Chancellor Rachel Reeves has received an extra £9.8 billion in the first two months of this tax year from frozen thresholds in breach of Labour's election pledge not to raise taxes on working people.
Já imaginou navegar pela web moderna com o Internet Explorer ou com o Netscape? Com o Reframe é possível, num projeto Open Source que combina o visual dos browsers clássicos com tecnologia moderna.
Le GRAAL, association pionnière dans la réhabilitation des animaux de laboratoire, demande aujourd'hui la création d'un fonds national dédié à la retraite de ces animaux et l'obligation, dans chaque demande de financement scientifique, d'inclure un volet budgétaire consacré à la réhabilitation de ceux qui auront été utilisés. Un appel qui fait suite à l'annonce de l'agrandissement d'une station de primatologie.
In a groundbreaking advancement for climate-based daylight modeling, researchers Aw, Leng, and Lim have developed an innovative Principal Component Analysis (PCA)-based climatic similarity index designed specifically to enhance weather file selection criteria in tropical climates. This pioneering study, published in Scientific Reports in 2026, not only addresses the critical challenge of accurately simulating daylight conditions in regions characterized by complex tropical weather patterns but also marks a significant leap forward in climate-driven architectural and environmental modeling.
Tropical climates are notoriously difficult to model due to their inherent variability and a rich tapestry of meteorological phenomena, including high humidity, fluctuating cloud cover, intense rainfall, and dynamic solar radiation patterns. Traditional weather file selection methods often fall short in capturing this complexity, which can lead to inaccuracies when used as inputs for climate-based daylight simulations. It is precisely this gap that the PCA-based climatic similarity index aims to bridge, by offering a sophisticated, data-driven method to select representative weather files that better mirror the actual climatic nuances of tropical regions.
At the core of this new method lies Principal Component Analysis, a powerful statistical tool that reduces the dimensionality of large, multivariate datasets while preserving the most critical variances within the data. By applying PCA to a wide array of climatic variables—such as temperature, humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, and cloud cover—the researchers extracted patterns that effectively distill the complexity of tropical weather into manageable, representative components. This dimensionality reduction facilitates the identification of weather days or periods that are climatically similar, which can then be selectively employed in daylight modeling simulations to enhance their fidelity.
One of the most striking aspects of this research is its focus on tailoring the index specifically for tropical environments. Unlike temperate or arid regions, tropical climates present a unique set of challenges due to their lack of distinct seasons, diverse microclimates, and frequent convective weather events. The PCA-based similarity index developed in this study accommodates these factors by incorporating variables sensitive to the high variability and transient nature of tropical weather, thereby offering a bespoke solution rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Implementing this index drastically improves the selection of weather files for daylight modeling. Instead of relying on standardized Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) datasets, which might not sufficiently capture the local climatic variability, the index enables the identification of the most climatologically representative data points. Consequently, simulations built on these carefully curated datasets demonstrate markedly improved accuracy in predicting daylight performance, solar heat gains, and glare potential—parameters crucial for the optimization of building energy efficiency, occupant comfort, and environmental impact in tropical architecture.
The implications of this development extend beyond just daylight modeling. Because accurate weather file selection is foundational for a host of building performance simulations, the PCA-based climatic similarity index holds promise for applications in thermal comfort analyses, energy consumption forecasting, and even in the design of adaptive building envelopes that respond dynamically to changing climatic conditions. By improving the input data quality, the model ensures that downstream simulation outputs are more reliable and relevant to real-world scenarios.
Technically, the process begins by assembling an extensive local weather dataset comprising high-resolution meteorological measurements collected over multiple years. The researchers then preprocess the data to address missing values and normalize the variables, ensuring that the subsequent PCA accurately reflects genuine climatic patterns rather than artifacts or biases. The PCA is executed to derive principal components that quantify the dominant modes of variability in the dataset. Each weather day is then scored based on these components, facilitating clustering or similarity assessments.
The novel similarity index is computed by measuring the Euclidean distance between weather days in the principal component space, enabling the quantification of climatic resemblance. Days with the smallest distances are deemed most similar, allowing researchers and practitioners to construct weather file subsets that authentically capture the spectrum of climatic conditions typical for the region. This approach reveals weather analogues that traditional chronological or statistical selection methods might overlook.
To validate the performance of their index, the authors integrated it within a daylighting simulation framework and compared simulation outcomes using weather files selected via their method against those obtained from standard TMY and random selections. The results showed improved correlation with observed daylighting metrics, reduced simulation uncertainty, and an enhanced capacity to capture extreme weather events that significantly influence daylight availability and building performance in the tropics.
This methodological innovation also paves the way for more robust scenario-based simulations in the context of climate change. As tropical regions face increasing variability due to global warming, having a dynamic, adaptable index that can recalibrate weather file selection in response to shifting climatic baselines becomes essential. The PCA-based similarity measure offers a flexible tool to explore the impacts of future climate scenarios on daylight and building performance, supporting resilience and adaptation strategies.
Moreover, this approach is transferable to other climate-based modeling domains. While the current work focuses on daylighting, the underlying mathematical framework could be repurposed for selecting representative weather data in hydrological models, urban microclimate assessments, and even in renewable energy generation forecasting where tropical climate variability plays a critical role.
The researchers emphasize the importance of open data and algorithm transparency, ensuring that the index can be implemented in open-source simulation tools frequently used by the building performance community. This accessibility enhances the potential for widespread adoption, community-driven refinement, and integration into international building standards addressing tropical architecture.
In conclusion, Aw, Leng, and Lim’s development of a PCA-based climatic similarity index represents a vital advancement for climate-sensitive modeling in tropical regions. By refining the selection of weather files, their work promises to improve the accuracy and reliability of daylight simulations, contributing to more sustainable, comfortable, and energy-efficient building designs. As tropical cities grow rapidly and strive to meet sustainability goals, such innovative tools become invaluable for architects, engineers, and policymakers navigating the complexities of climate-responsive design.
Subject of Research: Development of a Principal Component Analysis-based climatic similarity index for enhanced weather file selection in climate-based daylight modeling in tropical climates.
Article Title: Development of a PCA-based climatic similarity index to enhance weather file selection criteria for climate-based daylight modelling simulations in tropical climates.
Article References:
Aw, S.B., Leng, P.C. & Lim, Y.W. Development of a PCA-based climatic similarity index to enhance weather file selection criteria for climate-based daylight modelling simulations in tropical climates. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-58112-x
Jio Platforms, which owns India’s largest telco, is looking to lease broadband capacity from satellite constellations to jumpstart its own sovereign LEO network in the country.
Just as last week was ending, the US government forced Anthropic to pull its two newest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns after Amazon researchers allegedly found a way to bypass Fable 5’s guardrails. Cybersecurity researchers have since signed an open letter calling the move dangerous, and Anthropic itself noted the same jailbreaks exist in other models. So is […]
MDA Space is buying smallsat manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) for $620 million, giving the Canadian company greater access to the lucrative U.S. government market.
Welcome to Edition 8.46 of the Rocket Report! We don't mention Starship in the body of this week's report, so I'll give a brief update here. The next test flight of SpaceX's mega-rocket—Flight 13—could happen as soon as next month, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and chief operating officer, in a recent interview with CNBC. There's still a fair bit of work to do before Flight 13, so don't count on a launch next month just yet. What we do know, based on Shotwell's comments to CNBC, is the next Starship test flight will look a lot like the previous one last month, with a suborbital flight path and a splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX is holding off on an orbital flight until at least the following launch, Flight 14, after the ship was unable to complete a critical engine restart in space on the last flight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Isar test flight scrubbed again. Isar Aerospace still commands top position among a new generation of European rocket startups, but the company’s efforts to launch a critical test flight of its Spectrum rocket continue to encounter roadblocks, Ars reports. The latest delay came Monday, when Isar scrubbed a launch attempt after "detecting off nominal behavior in the vehicle’s fluid systems," according to a social media post. "The teams are analyzing the new data to isolate the root cause." Isar is flush with cash, having raised nearly $1 billion to date, but is still lacking in the critical currency of flight experience. The Spectrum rocket has flown just once to date, on a failed launch last year that lasted less than 30 seconds.
Welcome to Edition 8.46 of the Rocket Report! We don't mention Starship in the body of this week's report, so I'll give a brief update here. The next test flight of SpaceX's mega-rocket—Flight 13—could happen as soon as next month, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and chief operating officer, in a recent interview with CNBC. There's still a fair bit of work to go before Flight 13, so don't count on a launch next month just yet. What we do know, based on Shotwell's comments to CNBC, is the next Starship test flight will look a like like the previous one last month, with a suborbital flight path and a splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX is holding off on an orbital flight until at least the following launch, Flight 14, after the ship was unable to complete a critical engine restart in space on the last flight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Isar test flight scrubbed again. Isar Aerospace still commands top position among a new generation of European rocket startups, but the company’s efforts to launch a critical test flight of its Spectrum rocket continue to encounter roadblocks, Ars reports. The latest delay came Monday, when Isar scrubbed a launch attempt after "detecting off nominal behavior in the vehicle’s fluid systems," according to a social media post. "The teams are analyzing the new data to isolate the root cause." Isar is flush with cash, having raised nearly $1 billion to date, but is still lacking in the critical currently of flight experience. The Spectrum rocket has flown just once to date, on a failed launch last year that lasted less than 30 seconds.
Welcome to Edition 8.46 of the Rocket Report! We don't mention Starship in the body of this week's report, so I'll give a brief update here. The next test flight of SpaceX's mega-rocket—Flight 13—could happen as soon as next month, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and chief operating officer, in a recent interview with CNBC. There's still a fair bit of work to do before Flight 13, so don't count on a launch next month just yet. What we do know, based on Shotwell's comments to CNBC, is the next Starship test flight will look a lot like the previous one last month, with a suborbital flight path and a splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX is holding off on an orbital flight until at least the following launch, Flight 14, after the ship was unable to complete a critical engine restart in space on the last flight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Isar test flight scrubbed again. Isar Aerospace still commands top position among a new generation of European rocket startups, but the company’s efforts to launch a critical test flight of its Spectrum rocket continue to encounter roadblocks, Ars reports. The latest delay came Monday, when Isar scrubbed a launch attempt after "detecting off nominal behavior in the vehicle’s fluid systems," according to a social media post. "The teams are analyzing the new data to isolate the root cause." Isar is flush with cash, having raised nearly $1 billion to date, but is still lacking in the critical currency of flight experience. The Spectrum rocket has flown just once to date, on a failed launch last year that lasted less than 30 seconds.
A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake.
The new details come from a private investor list obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk’s rocket company: which people in countries like China bought into the company, and how. SpaceX built its business off sensitive US government work like making spy satellites for the Pentagon. While there is no ban on Chinese investment in US military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated.
In a sign of its sensitivity to the concerns, SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week due to “regulatory and compliance risks,” Bloomberg reported. The US government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to get access to cutting-edge technology.
A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake.
The new details come from a private investor list obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk’s rocket company: which people in countries like China bought into the company, and how. SpaceX built its business off sensitive US government work like making spy satellites for the Pentagon. While there is no ban on Chinese investment in US military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated.
In a sign of its sensitivity to the concerns, SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week due to “regulatory and compliance risks,” Bloomberg reported. The US government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to get access to cutting-edge technology.
Le 12 août prochain, une éclipse solaire offrira un spectacle rare aux observateurs du monde entier. Visible depuis la France métropolitaine, elle promet des conditions d’observation particulièrement impressionnantes dans certaines régions. Mais attention : admirer le Soleil, même partiellement...
Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid wiped out 75% of the species on Earth. This event caused the extinction of all dinosaurs except birds, referred to as non-avian dinosaurs. However, an open question in paleontology is whether the dinosaurs were already declining before the asteroid hit. Many scientists think that around 5 to 10 million years before the extinction event, dinosaurs became less biologically diverse across America, making them more prone to extinction.
To investigate this hypothesis, scientists recently revisited fossils in a rock layer from the end of the dinosaur era that previous researchers had incorrectly dated. The bulk of the fossils from this period had previously been collected from a different section of rocks called the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. These researchers studied a rock layer in New Mexico that is exposed to the surface, known as the Naashoibito Member. It’s approximately 30 meters (about 100 feet) thick and formed from ancient river sediments.
To determine when the Naashoibito Member formed, the scientists measured the decay of radioactive elements within its mineral grains over time, a technique called radiometric dating. The scientist reasoned that these mineral grains must have crystallized before being transported and incorporated into the Naashoibito Member, so their youngest ages should provide a maximum depositional age.
They determined the ages of 1,046 crystals of the mineral feldspar from 2 dinosaur-bearing rock layers in the Naashoibito Member. Based on these ages, the researchers found that a sandstone within 5 meters (about 16 feet) of the lowest boundary of the Naashoibito Member must be younger than 66.9 million years old. They found that the other layer, which is around 3.5 meters (11 feet) from the base of the lowest boundary, must be younger than 66.4 million years old. These age ranges indicated that the sandstone contains dinosaur fossils formed 400,000 years before their extinction.
Next, the researchers measured the direction of magnetic minerals inside the rocks, using a practice called magnetostratigraphy. The direction of these minerals indicates where Earth’s magnetic field was pointing at that time. Scientists have shown that the Earth’s magnetic field has flipped multiple times over Earth’s history, so they can use these magnetic signals to create a timescale for when the sediments formed.
The researchers wanted to determine whether the magnetic minerals were lined up in a direction like today, called normal polarity, or the opposite, called reverse polarity. The researchers found one rock layer with normal polarity at the base of the Naashoibito Member, and one with reverse polarity in the upper part of the Naashoibito Member. These magnetic field directions lined up with 2 known polarity intervals over a timeline that matched the feldspar dates. Together, these data demonstrated that the Naashoibito Member formed at the end of the dinosaur era, around the same time as the Hell Creek Formation.
Next, the researchers wanted to test whether non-avian dinosaurs maintained their diversity across different regions of Western North America during this time period. They compared fossil patterns from locations across North America using statistical grouping methods that determine how similar or different their environments were. They found that temperature, rather than geographical location alone, was the best predictor of diversity at the extinction event.
The team concluded that a diverse population of Naashoibito dinosaurs lived at around the same time as the Hell Creek dinosaurs. Earlier scientists surmised that dinosaurs were already on the decline because they studied the colder northern regions, where diversity was lower. However, these results suggest that warmer conditions in the south still supported diverse dinosaur populations. Together, this evidence suggests that dinosaurs were still diverse and thriving 66 million years ago, and that their extinction was indeed a result of the asteroid impact.
The word Rolex has five letters, two syllables, and works in every language a marketer might want to sell into. It is short enough to sit on a watch dial without crowding the hands, blunt enough to pronounce in German, French, Japanese, and Hindi without distortion, and abstract enough to mean nothing at all. A young Bavarian named Hans Wilsdorf registered it as a trademark in 1908 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, years before he had a factory of his own. The name came first. The watches followed.
That sequence — invent the word, secure the word, then build the company around it — is one of the earliest known examples of what marketers would later call a coined brand. Wilsdorf did it in 1908 for a product he did not yet manufacture.
Wilsdorf had ended up in London after a stint at a watch exporter in La Chaux-de-Fonds. By his mid-twenties he was importing Swiss movements and casing them in England under the unglamorous name Wilsdorf & Davis. He wanted something better. He wanted a name that was short, memorable, pronounceable in any European tongue, and small enough to be legible above the 12 o’clock marker of a wristwatch barely 30 millimetres across.
The constraints were real.
Try the test yourself. Write your favourite watch brand on a dial 30 millimetres wide, leaving room for hour markers, a logo, and the hands. Patek Philippe is thirteen letters and a space. Vacheron Constantin is eighteen. Jaeger-LeCoultre is fifteen and a hyphen. Rolex is five. On a wrist seen from across a room, five wins.
The phonetics of a global product
The cleverness sits in what the word avoids. There is no diphthong that collapses in Mandarin. No silent letter that an English speaker would mispronounce in French. No umlaut. No accent. No consonant cluster that trips an Italian tongue. The two syllables — ro and lex — are phonemes that exist in nearly every major language. A Tokyo retailer and a Geneva concierge say the word almost identically.
This was not accidental. By his own account, Wilsdorf wanted a name that was short, easy to say and remember in any language, and that looked good on a dial — a goal he later described as the reason he ran through hundreds of letter combinations before settling on Rolex, as Rolex itself recounts in its company history. He had also learned, selling watches across the British Empire and into continental Europe, that brand names with national flavour travelled badly.
He got one. Rolex is the closest thing the watch industry has ever produced to a piece of linguistic infrastructure — a sequence of sounds engineered to survive translation.
Trademark first, factory later
Wilsdorf registered the name in Switzerland in 1908 — the surviving registry entry is dated 2 July 1908 and lists the La Chaux-de-Fonds office of Wilsdorf & Davis, as the original trademark record reproduced in horological archives shows. He was still operating out of London and still casing movements supplied by Hermann Aegler’s workshop in Bienne. He did not own a Swiss manufacturing operation. He owned a word, an import-export business, and a hunch that wristwatches — at that point still dismissed as women’s jewellery, a prejudice Space Daily has explored in detail — would become the dominant form of timekeeping for men within a generation.
He was right on both counts. The First World War, with its trench officers needing both hands free, did for the wristwatch what no advertising campaign could. By 1919 Wilsdorf had relocated to Geneva, partly because British post-war duties made exporting from London punishing, and partly because anti-German sentiment in Britain had already pushed him to rename the firm The Rolex Watch Co. Ltd. in 1915, a change Britannica attributes to wartime prejudice against the German-sounding Wilsdorf name. The company that became synonymous with Swissness was Swiss almost by accident of geopolitics.
What a name buys you
Coining a word does something specific that descriptive names cannot. A descriptive name — Universal Geneve, International Watch Company — tells you what the thing is and where it comes from, and that’s the ceiling of its meaning. A coined word is an empty vessel. Whatever you pour into it over decades of advertising, sponsorship, and product, the word holds.
Wilsdorf began pouring almost immediately. The company developed the Oyster case, among the first commercially viable waterproof wristwatches. In 1927 a young London typist named Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel, wore an Oyster during a high-profile Channel swim, and Wilsdorf took out prominent newspaper advertising to promote it. The word Rolex had its first myth.
The dress watch market is still organised around names of this kind. A 2025 Esquire review of a dress watch describes the category in language Wilsdorf would have recognised: thinness, legibility, restraint. The dials of the watches sitting next to it in auction catalogues all carry short, abstract words. Omega. Cartier. Tudor. Seiko. The naming convention Wilsdorf arrived at in 1908 became the default the rest of the industry now follows.
The decision that made Rolex unbuyable
Naming was the first of two structural decisions that made Rolex what it is. The second came after the death of Wilsdorf’s wife, Florence. Childless and grieving, he created the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation and, in his will, left every share of Rolex to it. When he died in 1960, the foundation became the sole owner. That arrangement — which Space Daily has covered separately — means no shareholder can demand a dividend, no rival can buy the company, and no quarterly report has to be filed. Rolex’s finances remain opaque because there is no legal obligation to publish them.
The opacity is the point. Because the company discloses nothing, every revenue figure is an outside estimate: analysts at Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult put Rolex’s annual wholesale revenue above CHF 11 billion in their most recent reading, while cautioning that the brand publishes no official figures of its own. The foundation, a registered Swiss charitable trust, directs funds to charitable causes, including children’s charities — a nod to Wilsdorf’s own childhood as an orphan.
In 2023, Rolex agreed to buy Bucherer, its largest retailer, consolidating a distribution partner it had worked with for a century. A privately held watchmaker had moved to absorb its own biggest distributor, the kind of step no public company answerable to shareholders would have executed so quietly.
The freedom to make moves like that traces back to two decisions taken decades apart by the same man. First, in 1908, to coin a word with no national origin and trademark it before he had a factory. Second, decades later, to put the company beyond ownership. The first decision gave Rolex a name that could be sold anywhere. The second made sure no one could ever sell Rolex.
What five letters still do on a dial
Pick up a Submariner. The word sits above the centre pinion in a sans-serif crown-logo lockup that has barely changed in eighty years. Five letters. About four millimetres wide on a 40 mm dial. The eye reads it before it registers the hour. On a black bezel diving watch under a cocktail-bar lamp, the word is legible at three metres. On a gold Day-Date across a boardroom table, it’s legible at five.
That legibility is a function of letter count. Six letters would have required a smaller font. Eight would have required either a smaller font or a curved arc that distorts the reading angle. Five fits the optical sweet spot of a wristwatch dial almost perfectly — the horological equivalent of a logo built for a smartphone home screen, except Wilsdorf made the choice in 1908, when the dominant timepiece was still a pocket watch on a chain.
There is a reason the watch industry has not produced another Rolex-style word in the 118 years since. Most of the obvious five-letter, language-neutral combinations were registered long ago. The rest sound like pharmaceuticals. Coining a word that means nothing and survives a century of meaning being poured into it is harder than it looks, and the field is crowded with failures whose names you have already forgotten.
The trademark filing in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1908 predated the existence of Rolex SA as an independent Swiss manufacturer by years. It predated the Oyster case by nearly two decades. It predated the foundation that owns the company today by several decades. It predated the watch on the wrist of an English Channel swimmer by nearly twenty years. For most of its first decade, the word Rolex sat on watches whose movements were made by other people, in cases assembled by other people, sold under a name that belonged to a young Bavarian importer in a rented London office. The word did the work. The factory caught up later.
Look at a Rolex dial today and you are reading a piece of linguistic engineering that is older than the Russian Revolution, older than the Model T, older than the first transatlantic flight. The hands have moved roughly a billion times around it. The word has not.
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