plan would also mean passing by Sedna more slowly, providing more time to gather data on the object. Choosing this option would give the spacecraft a relative velocity of 13.70km/s as it passed Sedna, comparable to the speed at which New Horizons  approached Pluto in 2015.

A second trajectory proposed by the team would consist of a 2034 launch, and would provide a similar additional flyby, this time of the metallic asteroid  16 Psyche.

At the moment, it’s unclear whether a mission to Sedna will actually make it to the launch pad with all the competing options available to mission planners in the coming decade, but as it’s our only chance in the next 11,000 years, the idea is sure to be given due diligence.

Note:This article is taken from Universe Today to see original article Click here

Source: Universe Today

Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech announced on Wednesday that they would develop a potential mRNA-based vaccine for the prevention of viral  shingles, working together for the third time after the success of their COVID-19 vaccine.

 Pfizer partnered with BioNTech in 2018 for an influenza vaccine and again in 2020 to develop the COVID-19 vaccine which has been used around the world and  brought in billions of dollars in corporate sales.

The companies plan to begin clinical trials of the shingles vaccine, which will combine antigen technology recognized by scientists at Pfizer  with BioNTech's mRNA platform technology, in the second half of 2022. 

Shingles, also known known as herpes zoster, usually develops in older people who had chickenpox or varicella-zoster virus when they were younger. 

Its hallmark is a painful rash that goes away within a month in most cases. In some cases, however, this leads to nerve pain which can persist for much longer collaboration, BioNTech will receive $225 million in upfront payment and be eligible  for future regulatory and commercial payments of up to $200 million. BioNTech will pay Pfizer $25 million for the company's proprietary antigen technology.