Google's "Iris" augmented/virtual reality headset may never see the light of day. A new report

SHENZHEN, China--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 27, 2023--

(Reuters) -Australia's competition watchdog said on Monday new competition laws were required in response to the rapid expansion of digital

The Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. agreed to buy three utilities from Dominion Energy Inc. in a $9.4

SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 13, 2023--

To the uninitiated, there isn’t much to water. Sure, the world’s oceans are filled with monsters, marvels and mysteries but, otherwise, they’re just vast, singular expanses of liquid. Right? Wrong. Far from being uniform everywhere, ocean water is a patchwork of interlinked layers and masses which mix and split apart thanks to currents, eddies, and changes in temperature or salinity. Indeed, beneath the surfaces of our great seas, there are waterfalls, rivers and even gigantic blobs, stretching thousands of miles, that somehow manage to evade detection. Now, scientists have discovered one of these massive blobs in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; extending from the tip of Brazil to the Gulf of Guinea. Until the discovery of this water mass – which has been named the Atlantic Equatorial Water – experts had seen waters mixing along the equator in the Pacific and Indian oceans, but never in the Atlantic. "It seemed controversial that the equatorial water mass is present in the Pacific and Indian oceans but missing in the Atlantic Ocean because the equatorial circulation and mixing in all three oceans have common features," Viktor Zhurbas, a physicist and oceanologist at The Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Moscow, told Live Science. "The identified new water mass has allowed us to complete (or at least more accurately describe) the phenomenological pattern of basic water masses of the World Ocean." As the name suggests, the Atlantic Equatorial Water is formed by the mixing of separate bodies of water by currents along the equator. To distinguish such masses from the water surrounding them, oceanographers analyse the relationship between temperature and salinity across the ocean — which determines the density of the seawater. Back in 1942, this charting of temperature-salinity led to the discovery of equatorial waters in the Pacific and Indian oceans, as Live Science notes. Because they are created by the mixing of waters to the north and south, the Indian and Pacific Equatorial waters share similar temperatures and salinities curving along lines of constant density, which make them easy to distinguish from the surrounding water. And yet, for years, no such relationship could be spotted in the Atlantic. However, thanks to data collected by the Argo programme – an international collection of robotic, self-submerging floats which have been installed across Earth’s oceans – the researchers spotted an unnoticed temperature-salinity curve located parallel to the North Atlantic and South Atlantic Central waters. This was that elusive Atlantic Equatorial Water. "It was easy to confuse the Atlantic Equatorial Water with the South Atlantic Central Water, and in order to distinguish them it was necessary to have a fairly dense network of vertical temperature and salinity profiles covering the entire Atlantic Ocean," Zhurbas explained in his email to Live Science. The discovery is significant because it offers experts a better understanding of how oceans mix, which is vital to how they transport heat, oxygen and nutrients around the world. Sign up for 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

Epic Games has announced the roll out of Fortnite Ranked, but when does it start?

A nonprofit organization that researches links between social media, hate and extremism has been threatened with a lawsuit by X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter

Twitter's auto-reply poop emoji to press inquiries is no more. Back in March, owner Elon

All major social media platforms do poorly at protecting LGBTQ+ users from hate speech and harassment — especially those who are transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming, the advocacy group GLAAD said on Thursday

Apple will stop using leather, it has announced. It will offer no new products using materials taken from animals, it said. That includes iPhone cases and Watch bands, both of which make heavy use of leather. Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, noted that leather is a popular material for accessories. But it has considerable environmental impact, she noted, especially at the scale that Apple uses it. As such, it has committed to phasing out those materials. Instead, it will rely on new materials that have been especially developed. For the Apple Watch’s sport loop, for instance, it has changed the material to use 82 per cent recycled yarn. For the straps that are currently made out of leather, it will rely on a new seemingly custom developed material called “FineWoven”. That will presumably also be used for the cases made for the new iPhone 15. And Apple has developed new straps with Nike and Hermès. The latter collaboration has relied heavily on leather – but recently Apple has been rumoured to be selling off those products cheaply. The new materials will help make the new Apple Watch Series 9 the first carbon neutral product the company has made. Read More Here’s the brand new Apple Watch Apple is about to reveal the new iPhone – and a lot more Here’s when you will actually be able to get the new iPhone

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 22, 2023--