NASA and SpaceX are preparing to bring home three American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut from the International Space Station (ISS).

On Sunday, NASA’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, will fly home aboard the same Crew Dragon capsule that they arrived in back in March.

The four ISS inhabitants spent much of their time in orbit carrying out science research, including a number of studies aimed at improving human health.

The short video below offers a neat overview of Crew-8’s time aboard the station some 250 miles above Earth:

One of the astronauts, Matthew Dominick, also shared a steady stream of impressive photos and time-lapse videos during his first orbital mission.

How to watch

NASA will live-stream the undocking on its website, or you can watch the same footage via the video player that will appear later at the top of this page.

You’ll also be able to listen in on communications between the crew and Mission Control, and NASA is likely to provide a commentary to offer more insight into the spacecraft’s departure.

While the Crew Dragon will appear to edge away from the ISS at a very slow speed, keep in mind that both the spacecraft and the station are in fact orbiting Earth at a colossal 17,500 mph.

NASA will also live stream the splashdown off the coast of Florida, but the agency has yet to share a specific time for that.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 series of flagship tablets won’t get monthly security updates. Although a little disappointing, Samsung has promised seven years of Android OS and security updates for these premium devices.

Samsung will support its latest tablets for seven years

Samsung recently announced the premium Galaxy Tab S10 series of tablets. This year, the company skipped the base variant and is offering the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus and the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra.

The Galaxy Tab S10 series devices could be easily considered flagship and industry-leading tablets. In other words, they are right up there with the Samsung Galaxy S24 series of smartphones.

Samsung has promised to support the premium tablets for seven years. Specifically speaking, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 series will get seven Android versions and seven years of security updates from Samsung.

Needless to say, it is truly rare and remarkable for an Android tablet to receive software support for such a long time. Considering these tablets run Android 14 out of the box, Samsung has technically assured they will get the Android 21 update. It would be a record for these tablets, or more specifically their batteries, to survive this long.

Samsung won’t send security updates to the Galaxy Tab S10 every month

According to Phone Arena, these tablets will receive security updates every three months. Samsung has updated its official ‘Security Update’ page. The company has included the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus and S10 Ultra as officially supported devices.

Samsung has added the Galaxy Tab S10 series tablets to the “Current Models for Quarterly Security Updates” list. What this means is these tablets will get security updates every three months.

It is strange to note that Samsung won’t increase the frequency of security updates for the Galaxy Tab S10 tablets to match its other flagship devices. Samsung has traditionally sent out security updates to its tablets every three months. In other words, the company hasn’t broken the pattern. However, some reports suggest Samsung could have sent out security updates to the Galaxy Tab S10 tablet every month, just like the Galaxy S24 series of smartphones.

October Prime Day has come and gone but, as to be expected, there are still a few deals floating around on the internet. This year’s fall Prime Day brought a slew of deals across all categories, including tech, and some of those deals haven’t expired just yet. There’s a chance we see some of these sale prices return in a month when Black Friday comes around, but if you’re keen on getting some of your holiday shopping done now, you still have a bit more time. Here are the best Prime Day deals you can still get today.

Best Prime Day Apple deals

Apple deals can be hit or miss during Amazon Prime Day, but we saw a number of good ones this time and many of them are still available. Whether you’ve been on the hunt for a new Apple device for yourself or you know you want to pick one up as a gift, you can save a bit of cash if you do so now.

• Apple AirPods Pro for $169 ($80 off): Apple’s most powerful wireless earbuds have excellent ANC, a good sound profile and decent battery life, and thanks to a software update, they just got new features like voice isolation and Siri interactions (hearing aid features are coming soon).

• Apple AirPods Max for $395 ($154 off): These expensive cans are a much better buy when on sale, and they boast excellent sound quality, good ANC, a luxe design and a solid battery life. They’re available in Lightning or USB-C.

• Apple Watch SE (2nd gen, GPS) for $170 ($79 off): The entry-level Apple Watch remains a fine choice for first-time smartwatch buyers, so long as you can live without the larger always-on display and more advanced health features of the pricier Series 10. This is another one of the lowest prices we’ve tracked for the 40mm model; the larger 44mm variant is similarly discounted at $200.

• Apple 10th-gen iPad for $299 ($50 off): The new, baseline iPad updates a familiar device with a fresh design, improved performance, USB-C charging and a better battery life.

• Apple 9th-gen iPad for $199 ($130 off): This model is on its way out, but $200 for an iPad is a solid sale price. This slab has a 10.2-inch display, an A13 Bionic chip and 64GB of storage — plus the antiquated physical Home button.

• Apple 13-inch MacBook Air M2 for $749 ($250 off): Despite having a slightly older chipset, the M2 MacBook Air remains a great budget option for most anyone, save those who regularly push their daily driver to the limit with activities like video editing.

• Apple 13-inch MacBook Air M3 for $849 ($250 off): This is our top pick for the best MacBook you can buy right now thanks to its excellent performance, thin-and-light design, bright screen and comfortable keyboard and trackpad.

Best Prime Day Anker deals

One can never have too many charging accessories, be they cables, wireless charging pads or power banks. Anker makes some of our favorites across all those categories, and you’ll find deep discounts on Anker gear even now after Prime Day has ended.

Best Prime Day Lego deals

A number of Lego sets are still on sale post October Prime Day. Some of our favorites come from the Star Wars, Super Mario and Harry Potter lineups, and you’ll find savings up to 41 percent on those.

Best Prime Day deals on tech

Yes, Black Friday is right around the corner, but it would be unwise to sleep on these Prime Day tech deals that you can still get today. We’re seeing steep discounts on headphones, TVs, streaming devices, gaming gear and more, making it a good time to pick up something for yourself or cross a few items off your holiday shopping list early.

• Dyson V15 Detect Plus cordless vacuum cleaner for $570 ($180 off): This version of our top pick in our best cordless vacuum cleaner guide has superior suction power and can handle pet hair without breaking a sweat, plus it has 60 minutes of run time and comes with a number of cleaner-head accessories.

• Dyson Airwrap for $500 ($100 off): Dyson’s immensely popular hair styling tool uses the Coanda effect to help create waves and curls without excess heat.

• Samsung The Frame smart TV for $978 ($668 off): This is a return to the July Prime Day price for this bundle that includes Samsung’s iconic art TV and a white bezel.

• LG 55-inch C4 evo OLED smart TV for $1,297 ($700 off): LG’s midrange OLED sets, the C4 family includes upgraded Alpha 9 Gen 7 chip, improved brightness and a 144Hz max refresh rate. Most sizes are discounted at the moment.

• Shark AI Ultra robot vacuum cleaner for $280 ($139 off): Shark’s robo-vac can clean both carpet and hard floors well and maps your home while it cleans so you can more easily send it to specific rooms and areas when you want. Its self-emptying base can also hold up to 60 days worth of debris.

• Dyson V15 Detect Plus cordless vacuum cleaner for $570 ($180 off): This version of our top pick in our best cordless vacuum cleaner guide has superior suction power and can handle pet hair without breaking a sweat, plus it has 60 minutes of run time and comes with a number of cleaner-head accessories.

• SanDisk microSDXC Card for Nintendo Switch (128GB, 2-pack) for $28 ($12 off): SanDisk’s Switch-branded microSD card isn’t the fastest we’ve used, but it’s perfectly suitable for most use cases, and this is a solid value for a two-pack.

• SanDisk Ultra microSD card (1.5TB) for $89 ($61 off): If you don’t care about performance so much and just want a big chunk of space for as little cash as possible, this deal should work. You’ll have to deal with slower transfer speeds, but the discount takes roughly $20 off this 1.5TB card’s typical going rate in recent months.

• Crucial X9 Pro portable SSD (1TB) for $85 ($10 off): The X9 Pro is the top pick in our guide to the best portable SSDs, combining dependable performance with a rugged compact design. We’ve seen this 1TB model go for much less in previously sales, but it’s sat in the $90 to $100 range for almost all of the past year. This discount marks the lowest price we’ve seen since January.

• Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones for $298 ($101 off): Our top picks for the best wireless headphones have never been cheaper, and they offer excellent sound quality, ANC, multi-device connectivity and a 30-hour battery life.

• Bose QuietComfort headphones for $199 ($150 off): These are some of our favorite noise-canceling headphones and most of the colorways are on sale right now.

• Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones for $329 ($100 off): These headphones offer class-leading noise cancellation and they’re a much better buy then normal at this sale price.

• Anker Soundcore Space A40 wireless earbuds for $45 ($35 off): This is a new record-low price for our favorite budget wireless earbuds, which offer solid ANC, a good sound profile, multi-device connectivity, wireless charging and a comfortable fit.

• Jabra Elite 4 Active for $70 ($50 off): These are some of our favorite headphones for running thanks to their comfortable, IP57-rated design, good sound quality and ANC, multipoint connectivity and solid battery life.

• Sonos Era 100 for $199 ($50 off): This is one of our favorite smart speakers thanks to its excellent sound quality, Trueplay tuning and Bluetooth support. Plus, if you have two of them, you can pair them for a stellar stereo sound experience.

• Marshall Emberton II speaker for $100 ($70 off): One of our favorite Bluetooth speakers, this model has an attractive, retro design, a pleasant, balanced sound profile and up to 30 hours of battery life.

• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra for $920 ($380 off): The entirety of the Galaxy S24 lineup has dropped in price for this sale event; the Galaxy S24+ has been discounted to $750, while the Galaxy S24 is just $600.

• Google Pixel 8a for $379 ($121 off): Our top pick for the best midrange smartphone impresses with a 120Hz display, excellent cameras and a strong battery life.

• Roku Streaming Stick 4K for $34 ($16 off): One of our top picks for the best streaming devices, this Roku dongle supports 4K, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision content and provides access to a lot of free content thanks to Roku’s operating system.

• Roku Ultra (2024) for $79 ($21 off): The brand new Ultra is 30 percent faster than the previous model, and it supports Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision and Wi-Fi 6.

• Elgato Stream Deck+ for $170 ($30 off): This upgraded version of the popular streaming controller includes eight programmable buttons, four dials and a touch strip, all of which work together to let you build the ultimate controller for your gaming or productivity setup.

• Ninja DualZone air fryer for $168 ($32 off): This 8-quart model of one of our favorite air fryers can cook two totally different foods at the same time, and you can set it up for both foods to be done cooking at the same time. The larger, 10-quart model is $50 off and down to $200.

• Cosori 9-in-1 air fryer for $85.49 ($33.51 off): This newer air fryer from Cosori has nine preset cooking modes and a six-quart capacity that makes it just the right size to cook a good amount of food without taking up too much space on most countertops.

• Ooni Volt 12 electric pizza oven for $719 ($180 off): Ooni’s electric pizza oven can be used indoors and it has handy, front-mounted controls that let you easily adjust the top and bottom cooking elements.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice, and stay tuned to Engadget.com for all of the best tech deals coming out of October Prime Day 2024.

A trio of scientists consisting of Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google’s AI division DeepMind, as well as John Jumper, Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and David Baker of the University of Washington have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their groundbreaking work in predicting and developing new proteins.

The DeepMinders won for AlphaFold 2, an AI system capable of predicting the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. Meanwhile, Baker won for leading a laboratory where the 20 amino acids that form proteins were used to design new ones, including proteins for “pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors,” according to the Nobel committee’s announcement.

The award highlights how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing biological science — and comes just one day after what I believe to be the first Nobel Prize awarded to an AI technology, that one for Physics to fellow Google DeepMinder Geoffrey Hinton and Princeton professor John J. Hopfield, for their work in artificial neural networks.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the prize as it did with the Physics one, valued at 11 million Swedish kronor (around $1 million USD), split among the laureates — half will go to Baker and the other half divided again in fourths of the total to Hassabis and Jumper.

The committee emphasized the unprecedented impact of AlphaFold, describing it as a breakthrough that solved a 50-year-old problem in biology: protein structure prediction, or how to predict the three-dimensional structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence.

For decades, scientists knew that a protein’s function is determined by its 3D shape, but predicting how the string of amino acids folds into that shape was incredibly complex. Researchers had attempted to solve this since the 1970s, but due to the vast number of possible folding configurations (known as Levinthal’s paradox), accurate predictions remained elusive.

AlphaFold, developed by Google DeepMind, made a breakthrough by using AI to predict the 3D structures of proteins with near-experimental accuracy, meaning that the predictions made by AlphaFold for a protein’s 3D structure are so close to the results obtained from traditional experimental methods—like X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, or nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy—that they are almost indistinguishable.

When AlphaFold achieved “near-experimental accuracy,” it was able to predict protein structures with a level of precision that rivaled these methods, typically within an error margin of around 1 Ångström (0.1 nanometers) for most proteins. This means the model’s predictions closely matched the actual structures determined by experimental means, making it a transformative tool for biologists.

Hassabis and Jumper’s work, developed at DeepMind’s London laboratory, has transformed the fields of structural biology and drug discovery, offering a powerful tool to scientists worldwide.

“AlphaFold has already been used by more than two million researchers to advance critical work, from enzyme design to drug discovery,” Hassabis said in a statement. “I hope we’ll look back on AlphaFold as the first proof point of AI’s incredible potential to accelerate scientific discovery.”

AlphaFold’s Global Impact

AlphaFold’s predictions are freely accessible via the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, making it one of the most significant open-access scientific tools available. Over two million researchers from 190 countries have used the tool, democratizing access to cutting-edge AI and enabling breakthroughs in fields as varied as molecular biology, drug development, and even climate science.

By predicting the 3D structure of proteins in minutes—tasks that previously took years—AlphaFold is accelerating scientific progress. The system has been used to tackle antibiotic resistance, design enzymes that degrade plastic, and aid in vaccine development, marking its utility in both healthcare and sustainability.

John Jumper, co-lead of AlphaFold’s development, reflected on its significance, stating, “We are honored to be recognized for delivering on the long promise of computational biology to help us understand the protein world and to inform the incredible work of experimental biologists.” He emphasized that AlphaFold is a tool for discovery, helping scientists understand diseases and develop new therapeutics at an unprecedented pace.

The Origins of AlphaFold

The roots of AlphaFold can be traced back to DeepMind’s broader exploration of AI.

Hassabis, a chess prodigy, began his career in 1994 at the age of 17, co-developing the hit video game Theme Park, which was released on June 15 that year.

After studying computer science at Cambridge University and completing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, he co-founded DeepMind in 2010, using his understanding of chess to raise funding from famed contrarian venture capitalist Peter Thiel. The company, which specializes in artificial intelligence, was acquired by Google in 2014 for around $500 million USD.

As CEO of Google DeepMind, Hassabis has led breakthroughs in AI, including creating systems that excel at games like Go and chess.

By 2016, DeepMind had achieved global recognition for developing AI systems that could master the ancient game of Go, beating world champions. It was this expertise in AI that DeepMind began applying to science, aiming to solve more meaningful challenges, including protein folding.

The AlphaFold project formally launched in 2018, entering the Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction (CASP) competition—a biannual global challenge to predict protein structures. That year, AlphaFold won the competition, outperforming other teams and heralding a new era in structural biology. But the real breakthrough came in 2020, when AlphaFold2 was unveiled, solving many of the most difficult protein folding problems with an accuracy previously thought unattainable.

AlphaFold 2’s success marked the culmination of years of research into neural networks and machine learning, areas in which DeepMind has become a global leader.

The system is trained on vast datasets of known protein structures and amino acid sequences, allowing it to generalize predictions for proteins it has never encountered—a feat that was previously unimaginable.

Earlier this year, Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs unveiled AlphaFold 3, the third generation of the model, which the creators say uses an improved version of the Evoformer module, a deep learning architecture that was key to AlphaFold 2’s remarkable performance.

The new model also incorporates a diffusion network, similar to those used in AI image generators, which iteratively refines the predicted molecular structures from a cloud of atoms to a highly accurate final configuration.

David Baker’s Contribution to Protein Design

While Hassabis and Jumper solved the prediction problem, David Baker’s work in de novo protein design offers an equally transformative approach: the creation of entirely new proteins that do not exist in nature.

Based at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design, Baker’s lab developed Rosetta, a computational tool used to design synthetic proteins.

Baker’s work has led to the development of proteins that could be used to create novel therapeutics, including custom-designed enzymes and virus-like particles that may serve as vaccines. His group has even designed proteins to detect fentanyl, an opioid at the center of a global health crisis.

By designing new proteins from scratch, Baker’s research expands the boundaries of what proteins can do, complementing the predictive power of AlphaFold by enabling the creation of molecules tailored to specific functions.

The Future of AI in Science

The Nobel Prize recognition of AlphaFold and Baker’s work underscores a broader trend: AI is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool in scientific research. AlphaFold’s success has sparked new interest in the potential of AI to solve complex problems across various fields, including climate change, agriculture, and materials science.

The Nobel Committee highlighted the transformative potential of these discoveries, emphasizing that they “open up vast possibilities” for the future of biology and chemistry. Hassabis has long been vocal about AI’s potential to drive innovation, but he is also clear-eyed about the risks. “AI has the potential to accelerate scientific discovery at a rate we’ve never seen before, but it’s crucial that we use it responsibly,” he said in a recent interview.

As AI systems like AlphaFold continue to evolve, their ability to simulate biological processes and predict outcomes could revolutionize healthcare, sustainability efforts, and beyond. Jumper and Hassabis’ Nobel Prize is a recognition of their work’s enormous impact, but it also signals the dawn of a new era in science—one where AI plays a central role in unlocking the mysteries of life.

What’s next?

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognizes the profound contributions of Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, and David Baker, whose pioneering work has reshaped the landscape of protein science. AlphaFold, now a cornerstone tool for researchers worldwide, has accelerated discovery in ways previously unimaginable.

David Baker’s work in computational protein design further expands the possibilities for biological innovation, offering new solutions to global challenges.

Together, these advancements mark the beginning of a new era for artificial intelligence in science—one where the possibilities are just beginning to unfold (pun intended).

While he remains optimistic about AI’s positive impact, Hassabis warns that the risks, including the potential for societal-scale disasters, must be taken as seriously as the climate crisis.