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AthanasiusKircher writes:

Recent reporting and discussions here about "trolls" and the "culture of hate" (both con and pro) have repeatedly broached the topic of what appropriate limits to free expression might be.

Dean of Students John Ellison at the University of Chicago has taken a stand on the issue in a letter welcoming new students. He writes:

While some have voiced support for Ellison's commitment to free expression (with Robby Soave at Reason encouraging readers to give the dean "a round of applause"), others are concerned about the implications of his message. L.V. Anderson at Slate agrees with much of the letter's content promoting "civility and mutual respect," but finds the last paragraph quoted above to be "weird" and unsettling:

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Striking Bolivian miners have reportedly tortured and killed the deputy interior minister, Rodolfo Illanes, who was sent to speak to protesters:

Bolivian Deputy Interior Minister Rodolfo Illanes was beaten to death after he was kidnapped by striking mineworkers on Thursday, the government said, and up to 100 people have been arrested as authorities vowed to punish those responsible. "At this present time, all the indications are that our deputy minister Rodolfo Illanes has been brutally and cowardly murdered," Minister of Government Carlos Romero said in broadcast comments.

He said Illanes had gone to talk to protesters earlier on Thursday in Panduro, around 160 km (100 miles) from the capital, La Paz, but was intercepted and kidnapped by striking miners. The government was trying to recover his body, Romero said, in a case that has shocked Bolivians. Defence Minister Reymi Ferreira broke down on television as he described how Illanes, appointed to his post in March, had apparently been "beaten and tortured to death".

[...] Protests by miners in Bolivia demanding changes to laws turned violent this week after a highway was blockaded. Two workers were killed on Wednesday after shots were fired by police. The government said 17 police officers had been wounded. The National Federation of Mining Cooperatives of Bolivia, once strong allies of leftist President Evo Morales, began what they said would be an indefinite protest after negotiations over mining legislation failed. Protesters have been demanding more mining concessions with less stringent environmental rules, the right to work for private companies, and greater union representation.

Also at NPR, WSJ, and BBC (and in Spanish).

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takyon writes:

Cisco is releasing patches for an exploit disclosed by an entity calling itself the Shadow Brokers:

Cisco Systems has started releasing security patches for a critical flaw in Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewalls targeted by an exploit linked to the U.S. National Security Agency. The exploit, dubbed ExtraBacon, is one of the tools used by a group that the security industry calls the Equation, believed to be a cyberespionage team tied to the NSA.

ExtraBacon was released earlier this month together with other exploits by one or more individuals who use the name Shadow Brokers. The files were provided as a sample of a larger Equation group toolset the Shadow Brokers outfit has put up for auction.

[...] There is a second Equation exploit in the Shadow Brokers leak that targets ASA software. It is called EpicBanana and exploits a vulnerability that Cisco claims was patched back in 2011 in version 8.4(3). Nevertheless, the company published a new advisory for the flaw in order to increase its visibility. A third exploit, BenignCertain, affects legacy Cisco PIX firewalls that are no longer supported. Cisco investigated the exploit and said only versions 6.x and earlier of the PIX software are affected. Users who still have such devices on their networks should make sure they're running software versions 7.0 and later, which are not affected.

There is speculation that the hacks are actually leaks from a "second (third?) Snowden". A linguistic analysis of the "broken English" used by the Shadow Brokers determined that the text was written by someone pretending to not know English.

Previously:
"The Shadow Brokers" Claim to Have Hacked NSA
NSA 'Shadow Brokers' Hack Shows SpyWar With Kremlin is Turning Hot

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A Vice Chairman at a large South Korean conglomerate ("chaebol") has died in an apparent suicide:

A senior executive of South Korea's Lotte Group has died, an official at the country's fifth-largest family-run conglomerate told Reuters on Friday, amid a sweeping criminal probe into the business. The official, who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said a police investigation into the death of Lee In-won, a Lotte Group Vice Chairman, was underway. He did not elaborate. Yonhap News Agency [...] [adds] that a suicide note was found in the executive's car.

Also at Bloomberg. So what's happening over at Lotte? Alleged tax evasion:

Prosecutors raided additional offices of Lotte Group's policy headquarters Thursday [August 4th] in order to gain evidence regarding alleged tax evasion by group founder Shin Kyuk-ho, officials said Friday. Shin is now suspected of evading roughly 600 billion won ($540 million) of gift taxes while transferring assets to his common-law wife Seo Mi-kyung and their daughter Shin Yoo-mi.

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

CNN reports that a U.S. Navy patrol craft fired warning shots at an Iranian vessel:

A US Navy patrol craft fired three warning shots at an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps boat Wednesday after US officials said it had harassed that patrol craft, CNN has learned. Another US patrol craft and a Kuwaiti Navy ship were also harassed in the incident, which took place in the northern end of the Persian Gulf.

At one point, the Iranian boat came within 200 yards of one of the US Navy boats. When it failed to leave the area after the Navy had fired flares and had a radio conversation with the Iranian crew, the US officials said, the USS Squall fired three warning shots. Following standard maritime procedures, the Navy fired the three shots into the water to ensure the Iranians understood they needed to leave the immediate area.

Also at Reuters.

The incident occurred a day after four Iranian vessels made a "high speed intercept" of a U.S. warship.

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butthurt writes:

The Washington Post reports about research on a galaxy called Dragonfly 44 which is believed to contain about the same mass as the Milky Way but is only 1% as bright. The low ratio of luminosity to mass is characteristic of ultra diffuse galaxies (UDGs). The galaxy is believed to lie 101 megaparsecs (329 million light years) away. The researchers offer explanations for the dimness of UDGs:

"AGN" is short for active galactic nucleus — where matter falls into a supermassive black hole. The citation is to "Dwarf Galaxies with Optical Signatures of Active Massive Black Holes" (open, DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/775/2/116) (DX).

Previously: Huge Population of "Ultra-Dark Galaxies" Discovered

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Donald "D.A." Henderson, a physician, educator, and epidemiologist who led the World Health Organization's campaign to eradicate smallpox, died at 87 years of age on Aug. 19, 2016.

Smallpox was responsible for an estimated 300–500 million deaths during the 20th century. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year.

After vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox in 1979. Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest, which was declared eradicated in 2011.

Key to the eradication effort, given an insufficient supply of vaccine to inoculate everyone, was "surveillance-containment":

This technique entailed rapid reporting of cases from all health units and prompt vaccination of household members and close contacts of confirmed cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Henderson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox

2014 Interview: http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-special-henderson/ or use YouTube.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Twitter users aren't the only ones checking the microblogging service for important updates. Android malware is starting to do so, too.

One maker of Android malware is using Twitter to communicate with infected smartphones, according to security firm ESET.

The company discovered the feature in a malicious app called Android/Twitoor. It runs as a backdoor virus that can secretly install other malware on a phone.

Typically, the makers of Android malware control their infected smartphones from servers. Commands sent from those servers can create a botnet of compromised phones and tell the malware on all the phones what to do.

The makers of Android/Twitoor decided to use Twitter instead of servers to communicate with the infected phones. The malware routinely checks certain Twitter accounts and reads the encrypted posts to get its operating commands.

Lukas Stefanko, an ESET researcher, said in a Wednesday blog post that this was an innovative approach.  It removes the need to maintain a command and control server, and the communications with the Twitter accounts can be hard to discover.

"It's extremely easy for the crooks to re-direct communications to another freshly created account," he said.

[...] So far, Android/Twitoor has been found downloading versions of mobile banking malware to users' phones.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The World Socialist Web Site reports

The management of Volkswagen in Germany, [Europe's largest automaker, with around 620,000 employees,] has taken a hard-line stance in a dispute with two suppliers and accepted a partial halt in [vehicle] production.

[...] Almost 30,000 workers face the threat of forced time off or reduced hours. [...] The company has applied for reduced working hours at the federal labour agency, which means employees will receive reduced-hours pay, meaning significant wage reductions.

[...] Suppliers ES Automobilguss and Car Trim allege VW has forced them to halt deliveries by ending a development cooperation programme worth half a billion euros without notice or cause. Both firms are demanding VW pay €58 million in compensation. They describe the crisis at VW as self-made. "VW was offloading its own problems onto the supply industry" and was clearly exploiting "its dominant market position against suppliers", they claimed. An employee meeting took place at ES on [August 22].

ES specialises in transmissions, while Car Trim focuses on internal fittings like car seats.

[...] The conflict between VW and Prevent [Group, which overarches the two suppliers and others,] is the outcome of the years-long process of cutting costs by shifting production from the major automakers to suppliers. Much of production has been outsourced to Eastern Europe, where wages are many times lower than those in Germany.

Previous:
Volkswagen Sets Aside 6.5 Billion Euros for Fines and Recalls
Activist-Comedian Interrupts VW Exec's Geneva Presentation to Install "Cheat Box"

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientific literature often mis-names genes and boffins say Microsoft Excel is partly to blame.

"Automatic conversion of gene symbols to dates and floating-point numbers is a problematic feature of Excel software," In a paper titled write Mark Ziemann, Yotam Eren and Assam El-OstaEmai of the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute in Australia in a paper titled Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature .

Among the things Excel does to gene names include changing "SEPT2", the name of a gene thought to have a role in proper formation of cell structure, to the date "2-Sep". The "MARCH1" gene becomes "1-Mar".

The paper notes that this is a problem that's been know for over a decade, but one which remains pervasive. The trio studied 35,175 Excel tables attached to 3,597 scientific papers published between 2005 and 2015 and found errors in "987 supplementary files from 704 published articles. Of the selected journals, the proportion of published articles with Excel files containing gene lists that are affected by gene name errors is 19.6 per cent."

It's not hard to change the default format of Excel cell to avoid changes of this sort: you can get it done in a click or three. Much of the problem in these papers is therefore between scientists' ears, rather than within Excel itself. The paper's silent on why genetic scientists, who The Register will assume are not short of intelligence, have been making Excel errors for years.

This article focuses on errors resulting from auto-correction of gene names; certainly other subject areas have suffered from similarly 'helpful' software. What hilarious and/or cringe-worthy 'corrections' have YOU seen?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Deep Space Industries intends to fly a small "Prospector" spacecraft to an asteroid by 2020:

Deep Space Industries announced today its plans to fly the world's first commercial interplanetary mining mission. Prospector-1™ will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid, and investigate the object to determine its value as a source of space resources. This mission is an important step in the company's overall plans to harvest and supply in-space resources to support the growing space economy.

[...] Recently, Deep Space Industries and its partner, the government of Luxembourg, announced plans to build and fly Prospector-X™, an experimental mission to low-Earth orbit that will test key technologies needed for low-cost exploration spacecraft. This precursor mission is scheduled to launch in 2017. Then, before the end of this decade, Prospector-1 will travel beyond Earth's orbit to begin the first space mining exploration mission. [...] Prospector-1 is a small spacecraft (50 kg when fueled) that strikes the ideal balance between cost and performance. In addition to the radiation-tolerant payloads and avionics, all DSI spacecraft use the Comet™ water propulsion system, which expels superheated water vapor to generate thrust. Water will be the first asteroid mining product, so the ability to use water as propellant will provide future DSI spacecraft with the ability to refuel in space.

Coverage at Ars Technica and Space News.

Previously:
Planetary Resources Signs Investment Agreement With Luxembourg.

Original Submission

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/fbi-uncovered-at-least-14900-more-documents-in-clinton-email-investigation/2016/08/22/36745578-6643-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html

The FBI's year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server uncovered 14,900 emails and documents from her time as secretary of state that had not been disclosed by her attorneys, and a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned.

Justice Department lawyers said last week that the State Department would review and turn over Clinton's work-related emails to a conservative legal group. The records are among "tens of thousands" of documents found by the FBI in its probe and turned over to the State Department, Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson said Monday in court.

The 14,900 Clinton documents are nearly 50 percent more than the roughly 30,000 emails that Clinton's lawyers deemed work-related and returned to the department in December 2014.

Lawyers for the State Department and Judicial Watch, the legal group, are negotiating a plan for the release of the emails in a civil public records lawsuit before U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington.

In a statement after a hearing at the U.S. district courthouse in Washington, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said the group was pleased that Boasberg rejected the department's proposal to begin releasing documents weekly on Oct. 14, ordering it instead to prioritize Clinton's emails and to return to court Sept. 22 with a new plan.

"We're pleased the court accelerated the State Department's timing," Fitton said. "We're trying to work with the State Department here, but let's be clear: They have slow-walked and stonewalled the release of these records. They've had many of them since July 25 ... and not one record has yet been released, and we don't understand why that's the case."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists have recreated heteroplasmy by producing embryos with both maternal and paternal mitochondrial DNA:

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from the University of Missouri has succeeded in creating embryos with "heteroplasmy," or the presence of both maternal and paternal mitochondrial DNA. This new innovation will allow scientists to study treatments for mitochondrial diseases in humans as well as the significance of mitochondrial inheritance for livestock.

When parents pass along their genes to their children, most of the DNA from the mother and father is evenly divided. However, children only receive one type of [mitochondrial DNA] from their mothers, while the fathers' mitochondrial DNA is naturally removed from the embryos. Peter Sutovsky, a professor of reproductive physiology at Mizzou and lead author Won-Hee Song, a doctoral candidate in the Mizzou College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, have found a way to prevent this paternal mitochondrial DNA removal process in pig embryos, thus creating embryos with "heteroplasmy."

"As many as 4,000 children are born in the U.S. every year with some form of mitochondrial disease, which can include poor growth, loss of muscle coordination, learning disabilities and heart disease," Sutovsky said. "Some scientists believe some of these diseases may be caused by heteroplasmy, or cells possessing both maternal and paternal mitochondrial DNA. We have succeeded in creating this condition of heteroplasmy within pig embryos, which will allow scientists to further study whether paternal heteroplasmy could cause mitochondrial diseases in humans."

Autophagy and ubiquitin–proteasome system contribute to sperm mitophagy after mammalian fertilization (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1605844113) (DX)

Previous/Related:
Project to Repair Mitochondria Funded
Three-Person Babies Could Be Possible in Two Years
U.S. Panel Gives Tentative Endorsement to Three-Person IVF
Newcastle University Study Verifies Safety of Three-Person IVF

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Elysium Health is selling an anti-aging pill for roughly $60/month:

Basis and the other pills that will likely follow it in the next five to ten years are the fruits of a scientific backwater that has been working toward this moment for a quarter-century. These drugs and supplements are aimed to be a hack of the heretofore most intractable condition of human existence, the invisible countdown clock with which evolution has equipped our bodies. They just might postpone the onset of the most common afflictions of our dotage, from cancer to heart disease to diabetes to Alzheimer's. We won't necessarily enjoy longer maximum life spans (though that's a possibility), but we very well might enjoy longer health spans, meaning the vital, productive chunk of our lives before degeneration kicks in.

[...] [Any] qualms I might have had about whether this was simply next-generation snake oil faded in the halo of the six Nobel Prize winners who sit on Elysium's scientific advisory board. Most impressively, the company's co-founder is Leonard Guarente, who heads MIT's aging center and is one of the pioneers of aging science, a contender for the Nobel Prize should geroscience ever get a nod from the Swedish academy.

[...] The theory behind Basis is in part an evolution of the theory behind drinking red wine: One of its main ingredients, pterostilbene, is considered a more powerful version of resveratrol, with a more convincing track record in the lab. As for NR [nicotinamide riboside], by increasing NAD [nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide] levels in our cells, it in turn appears to reverse mitochondrial decay. In a 2013 scientific paper, Sinclair announced that a single week of injections of an NAD precursor into elderly mice had made their muscles look young again, though without restoring their strength. Both compounds aim to activate sirtuins, and the hope is that together they might amplify what each does individually.

Here's an older article about the NAD booster approach, as well as the 2013 study (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.11.037) (DX) by David Sinclair and colleagues published in Cell. Pterostilbene at Wikipedia.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A Baidu voice recognition program has outclassed humans that were typing using smartphone on-screen keyboards:

Computers have already beaten us at chess, Jeopardy and Go, the ancient board game from Asia. And now, in the raging war with machines, human beings have lost yet another battle — over typing. Turns out voice recognition software has improved to the point where it is significantly faster and more accurate at producing text on a mobile device than we are at typing on its keyboard. That's according to a new study by Stanford University, the University of Washington and Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant. The study ran tests in English and Mandarin Chinese.

Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng says this should not feel like defeat. "Humanity was never designed to communicate by using our fingers to poke at a tiny little keyboard on a mobile phone. Speech has always been a much more natural way for humans to communicate with each other," he says.

Researchers set up a competition, pitting a Baidu program called Deep Speech 2 against 32 humans, ages 19 to 32. The humans took turns saying and then typing short phrases into an iPhone — like "buckle up for safety" and "wear a crown with many jewels" and "this person is a disaster." They found the voice recognition software was three times faster.

Speech Is 3x Faster than Typing for English and Mandarin Text Entry on Mobile Devices (abstract) and full paper (pdf).

Original Submission