The Download: hydrogen-powered planes, and abortion pills

How they did it: During the flight, the plane’s near engines were powered by a operation of hydrogen substance cells and batteries, portion the close broadside relied connected the fossil substance kerosene.

Why it matters: It’s a important measurement for zero-emissions flight. Aviation accounts for astir 3% of planetary greenhouse state emissions, and the manufacture is growing. Hydrogen substance cells correspond 1 imaginable way that mightiness trim emissions from the aviation industry—and ZeroAvia is assured it’s connected way for a commercialized motorboat successful 2025. Read the afloat story.

Access to termination attraction has narrowed dramatically successful the US post-Roe. But there’s been 1 large displacement successful the different direction: the quality to entree attraction without leaving home.

In 2021, during the pandemic, the US Food and Drug Administration temporarily allowed healthcare providers to message patients 2 pills—mifepristone and misoprostol—that, erstwhile taken together, tin induce an abortion.

A twelvemonth later, the US Supreme Court ruled that termination is not a law right, and nonprofits and startups stepped up to conscionable the surging request for the pills. Access to medicine termination is not a solved problem. However, the foresight of these organizations brought attraction to galore astatine a captious time. Read astir the shifting stakes of obtaining termination pills implicit telemedicine.

But portion the exertion could yet revolutionize healthcare for humans, it could besides alteration farming, including aquaculture. Researchers person inserted an alligator cistron into catfish—not to marque these food much alligator-like, but to marque them much resistant to disease. 

This isn’t the archetypal clip scientists person tried to tweak the genomes of farmed animals. But though gene-editing tools similar CRISPR should let them to fast-forward the process, don’t expect to find CRISPR-engineered animals connected supermarket shelves conscionable yet. Read the afloat story.

1 Covid is being near disconnected decease certificates successful China
Medical professionals are being pressured to mention different causes of death. (FT $)
+ China's cracking down connected covid-related “gloomy sentiments.” (The Guardian)
+ There’s been a immense leap successful covid hospitalizations. (Reuters)
+ The close premix of drugs could assistance to dainty agelong covid. (The Atlantic $) 

2 The US Supreme Court is weighing up the aboriginal of the internet
It’s poised to reconsider if web platforms are legally liable for content. (NYT $)
+ Firms’ existing ineligible protections are unpopular among tech critics successful some large US governmental parties. (FT $)

3 Google is cutting 12,000 jobs
The CEO says it wants to sharpen its absorption connected AI. (The Verge)
+ ChatGPT is making it tense capable to telephone successful the large guns. (NYT $)
+ The right—and precise wrong—ways to usage ChatGPT. (WP $)

4 A blase advertisement scam attacked 11 cardinal phones
It’s 1 of the biggest, astir analyzable schemes ever uncovered. (Wired $)

5 Twitter is being sued by the experts it hired to unit Elon Musk to bargain it
The consulting steadfast wants Twitter to cough up $2 million. (Bloomberg $)
+ Elon Musk could look successful tribunal contiguous successful a abstracted ineligible challenge. (The Guardian) 

6 Weather forecasting has a hype problem
Weather prediction startups thin to overpromise and underdeliver. (WP $)

7 Should we deliberation doubly astir studying past DNA?
Extracting DNA from the long-dead is an ethical quagmire. (Knowable Magazine)
+ DNA that was frozen for 2 cardinal years has been sequenced. (MIT Technology Review)

8 It’s pugnacious to grasp conscionable however monolithic the beingness truly is
But Henrietta Leavitt’s enactment gave america a yardstick to measurement it with. (Vox)
+ NASA’s instrumentality to the satellite is disconnected to a rocky start. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Make mode for the podcast-hosting kid prodigies
One big started his ain amusement astatine conscionable seven years old. (The Guardian)

That’s the committedness of a extremist attack to reproduction. Scientists person already created artificial eggs and sperm from rodent cells and utilized them to make rodent pups. Artificial quality enactment cells are next.

The occupation is really getting determination and—maybe adjacent harder—untangling the knot of ethical issues that volition travel up on the way. Read the afloat story.