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Why is Nasa’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample canister ‘scientific treasure box’ to scientists?

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As scientists took a closer look at the sample of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu that was recently collected by Nasa, they were greeted with a pleasant surprise.

Last week, scientists discovered a dark, fine-grained material on the inside of a canister containing a sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu which could provide key insights about the asteroid before the primary sample is analysed.

Nasa’s 7-year OSIRIS-Rex mission returned to Earth on September 24, carrying the asteroid sample, topping a total trip distance of some 3.86 billion miles.

The canister, which according to Nasa is a “scientific treasure box,” was taken to Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where a clean room was built for the analysis of the cosmic sample.

Asteroids, remnants of the solar system’s formation, provide insights into the early days of planet formation. However, they also pose a threat to Earth, highlighting the importance of understanding their composition and orbits crucial for deflecting space rocks on collision courses, CNN reported.

In October 2020, OSIRIS-REx used its ouch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) head to collect a sample from Bennu’s surface, which gathered so much material that particles drifted off into space before being stowed in a canister.

Scientists believed they could analyse the material quickly, but there was plenty before reaching the bulk of the sample, requiring more time to collect all the material.

“The very best ‘problem’ to have is that there is so much material, it’s taking longer than we expected to collect it,” said Christopher Snead, deputy OSIRIS-REx curation lead, in a statement.

“There’s a lot of abundant material outside the TAGSAM head that’s interesting in its own right. It’s really spectacular to have all that material there.”

The asteroid sample will be revealed on October 11 in a live Nasa broadcast. The TAGSAM head will be carefully disassembled in a specialised glovebox to reveal initial findings from Bennu material.

“We have all the microanalytical techniques that we can throw at this to really, really tear it apart, almost down to the atomic scale,” said Lindsay Keller, OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team member, in a statement.

Additionally, the team plans to examine Bennu’s collected material using scanning electron microscopes, X-rays, and infrared instruments to understand its chemical composition and detect hydrated minerals or organic particles.

The instruments will also reveal the abundance of specific minerals on the asteroid.

The initial analysis will help researchers have a better idea of what to expect from the bulk sample collected from Bennu.

Scientists believe asteroids like Bennu may have introduced essential elements like water to Earth early in our planet’s formation, potentially answering questions about the origins of our solar system.

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TikTok offers a special in-app experience to commemorate the release of Jimin’s second solo album, MUSE, by BTS.

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Calibre fans everywhere get the chance to interact with only-available content, take part in challenges, and get temporary rewards by visiting the #Jimin_Who hub. To find a time-limited, exclusive profile frame, search for relevant terms like “Jimin” and “BTS.” You’ll be provided with difficulties. Moreover, the hub offers high-calibre content produced by Jimin, such as his solo and collaborative works, Fan Spotlight, which highlights exceptional ARMY members and their works, and an immersive event honouring Jimin’s second album, MUSE.

TikTok is committed to enabling fans and artists to interact and create, as this programme demonstrates. The TikTok community worldwide is expected to find resonance in this experience, as BTS is one of the most popular accounts and #kpop is one of the fastest-growing genres on the platform, producing 59.8 million posts and 602 billion video views.

BTS (@bts_official_bighit) broke numerous records throughout their more than ten-year tenure, becoming the fourth-largest artist account on TikTok and cementing their status as pop icons of the twenty-first century.

The group’s hashtags, #bts and #bts_official_bighit, are part of 94.1 million creator videos and 33.4 million videos, respectively, and have over 65.5 million followers and 1.4 billion likes. Because of his solo work, Jimin has become an international phenomenon, inspiring millions of creator videos and views.

In over 22.9 million creator videos, hashtags pertaining to #jimin have appeared. The group’s TikTok dance video, which was viewed over 36.2 million times and received over 8.6 million likes, was inspired by Jimin’s #1 song, “Like Crazy,” which he released last year after his debut solo album FACE. The song inspired over 300,000 creator videos. The MUSE pre-release single “Smeraldo Garden Marching Band (feat. Loco)” has received 2.5 million likes and 11 million views on Jimin’s recent exclusive behind-the-scenes video.

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63,000 Instagram accounts are deleted by Meta

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The “Yahoo boys,” a group of Nigerian internet scammers, are well-known for their elaborate schemes, which include posing as needy individuals or promising phenomenal returns on investments from prominent Nigerian figures.

63,000 Instagram profiles, according to a statement by Meta, which also mentioned that 7,200 Facebook pages, groups, and accounts that offered advice on con artistry had been deleted.

The organisation also eliminated a smaller, more tightly-knit network of about 2,500 computers that belonged to a collective of about 20 people.

The prospect of compromising photos—fake or real—being released is used in sexual extortion, or “sextortion,” to coerce victims into paying to halt the abuse.

Meta notified the scammers’ attempts to the U.S. National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, as most of the scammers’ attempts were unsuccessful and largely targeted adults, but there were also attempts made against kids.

The disruption of these networks was not new, according to Meta officials, who also disclosed the current operation in an effort to “raise awareness.”

Governments, particularly lawmakers in the US, where Meta is headquartered, have increased pressure on the social media behemoth to address allegations that its executives have disregarded data indicating that its services are harmful to children. As a result, the company has been under defensive fire in recent years.

One American senator charged Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, and other prominent figures in the social media space earlier this year, saying they had “blood on their hands” for not doing enough to shield young people from the growing risks of sexual predatory content on their platforms.

Additionally, in an effort to raise awareness of these risks, the U.S. Surgeon General has advocated for social media apps to have a warning label attached.

A part of the national penal code that dealt with fraud ineffectively gave rise to the term “419 scams” for Nigerian con artists.

Online frauds have increased in number, with individuals responsible operating from wealthy neighbourhoods, college dorms, or impoverished suburban areas while the nation of more than 200 million people experiences increasing economic woes.

A few users, according to Meta, were giving advice on how to pull off scams.

It stated, “Among their attempts were links to photo collections that they could use to create fictitious accounts, as well as offers to sell scripts and instructions to deceive people with.”

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Google abandons its plans to do rid of cookies in Chrome

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The significant change in course comes as a result of worries expressed by advertisers, who provide the majority of the company’s revenue, that their capacity to gather data for customised advertisements will be restricted due to the removal of cookies from the most widely used browser in the world, leaving them reliant on Google’s user databases.

Due to worries that Google’s proposal would stifle competition in the digital advertising market, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has also carefully examined the proposal.

“Rather than discontinuing third-party cookies, we would launch a fresh experience in Chrome that empowers individuals to make a knowledgeable decision that is applicable to all of their online browsing, and they could modify that decision whenever they choose,” stated Anthony Chavez, vice president of the Privacy Sandbox project, which is supported by Google, in a blog post.

A major objective of the Privacy Sandbox project, which was started in 2019 by Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab unit, is to phase out third-party cookies while simultaneously improving online privacy and boosting digital enterprises.

Though they can potentially be used for unauthorised monitoring, cookies are information packets that websites and advertisers use to identify specific online users and follow their browsing patterns.

Within the European Union, publishers are required to obtain explicit agreement from users before storing cookies, as per the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Cookie deletion is another feature that most popular browsers offer.

While continuing to fund the Privacy Sandbox programme, Chavez stated that Google was collaborating on the new strategy with publishers, privacy organisations, and regulators like the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office and CMA.

Many responded differently to the announcement.

Analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf of eMarketer stated in a statement, “Advertising stakeholders won’t have to prepare to quit third-party cookies cold turkey.”

One example of how cookies can hurt consumers is when they display predatory advertisements that target specific demographics, according to Lena Cohen, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. According to Cohen, Google’s choice to keep accepting third-party cookies is a direct result of their advertising-driven business model, even though other major browsers have been banning them for years.

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