America’s rivers are changing color — and people are behind many of the shifts, a new study said.

One-third of the tens of thousands of mile-long (two kilometer-long) river segments in the United States have noticeably shifted color in satellite images since 1984. That includes 11,629 miles (18,715 kilometers) that became greener, or went toward the violet end of the color spectrum, according to a study in this week’s journal Geographical Research Letters. Some river segments became more red.

Only about 5% of U.S. river mileage is considered blue — a color often equated with pristine waters by the general public. About two-thirds of American rivers are yellow, which signals they have lots of soil in them.

But 28% of the rivers are green, which often indicates they are choked with algae. And researchers found 2% of U.S. rivers over the years shifted from dominantly yellow to distinctly green.

“If things are becoming more green, that’s a problem,” said study lead author John Gardner, a University of Pittsburgh geology and environmental sciences professor. Although some green tint to rivers can be normal, Gardener said, it often means large algae blooms that cause oxygen loss and can produce toxins.

The chief causes of color changes are farm fertilizer run-off, dams, efforts to fight soil erosion and man-made climate change, which increases water temperature and rain-related run-off, the study authors said.

“We change our rivers a lot. A lot of that has to do with human activity,” said study co-author Tamlin Pavelsky, a professor of global hydrology at the University of North Carolina.

For example, Pavelsky said, the green at times in the Ohio River indicates a bad algae problem from farm runoff while rivers that are getting less yellow demonstrate the success of regulations to prevent soil erosion.

The study looked at more than 230,000 NASA satellite images over 35 years, focusing on rivers and reservoirs. The study found much of the shift to greener rivers happened in the North and West, while the yellowing occurred more in the East and around the Mississippi River. It also found some rivers change colors naturally with the seasons.

Outside experts praised the study, saying while hard-to-understand measurements have shown problems with American rivers, this illustrates the situation simply.

The study “is super cool and a bit mind-blowing (yet intuitive),” Martin Doyle, head of water programs at Duke University, wrote in an email. “It shows how most every aspect of our planet is being affected by humans, now including the basic color of our water. That’s pretty profound if you think about it.”

“It’s also important because it opens up the idea and potential of using river color as early-stage indicator, or warning of environmental change,” wrote Doyle, who wasn’t part of the study.

Every January, huge crowds descend on Las Vegas for the CES gadget show, an extravaganza of tech and glitz intended to set the tone for the coming year in consumer technology. CES kicks off this week, but thanks to the pandemic, it will be in a radical new format — a “virtual” show taking place only in cyberspace.

Yes, that means everyone can still get a glimpse of the future, but only by via technology of the future — aka video streams and chat. If all goes well, attendees will be able to marvel at COVID-fighting “coronabots,” artificial intelligence-powered avatars and transparent TVs.

But it’s still not entirely clear exactly how all this all is going to work, or whether the show will generate anything resembling its usual boosting impact on the tech industry.

“It’s different. Obviously we’re not going to be in Las Vegas, we’ll be spread out around the world,” said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Technology Association, the trade group that produces CES. “But I think there’s an attitude that because of COVID that we’re all in this together and that is what the CES is about. It’s really the shared experience of the industry. Everyone just wants to come together.”

The show will be a trade-off, Shapiro said. Forget the attention-getting spectacles, like dazzling wall-high TV displays and Google’s theme-park ride from two years ago. Instead, Shapiro said, there will be a chance for a more personalized experience that attendees can set up in advance based on their particular interests.

That’s the optimistic view. On the flip side, smaller exhibitors are less likely to get noticed without a show floor. Serendipitous meetings between entrepreneurs and investors, potential acquirers and acquirees, job-seekers and employers — all common to the world’s largest tech show — will probably be scarce.

More than 150,000 attendees and 1,800 exhibitors will take part in CES from Monday to Thursday, a show that will now consist of virtual keynote speeches, product demonstrations and panel discussions. Plus, there’s the opportunity to network in virtual meeting rooms. Last year in the physical show, there were about 170,000 attendees and 4,400 exhibitors. The number of exhibitors were capped this year at 2,000 to insure the online experience, which is being run by Microsoft, was optimal.

Tim Bajarin, president of consultancy Creative Strategies, insists that not much has changed about CES for him, despite the fact that he’ll be staring at screens rather than haunting meeting rooms and pacing the convention floor. He’s still researching products he wants to see demos of, scheduling meetings with people he wants to talk to one-on-one and focusing on keynotes and sessions to attend.

“The difference is I’m not there physically having to walk 10 miles a day and I’m not paying exorbitant high hotel fees,” he said. “I’m not having to battle people shoulder-to-shoulder to navigate the show floors.”

But smaller companies and startups might find it harder to stand out. While CES has gone to great lengths to let attendees search through exhibitors by topic and interest categories, the site still can be tricky to navigate. When the show is in Las Vegas, its “Eureka Park” is an area where you can wander — aimlessly or with purpose — through hundreds of booths extolling new internet-connected gadgets, unglamorous back-end technology services, or anything else you might want.

Online, you can search for “Eureka Park” or “startup.” But what you get is a seemingly endless set of pages bearing the logos of 600 companies, 12 at a time — and no description of any of them.

Qeexo, a machine-learning platform startup, exhibited during CES in 2019 and 2020, but has decided to sit 2021 out. The company entered the CES innovation awards and won an honor, but won’t have even a virtual booth after participating in other virtual events it didn’t find effective.

“The benefit of having an onsite booth is you get real time feedback, after showing a live demo,” said CEO Sang Won Lee. The company already has an online demo at its own website, and doesn’t see the point of additional investment. “It’s difficult to get engaged (online) when you can’t really talk to people directly,” Lee said.

Mark Ely, vice president of product strategy at Roku, which is announcing technology that lets electronics makers create their wireless soundbars that work with Roku TVs, says changes to the show seem similar to the adjustments everyone has had to make over the past 10 months due to the coronavirus.

“In some ways our meetings approach is the same as it would have been over past few months doing Zoom calls,” he said. So they are adjusting to meetings at CES the same way they’ve adjusted to meetings during the pandemic, by going virtual. “The benefit is everyone shows up on time, which is always challenging at CES,” he said. “The downside is you don’t get the chance to engage with a broader range of partners.”

Tuong Nguyen, senior principal analyst at Gartner, said this year’s CES is taking more planning.

“The biggest challenge is sort of the ad hoc interactions that I usually have, walking the floor to catch someone doing something interesting,” he said. “I’m trying to do some more targeted outreach.”

But he’s not sure how his week will pan out. The experience reminds him of his first CES, an overwhelming extravaganza punctuated by huge crowds, chance meetings, big parties, endless walking and long taxi lines. “You don’t really know what’s going to happen,” he said.

BEIJING — Chinese automaker Geely says it will form an electric car venture with tech giant Baidu, adding to a flurry of corporate tie-ups in the industry to share soaring technology development costs.

Geely Holding Group, which also has separate electric car brands, said Monday the venture with Baidu.com Inc. would focus on intelligent and connected vehicles. It gave no details of investment or when products might be released.

Global and Chinese automakers have launched partnerships to share the multibillion-dollar costs of developing electric vehicles for China under government pressure to meet sales quotas.

China is the world’s biggest market for the technology, accounting for about half of global sales. The ruling Communist Party spent billions of dollars on subsidies in an attempt to take an early lead in the industry. It is shifting the burden to manufacturers by requiring them to earn credits from selling electric vehicles or face penalties that have yet to be announced.

Privately held Geely, best known abroad as the owner of Sweden’s Volvo Cars, is one of China’s biggest independent automakers. Its brands include Geely, Lynk & Co., Geometry and Polestar, all of which sell electric vehicles. Geely is the biggest shareholder in Malaysia’s Proton and Britain’s Lotus.

Baidu operates China’s most popular internet search engine. It is regarded as one of the world’s leading developers of automated driving technology.

MEXICO CITY — Farmers digging in a citrus grove near Mexico’s Gulf coast have found a striking, six-foot-tall statue of a female figure who may represent an elite woman rather than a goddess, or some mixture of the two, experts said Friday.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History said it was the first such statue found in a region known as the Huasteca.

The carved woman has an elaborate hairpiece and marks of status, and may date to around 1450 to 1521, the institute said. While the site where it was found is nearer to the pre-Hispanic ruin site of El Tajín, the statue shows some influences of the Aztecs.

Farmers digging in the grove found it on New Year’s Day and quickly reported it to authorities. The area where it was found was not previously known to be an archeological site, and the stone statue may have been moved from some unknown original site.

Just who the open-mouthed, wide-eyed statue depicts remains something of a mystery.

Institute archaeologist María Eugenia Maldonado Vite wrote that “this could be a ruler, based on her posture and attire, more than a goddess.”

Maldonado added it could be “a late fusion between the Teem goddesses and women of high political or social status in the Huasteca.” Those goddesses were part of a fertility cult.

Susan Gillespie, an anthropology professor at the University of Florida, said there “there are quite a few pre-Hispanic depictions of elite women and female rulers elsewhere, best known among the Classic Maya but also in Classic Zapotec bas-reliefs and Postclassic Mixtec codices.”

“Colonial era Aztec documents mentioned women ‘rulers’ or at least holders of the crown to pass on to their successors … so that is not a surprise,” Gillespie added. “Women were highly valued in the pre-Hispanic era, drastically losing their status only after the conquest.”

However, she noted that “if there is only one such find, it’s hard to say whether it is significant, or even correctly identified. Archaeology works best with repeated occurrences, to show a pattern.”

In 1994 in the Mayan ruin site of Palenque, archaeologists found the tomb of a woman dubbed The Red Queen because of the red pigment covering her tomb. But it has never been firmly established that the woman, whose tomb dates from between 600 and 700 A.D., was a ruler of Palenque.

DETROIT — A widening global shortage of semiconductors for auto parts is forcing major auto companies to halt or slow vehicle production just as they were recovering from pandemic-related factory shutdowns.

Officials at Volkswagen, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, Toyota and Nissan all say they have been hit by the shortage and been forced to delay production of some models in order to keep other factories running.

“This is absolutely an industry issue,” Toyota spokesman Scott Vazin said in an email Friday. “We are evaluating the supply constraint of semiconductors and developing countermeasures to minimize the impact to production.”

If the chip shortage lasts, production cuts could reduce the inventory of cars, trucks and SUVs for sale in the U.S. and other markets. That comes at a time when the industry was just starting to replenish inventory lost when factories shut down last spring to stop the spread of novel coronavirus.

Toyota was forced to slow production of the full-size Tundra pickup at a factory in San Antonio, Texas. Ford had scheduled down time next week at its Louisville, Kentucky, assembly plant, but moved it ahead to this week. The plant makes the Ford Escape and Lincoln Corsair small SUVs.

Fiat Chrysler has temporarily car closed factories in Brampton, Ontario, and a small-SUV plant in Toluca, Mexico, while Volkswagen said in December it was facing production slowdowns due to the shortage. Nissan said it has had to adjust production in Japan but hasn’t seen a significant impact so far in the U.S.

Industry officials say semiconductor companies diverted production to consumer electronics during the worst of the COVID-19 slowdown in auto sales last spring. Global automakers were forced to close plants to prevent the spread of the virus. When automakers recovered, there weren’t enough chips.

“There have been warning signs about his for months,” said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry at the Center for Automotive Research, an industry think tank.

It takes six to nine months of lead time for the industry to get chips via a complex web of suppliers, Dziczek said. She said she hopes that some of the lead time had passed when the issues began surfacing several months ago, making this a short-term rather than long-term problem. “There’s still some coming through, just not the volumes that they thought there would be,” Dziczek said.

In many cases, automakers have stopped making slower-selling vehicles in order to divert the chips to hotter segments of the market, including pickup trucks and SUVs.

“This will minimize the impact of the current semiconductor shortage while ensuring we maintain production at our other North American plants,” Fiat Chrysler said in a statement.

The auto industry is using more semiconductors than ever before in new vehicles with electronic features such as Bluetooth connectivity and driver assist, navigation and hybrid electric systems. Semiconductors are typically silicon chips that perform control and memory functions in products ranging from computers and cellphones to vehicles and microwave ovens.

Auto sales plunged during the first wave of lockdowns in April but have since recovered significant ground. U.S. new vehicle sales were down 34% during the first half of last year, but recovered to end the year down only 15%.

The shortage in chips required in increasingly automated cars is the latest example of how the semiconductor industry’s ebbs and flows can have ripple effects in products.

Schools districts last summer scrambled to get orders filled for laptops for students still largely going to classes remotely as personal computer makers struggled to secure processors and other components.

The problems started when overseas factories making the chips were forced to shut down in the pandemic’s early stages. The problem was exacerbated last July after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on 11 Chinese companies for alleged labor abuses.

To make matters worse, the schools found themselves competing for laptops against deeper pocketed companies that were also placing huge orders for employees while they worked from home.

Chip shortages also forced Apple to push back the rollout of its latest lineup of iPhones until late October and early November, more than a month later than when the trendsetting company usually releases its top-selling device.

The global semiconductor market is expected to be worth about $129 billion in 2025, nearly triple its size in 2019, according to the research firm Mordor Intelligence. The firm lists major players in the automotive chip market as STMicroelectronics, Infineon Technologies, NXP Semiconductor, Texas Instruments and Toshiba.

New research suggests Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine can protect against a mutation found in the two more-contagious variants of the coronavirus that have erupted in Britain and South Africa.

The study was preliminary and did not look at the two other major vaccines being used in the West — Moderna’s and AstraZeneca’s. But it was reassuring, given questions of whether the virus could mutate to defeat the shots on which the world has pinned its hopes.

“There’s no reason to think the vaccines won’t work just as well on these strains,” said Dr. Frederic Bushman of the University of Pennsylvania, who tracks how the virus mutates.

The mutated version circulating in Britain has also been detected in the U.S. and numerous other countries. That and the variant seen in South Africa are causing global concern because they appear to spread more easily — although how much more isn’t yet known.

Bushman, who wasn’t involved with the Pfizer study, cautioned that it tested just one vaccine against one worrisome mutation. But the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines are undergoing similar testing, and he said he expects similar findings.

That’s because all the vaccines so far are prompting recipients’ bodies to make antibodies against multiple spots on the spike protein that coats the virus.

“A mutation will change one little place, but it’s not going to disrupt binding to all of them,” Bushman explained.

While scientists did not expect that a single mutation would completely upend efforts to stop the pandemic, it is still an important area of study because the coronavirus, like all viruses, constantly evolves. This study marks just the beginning of continual monitoring to make sure that all the vaccines being rolled out around the world continue to work.

The study looked at one modification to the spike protein that both variants share, called N501Y, that is believed responsible for the easier transmission. Pfizer and researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston conducted laboratory tests to see if that mutation could thwart the vaccine.

They used blood samples from 20 people who received the vaccine, made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, during a large trial of the shots. Antibodies from those recipients fended off the virus in lab dishes, according to the study, posted late Thursday on an online site for researchers.

The findings have not yet been reviewed by outside experts, a key step for medical research.

But “it was a very reassuring finding that at least this mutation, which was one of the ones people are most concerned about, does not seem to be a problem” for the vaccine, said Pfizer chief scientific officer Dr. Philip Dormitzer.

Viruses constantly undergo minor changes as they spread from person to person.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press this week that the coronavirus variants don’t appear to block vaccine-induced antibodies but that testing to be sure of that is underway in the U.S. and elsewhere.

British scientists have likewise said the variant found in the U.K. -– which has become the dominant type in parts of England — still seems to be susceptible to vaccines.

But the variant discovered in South Africa has an additional mutation that has scientists on edge, one named E484K. The Pfizer study found that the vaccine appeared to work against 15 additional possible mutations, but E484K wasn’t among those tested. Dormitzer said it is next on the list.

South Africa has not started mass vaccinations.

If the virus eventually mutates enough that the vaccine needs adjusting — much like flu shots are adjusted most years — tweaking the recipe wouldn’t be difficult for vaccines made with newer technologies. Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are made with a piece of the virus genetic code that is simple to switch.

The coronavirus isn’t changing as rapidly as other viruses such as flu or HIV, and its structure is more stable than the flu’s, Bushman said, although that will need to be tracked.

“My guess is vaccination will stick longer and be more effective than it is for influenza,” he said.

Meanwhile, U.S. health regulators said Friday they think there is a low risk that the new variants could hurt the accuracy of hundreds of COVID-19 tests on the market.

Food and Drug Administration chief Stephen Hahn said the agency has been monitoring the virus since the summer for any mutations that could skew testing results. So far, most tests that look for the virus’s genetic code remain accurate, but the agency is also studying whether viral mutations could affect rapid tests that look for COVID-19 proteins, called antigens.

DETROIT — General Motors is changing its corporate logo and launching an electric vehicle marketing campaign to reshape its image as clean vehicle company, rather than a builder of gas-powered pickups and SUVs.

The 112-year-old Detroit automaker has promised to roll out 30 new battery-powered vehicles globally by the end of 2025 and said Friday that the new campaign will highlight its progressive vision for the future.

GM said the industry has reached a history-changing inflection point for mass adoption of electric vehicles.

The campaign comes as stock market investors are enthralled with companies that make electric vehicles. Shares of global EV leader Tesla Inc. have skyrocketed more than 800% in the past year, and the company’s market value has passed $800 billion. GM’s shares are only up slightly in the past year and its value is around $61 billion.

Shares of GM were down 1.6% to $42.61 in Friday afternoon trading.

GM is scrapping its old square blue logo and replacing it with a lower case gm surrounded by rounded corners. The company says it’s the biggest change to its logo since 1964. The ‘m’ in the logo is underlined to look more like an electrical plug.

“We felt it was just such a transformative moment that this is the time that we would change again,” said Deborah Wahl, GM global chief marketing officer. “Our message here is that we believe there should be an EV for everyone.”

GM is hoping the “Everybody In” campaign prepares buyers for a new era of vehicle propulsion.

Wahl said the marketing campaign will be “very significant,” but she wouldn’t say how much money would be spent or where it will show up. “You will see it in many places throughout the year,” she said Friday. She said the campaign will start in the United States but eventually will become global. It will not be in brand ads for vehicles, Wahl said.

Late last year, GM said it was nearing a battery chemistry breakthrough that will make electric vehicles as affordable as those with internal combustion engines in less than five years. Some will be able to go up to 450 miles per charge and from zero to 60 mph (97 kilometers per hour) in as quickly as three seconds.

The company has promised to spend $27 billion on battery vehicles through 2025.

The new logo will go wherever GM now has a logo, including websites and buildings, Wahl said.

The company stopped putting the logo on car bodies about a decade ago as it started to emphasize individual brands. But GM says the new logo eventually will replace the old one on window glass and some other parts.

The marketing campaign will feature celebrities including Malcom Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point.”

A campaign of “Everyone In” conflicts a bit with GM’s announced plans for electric vehicles such as a GMC Hummer pickup and Cadillac Lyriq SUV, both higher-priced vehicles. But Wahl said lower priced vehicles are among the 30 new electric vehicles that are coming.

GM officials have said previously that they will have a small electric SUV that will cost less than $30,000 within five years.

The campaign will run ahead of current electric vehicle sales trends in the U.S. Last year automakers sold just over 260,000 fully electric vehicles. Although sales were up nearly 10% over 2019, electric vehicles still were less than 2% of new vehicle sales.

LONDON — Britain’s competition watchdog said Friday it launched an investigation into Google’s plan to overhaul its ad data system over worries it could leave even less room for rivals in the online ad industry.

The Competition and Markets Authority said it opened a formal investigation into Google’s proposals to remove so-called third-party cookies from its popular Chrome browser and Chromium browser engine.

Cookies are small pieces of text kept on devices to keep track of user information such as the login name. They’re used to help businesses more effectively target advertising and fund free online content such as newspapers, but they can also be used to track users across the internet.

Google has proposed replacing third-party cookies with its own tools, as part of a “privacy sandbox” set to be rolled out in 2022. But the watchdog said the changes could hurt publishers’ ability to make money as well as undermine digital ad competition, entrenching Google’s market power.

“Google’s Privacy Sandbox proposals will potentially have a very significant impact on publishers like newspapers, and the digital advertising market. But there are also privacy concerns to consider,” the CMA’s Chief Executive Andrea Coscelli said in a statement. Regulators will work with the U.K.’s privacy commissioner and engage with Google during the investigation, he said.

Chrome is the world’s dominant web browser, and many others like Microsoft’s Edge are based on Google’s Chromium technology. In a market study last year, the CMA found that Google controls more than 90% of the U.K.’s 7.3 billion-pound ($10 billion) search advertising market.

Google stressed that it hasn’t made any changes yet and it’s collaborating with the industry to come up with the best solution. The company pointed out that other browsers such as Safari and Firefox have already started blocking third-party cookies but also acknowledged that such moves hurt the ability of content creators, newsrooms, web developers and videographers to make money.

“Creating a more private web, while also enabling the publishers and advertisers who support the free and open internet, requires the industry to make major changes to the way digital advertising works,” the company said.

The CMA opened its investigation after receiving a complaint from an industry lobbying group, Marketers for an Open Web, which has said the changes would create a “walled garden” owned by Google and deny publishers access to cookies they use to sell digital ads, crimping their revenues by up to two-thirds.

“Providing more directly identifiable, personal information to Google does not protect anyone’s privacy,” said the group, made up of technology and publishing companies. “We believe that the CMA’s investigation will confirm this and save the web for future generations.”