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An Anonymous Coward writes:

I've been trying to make sense of the extreme precipitation that hit southern China in the past month, which has produced catastrophic flooding, particularly in cities and towns located along the Yangtze River.

El Niño refers to the periodic warming of surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean; this phenomenon occurs every few years and typically lasts about a year. (La Niña refers to the opposite, i.e. a periodic cooling). The occurrences have varied greatly in intensity. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has developed a metric called the Oceanic Nino Index (ONI), which denotes the deviation from the usual ocean surface temperature, as measured in a region ("Niño 3.4") centered at the equator in mid-Pacific longitudes. NOAA meterologists classify an El Niño period as weak, moderate, strong, or very strong (the last has been dubbed "Super El Niño" by the press), based on whether its peak ONI exceeds 0.5°C, 1.0°C, 1.5°C, or 2.0°C (ONI historical chart here).

A Super El Niño ended this past May, producing warm water that evaporates and circulates through the atmosphere by convection. During an El Niño, the normal Pacific trade winds are disrupted. But an obvious question is, why did extreme rainfall occur after the El Niño was over? It seems that the atmospheric turbulence continues for months after the ocean surface temperatures have abated.

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takyon writes:

Get ready for the operation of a new command in the name of American freedom. A Cyber Command:

The director of the National Security Agency says his first few dedicated cyber troops will be operational by early fall but the nation can't wait for the full unit to be ready. The military's Cyber Mission Force, which will eventually contain 6,200 people split into 133 teams, is the largest single unit dedicated to operating in computer networks. It's intended to both attack and defend computer systems around the world.

The U.S. Cyber Command ordered the creation of this dedicated cyber unit in 2012, and Adm. Michael Rogers, who is the director of the NSA and the Cyber Command, says the unit will reach what he called initial operating capability by Sept. 30. [...] According to the Department of Defense, about half of the Cyber Mission Force teams will be assigned to protecting military networks from cyber intrusions. Another 20 percent will be dedicated to combat missions. About 10 percent will be assigned to national mission teams to protect the country's infrastructure, and the remaining fifth will be assigned to "support teams."

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fork(2) writes:

While there's been so much news and commentary about the SolarCity/Tesla marrying up, there are a couple of non-buyout things of interest that have been happening with the solar energy company.

First, Science World Report reports that SolarCity has discovered its solar panels are performing better than expected.

SolarCity reported that solar power systems will last 35 years. It is 40 percent more than what the market was initially expecting.

SolarCity's primary finding is that the annual efficacy loss or power degradation of solar panels supplied is greater than 35 percent. It is lower compared to the industry-wide selection of non-SolarCity panels, SolarCity reported. The latter is expected to be of use for a period of 25 years only.

Second, the Providence Journal (Rhode Island) reports that:

As Governor Raimondo signed a package of bills Thursday that she said was intended to position Rhode Island as a leader in the renewable-energy sector, a California-based company that has been operating in the Ocean State since last summer said it intends to expand here.

SolarCity, one of the largest installers of residential solar panels in the nation, employs about 20 people in Coventry. The company could now expand that operations center to employ 75 to 200 people, as it does in other such centers in New England, said Leon Keshishian, a regional vice president who handles East Coast solar installations.

The new laws should pave the way for the company to install more residential solar systems in Rhode Island -- and hire more salespeople, installers and technicians, Keshishian said in an interview.

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

A veritable Who's Who of the tech industry have signed an open letter aggressively criticizing Donald Trump and his proposed presidential policies.

"We are inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, researchers, and business leaders working in the technology sector," the letter begins. "We are proud that American innovation is the envy of the world, a source of widely-shared prosperity, and a hallmark of our global leadership."

It then takes a nasty turn. "We believe in an inclusive country that fosters opportunity, creativity and a level playing field. Donald Trump does not. He campaigns on anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people, and a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline."

Among the 145 signatories--all signing "in a personal capacity"--are "Father of the internet" Vint Cerf, Woz, Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, several former and current Twitter execs and top executives from Slack, Yelp, Flickr, Qualcomm, Box, YouTube--even recent lawsuit recipient Shervin Pishevar of Hyperloop One, among many others.

Their main message: "We have listened to Donald Trump over the past year and we have concluded: Trump would be a disaster for innovation."

[...] Pollsters will no doubt be able to point to some segment of society that is likely to be persuaded by the letter not to vote for Trump, but the reality is that it serves to further highlight the apparent divide in American society between those who can't quite believe someone like Donald Trump is going to become a major party's presidential candidate, and those who think he represents a fresh and honest approach to the US' systemic problems.

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fork(2) writes:

ScienceDaily reports on a paper published in Environmental Research Letters in which "Scientists have specified how many deaths can be attributed to human-made climate change during an extreme heatwave in two European cities in 2003. They calculate that in Paris, the hottest city in Europe during the heatwave in summer 2003, 506 out of 735 summer deaths recorded in the French capital were due to a heatwave made worse by human-made climate change. The impact of climate change was less severe in London, with an additional 64 deaths out of a total of 315 heat-related deaths[...]"

The article continues:

The findings were generated by putting the results of climate model simulations of the 2003 heatwave into a health impact assessment of death rates. Using computer time donated by thousands of volunteers from the weather@home project, the researchers ran many thousands of high-resolution regional climate model simulations. They found that human-induced climate change increased the risk of heat-related deaths in central Paris by around 70% and by 20% in London.

The paper says the mortality rate attributed to human-made climate change in both these cities is notably high, but they are just two of a large number of cities that were affected by the heatwave that year. It suggests that the resulting total number of deaths across Europe due to climate change is likely to be substantially higher.

The paper looks at the three months June to August. It warns that no heatwave on record has ever had such a widespread effect on human health, as experienced during those months of 2003. Previous studies have attributed changes in heatwave frequency and severity to human-caused climate change, or demonstrated the effect of extreme heat on human mortality. This paper is the first to attribute the number of premature deaths to climate change during extreme heat waves.

[...] By starkly showing we can measure the toll in human lives that climate change is already taking through worsening extreme heat, this study shines a spotlight on our responsibilities as a society for limiting further damage,' adds co-author Dr Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, USA.

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fork(2) writes:

The Senate subcommittee on space, science and competitiveness met to discuss NASA on July 13 for the first time in over a year (the last was in March 2015). For clarity, the Senate's website describes this subcommittee as follows:

The Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness has responsibility for science, technology, engineering, and math research and development and policy; standards and measurement; and civil space policy. The Subcommittee conducts oversight on the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the National Technical Information Service. Advancements in science and technology are vital to the nation's continued economic security, innovation, and competitiveness.

From SpaceNews:

Both members and witnesses at the July 13 hearing of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee argued that NASA was making good progress implementing key elements of the human space exploration program developed in the aftermath of the 2010 decision by the Obama Administration to cancel the Constellation program.

"Human space exploration and innovation are integral to the mission of NASA," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the subcommittee, in his opening statement. "That's why this subcommittee will work to provide NASA with the security and stability that is necessary as the agency transitions from one administration to the next."

Cruz indicated he was particularly concerned about the Space Launch System heavy-lift vehicle and Orion crew spacecraft, the two largest elements of NASA's human spaceflight plans. "What are the lessons we can learn from the cancellation of the Constellation program and what steps should Congress take to ensure that the Space Launch System and Orion don't face the same fate in the years to come?" he asked later in the hearing.

[...] Other witnesses said a future decision to cancel SLS in particular could have international ramifications. "If we don't develop heavy lift, I assure you the Chinese will," said Mike Gold, vice president of Washington operations for Space Systems Loral. "If we do not develop this critical capacity, we will be behind China, who is making, frankly, all of the right decisions."

It's unclear what threats to NASA programs are posed by the next administration. Candidates from the two major parties have offered few, if any indication about what their space policy positions are. SpaceNews continues:

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/d.b.-cooper-hijacking

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/12/the-d-b-cooper-case-has-baffled-the-fbi-for-45-years-now-it-may-never-be-solved/

After one of "the longest and most exhaustive investigations" in FBI history, the D.B. Cooper skyjacking case has been closed, with no resolution. From the FBI Press Release:

Following one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations in our history, on July 8, 2016, the FBI redirected resources allocated to the D.B. Cooper case in order to focus on other investigative priorities. During the course of the 45-year NORJAK investigation, the FBI exhaustively reviewed all credible leads, coordinated between multiple field offices to conduct searches, collected all available evidence, and interviewed all identified witnesses. Over the years, the FBI has applied numerous new and innovative investigative techniques, as well as examined countless items at the FBI Laboratory. Evidence obtained during the course of the investigation will now be preserved for historical purposes at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

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butthurt writes:

On the occasion of amazon.com's Prime Day sale (now finished) The Guardian reported on the payments that operators of Web sites can receive for sending customers to the online retailer. "The Daily Mail, USA Today, The Telegraph, PC World and CNet" are shown as examples of news organisations that promoted the sale. The PC World page gave a 404 error when the submitter tried to retrieve it, and had not been saved on web.archive.org or archive.is.

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Thexalon writes:

The Columbia Journalism Review has an opinion piece on media company's attitudes towards ad blockers:
What media companies don't want you to know about ad blockers

As the author points out, the media companies want the ability to force users to turn off ad blockers, but also do not want to be liable for any malware and/or NSA spying that they serve up from their ad networks. This seems more than a tad unfair to users.

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butthurt writes:

The drug AR-12, otherwise known as OSU-03012⁴ (presumably for being discovered at the Ohio State University), which has been known for "more than ten years," has been licenced to the American company Arno Therapeutics¹ since 2008.² A company statement says²

In preclinical studies, AR-12 has shown efficacy in a wide range of tumor types, including breast, lung, prostate, pancreatic, brain and hematological cancers, as both a single-agent as well as in combination with leading oncology therapeutics.
[...]
We are currently conducting a multi-centered, two-part, Phase I clinical study of AR-12 in adult patients with advanced or recurrent solid tumors or lymphoma.

Animal testing has shown it has antiviral properties:¹

In animal models, AR12 doubled survival and suppressed liver damage caused by another hemorrhagic fever virus, effectively protected cells from Ebola and suppressed drug-resistant strains of HIV significantly more effectively than any of the approved anti-viral treatments.

The drug is believed to "reduce the expression of multiple chaperone proteins," including GRP78, which are "proteins which facilitate the viral life cycle."⁴

According to Paul Dent, a researcher who studies the drug,¹

Lots of bits of the chaperones change throughout evolution, but the key bits of the chaperones have often stayed almost the same. The result is that AR-12 can nobble malaria just like it can do to bacteria.

The company is said to be "planning its first clinical trial as an antiviral drug in Nottingham."¹

[1] The Australian, "Breakthrough cancer therapy destroys drug-resistant superbugs" [PAYWALLED] - Link to Google Cache [It isn't pretty, but it works - Ed.]

[2] Arno Therapeutics Web site

[3] ReliaWire, "Experimental cancer drug has been found to effectively treat Ebola and drug-resistant HIV"

[4] Journal of Cellular Physiology, "AR-12 Inhibits Multiple Chaperones Concomitant With Stimulating Autophagosome Formation Collectively Preventing Virus Replication" (DOI: 10.1002/jcp.25431)

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takyon writes:

The long-secret 28-29 pages of the 9/11 Commission's report have been released by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, albeit in a redacted form:

"According to various FBI documents and CIA memorandum, some of the September 11 hijackers, while in the United States, apparently had contacts with individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government," the report said, giving a catalog of alleged links.

They included reported contacts between Saudis in California and a statement that a man who was reportedly a Saudi Interior Ministry official stayed at the same Virginia hotel as one hijacker in September 2001.

Another section said that Omar al-Bayoumi, said to be a Saudi intelligence officer, met with two hijackers at a public place after they arrived in San Diego. It said, citing FBI files, that his salary rose to $3,700 a month from $465 two months after two of the hijackers arrived in California.

One page described how two of the hijackers asked flight attendants technical questions during a trip in 1999 from Phoenix to Washington to attend a party at the Saudi embassy. One tried twice to enter the cockpit. The plane made an emergency landing and the FBI investigated, but did not prosecute.

Here are the documents, available at Cryptome or House.gov. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says that the release of the documents is not an indication that the intelligence community agrees with their accuracy. Apparently, many of the leads mentioned have been investigated by the FBI and found to have no basis in fact.

So, SoylentNews readers, did the Saudis do 9/11?

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ticho writes:

An interesting blog post by Github's Infrastructure Engineering Management describes how they developed an iptables module to counter SYN floods, a type of attack they apparently deal with often.

In an effort to reduce the impact of these attacks, we began work on a series of additional mitigation strategies and systems to better prepare us for a future attack of a similar nature. Today we're sharing our mitigation for one of the attacks we received: synsanity, a SYN flood DDoS mitigation module for Linux 3.x.

[...] synsanity is inspired by SYNPROXY, in that it is an iptables module that sits inside iptables between the Linux TCP stack and the network card. The major difference is that rather than touch all packets, synsanity simply generates a SYN cookie identically to the way the Linux kernel would generate one if the SYN queue was full, and once it validates the ACK packet, it allows it through to the standard Linux SYN cookie code, which creates and completes the connection. After this point, synsanity doesn't touch any further packet in the TCP connection.

We believe that if you need to hide your mitigation to keep it secure, it's not designed well enough. The best and most secure tools are shared, open and subject to community scrutiny, so today we're open sourcing synsanity so that everyone can benefit from this work.

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HughPickens.com writes:

Folk wisdom has it that everyone has a doppelgänger; somewhere out there there's a perfect duplicate of you, with your mother's eyes, your father's nose and that annoying mole you've always meant to have removed. Now BBC reports that last year Teghan Lucas set out to test the hypothesis that everyone has a living double. Armed with a public collection of photographs of U.S. military personnel and the help of colleagues from the University of Adelaide, Lucas painstakingly analysed the faces of nearly four thousand individuals, measuring the distances between key features such as the eyes and ears. Next she calculated the probability that two peoples' faces would match.

What she found was good news for the criminal justice system, but likely to disappoint anyone pining for their long-lost double: the chances of sharing just eight dimensions with someone else are less than one in a trillion. Even with 7.4 billion people on the planet, that's only a one in 135 chance that there's a single pair of doppelgängers. Lucas says this study has provided much-needed evidence that facial anthropometric measurements are as accurate as fingerprints and DNA when it comes to identifying a criminal. "The use of video surveillance systems for security purposes is increasing and as a result, there are more and more instances of criminals leaving their 'faces' at a scene of a crime," says Ms Lucas. "At the same time, criminals are getting smarter and are avoiding leaving DNA or fingerprint traces at a crime scene."

But that's not the whole story. The study relied on exact measurements; if your doppelgänger's ears are 59 mm but yours are 60, your likeness wouldn't count. "It depends whether we mean 'lookalike to a human' or 'lookalike to facial recognition software'," says David Aldous. If fine details aren't important, suddenly the possibility of having a lookalike looks a lot more realistic. It depends on the way faces are stored in the brain: more like a map than an image. To ensure that friends and acquaintances can be recognized in any context, the brain employs an area known as the fusiform gyrus to tie all the pieces together. This holistic 'sum of the parts' perception is thought to make recognizing friends a lot more accurate than it would be if their features were assessed in isolation.

Using this type of analysis, and judging by the number of celebrity look-alikes out there, unless you have particularly rare features, you may have literally thousands of doppelgängers. "I think most people have somebody who is a facial lookalike unless they have a truly exceptional and unusual face," says Francois Brunelle has photographed more than 200 pairs of doppelgängers for his I'm Not a Look-Alike project. "I think in the digital age which we are entering, at some point we will know because there will be pictures of almost everyone online

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fork(2) writes:

SpaceX is set to launch its 9th Dragon Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-9) at 12:45am EDT (04:45am UDT) in the early morning of Monday July 18th. Weather forecasters are currently predicting a 90% chance of favorable weather for the launch.

According to The Verge , "The vehicle will carry around 3,800 pounds of fresh cargo and science experiments, including a space-based DNA sequencer called minION that will be used by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins to sequence DNA in space for the first time."

In addition, the craft will carry a new International Docking Adapter, or IDA, and its main purpose is to provide a port for spacecraft bringing astronauts to the station in the future.

Outfitted with a host of sensors and systems, the adapter is built so spacecraft systems can automatically perform all the steps of rendezvous and dock with the station without input from the astronauts. Manual backup systems will be in place on the spacecraft to allow the crew to take over steering duties, if needed.

"It's a passive system which means it doesn't take any action by the crew to allow docking to happen and I think that's really the key," said David Clemen Boeing's director of Development/Modifications for the space station.

The IDA stands about 42 inches tall and is 63 inches in diameter on the inside. Sensors and other fittings ring the perimeter of the adapter and give it an overall diameter of about 94 inches. Spacecraft flying to the station will use the sensors on the IDA to track to and help the spacecraft's navigation system steer the spacecraft to a safe docking without astronaut involvement.

Florida Today also reports:

About 10 minutes of liftoff, the first stage of the Falcon 9 will fly back to a landing pad near the tip of Cape Canaveral for the first time since December, when SpaceX achieved its first booster landing.

SpaceX has landed four boosters so far, including three at sea, in its effort to develop reusable rockets that could dramatically lower launch costs.

SpaceX has scheduled YouTube live streams of the CRS-9 Hosted Webcast and the CRS-9 Technical Webcast. The Press Kit with full details is available in html and as a pdf.

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Runaway1956 writes:

A new study of patients undergoing corneal transplants indicates that subtle differences between men and women may lead to poorer outcomes for a woman who has received a cornea from a male donor. The research, published today (14 July) in the American Journal of Transplantation, suggest that gender matching may be beneficial to potentially reduce the risk of failure and rejection in patients undergoing corneal transplantation.

In the study, a team led by Professor Stephen Kaye, from the University of Liverpool and the Royal Liverpool University Hospital; and Cathy Hopkinson from NHS (National Health Service) Blood and Transplant Service, investigated whether donor and recipient gender incompatibility influences corneal transplant rejection and failure up to five years post-transplant.

More than 18,000 patients were identified in the UK who had undergone a first corneal transplant. While over 80 per cent of all patients included still had a functioning graft at five years, a higher proportion of male to female transplants failed or were rejected during this time, when compared to gender-matched transplants.

For every 1,000 people transplanted with a gender-matched cornea, on average 180 will fail, compared to 220 for male-to-female mismatched grafts.

The effect of gender matching was especially evident in patients with Fuchs endothelial dystrophy which affects a thin layer of cells that line the back of the cornea, called corneal endothelial cells. These cells regulate the amount of fluid inside the cornea. An appropriate fluid balance in the cornea is necessary for clear vision

https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2016/07/14/corneal-transplants-men-women-dont-see-eye-eye/

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajt.13926/abstract;jsessionid=6950A3A34E70ECA93F46B07B891AD9CF.f01t02

Original Submission