OnePlus Smartphone, Realme GT2 Master Explorer Edition, Asus ROG Phone 6 to Feature Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC

OnePlus, Realme, and Asus have announced the launch of smartphones equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC, just a day after the flagship chipset was launched by Qualcomm. Asus will be bringing out the ROG Phone 6 gaming smartphone powered by the latest chipset from Qualcomm while the handset from OnePlus featuring the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC is scheduled to hit the markets in the third quarter of the current year. Realme has also announced that its GT2 Master Explorer Edition will be the first handset to sport the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. To recall, several other manufacturers have announced use of the new Qualcomm SoCs, but these are the first few manufacturers to reveal concrete plans.

OnePlus in a post on Weibo teased an upcoming smartphone equipped with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC on its official Weibo page. Although the name of the handset has not been revealed by the company, OnePlus has said the smartphone will hit the market in Q3 of 2022.

Realme GT2 Master Explorer Edition will also feature the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. In fact, Realme has also claimed in its Weibo post that the flagship smartphone will be first Android mobile to be equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ processor. The official launch date of the handset has not been announced yet.

And finally, Taiwanese electronics giant Asus has also confirmed that ROG Phone 6 series, which will be launched as the Tencent variant in the Chinese market, will feature the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC in both the Chinese and global variant. The ROG brand has also made the announcement on its official Instagram page where it has said that the ROG Phone 6 will be the first gaming smartphone to sport the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. 2D renders of the ROG Phone 6 series were leaked earlier this year. The design of the upcoming Asus ROG Phone 6 series was shown to be similar to the Asus ROG Phone 5 series.

Qualcomm recently launched the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoCs as its latest mobile platforms. Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is capable of delivering up to 10 percent faster CPU performance and 30 percent improved power efficiency over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. As we mentioned, apart from OnePlus, Realme, and Asus, several other manufacturers announced they would be launching smartphones with the latest Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC, including including Black Shark, Honor, iQoo, Lenovo, Motorola, Nubia, Oppo, Redmi, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE.


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NASA Plans to Conduct Artemis 1 SLS Launch’s Final Wet Dress Rehearsal in June

NASA is planning to make another attempt at testing the Artemis 1 SLS rocket in early June for the last time before launching it into space. The space agency said it will bring the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft to the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in early June for the next wet dress rehearsal attempt. A wet dress rehearsal involves following all the launch-day procedures, including loading the propellant, without actually launching the mission. This activity is aimed at finding any issues with the system and rectifying them in time for the actual launch.

With June as the target for the next test attempt, the launch of the Artemis 1 unnamed mission is expected to be pushed back again. The ambitious mission to send humans to the moon has faced several delays in its timeline. On the first flight, NASA will not send astronauts but the Orion spacecraft will fly around our closest celestial neighbour to study it.

NASA, in a blog post, said that its engineers have successfully addressed issues identified during previous rehearsal attempts of SLS, including the liquid hydrogen system leak. “Plans call for the next wet dress rehearsal to take place about 14 days after the rocket arrives at the pad,” it added. NASA officials said they are aiming for a launch window in August.

Previous attempts at conducting the wet dress rehearsal had to be either halted mid-way or delayed because of technical issues. The agency first delayed the final tests scheduled for April 4 after identifying issues with the helium check valve. A second attempt, on April 14, was prevented after a leak was discovered during liquid hydrogen loading operations. The rocket had to be rolled back to the vehicle assembly building for troubleshooting.

The SLS is designed to be the most powerful rocket ever built and it can carry more payload to deep space than any other vehicle. NASA plans to use it for human exploration of the moon and Mars, and send robotic missions to Saturn and Jupiter.


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NASA, ESA, JAXA to Soon Scale Up Documentation of Changes in Environment, Society on Earth

NASA will soon be scaling up its documentation of environmental and societal changes on Earth. The space agency will achieve this by working in collaboration with its partners in Europe and Japan, namely ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency). The collaboration will include utilising all the Earth-observing satellite data available so far. This will be used to document and expand resources and understand a wider range of changes that are taking place in the environment and human society around the globe. The dashboard will include six areas of focus — atmosphere, agriculture, biomass, water and ocean, cryosphere, and economy.

The expanded documentation will widen the scope of online resources available to us. This will in turn help in the making of more data-driven stories. The information can also be used to explore relevant datasets.

Karen St. Germain, NASA Earth Science Division director, said in a statement, “With our partners at ESA and JAXA, this is another important step to get the latest information to the public about our changing planet, in an accessible and convenient way, which can inform decisions and planning for communities around the world.”

The dashboard aims to provide an accessible and objective resource to people like public scientists and decision-makers who may not yet be familiar with satellite data. Here’s what NASA’s website has to say about this project, “It offers a precise, objective, and comprehensive view of our planet. Using accurate remote sensing observations, the dashboard shows the changes occurring in Earth‘s air, land, and water and their effects on human activities. Users can explore countries and regions around the world to see how the indicators in specific locations change over time.”

For this purpose, the collaborators need to find satellite data streams that can be rendered to simplified and objective resources. Current computing infrastructure has to be updated to share the information across the agencies. The six focus areas will deal with different aspects of life on Earth.

The atmosphere focus area looks into air pollution and climate change, while the agriculture will seek more insights into agricultural production, crop conditions, and food supply. How do trees and plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? We’ll know that through the biomass focus area. Cryosphere will deal with the impact of global warming on sea ice. The water and ocean area will explore the richness of this natural resource. The economy focus area will connect Earth’s social and economic systems to the environment.


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What’s It Like to Be on Venus or Pluto? We Studied Their Sand Dunes and Found Some Clues

What is it like to be on the surface of Mars or Venus? Or even further afield, such as on Pluto, or Saturn’s moon Titan? This curiosity has driven advances in space exploration since Sputnik 1 was launched 65 years ago.

But we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of what is knowable about other planetary bodies in the Solar System.

Our new study, published today in Nature Astronomy, shows how some unlikely candidates – namely sand dunes – can provide insight into what weather and conditions you might experience if you were standing on a far-off planetary body.

What’s in a grain of sand? English poet William Blake famously wondered what it means “to see a world in a grain of sand”.

In our research, we took this quite literally. The idea was to use the mere presence of sand dunes to understand what conditions exist on a world’s surface.

For dunes to even exist, there are a pair of “Goldilocks” criteria that must be satisfied. First is a supply of erodible but durable grains.

There must also be winds fast enough to make those grains hop across the ground – but not fast enough to carry them high into the atmosphere.

So far, the direct measurement of winds and sediment has only been possible on Earth and Mars.

However, we have observed wind-blown sediment features on multiple other bodies (and even comets) by satellite.

The very presence of such dunes on these bodies implies the Goldilocks conditions are met.

Our work focused on Venus, Earth, Mars, Titan, Triton (Neptune’s largest moon), and Pluto. Unresolved debates about these bodies have gone on for decades.

How do we square the apparent wind-blown features on Triton’s and Pluto’s surfaces with their thin, tenuous atmospheres? Why do we see such prolific sand and dust activity on Mars, despite measuring winds that seem too weak to sustain it? And does Venus’s thick and stiflingly hot atmosphere move sand in a similar way to how air or water move on Earth? Furthering the debate Our study offers predictions for the winds required to move sediment on these bodies, and how easily that sediment would break apart in those winds.

We constructed these predictions by piecing together results from a host of other research papers, and testing them against all the experimental data we could get our hands on.

We then applied the theories to each of the six bodies, drawing on telescope and satellite measurements of variables including gravity, atmospheric composition, surface temperature, and the strength of sediments.

Studies before ours have looked at either the wind speed threshold required to move sand, or the strength of various sediment particles.

Our work combined these together – looking at how easily particles could break apart in sand-transporting weather on these bodies.

For example, we know Titan’s equator has sand dunes – but we aren’t sure of what sediment encircles the equator.

Is it pure organic haze raining down from the atmosphere, or is it mixed with denser ice? As it turns out, we discovered loose aggregates of organic haze would disintegrate upon collision if they were blown by the winds at Titan’s equator.

This implies Titan’s dunes probably aren’t made of purely organic haze. To build a dune, sediment must be blown around in the wind for a long time (some of Earth’s dune sands are a million years old).

We also found wind speeds would have to be excessively fast on Pluto to transport either methane or nitrogen ice (which is what Pluto’s dune sediments were hypothesised to be).

This calls into question whether “dunes” on Pluto’s plain, Sputnik Planitia, are dunes at all.

They may instead be sublimation waves. These are dune-like landforms made from the sublimation of material, instead of sediment erosion (such as those seen on Mars’s north polar cap).

Our results for Mars suggest more dust is generated from wind-blown sand transport on Mars than on Earth.

This suggests our models of the Martian atmosphere may not be effectively capturing Mars’s strong “katabatic” winds, which are cold gusts that blow downhill at night.

 This study comes at an interesting stage of space exploration.

For Mars, we have a relative abundance of observations; five space agencies are conducting active missions in orbit, or in situ. Studies such as ours help inform the objectives of these missions, and the paths taken by rovers such as Perseverance and Zhurong.

In the outer reaches of the Solar System, Triton has not been observed in detail since the NASA Voyager 2 flyby in 1989.

There is currently a mission proposal which, if selected, would have a probe launched in 2031 to study Triton, before annihilating itself by flying into Neptune’s atmosphere.

Missions planned to Venus and Titan in the coming decade will revolutionise our understanding of these two.

NASA’s Dragonfly mission, slated to leave Earth in 2027 and arrive on Titan in 2034, will land an uncrewed helicopter on the moon’s dunes.

Pluto was observed during a 2015 flyby by NASA’s ongoing New Horizons mission, but there are no plans to return.


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Researchers Reveal How Mars Has Discreet Auroras Without Presence of Global Magnetic Field

Auroras are natural light displays, forming dynamic patterns of brilliant lights in the Earth’s sky because of disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind — jet of charged particles coming from the Sun. The magnetosphere is an area of space controlled by a planet’s magnetic field. Except Mercury, almost all planets in the solar system have auroras. However, things get a little interesting on Mars. Unlike Earth, the Red Planet does not have a global magnetic field that plays a crucial role in the formation of auroras. Mars has spots of local, induced magnetism. As per the latest research, these localised magnetic fields interact with the solar wind in interesting ways to produce Mars’s discrete (or structured) ultraviolet auroras.

Scientists at the University of Iowa, US, know that discrete auroras form on Mars, just like on Earth. But they did not know how they formed, especially in the absence of a global magnetic field. They now report that discrete auroras on the Red Planet are governed by the localised interaction between the solar wind and magnetic fields generated by the crust on Mars – unlike Earth, where auroras appear when particles from the solar wind collide with Earth’s magnetosphere.

“We have the first detailed study looking at how solar wind conditions affect auroras on Mars,” claimed physicist and astronomer Zachary Girazian of the University of Iowa.

“Now is a very fruitful and exciting time for researching auroras on Mars. The database of discrete aurora observations we have from MAVEN is the first of its kind, allowing us to understand basic features of the aurora for the first time,” Girazian added.

The researchers have published their findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics after more than 200 observations of discrete auroras on Mars by the NASA-led Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft.

According to the research, auroras form on all other planets as a result of the complex interaction between their magnetic fields and solar winds. But Mars’s global magnetic field decayed a long time ago, leaving behind only patches of magnetism preserved in the crust.


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TRAI Said to Moot Mechanism for KYC-Based Caller Name Display, Consultation to Begin in a Few Months

Telecom regulator TRAI will soon start consultation on framing a mechanism for caller’s KYC-based name to flash on phone screens when someone calls, according to a top official.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has received a reference to begin consultation on the same from the Department of Telecom (DoT).

The consultation on this is expected to begin in a couple of months, TRAI Chairman PD Vaghela said.

“We have just received a reference, and we will start work on this soon. Name as per KYC will appear when someone calls,” Vaghela said.

TRAI had already been thinking on similar lines, but now with the specific reference from the telecom department, work on this will start soon.

“The mechanism will enable name-appearing on a phone screen, in accordance with KYC done by telecom companies, as per DoT norms,” Vaghela added.

The move assumes significance as the mechanism will help identify callers as per their KYC (Know Your Customer) and bring greater accuracy and transparency than some apps that identify callers based on crowdsourcing data.

Sources said that once the framework for KYC based-new mechanism is worked out, the identity establishment will become more clear and legally tenable. It will also have a ripple effect, leading to a clean up of data on crowdsourcing apps as there will be KYC linkages.

Asked whether the process will be kept voluntary, sources said it is too early to discuss the modalities since many aspects will come up for discussion at the consultation stage.

TRAI has also implemented blockchain technology to curb the problem of unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) or spam calls and messages.

Experts say that a KYC-based caller identification mechanism would safeguard users against rising instances of spam calls and fraud.

Meanwhile, in an email statement, the caller identification app Truecaller’s spokesperson said: “We welcome any, and all actions in the mission to make communication safe and efficient”.  “Number identification is crucial to ending the menace of spam and scam calls and we, at Truecaller, have been working tirelessly towards this important mission for the past 13 years. We appreciate this move by TRAI and would like to reiterate that we remain very supportive of this and any future initiatives they have,” the company spokesperson added. 


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Hyundai to Build First EV and Battery Manufacturing Unit in Georgia in 2023, Plans to Invest $5.54 Billion

South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group said on Friday it plans to invest about $5.54 billion (roughly Rs. 43,110 crore) to build its first dedicated full electric vehicle (EV) and battery manufacturing facilities in the United States.

Hyundai will break ground on its new facility in Georgia in early 2023 and is expected to begin commercial production in the first half of 2025 with an annual capacity of 300,000 EV units, the company said in a statement.

The South Korean auto group said it intends to create about 8,100 jobs.

Hyundai Motor Group, which houses Hyundai and Kia, added that the battery manufacturing facility will be established through a strategic partnership, details of which will be disclosed at a later stage.

Reuters reported last week that Hyundai was in talks to build an EV manufacturing plant in the United States and had held discussions with Georgia officials.

The plant is a key part of Hyundai’s $7.4 billion (roughly Rs. 57,585 crore) planned investment in the United States through 2025 to foster future mobility. The state of Georgia expects to attract another $1 billion (roughly Rs. 7,780 crore) in additional investment from non-affiliated Hyundai Motor Group suppliers on top of the investment.

Hyundai’s battery supplier, SK Innovation’s battery unit SK On, has built two adjacent plants in Georgia. The first, which mostly supplies Volkswagen, started production in the first quarter. The second, which will supply Ford Motor, is set to begin production early next year.

SK On will supply the battery for the Ioniq 7, a source previously told Reuters. SK On said it cannot comment on supply deals involving specific customers.

Hyundai’s US investment coincides with US President Biden’s arrival in South Korea on Friday.

The South Korean auto group, which is among the world’s five biggest automakers by vehicle sales, has production sites in Alabama and Georgia. In April, Hyundai Motor said it plans to invest $300 million (roughly Rs. 2,330 crore) to add EVs in its Montgomery assembly.

Separately, Hyundai Motor Group said Wednesday it plans to invest KRW 21 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,28,300 crore) through 2030 for the expansion of its EV business in South Korea.

© Thomson Reuters 2022


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Boeing’s Starliner Capsule Uncrewed Test Flight Docks Successfully With International Space Station

Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule docked for the first time with the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, completing a major objective in a high stakes do-over test flight into orbit without astronauts aboard.

The rendezvous of the gumdrop-shaped CST-100 Starliner with the orbital research outpost, currently home to a seven-member crew, occurred nearly 26 hours after the capsule was launched from Cape Canaveral US Space Force Base in Florida.

Starliner lifted off on Thursday atop an Atlas V rocket furnished by the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA) and reached its intended preliminary orbit 31 minutes later despite the failure of two onboard thrusters.

Boeing said the two defective thrusters posed no risk to the rest of the spaceflight, which comes after more than two years of delays and costly engineering setbacks in a program designed to give NASA another vehicle for sending its astronauts to and from orbit.

Docking with ISS took place at 8:28pm EDT (5:58am IST) as the two vehicles flew 271 miles (436km) over the south Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia, according to commentators on a live NASA webcast of the linkup.

It marked the first time spacecraft from both of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program partners were physically attached to the space station at the same time. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule has been docked to the space station since delivering four astronauts to ISS in late April.

Bumpy road back to orbit

Much was riding on the outcome, after an ill-fated first test flight in late 2019 nearly ended with the vehicle’s loss following a software glitch that effectively foiled the spacecraft’s ability to reach the space station.

Subsequent problems with Starliner’s propulsion system, supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, led Boeing to scrub a second attempt to launch the capsule last summer.

Starliner remained grounded for nine more months while the two companies sparred over what caused fuel valves to stick shut and which firm was responsible for fixing them, as Reuters reported last week.

Boeing said it ultimately resolved the issue with a temporary workaround and plans a redesign after this week’s flight.

Besides seeking a cause of thruster failures shortly after Thursday’s launch, Boeing said that it was monitoring some unexpected behavior detected with Starliner’s thermal-control system, but that the capsule’s temperatures remained stable.

“This is all part of the learning process for operating Starliner in orbit,” Boeing mission commentator Steve Siceloff said during the NASA webcast.

The capsule is scheduled to depart the space station on Wednesday for a return-flight to Earth, ending with a airbag-softened parachute landing in the New Mexico desert.

A success is seen as pivotal to Boeing as the Chicago-based company scrambles to climb out of successive crises in its jetliner business and its space defense unit. The Starliner programme alone has cost nearly $600 million (roughly Rs. 4,670 crore) in engineering setbacks since the 2019 mishap.

If all goes well with the current mission, Starliner could fly its first team of astronauts to the space station as early as the fall.

For now, the only passenger was a research dummy, whimsically named Rosie the Rocketeer and dressed in a blue flight suit, strapped into the commander’s seat and collecting data on crew cabin conditions during the journey, plus 800 pounds (363kg) of cargo to deliver to the space station.

The orbital platform is currently occupied by a crew of three NASA astronauts, a European Space Agency astronaut from Italy and three Russian cosmonauts.

Since resuming crewed flights to orbit from American soil in 2020, nine years after the space shuttle program ended, the U.S. space agency has had to rely solely on the Falcon 9 rockets and Crew Dragon capsules from Elon Musk’s company SpaceX to fly NASA astronauts.

Previously the only other option for reaching the orbital laboratory was by hitching rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

© Thomson Reuters 2022


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Netflix to Settle Tax Dispute With Italy for $59.1 Million, Opens First Office in Rome Hiring Over 40 Employees

US streaming service Netflix has agreed to settle a tax dispute with Italy, the company and legal sources said on Friday.

Milan prosecutors issued a statement saying they had settled with a multinational video on-demand streaming company for a period covering Oct. 2015 to 2019 and asked it to pay EUR 55.8 million (roughly Rs. 460 crore).

They gave the settlement figure without specifically naming the company involved but three sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed it was Netflix.

A Netflix spokesperson said the company was pleased to have the matter finalised.

“We have maintained constant dialogue and cooperation with the Italian authorities and continue to believe that we have acted in full compliance with Italian and international rules,” the spokesperson said.

Prosecutors had opened an investigation into potential tax evasion three years ago.

They claimed Netflix should have paid taxes in Italy because it relied on digital infrastructure to stream content to 2 million users in the country.

As a backdrop to the payment agreement, Netflix has now opened an office in Italy, setting up a base in Rome and hiring more than 40 employees.

The investigation by Milan prosecutors who argued that cables and computer servers used by Netflix amounted to a physical presence in Italy, had been triggered by checks conducted by Italy’s tax police.

Milan prosecutors in the past have probed other US tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, and Facebook for dodging taxes, allowing Italy to net several billion euros in fines and tax payments.

© Thomson Reuters 2022


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