BEAVERTON, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 21, 2023--

YouTube has been making some big announcements for creators at this year's VidCon. Yesterday, Mashable

While millions of people own cats and dogs and wouldn’t dream of getting rid of them, pets pose a health risk to humans that is massively overlooked, according to a new study. Since the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world with devastating impact, it has become evident how much of a risk new viruses can pose to our well-being. However, experts are warning that it is not just the wildlife trade or exotic animals that we should be concerned about, as pets could also be sources of zoonotic diseases (which jump from animals to humans). Back garden pets, house pets, working animals and even rodents and pests could host new viruses that could affect humans, according to a new study. It warns that the urbanisation of our habitats and climate change will have an impact on diseases and their dynamics. The study was shared in Science Translational Medicine and penned by disease ecologist Amandine Gamble along with a group of colleagues, who gave examples of how companion animals (aka pets) and stray animals carried a risk of zoonotic spillover. While the risk is thought to be small, experts warn it is significantly underappreciated, especially given the frequent proximity human beings have to pets and strays. The study said: “These animals can play critical roles in zoonotic spillover by enabling the maintenance of a zoonotic pathogen, facilitating its spatial spread, acting as a bridge between otherwise unconnected species, or providing particular opportunities for its evolution.” While the zoonotic spillover that caused Covid-19 sparked a global pandemic, any instance of infection that jumps from animal to human is known as a zoonotic, regardless of the numbers affected. Pet parrots are a known transmitter of the Chlamydia psittaci bacterium to humans. Elsewhere, bats and horses are also known sources of zoonotic diseases. In terms of common household pets, cats can act as a link to a number of fatal diseases. The experts explained: “Numbers of infections are low, but plague is endemic in 17 western U.S. states, and many of the small mammals on which cats prey carry Y. pestis. “Consequently, outdoor cats and cats with incomplete veterinary care, combined with human interaction, suggest that cat-transmitted plague can be considered an increasing public health risk.” They conclude that “it is critical to implement surveillance programs allowing us to track changes in pathogen dynamics”. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Flying on Mars presents a major challenge. The Martian surface air density is only about

LONDON & NEW YORK & HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 15, 2023--

On 10 August, California regulators voted to expand the footprint of paid taxi services by autonomous, driverless cars from Cruise and Waymo in San Francisco. Since then, it’s been utter chaos, with the AVs involved in traffic jams, slapstick malfunctions, and a car accident with a fire truck. A day after the vote, video went viral on social media showing about 10 frozen Cruise taxis snarling traffic in the North Beach neighbourhood, which company officials later said was caused by a connectivity issue due to a spike in cell traffic because of a nearby music festival. The following Tuesday, a Cruise taxi was stuck in wet concrete at a construction site. “I can see five different scenarios where bad things happen and this is one of them,” resident Paul Harvey told SFGATE. “It thinks it’s a road and it ain’t because it ain’t got a brain and it can’t tell that it’s freshly poured concrete.” Two days after that, a Cruise taxi had what might be its most serious accident yet, colliding with a fire truck in the Tenderloin neighbourhood, giving the taxi’s passengers non-severe injuries. A firefighter in the truck said the AV “lurched” as it passed through an intersection ABC 7 reports, while Cruise said its vehicle detected the emergency sirens but was unable to get out of the way in time from the truck, which drove into the oncoming traffic lane. “The AV’s ability to successfully chart the emergency vehicle’s path was complicated by the fact that the emergency vehicle was in the oncoming lane of traffic, which it had moved into to bypass the red light,” the company wrote in a statement. “Cruise AVs have the ability to detect emergency sirens, which increase their ability to operate safely around emergency vehicles and accompanying scenes. In this instance, the AV identified the siren as soon as it was distinguishable from the background noise. “The Cruise AV did identify the risk of a collision and initiated a braking maneuver, reducing its speed, but was ultimately unable to avoid the collision,” the company added. Following the repeated mishaps, the California Department of Motor Vehicles asked Cruise to cut its 400-strong deployment of AVs in San Francisco in half, with the agency saying it was “investigating recent concerning incidents.” As The Independent reported, critics of AVs warned ahead of their expansion in San Francisco that the driverless cars weren’t ready for primetime, particularly when it comes to interfacing with emergency vehicles. According to data Cruise shared with the state earlier this month, between January and mid-July of 2023, Cruise AVs temporarily malfunctioned or shut down 177 times and required recovery, 26 of which such incidents occurred with a passenger inside, while Waymo recorded 58 such events in a similar time frame. Meanwhile, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA), between April 2022 and April 2023, Cruise and Waymo vehicles have been involved in over 300 incidents of irregular driving including unexpected stops and collisions, while the San Francisco Fire Department says AVs have interfered 55 times in their work in 2023. Last year, Cruise lost contact with its entire fleet for 20 minutes according to internal documentation viewed by WIRED, and an anonymous employee warned California regulators that year the company loses touch with its vehicles “with regularity.” Since being rolled out in San Francisco, robotaxis have killed a dog, caused a mile-long traffic jam during rush hour, blocked a traffic lane as officials responded to a shooting, and driven over fire hoses. Jeffrey Tumlin, San Francisco’s director of transportation, has called the rollout of robotaxis a “race to the bottom,” arguing Cruise and Waymo weren’t yet definitive transit solutions, and instead had only “met the requirements for a learner’s permit.” Read More How a vote to empower autonomous ‘robotaxis’ from Cruise and Waymo has divided San Francisco GM's Cruise autonomous vehicle unit agrees to cut fleet in half after 2 crashes in San Francisco San Francisco launches driverless bus service following robotaxi expansion GM's Cruise autonomous vehicle unit agrees to cut fleet in half after 2 crashes in San Francisco Chinese military launches drills around Taiwan as 'warning' after top island official stopped in US San Francisco launches driverless bus service following robotaxi expansion

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