Still need to send a few presents? Holiday shipping deadlines are quickly approaching for UPS, USPS, and FedEx if you’d like your items delivered in time for Christmas. Post offices are also facing their annual surge in mail volume in addition to inclement weather, so the sooner you send those packages the better.
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Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On With Your Day. |
- Holiday travel
- Toyota recall
- Nuclear fusion
Holiday travel
Some of the largest airlines in the US have entered their peak travel windows as millions of passengers take to the skies for the holidays. American Airlines, the country's largest carrier, expects Friday, December 22, to be its busiest of the holiday travel period that began Wednesday. In all, the airline plans to serve 12.7 million passengers. Delta is expecting to serve around 9 million people in total, including 600,000 customers each day on December 21 and 22 as well as from December 26 to 30. The FAA also said holiday air traffic overall will peak today with the agency's air traffic controllers handling nearly 49,000 flights. This comes as both the East and West coasts are facing poor weather conditions that could trigger travel delays and road closures ahead of the busy holiday weekend.
Toyota recall
Toyota is recalling around 1 million vehicles over a sensor glitch that could cause the passenger airbag to fail to deploy in a crash. The recall involves 15 different 2020 and 2021 model year Toyota and Lexus models including the Toyota Camry, Rav4, Sienna and the Lexus RX350 and ES350. Specifically, the Occupant Classification System sensor that detects when someone is sitting in the front passenger seat could short circuit. In some of these vehicles the sensor was improperly manufactured and could fail to deploy in incidents when it should. Owners of the vehicles involved in the recall will be notified by February 2024, Toyota said.
Nuclear fusion
Scientists have successfully replicated nuclear fusion at least three times this year — a process which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power. Nuclear fusion is a reaction that involves smashing two or more atoms together to form a denser one in a process that releases huge amounts of energy — and leaves no legacy of long-lived radioactive waste. Last December, a group of California scientists managed, in a world first, to produce a nuclear fusion reaction that released more energy than it used, in a process called "ignition." Now they say they have successfully replicated ignition at least three additional times in 2023. This marks another significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
Nuclear fusion
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