Missed issue: ReHacked #48: unsafe civil aviation, why black holes blasts out energy beams, where wormholes lead to, why message lost during native english speaker communication and more

The numbering in the last issue was messed - should be 48, but it was 49 - my bad :)

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Belarus 'diverts Ryanair flight to arrest journalist', opposition says #world #stateterrorism #plane #hijacking

A Ryanair plane from Greece to Lithuania was diverted to Belarus for several hours on Sunday, with activists saying it was done to arrest a dissident journalist on board.

European nations reacted with outrage, accusing Belarus of "state terrorism".

The ex-editor of the Nexta group, Roman Protasevich, was detained before the plane was allowed to resume its flight.

Belarus media said a MiG-29 escorted the jet to Minsk because of a bomb scare but no explosives were found.

The plane finally landed in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, its original destination, at 21:25 local time (18:25 GMT), more than seven hours after its scheduled arrival.

Arriving passengers said they had been given no information about the reason for the abrupt diversion to Minsk. One said Mr Protasevich looked "super scared. I looked directly to his eyes and it was very sad".

Another, Monika Simkiene, told AFP news agency: "He just turned to people and said he was facing the death penalty."

Ford unveils its electric F-150 with 300 miles of range and 563HP #technology #engineering

Just one year after Ford debuted its first hybrid F-150, the company is ready to show off an all-electric version of its iconic truck. The F-150 Lightning lives up to its "truck of the future" billing, as it prepares to lead a string of electric pickups and SUVs that are about to hit the streets, including Tesla's Cybertruck, the Hummer EV and others.

Face masks effectively limit the probability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission #science #health

Airborne transmission by droplets and aerosols is important for the spread of viruses. Face masks are a well-established preventive measure, but their effectiveness for mitigating SARS-CoV-2 transmission is still under debate. We show that variations in mask efficacy can be explained by different regimes of virus abundance and related to population-average infection probability and reproduction number. For SARS-CoV-2, the viral load of infectious individuals can vary by orders of magnitude. We find that most environments and contacts are under conditions of low virus abundance (virus-limited) where surgical masks are effective at preventing virus spread. More advanced masks and other protective equipment are required in potentially virus-rich indoor environments including medical centers and hospitals. Masks are particularly effective in combination with other preventive measures like ventilation and distancing.

Native English speakers are the world’s worst communicators #culture #language

In a room full of non-native speakers, ‘there isn’t any chance of understanding’. It might be their language, but the message is often lost.

It was just one word in one email, but it triggered huge financial losses for a multinational company.

The message, written in English, was sent by a native speaker to a colleague for whom English was a second language. Unsure of the word, the recipient found two contradictory meanings in his dictionary. He acted on the wrong one.

Months later, senior management investigated why the project had flopped, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. “It all traced back to this one word,” says Chia Suan Chong, a UK-based communications skills and intercultural trainer, who didn't reveal the tricky word because it is highly industry-specific and possibly identifiable. “Things spiralled out of control because both parties were thinking the opposite.”

Nonnative English Speakers Share Their Gripes About Speaking English : Goats and Soda : NPR #language #culture

A month or two after I began teaching in the U.S., I had to make some changes to the class schedule. "We'll need to prepone the quiz, I'm afraid," I said, steeling myself for the groans from students that were sure to follow.

Instead, there was deafening silence.

I looked around to see blank expressions on my students' faces — that look of "I have NO idea what you just said," which stops any teacher worth their salt mid-lecture to backtrack and explain a concept further.

'Out of control': Organized crime drives S.F. shoplifting, closing 17 Walgreens in five years #crime

Wormhole Tunnels in Spacetime May Be Possible, New Research Suggests #science #nature #physics

In the early days of research on black holes, before they even had that name, physicists did not yet know if these bizarre objects existed in the real world. They might have been a quirk of the complicated math used in the then still young general theory of relativity, which describes gravity. Over the years, though, evidence has accumulated that black holes are very real and even exist right here in our galaxy.

Today another strange prediction from general relativity—wormholes, those fantastical sounding tunnels to the other side of the universe—hang in the same sort of balance. Are they real? And if they are out there in our cosmos, could humans hope to use them for getting around? After their prediction in 1935, research seemed to point toward no—wormholes appeared unlikely to be an element of reality. But new work offers hints of how they could arise, and the process may be easier than physicists have long thought.

Unexpected 'Black Swan' defect discovered in soft matter for first time #physics #science

In new research, Texas A&M University scientists have for the first time revealed a single microscopic defect called a "twin" in a soft-block copolymer using an advanced electron microscopy technique. This defect may be exploited in the future to create materials with novel acoustic and photonic properties.

"This defect is like a black swan—something special going on that isn't typical," said Dr. Edwin Thomas, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "Although we chose a certain polymer for our study, I think the twin defect will be fairly universal across a bunch of similar soft matter systems, like oils, surfactants, biological materials and natural polymers. Therefore, our findings will be valuable to diverse research across the soft matter field."

Physicists Identify the Engine Powering Black Hole Energy Beams #space #nature #physics

<…> through the work of Issaoun and her colleagues on the black hole-observing Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team, the mystery has started to unravel. Several weeks ago, the EHT released its second photo of a black hole — another view of the same fiery ring pitted by darkness seen in 2019. Both images show the glowing plasma around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, whose giant jet rises outside the frame. Unlike in the first photo, the ring in the new image has stripes, indicating that the light is strongly polarized.

Experts say the spiral pattern of the stripes results from a strong, orderly magnetic field around the M87 black hole, and that this represents the first significant empirical evidence in favor of a popular 44-year-old theory of jet launching, known as the Blandford-Znajek process.

Where Do Butts Come From? #nature

To peer into the soul of a sea cucumber, don’t look to its face; it doesn’t have one. Gently turn that blobby body around, and gaze deep into its marvelous, multifunctional anus.

The sea cucumber's posterior is so much more than an exit hole for digestive waste. It is also a makeshift mouth that gobbles up bits of algae; a faux lung, latticed with tubes that exchange gas with the surrounding water; and a weapon that, in the presence of danger, can launch a sticky, stringy web of internal organs to entangle predators. It can even, on occasion, be a home for shimmering pearlfish,  which wriggle inside the bum when it billows open to breathe. It would  not be inaccurate to describe a sea cucumber as an extraordinary anus  that just so happens to have a body around it. As Rebecca Helm, a  jellyfish biologist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville,  told me, “It is just a really great butt.”

Browse and download high-resolution, public domain artworks. #art #culture

France's 18-year-olds given €300 culture pass #culture

Some 800,000 teenagers a year can now look forward to downloading an app and getting €300 (£260; $365).

The pass can be used for tickets to the cinema, museum and theatre, or to buy books, art materials, dance courses and instruments or an online subscription.

A New Replication Crisis: Research that is Less Likely to be True is Cited More #science

Papers in leading psychology, economic and science journals that fail to replicate and therefore are less likely to be true are often the most cited papers in academic research, according to a new study by the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management.

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Dainius