Month: December 2021

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson)

I can barely believe it’s once again that time of year when I sit down and look through everything we drove during the last 12 months to see what stood out. And what a 12 months they’ve been, with a number of highly anticipated new models, including quite a few new battery electric vehicles. In fact, more than half of my top 10 are BEVs, which says good things about ever-expanding consumer options. Read on to find out what impressed in 2021.

1. Hyundai Ioniq 5

OK, I boxed myself into this corner earlier this month when I wrote a headline proclaiming that the Hyundai Ioniq 5 was the best EV we drove all year. I haven’t changed that opinion in the last week, either. Hyundai’s days of unreliable, poorly made cars are long behind it, and its electric powertrains were already the best of the non-Tesla rest.

Now it has a brand-new 800 V platform for larger, more premium BEVs, and the Ioniq 5 is the first result. It has pin-sharp styling and TARDIS-like levels of interior space, and it rapid-charges in just 18 minutes. And the fully loaded AWD version is still under $55,000 before any tax credits or incentives. Watch this space for a more powerful, sportier Ioniq 5 N.

Enlarge (credit: Craig Hastings | Getty Images)

President Joe Biden on Tuesday issued a proclamation revoking controversial travel restrictions targeting southern Africa where the ultra-transmissible omicron coronavirus variant was first detected in late November.

The travel restrictions on eight countries in southern Africa—Botswana, Eswatini/Swaziland, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe—will be lifted at 12:01am ET on December 31.

The revocation was long sought by public health experts, who say such travel bans are ineffective and harmful.

Enlarge / SEM Micrograph of a tardigrade, more commonly known as a water bear or “moss piglet.” (credit: Cultura RM Exclusive/Gregory S. Paulson/Getty Images)

There’s rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we’re once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2020, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: the amazing physics of the humble tardigrade.

Is there nothing the tiny tardigrade can’t do? More commonly known as water bears (or “moss piglets”), these amazing micro-animals can survive in the harshest conditions: extreme pressure, extreme temperature, radiation, dehydration, starvation—even exposure in outer space.  That hardiness makes them a favorite case study for scientists.

Earlier this year, researchers at Rockefeller University examined the water bear’s distinctive gait and concluded the creature’s movement resembles that of insects 500,000 times their size, according to a paper published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Enlarge (credit: WichienTep | Getty Images)

A 10-year-old girl and her mother got a lesson about the utility of voice assistants after Amazon’s Alexa suggested the girl try the TikTok plug challenge. According to the girl’s mother, Kristin Livdahl, the dangerous suggestion came after her daughter asked Alexa for a challenge to do.

“We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shot on your foot, from a Phy Ed teacher on YouTube earlier,” Livdahl explained in her Twitter thread. “She just wanted another one.”

For the (blessedly) uninitiated, the plug challenge consists of partially plugging a phone charger into an electrical outlet and then dropping a penny onto the exposed prongs. Results can run the gamut from a small spark to a full-on electrical fire.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in May 2021 carrying the 29th batch of approximately 60 satellites as part of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband Internet network. (credit: SOPA Images / Getty Images)

Earlier in December, the Chinese government filed a document with the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space at the United Nations. The body helps manage the terms of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, more commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty. In the document, China alleges that it had to move its space station twice this year due to potential collisions with Starlink satellites operated by SpaceX.

The document pointedly notes that signatories of the treaty, which include the US, are responsible for the actions of any nongovernmental activities based within their borders.

The document was filed back on December 6, but it only came to light recently when Chinese Internet users became aware of it and started flaming Elon Musk, head of SpaceX.

Enlarge / Travelers wait in line to check-in at LaGuardia Airport in New York, on December 24, 2021. -On Christmas Eve, airlines, struggling with the Omicron variant of Covid-19, have canceled over 2,000 flights globally, 454 of which are domestic, into or out of the US. (credit: Getty | YUKI IWAMURA)

As the ultratransmissible omicron coronavirus variant bears down on the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday made a controversial decision to ease COVID-19 isolation and quarantine rules.

The country’s omicron surge has sent graphs of case counts vertical, and is already causing severe strain on health systems, shuttering businesses, and wreaking havoc on holiday travel and festivities. The US is currently averaging over 243,000 new COVID-19 cases per day, near the country’s all-time high of an average just over 250,000 per day set in early January 2021. Still, federal officials and public health experts say this is only the beginning of omicron’s towering wave, which may not peak until next month.

The CDC’s decision Monday is intended to ease the economic burden of the skyrocketing cases and follows an accumulation of data suggesting that infectiousness tends to wane two to three days after the onset of symptoms. However, some public health experts called the new rules “reckless” for not incorporating testing requirements.