A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed the convictions, sentences and nine-figure restitution ordered against both Holmes and Theranos president, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

[...] Theranos was supposedly going to revolutionize medical laboratory testing with the ability to run fast, accurate and affordable tests with just a drop of blood from a finger prick. “But the vision sold by Holmes and Balwani was nothing more than a mirage,” 9th Circuit Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen wrote for the panel, adding that the “grandiose achievements touted by Holmes and Balwani were half-truths and outright lies.”

Google Maps users in the U.S. will soon see “Gulf of America” in place of “Gulf of Mexico” and “Mount McKinley” instead of “Denali” on the map, in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order issued last week.

Google said in a series of posts on X on Monday that it is has a “longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.” The changes will go into effect “quickly,” it added, after the names are updated in the Geographic Names Information System, which is run by the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey.

The Gulf of Mexico will continue to be identified as such for Google Maps' users in Mexico, the company said. Users in the rest of the world will see both names on the map.

A new study has found that drivers of flashy vehicles are less likely to stop and allow pedestrians to cross the road — with the likelihood they'll slow down decreasing by 3% for every extra $1,000 that their vehicle is worth.

Researchers from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas speculated that the expensive car owners "felt a sense of superiority over other road users" and were less able to empathize with lowly sidewalk-dwellers.

...[T]he best predictor of whether a car would stop was its cost, researchers discovered. "Disengagement and a lower ability to interpret thoughts and feelings of others along with feelings of entitlement and narcissism may lead to a lack of empathy for pedestrians" among costly car owners, they theorized in the study.

China has been unveiling a lot of new weaponry lately, but one of their latest reveals looks really, well, out of this world.

Called the "Super Great White Shark" by Chinese media, the aircraft conjures up images of 1950s sci-fi movies more than 21st century technology. But China says the "armed helicopter" was designed for the "future digital information battlefield."

State-tabloid the Global Times published an image gallery of the aircraft, calling it a fusion of modern, proven helicopter designs — such as the American AH-64 Apache and CH-53 Sea Stallion as well as the Russian Ka-52 and Mi-26 copters. It also has the blended-wing design employed by stealth aircraft, including the US B-2 bomber.

[...] The prototype was displayed last week at the China Helicopter Exposition in Tianjin. It was a static display only. The aircraft is landbound — at least for now.

A team of Japanese researchers recruited six cows and gave them each black-and-white stripes, black stripes and no stripes. They took photos of the cow's painted right side, counting the number of bites as they happened and watching how the cows reacted. [...]

Zebras' stripes have more than aesthetic value; they help fend off bloodsuckers. Past studies have proven flies are less likely to land on black-and-white surfaces — the polarization of light impairs their perception, so they can't properly decelerate, researchers wrote.

Some scientists and academics are embarking on a frenzied mission to archive reams of scientific data on climate change, energized by a concern that a Trump administration could seek to wipe government websites of hard-earned research.

Environmentalists and researchers encountered a friendly White House over the last eight years that encouraged inquiry into global warming and signed historic agreements meant to lower global carbon emissions. But the surprise victory of Donald Trump last month has ignited a scramble among those minds who are alarmed by the President-elect's comments on climate change and a string of appointments who do not share the Obama administration's views or attention to this type of scientific research.

The chief concern: publicly available climate change data and research found on government websites would be wiped clean or made otherwise inaccessible to the public. Some worry the information could only be retrieved with a taxing Freedom of Information Act request.

SpaceX called off a planned launch of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a communications satellite less than two minutes before blastoff from Florida on Thursday, citing a technical problem. It marked the second straight day that Elon Musk's privately owned Space Exploration Technologies had postponed the launch.