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Experts Alarmed After Large Piece Blows Off Boeing 737 Mid-Flight – Futurism

"I can't imagine what these passengers experienced." Terror Flight

Last week, passengers aboard an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California experienced the fright of their lives.

Shortly after taking off, a substantial piece of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 fuselage tore off, causing air to rush out and pressure to drop. Fortunately, all 171 passengers and six crew members on board made it back to the ground largely unscathed after the pilots successfully turned back to land.

Now, regulators have kicked off an investigation and grounded 171 of the Boeing commercial airliners to check them for any signs of damage to ensure such an incident won't happen again. Alaska Airlines has also had to cancel hundreds of upcoming flights.

"I can't imagine what these passengers experienced," Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University air safety expert Anthony Brickhouse told Reuters. "The wind would be rushing through that cabin. It was a probably pretty violent situation, and definitely a scary situation."

It's still unclear just how widespread the grounding is. In the US, only Alaska Airlines and United are affected.

Nonetheless, it's the last thing Boeing needs, since the company has been struggling with one crisis after the other overin recent years. In early 2019, Boeing announced that it had grounded the entire global fleet of its 737 MAX aircraft following two fatal crashes, one in 2018 that killed all 189 people on board, and a second in 2019 that killed 157.

The culprit in both crashes turned out to be related to the plane's "enhanced flight control" system that caused the nose of the planes to dip rapidly.

In the latest instance, the offending component was a section of the fuselage that in some high-capacity configurations is used as an additional door. In the case of the Alaska Airlines flight, the opening was closed with a "plug door," per the BBC.

The MAX 9 makes up only 220 of the 1,400 MAX jets Boeing has delivered to customers. Most of these planes are owned by US airlines.

"We are very, very fortunate here that this didn't end up in something more tragic," National Transportation Safety Board chairman Jennifer Homendy said in a statement.

More on Boeing: Boeing CEO Caught Commuting by Private Jet

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Scientists Have Been Studying Your Pee and They Finally Have Answers – Futurism

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Until now, scientists somehow didn't know exactlywhat made pee yellow.

But that just may have finally changed.In a new study published in the journalNature Microbiology, a multidisciplinary group of scientists out of the University of Maryland reported on their findings about a middleman enzyme called bilirubin reductase, which had long evaded researchers as they tried to figure out which precise compounds resulted in urine's distinct yellow hue.

To be clear, as Healthline reports, scientists had known for more than 125 years that on a high level, urine gets its color from the disposal of old red blood cells as they degrade in our livers.

But although the process by which urine became yellow was known, the middle-man of compounds couldn't be captured until genome sequencing technology became advanced enough to break down the building blocks of pee.

"Our work to find [bilirubin reductase] relied on combining experimental screening with genomic analysis, an approach that has only become possible with the isolation of more gut bacterial species and the advancement of genome sequencing technology," UMD cell biologist and molecular geneticist and paper co-author Brantley Hall told Healthline.

"Unfortunately, gut microbes can be challenging to study," Hall added. "The gut is a low-oxygen environment, and many of the bacteria in our guts cant survive if too much oxygen is present, making them difficult to grow and perform experiments on in labs. This ultimately meant that only a handful of bacterial species had ever been identified as being able to metabolize bilirubin, limiting the amount of data that was available."

After finally being able to isolate gut bacteria long enough, the scientists eventually found that bilirubin reductase, abbreviated as BilR, was the enzyme that took the orange bilirubin gut compound and transformed it into urobilin in the liver.

Beyond finding the missing piss link, this discovery could also help scientists and doctors understand and treat jaundice in infants, as well as other conditions related to bilirubin breakdown failure including gallstones and inflammatory bowel disease in adults and, less commonly, other disorders in which bilirubin builds up so much that people become extremely sick, get brain damage, and can even die.

At the end of the day, however, it's also extremely exciting that scientists have figured this out at all.

"Its remarkable that an everyday biological phenomenon went unexplained for so long," Hall exclaimed, "and our team is excited to be able to explain it."

More on bodily functions: Guy Who Used Son as a"Blood Boy"Says Elon Musk Will"Fire YouandLeave YoutoDie"

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The Cybertruck’s Real World Range Is Incredibly Feeble – Futurism

It's not looking great. Hypomiling

While we still don't know exactly how the mileage of Tesla's Cybertruck will perform over time, early tests for the handful that the company finally delivered aren't looking all too promising.

YouTube account Out of Specs rented a Cybertruck and took it for an extended spin, livestreaming the ordeal over five hours.

Their finding: the pickup covered a measly 254 miles on the highway, falling far short of the truck's EPA-rated range of 320 miles and that doesn't bode well, considering Tesla has already had to make some significant compromises, especially when it comes to price.

For one, the massive 6,600-pound truck needs an additional battery pack that takes up most of the bed of its truck to get anywhere close to the 500-mile range that Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised on stage during the truck's unveiling back in 2019.

And that's for the top trim level that Tesla's started to deliver to customers. A less powerful entry-level trim that will go for $60,990 will have an even more meager 250-mile range if it ever makes it into production sometime next year, that is.

Of course, Out of Specs' end result has to be taken with a grain of salt. For one, there are plenty of other environmental factors to consider, like weather, tires, or what features were being used that may have eaten into the pickup's considerable 123 kilowatt-hour reserves. The truck was driving on a highway at a relatively chilly temperature of just 46 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nonetheless, even at colder temperatures, which are all too common in many parts of the country, you'd probably expect such a hyped $100,000 EV to go a little further.

"Absolutely horrid," one Cybertruck Owners Club forum user commented.

Rivian's R1T has an EPA range of 314 miles, with Reddit users reporting real-world figures of just under 300 miles. Ford's F-150 Lighting impressed as well, covering well over 300 miles on a single charge in a real-world test.

In short, we'll reserve judgment until more people have had the chance to drive a Cybertruck until its battery pack is depleted. But given what we've seen so far, it's not looking great.

More on the Cybertruck: Driver Injured in First Cybertruck Crash

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SpaceX Releases Bizarre Video in Attempt to Prove Elon Wasn’t on Drugs – Futurism

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a scandalousreport about multi-hyphenate CEO Elon Musk's alleged drug habit, including the purported use of psychedelic substances like LSD, magic mushrooms, and other mind-altering drugs like cannabis, MDMA, and cocaine.

The newspaper singled out a 2017 SpaceX staff meeting as a noteworthy turning point for the mercurial entrepreneur, with several sources saying his strange behavior suggested he could have been on drugs at the time. One of the WSJ's sources described the event as "nonsensical," "unhinged," and "cringeworthy."

Now, SpaceX has published an excruciating 73-minute live stream of the meeting in an effort to clear Musk's name. But in many ways, the video instead raises even more questions following the WSJ's piece.

Sure, the video demonstrates that the newspaper's sources might've been wrong about one claim: that SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell had to fully take over the meeting.

But Shotwell does do her level best to defuse Musk's bizarre behavior, in which he constantly struggles to complete sentences, repeats himself over and over, embarks on peculiar digressions, and at one point appears confused about what day of the week it is, confusing Friday for Tuesday.

"Im doing color commentary," Shotwell says at one point as Musk struggles. "We didnt practice this, by the way. This comedy routine, its all extemporaneous."

Overall, the video does little to convince the viewer that Musk is fully okay. He seems relentlessly jitteryand his speech is filled with excruciating stutters and pauses.

In one instance, he puts on "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash on his smartphone,then puts it back in his pocket with the song still playing. He then takes it back out again and has to hand it off to Shotwell to turn off the audio.

"Sorry, I got almost no sleep last night," he says. "Brain's not working properly."

To be clear, Musk has never been the poster child of public speaking. He's long struggled to string coherent sentences together, or gone off on tangents mid-sentence.

Whether his particularly striking behavior during the newly-released video can be chalked up to drug or alcohol use, a brutal hangover, or simple sleep deprivation is difficult to say.But combined with the other allegations in theWSJ's reporting, it's hard not to wonder.

Meanwhile, Musk joked on his social media platform X that he would "definitely take" narcotics" if they improved his "net productivity over time."

"After that one puff with Rogan, I agreed, at NASAs request, to do three years of random drug testing, Musk tweeted, referring to the time he took a hit off a blunt during a fateful interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in 2018. "Not even trace quantities were found of any drugs or alcohol."

Nonetheless, the WSJ maintains that multiple sources claimed that his drug use was extensive, something that's especially concerning considering his companies' multi-billion dollar government contracts.

In short, it's impossible to tell with any degree of certainty whether Musk was on drugs during important staff meetings over six years ago. But while Musk claims to have submitted himself to drug tests over years, the public has yet to see the results of these tests.

Given his erratic behavior at the event, as well as his well-documented tendency to mislead and lie, there's certainly still a case to be made.

Whether these reports will lead to anything is doubtful, though. Analysts are already predicting that investors at Musk's EV maker Tesla "won't care" about the WSJ's allegations.

But they're not laughing, either. Especially following his disastrous takeover of X-formerly-Twitter, Musk's distractions and off-color antics have greatly strained his relationship with investors.

More on Musk: Twitter Suddenly Suspends Journalists Critical of Elon Musk

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Experts Deeply Concerned About Cybertruck Safety – Futurism

Woe betide any car or pedestrian that crosses the Cybertruck's path. Road Warrior

The Tesla Cybertruck's distinctive looks could have deadly consequences for its passengers, pedestrians, and other cars on the road unfortunate enough to cross its path, experts fear despite claims made by CEO Elon Musk that it will be "safer per mile than other trucks."

Video of crash tests featuring the vehiclehas been widely scrutinized after being shown in an official livestream of the Cybertruck's delivery event last week.

Because only limited footage was shared with the public with no accompanying data, there's only so much that can be deduced right now. But whatever the armchair experts may be saying online, the real experts are already quite concerned with what they've seen so far.

They cite the Cybertruck's stainless-steel exterior, an unorthodox material to use in a car body due to its weight and stiffness not to mention manufacturingchallenges as heightening the danger of collisions, especially with pedestrians. And go figure: not only is the car made up of the same stuff as a kitchen knife, it's got the sharp edges of one, too.

"The big problem there is if they really make the skin of the vehicle very stiff by using thick stainless steel, then when people hit their heads on it, it's going to cause more damage to them," Adrian Lund, former president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), told Reuters.

Much attention was drawn to the Cybertruck's apparent lack of crumple zones, areas of a car designed to absorb the impact of a collision by deforming. Rigid stainless steel would seem a poor candidate material for crumpling, meaning that occupants are potentially less shielded against the full force of an impact.

That could also be bad news for other cars on the road. If the Cybertruck doesn't crumple enough in a collision, it'll slam into other vehicles like a sledgehammer on wheels.

"If you're in a crash with another vehicle that has a crumple zone and your car is more stiff, then their cars are going to crush and yours is resistant," David Friedman, the former acting head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told Reuters.

Samer Hamdar, a professor of auto safety at George Washington University, echoed fears over the Cybertruck's crumple zones, but cautioned that there could be other features in the car to compensate that we haven't seen yet.

"There might be a possibility of a shock-absorbent mechanism that will limit the fact that you have a limited crumple zone," Hamdar told Reuters.

At any rate, while Cybertrucks are finally being driven off the lot with deliveries set to start in the US, they're so far a no-go in the European Union likely due to its sharp, protruding edges, and bloated weight.

More on Tesla: The Cybertruck's Giant Windshield Wiper Is Floppy

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Anti-Cancer Pill Shows Promising Results in Human Experiment – Futurism

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In its latest round of early human trials, a drug called divarasib has shown promising results in treating a specific form of bowel cancer, outshining existing alternatives.

In a new studypublished in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Australia found that when divarasib is combined with another cancer treatment called cetuximab, 62 percent of patients with tumors caused by a mutation in the KRAS gene experienced a positive outcome, which means that their tumors were either completely eradicated or reduced in size.

When used on its own, previous research found the pill yields a still impressive 35.9 percent positive response rate, notes NewAtlas, and is overall 20 times more effective than other treatments that also target the same cancer.

Despite the promising results, it's a very targeted drug that will only be effective for a small proportion of colon cancer patients. The mutation, KRAS G12C, affects a protein that controls cell division and occurs only in four percent of colon or rectal (colorectal) cancer cases,according to the researchers.

However, because KRAS G12C cancer is commonly tested for and has such a poor prognosis, doctors could quickly identify the patients that would benefit from divarasib, providing immediate and potentially life-saving relief.

"The median progression-free survival for patients in the study" the amount of time during or after the treatment they were able to live without the cancer getting worse "was just over eight months and the treatment was well tolerated with manageable side effects," said study lead author Jayesh Desai, a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, in a statement.

"While this is not a head-to-head trial, the response rates are better than what we have seen with other treatments that work on the KRAS G12C mutation pathway," he added, referring to trials that directly compare different therapies.

Existing treatments for KRAS G12C bowel cancer such as chemotherapy and immunotherapy provided only modest results. Their main drawback is that they're non-selective, targeting the whole body rather than homing in on the deadly tumors a problem that divarasib seemingly promises to circumvent.

"We are very hopeful that this combination of divarasib with cetuximab will translate into better outcomes for our colorectal cancer patients," Desai said.

More on cancer: Scientists Intrigued by Clever Trick That Makes Cancer Cells Self-Destruct

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