(CNN) — A loud bang, a jolt, and cold air whooshing suddenly through the cabin: these were the immediate signs that something was very wrong aboard Alaska Airlines flight 1282, according to one passenger report.

An “explosive decompression” had occurred, the result of a fuselage plug — which in different configurations of the same aircraft can be an exit door — being violently blown out, leaving a gaping hole in the left side of the plane.

As investigators work to determine exactly what caused the incident, we look at what happens when an aircraft experiences a sudden loss of cabin pressure and the risks for those on board.

Why we pressurize

“The reason aircraft are pressurized is the comfort of the passengers,” says Graham Braithwaite, a professor of aviation safety and accident investigation at Cranfield University in the UK. “As the aircraft climbs, the cabin pressure will eventually settle to about 8,000 feet. So if you’re flying at 35,000 feet, the cabin will feel like you’re at 8,000 feet of altitude.”

This is necessary because as altitude increases, air becomes less dense and — as any mountaineer will know — breathing becomes more difficult as fewer oxygen molecules are taken in due to “thin air.” This effect can be clearly felt in the real world past about 10,000 feet, which is why passenger cabins are set at a pressure of around 8,000 feet, where everyone will feel comfortable without putting too much stress on the plane’s systems.

However, this means that the inside of the plane is at a much higher pressure than the outside, working against a key tenet of physics: Air always moves from high pressure to low pressure areas, and it does so faster if the difference in pressure is high. The wind is a common manifestation of this phenomenon.

If at any point during the flight there is a fuselage breach, physics will prevail and the air from the cabin will rush to the outside: “Just because of that pressure difference,” explains Braithwaite.

In the case of a rapid or explosive decompression, like the one during the Alaska Airlines flight, oxygen masks will automatically drop down: “The instruction in every safety briefing is to put them on rapidly, because the higher you are, the less time you will have into what we call ‘useful consciousness.’ Since the air is thinner, it’s hard to breathe at altitude. So that becomes a really important thing,” Braithwaite adds.

The flight crew will immediately start working to get the aircraft down to about 10,000 feet, where the air will be breathable. “If there’s been a very sudden depressurization, the crew will also try to weigh up whether the aircraft is structurally damaged, versus how quickly they can descend,” Braithwaite says. “If they descend too rapidly, they might be putting that aircraft under a lot more stress.”

Once safely on the ground, the aircraft will be met by rescue teams, and the crew will decide whether passengers are safer on board or if an evacuation is needed. “It’s an incredibly unusual type of event,” says Braithwaite, “and even though people can point to a couple of examples where an aircraft lost a panel or a door in flight, If you compare that to the number of flights that operate every day, these are still incredibly rare events, and they all tend to have unique qualities.”

Previous accidents

The deadliest decompression accident in aviation history happened in 1985, when Japan Airlines Flight 123 suffered severe structural damage due to a faulty repair of the fuselage following a hard landing years earlier. The Boeing 747 lost a large portion of the tail mid-flight and crashed into a mountainous area near Tokyo, killing all but four of the 524 people on board. It is the deadliest ever aviation accident involving a single aircraft.

The most recent death following a rapid decompression dates back to 2018, when a woman died aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, after being partially sucked out of the window of a Boeing 737-700. The window had been blown out by shrapnel from an engine that exploded due to improper maintenance, and the woman was left hanging out of the hole.

That aircraft was at 32,000 feet when the blowout occurred, which made things far worse than the Alaska Airlines flight, whose altitude was just 16,000 feet.

“They were really lucky it was low altitude,” says Jonathan Clark, a professor of aerospace medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. “From a standpoint of hypoxia, which is always the thing that the pilots worry about, that’s not very high. If that had happened at a high altitude, above 30,000 feet, it could have been far more problematic.”

Hypoxia occurs when the body is deprived of oxygen, and among other things it can severely impair cognitive function, leading to poor decision-making — a big issue if you’re a pilot.

“Visual function can be affected, fine movements impaired and mental processes slowed,” says David Gradwell, an emeritus professor of aerospace medicine at King’s College London.

“These symptoms, although reversible, would progress — unless action is taken — until loss of consciousness occurs. How long it takes for the signs and symptoms of hypoxia to arise varies with altitude and individual factors. Up to 12,000 feet, healthy individuals would notice few hypoxic effects. However, if exposed to an altitude of 35,000 feet, hypoxia would follow perhaps within less than a minute.”

The oxygen masks prevent hypoxia until the plane descends to a lower altitude, but immediately following an explosive decompression, everyone on board will experience some other effects on their bodies.

“You’ll feel your ears pop, and that can be very disorienting,” says Clark. “You can potentially experience barotrauma — an injury from pressure change. It can occur in your sinuses, in your ears. If you have a filling that’s got a hole in it, it can blow the tooth off. If you have a belly full of gas, that gas will expand, and your belly will swell up. The water vapor that is in the air can turn into a cloud and you can’t see anything. It will get very cold, very quickly. There will also be a massive wind blast as all that pressure in the cabin goes out the hole. Anything that’s not tightly secured will fly out. So there will be a lot of disorientation inside the aircraft.”

Decompression is not always explosive; it can also be gradual, either occurring very slowly, or as the result of the cabin failing to pressurize altogether. In both instances it can go unnoticed and hypoxia can kick in before any action is taken, incapacitating passengers and crew.

One such case in 2005 was Helios Airways Flight 522, which did not pressurize at all due to human error and became a ghost flight once everyone on board the Boeing 737-300 lost consciousness at altitude, pilots included. It crashed into a mountain in southern Greece once fuel ran out, killing all 121 on board.

A similar accident happened in 2023, when a small business jet with four people on board lost pressurization and even flew over Washington, DC — prompting the US Air Force to intercept it with fighter jets. The Cessna Citation eventually crashed in rural Virginia.

What you can do

If you’re looking for ways to minimize risk in the unlikely event of a violent decompression, you should start with your seatbelt, Clark suggests.

“I always wear my seatbelt, even if it’s really loose. It’s good for turbulence protection, which happens all the time, and it’s very good if you have a deep depressurization: you still might bounce around, but you won’t get sucked out,” he says. “The other thing is, as soon as that mask comes down, put it over your face and pull on the cord to make sure that the oxygen is flowing. Put yours on before your infants, because if you’re gonna pass out, then you won’t be able to help anyone.”

The Alaska incident has renewed the discussion around “lap babies,” or infants under two that parents keep on their lap rather than in a separate seat. Flight attendant unions have for years called for the practice to be banned, saying that babies are at high risk during turbulence and decompression events.

“When an explosive decompression happens, it creates a violent and immediate suction that can eject people and items out of the plane or throw them around the aircraft cabin,” says Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, representing 50,000 flight attendants at 19 airlines. “In an event like this, it is incredibly important to have your seatbelt on when seated at all times and that every passenger including children under the age of two have their own seats and are properly secured in them.”

The other important thing during any kind of emergency is to carefully follow the instructions of the crew, even if there is no announcement about the situation from the pilot, as was the case with the Alaska Airlines flight, according to passenger reports.

“I imagine the cockpit crew was quite busy,” say Patrick Smith, an airline pilot flying Boeing 767s and the author of the book and blog “Ask the Pilot.”

“There was an emergency descent to perform, as well as the necessary checklists and coordination with air traffic control. Also the pilots would’ve been wearing oxygen masks, which makes communications more difficult. It’s possible one of the pilots did make a PA, but it simply wasn’t heard in the noise. Or, being as busy as I imagine they were, they may have relayed information to the flight attendants, and left it up to them in the interest of time.”

Smith adds that depressurization incidents are usually easily handled and rarely dangerous: “Unless the plane decompresses explosively causing serious structural damage,” he says. “The biggest danger in the Alaska Airlines incident would’ve been the door plug colliding with the tail structure. But this didn’t happen, leaving the rest of it pretty routine.”

But even though those on board escaped with little or no physical injuries, there could be some psychological trauma, according to Graham Braithwaite.

“I think the National Transportation Safety Board Chair has pointed out that in this case, it’s probably the psychological injury that will be more significant,” he says. “It’s a pretty frightening experience for the people on the aircraft and they will no doubt be getting professional counseling.”

One thing aviation does extremely well, he adds, is learn from incidents like this one: “It’s one of the reasons we’ve achieved the level of safety that we have today. Every airline will look for where the learning is — there were some things that were done very well here in terms of how the crew responded to the event, as well as what might have gone wrong.

“The cabin crew in particular have reminded us of just what an incredible job they do when managing safety on board airplanes,” says Braithwaite. “So if it means that more people will listen to the safety briefing, or pay attention to the suggestion to keep their seatbelts fastened, that will have been a positive.”

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LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) — Tech companies showed quirky gadgets and new innovations at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas this week, from AI-powered pillows that can reduce snoring and mirrors that can detect your mood to transparent televisions and car mirrors that track your eyes.

Although the event, which is the largest consumer tech conference of the year, is known for robots roaming the show floor, splashy presentations and oddball products, it’s also a hotbed for dealmaking among executives, manufacturers and retailers across various industries.

In addition, CES can set the stage for some of the biggest tech trends of the year and shine a spotlight on how companies intend to be part of those conversations.

Here’s a look at some of the buzziest products announced this week:

AI companions

AI companions are one of the biggest trends to emerge from the show this year. Loona — a $380 dog-like companion robot — has generated buzz for being the world’s first robot with built-in ChatGPT technology, allowing users to have conversations and interact with the device.

People can play games with it, give it commands or use it as a moveable home monitor.

At the same time, LG’s two-legged companion robot Rosie is more like an AI assistant, with the ability to help out with chores around the house, by integrating with LG appliances and reminding people to take their medication.

Samsung’s buzzy Ballie robot, which was first shown off at CES in 2020, received a refresh. The device can follow users around the house to take phone calls, feed pets and project movies and video calls onto the floor or walls.

Meanwhile, startup Rabbit’s $199 R1 AI pocket-sized companion looks and acts differently from the rest: The walkie talkie-like gadget works alongside smartphone apps. By holding down a button, you can ask it to provide recipes, book flights and make calls.

Dipanjan Chatterjee, an analyst at Forrester Research, said while the simplicity of Rabbit’s gadget is reflective of the type of products that often gets a lot of attention at tech trade shows, it may be a challenge for it to resonate in everyday life.

“The idea of a natural language-driven single interface to manage life’s complexities is as endearing as it is impractical,” he said. “Getting consumers to carry one more device with yet another data plan is a big ask.”

AI task robots

Beyond companions, AI has made its way into nearly every appliance and gadget you could think of this year. There are robots that mow the lawn and plow the snow, and others such as Samsung’s latest lineup of AI-powered mops and vacuums that handle the indoor cleaning.

AI has found its way into unlikely devices, too: Baracoda’s mental health mirror identifies your mood and gives daily affirmations to make you feel better. And the hyped Holobox allows people to talk to others in different parts of the world via an actual hologram, giving the impression you’re right there in the same room.

Apple accessories are getting AI, too. Belkin’s new Qi2 & DockKit Auto Tracking Stand is the first gadget to use Apple’s new DockKit framework, using the iPhone’s facial recognition technology to follow faces and body movements while filming videos (consider it a dream for TikTok influencers).

Generative AI hits more services

Beyond gadgets, companies shared their vision for an AI-powered future. Walmart said it is experimenting with a generative AI search tool for iOS users that will let them ask questions about what items to buy for certain occasions.

Amazon gave updates on how some of its developers are integrating generative AI with their voice assistant, Alexa, including how users can now have conversations with different personas, including historical figures, via chatbot service Character.ai.

Chipmakers Nvidia and AMD also showed off new processors that focus on supporting advanced AI capabilities.

But perhaps some of the most impressive AI announcements came from automakers. Volkwagen said it will be adding ChatGPT to its lineup of cars later this year.

“This can be helpful on many levels during a car journey. Enriching conversations, clearing up questions, interacting in intuitive language, receiving vehicle-specific information, and much more – purely hands-free,” the company said in a press release.

Mercedes Benz announced plans to upgrade their in-car voice experience using generative AI, too.

“Voice tech has struggled not because the idea was bad but because the capabilities were sorely lacking,” said Chatterjee. “Generative AI changes all of that. A no-brainer application for voice tech is in cars because there couldn’t be a worse occasion for using your hands for anything else but driving.”

More auto upgrades

CES offered more car innovation than most auto shows these days. More than ever, it’s become a place for car companies wanting to be seen as tech leaders, not just car companies.

Honda announced a new line of electric vehicles relying on thinner battery packs than most of the ones used today. Vietnamese automaker VinFast, which had some stumbles entering the US market, unveiled a small electric pickup and a really, really small electric SUV. It’s hard to imagine but the VinFast VF 3 four-seat SUV is much more compact bumper to bumper than the new Fiat 500.

VinFast also revealed new technology that can automatically adjust your car’s rear view mirrors as soon as you sit down. No more fiddling with that little knob.

Transparent TVs

It wouldn’t be CES without some big, super flashy TV innovations. This year, Samsung wowed onlookers with the world’s first transparent MicroLED screen, which looks much like a floating sheet of glass.

LG also showed off its new OLED Signature T model, a 77-inch transparent display. LG was one of the first leaders in transparent TVs; one of its earlier prototypes impressed the show floor back in 2020.

“There’s always something related to TVs that adds buzz to the show, and this year it’s transparent models,” said Jon Erensen, an analyst with market research firm Gartner. ”We will see how expensive they are and how they are used. It’s very neat technology but the question is how practical it is for the everyday consumer, and whether it will be adopted around the house or more novel uses for it outside of the home.”

Health devices and wearables get smarter

Health, beauty and wearable tech have long been part of the CES conversation, and this year is no exception.

Withing’s BeamO device, which is small enough to fit in a pocket, is an at-home checkup tool featuring a stethoscope, an oximeter, an ECG and a thermometer.

It allows people to access vital signs while on the go and share with doctors in real-time during telehealth appointments. Meanwhile, a new pillow adjusts the positioning of a sleeper’s head if small movements indicate they could be snoring.

For the hearing impaired, EssilorLuxottica showed off a prototype of its Nuance Audio eyeglasses that also feature built-in hearing aids. In a press release, CEO Francesco Milleri called hearing solutions an “unpenetrated market” with the device’s potential to “improve quality of life for over a billion people.”

Another accessibility item, the Palmplug gloves, is packed with sensors for gamers but can also be used to track hand movements and better enable physical therapy for certain users such as stroke patients.

Traditional health trackers are changing, too. Evie, a health monitoring ring, looks more like jewelry than similar devices on the market; it tracks sleep, steps and provides an overall picture of health and recovery. An AI-powered collar called Minitailz tracks the whereabouts of dogs and cats but also monitors their vitals in real time, flagging owners to any potential health issues.

The Apple impact

While Apple was noticeably absent once again at CES, it made headlines this week by announcing its Vision Pro mixed reality headset will be available for purchase in the United States starting on February 2.

“It’s not unusual for Apple to capture headlines even though they don’t attend CES,” said Jitesh Ubrani, an analyst at market research firm IDC. “The imminent arrival of the Vison Pro is likely to have a positive impact on the entire industry as Apple brings awareness like no other.”

For example, Sony teased a mixed reality headset that can be controlled with a smart ring, and Qualcomm unveiled a new Snapdragon chipset for virtual reality headsets.

“[The Vision Pro news] puts a bit of pressure on companies peddling their wares to ensure that they put their best foot forward as everyone in the AR/VR industry is likely going to be compared to Apple,” Ubrani said.

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(CNN) — Two stubborn fasteners trapped invaluable material sampled from an asteroid — but after a monthslong process, it has finally been released, NASA announced Thursday.

The space agency already harvested about 2.5 ounces (70 grams) of rocks and dust from its OSIRIS-REx mission, which traveled nearly 4 billion miles to collect the unprecedented sample from the near-Earth asteroid called Bennu.

But NASA revealed in October that some material remained out of reach in a capsule hidden inside an instrument called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism — a robotic arm with a storage container at one end that collected the sample from Bennu.

The sampler head is held shut by 35 fasteners, according to NASA, but two of them proved too difficult to open.

Prying the mechanism loose is no simple task. The space agency must use preapproved materials and tools around the capsule to minimize the risk of damaging or contaminating the samples.

These “new tools also needed to function within the tightly-confined space of the glovebox, limiting their height, weight, and potential arc movement,” said Dr. Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curation lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, in a statement. “The curation team showed impressive resilience and did incredible work to get these stubborn fasteners off the TAGSAM head so we can continue disassembly. We are overjoyed with the success.”

To address the issue, NASA said two tools were created from surgical steel — “the hardest metal approved for use in the pristine curation gloveboxes.”

Before tackling the stuck fasteners, a team at Johnson Space Center tested the tools in a “rehearsal lab,” slowly amping up the torque applied to ensure the new tools could successfully remove the unyielding clasps.

What the asteroid sample has revealed so far

As of Thursday afternoon, NASA said the trapped sample material had not yet been revealed. A “few additional disassembly steps” remain, according to the space agency. After taking those steps, the hidden cache can be photographed, extracted and weighed, NASA said.

An analysis of material from Bennu that NASA researchers had harvested last fall already revealed the samples from the asteroid contained abundant water in the form of hydrated clay minerals as well as carbon.

Scientists believe signs of water on asteroids bolster the current theory of how it arrived on Earth billions of years ago.

“The reason that Earth is a habitable world, that we have oceans and lakes and rivers and rain, is because these clay minerals landed on Earth 4 billion years ago to 4 and a half billion years ago, making our world habitable,” OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta said in October. “So we’re seeing the way that water got incorporated into the solid material.” Lauretta  is a regents professor of planetary science and cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona.

Some of the Bennu samples that were previously harvested have been hermetically sealed in storage containers for future study over the course of decades, according to NASA’s Thursday news release.

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NEW YORK (AP) — John Walsh, advocate for missing children and longtime host of “America’s Most Wanted,” said he feels outmanned by criminals all the time – especially in the courtroom.

“I say to myself, ‘My God, the lawyer for this dirtbag predator is smarter and more sophisticated than the cops are’,” the co-founder of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children told The Associated Press. “They don’t really know the technology.”

Human traffickers and sexual predators often use high-end technology and increasingly take advantage of encryption to protect the details of their crimes, Walsh said. And even if they didn’t, law enforcement officials, especially in smaller cities and towns, lack the budget and the access to the technological tools that would speed up the investigation and aid in the prosecution of the offenders.

“The pimps of the day, the gangs of today are way smarter than the sex-trafficking gangs of the past.”

Cellebrite DI, Ltd., wants to change that. The provider of digital tools that help law enforcement and private firms find and follow investigative leads on Friday launched “Operation Find Them All” – an initiative where the firm will donate its technology to nonprofits that help find endangered children, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the nonprofit The Exodus Road, which fights human trafficking around the world. The NASDAQ-traded company — which reported revenue of $85 million for the third quarter of 2023, up 17% year over year — will also make a financial donation to those organizations, as well as Raven, a political nonprofit that raises awareness of the threat of child exploitation online.

Yossi Carmil, Cellebrite’s CEO, said the FBI had nearly 360,000 cases of missing children in 2022, while the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received more than 32 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation that year. Knowing that his company had the technology that could help children in trouble, Carmil said he felt Cellebrite had to do what it could.

“We are the biggest admirers of law enforcement,” Carmil said. “However, they are understaffed, underequipped, and, at any point of time, regardless of how much the government will give them, they are under constraints. They always need to do more with less.”

Kent Nielsen, digital forensic investigator for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office in Texas, said his department currently uses Cellebrite technology to process data gathered from cell phones as well as its AI-driven software to analyze the data to find potential leads.

“The system really helps us with doing our jobs faster,” said Nielsen, adding that one smartphone could contain more than 250,000 images to process. Rather than having an investigator look through those images and sort them, Cellebrite’s Pathfinder software can handle it, while also linking them to locations, as well as other data from other smartphones or other cases.

The Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office used the Cellebrite technology last weekend as part of the multi-agency Operation Interception to help rescue children being trafficked, as many visited the area due to the College Football Playoff national championship held in nearby Houston. Nielsen said seven girls were rescued and 23 arrests were made.

Matt Parker, co-founder of The Exodus Road, said he saw what a difference one piece of Cellebrite technology made in investigating the human trafficking of Rohingya Muslims in Malaysia in 2015. Through “Operation Find Them All,” Parker hopes to bring Cellebrite technology to other countries, even if the governments have previously not prosecuted human trafficking cases.

“When you fight corruption globally, you have to have an overwhelming amount of evidence that is difficult to sweep under the rug,” Parker said. “You have to make the case a slam dunk, and I’m telling you, in all the experience I have had over the last 13 years … in hundreds of cases of human trafficking, when we leverage Cellebrite technology and we introduce that technology into the judicial process, the success level is significantly higher.”

Walsh said he hopes that the increased access to technology can help level the playing field against those preying on children.

He said the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children employs about 450 at its Virginia headquarters and has five other branches around the country. In 2022, it received more than 110,000 calls about missing children – an increase of 16% from the previous year.

“We should have 2,000 people working on those calls,” Walsh said. “We should have 100 branches across the United States.”

Experts say that not only are there now more human traffickers, but they are also technologically savvier.

“The pimps of the day, the gangs of today are way smarter than the sex-trafficking gangs of the past,” Walsh said. “They’re way more dangerous. They move faster. They have encrypted files. They’re smart. And law enforcement just can’t keep up with them.”

Cellebrite’s Carmil said government has the responsibility of funding law enforcement so that they can better protect children and quickly search for those that are missing.

However, he said corporations and nonprofits need to do what they can as well.

“I’ve got kids. John (Walsh) has kids. We are also citizens and parents,” Carmil said. “This is a holy mission. It goes beyond the money.”

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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(CNN) — Long before the first sharks appeared, large predator worms were the “terror beasts” of the seas more than 500 million years ago, according to new research.

Scientists discovered fossils of the previously unknown worm species during expeditions in North Greenland, uncovering what they believe to be some of the earliest carnivorous animals.

The worms reached nearly 1 foot (30 centimeters) in length and were some of the largest swimming animals at the time, known as the early Cambrian Period.

The researchers named the worms Timorebestia, Latin for “terror beasts.” Fins marched down the sides of their bodies, and their distinctive heads had long antennae and massive jaws.

Previously, it was believed that primitive arthropods, including strange-looking distant relatives of crabs and lobsters called Anomalocaris, were at the top of the marine food chain during the Cambrian Period, which lasted from 485 million to 541 million years ago.

But the predator worms were a key part of the ecosystem 518 million years ago that scientists didn’t even know existed until they found the fossils. A study describing the findings published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

“Timorebestia were giants of their day and would have been close to the top of the food chain,” said senior study author Dr. Jakob Vinther, associate professor in macroevolution at the University of Bristol’s Schools of Earth Sciences and Biological Sciences, in a statement.

“That makes it equivalent in importance to some of the top carnivores in modern oceans, such as sharks and seals back in the Cambrian period,” Vinther said. “Our research shows that these ancient ocean ecosystems were fairly complex with a food chain that allowed for several tiers of predators.”

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During the Cambrian Period when carnivorous predators appeared, “animals explosively evolved for the first time,” Vinther said. “It had a tremendous impact on the carbon and nutrient cycles as well as the pace of evolution.”

Tracing an evolutionary path

These predator worms are distant relatives of the much smaller modern arrow worms, or chaetognaths, that feed on zooplankton, Vinther said.

Arrow worms are considered to be among the oldest animals that originated in the Cambrian Period. Arthropods first appeared between 521 and 529 million years ago, while evidence of arrow worms suggests they existed as early as 538 million years ago.

“Both arrow worms, and the more primitive Timorebestia, were swimming predators,” Vinther said. “We can therefore surmise that in all likelihood they were the predators that dominated the oceans before arthropods took off. Perhaps they had a dynasty of about 10-15 million years before they got superseded by other, and more successful, groups.”

Preserved within the fossilized digestive system of Timorebestia was Isoxys, a swimming arthropod that had long, protective spines pointing forward and backward.

“However, they clearly didn’t completely succeed in avoiding that fate, because Timorebestia munched on them in great quantities,” said study coauthor Morten Lunde Nielsen, a former doctoral student at the University of Bristol, in a statement.

Uncovering details about Timorebestia provides a window into the evolutionary timeline of worms from half a billion years ago to the present day, the researchers said.

“Today, arrow worms have menacing bristles on the outside of their heads for catching prey, whereas Timorebestia has jaws inside its head,” said study coauthor Luke Parry, associate professor of paleobiology at the University of Oxford, in a statement.

“This is what we see in microscopic jaw worms today — organisms that arrow worms shared an ancestor with over half a billion years ago. Timorebestia and other fossils like it provide links between closely related organisms that today look very different.”

Modern arrow worms have a distinct nervous system on their bellies called a ventral ganglion, and it was found preserved in Timorebestia as well, said senior study author Dr. Tae-Yoon Park, a principal research scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute. The nervous system was also spotted in another fossil called Amiskwia, suggesting that soft-bodied animal is also evolutionarily related to arrow worms.

A remote but rich fossil deposit

Park led a research team on expeditions to Sirius Passet, a well-preserved fossil site in the farthest reaches of North Greenland. The sun shines all day in the remote location, which is 600 miles (966 kilometers) from the North Pole, Vinther said. Researchers have a small window of about six weeks each year when the site is accessible, but it’s worth the trek, he said.

“The fossils are so dense here, compared to any other locality, that every time you split the rock you reveal dozens to hundreds of soft bodied fossil organisms,” Vinther said.

Members of the research team are eager to return to Sirius Passet, where they have discovered fossilized remains of other relatives of Timorebestia, to gain a better understanding of the ocean’s first food chain.

“Thanks to the remarkable, exceptional preservation in Sirius Passet we can also reveal exciting anatomical details including their digestive system, muscle anatomy, and nervous systems,” Park said. “We have many more exciting findings to share in the coming years that will help show how the earliest animal ecosystems looked like and evolved.”

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REXBURG — Madison County is set to have a “significant transformation” in its technological landscape, thanks to an almost $13.7 million grant, according to county leaders.

Rexburg city and county officials met with area residents to announce the project Wednesday evening.

The State of Idaho Capital Project Fund awarded the county a grant totaling $13,673,938 for the development and implementation of a broadband high-speed fiber-to-the-home project.

Grant-match money from Madison County and Fybercom — partnering with the county on the project — will increase the budget to over $17.6 million.

The initiative aims to provide high-speed fiber internet connectivity to almost 3,000 households throughout Madison County and represents “a significant leap forward” in the county’s infrastructure, officials said.

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“This grant is a game-changer for Madison County. We are thrilled to embark on this crucial partnership with Fybercom, enabling us to expand broadband access and provide our residents with the high-speed internet they deserve,” said Paul Sorensen, county information technology manager.

Residents can look forward to faster internet speeds, increased reliability, enhanced connectivity for remote work, improved access to online education, and more significant opportunities for local economic growth and innovation, officials said.

“We are proud of the opportunity to use this grant money to provide affordable, reliable, high-speed internet to county residents,” Sorensen said. “Multiple years of effort in preparation and zigs and zags in plans have cumulated in us getting this grant.”

Work has already begun on the project, Sorenson said. Areas south of Rexburg, including Archer, Sunnydell and Thornton, can look forward to service this summer. Folks in the Burton and Hibbard areas are slated to receive high-speed in 2025. Sugar City, Salem and other outlying areas are scheduled for 2026.

Once complete, monthly rates for the new internet will range from $68.99 per month for 1,000 megabits per second to $39 per month for 100 megabits per second. There are no installation or activation fees. Sorensen said that families with lower incomes may be eligible for help with the monthly costs, with reimbursements ranging from $30 to $75 monthly, depending on gross annual income.

RELATED | Is high-speed internet a human right?

Officials said that investing in high-speed fiber infrastructure underscores the commitment of the state and private enterprises to fostering inclusive growth and development for Idaho communities.

Those interested in signing up for the new internet service can do so here.

For more information about the Madison County high-speed fiber-to-the-home project, contact Fybercom at (208) 403-0505, Fybercom.net or email info@fybercom.net.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures.

The cuts come as Google looks towards “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the company said in a statement.

“Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally,” it said.

Google earlier said it was eliminating a few hundred roles, with most of the impact on its augmented reality hardware team.

The cuts follow pledges by executives of Google and its parent company Alphabet to reduce costs. A year ago, Google said it would lay off 12,000 employees or around 6% of its workforce.

In a post on X — previously known as Twitter — the Alphabet Workers Union described the job cuts as “another round of needless layoffs.”

“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter,” the union wrote. “We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”

Google is not the only technology company cutting back. In the past year, Meta — the parent company of Facebook — has slashed more than 20,000 jobs to reassure investors. Meta’s stock price gained about 178% in 2023.

Spotify said in December that it was axing 17% of its global workforce, the music streaming service’s third round of layoffs in 2023 as it moved to slash costs and improve its profitability.

Earlier this week, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and studios units. It also will lay off about 500 employees who work on its livestreaming platform Twitch.

Amazon has cut thousands of jobs after a hiring surge during the pandemic. In March, Amazon announced that it planned to lay off 9,000 employees, on top of 18,000 employees it said that it would lay off in January 2023.

Google is currently locked in a fierce rivalry with Microsoft as both firms strive to lead in the artificial intelligence domain.

Microsoft has stepped up its artificial intelligence offerings to rival Google’s. In September, Microsoft introduced a Copilot feature that incorporates artificial intelligence into products like search engine Bing, browser Edge as well as Windows for its corporate customers.

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(CNN) — Duolingo laid off around 10% of its contract workers, the company told CNN Tuesday, as the educational technology app moves to rely more heavily on artificial intelligence.

While not all layoffs were due to the technology, the language learning company let go of some contractors at the end of 2023 to make room for AI-related changes in how content is generated and shared. Duolingo says no full-time employees were involved in the layoffs and that it attempted to find alternate roles for all those being let go before turning to “off-boarding” as a last option.

A virtual language tutor, Duolingo says it has 24.2 million daily active users, 5.8 million paid subscribers and more than 100 available courses, according to the Pittsburgh-based company.

It has been proactive in adding AI to its platform, creating a new subscription tier dubbed “Duolingo Max” in March that incorporates OpenAI’s advanced language model GPT-4 to add AI-powered features that include having full conversations with a chatbot to practice skills and getting AI-generated explanations about why an answer is right or wrong.

“Generative AI is accelerating our work by helping us create new content dramatically faster,” CEO Luis von Ahn wrote in a November shareholder letter.

Following the contractor lay-offs, Duolingo says AI will increasingly be used to perform tasks such as creating sentences for courses, producing lists of acceptable translations and reviewing user error reports in order to correct mistakes quicker.

While trimming its workforce to increasingly rely on AI to create and check content, Duolingo says it still uses humans to check AI-completed work.

“We are not swapping the expertise of human experts for AI,” the company told CNN. “AI is a tool we are using to increase productivity and efficiency, to add new content, and improve our courses faster so that we can continue to teach to higher levels of proficiency.”

Duolingo is not alone in its move to get rid of people in favor or AI. According to a November report from ResumeBuilder, 37% of companies surveyed say AI replaced workers in 2023. Looking ahead, 44% say the technology will cause layoffs in 2024.

Chegg, an education technology company, disclosed in a regulatory filing in June that it was cutting 4% of its workforce, or about 80 employees, “to better position the Company to execute against its AI strategy and to create long-term, sustainable value for its students and investors.”

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in an interview with Bloomberg in May that the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with AI in coming years. In a subsequent interview with Barrons, however, Krishna said he felt his earlier comments were taken out of context and stressed that “AI is going to create more jobs than it takes away.”

And in late April, file-storage service Dropbox said it was cutting about 16% of its workforce, or about 500 people, also citing AI.

CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.

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New York (CNN) — Meta announced Tuesday that it is expanding its youth safety efforts by rolling out new settings for teen Facebook and Instagram users, including content restrictions and hiding search results for terms related to self-harm and suicide.

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram said the new policies will add to its existing slate of more than 30 well-being and parental oversight tools aimed at protecting young users.

Tuesday’s announcement comes after Meta has in recent months faced renewed scrutiny over its potential impact on teen users.

In November, former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Arturo Bejar told a Senate subcommittee in a hearing that Meta’s top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ignored warnings for years about harms to teens on its platforms such as Instagram. Bejar raised particular concerns about the sexual harassment of teens by strangers on Instagram.

The same month, unsealed court filings in one lawsuit against the company revealed internal company documents that suggest Zuckerberg repeatedly thwarted teen well-being initiatives.

Court documents unsealed in a separate lawsuit weeks later alleged that Meta has knowingly refused to shut down most accounts belonging to children under the age of 13, while collecting their personal information without their parents’ consent.

New Mexico’s Attorney General filed another lawsuit against Meta in December, accusing the company of creating a “breeding ground” for child predators.

The new pressure comes about two years after another Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, released a trove of internal documents that raised questions about the company’s handling of youth safety. Those documents, known as the “Facebook Papers,” sparked outcry from lawmakers and the public and prompted efforts by Meta and other social platforms to improve their protections for teen users.

In a blog post announcing the new policies Tuesday, Meta said it wants “teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences on our apps.”

Meta said it will start hiding “age-inappropriate content” such as posts discussing self-harm and eating disorders, nudity or restricted goods from teens’ feeds and stories, even if it is shared by someone they follow.

It added that it will place all teens who use Facebook and Instagram into its most restrictive content recommendation settings, which make it more difficult to come across potentially sensitive content in search or explore, by default — a policy that was previously applied only to new teens who signed up to the apps.

The changes are set to roll out to children under the age of 18 in the coming months.

The company is also expanding the range of search terms related to self-harm, suicide and eating disorders for which it hides results and instead directs users to support resources. That list, which will be updated in the coming weeks, will now include terms such as “self-harm thoughts” and “bulimic,” Meta said.

Meta said it plans to continue sharing resources from organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness when someone posts content “related to their struggles with self-harm or eating disorders.”

Meta also said it will prompt teen users to review their safety and privacy settings.

It will offer them an easy, one-tap way to “turn on recommended settings,” which will automatically change their settings to restrict who can repost their content, “remix” and share their reels, tag, mention or message them.

The settings will also “help hide offensive comments,” Meta said.

Updating teens’ privacy settings could help to address concerns, including those from whistleblower Bejar and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, that adult strangers can easily message and proposition young users on Facebook and Instagram.

Tuesday’s changes add to Meta’s existing teen safety and parental control tools, which also include the ability for parents to see how much time their kids spend on the company’s apps, reminders to take a break during long scrolling sessions and notifications for parents if their teen reports another user.

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(CNN) — Odd radio circles in space have mystified astronomers since the cosmic objects were first discovered in 2019. Now, scientists think they may understand what forms these mysterious celestial structures, and the answer could provide insights into galactic evolution.

The odd radio circles, also known as ORCs, are so massive that entire galaxies reside at their centers, and the objects span hundreds of thousands of light-years.

Our Milky Way galaxy is 30 kiloparsecs across, and one kiloparsec equals 3,260 light-years. The odd radio circles measure hundreds of kiloparsecs across. So far, only 11 have been detected, and some of those are potential ORCs that haven’t been confirmed, according to researchers.

Astronomers have come up with many theories to determine what might form the space rings, including that they’re the result of massive cosmic collisions. But a new study suggests that the circles are shells sculpted by the powerful galactic winds created when massive stars explode.

Pinpointing ORCs

Astronomers first spotted the odd radio circles using the SKA Pathfinder telescope, operated by Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, or Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

The telescope can scan large parts of the sky to detect faint signals, which allowed scientists to discover the unusual objects.

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Researchers using the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s MeerKAT telescope also captured the first image of an ORC, labeled ORC 1, in 2022. (MeerKat is shorthand for Karoo Array Telescope, preceded by the Afrikaans word for “more.”) The powerful telescope is sensitive to faint radio light.

Theories poured in after the odd radio circles were discovered: Perhaps they were the throats of wormholes, the remnants of black hole collisions or powerful jets pumping out energetic particles, researchers hypothesized.

But prior to the new study, the circles had only been observed through radio waves. Despite their massive size, no visible light, infrared or X-ray telescopes detected the odd radio circles.

University of California San Diego professor of astronomy and astrophysics Alison Coil and her collaborators decided to look closely at ORC 4, the first known odd radio circle observable from Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. Coil and her team studied ORC 4 using the W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii, which revealed the presence of more luminous heated gas in visible light than seen in typical galaxies.

The finding only sparked more questions.

A missing link

Coil became captivated by the odd radio circles because she and her fellow researchers study massive “starburst galaxies,” which have a high rate of star formation. The galaxies also can drive rapidly outflowing winds. When giant stars explode, they release gas into interstellar space, or the space that exists between stars.

When enough stars explode at once, the force from the explosions can drive the gas out of a starburst galaxy at up to 4,473,873 miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per second).

“These galaxies are really interesting,” said Coil, lead study author and chair of the University of California San Diego’s department of astronomy and astrophysics, in a statement. “They occur when two big galaxies collide. The merger pushes all the gas into a very small region, which causes an intense burst of star formation. Massive stars burn out quickly and when they die, they expel their gas as outflowing winds.”

Coil and her team thought that the radio rings might be related to starburst galaxies.

By using visible and infrared light data, Coil’s team calculated that the stars within the galaxy inside ORC 4 are 6 billion years old.

“There was a burst of star formation in this galaxy, but it ended roughly a billion years ago,” Coil said.

Then, study coauthor Cassandra Lochhaas, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, ran simulations to recreate the size and properties of the radio circle that included the amount of gas they detected with the Keck telescope.

Lochhaas’ simulation showed that outflowing galactic winds had blown for 200 million years before ceasing. Then, the forward-moving shockwave continued to send hot gas out of the galaxy, creating the radio circle. Meanwhile, a reverse shock sent cooler gas back into the galaxy.

These events took place over the course of an estimated 750 million years.

The new research was published in the journal Nature and presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans on Monday.

“To make this work you need a high-mass outflow rate, meaning it’s ejecting a lot of material very quickly. And the surrounding gas just outside the galaxy has to be low density, otherwise the shock stalls. These are the two key factors,” Coil said. “It turns out the galaxies we’ve been studying have these high-mass outflow rates. They’re rare, but they do exist. I really do think this points to ORCs originating from some kind of outflowing galactic winds.”

Understanding the origins of odd radio circles also helps astronomers ultimately understand what impact the phenomena may have on shaping galaxies over time.

“ORCs provide a way for us to ‘see’ the winds through radio data and spectroscopy,” Coil said. “This can help us determine how common these extreme outflowing galactic winds are and what the wind life cycle is. They can also help us learn more about galactic evolution: do all massive galaxies go through an ORC phase? Do spiral galaxies turn elliptical when they are no longer forming stars? I think there is a lot we can learn about ORCs and learn from ORCs.”

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