Science

The Withings Body Scan Connected Health Station is an extra as hell scale. It’s got a handle for 6-lead EKGs and can purportedly take segmented body fat scans. As in, differentiate how much fat you carry in your arms versus legs, etc. Withings also claims the scale’s EDA sensors can measure your foot sweat to gauge your nerve health. Wild.

In any case, Withings first announced this baby nearly two years ago at CES 2022 — and this is a good example of how long FDA clearance can take as this $399.95 scale will be available at the end of September 2023.

NASA reports that the OSIRIS-REx capsule “has been bagged” and is flying suspended from a helicopter to the space agency’s clean lab to recover samples gathered from the Bennu asteroid in 2020.

When it gets to NASA’s on-site clean room, scientists will remove the canister containing the sample to be opened at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas on Tuesday.

Check out this gallery of screenshots from NASA’s live coverage. NASA had a photographer on site, so we’ll probably get some much nicer shots of the process soon.

After the Bennu sample capsule’s release, NASA renamed the OSIRIS-REx mission. Now called OSIRIS-APEX, the spacecraft will meet up with a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid called Apophis.

Apophis will miss the Earth by about 20,000 miles in 2029 — that’s closer than our own Moon.

OSIRIS-APEX will study the gravitational effects of the close pass on “the asteroid’s orbit, spin rate, and surface.”

NASA put together a rendered preview to show what’s happening during today’s return of a sample scooped up from the asteroid Bennu, showing what the delivery and release of the OSIRIS-REx capsule looks like.

Consumers, states, and the FTC are taking marketing claims from wellness companies more seriously — and, increasingly, there are legal consequences.

The lawsuits come as online promoters move from endorsing other companies’ products to creating and pushing their own. Meanwhile regulators are looking more closely at influencer marketing, which is expected to exceed $21 billion this year, according to an industry report.

We’re a couple of days away from the OSIRIS-REx mission dropping off a capsule containing pieces of the asteroid Bennu that it snatched in 2021.

Right now, a NASA press conference is letting the media ask questions of the project’s leaders about what to expect this weekend.

“We were never meant to see our faces this much,” argues a Dazed essay. The increase in video conferencing may also mean an increase in body dysmorphic disorder, one survey of more than 7,000 people suggests. (The survey also found an increased use of fillers in people aged 18 to 24.) Personally, I find it helpful to turn off self-view in video calls and insist on phone calls as often as possible.

Joe Biden and heads of state for many of the top polluting countries — China, India, and Russia, and the UK — were missing at the UN Climate Ambition Summit, where the ticket to participate was a more ambition climate plan. “The rich countries that have historically driven the climate crisis and are continuing to expand fossil fuels were given an opportunity ... to demonstrate their commitment to the 1.5°C global warming limit. Instead, we saw cowardice and a staggering failure of climate leadership,” Romain Ioualalen of Oil Change International said in a statement.

During the UN climate summit today, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced that Brazil will recommit to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 48 percent by 2025. The country initially pledged to do that under the Paris agreement, but former president Jair Bolsonaro reversed course.

Deforestation in Brazil has also dropped by 48 percent this year, Lula said. Under Bolsonaro, deforestation created 122 percent more carbon dioxide emissions in two years than the average recorded between 2010 and 2018.

The Paris agreement, while committing countries to limit global warming, doesn’t actually use the term “fossil fuel.” The world needs a treaty on the non-proliferation of fossil fuels, Lidy Nacpil of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development said during the opening plenary of the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit taking place today. The non-proliferation treaty’s supporters based it on the same principles as the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Amazon says that all devices it announces today will have their carbon footprint published in product sustainability fact sheets. Almost every device announced today will come in 100% recycled packaging in the US.

Amazon also announced that they’ve contracted enough renewable energy capacity through new wind and solar farms to equal the expected energy use of those devices.

A civilian climate corps was a key ask youth climate activists had of Biden while he was still on the campaign trail in 2020. Today, during NYC’s Climate Week, the Biden administration announced that it’s launching a new American Climate Corps, a job training program for careers in clean energy and conservation.

We’re still waiting for more details on how the program will work and where the funds will come from. But starting today, people can sign up to “learn more” about the Corps, according to White House officials.

Elon Musk’s company is arguing in a Texas federal court that the Justice Department’s lawsuit alleging that the company is illegally disqualifying asylees and refugees from employment is unconstitutional.

Bloomberg noted in a report last week that the company is engaged in “a handful of lawsuits by former employees” over discrimination.

The company’s Texas filing may be to ensure the case funnels through the Fifth Circuit appellate court on appeal since that court tends to push back on federal regulatory action lately, writes Space News.

According to NASA: “Coronal mass ejections are immense eruptions of plasma and energy from the Sun’s corona that drive space weather.” You can find out more about the probe’s mission and see the uncompressed, unedited version on NASA’s website.

NASA launched the probe to learn more about the Sun in August 2018, and it’s already taken an incredible photo of Venus. You can also find out more about how it deals with being hit by all that solar dust and where it got its name.

The Verge saw NYPD fill at least three police vans with protesters who marched through NYC’s financial district to end fossil fuels. Demonstrators are still blocking entrances to the bank, and there are more arrests going down.

Have you ever wondered why celebrities’ teeth all look the same? It’s veneers, and this Cronenberg-esque piece highlights the problems with treating the body as a platform — and the TikTok account of a dentist devoted to calling veneers out.

Edward Norton, Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo, Rosario Dawson, Alyssa Milano, Marisa Tomei, and Alicia Silverstone are among the actors who joined some 700 activists and organizations that signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to phase out fossil fuels. The letter comes ahead of a ‘March to End Fossil Fuels’ and a United Nations Climate Ambition Summit in New York City next week. “You have the executive authority to stop approving fossil fuel projects, phase out fossil fuel production on federal lands, and halt oil and gas exports,” the letter says.

Exxon kept trying to mislead people on climate change even after finally admitting publicly in 2006 that fossil fuels are to blame, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation. Exxon continued to support research that questioned mainstream climate science after pledging to stop funding climate denial, according to the report. Before that, Exxon had already spent decades studying climate change while sowing doubt about the risks of burning fossil fuels.