SoylentNews

takyon writes:

UK steps up fight after losing 'measles-free' status

The United Kingdom says it will take steps to halt the spread of misinformation about vaccines as a result of losing its "measles-free" status after the highly infectious disease was declared eliminated in the country three years ago.

Measles, which is almost entirely preventable with two doses of vaccine, is making a comeback globally. In the first half of the year, there have been almost three times as many cases as the same time last year. Cases globally are at the highest level since 2006, according to the World Health Organization.

"After a period of progress where we were once able to declare Britain measles free, we've now seen hundreds of cases of measles in the UK this year. One case of this horrible disease is too many, and I am determined to step up our efforts to tackle its spread," Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a statement.

UK's Johnson slams 'mumbo-jumbo' about vaccines after measles rates rise

"The UK generally has a great record on fighting measles, but for the first time we're suddenly going in the wrong direction," Johnson said on a visit to a hospital in Truro, south-west England. "I'm afraid people have just been listening to that superstitious mumbo-jumbo on the internet, all that anti-vax stuff, and thinking that the MMR vaccine is a bad idea. That's wrong, please get your kids vaccinated."

See also: UK to pressure social media companies to fight anti-vax info

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

US West struggles to hit goals of fighting fire with fire

The thick scent of smoke hung in the midday air when a trail along the Kings River opened up to an ominous scene: flames in the trees and thick gray smoke shrouding canyon walls.

Firefighters were on the job. In fact, they had started the blaze that chewed through thick ferns, blackened downed trees and charred the forest floor. The prescribed burn—a low-intensity, closely managed fire—was intended to clear out undergrowth and protect the heart of Kings Canyon National Park from future wildfires that are growing larger and more frequent amid climate change.

The tactic is considered one of the best ways to prevent the kind of catastrophic destruction that has become common from wildfires, but its use falls woefully short of goals in the U.S. West. A study published in the journal Fire in April found prescribed burns on federal land in the last 20 years across the West has stayed level or fallen despite calls for more.

Prescribed fires are credited with making forests healthier and stopping or slowing the advance of some blazes. Despite those successes, there are plenty of reasons they are not set as often as officials would like, ranging from poor conditions to safely burn to bureaucratic snags and public opposition.

After a wildfire last year largely leveled the city of Paradise and killed 86 people, the state prioritized 35 brush and other vegetation-reduction projects that could all involve some use of intentional fire, said Mike Mohler, deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Despite the push for more burns, there are disastrous reminders of prescribed fires blowing out of control—such as a 2012 Colorado burn that killed three people and damaged or destroyed more than two dozen homes.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Seconds before a memory pops up, certain nerve cells jolt into collective action [DOI: 10.1126/science.aax1030] [DX]. The discovery of this signal, described in the Aug. 16 Science, sheds light on the mysterious brain processes that store and recall information.

Electrodes implanted in the brains of epilepsy patients picked up neural signals in the hippocampus, a key memory center, while the patients were shown images of familiar people and places, including former President Barack Obama and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. As the participants took in this new information, electrodes detected a kind of brain activity called sharp-wave ripples, created by the coordinated activity of many nerve cells in the hippocampus.

Later blindfolded, the patients were asked to remember the pictures. One to two seconds before the participants began describing each picture, researchers noticed an uptick in sharp-wave ripples, echoing the ripples detected when the subjects had first seen the images.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

On Sunday a funeral was held in Iceland to commemorate Okjokull, what was once a vast glacier, reports the Associated Press. It was estimated to span 15 square miles (38 square kilometers) in 1901. It now takes up less than half a square mile (under 1 square kilometer), according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Icelandic geologist Oddur Sigurðsson presented to the audience, which included Iceland's Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and around 100 others, a death certificate for Okjokull. In a symbolic move, a plaque was planted with a message to future generations. It reads:

"Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it." 

The funeral is actually a few years late, as Okjokull lost its glacier status in 2014. Since jokull is Icelandic for volcano, the former glacier now just goes by Ok -- named after the volcano it rested atop.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Why the Navy Is Relying on WWII-Era Communications

The U.S. Navy, anticipating a future when a high-tech enemy could read its electronic communications, is going back to a hack-proof means of sending messages between ships: bean bags. Weighted bags with messages inside are passed among ships at sea by helicopters.

In a future conflict with a tech-savvy opponent, the U.S. military could discover even its most advanced, secure communications penetrated by the enemy. Secure digital messaging, voice communications, video conferencing, and even chats could be intercepted and decrypted for its intelligence value. This could give enemy forces an unimaginable advantage, seemingly predicting the moves and actions of the fleets at sea with uncanny accuracy.

Last week, a MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter delivered a message from the commander of an amphibious squadron to the captain of the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer. The helicopter didn’t even land to deliver it, dropping it from a hovering position before flying away. The message was contained in a bean bag dropped on the Boxer’s flight deck.

The bean bag system, as Military.com explains it, is nearly eight decades old. The system dates back to April 1942, when a SBD Dauntless dive bomber assigned to the USS Enterprise was flying a scouting mission ahead of the USS Hornet. Hornet, about to launch sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers on a raid against Japan, was traveling in extreme secrecy to preserve the element of surprise. The Dauntless pilot encountered a Japanese civilian ship and, fearing he had been spotted, dropped a message in a bean bag on the deck of Hornet.

[...] Bean bags aren’t the only old tech the Navy is bringing back. In 2016, NPR reported that the service was reintroducing sextants as a navigational tool for officers. The U.S. armed services are heavily reliant on the satellite-based Global Positioning System for navigation, making jamming or spoofing GPS signals a major priority for adversaries. If they’re successful, the military must be able to navigate from Point A to Point B the old fashioned way—by sextant if necessary.

Original Submission

A submission from an AC prompted the following.

Pipedot (https://pipedot.org/) was another reaction to Slashdot Beta but didn't get going as quickly as SN. Nevertheless Bryan, the owner, created a useful site with nice features like the "Feed" page for RSS reading.

Last Thursday Aug 15, the site started sending out 502 codes in response to any attempts at access and it remained like that for a short while. We have seen no explanation regarding the outage. However, at the time of this story's writing, the site is back online again.

Pipedot is not currently accepting new stories and hasn't published one since 2017, but it hasn't gone away. Those running the site believe that it didn't justify the level of effort to keep pushing out stories when they were really competing with other Slashdot alternatives, including ourselves. But, recognising that things can change, the site is still 'live' and ready to go if needed. It provides a very useful RSS feed which is available for anyone to use and it provides a lot of useful material for potential submissions.

We have a good and friendly relationship with Pipedot and we are very happy to cooperate with them, especially as we did in the first year or two after Slashdot Beta. It is also reassuring to know that, if something unexpected happens to our own site, it would only be a matter of days before an alternative site could be up and running. We are pleased to discover that last weeks event was only a temporary blip and not a sign that Pipedot was going away. We wish them every success for the future.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Currently people can access FTP list and download resources hosted on FTP servers in Chrome through FTP URLs, but this may not work anymore in the near future. In a post published by Chrome engineers, there is a plan to deprecate FTP support in Chrome version 82.

The major motivation for this deprecation is that Chrome doesn't have an encrypted FTP connection support(FTPs), this raises security risk of downloading resources over FTP. Since users can access FTP URLs and download resources, there is no encryption of the data which indicates any sensitive information would be exposed to middle man attack. There are other vulnerabilities as well. 

[...] The deprecation will start from Chrome version 82 planned to be released in 2020 Q2.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/13/750770595/trump-administration-delays-some-china-tariffs

The Trump administration is postponing some of its new tariffs on Chinese imports — a significant retreat in the trade war that has rattled financial markets on both sides of the Pacific.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced on Tuesday that 10% tariffs on certain popular consumer items — including cellphones, laptop computers, video game consoles, computer monitors and some toys, shoes and clothing — will be postponed until Dec. 15.

'What we've done is we've delayed it, so they they[sic] won't be relevant to the Christmas shopping season,' President Trump told reporters.

I guess it really is easy to win a trade war: just saber-rattle but never actually do things.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow7671

New Norman Cryptominer Uses Dynamic DNS for C2 Communication

A new cryptominer malware that infected almost all the computers on a company's network within a year uses DuckDNS for command and control (C2) communications with its masters.

[...] The new miner malware strain dubbed Norman by the Varonis Security Research team was discovered while actively mining for Monero using the computing resources of the infected workstations and servers as directed by its operators.

All infected hosts on the network were very easily detected by the use of DuckDNS which is a dynamic DNS service designed to help users create custom domain names easier.

According to the researchers who found this new cryptomining malware, "most of the malware from this case relied on DuckDNS for command and control (C&C) communications, to pull configuration settings or send updates."

Besides multiple miner malware samples among which Norman stood out as not having been seen before in the wild, Varonis' research team also discovered several password dumping tools and a hidden PHP shell, with some of them having infected the systems a few years earlier.

[...] Malware developers are targeting most platforms with their malicious payloads, their cryptominers having been observed while attempting to infect all types of platforms and devices, from Windows, Linux, and macOS computers to Android devices and cloud services.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a new antibiotic that, when combined with two existing antibiotics, can tackle the most formidable and deadly forms of tuberculosis. The trio of drugs treats extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), along with cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) that have proven unresponsive to other treatments.

Tuberculosis is the single leading infectious killer in the world, infecting an estimated 10 million people in 2017 and killing 1.6 million of them. XDR-TB and MDR-TB are even more savage forms of the disease, which is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The drug-resistant strains of TB kill an estimated 60% and 40% of their victims, respectively.

[...] The new three-drug regimen with the new FDA-approved antibiotic beats those figures handily, according to data from a small Phase III clinical trial. The regimen cleared the infection from 95 of 109 patients with XDR-TB or treatment-unresponsive MDR-TB in just six months. That's an 87% treatment success rate for six months of treatment. (Two patients not included in the 95 extended their treatment to nine months.)

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/how-a-new-antibiotic-destroys-extremely-drug-resistant-tuberculosis/

Original Submission

barbara hudson writes:

Increase in gaming disorder in UK forcing people into private treatment at home or abroad

Jan Willem Poot, 40, a former addict turned entrepreneur who set up the clinic, said it was seeing a 20-30% annual increase in people – mainly young men – coming in with gaming dependency. "Also, in the beginning it was eight to 10 hours of playing but at this moment we have got kids who game 18-19 hours a day. They sometimes go weeks without showers and are not eating."

Gaming disorder is defined by the World Health Organization as a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour so severe that it takes "precedence over other life interests". Symptoms include impaired control over gaming and continuation or escalation of gaming despite negative consequences.

Original Submission

"Chocolate" writes:

Ever played one of those 'brain training' games and wondered if it did anything good? Probably not, if you are thinking that afterwards. They do apparently train the brain for being more capable in dealing with brain training puzzles.

Back in reality, a new treatment is being offered to train the brain to work better. It is claimed that neurofeedback and qEEG (quantitative electroencephalograph) practitioners can help map the brain and provide feedback to help brain functionality improve. However, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists have concluded that there is insufficient evidence that this proposed treatment will help with mental disorders.

I'll stick to retrophrenology thanks.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A while back there was an article about a man whose hand was scalded after he nuked a cup of water in the microwave. A cautionary tale, with the punchline being that microwaving food can store energy in the material being heated which can then violently erupt when the material is disturbed.

A woman has been possibly blinded in one eye after her microwaved eggs exploded:

She said: "I googled to see if you could make boiled eggs in the microwave.

"There are endless websites and YouTube videos which say you can. The one I read, though, was the set of instructions on recipe website, Delish.

"It said that you could microwave the eggs as long as you add salt to the eggs in the water to prevent them from bursting.

"The instructions then said to leave the eggs in the microwave for between six and eight minutes. Being cautious, I did six and took them out.

"As I looked into the jug to see if the eggs were done, they went bang in my face.

"It only happened as I took them out. The eggs were fine in the microwave."

This is another example of the everyday acts that people undertake in their daily lives which can have devastating consequences if not handled correctly.

Have we failed society by not teaching basic science lessons at school? I love how microwave popcorn has a warning on the outside to remove the outer packing first, and the iron warning tag advising to not iron clothes on the body.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Emma Charlton at the World Economic Forum summarizes a report that finds by cutting out three 10-minute social media checks a day you could read as many as 30 more books a year.

"Just a couple of five-minute breaks every hour are hundreds of hours yearly," the Omni Calculator's creators say. "You cut your social media time by half, and you still get plenty of time to read, run or earn money."

It recommends turning off push notifications that appear on your screen, deleting some apps, calling your friends rather than messaging them, and taking short holidays from all social media once in a while.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

SMIC: 14nm FinFET in Risk Production; China's First FinFET Line To Contribute Revenue by Late 2019

SMIC, the largest contract maker of semiconductors in China, announced this month that it would start commercial production of chips using its 14 nm FinFET manufacturing technology by the end of the year. This is the first FinFET manufacturing line in China, making it a notable development for a country that already houses a significant number of fabs, as the world's leading-edge manufacturers never installed FinFET technology in China for geopolitical and IP reasons. SMIC in turn seems to expect a rather rapid ramp of its 14 nm node, as it anticipates the new manufacturing line will meaningfully contribute to its revenue before the end of the year.

According to SMIC, their 14 nm FinFET manufacturing technology was developed entirely in-house and is expected to significantly increase transistor density, increase performance, and lower power consumption of chips when compared to devices made using the company's 28 nm process that relies on planar transistors. Earlier this year it was expected that SMIC would start production of 14 nm chips already in the first half of 2019, so the firm seems to be a little behind the schedule. Nonetheless, an in-house FinFET process technology is quite a breakthrough for a relatively small company that puts it into a club with just five[*] other foundries with FinFET technologies.

Fin Field-Effect Transistor (FinFET).

[*] SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) would be joining the ranks of these five other companies with FinFET technology: TSMC, Samsung Electronics, Intel, Global Foundries, and SK Hynix.

Previously: China Lags Behind Other Countries in Semiconductor Manufacturing

Original Submission