List of All Articles with Tag 'ci'

When he’s not making radical, controversial changes to Twitter/X, Elon Musk is eyeing up plans to colonise Mars in the coming years with his company SpaceX – and now a team of researchers at the Virginia-based George Mason University claims it has found out the minimum number of people needed to successfully takeover the red planet. In the study – the results of which were published to the research platform Arxiv in August - the academics established a model to find out the ‘initial population size’ required on Mars to produce a “stable colony size”. They ran the model five times for 28 Earth years, and increased the population by 10 people each time - from 10 to 170 individuals. “Given that there are four critical tasks that are needed continuously (air, water, food production and waste removal) in addition to handling disasters, and two skills needed for each task, we chose a population size of 10 as the minimum needed for a ‘stable’ colony size. “The population is allowed to dip below 10 as long as it bounces back within 1.5 years, or the amount of time between Earth resupply shuttles.” The test found all initial population sizes over 50 were able to sustain a population of at least 10 people across the time period, and that the bare minimum number to meet that criteria is at least 22 people. There you go, Elon. You’re welcome. It’s certainly a decrease in the minimum number previously suspected by French researcher Jean-Marc Salotti in June 2020 – that was the rather astronomical figure (sorry) of at least 110 people. And the Virginia researchers didn’t stop there, either, as they also took a look at the personality types best placed to handle the highly stressful environment that is living on a completely different planet. There’s four: “agreeables”: low competitiveness and aggressiveness, and not fixated on “stringent routine “socials”: medium competitiveness, extroverted, require social interaction but not fixated on stringent routines “reactives”: medium competitiveness and fixed on stringent routines “neurotics”: high competitiveness, highly aggressive and a “challenged ability to adapt to boredom or a change in routine” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “agreeables” came out on top. The researchers added: “In all runs, the Agreeable personality type was the only one to survive the full duration of model runs. This is likely because it has the highest coping capability.” Their results found that while the “neurotic” was “most likely to fail”, and both “reactives” and “socials” fluctuated, the “agreeables” was the “most resilient”. “While this model assigns equal numbers of each personality type, future work could try adjusting the proportion of each to possibly lead to a lower required minimum initial population. For example, a crew of all Agreeable personalities may be more successful,” they suggest. Musk, meanwhile, said earlier this year that he was optimistic humans landing on Mars was "possible" in the next five years, and "highly likely" in a decade. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Pope Francis formally began his 8,000-kilometer trip to Mongolia on Saturday, a country sandwiched between Russia and China that has a tiny Catholic population.

By Echo Wang and Anirban Sen NEW YORK Arm Holdings Ltd, the chip designer owned by SoftBank Group

With Chelsea completing the signing of talented England U21 international Cole Palmer from Manchester City on deadline day, 90min looks at where the attacker could fit in Mauricio Pochettino's side.

It is no secret that Elon Musk is a quirky individual, so it is no surprise that how he chose to spend the evening after he made his offer to buy Twitter was rather odd. According to Grimes, his on-off girlfriend, the tech mogul stayed up all night playing video games after putting the offer in for the app now known as X. Grimes shared the anecdote to Walter Isaacson for his upcoming biography on the world's richest person — an excerpt of which was published by the Wall Street Journal. She said he flew to Vancouver to meet her parents but then stayed in the hotel because he was in "stress mode" and played the fantasy game Elden Ring on a laptop he had with him. "Instead of sleeping, he played until 5:30 in the morning," Grimes told Isaacson. Since purchasing Twitter last year, Musk has brought in a number of changes including making users pay for their verifying blue ticks and changing the name and logo to X. It seems more changes are afoot, and he recently announced the possibility of video and audio calls on the social media platform. As for playing video games all through the night... whatever calms you down, we guess. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The agent of Erling Haaland, Rafaela Pimenta, has been quizzed on Real Madrid's supposed interest in the Manchester City striker. The striker has a number of release clauses in his current contract.

Chelsea head coach Mauricio Pochettino has revealed that the club hierarchy were the ones to decide to sign Cole Palmer from Manchester City.

Here are five cities or regions across the country that show signs of vulnerability under a rapidly warming planet -- from coastal flooding in New York to saltwater intrusion in California's groundwater.

Ireland's first Hate Speech Bill is causing serious debate at home and abroad.

Ukraine's Security Service says it has identified a Russian commander who is accused of giving orders to shoot civilians.

If authorised, it would mean SAG members would be striking against TV, film and video game firms.

The Finnish city of Oulu is a hive of activity for bike thieves - but one man is determined to stop them.