|
Flying car certified for the skies: A startup has received certification in Slovakia for its flying car, AirCar. The hybrid, which was required to undergo 70 hours of flight testing and more than 200 take-offs and landings, takes two minutes and 15 seconds to transform from car into aircraft. The company told BBC News it planned “to fly to London from Paris in the near future.”
Uh-oh: You’d think during lockdown that sexually transmitted diseases might have declined. Instead, experts are warning of a probable—and alarming—increase in U.S. cases. Why? One reason: The pandemic disrupted testing for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis—key to stopping their spread, Jillian Kramer reports.
Where’s the kids’ vaccine? It looks like it may be the end of winter or early spring before a vaccine will be available for kids younger than five years old. What’s the holdup? Amy McKeever explores vaccine trial travails, as well as the impatience of parents struggling with day-care and pre-school closings—and higher pediatric hospitalization rates.
How about an all-purpose COVID vaccine? It’s promising, say scientists doing initial studies on animals. Rather than having to tweak for every variation, this would be a solution to a myriad number of coronavirus threats. “The great thing about having such vaccines is that they could handle potentially new [SARS-CoV-2] variants as well as the next horrible spillover viruses that’ll come down the road,” structural biologist Pamela Björkman tells Nat Geo.
New Explorers at Large: Path-breaking Bangladeshi photographer, teacher, and social activist Shahidul Alam and Vietnam Veterans Memorial creator, sculptor, and designer Maya Lin have been named to 10-year terms as National Geographic Society Explorers At Large. Only a few of the Society’s Explorers have been named to the at-large post, including Nat Geo legends Bob Ballard, Rodrigo Medellín, and Sylvia Earle. Read more about their appointments here.
|
|
|
|
