Android 15 could come with a smart new feature that can check the health of your phone’s onboard storage, thereby alerting you to the risk of losing files or running out of usable space when you most need it.
The feature is dubbed Device Diagnostics, as spotted by Android Authority in the latest Android 15 beta, and provides users with a percentage readout of how much of your internal storage is still usable.
So why would you need such a feature? Well despite quotes onboard storage space, a lot of phones lose a portion of that to the operating system and native apps, and then overtime the universal flash storage (UFS) smartphones use, chosen for its speed, compact size, and low power consumption, can cause it to degrade over time. Such degradation comes at the hands of downloading flies, saving photos and transferring flies back and forth.
This happens to all forms of storage, eventually losing data or becoming completely unreadable, which loses anything not backed up. Currently, there aren’t any tools for checking the status of your phone’s internal storage, like some phones use for assessing battery health. So, without warning, your storage could fail, and you could lose valuable data that isn’t backed up.
However, the Device Diagnostics could provide access to battery and storage health information in the same place, making it easier to track components more prone to degrading over time. It could also include the ability to test your phone’s display and touchscreen functionality to see if they are still working properly. This could help you decide when to transfer your files to another storage option or switch to a newer device.
The wrinkle here is that Device Diagnostics is in the Android 15 beta meaning there’s no guarantee it will make it into the full release which we’re predicting will come sometime between August and October with more information likely to b revealed at the upcoming Google I/O 2024 event on May 14.
Furthermore, if it does become part of the full Android 15 rollout, Device Diagnostics may only be available to Google Pixel devices. This is because not all Android devices share the relevant information with the Android OS. As a result, it may not be able to provide precise storage lifetime information or support it at all.
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After following the instructions from Android Police, I downloaded the Activity Launcher app on my Google Pixel 7 Pro running Android 15, I could access the device diagnostics without needing to root my phone.
From here I could see the component health of my Pixel and could confirm that my phone is maintaining 98% of its 128GB storage. I was also able to check my battery status with a detailed breakdown of its capacity, cycle count, and manufacturing date. So such a feature could be rather handy for people who want an extra layer of insight into their phone’s health and have yet to go big on cloud-based backups.
Maintaining memories
While not every phone could support the Device Diagnostics feature, you can still do a few things to prevent the loss of important files and phones right now.
The first is to backup your important files to another device or use cloud storage. The second is to perform performance maintenance on your device by deleting unnecessary documents and duplications and removing apps you no longer use or that are not supported.
You can also clear most apps’ cache and data within your phone’s settings; however, this may require you to sign in to those apps again.
Google‘s Long Exposure photo mode is actually decent. There, I said it. Photographer me is putting his neck on the line by saying that another smartphone computational photography mode, recently given its own tab in Google’s revamped Camera app, is one less reason to use a ‘proper’ camera – and mine’s a TechRadar-approved best mirrorless camera, no less.
I was on a short family break at the coast recently and set an early alarm to sneak out for a little solo time at first light at a secluded cove nearby. It would be me, the gentle lapping waves, and hopefully a little color in the sky. Of course, I would take a camera too.
Hot tea in a travel flask, banana, notepad and pen, mirrorless camera, two pro lenses covering the 24-200mm focal length between them, an ND filter plus a tripod, and I was good to go. Oh, and the Google Pixel 6 was in my pocket.
Image 1 of 3
The standard version of the headline image, completely unedited.(Image credit: Future | Tim Coleman)
With the Long Exposure photo mode applied but no edit. That horizon needs straightening!(Image credit: Future | Tim Coleman)
An edited version in the original 4:3 aspect ratio, whereas our headline images get cropped 16:9.(Image credit: Future | Tim Coleman)
A steep descent through a wooded area and the sheltered east-facing cove came into view. I’ve learned the importance of enjoying nature first before taking a camera out of the bag, especially given my screen-intensive day job.
After grounding myself in the peace and unrushed pace of the quiet sunrise I started moving around the beach looking for compositions that caught my eye, for photos that would transport me back to what it was like being there.
Sunrise was lovely – not award-winning, but adding a splash of color. The outgoing tide was steadily revealing more of the beach. Small waves crashed against the clay-red sandy incline, climbed up the beach a little, and then retreated around small rocks, creating interesting patterns.
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I’ve taken a few long exposure seascape photos down the years, and love the technique, especially for accentuating the movement of water as it retreats around rocks. I take a quick snap of the scene on the Pixel 6 and it occurs to me that I’ve not properly used its Long Exposure photo mode yet, now prominent in the camera app with its own tab.
Image 1 of 2
Most of my favorite images of the morning were taken in vertical format. I’ve made a cooler, moody edit to this photo using the Google Pixel 6’s camera app editor (Image credit: Future | Tim Coleman)
The unedited standard version of the same image. (Image credit: Future | Tim Coleman)
The Long Exposure photo mode blurs movement, while keeping still objects sharp. The creative technique can be used in several ways, with blurring moving water a popular choice. Having observed the water trails, I line up the picture and take the snap.
It works a little like Night Sight – you need to keep your phone as steady as possible while the long exposure is captured. That way the still objects – in this case the rocks, cliff faces, and untouched sand – remain sharp. This computational photography mode is like a pro mirrorless camera’s in-body image stabilization on steroids.
The phone stores both the regular photo and the long exposure effect image (I’ve included both versions of every image for comparison). I have to say, the effect in this scenario is convincing (see above), similar to what I’d expect from my mirrorless camera which remains in the bag 50 meters away up the beach.
Whatever camera you use for long exposure photography (be it mirrorless or a cameraphone) – in this context of accentuating retreating ocean waters – you need to keep trying and trying and trying to get the shot. Timing is so hard.
Your best bet is starting the capture with the wave at its peak up the beach and just as the water starts to retreat. That way the natural path back to the ocean, be it straight or snaking around rocks, is accentuated and depicts the tidal energy.
Image 1 of 2
Not all scenes are worth using the Long Exposure photo mode for. The water is too far away in this composition and now I’m blowing out highlights.(Image credit: Future | Tim Coleman)
For this scene I prefer the standard photo. Also, if you look closely at the detail in the image using the Long Exposure photo mode, it’s a little softer.(Image credit: Future | Tim Coleman)
Google Pixel’s Long Exposure mode isn’t perfect – detail is usually softer than in the standard version – but it’s pretty darn good and convincing enough that I didn’t really need to bring my mirrorless camera, tripod, and ND filters along for the ride. If I owned the OM System OM-1 II (or OM-1), I could use that camera’s Live ND computational photography mode instead and leave the tripod and ND filters behind.
I haven’t lost faith in my ‘proper’ camera, far from it. Towards the end of my time at the beach, while still alone, a playful seal popped its head up like a floating rock. I steamed back up the beach to my bag, grabbed the camera with a 70-200mm lens, and got a few photos that far exceed what I could possibly hope to get with the Pixel 6 – though some of today’s best cameraphones might have done a decent job.
I’ll also still use my ‘proper’ camera with tripod and ND filters for long exposure photography, too. It’s just that now I might think twice if lugging all of that gear to get the creative effect is worth it when I have the computational mode in a device that slips into my pocket.
Sammy, from considerable distance, taken with my pro mirrorless camera that I still love. (Image credit: Future | Tim Coleman)
In a bid to simplify its product range for customers, IBM has announced changes to the names of some of its popular storage solutions.
The tech giant’s latest product rebrand is designed to better communicate their functions and capabilities, and do away with some of the confusion that came about following the previous renaming round.
Back in 2015, Big Blue introduced the Spectrum prefix for its storage products. However, in February 2023, the Spectrum prefix was changed to Storage. This move was intended to make it clearer to customers what each product does. So, for example, the “Spectrum Fusion” product set became “Storage Fusion” instead.
Not ‘Storage Discover’
Now, Blocks and Files reports that IBM is renaming its Storage Fusion HCI product to Fusion HCI. This change was reportedly made to better reflect the product’s function as a hyperconverged system for running Red Hat OpenShift and its applications, rather than a storage product.
Additionally, the Spectrum Discover product, which provides data cataloging and metadata management for file and object data, has been given an alternative name. Blocks and Files says Big Blue’s customers can now refer to it as either Data Cataloging or Spectrum Discover, but not, as you might think given the previous prefix change, Storage Discover. Clear?
IBM’s Data Cataloging/Spectrum Discover product is designed to automatically catalog unstructured data by capturing metadata as it is created. It can connect to exabyte-scale heterogeneous file, object, backup, and archive storage on premises and in the cloud, making it a valuable tool for data management.
While the new names may take some getting used to, the underlying functionality of IBM’s revamped storage portfolio remains the same, and the changes are sensible ones that better define the products’ purposes.
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A typical mouse embryo (left) has four limbs. An embryo in which a particular gene was switched off halfway through development has six limbs, and several of its internal organs protrude from its abdomen.Credit: Anastasiia Lozovska et al/Nat. Comms
Developmental biologist Moisés Mallo and his colleagues inactivated a gene in a mouse embryo to see how the change affected spinal-cord development. One of the bioengineered embryos developed genitals that looked similar to two extra hind limbs. The finding led the researchers to unexpected discoveries about which changes in DNA’s 3D structure affect how embryos develop. “I didn’t choose the project, the project chose me,” Mallo says.
South Korea will become the first East Asian country to join the European Union’s €95-billion (US$102-billion) Horizon Europe research-funding programme. The country’s researchers will be eligible to apply for grants from a €53.5 billion pot of funding for research into global challenges in health, energy, climate change and industrial competitiveness. Last year, New Zealand became the first country to ‘associate to’ Horizon Europe, Canada will be signing on later this year, and Singapore and Japan are in preliminary discussions with the European Commission.
Studies in mice reveal that when long-term memories are formed, the DNA in some nerve cells snaps, triggering an immune response responsible for repair. This DNA damage-and-repair cycle might be a way for nerve cells to make memories that last. When mice were trained to remember an electrical shock, the nerve cells initiated an inflammatory response mediated by the TLR9 protein. When the researchers deleted the gene encoding the TLR9 protein from mice, the animals had trouble recalling long-term memories: they forgot the place where they had previously been shocked. These findings contribute to the picture that forming memories is a “risky business”, says neurobiologist Li-Huei Tsai.
Before the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the jailing of its chief exec Sam Bankman-Fried, the company allocated tens of millions of dollars to effective altruism — a philanthropic movement dedicated to tackling long-term risks to humanity, such as climate change. This included giving money to research organizations and scientists, many of whom are under pressure to return the money. Some people are concerned that news of the fraud has damaged the perception of effective altruism itself. “We were really gearing up to this big change,” says Sawyer Bernath of the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative. “All of a sudden it turned out to be all fake.”
Efforts such as the Patient-Led Research Collaborative have played a crucial role in advising, designing and even funding basic and clinical research into long COVID. Its influential survey has amassed more than 1,000 citations. Co-founder Lisa McCorkell is among the patient advocates who say that despite the fact that such efforts can worsen their symptoms, they have little choice but to get involved. “We’re driven by desperation, out of improving our own quality of life.”
A spreadsheet that has been shared between graduate students around the world for more than a decade helps academics in management navigate the job market. Refreshed each year, the spreadsheet’s tabs act as a job-listings board — and a forum for questions and frustrations. “If that sounds similar to Slack and other messaging tools, it is,” writes business researcher Silvia Sanasi. “But the spreadsheet is completely anonymous. It is also incredibly flexible, quick to load and easy to search. Plus, researchers are already well versed in spreadsheets — and appreciate the ability to trawl job-search boards while looking as if they’re working.”
Palaeobotanist Estella Bergere Leopold’s investigations of fossil pollen and spores provided some of the first insights into the evolution of modern plant communities. In 1955, Leopold became one of the few female scientists at the US Geological Survey, where her studies revealed the existence of a tropical rainforest in the south Pacific millions of years ago. Leopold was also an ardent conservationist and activist who traced back her unbridled enthusiasm for ecology to her childhood spent on a farm in Wisconsin. “Without loving nature,” she said in 2011, “who’s going to want to protect it?” Leopold has died, aged 97.
A bird-like brain might have been the ancestral crucible for dreams, writes cultural curator Maria Popova. In ostriches, which belong to the most ancient group of birds, and platypuses, which are part of the most ancient mammal group, dream-like activity was found in the brainstem. In other birds and mammals, dream-rich sleep takes place primarily in the forebrain, suggesting that dreaming slowly migrated into this evolutionarily younger structure. “The most haunting intimation of the research on avian sleep is that without the dreams of birds, we too might be dreamless,” Popova says.
Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA; Image processing: T. A. Rector, Univ. Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab; M. Zamani & D. de Martin, NSF’s NOIRLab
This stunning photo shows the Vela supernova remnant, an expanding nebula of cosmic debris created by a massive stellar explosion around 11,000 years ago. The image was created by separately capturing light of distinct wavelengths using filters and then combining them.
When Lisa McCorkell got COVID-19 in March 2020, her symptoms were mild. Her physicians told her to isolate from others and that she would recover in a few weeks. But the weeks stretched into months and McCorkell, who was working on a master’s degree in public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, started having debilitating and bewildering symptoms: fatigue, dizziness and shortness of breath. Previously an avid runner, McCorkell found her heart racing from simple efforts.
She struggled to find an explanation, and soon realized that her physicians didn’t know any more about her condition than she did. To complicate matters, the limited availability of high-quality testing for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in the early days of the pandemic left many of her doctors wondering whether her symptoms were really due to COVID-19 at all. “I didn’t have health-care providers that took me seriously,” McCorkell says. “That largely pushed me out of the health-care system.”
McCorkell turned instead to those who were experiencing the same puzzling symptoms and frustrations, joining a support group for people with what would eventually be called long COVID. As they compared notes, McCorkell and a handful of others — many of whom had research experience — realized that the information they were sharing might be helpful not only for those with long COVID, but also for those looking to study the condition. So, they founded a non-profit organization, called the Patient-Led Research Collaborative (PLRC), to design, provide advice on and even fund basic and clinical research into long COVID and other chronic illnesses.
Four years on: the career costs for scientists battling long COVID
A survey run by the group and published in 2021 catalogued the more than 200 symptoms experienced by people with the condition (H. E. Davis et al. eClinicalMedicine38, 101019; 2021). It is seen by some as putting long COVID on the map. “They really jump-started the interest,” says Lucinda Bateman, a physician in Salt Lake City, Utah, who specializes in treating people who have long COVID and related conditions. “That was really a point from where more broad awareness arose.”
In the past few years, this study and similar patient-led efforts have helped to shape research programmes on long COVID and kick off some early clinical trials of therapies that might otherwise have gone unexplored. Many patient advocates see the efforts as crucial. They also think the results are more helpful for advancing the understanding of long COVID than the current findings from programmes funded by the US$1.15-billion RECOVER initiative led by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). People with long COVID and their advocates have criticized the initiative for not always listening to the needs of people with long COVID.
Getting involved in research is challenging, given the symptoms of long COVID, but many patient advocates say they have no choice. “They’ve got you over a barrel,” says Margaret O’Hara, who coordinates patient involvement in research for a National Health Service hospital trust in England. O’Hara is on medical leave owing to long COVID. Referring to the research, she says: “You have to do it, because you are the one who is going to suffer for it if you don’t, but at the same time, you’re in bed sick.”
A plethora of symptoms
The PLRC’s survey of long COVID symptoms was the first major research study of the condition. The premise was simple enough: authors surveyed almost 3,800 people in 56 countries, many of whom were members of various long COVID support groups worldwide, including the network Body Politic, from which the PLRC originated. When the authors analysed the data, they found scores of symptoms in at least ten organ systems.
The study showed that the most prevalent problems were fatigue, post-exertional malaise — a worsening of symptoms after exertion — and the cognitive dysfunction that came to be referred to as brain fog. Nearly 86% of participants reported relapses triggered by exertion; 87% said fatigue was a main symptom; and 88% reported brain fog, with no differences in cognitive issues across age groups.
NIH launches trials for long COVID treatments: what scientists think
The paper has amassed more than 1,000 citations, been mentioned in some 60 policy statements and is widely considered a seminal paper in long COVID research, owing to its in-depth analysis. For McCorkell, however, its impact is more fundamental. “What we demonstrated with the survey is that patients can lead high-quality research, and that it’s really necessary in order to have the most comprehensive look at a condition.”
The achievement is especially notable considering that the study was conducted by unpaid volunteers, most of whom identify as disabled, and it received no financial support. By contrast, many long COVID research initiatives have tended to focus on a subset of symptoms, which comes with the risk of missing the bigger picture, says McCorkell.
“There’s a lot of complexity in these illnesses, and I think it’s really important to embrace these complexities,” says Beth Pollack, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, whose work focuses on understanding long COVID and other infection-associated chronic illnesses. With conditions that have a range of symptoms, and for which there is only limited research, building a knowledge base starts by listening to patients’ stories and capturing the nuances of their conditions, Pollack says.
Desperate measures
In early 2020, Martha Eckey, a pharmacist in Minneapolis, Minnesota, developed a COVID-like illness. She experienced a crushing fatigue that no amount of sleep could relieve, and was bedbound for days at a time. The physicians she went to for help had no answers. In desperation, Eckey turned to the online community of people with long COVID.
She found people trying treatments from prescription medications to over-the-counter supplements. But the effectiveness of these was restricted largely to personal anecdotes.
In the hope of getting a more comprehensive, systematic understanding of what worked, Eckey designed a survey called TREAT ME, which asked people with long COVID and those with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), about their experiences, including whether they had tried any of a list of 150 medications and supplements. More than 4,000 people responded.
Martha Eckey’s TREAT ME survey found overlap between treatments people were using for long COVID and for other chronic conditions.Credit: John Karp
Eckey found overlap with other chronic conditions. Some treatments revealed by the survey as most effective for long COVID were drugs such as beta blockers and the heart-failure medication Corlanor (ivabradine). These are sometimes used to treat postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a nervous-system disorder that can be triggered by COVID-19. Eckey also found that a number of individuals reported relief after taking naltrexone, a non-opioid drug for treating substance-use disorder. When taken at low doses, it has anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties.
Physiotherapist David Putrino, who specializes in rehabilitation and human performance at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, says that the TREAT ME survey captured something both simple and profoundly important. “It’s a very fundamental question of, ‘what are you taking that’s helping right now?’” he says. The results have helped to guide his research on long COVID.
Listening to patients
TREAT ME attracted the attention of scientists and research foundations, who soon realized that this information could help to shape their efforts. One was the Open Medicine Foundation, a non-profit organization in Agoura Hills, California, that studies infection-associated chronic illnesses such as long COVID and ME/CFS.
Linda Tannenbaum, a clinical laboratory scientist, founded the Open Medicine Foundation in 2012 in response to the difficulties she encountered while seeking a diagnosis and treatment for her daughter, who has ME/CFS. Its first double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial will explore low-dose naltrexone (LDN) and another drug, pyridostigmine, which is used to treat an autoimmune disorder that affects voluntary muscle movements. The medications will be tested separately and in combination. Tannenbaum credits TREAT ME for helping to shape which symptoms will be assessed during the trial.
“The reason we are doing LDN as our first trial is that patients asked for it,” she says. TREAT ME also showed that many people with long COVID said that LDN helped to reduce brain fog (see go.nature.com/3qy2tpj). Given these results, the Open Medicine Foundation also incorporated parameters in the trial to test cognitive function. Both LDN and pyridostigmine have been used to treat long COVID, but as many patients report, physicians are often reluctant to prescribe these drugs because of a lack of formal, randomized, controlled trials showing their effectiveness. “Doctors are very hesitant to go outside approved, or at least medically tested, medications,” says Bateman. In her experience, insurance companies also won’t pay for these medications for people with ME/CFS and long COVID without strong evidence to support their use.
Many patient advocates say that there is insufficient clinical research on the kinds of drug that people are already using. In February, the RECOVER initiative received a further $515 million over the next 4 years to test more interventions and investigate the long-term effects of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. But so far, the only trials it has begun are of the antiviral medication Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir), which started enrolling patients in July 2023, and of ivabradine and intravenous immunoglobulin, which recruited its first participants last month.
Lauren Nichols, a long COVID patient advocate, helped to lead the Body Politic support group.Credit: Lauren Owens Lambert/Reuters
“There are a lot of clinical trials that are focused on more behavioural and on non-pharmaceutical interventions, and that is really not a priority to the patient community,” McCorkell says. “It is a misunderstanding of how severe the condition is, and how much of an impact on people’s quality of life it has taken.”
A spokesperson for RECOVER told Nature that the clinical trial of a computer game has already started enrolling participants and that the exercise trial is still scheduled to begin. They emphasized that these are accessible interventions, which might help some people who are affected, given the wide range of symptoms. They also said that moving these trials forwards will help in developing the framework for testing more treatments.
Lifting the fog
In the weeks after her initial COVID-19 infection, Hannah Davis found herself struggling with severe brain fog, to the point at which she could barely string two sentences together. Davis, who at the time was working as a data analyst and artist, with a particular focus on addressing biases in machine learning, kept waiting for her cognitive function to go back to normal, only for it never to return. “I had, and continue to have, terrible, terrible cognitive impairment,” says Davis, who is one of the co-founders of the PLRC.
Long COVID exercise trials proposed by NIH raise alarm
Brain fog is having a significant impact on people’s livelihoods, says Wes Ely, a physician-scientist who works in intensive care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. People with long COVID have a form of cognitive impairment that is often “like mild and moderate dementia”, he says.
Ely, who studies treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, decided in 2020 to expand into studying the cognitive impairments associated with long COVID. He quickly recognized that the condition is deeply complex, with symptoms that go beyond cognitive impairment.
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon, he turned to the patient community, eventually recruiting Davis and Jaime Seltzer, director of scientific and medical outreach at the non-profit organization ME Action in Santa Monica, California. Together, they drafted a clinical trial to test the medication baricitinib, an immunomodulatory drug that is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and alopecia areata, and acute COVID-19 infections. “I wanted to learn from people who are living with this disease,” says Ely.
The trio, along with other US investigators, designed a 550-person clinical trial of baricitinib as a potential treatment for long COVID. The trial has now been funded by the NIH and will start enrolment later this year.
From Seltzer’s perspective, an effective collaboration between patients and scientists can help both sides equally, because it leads to more effective and targeted research. “We have the resources to help you do what you do even better,” Seltzer says. The lived experiences of patients can shape research priorities in several key ways, she says. These include finding the most efficient way to allocate limited funds on the basis of symptom burden; offering context on the prevalence and severity of symptoms; and identifying how the trial design can capture improvement most effectively. All of this can help lead to faster breakthroughs in treatments, which is of benefit to both patients and researchers, Seltzer says.
Microclot mystery
In late autumn 2022, McCorkell flew to New York City to participate in a trial being conducted by Putrino and his team. This study aimed to look for the presence of tiny blood clots, called microclots, in people with long COVID. It is thought that these cause symptoms such as fatigue and brain fog by impairing blood flow to the brain and body. There are still a lot of unknowns about microclots, including how many people with long COVID have them, how they form and whether the association is causal.
Long-COVID treatments: why the world is still waiting
McCorkell gave blood samples that were analysed using fluorescent microscopy, which confirmed she had microclots. McCorkell says it was “a wake-up call”. Until that point, she had been managing her symptoms mainly by avoiding overexertion. But the presence of the clots suggested to her that there might be active damage happening to her body. So, she started taking supplements that TREAT ME survey respondents reported as helpful.
Eckey’s results, which have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, show that of 668 respondents with long COVID, between 40% and 70% found some symptom relief when taking the supplements nattokinase, serrapeptase or lumbrokinase, individually or in combination (see go.nature.com/43xgyoq).
When Putrino saw these results, he decided it was crucial to conduct clinical trials of the supplements. He expects to begin a 120-person study on lumbrokinase in the coming months, and has involved patients at every step of its development.
“Every research trial that we run, we involve the patient community in the protocol,” Putrino says. This includes taking their advice on what trials should be prioritized, what symptoms to assess, how many clinic visits to require and what the testing environment should be like, to minimize the risk of exacerbating their symptoms, he says.
McCorkell says that the supplements she’s been taking have improved her general function by about 10%. Whereas that might not sound like much, she feels it is meaningful progress. Although the long COVID research has been difficult, she sees no other option but to stay involved. “We’re driven by desperation, out of improving our own quality of life.”
The Easter bunny is bringing something very special this year, with a massive 25% off our favourite hybrid mattress in the Simba sale. This huge saving is excellent news for anyone who wants to start their spring cleaning by getting rid of their old mattress and boosting their sleep.
We recently awarded the Simba Hybrid Original the number one spot in our best hybrid mattress guide, and if you take a look at our Simba Hybrid Original mattress review, it’s easy to see why. Our tester described the Simba Hybrid Original as “one of the most comfortable mattresses [they’d] ever had”, praising how it offered just the right amount of support and softness while still delivering top quality temperature regulation and motion isolation.
Simba mattress sales have undergone a bit of a shake-up recently and we’re not seeing the same number of deals we used to. So if you want to save big on a bed from one of the best mattress brands in the UK, I recommend taking a close look at this Simba sale. Read on to find out why the Simba Hybrid Original mattress is my top pick…
Buy it if…
✅ You like to move around in the night: There’s a bit of bounce to the Simba Hybrid Original mattress, which makes it easier to switch sides and move around (the mattress won’t hold onto you in the way a softer foam can). And the medium-firm feel surface suits a range of positions, so if you’re restless, you feel supported no matter how you’re lying.
✅ You share a bed: Hybrid mattresses aren’t always known for their motion isolation, but the Simba Hybrid Original actually performs pretty well in this category – if your partner moves around, your sleep shouldn’t be disrupted. And with edge-to-edge support, two people can stretch out on the bed without it starting to sink at the sides.
✅ You want to save: Simba sales are no longer the permanent presence they once were, so act now if you want a discount on a high quality mattress. When this 25% off sale is over, we don’t know when the next one will come along.
Don’t buy it if…
❌ You like to sink into the bed: Although there’s an upper layer of foam to the Simba Hybrid Original, it doesn’t off the sink-in feel of an all-foam bed. If you like a bed that hugs you in your sleep, take a look at our Emma Original mattress review. There’s also 20% off the Emma Original right now.
❌ You’re a lightweight side sleeper: The Simba Hybrid Original suits a lot of sleep styles, but lightweight side sleepers isn’t one of them, unfortunately. If this is you, consider a bed with a softer sleep surface. In our Brook + Wilde Elite mattress review, we noted this luxury hybrid suits everyone, because you can pick a firmness. Save 40% in the Brook + Wilde spring sale.
❌ You want.a more sustainable bed: Simba is a certified B Corp, and the Hybrid Original has been designed to use minimal foam to limit its carbon footprint. However, if you want a mattress that prioritizes natural materials, consider the recently-launched Simba Earth range. Combining traditional materials with the latest technology, the Simba Earth Source mattress is the most affordable option, and there’s 25% off.
Streaming service Max will finally be rolling out to Europe later this Spring, replacing HBO Max on the continent. Except for the United Kingdom, that is – the situation on the British Isles is a little complicated.
This news comes straight from a keynote presentation by JB Perette, who is the CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games over at Warner Bros. Discovery. The roll out won’t happen all at once, but in two waves.
On May 21, Max will officially launch in the Nordic countries, the Iberian Peninsula, as well as Central and Eastern Europe. It’s important to mention those regions already have HBO Max available to them so the change is happening there sooner. After that, the service will soon be made available in Poland, the Netherlands, France, and Belgium.
It’s unknown exactly when the platform will go live in the last four countries, however it could happen in the summer. As Variety points out, the 2024 Olympic Games will kick off in Paris on July 26. Plus, “Max will be the only platform to stream all live coverage of the [games]”. So if they want to have most of Europe watching the Olympics, it’ll have to come out before then.
Pricing
Pricing for subscription plans, at this moment, is unknown. Prices weren’t revealed during Perette’s presentation, although there is some information out there. According to Variety, Max in Europe will offer a cheap basic plan with ads, and a premium plan that’ll allow viewers to “stream content in Full HD or 4K on up to four devices simultaneously”. They go on to claim users will be given “up to 100 downloads of content.” As the service becomes available, pricing should become more clear.
On the surface, it seems Max subscribers can download up to 100 individual movies and shows from the platform. It is possible that Variety is actually talking about users being allowed to download hundreds of movies and shows. We believe it’s the former, but again, the wording isn’t super clear.
Going back to the subscriptions, the basic plan will first launch in nine countries including Denmark, France, Norway, and Romania. Pricing for everything “will vary from country to country”. More will be revealed within the coming months.
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UK availability
Max’s presence in the United Kingdom depends on the business deal Warner Bros. Discovery has with the British telecommunications company Sky.
As Deadline explains, Sky is the “exclusive distributor of most HBO content” in the UK due to a “lucrative licensing deal”. The contract doesn’t expire until 2026, so it’s entirely possible people there will have to wait another two years before they can get something resembling Max.
Sky has special “life of series agreements” for certain content so they can continue streaming them even if the deal changes. Of course, Warner Bros. and Sky can alter their contract within the next two years, but whether or not that’ll happen remains to be seen.
Meta has unveiled details about its AI training infrastructure, revealing that it currently relies on almost 50,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to train its open source Llama 3 LLM.
The company says it will have over 350,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs in service by the end of 2024, and the computing power equivalent to nearly 600,000 H100s when combined with hardware from other sources.
The figures were revealed as Meta shared details on its 24,576-GPU data center scale clusters.
The company explained “These clusters support our current and next generation AI models, including Llama 3, the successor to Llama 2, our publicly released LLM, as well as AI research and development across GenAI and other areas.“
The clusters are built on Grand Teton (named after the National Park in Wyoming), an in-house-designed, open GPU hardware platform. Grand Teton integrates power, control, compute, and fabric interfaces into a single chassis for better overall performance and scalability.
The clusters also feature high-performance network fabrics, enabling them to support larger and more complex models than before. Meta says one cluster uses a remote direct memory access network fabric solution based on the Arista 7800, while the other features an NVIDIA Quantum2 InfiniBand fabric. Both solutions interconnect 400 Gbps endpoints.
“The efficiency of the high-performance network fabrics within these clusters, some of the key storage decisions, combined with the 24,576 NVIDIA Tensor Core H100 GPUs in each, allow both cluster versions to support models larger and more complex than that could be supported in the RSC and pave the way for advancements in GenAI product development and AI research,” Meta said.
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Storage is another critical aspect of AI training, and Meta has developed a Linux Filesystem in Userspace backed by a version of its ‘Tectonic’ distributed storage solution optimized for Flash media. This solution reportedly enables thousands of GPUs to save and load checkpoints in a synchronized fashion, in addition to “providing a flexible and high-throughput exabyte scale storage required for data loading”.
While the company’s current AI infrastructure relies heavily on Nvidia GPUs, it’s unclear how long this will continue. As Meta continues to evolve its AI capabilities, it will inevitably focus on developing and producing more of its own hardware. Meta has already announced plans to use its own AI chips, called Artemis, in servers this year, and the company previously revealed it was getting ready to manufacture custom RISC-V silicon.
Known for high-quality earbuds that don’t break the bank, EarFun released a set of over-ear cans Monday for the first time — Earfun Wave Pro Hi-Res ANC Wireless Headphones.
Introduced at CES 2024, the new noise-canceling EarFun Wave Pro cans claim high-resolution audio, hybrid active noise cancellation (ANC) and a stalwart 80 hours of playback. And all that comes at a cost of just $80. Actually, even less for early-bird buyers.
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The cans’ hybrid ANC is rated effective up to 45 decibels, which can quiet voices and other mid-range frequencies around you. And active Anti-Wind Noise technology helps when you’re out and about.
And noise cancellation extends to calls, too. Environmental noise cancellation (ENC) technology driven by an AI-powered algorithm removes surrounding noise to emphasize your voice.
Solid sound quality
The new headphones put premiums on quality sound and comfort, but for an affordable price. Photo: EarFun
And as for audio quality, EarFun’s hybrid ANC over-ear wireless headphones come with Hi-Res Audio certifications and LDAC audio codec support (ideal for Android users with compatible devices).
Here’s how EarFun describes sound quality and the accompanying hardware:
Reaching a frequency response up to 96kHz, the Hi-Res certified Wave Pro can deliver music with range while accurately preserving detail. The LDAC certification allows listeners to enjoy the high-fidelity codec with compatible devices and experience the higher end of what Bluetooth audio can offer.
The Wave Pro is equipped with a pair of refined 40mm DLC (Diamond-Like Carbon) composite film dynamic coil drivers, producing incredible bass levels, and ultra-clear treble that sustains revealing clarity. Plug-in via the embedded 3.5mm auxiliary port to appreciate EarFun’s dynamic sound signature over large diaphragms with a wired connection.
80 hours of battery life, multipoint connectivity, Game Mode
A comparison puts EarFun Wave Pro up against some bigtime competition. Photo: EarFun
EarFun said it gave its “premier over-ear ANC headphones a battery anxiety-dissolving 80 hours of battery life for a truly wireless experience.” It seems like just yesterday that 50 hours of wireless headphone playback seemed astounding.
And the multipoint connection also takes advantage of Wave Pro’s long battery life. You can stay connected between devices and switch between them with onboard touch controls.
Wave Pro also includes a Game Mode for low latency use. Gaming and streaming experiences benefit from under 55ms-latency to keep input and media in sync.
EarFun Wave Pro headphones: Emphasis on lightweight comfort
The headphones also focus on ergonomic comfort. Their lush earcups provide a gentle but even seal.
EarFun included its companion app to help users tailor their audio experience with the headphones. They can set up and use compatible voice assistance, for example.
Amazingly, even with the low $79.99 price at myearfun.com and Amazon, a limited-time, early-bird special gives you a further 3o% discount. That results in a price of below $60, so check to see if the deal is still on.
People with long COVID often struggle to get sufficient support in the workplace; researchers are no exception.Credit: Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Abby Koppes got COVID-19 in March 2020, just as the world was waking up to the unprecedented scale on which the virus was spreading. Her symptoms weren’t bad at first. She spent the early lockdown period in Boston, Massachusetts, preparing her tenure application.
During that summer of frenzied writing, Koppes’s symptoms worsened. She often awoke in the night with her heart racing. She was constantly gripped by fatigue, but she brushed off the symptoms as due to work stress. “You gaslight yourself a little bit, I guess,” she says.
Soon after Koppes submitted her tenure application in July, she began experiencing migraines for the first time, which left her bedridden. Her face felt as if it was on fire, a condition called trigeminal neuralgia that’s also known as suicide disease because of the debilitating pain it causes. Specialists took months to diagnose her with a series of grim-sounding disorders: Sjögren’s syndrome, small-fibre polyneuropathy and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. To make time for the litany of doctors’ appointments, Koppes took a six-month “self-care sabbatical”.
It’s a bit of a blur, she says, but Koppes, a biochemical engineer at Northeastern University in Boston, describes September 2021 to April 2023 as a dark period in her life. Fortunately, she was buoyed by one monumental victory that preceded it: she was granted tenure in summer 2021.
Abby Koppes changed her research focus to study her own experience of long COVID.Credit: Adam Glanzman/Northeastern University
However, other academic researchers with long COVID might not count themselves so lucky. Koppes’s experience has compelled her to speak up for other researchers with the condition. It needn’t spell the end of an academic career, provided institutions step up to help. Nature spoke to researchers living with long COVID to find out how they manage the illness amid the pressures of academic research. (Many requested anonymity for privacy or for fear of repercussions on their careers and reputations.) They describe new realities that include budgeting for periods of fatigue and negotiating adjustments such as flexible working arrangements — an area, they say, in which academia can do better.
When academia meets long COVID
Koppes is one of at least 65 million people worldwide to develop long-term health problems after contracting the virus SARS-CoV-2. The World Health Organization defines long COVID as a suite of symptoms lasting two months or longer, continuing or occurring three months after the initial infection.
Collection: Coronavirus and scientific careers
Common symptoms of long COVID include cognitive impairment, fatigue and immune dysregulation. Weak or overburdened health-care systems in some nations mean many people who have the condition are left without appropriate care.
Moreover, in the cut-throat world of academia, in which it is the norm to push oneself through graduate training and the postdoctoral stage, and as an early-career academic, long COVID throws up barriers for those seeking permanent positions, such as the promised land of tenure.
It could also squeeze diversity out of the talent pool — studies have shown that long COVID tends to disproportionately affect women and people of colour. “Women are already under-represented in higher roles,” says Natalie Holroyd, a computational medicine researcher with long COVID at University College London. “Is this going to exacerbate existing inequality?”
Scientists count the career costs of COVID
“Getting tenure was so profoundly destructive to my health that it prepared my body for severe long COVID,” one Latina researcher in the humanities tells Nature. “I feel like my academic job demands my death.”
Researchers with long COVID often face extra administrative burdens: dealing with the mountains of paperwork for disability claims and workplace-accommodation requests. These tasks can feel like a part-time job in their own right. “Not only are we trying to get all the same work done with many fewer functional hours, but we also have more work to do,” one US-based biology researcher says. “That doesn’t even count all of the extra hours that we have to spend dealing with getting health care.”
There’s also financial pressure. Researchers might feel the need to soldier on to continue to receive a steady income and, in many cases, employer-provided health insurance. The most vulnerable individuals are graduate students and postdoctoral scholars on temporary contracts. International early-career researchers’ visa status can be contingent on working full-time.
In some cases, seeking accommodations can feel out of reach. “I did not go up to anybody and say, ‘Hey, I’ve been dealing with this the entire two years. Can we do something about it?’” says Priya (not her real name), a master’s student with chronic post-COVID-19 health problems at one of the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research. Organizing a community to advocate for a better learning and research environment takes time, effort and money. Convinced that the university can’t do much, Priya is resigned to bearing her poor health alone. “There are definitely other people here that have similar issues, but I don’t think there’s been a dialogue about it.”
Pandemic productivity loss: how scientific institutions should support academic mothers
Academics with long COVID also face societal ignorance about the condition, with several of those Nature spoke to reporting that they were mainly left to fend for themselves or to navigate workplace accommodation policies that aren’t tailored for long COVID. Many researchers conceal their illness for fear of stigma. Even with understanding colleagues, people with long COVID say they’re exhausted from constantly advocating for their needs and educating others about the condition.
Because some symptoms can be invisible, colleagues might negatively judge a co-worker’s performance or ability to participate. When Sarah (not her real name) started her assistant professorship at a US university, colleagues who were aware of her condition would occasionally tell her that she “looked good” during a meeting. “But it’s because I had very carefully managed my day,” she says. To be able to attend an hour-long meeting at the height of her symptoms, Sarah says she would sleep for two hours beforehand, then for another two afterwards to recuperate. “They don’t realize that there are four hours on either side that were devoted to making it possible.”
The need for extra rest can leave those with long COVID little time for pursuing career-advancing opportunities, especially travel. And because reinfection can exacerbate symptoms, crowd-facing activities aren’t safe, either, when masking is not required.
Sociologist Kerstin Sailer had to redefine what it meant to be a researcher living with the disabilities that come with long COVID.Credit: Beatrix Fuhrmann
Many high-achieving researchers with long COVID say that one of their biggest struggles is the loss of their identities that had been pegged to their cognitive abilities and productivity. Often, they learnt the hard way that pushing themselves beyond their limits would only cause them to crash later. “It took me a while to recognize that I am now a disabled academic,” says Kerstin Sailer, a sociology researcher at University College London. She had “to gather around and find my own kind of inner strength and redefine what it means to be me”.
But Sailer and others are a testament to the fact that long COVID need not signal a career dead end. With the right support, affected academics can still thrive.
Accommodations and flexibility
Researchers living with long COVID have found ways to adapt, often relying on assistance from peers. Koppes co-advises all of her students with her husband, an academic at the same university, which is helpful for the days she’s off sick. Other long-haulers have formed online support groups or leaned on collaborators to help them to cross project finishing lines. Kathleen Banks, a public-health doctoral student with long COVID at Boston University in Massachusetts, has an informal dissertation coach who holds her accountable for meeting graduation milestones without pushing her too hard.
Researchers say that the most important form of support is that offered by a compassionate supervisor, be it a department chair or a research adviser. They advise looking for someone who prioritizes your health and doesn’t put undue pressure on you to perform.
Academia’s ableist culture laid bare
Holroyd says she’s grateful for having had the same supportive adviser since her PhD days. “He kept reassuring me that the work that [I’m] putting out is fine, it’s enough,” she says of her now-postdoctoral supervisor. “I’m unlikely to find that level of support elsewhere.”
Ideally, supervisors will also fight for needed accommodations. These can include having a private office, being able to work from home, teaching remotely and having a flexible schedule to deal with an unpredictable ailment.
Employers should also recognize that accommodations, such as virtual working, aren’t one-size-fits-all. Jane (not her real name) is a US-based researcher in the social sciences who developed mast-cell activation syndrome after a COVID-19 infection. In her case, this causes life-threatening allergic reactions to synthetic chemicals in scented products. She requested a high-efficiency particulate air filter for her classroom, but her institution recommended that she teach remotely instead.
However, as other classes at her institution returned to in-person formats, Jane says she noticed that students preferred those to virtual courses such as hers. She’s nervous about the impact this might have on the teaching evaluations that count towards tenure. She has proposed that her institution establish a fragrance-free policy for her office building, but her employers, although receptive, have declined to help her enforce the rules. “It felt like they threw everything at me to advocate for myself,” Jane says. “They basically proposed the remote option as an alternative to all the things that I had requested.”
In many countries, disability laws require employers to make reasonable allowances for disabled workers. Of course, the word ‘reasonable’ is open to interpretation. Not everyone has found workarounds for their job. One mathematics PhD student in the Netherlands quit his programme in his final year after contracting long COVID. And some scholars have pivoted to focus on less physically demanding and more remote-friendly research fields, choosing computational over experimental work, for example, to allow them to sidestep significant hands-on labour.
Many institutions have offered employees with long COVID tenure-clock pauses, deadline extensions and emergency health-related funding. Advocates welcome these short-term support measures, but say more needs to be done. Medical experts don’t know how long the condition might last, so academia needs to formulate long-term policies.
Without such policies, informal arrangements can signal to those with long COVID that they’re a burden. “My experience with the accommodation system has been [that] it just comes down so much to having a supportive principal investigator” to back you up, says one graduate student at a major US university who has long COVID. “That’s just not how it should be.”
Culture shift
Some advocates are calling for a culture that champions workplace accessibility for all: universal design. The concept aims to shift the onus of advocating for particular needs away from the individual. Universal design measures include — by default — live captioning for video-call events and the taking of meeting notes to share with absentees. Researchers with long COVID also advocate for those organizing seminars and conferences to enable remote attendance options.
Brainstorming for these initiatives needs to be a community-wide process, says Emily Shryock, the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Disability Cultural Center, a community hub for those who identify as disabled and their allies. She recognizes that there will always be tricky situations that have no easy answer. Nevertheless, the broader goal is to reach a middle ground between measures that aren’t required by law any more, such as mask mandates, and individual preferences. “That would be the hope — that every person would feel like they can ask for what they need and be supported in that request, even if, ultimately, they don’t get exactly what they want,” she says.
Postdoctoral fellow Sandra Schachat says being vulnerable to contracting long COVID means she is likely to seek remote-working opportunities next.Credit: Andrés Baresch
Universal design is just the first step; academic culture has a long way to go to becoming more inclusive. People like Holroyd choose to stay with trusted advisers so as not to risk working with someone less empathetic. Others are leaving academia altogether. “Why would I want to spend my entire career begging for safety measures that are essential to my survival?” asks Sandra Schachat, a postdoctoral researcher and Schmidt Science Fellow at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has dodged COVID-19 so far, but she has an autoimmune disease and knows it makes her vulnerable to the infection’s chronic fallout. Although she says her current lab is “perfect”, she doesn’t trust the larger academic world to protect people like her. So, when her fellowship ends, she plans to explore a career in industry that will allow her to work remotely.
In academia’s rigid research-assessment system, which is based on the quantity of publications and invited talks a person clocks up, people with chronic illnesses find it incredibly hard to compete. Jane, the social scientist, says her university refuses to make exceptions to the tenure policy for those with long COVID. Other affected researchers call for academic success to be reimagined.
Chris Maddison says long COVID bolsters calls for more flexible research assessments.Credit: Dan Komoda/Institute for Advanced Study
“I do think that [universities] should broaden what they consider to be impact,” says Chris Maddison, a machine-learning researcher with long COVID at the University of Toronto, Canada. That could mean acknowledging different contributions towards society as being equally valuable. For example, in addition to papers published, his field could also count contributions such as releases of scalable, machine-learning prototypes. Nevertheless, Maddison admits that finding the solution to equitable academic assessment isn’t simple. “Maybe long COVID is just one other impetus to say we need to really solve this problem.”
On an individual level, long COVID has also served as a wake-up call to some researchers in relation to their taxing lifestyles. “It’s really forced me to re-evaluate my relationship with stress and my work–life balance,” says one postdoc in the United Kingdom. Now, she is diligent about pacing herself and feels much less guilty for taking breaks. “This experience has helped me develop healthier habits and skills that I’ll carry with me even after I recover.”
On the flip side, the rigours of academic research have also helped to prepare these scholars for the ups and downs of long COVID. “Science has also trained me [to have] resilience, persistence, patience,” says Sarah. “These are helpful qualities when dealing with chronic conditions.”
Koppes agrees. Inspired by her own conditions, she has shifted her research towards the autoimmunity and neurology of long COVID symptoms to interrogate her experience.
For now, Koppes is celebrating the small victories in her slow recovery: being able to walk the dog or take public transport instead of relying on car rides. On her wall at home hangs a reproduction of a painting by the impressionist artist Edward Henry Potthast titled Wild Surf, Ogunquit, Maine. It depicts a beach that she and her husband frequented pre-COVID-19 — a reminder, she says, not of everything she’s lost, but of what she might one day return to.
