An independent review board concluded last year that NASA’s Mars sample return mission could cost as much as US$11 billion, more than what it cost to launch the James Webb Space Telescope. In a report released today, a separate NASA review team concluded that even if the agency spent that much money, the dropoff of the samples on Earth would be delayed until 2040. The agency had originally sought to land the samples on Earth in the early 2030s.
The $11 billion price tag is “too expensive,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson at a press briefing, and “not returning the samples until 2040 is unacceptable.” Nelson said the agency “is committed to bringing at least some of the samples back” and later said NASA would return “more than 30” of the 43 planned samples.
Scaling back
NASA’s Perseverance rover has already collected more than 20 rock samples from Jezero Crater, where the rover landed in 2020. Scientists think that the crater was once filled with a lake of water, and samples from the crater and its surroundings could provide a window into the planet’s history and, perhaps, evidence of past life on the red planet.
In the agency’s original vision, a NASA spacecraft would have flown to Mars carrying a two-part retrieval system: a half-ton lander — which would have been the most massive vehicle to ever land on Mars — and a rocket to fly the lander and samples into Martian orbit. There they were to meet a spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency that would fly the samples to Earth.
Now NASA plans to solicit proposals — from companies as well as NASA centres — for a streamlined system, perhaps one that uses a lighter lander, Nicky Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said at the briefing. The deadline for proposals is 17 May, and the revised mission will be chosen later this year. Fox did not respond directly to reporters’ questions about when the samples will reach Earth under the new scheme.
NASA recommends spending $200 million of its planetary-science budget in 2025 on assessing alternative architectures for Mars sample return, Fox said. Dedicating any more money to the mission threatened to “cannibalize” other planetary science missions, Nelson said.
Back to the drawing board
Vicky Hamilton, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, expressed disappointment that eight months after the independent review board released its report, the agency still lacks a solid plan for “a very valuable science goal.”
Returning these samples would also demonstrate capability for two-way trip to Mars before we can send astronauts, says Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. “The sample return technology is here, it exists,” she says. “It’s a matter of putting the pieces together.”
But scientists were relieved by one announcement: Fox said the revised timeline for sample return will not affect the science goals for Perseverance, including plans for it to explore terrain beyond Jezero Crater.
NASA’s Mars rover makes ‘fantastic’ find in search for past life
Among samples collected outside the crater will be “some of the ancient crust of Mars, representing rocks older than we have seen yet in Jezero Crater, some of which may have been altered by near-surface water,” says Meenakshi Wadhwa, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe and principal scientist for the Mars Sample Return program.
So far, the only Mars samples that scientists have been able to study on Earth are bits and pieces ejected from the red planet that made it to Earth as meteorites. All known Martian meteorites are “igneous” rocks, meaning that they solidified from lava, and all are very old. As a result, they provide valuable timestamps for Mars’ geological evolution, but carry little information about how the planet’s surface was shaped by the water that once flowed across it.
To achieve the mission’s main goal of searching for signs of past life, the real treasures are layered sedimentary rocks formed by minerals and organic matter deposited over the aeons by water. Perseverance’s instruments have already detected organic molecules in Martian samples, but whether those molecules are a marker of past life can only be determined by closer scrutiny in laboratories on Earth.
With the Apple Car canceled, Apple is exploring new markets where it might be able to find new revenue streams, and personal robotics is apparently one area the company is investigating.
This guide highlights everything we know about Apple’s interest in robotics, and we’ll update it with new rumors going forward.
The Robot Rumors
According to Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, Apple is looking for its “next big thing,” and robotics are one area of focus. Apple has engineering teams working on various in-home robotic devices and the AI software and functionality that might be able to make a home robot useful.
Apple’s work on robotics takes place in the hardware engineering division and in its AI and machine learning group under AI chief John Giannandrea.
Mobile Robot
Apple is considering a mobile robot that would follow users around the home, presumably serving as something like an iPad on wheels. A robot would likely be able to place FaceTime calls, monitor the home and the people in it, carry out simple tasks, and answer queries.
Apple is said to be exploring AI algorithms that would be used to help robots navigate cluttered spaces in homes, and while Apple wants to design a robot that would clean and do chores much like Rosey in the Jetsons, it’s too complicated for now. Gurman says that such a robot is unlikely this decade due to “extraordinarily difficult engineering challenges.”
Table-Top Robot
Another Apple project is described as an “advanced table-top home device” where robotics are used to move a display around. The device, which is described as a robotic motor on a small stand, would mimic the head movements of a person on a FaceTime video call. It would be able to nod, or precisely lock on to a single person during a group FaceTime call. Gurman says that Apple has had some difficulty with weight and balance, and Apple is also not sure that consumers will pay “top dollar” for such a product.
The robotic display is said to be further along than Apple’s mobile robot, but it has been “added and removed from the company’s product roadmap” several times over the years.
Secret House Facility
Apple reportedly has a secret facility that is designed to look like the inside of a home, and that’s where it is testing future home products.
Other Home Devices
There are some more realistic products that are in the works, with rumors suggesting that Apple is developing an iPad-like home hub device that would serve as a central way to control smart devices. Apple has also been rumored to be working on a version of the Apple TV that integrates HomePod speakers and a camera, and there have been rumors of a HomePod with a display.
Apple’s Competition
Amazon has a $1,600 “Astro” robot that it sells by invitation. Astro is able to navigate the home and remotely check specific rooms, people, and things when the user is away from home.
The robot is able to send an alert if an unrecognized person is detected, or if there are sounds like an alarm. Astro has a built-in display and can be used for watching TV, placing calls, setting reminders, sending messages, and more. Astro uses Alexa, and Amazon suggests that it can be used to “remotely care for aging loved ones.”
Astro is also able to carry “a variety of accessories” such as a Ziploc container, a blood pressure monitor, and a Furbo Dog Camera that provides treats for a pet.
Sony has experimented with robots, and is best known for the Aibo robotic dog. Priced at $2900, Aibo is designed to act like a real dog with dynamic movements, lifelike expressions, curiosity, and an interest in human interaction. Aibo is able to learn tricks, play with toys, and listen to commands.
There are a number of other home robots on the market, but the best known may be the wide range of robot vacuums like the Roomba that are able to navigate the home to automatically clean up dust, dirt, pet fur, and other debris.
Robot Launch Date
Apple’s work on personal robotics is in the early stages, and the company has small teams that are exploring different concepts. It is not clear if some kind of robot will ever launch, and there is no word on when if so.
In an attempt to help citizens across the state have some respite from the pressures of work, California State Assembly member Matt Haney has introduced AB 2751, a proposition designed to give workers the “right to disconnect” from work-related communications outside of working hours.
AB 2751 draws inspiration from similar legislation in countries like France, Spain, and Ireland. If passed, it would set a precedent for not only the US but other countries globally. In recent months, all eyes have been on California’s tech sector over concerns that Silicon Valley’s work-life balance has degraded.
The bill aims to address concerns over burnout, stress, and the blurring of boundaries between work and personal life in today’s digital working landscape.
“Right to disconnect”
The news, first reported by The San Francisco Standard, quotes an interview between Haney and the publication: “If you’re working a 9-to-5 job, you shouldn’t be expected to work 24/7. That should be available to everyone, regardless of the existence of smartphones.”
In the interview, Haney calls out the irony that the state that created the communication and collaboration tools that have led to concerns about out-of-hours working is also the state that is seeking to address worker burnout.
If passed, enforcement would fall under the Department of Labor’s jurisdiction, with penalties starting at $100 per incident. The bill covers exemptions, such as emergency situations.
While many see this as a positive change for tech workers, critics say that the restrictions could hamper innovation and competitiveness.
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There’s also the fact that, with flexible working routines and foreign hiring, many employees work different hours. If the bill is passed, and even before that if it sparks enough interest, it wouldn’t be unlikely that we see online platforms introduce clearer ways for workers to limit their notifications outside of working hours.
The news comes following an extremely turbulent few years. Workers were first sent home during the pandemic, and then the mass layoffs began. After that came a period of increased return-to-office pressures, and the layoffs continued.
In a recent Reddit AMA, Google revealed it’s working on multiple projects for its smart home platform. Chief among these is the introduction of an offline mode. The way Google Home currently works, as explained by Android Authority, is commands sent to a device are transmitted through company servers first before affecting your network. If your internet ever goes out, commands cannot be sent at all which can be frustrating for homeowners. Offline mode will directly address this by enabling local control.
It may, however, be a while until we see the feature rollout. One of the Google devs told a commenter that the team is focusing more on routing device interaction locally through the Matter standard. They’re doing this first because they want to establish a stable software foundation with low latency before moving forward. “Once…. a significant portion of your traffic [is] running locally,” the company will look into establishing an offline mode for Google Home.
Bringing in the old
Much of the AMA saw people airing out their grievances with Google Home. They point out the many issues affecting the platform using some, shall we say, colorful language. Once you get past all the vitriol, you begin to see what’s coming down the pipeline, including adding support for first-generation Nest cameras.
The old models don’t work with the current iteration of Google Home, leading to an ecosystem filled with hardware that should function as a cohesive unit, but sadly doesn’t. Support is sporadic at the moment According to another developer, updating the firmware for those old gadgets has been a tough challenge. Some of them are ancient by tech standards having launched back in 2015. A few, like the original Nest Cam Indoor, do work with Google Home.
Expanding support
Another area the team is working on is improving integration with third-party brands like Wyze and Eufy. Several commenters asked why the tech giant is so focused on Nest devices instead of expanding support to non-Google hardware. They cite “security and quality controls as reasons for delays”. Efforts like these require closely working with partners to ensure everything runs well.
Considering that Wyze recently suffered (yet another) security breach and service outage in February, perhaps it’s a good idea for the team to take its time filling in the gaps.
And that may be all the projects the Google Home dev team is working on right now. We scoured through the nearly one thousand comments but didn’t see anything else particularly noteworthy apart from promises from the team.
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Unfortunately, a launch date for any of these features or a roadmap wasn’t given so we don’t know when these updates will arrive. But if and when they do come out, they’ll first be made available through Google Home’s Public Preview. Instructions on how to join the program can be found on the Nest Help website.
When Hurricane Otis hit Acapulco on the Pacific coast of Mexico on 25 October 2023, it had developed much more quickly and taken a different course than predicted. It damaged an area covering nearly 700 hectares, home to around 560,000 people (see go.nature.com/499dwgy). A preliminary assessment suggests that reconstruction could cost between US$14 billion and $21 billion (see go.nature.com/3pkbvav).
The hurricane’s impact exposed a lack of readiness from the Mexican government’s National Civil Protection System, local authorities, emergency response agencies and the private sector (particularly the tourism industry); this lack of preparedness affected a large part of the local population.
It also laid bare the structural and socio-economic vulnerabilities that prevail in the country. Years of uneven development and territorial planning have led to the formation of settlements that are particularly at risk from natural hazards and in which the poorest communities are systematically the most vulnerable. As extreme weather events increase in frequency and intensity, so does the need for communities to be better prepared — and better repaired.
Disaster early-warning systems are ‘doomed to fail’ — only collective action can plug the gaps
In 2023, we and others founded the Mexican Network of Scientists for Climate (REDCiC, for its acronym in Spanish) to build bridges between those working on climate issues from different perspectives. This includes scientists and postgraduate students from the country at Mexican and international public and private research institutions, as well as journalists and outreach professionals. The network currently comprises around 100 members, and is likely to double in size in a couple of years. By organizing activities such as conferences and workshops, REDCiC facilitates scientific exchange and knowledge sharing, and seeks to ensure that climate adaptation and mitigation policies are rooted in robust data and analyses. For example, a workshop on Hurricane Otis led to a collaboration with the Mexican federal government’s National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies (Conahcyt). And through public campaigns, media exposure, outreach and education, REDCiC engages the public in climate actions and highlights the role of citizen science, local practices and Indigenous Knowledge in addressing current and future environmental challenges.
Grounded in this interdisciplinary perspective, here we set out three priorities for scientists and policymakers to tackle climate-driven hazards and help reduce vulnerability.
Invest in modelling and forecasting
Disasters fuelled by the climate crisis are on the rise globally. In 2023 alone, record-breaking floods hit multiple countries, including the United States (see go.nature.com/3psmtaj), India and several Mediterranean nations. According to the international disaster database EM-DAT, there were prominent episodes of intense droughts (go.nature.com/496q8uj), heatwaves1 and wildfires2 across the Northern Hemisphere, including in Canada, the United States and Mexico. It is essential that models and practices reflect current climate trends as accurately as possible.
A satellite image of the category 5 Hurricane Otis over the west coast of Mexico.Credit: GOES-East/NOAA/Alamy
Why did state-of-the-art models fail to forecast that Otis would reach the maximum intensity (a category 5 hurricane), rather than remain a tropical storm? Thorough analyses are required, but it seems to have stemmed partly from its rapid development in the East Pacific region, where data-collection points are sparse. The limited availability of ocean buoys, land observations, radars and hurricane hunters along the west coast of Mexico places heavy reliance on satellite imagery for forecasting, which, along with the aggravating nature of climate impacts, can lead to less-accurate forecasts.
Flash floods: why are more of them devastating the world’s driest regions?
Governments and funding agencies must invest in better infrastructure and instrumentation, along with more research into weather events. Many phenomena — including how hurricanes intensify3 — are complex and not well understood. They remain difficult to predict despite considerable advances in meteorological modelling and forecasting in recent decades4.
An overhaul of what is considered expertise is also required — Indigenous Knowledge and local and traditional practices have typically been dismissed, but can help to improve information quality and data availability for modelling and forecasting5. This is especially crucial for a country such as Mexico, where a large proportion of lands (including at least 60% of forests and tropical rainforests) are managed by Indigenous and local communities.
Build resilience in vulnerable communities
The effects of Hurricane Otis also underscore the need to improve early-warning systems — which is itself contingent on accurate forecasts. Because disaster preparation becomes difficult once winds reach tropical storm force (sustained surface winds of 63–117 kilometres per hour), alerts should be issued between 36 and 48 hours before the predicted impact. This is in line with the United Nations’ Early Warnings for All initiative, which aims to ensure everyone is protected from natural hazards by 2027.
To protect populations effectively, communication must be rapid and seamless between stages, from data collection and forecasting to the spread of disaster-risk knowledge and warnings to communities that are likely to be affected.
Moreover, the response capacity of a community comes into play. This aspect is relatively subjective and, in a sense, is not just a policy issue but a political one, because it involves defining what is meaningful, desirable and a priority. Power dynamics at local and national levels have long led to the marginalization of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, which means that such groups have historically been excluded from decision-making processes.
Mangrove saplings planted by a community reforestation project in El Delgadito, Mexico.Credit: Gemina Garland-Lewis
In making landfall in and around Acapulco, Otis hit an area known for its long-standing stark inequalities and vulnerabilities, and its lack of inclusive mechanisms for planning, coordinating and implementing risk strategies. Farther inland, the government of Mexico City has announced the development of ‘community brigades’ to address these issues. Groups of trained volunteers help to lead disaster-risk prevention and responses in their communities, although the project is still in the developmental phase.
With the arrival of El Niño, prepare for stronger marine heatwaves
As well as being disproportionately affected by the effects of climate change, low- and middle-income countries often encounter significant barriers to implementing long-term climate strategies. Although international climate justice and loss-and-damage mechanisms are crucial, so are ambitious national and regional actions. A robust adaptation framework involves reshaping urban and rural development strategies, re-evaluating building codes and construction practices for efficiency, circularity and resilience, and reconceptualizing reconstruction efforts to incorporate ecosystemic, social and cultural diversity. This can succeed only if the framework is put in place by local and national governments working with local communities, because it is not enough to just swiftly and pragmatically disburse loss-and-damage funding. Local needs, challenges and priorities need to be considered.
Historically, low- and middle-income countries have been assigned the role of resource providers. These prevailing dynamics of global production, consumption and trade must be re-evaluated. Each country must assess the extent to which it can decouple resource extraction from economic growth, by reducing reliance on linear models of production and consumption, and improving resource efficiency and circularity. Similarly, nations must explore strategies to decouple economic growth from overall prosperity and quality of life. This includes a re-evaluation of the significance of private, public and social property, which can play a key part in resource demand. For example, prioritizing investments in public infrastructure and urban utilities can alleviate resource demand. Rather than promoting private amenities such as swimming pools, which are often an inefficient use of land and resources, emphasis should be placed on public alternatives such as open spaces and public recreational areas.
Work with local communities
In Mexico, investing in and implementing mid- and long-term adaptation policies and plans has proved challenging, even though these have been formulated by the federal government, most of the state governments and a few municipal governments. This is largely because more than one-third of the country’s population lives in poverty, according to CONEVAL (the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy). Against this background, addressing basic urgent needs within a framework of short-term goals has necessarily been prioritized over future climate adaptation plans, even though this population group is likely to be most affected by long-term climate effects.
Beyond poverty and inadequate basic services and infrastructure, however, climate action is hindered by weak governance, restricted funding, limited human capacity at the local level and a lack of trust and involvement of Indigenous and local communities.
Meet the scientists planning for disasters
Tools such as risk atlases, territorial and hydrological planning and building standards must be adapted and robustly updated to take climate risks and systemic vulnerabilities into account. For this to happen, it is essential for the scientific community, practitioners, government agencies and, certainly, Indigenous and local communities to reach a consensus on the most suitable criteria, while considering diversity (spatial, social and cultural). A participatory and inclusive consensus should enable development of meaningful metrics to assess vulnerability and evaluate the effectiveness of actions taken.
This type of consensus-building practice led to the successful reforestation of mangroves in the El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. The mangroves protect the local coastal community of El Delgadito from hurricanes, storms and floods; provide habitats for fish and shellfish — a key source of livelihood — and serve as carbon dioxide sinks. Since 2017, however, it has been recorded that mangroves have suffered dryness and uprooting, which is attributed to climate change.
In response, in 2019, the local community initiated a reforestation effort in partnership with scientists at Mexican institutions, the US–Mexican non-governmental organization WILDCOAST and the Mexican government’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP). This enabled the reintroduction of more than 60,000 plants in 4 years6. Women and young people of any gender are actively involved in planting, maintenance and monitoring activities. Children are also encouraged to participate, fostering environmental awareness and education in the community.
The REDCiC network aims to promote progress along all three priorities outlined. It fosters interactions in the scientific community — from climate, environmental and social sciences to public health; supports communication between scientists, relevant institutions and the public; and promotes the inclusion of Indigenous and local communities at all levels of the discourse.
These collaborations are crucial for building a climate-resilient society, particularly in contexts that are characterized by constrained capacities and escalating needs, as in Mexico. International organizations, local and regional governments, scientific institutions, organized civil society, the private sector and the media should support networks such as this one — in Mexico and elsewhere — through funding but also by engaging with their members and activities to accelerate transformational, rather than merely incremental, climate action.
Gig work predates the internet. Besides traditional forms of self-employment, like plumbing, offers for ad-hoc services have long been found in the Yellow Pages and newspaper classified ads, and later Craigslist and Backpage which supplanted them. Low-cost broadband internet allowed for the proliferation of computer-based gig platforms like Mechanical Turk, Fiverr and Elance, which offered just about anyone some extra pocket change. But once smartphones took off, everywhere could be an office, and everything could be a gig — and thus the gig economy was born.
Maybe it was a confluence of technological advancement and broad financial anxiety from the 2008 recession, but prospects were bad, people needed money and many had no freedom to be picky about how. This was the same era in which the phrase “the sharing economy” proliferated — at once sold as an antidote to overconsumption, but that freedom from ownership belied the more worrying commoditization of any skill or asset. Of all the companies to take advantage of this climate, none went further or have held on harder than Uber.
Uber became infamous for railroading its way into new markets without getting approval from regulators. It cemented its reputation as a corporate ne’er-do-well through a byzantine scandal to avoid regulatory scrutiny, several smaller ones over user privacy and minimally-beneficial surcharges as well as, in its infancy, an internal reputation for sexual harassment and discrimination. Early on, the company used its deep reserves of venture capital to subsidize its own rides, eating away at the traditional cab industry in a given market, only to eventually increase prices and try to minimize driver pay once it reached a dominant position. Those same reserves were spent aggressively recruiting drivers with signup bonuses and convincing them they could be their own boss.
Self-employment has a whiff of something liberatory, but Uber effectively turned a traditionally employee-based industry into one that was contractor-based. This meant that one of the first casualties of the ride-sharing boom were taxi medallions. For decades, cab drivers in many locales effectively saw these licenses as retirement plans, as they’d be able to sell them on to newcomers when it was time to hang up their flat cap. But in large part due to the influx of ride-sharing services, the value of medallions has plummeted over the last decade or so — in New York, for instance, the value of a medallion dropped from around $1 million in 2014 to $100,000 in 2021. That’s in tandem with a drop in earnings, leaving many struggling to pay off enormous loans they took out to buy a medallion.
Some jurisdictions have sought to offset that collapse in medallion value. Quebec pledged $250 million CAD in 2018 to compensate cab drivers. Other regulators, particularly in Australia, applied a per-ride fee to ride-sharing services as part of efforts to replace taxi licenses and compensate medallion holders. In each of those cases, taxpayers and riders, not rideshare companies, bore the brunt of the impact on medallion holders.
At first it was just cab drivers that were hurting, but over the years, compensation for this new class of non-employee app drivers dried up too. In 2017, Uber paid $20 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that it used false promises about potential earnings to entice drivers to join its platform. Late last year, Uber and Lyft agreed to pay $328 million to New York drivers after the state conducted a wage theft investigation. The settlement also guaranteed a minimum hourly rate for drivers outside of New York City, where drivers were already subject to minimum rates under Taxi & Limousine Commission rules.
Many rideshare drivers have also sought recognition as employees rather than contractors, so they can have a consistent hourly wage, overtime pay and benefits — efforts that the likes of Uber and rival Lyft have been fighting against. In January, the Department of Labor issued a final rule that aims to make it more difficult for gig economy companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees. The EU is also weighing a provisional deal to reclassify millions of app workers as employees.
Of course, the partial erosion of an entire industry’s labor market wasn’t always the end goal. At one point, Uber wanted to zero out labor costs by getting rid of drivers entirely. It planned to do so by rolling out a fleet of self-driving vehicles and flying taxis.
“The reason Uber could be expensive is because you’re not just paying for the car — you’re paying for the other dude in the car,” former CEO Travis Kalanick said in 2014, a day after Uber suggested drivers could make $90,000 per year on the platform. “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away.”
Uber’s grand automation plans didn’t work out as intended, however. The company, under current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, sold its self-driving car and flying taxi units in late 2020.
Uber’s success had second-order effects too: despite a business model best described as “set money on fire until (fingers crossed!) a monopoly is established” a whole slew of startups were born, taking their cues from Uber or explicitly pitching themselves as “Uber for X.” Sure, you might find a place to stay on Airbnb or Vrbo that’s nicer and less expensive than a hotel room. But studies have shown that such companies have harmed the affordability and availability of housing in some markets, as many landlords and real-estate developers opt for more profitable short-term rentals instead of offering units for long-term rentals or sale. Airbnb has faced plenty of other issues over the years, from a string of lawsuits to a mass shooting at a rental home.
Increasingly, this is becoming the blueprint. Goods and services are exchanged by third parties, facilitated by a semi-automated platform rather than a human being. The platform’s algorithm creates the thinnest veneer between choice and control for the workers who perform identical labor to the industry that platform came to replace, but that veneer allows the platform to avoid traditionally pesky things like legal liability and labor laws. Meanwhile, customers with fewer alternative options find themselves held captive by these once-cheap platforms that are now coming to collect their dues. Dazzled by the promise of innovation, regulators rolled over or signed a deal with the devil. It’s everyone else who’s paying the cost.
To celebrate Engadget’s 20th anniversary, we’re taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.
Philips Hue is expanding its partnership with Samsung SmartThings, giving users greater control over how their smart lights “interact with their home entertainment systems.” To achieve this, Philips will launch a major update to its Sync TV app that’ll introducing a handful of new features. Philips is even changing the software’s subscription model to be more financially comfortable.
Starting from the top, people will be able to adjust settings on certain Samsung TVs via the app, without interrupting a movie or show. This includes changing different lighting modes on the fly as well as choosing when to start or stop content syncing.
Additionally, users can create “multi-device automations”. These are smart home profiles that’ll work in collaboration with your Samsung TV instead of keeping the display isolated from everything else. Samsung says you can synchronize the lighting fixtures with “other smart home devices to enhance [the] TV-watching environment.”
(Image credit: Philips Hue)
Select 2024 Samsung TVs will also receive a Music Mode that’ll cause the lights around your display to react to the audio being played. Dance beats, for example, will see the fixtures pulsate to the rhythm. Looking at the official image, it appears you tweak the level of intensity.
“Samsung Q60 series or higher QLED TVs manufactured from 2022 onward” will support the upgraded Sync TV app, according to the Philips Hue announcement. Music Mode’s availability is a little different. As we said, it’ll first come out to “compatible 2024 Samsung TVs.” Later on in the year, the feature will expand to “compatible 2022 and 2023 Samsung TVs.” It’s still unclear exactly which compatible TVs that includes.
New subscription model
Besides the patch, Philip Hue is launching a new subscription model for Sync TV where you can pay $2.99 a month and connect the app to up to three individual Samsung displays at once. Prior to this, people could pay a one-time fee of $130 to connect the app to a single Samsung TV. But that was it, there was no monthly option until recently.
(Image credit: Samsung)
It’s unknown if the subscription model will be globally available. Samsung in its post states the pricing will be €2.99 across Europe, but didn’t mention any other locales. Speaking of global regions, the app will be coming out to several new nations including Brazil, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
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Like the feature update, Philip Hue’s refreshed Sync TV subscription is slated to release later in the Spring. While we still have you, check out TechRadar’s list of the best Samsung TVs for 2024.
Vaccines are usually used to prevent infectious diseases. A therapeutic cancer vaccine is different. Rather than teaching the immune system to recognize pathogens in advance of an infection, these vaccines use identifying proteins produced by cancer cells, known as antigens, to provoke a powerful immune response to existing tumours.
A variety of approaches
The first step is to deliver antigens to immune cells called dendritic cells. These present antigens to other immune cells, and stimulate a response. In the past decade, several approaches have emerged1. One delivers antigens that are shared by many people with the same type of cancer (2). Others, including those that make use of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, are highly personalized to the unique neoantigens produced by an individual’s tumour (3). Other personalized approaches involve injecting dendritic cells that are pre-loaded with cancer antigens (1), or generating antigens inside the body and promoting their uptake by dendritic cells in situ (4).
Infographic: Alisdair Macdonald
Mounting a response
Unlike preventive vaccines, which focus mainly on activating antibody-producing B cells, a therapeutic cancer vaccine must generate a strong T-cell response. Dendritic cells loaded with tumour antigens bind and activate CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, which can then mount an attack on the tumour2.
Infographic: Alisdair Macdonald
Promising results
Numerous therapeutic cancer vaccines, on the basis of a variety of approaches, are showing encouraging results in trials.
Pancreatic cancer: In a phase I trial of a personalized mRNA vaccine, half of the participants developed T cells targeted to cancer neoantigens6. Recurrence-free survival in this group was longer compared with those who did not respond.
Infographic: Alisdair Macdonald
Melanoma: A phase II trial of a personalized mRNA vaccine showed a 44% decrease in the risk of post-surgical recurrence or death7. A phase III trial is under way, with final results expected in 2029.
Infographic: Alisdair Macdonald
Lymphoma: A phase I/II trial of an in situ vaccine that combined radiotherapy with signalling molecules that mobilize and activate dendritic cells showed evidence of tumour regression in 8 of 11 people who were treated8.
Infographic: Alisdair Macdonald
Obstacles ahead
The future development and the clinical uptake of therapeutic cancer vaccines will be shaped by several factors.
Infographic: Alisdair Macdonald
Unwieldy trials. Testing multiple combinations of agents makes clinical trials more complex. Another complicating factor is timing when to give a vaccine relative to other interventions, such as surgery.
Immunity monitoring. Tracking acquired immunity is important for assessing vaccine efficacy. For cancer vaccines, new T-cell monitoring techniques are needed.
Scalability. Personalized cancer vaccines could pose logistical challenges. Streamlining production will be essential to keep costs down and availability high.
Harmless lab pranks, such as spraying objects with unexpected scents or adding googly eyes, can lift spirits and encourage research-group bonding.Credit: Juj Winn/Getty
On 1 April 2022, John Prensner, then a postdoctoral researcher in cancer biology, received a surprising letter. Typed on official-looking letterhead paper, the message outlined plans for a Smithsonian Institution exhibit dedicated to the Human Genome Project, which in 2001 produced the first draft sequence of the human genome. Through professional connections, the writer said, they had learnt that Prensner held a piece of that history on his lab bench at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts: a PTC-200 machine used for PCR reactions during the pioneering work.
The machine had been inherited from a colleague at the nearby Whitehead Institute, where much of the project’s research was done, and was a favourite of Prensner’s because it was so simple to operate. He used the PTC-200 exclusively, and by then it was nearly as old as he was. When it finally stopped working, Prensner took the machine apart to try to fix it. But it never woke again, collecting dust until the letter arrived. “I wouldn’t get rid of it because I loved it so much, so I was excited that it might get a second life,” he says. “Until I turned the letter over.”
On the back, the letter stated that the Smithsonian was also interested in antiquated sound technology, including Prensner’s barely functioning 1995 boom box. Tipped off by the halo of labmates lurking surreptitiously around him, he soon realized that the whole thing was probably a prank. “Fortunately, the lab had a very positive atmosphere, so there weren’t any ill feelings,” Prensner says, adding that when he left in 2023 to start his lab at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, he trashed the PCR machine, but kept the boom box and letter.
Say what? The principal investigators who pass down wisdom through humour
Practical jokes such as this play out in labs every day, and many live on as group lore, stretching across generations of students and staff. Pranks, it turns out, are about much more than a laugh, and can serve important purposes — as tools for community-building, creative outlets in an otherwise intense working environment and as a means of passing on guidance. And although jokes can take nearly any form, there are underlying rules that define if and when pranking is appropriate. (Lab safety comes first: no researchers or experiments were harmed by these pranks.)
“The basis of a good prank is that you have to like and respect the person you’re pranking,” says Jess McLaughlin, who once hid tiny plastic horses they had found in a box on the kerb all throughout their lab when they were doing a genomics postdoc at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. “You’re not there to cause someone distress — you’re doing it with the person rather than to them.”
A prankster’s playbook
Some scientists, including McLaughlin, approach pranking opportunistically — striking when the Universe provides. Others pursue it with intention. Monica Tomaszewski , a programme manager at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, recalls glueing down teachers’ chalk at school, but her pranking talents truly blossomed during her PhD at the same university. There, she discovered that her adviser, who is now retired, had a similar sense of humour. Because he was Canadian, Tomaszewski planned a prank to make his office smell like maple syrup. She bought candle-scenting solution, and each spring, applied it to his radiator, where he kept a collection of some 70 cacti.
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“His office would smell like syrup for a few weeks, and he had no idea why,” Tomaszewski says. But one day, he quietly shared his suspicions with her — that his cacti were going into heat and releasing pheromones. “It was such a ridiculous sentence, because cacti don’t have a mating cycle, and he is a very intelligent biologist,” she says. Tomaszewski nearly gave away the prank then and there, but ultimately kept it up — even passing the scenting solution to lab colleagues when she moved on — before finally confessing over lunch one day several years later.
This idea of ‘pranking up’ — targeting people in positions of authority — is one of the many unspoken rules of practical jokes, alongside pranking laterally by targeting friends and peers. But to a fault, researchers who spoke to Nature say that pulling pranks on people over whom you hold power is poor form.
Social cues also determine whether pranking is appropriate. Jennifer Phillips, a research associate in genetics at the University of Oregon in Eugene, says that it often comes down to whether it’s “the right time, in the right place, with the right people”. Not all labs embrace a culture of pranking, and group dynamics are constantly in flux as people come and go. But when Phillips joined the university for her PhD in 1998, “the lab was made up of a unique group of people who really put fun in the centre of the table”, she says.
An ongoing prank involved the timers used to track experiments. Good etiquette dictates that people quickly silence beeping alarms to avoid disturbing others, but that didn’t always happen. A first infraction might earn you some gentle ribbing, but that quickly escalated to snack bribes to recover hidden timers, rude words etched into offending timers and, in the worst cases, timers embedded in agarose gel. Phillips says there were few instances in which people didn’t catch on quickly.
Pranks helped to create a more egalitarian environment, she says. “Having fun made it easier to approach each other if someone had a question,” she says, noting that that was especially true for her, as a new student. “And the flip side is that we would also have intense lab meetings, where people would really go hammer and tongs on your data. The collegial lab culture made those criticisms seem more constructive and less personal.”
Why laughter in the lab can help your science
Indeed, among the researchers who spoke to Nature, leveraging humour to strengthen social bonds was a common reason why people prank. For example, Tomaszewski and her labmates were cleaning out lab stocks one day in 2006, when they found a bottle of calcium chloride solution that was one month shy of its 21st birthday. Rather than toss it, the group held a birthday party to celebrate. “We put one of those little triangular birthday hats on it,” she says, and they later adjourned to a local bar called Filthy McNasty’s to toast the bottle’s coming-of-age.
Although targeting junior or new people with pranks is discouraged, it’s perfectly reasonable to bring them in on the joke as co-conspirators. Back in 2015, independent palaeontologist Lisa Buckley pulled the summer rotation students into a long-standing prank war between herself and her husband, fellow palaeontologist Richard McCrea.
Buckley saw the move as a form of teamwork that strengthened otherwise temporary bonds. She and the students printed out cat pictures and crafted dozens of tiny pom-pom cats, which they scattered throughout McCrea’s office at the Peace Region Paleontology Research Centre in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, where the couple worked as curators. In retaliation for these ‘cat wars’, McCrea launched ‘the spidering’ — when Buckley returned from a week of field work, she found her office completely engulfed in fake webs and hundreds of fake spiders, including a giant one over her desk and another dangling underneath. Both Buckley and McCrea discovered cats and spiders among their possessions for years afterwards — squashed between pages in books or hidden in boxes — even after they’d each left for new positions. Buckley says there are probably more still hidden in the lab, along with an Annoyatron noisemaker she left in the ceiling that periodically emitted a cricket chirp.
“I pity the person that has to inhabit any of those offices,” she says.
The purpose of play
Pranking does take time and energy, but some scientists stress that it’s worth the small dent in productivity because of the positive benefits of humour and play — including offsetting the intensity of academic careers. Increasingly, early-career researchers face a demoralizing duo of stagnating wages and poor job prospects. Pranking, researchers say, serves as a pressure-release valve that keeps people invested in the work they’re doing. “Doing something silly with your lab, whether that’s pulling a prank or going out to karaoke, lets you remember that there’s joy in the work,” Tomaszewski says.
A dead millipede in Rachel Thayer’s former lab building inspired passers-by to create a memorial scene, complete with other dearly departed lab specimens.Credit: Rachel Thayer
Rachel Thayer, now a postdoc in evolutionary biology at UC Davis, had a similar experience in 2018 while she was a PhD student at UC Berkeley. For weeks, a dead millipede lay in the stairwell that Thayer used to access her lab, until one day, a funerary scene popped up around it — complete with a headstone, a priest and some shrubbery. Other students quickly added to the display, often using dearly departed model organisms from their work. Thayer contributed a butterfly from her research on the evolution of structural colour, which rested alongside fruit flies and pill bugs. “It changed trudging up and down the stairs into an inside joke,” she says, adding that it was “a light-hearted, silently shared moment in an otherwise boring and repetitive part of the day”.
Collection: Life in the lab
Indeed, researchers recall past pranks with fondness, particularly those who say they have since matured into boring, non-pranking adults. Daniel Bolnick, now an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, was a solid jokester earlier in his career. He once placed a life-like rubber hand in a colleague’s −80 °C freezer and, as a student, designed a poster at a conference claiming to provide scientific evidence of the butterfly effect — an aspect of chaos theory that describes how the flap of a butterfly’s wings can lead to a typhoon on the other side of the world. He watched as his co-prankster, Evan Preisser, now a community ecologist at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, presented the work under an assumed name. “Folks either got it or they didn’t,” Preisser says. “People in the latter group tried to educate us, and a few got agitated that they knew we were wrong but couldn’t prove it.”
Recalling these pranks, Bolnick says, feels cathartic, “because it does bring to mind times when I tapped into the creativity of science.” He adds that he might even feel compelled to start pranking again, albeit beginning with something gentle. As it happens, some of his former students are now faculty members in his department — and as staff of the same station, he thinks they are fair game. “That makes it easy — I know exactly who my first victims would be.”
Employee monitoring software refers to platforms that enable you to track your employees’ activities. They let you track working hours, location, computer usage, etc. They are helpful in office-based, remote, or hybrid workplaces. This article will explain employee monitoring software and how it works.
What is Employee Monitoring Software?
Employee monitoring software is a program that lets employers gather valuable data about their employees’ activities. You can use it to monitor the activities of office-based or remote employees.
Employee monitoring tools aren’t spooky, even though the definition might make them seem that way. They measure corporate activities in a non-invasive manner and guarantee user privacy. They’re exclusively for monitoring work-related activities and never personal affairs.
This software is valuable because it helps employers gather data about their staff. It lets employers know when broader productivity falls behind, needing immediate adjustments to guide employees toward better productivity. It informs employers about what works best for the team and how to adjust their strategy for optimal productivity.
Employee monitoring tools let you keep tabs on employees in various ways, including:
Web tracking: Logging the websites visited during working hours, letting you analyze the time spent on productive work.
Email monitoring: Tracking inbound and outbound work emails to prevent data leaks.
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Call monitoring: Listening to work-related calls, e.g., customer support calls, to analyze them and identify areas needing improvement.
Location monitoring: Tracking time-in and time-outs for employees.
Network monitoring: Enables employers to monitor network activities to prevent data leaks and unauthorized data usage.
Keylogging: Recording keyboard logs on workplace-issued computers.
Video: Installing video surveillance at the workplace to monitor general activities.
Features of Employee Monitoring Software
These are the features to expect in an employee monitoring platform:
1. Keystroke logging
Your program should allow you to log any text typed on a work device. As an administrator, you should be allowed to look through the logged key history of any specific device to gather insights. For instance, you can identify the source of a data leak by checking whose keystrokes reveal they accessed the particular data at a specified time.
2. Live screenshot capture
Screenshots are a reliable way to monitor employees’ work activities. You don’t need to use a live screen recorder, which often makes users uncomfortable. Instead, your monitoring software should be able to take screenshots at specific intervals to confirm an employee is doing their required work.
For example, you can set your monitoring program to take a screenshot every 10 minutes. Then, you can view all the captured screenshots for all employees in one gallery. If an employee’s screenshots primarily consist of non-work-related activities, you can ask them for clarification and take further action.
You can also find employee monitoring tools that offer live screen monitoring if that’s what you want.
3. Time tracking
Time management is closely linked to productivity. Your employee monitoring software should offer a tool to track time-ins and time-outs, especially for hourly workers. This feature allows you to keep tabs on working hours and ensure employees fulfill their end of the contract.
The employee monitoring software should let you delegate shifts online, with each employee notified of their allotted shifts. You should have a dashboard to monitor all employees’ working hours and quickly identify anomalies that need further attention.
(Image credit: ActivTrak)
4. Email and chat monitoring
Your platform should allow you to monitor corporate emails and chats. You should have a record of who sent and received chats or emails via corporate accounts. For example, if a work email address sends data to a suspicious address, you should be able to detect it and raise an alarm. Email monitoring helps you prevent employees from accessing and transferring data without permission.
5. Browsing history
You should be able to view the browsing history of the work devices with the monitoring software installed. This feature lets you monitor if employees spend their time on productive work. It also lets you know if employees visit suspicious sites that could harm your corporate network.
Preferably, you should be able to block specific websites from your corporate network to prevent data leaks. Employees will see an error notification if they try to visit such sites.
6. Alerts
A good employee monitoring program should allow you to get automatic alerts based on suspicious behavior. For example, you can set the system to alert the administrator if an employee tries to visit a blocked site or tries to visit an internal page with sensitive information. The system will automatically take a screenshot to show as proof and alert you to take any needed action.
7. Network monitoring
Employee monitoring programs should let you keep tabs on employees’ network usage. For example, you can set up filters to prevent employees from visiting specific site categories, e.g., gambling and dark web sites that malicious actors often target. You can set download limits for work devices to optimize bandwidth usage. You should be able to remotely monitor a connected device’s screen.
Benefits of Employee Monitoring Software
Monitoring software offers various benefits to employers, including:
1. Managing productivity
Productivity is the bedrock of every company, and employee monitoring tools make it easier to manage productivity. These tools allow you to gather valuable insights about workplace productivity and adjust your strategy to maximize productivity.
For example, the software lets you monitor the time range where employees are most productive. With this information, you can delegate important tasks to be handled at that time range.
Monitoring software encourages accountability for employees. People are more willing to do the required work when they know a monitoring system is in place. It doesn’t have to be invasive; something as simple as a time-tracking system encourages employees to be more accountable.
2. Data security
Unauthorized data access can cause severe damage to every organization. Employee monitoring tools help prevent data loss from occurring.
How?
Monitoring software keeps tabs on your employees’ computer usage, letting you know who accessed any data and at what time. You can track web searches and history to know who accessed any specific link. You can track key logs to know who downloaded or leaked any information. You can track network access and file movement logs to see who accessed specific files.
Employee monitoring tools act as the overseeing eye at your organization, observing how employees handle sensitive data.
3. Compliance
Employee monitoring software is legally required in some industries like medicine, financial services, and law. For example, investment banks must keep logs of whoever accesses specific data in case of investigations. Medical institutions must monitor who accesses sensitive patient data so that potential leaks can be traced.
In these industries, you need employee monitoring tools to comply with regulations or risk heavy fines or bans.
4. Legal liability protection
Employee monitoring software helps give you liability protection in case of disputes. The software lets you keep accurate records of an employee’s activities (working hours, attendance trends, browsing activities, etc.). You can refer to these records in court if disputes arise.
For instance, if an employee was reprimanded for unauthorized data access and files a lawsuit, you can use the software to prove that the employee mishandled the data. Monitoring software gives you a paper trail you can refer to in legal cases.
5. Increased revenue
Low productivity costs global businesses massive amounts annually. You can reduce such loss for your business by using employee monitoring tools. These tools analyze your employees’ activities and extract valuable insights.
How many customers do your staff attend to daily? How many support calls do they handle daily? How many meals are served per hour in your restaurant? These are the types of insights you easily get with monitoring software. Otherwise, you’ll have to gather this data manually, which takes much more time and effort.
With the insights you get, you can optimize your business processes for better productivity and claim lost revenue. For instance, if support staff aren’t closing the optimal number of tickets daily, you can provide more training or hire additional staff to reach the optimal level and keep your customers happy.
Any employer deploying monitoring software must consider the legal and ethical aspects. There are rules to follow to monitor corporate activities responsibly. Overdoing it might bring significant legal consequences or cause productivity to fall, the opposite of what you sought in the first place.
Let’s examine some questions regarding the ethics and legality of employee monitoring tools.
Are employee monitoring tools legal?
Yes, they are legal as long as you follow the relevant data collection laws in your jurisdiction. Workplace laws allow employers to digitally monitor employee activities to an extent. Monitoring is restricted to corporate activities. For example, employers can record work-related phone calls but not personal ones. Employers can monitor work-related email activities but not personal email correspondence.
You need to issue separate work devices to employees to monitor their activities. Monitoring personal devices requires explicit permission, which employees can reject without consequences.
In some U.S. states, like Connecticut and Delaware, employers must provide a formal notice to employees before monitoring them. In European Union (EU) countries, employees must also personally consent to your data collection, with a clear explanation of what data is being collected and why.
Check for relevant laws in your jurisdiction before installing employee monitoring software. Generally, you should build a culture of trust, letting employees know why you plan to install monitoring software and when you want to do it. They should know what data is being collected, how it’s being used, and the necessity for collecting the data. A high-trust culture between employers and employees contributes a lot to productivity.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Is it ethical to use employee monitoring software?
Yes, using employee monitoring tools is ethical if you only monitor workplace-related activities. Most employee monitoring tools have features that can be considered invasive. For instance, many allow administrators to automatically take screenshots at specified intervals to prove the user is working. The keylogging feature also keeps records of each key the user types.
Because of these invasive features, you must limit monitoring to workplace activities. Don’t try to monitor personal activities, or you risk legal consequences and breaking your trust with the employee. If you’re installing monitoring software, it’s advisable to send the employee a separate work device and let them know that activities on that device will be monitored. Monitoring personal activities is a no-no.
Ethical usage doesn’t only involve how you gather data; what you use the data for also matters. Use it only to extract insights that will improve workplace productivity. Don’t use the data to snoop on employees’ personal activities and break the trust you’ve built with them.
Consider data privacy when deploying monitoring software. The data you collect should stay and end in the workplace. Any data collected from work devices should be used for work-related activities only. Exposing the data to unauthorized parties without explicit consent is a no-no.
Factors to consider when choosing Employee Monitoring Software
These are the primary considerations when choosing an employee monitoring tool:
1. Cost
Compare the pricing of different programs and choose one you can afford in the long term. Monitoring tools usually charge a fixed monthly or annual fee per device, making it easy to estimate what you’ll pay.
2. Ease of use
You need a tool with an intuitive interface you can easily navigate. The employee monitoring system should be easy to install and manage on multiple devices. You should have an interactive dashboard to monitor employees’ activities and extract insights.
3. Scalability
You need a tool that can easily scale without sacrificing speed and performance. You should be able to install the system on more devices as your company grows, and it’ll continue working as usual. The system should not be significantly affected by increased usage.
4. Customer support
You need an employee monitoring software with an excellent support team. The team should be available to contact by telephone, live chat, or email if possible 24/7.
Conclusion
We have explained what you need to know about employee monitoring software; what it does, its features, benefits, and the legal & ethical considerations of using it. We also explained the most important considerations for choosing employee monitoring software. Follow our tips, and you’ll likely choose a platform you’ll appreciate in the long term.
