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butthurt writes:

The National Geographic reports on a letter published in Current Biology (full article is paywalled). Archaeologists excavated what they call

a distinctive stone tool assemblage created by a non-human animal in the New World, the Brazilian bearded capuchin monkey (Sapajus libidinosus).

They say that the monkeys used the "stone hammers and anvils" to break open the nuts of cashews. The tools are believed to date from about 600 or 700 years ago. The authors say they are "the oldest non-human tools known outside of Africa."

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takyon writes:

A newly discovered ~700 km diameter dwarf planet, 2015 RR245, has a highly elliptical orbit that will take it closer to the Sun than Pluto in 2096 (Pluto will be over 48 AU away in 2096, compared to 34 AU at closest approach for RR245):

National Research Council of Canada's Dr JJ Kavelaars first sighted RR245 in February 2016 in the OSSOS images from September 2015."There it was on the screen— this dot of light moving so slowly that it had to be at least twice as far as Neptune from the Sun." said Bannister. The team became even more excited when they realized that the object's orbit takes it more than 120 times further from the Sun than Earth. The size of RR245 is not yet exactly known, as its surface properties need further measurement. "It's either small and shiny, or large and dull." said Bannister.

[...] After hundreds of years further than 12 billion km (80 astronomical units, AU) from the Sun, RR245 is travelling towards its closest approach at 5 billion km (34 AU), which it will reach around 2096. RR245 has been on its highly elliptical orbit for at least the last 100 million years.

[...] Previous surveys have mapped almost all the brighter dwarf planets. 2015 RR245 may be one of the last large worlds beyond Neptune to be found until larger telescopes, such as LSST, come online in the mid 2020s.

MPEC 2016-N67 : 2015 RR245.

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takyon writes:

Researchers at Northeastern University and the University of Southern California have published a paper (pdf) confirming findings by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that T-Mobile's "Binge On" scheme is simply throttling. The researchers also showed how the throttling lowered video quality while hurting the battery life of tested devices, due to the increased download times needed. But wait, there's more:

And they didn't stop there. They actually reverse-engineered the classifier T-Mobile uses to decide whether or not data should be zero-rated. In other words, they figured out exactly what parts of a data stream T-Mobile looks at to decide if a flow of packets should count against a customer's data cap or not, and which values triggered zero-rating. With that knowledge in hand, they also figured how to subvert the classifier into zero-rating any data—not just video streams.

There was one technical discrepancy between the researchers' findings and our findings from back in January. The researchers found that changing the "Content-Type" HTTP header from "video/mp4" to something else prevents T-Mobile from recognizing that a file is actually video, and thus causes Binge On not to throttle or zero-rate the file. Our test, on the other hand, showed that changing the file extension (and thus the Content-Type header) wasn't sufficient—T-Mobile still recognized the file as video and throttled it.

To figure out the source of the discrepancy, we ran our test again, and also provided a packet log of our test to the researchers. They confirmed our results, and also ran some different tests to explore further what was going on. Together, we realized that both of our results were correct. That's because in addition to matching against the "Content-Type" header, T-Mobile also scans the first response packet for the string "mp4." (This string was present in the video file we used for EFF's tests, since it's part of the headers of the file itself.) If either match is found, Binge On throttles the stream. Thus, our test with different headers did show throttling, since our file had the string "mp4" in it. And the researchers' test with different headers didn't show throttling, because the content payload in their test didn't include the magic string.

Previously: Why Free Services from Telecoms Can Be a Problem on the Internet
T-Mobile Throttles All Video Streams and Downloads to 1.5Mbps, EFF Says

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takyon writes:

A clinical trial using a T-cell based cancer treatment was put on hold on July 7th following three patient deaths. The deaths followed the addition of the chemotherapy drug fludarabine to the pre-conditioning regimen. Juno proposed that it should be allowed to continue with a different pre-conditioning drug, and the FDA has accepted and removed the clinical hold. Juno's shares rose nearly 30% following the news.

A scriptwalled Forbes article expands on the apparently lethal effect of fludarabine:

Bishop says that the culprit appears to be a new drug, the chemotherapy fludarabine, that Juno recently added to the trial, called ROCKET. In the CART treatment, patients are first given a chemo cocktail that kills their existing T-cells. This gives the new T-cell, genetically re-engineered to attack cancer, room to grow. Juno has previously presented work showing that adding a drug called fludarabine to the chemotherapy makes the CART cells take root faster. For this reason, JUNO decided to start adding fludarabine to patients partway through.

Except in this study, the combination of fludarabine and the JCAR015 cells seems to have proved lethal. Twenty patients have been enrolled in the study, with as many as 90 planned. Out of those, Harr says, only a minority have been treated with fludarabine. A first death occurred from cerebral edema with a patient treated with fludarabine, but Juno, the outside researchers running the trial, the data safety monitoring board charged with treating patients, and regulators did not think it was related to treatment. But then a second death from cerebral edema occurred last week in a patient who had been treated with fludarabine, leading the trial to be stopped, followed by a third death, also from cerebral edema.

Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, compared the clinical hold to others that were resolved in the past, such as one for the drug Paclitaxel (Taxol). Here's the original press release.

We've previously reported on Juno Therapeutics:

CAR T-Cells: Using Your Immune System to Cure Your Cancer

Excitement at New Cancer Treatment

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fork(2) writes:

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering whether to allow a commercial mobile-phone company to share a crucial, additional set of frequencies that NOAA uses for time-critical weather transmissions. In November 2012, the company which later evolved into Ligado filed a request to share the 1,675-1,680-MHz band.

Nature discusses the problem:

Commercial mobile-phone companies are already transmitting at slightly lower frequencies, the 1,670-1,675-MHz band -- a situation that has caused problems with NOAA data.

In a representative sample of GOES imagery taken between May and September 2015, the agency found that 3.6% of the data ­during that stream had been subject to interference. And in May of this year, NOAA clocked 30 events in which satellite transmissions had dropped out, either streaking or nearly obliterating the images. "We consider that to be unacceptable," Wissman says. [Al Wissman, chief of data management and continuity operations for NOAA's satellite and information service in Silver Spring, Maryland]

The article describes one event:

As Hurricane Patricia barrelled down on Mexico last October, forecasters at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grabbed as many satellite images as they could to track its progress. But at least one crucial shot failed to download. A 22 October image from the Geostationary Operational Environ­mental Satellite (GOES) system showed a black swathe -- no data -- across most of the Pacific Ocean.

"You couldn't even see the hurricane," says Al Wissman. "That's how devastated the imagery was."

takyon writes:

A federal judge has rejected evidence obtained through the warrantless use of Stingray IMSI catcher technology by the DEA:

A federal judge in New York State has pushed back against Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) use of Stingray data, saying the data it collected isn't admissible. Like a Maryland state judge, who ruled in 2015 that IMSI-catcher data needed warrants, US District Court judge William Pauley III has decided that technology can't be used to subvert America's Fourth Amendment.

His judgment, here, draws parallels with other cases that have treated privacy-invasive technologies as "unreasonable search". Past rulings on such matters have kiboshed heat detection through walls, for example, in the 15-year-old Kyllo case that began in 1992. "Absent a search warrant, the Government may not turn a citizen's cell phone into a tracking device," the judgment notes – adding that the Department of Justice seems to agree, since its internal policies now tell government agents to get a warrant before using such devices.

Also at Ars Technica, Reuters, and NYT.

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takyon writes:

Some of Juno's instruments have been successfully turned on, including the JunoCam, and a new view of Jupiter has been obtained from 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) away from the planet, showing the Great Red Spot and three of the gas giant's moons.

The best images of Jupiter will be taken on August 27th after the next flyby:

"This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter's extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "We can't wait to see the first view of Jupiter's poles."

[...] During its mission of exploration, Juno will circle the Jovian world 37 times, soaring low over the planet's cloud tops -- as close as about 2,600 miles (4,100 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno will probe beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

So take the image you see now with interest, and await imagery with over 1,000× the resolution.

Here's the main mission page, as well as a site that purports to allow voting on future observation points sometime in the near future.

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butthurt writes:

Science reports on the work of a heart researcher who has built a cyborg imitating a stingray. To a silicone framework are attached artificial muscles consisting of fibronectin. The "muscles" are controlled by heart cells taken from rat embryos; the cells have been genetically modified so that they are sensitive to light. By shining a beam of light, the researcher is able to guide the cyborg through "underwater obstacle courses."

Phototactic guidance of a tissue-engineered soft-robotic ray (open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4292)

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fork(2) writes:

Cancer biologists rely on cultured lines of cancer cells. But these cultured cells may not resemble the tumor they came from due genetic change over the years they multiply in labs. This results in situations where an experimental drug that may work well on a cancer cell line doesn't translate into a useful therapy for a patient.

Science reports that several US and European funding agencies are launching the Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI) which hopes to provide the research community with tumor cells that behave more like actual human tumors.

The project involves four groups: the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, Maryland; Cancer Research UK in London; the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K.; and the nonprofit Hubrecht Organoid Technology in Utrecht, the Netherlands, which was founded by Hans Clevers, a cancer researcher at the Hubrecht Institute.

The project will draw on new insights into how to make the mixture of cells from a human tumor grow outside the body. [...] HCMI will scale up production of these tissue-based human cancer models and share them with the community. NCI will fund the development of 600 models; the Sanger Institute and Cancer Research UK will create 200; and the Hubrecht Institute will produce 200 models as part of a 2- to 3-year pilot project. [...] Although the focus will be largely on common cancers, such as colon and pancreatic, NCI will try to include rare and childhood cancers too, says Louis Staudt, director of NCI's Center for Cancer Genomics.

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fork(2) writes:

Emma Pelton, a biologist with the Xerces Society, said, "Most children can identify one bug, and it's monarch butterflies." The majestic, six-legged butterflies, are generally grouped into two populations, eastern and western. Most who have ever seen it will agree that the migration of the eastern monarch population is one of the most awesome spectacles in nature as millions of butterflies travel thousands of miles to overwinter in Mexico.

A new study, which appears in the online journal Animal Migration (DOI: 10.1515/ami-2016-0003) strongly suggests that the wing structure of the migrating butterflies is strongly influenced by the migration itself.

From ScienceDaily:

The new study builds on a certain previous analysis that had shown migratory populations of monarchs tend to have larger wings than non-migratory populations, suggesting that migration acts to keep monarchs large. However, in that study the butterflies that had the smallest wings tended to be closer to Earth's equator. This left open the possibility that the populations differed because of Bergmann's rule, which is a general principle throughout the animal kingdom whereby animals living closer to the equator (with warmer climate) tend to be smaller than those living in colder locations away from the equator. To sort out which of these two possibilities is the cause of the wing variation, a group of researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, GA examined a larger collection of monarchs from around the globe and compared wing features of each population, migratory and non-migratory. They also looked for evidence that the wings corresponded to the latitude of the population, which would support Bergmann's rule.

In the end the researchers found no evidence that the wing differences followed Bergmann's rule, and instead they concluded that the main driver of the population differences was indeed the migration, as was found in the earlier work. It seems that the long-distance journey acts to weed out smaller monarchs each year, leaving only the biggest ones, which then go on to reproduce. In monarch populations that are sedentary, this selection does not happen.

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butthurt writes:

A.V. Club reports that British prime minister David Cameron, who is about to resign, was caught unawares singing to himself while a microphone was switched on. Observers have speculated on what song he was singing, whilst musicians have created remixes and other compositions based upon it.

Further coverage:

• The Independent
• The Independent
• The Sun
• The Telegraph

Previously: Theresa May Will be the UK's Next Prime Minister

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has roped in Facebook, according to the BBC:

An Israeli rights group is suing Facebook for $1bn on behalf of families of victims of Palestinian attacks. The Shurat Hadin group says Facebook violates the US Anti-Terrorism Act by allowing militant groups such as Hamas a platform for spreading violence. Hamas called the lawsuit an Israeli attempt to blackmail Facebook. The victims cited in the case are all American, including Taylor Force, 28, who was stabbed to death while visiting Israel in March. The others are dual Israeli-US nationals who died in attacks in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank between 2014 and 2016.

The suit, filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, argues the platform "knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas... facilitat(ing) this terrorist group's ability to communicate, recruit members, plan and carry out attacks, and strike fear in its enemies". Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, accused Israel of trying to turn it into a spy tool against Palestinians. He said some Israeli politicians and soldiers had "expressed pride at the killing of Palestinians" on Facebook and other social media.

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nitehawk214 writes:

For the first time, water clouds have been detected outside of the solar system. The body, a brown dwarf named WISE 0855, is only 7.2 light-years from Earth. It was studied from the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii for 13 nights.

Scientists discovered WISE 0855 in 2014, using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft. A later paper in 2014 (co-authored by Skemer) uncovered some evidence of water clouds in the object's atmosphere, based on limited photometric data (how bright the object is in specific light wavelengths).

[...] The team found water vapor and also confirmed the object's temperature, which is about minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius, or 250 kelvins). For comparison, the temperature at the top of Jupiter's clouds is about minus 225 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 143 degrees Celsius, or 130 kelvins).

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Runaway1956 writes:

A new research report reveals that popular wearable devices may leak information as you use them. Researchers discovered that the motions of your hands as you use PIN pads, which is continually and automatically recorded by your device, can be hacked in real time and used to guess your PIN with more than 90 percent accuracy within a few attempts.

Wearable devices -- Fitbits, Jawbones, Nike+, Apple Watches and the like -- are white-hot. The tech segment is already producing an estimated $14 billion in sales worldwide, and expected to more than double within four years, climbing to north of $30 billion.

But a new Stevens Institute of Technology research report reveals those cool wearables just may leak information as you use them. Stevens researchers discovered that the motions of your hands as you use PIN pads, which is continually and automatically recorded by your device, can be hacked in real time and used to guess your PIN with more than 90 percent accuracy within a few attempts. Electrical and computer engineering professor Yingying Chen and three of her graduate students carried out the tests in Stevens labs, assisted by Stevens alumnus Yan Wang Ph.D. '15, now a professor at Binghamton University.

"This was surprising, even to those of us already working in this area," says Chen, a multiple-time National Science Foundation (NSF) awardee. "It may be easier than we think for criminals to obtain secret information from our wearables by using the right techniques. "The Stevens team outfitted 20 volunteers with an array of fitness wristbands and smart watches, then asked them to make some 5,000 sample PIN entries on keypads or laptop keyboards while "sniffing" the packets of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) data transmitted by sensors in those devices to paired smartphones.

"There are two kinds of potential attacks here: sniffing attacks and internal attacks," explains Chen. "An adversary can place a wireless 'sniffer' close to a key-based security system and eavesdrop sensor data from wearable devices. Or, in an internal attack, an adversary accesses sensors in the devices via malware. The malware waits until the victim accesses a key-based security system to collect the sensor data."

[...]

"Further research is needed, and we are also working on countermeasures," concludes Chen, adding that wearables are not easily hackable -- but they are hackable.

I know what I'm buying for Christmas this year - for all my coworkers!

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jmorris writes:

Some more non-settled science, courtesy of The Ottawa Hospital:

Guess the old simple classification system of sorting all blood into a couple of types was too simple. Just because blood doesn't cause an instant life threatening reaction doesn't mean it is totally compatible.

And like any good science article, the conclusion is "more research is needed!"

Original Submission