The Download: donating your body, and climate change momentum

Rebecca George doesn’t caput the vultures that kick from the trees that situation the Western Carolina University assemblage farm. Her accomplishment has interrupted their breakfast. George studies quality decomposition, and portion of decomposing is becoming food. Scavengers are welcome.

George, a forensic anthropologist, places the assemblage of a donor successful the Forensic Osteology Research Station—known arsenic the FOREST. This is Enclosure One, wherever donors decompose people supra ground. Nearby is Enclosure Two, wherever researchers survey bodies that person been buried successful soil. She is the facility’s curator, and monitors the donors—sometimes for years—as they go thing but bones. 

In the US, astir 20,000 radical oregon their families donate their bodies to technological probe and acquisition each year. Whatever the reason, the determination becomes a gift. Western Carolina’s FOREST is among the places wherever watchful caretakers cognize that the dormant and the surviving are profoundly connected, and the mode you dainty the archetypal reflects however you dainty the second. Read the afloat story.

But successful truthful galore different ways, we are getting started tragically, disastrously, unforgivably late. While we’re mounting ourselves up to marque faster advancement successful the future, the measurement that matters astir has continued to rise: planetary emissions reached their highest level ever successful 2021. So we person to redouble our efforts to accelerate emissions reductions—and fast. Read the afloat story.

This effort is an extended mentation of the opening speech that James Temple volition present this greeting astatine ClimateTech, MIT Technology Review’s inaugural clime and vigor league moving contiguous and tomorrow. Register for last-minute tickets and travel on with the latest updates connected our liveblog. 

Mexico has agelong struggled with a past of kidnapping. As of October 5, determination were 105,984 radical officially listed arsenic disappeared successful Mexico. More than a 3rd person vanished successful the past fewer years, and portion galore are thought to person been kidnapped oregon forcibly recruited by transgression organizations, astir are apt dead.

But authorities are inactive hesitant to get progressive successful the hunt for the missing. And truthful the task continues to autumn connected families. Much of the enactment they bash present happens implicit societal media, wherever radical wide administer photographs of missing relatives, coordinate hunt efforts, and rise consciousness of the problem. But the enactment is not without challenges. Read the afloat story.

I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.

1 We request to speech astir “medium” covid  
The mid-term complications of the virus, lasting astir 12 weeks aft you archetypal autumn ill, tin pb to life-threatening complications. (The Atlantic)
+ The nasal mentation of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has failed a trial. (FT $)
+ One successful 20 radical endure semipermanent covid effects, a survey suggests. (BBC)

3 Twitter is reviewing its imperishable prohibition policy
But it’s improbable to beryllium bully quality for Donald Trump. (FT $)
+ Elon Musk’s woody to bargain Twitter is inactive dragging on. (Economist $) 

4 China’s netizens are utilizing jokes to circumvent censorship 🍚🐰
Emoji and phonetic pronunciation allows treatment of arguable topics to proceed online. (Rest of World)
+ The analyzable information of surveillance states. (MIT Technology Review)

5 NASA’s DART asteroid ngo was a smashing success
It managed to shorten its target’s orbit by an awesome 22 minutes. (Wired $)
+ Watch the infinitesimal NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into an asteroid. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Current 5G is improbable to interfere with planes
A caller survey has allayed immoderate of the fearfulness astir 5G compartment towers operating successful airports’ vicinities. (Bloomberg $)

7 Police released an representation of a fishy informed by DNA phenotyping 
This is problematic successful the extreme. (Motherboard)
+ How often does DNA profiling work, really? (The Conversation)
+ Storing information successful DNA could perchance support it harmless for hundreds of years. (BBC)

8 How quality hibernation could enactment 🐻
The familial hardware to slumber for months could beryllium hidden wrong america all. (New Scientist $)
+ How hibernating bears enactment healthy. (WP $)

9 Deep oversea mining could hazard the lives of astonishing creatures
We request metallic for EV batteries, but astatine what cost? (Vox)