Coronavirus means no new emoji in 2021

Apr14
by on April 14, 2020 at 10:50 pm
Posted In: Shareables


The Unicode Consortium announced last week that it was pushing the release of Unicode 14 back by six months. Now instead of a new batch of emoji coming out in 2021, we won’t see the new ones until 2022. The reason is — you guessed it — COVID-19. Specifically, the Consortium is delaying the release of Unicode Standard Version 14.0, which would include a new batch of emoji characters. Mark Davis, President of the Consortium, said in a statement that attempting to adhere to the original schedule would put a strain on the Consortium’s volunteers: “Under the current circumstances we’ve heard…

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Scientists find 78% of people don’t show symptoms of coronavirus — here’s what that could mean

Apr13
by on April 13, 2020 at 5:00 pm
Posted In: syndication


The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, with 1.4 million cases and almost 75,000 deaths reported worldwide as of April 7. To slow down the spread and reduce mortality, governments across the world have put in place social distancing measures. When such measures are lifted, the “flattened epidemic curve” is expected to start rising again in the absence of a vaccine. As most testing takes place inside hospitals in the UK and many other countries, the confirmed cases so far largely capture people who show symptoms. But to accurately predict the consequences of lifting the restrictions, we need to understand how…

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We might’ve finally found dinosaur DNA, but some scientists don’t think it’s the real deal

Apr12
by on April 12, 2020 at 3:00 pm
Posted In: syndication, world


Researchers in China and the US have found material in a dinosaur fossil that they claim looks like DNA. In a new paper in National Science Review, Alida Bailleul and colleagues report on their discovery of remarkably well-preserved cartilage from a Late Cretaceous dinosaur, Hypacrosaurus, from North America, dated at between 74 million and 80 million years old. They highlight microstructures within the cartilage that they identify as nuclei and chromosomes from within its cells and also DNA. If accurate, this would be a hugely significant find. But can this report stand the scrutiny of a sceptical world? There are…

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