San Francisco News
Online data could be used against people seeking abortions now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned
Nora McDonald, University of Cincinnati In overturning Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case does not merely deprive women of reproductive control and physical agency as a matter of constitutional law, but it also changes their relationship with the online world. Anyone in a state where abortion is now illegal who relies on the internet for information, products and services related to reproductive health is subject to online policing. All women of child-bearing age, regardless of how secure and how privileged they may have imagined themselves to be, are now among the marginalized and vulnerable
Elon Musk won’t have a board to watch him when he takes Twitter private – does that matter?
Michael Withers, Texas A&M University and Steven Boivie, Texas A&M University It appears Twitter’s board of directors finally warmed to Elon Musk’ hostile bid and agreed to a sale – but not before it took a severe beating from the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and other prominent users on their own social network. Musk, who on April 25, 2022, sealed a deal to buy Twitter for US$44 billion, criticized board members for owning almost no shares of the company they oversee. Dorsey, who will step down from his seat on Twitter’s board at the end of
A lunar return, a Jupiter moon, the most powerful rocket ever built and the James Webb Space Telescope – space missions to watch in the coming months
Chris Impey, University of Arizona Space travel is all about momentum. Rockets turn their fuel into momentum that carries people, satellites and science itself forward into space. 2021 was a year full of records for space programs around the world, and that momentum is carrying forward into 2022. Last year, the commercial space race truly took off. Richard Branson and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos both rode on suborbital launches – and brought friends, including actor William Shatner. SpaceX sent eight astronauts and 1 ton of supplies to the International Space Station for NASA. The six tourist spaceflights in 2021 were
What is 5G? An electrical engineer explains
Prasenjit Mitra, Penn State 5G stands for fifth-generation cellular network technology. It’s the technology that enables wireless communication – for example, from your cellular phone to a cell tower, which channels it to the internet. 5G is a network service provided by telecommunications carriers and is not the same thing as the 5 GHz band on your Wi-Fi router. 5G offers an order of magnitude – 10 times – more bandwidth than its predecessor, 4G. The greater bandwidth is possible because over and above low and medium frequency radio waves, 5G uses additional higher-frequency waves to encode and carry information.