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Phoenix666 writes:

By adapting a technology used to build electronic components, researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new way to manufacture medication. The technique could eventually allow hospitals, pharmacies and doctor's offices to print drugs on demand, mixing different medications into one easy-to-administer dose.

[...] This latest technique was adapted from organic vapor-jet printing, a method of manufacturing electronics by depositing fine crystals of a material onto a substrate surface. To print their medication, the Michigan researchers heated a powdered form of the active pharmaceutical ingredient until it evaporated, where it then combines with a heated inert gas. That mixture is then funnelled through a nozzle and deposited onto a chilled surface, where it cools to form a thin crystalline film.

[...] In the long run, the technique could also allow medications to be mixed and matched, before being printed on-site in pharmacies and hospitals onto a delivery device like a dissolvable strip or microneedle patch.

[...] The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Reality Winner, a former NSA contractor accused of leaking a document to The Intercept, has had her interrogation by the FBI detailed in a transcript filed by federal prosecutors:

A National Security Agency contractor accused of leaking a classified report on Russian hacking aimed at the 2016 election told FBI agents she smuggled the document out of a high security intelligence facility in her pantyhose. That and other details appear in a transcript federal prosecutors filed in court Wednesday detailing the interrogation of 25-year-old linguist Reality Winner by the FBI as they carried out a search warrant at her home in June.

[...] Winner appears to say she believed the contents of the report — which described Russian spearfishing cyberattacks aimed at U.S. voter registration databases — should be in the public debate. "I saw the article and was like, I don't understand why this isn't a thing," she said. "It made me very mad ... I guess I just didn't care about myself at that point. ... Yeah, I screwed up royally."

[...] The transcript hints at possible political motivations for the leak. Winner says she objected to her workplace tuning the TV to Fox News. She also had a signed photo of CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper, although she said the signature was fake. "I wasn't trying to be a Snowden or anything," Winner said, referring to NSA leaker Edward Snowden and his massive disclosures of details on U.S. government surveillance. "I guess it's just been hard at work because ... I've filed formal complaint about them having Fox News on, you know? Uh, at least, for God's sake, put Al Jazeera on, or a slideshow with people's pets. I've tried anything to get that changed." Despite Winner's statement to the FBI agents, prosecutors say that in a Facebook chat in March with her sister, Winner said she was on the "side" of both Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

On pages 4-5 of the transcript, the FBI agents discuss letting Reality Winner (RW) put groceries in her fridge and leash up her dog. Do they teach them that technique at the Academy?

Previously: Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A recent study, led by Professor Kyoung Jin Choi in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at UNIST has introduced a new advanced energy harvesting system, capable of generating electricity by simply being attached to clothes, windows, and outer walls of a building.

This new device is based on a temperature difference between the hot and cold sides. The temperature difference can be increased as high as 20.9 °C, which is much higher than the typical temperature differences of 1.5 to 4.1 °C of wearable thermoelectric generators driven by body heat. The research team expects that their wearable solar thermoelectric generator proposes a promising way to further improve the efficiency by raising the temperature difference.

[...] The research team solved this low temperature difference faced by conventional wearable TEGs by introducing a local solar absorber on a PI substrate. The solar absorber is a five-period Ti/MgF₂ superlattice, in which the structure and thickness of each layer was designed for optimal absorption of sunlight. This has increased the temperature difference as high as 20.9 °C, which is the highest value of all wearable TEGs reported to date.

It will be sad when iPhone users don't camp out around outlets anymore.

Yeon Soo Jung, Dea Han Jeong, Sung Bum Kang, Fredrick Kim, Myeong Hoon Jeong, Ki-Suk Lee, Jae Sung Son, Jeong Min Baik, Jin-Sang Kim, Kyoung Jin Choi. Wearable solar thermoelectric generator driven by unprecedentedly high temperature difference. Nano Energy, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2017.08.061

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at the University of South Australia have developed drones that can remotely measure heart and breathing rates.

Image-processing systems combined with specially created algorithms allow the drones to detect vital signs in several people at once, while they are moving.

The drones could be deployed in nursing homes, on hospital wards and in war zones.

One expert said it could be "game-changing".

The system detects movements in human faces and necks in order to accurately source heart and breathing rates. In trials, the drones took measurements from a distance of three metres but could be advanced to take them from much further away.

"The drone will single out each person automatically and provide a trace for each individual as to where their heart rate and breathing rate is," said project supervisor Prof Javaan Chahl.

Hovering drones will be a welcome addition to emergency rooms and nursing homes.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Between the lack of air and the constant bombardment of radiation and micrometeorites, humans will need some serious shelter before we can feel at home on the Moon or Mars. While inflating or 3D printing our houses could be one way to pack light for the long trip, the most efficient method might just be to move into the natural shelter that's already there. Now astronomers have systematically analyzed possible lava tubes on the Moon and Mars, and found they may be just what Red Planet realtors are looking for.

Living underground is the easiest way to escape the harsh conditions of the lunar or Martian surface, and scientists have already found a few candidates. NASA has found hundreds of deep pits in the pock-marked rock of the Moon that could make good hidey-holes from the elements, and there's evidence of sprawling networks of lava tubes below the surface.

Don't they realize this has been proven to be a bad idea?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Running on Rays of Light and Off-the-Shelf Hardware

We have previously looked at how to make a wireless device live for years on one tiny coin cell battery. This time we up the game and make it live forever, using solar power and off-the-shelf hardware.

We build a prototype of our device and go through the technical details involved in designing for solar power. We use off-the-shelf hardware running the latest version of the Thingsquare ultra low-power software. Light does not provide a lot of power, so we need software that can make the most of it.

[...] There are many situations in which we would like a wireless network that lasts forever:

• Large-scale vineyard monitoring: keeping track of the vines that make up fine wines
• Checking up on those organic crops: believe it or not, agriculture is all about data
• Big city life: cities have parking spaces, trash cans, bus stops, trains and other urban necessities that need to be kept track of
• The great outdoors: knowing where cattle and livestock live their lives means farmers can save money

Sounds like a great project.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

More than a week after it said most people would be eligible to enroll in a free year of its TrustedID identity theft monitoring service, big three consumer credit bureau Equifax has begun sending out email notifications to people who were able to take the company up on its offer. But in yet another security stumble, the company appears to be training recipients to fall for phishing scams.

Some people who signed up for the service after Equifax announced Sept. 7 that it had lost control over Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other sensitive data on 143 million Americans are still waiting for the promised notice from Equifax. But as I recently noted on Twitter, other folks have received emails from Equifax over the past few days, and the messages do not exactly come across as having emanated from a company that cares much about trying to regain the public's trust.

[...] the email purports to have been sent from trustedid.com, a domain that Equifax has owned for almost four years. However, Equifax apparently decided it was time for a new — and perhaps snazzier — name: trustedidpremier.com.

The [above-pictured] message says it was sent from one domain, and then asks the recipient to respond by clicking on a link to a completely different (but confusingly similar) domain.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-25/nsa-targeted-106-000-foreigners-in-spy-program-up-for-renewal

The U.S. National Security Agency conducted targeted surveillance over the past year against 106,000 foreigners suspected of being involved in terrorism and other crimes, using powers granted in a controversial section of law that's set to expire at the end of this year.

The number of foreigners targeted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rose from 94,000 in fiscal year 2015, according to U.S. intelligence officials, who asked not to be identified discussing the information. The program lets agencies collect the content of emails and other communications from suspected foreign criminals operating outside the U.S., but it has become a flash point with some lawmakers for potential infringement of Americans' constitutional rights.

Congress has to decide by year-end whether to renew the NSA's power under Section 702, a program that came to light when former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed classified government documents in 2013. While the intelligence officials cautioned that changes would limit its effectiveness, lawmakers including Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, have indicated they'll seek adjustments to ensure against abuses.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Hugh Hefner, Playboy Magazine Founder and Star of Girls Next Door, Dies at 91

"Hugh M. Hefner, the American icon who in 1953 introduced the world to Playboy magazine and built the company into one of the most recognizable American global brands in history, peacefully passed away today [September 27] from natural causes at his home, The Playboy Mansion, surrounded by loved ones," a rep for the Playboy Enterprises founder said in a statement to PEOPLE.

[...] "My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom. He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognizable and enduring in history. He will be greatly missed by many, including his wife Crystal, my sister Christie and my brothers David and Marston, and all of us at Playboy Enterprises," said Cooper Hefner, his son and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.

By putting up his furniture as collateral for a loan and borrowing the rest from family and friends, Mr. Hefner published the very first issue of Playboy in December of 1953, which featured a nude Marilyn Monroe.

The same year, Hefner launched media and lifestyle company Playboy Enterprises, Inc., on which he served as a board member until the time of his death.

[...] The magazine became known for its articles as well as the beautiful women that graced its pages, with Hefner asking some of the world's greatest and most progress literary figures to write for him including, Hunter S. Thompson, John Updike, Ian Fleming, Joseph Heller, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac and Kurt Vonnegut.

Also at The New York Times, NPR, BBC (obituary), The Guardian, and Reuters.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Brain involvement in Duchenne muscular dystrophy was described by Duchenne de Boulogne himself in 1886. It has been largely ignored.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal genetic disorder that predominantly affects male children. There is no cure. Besides severe muscle wasting, the disease also affects the brain.

DMD is caused by DNA mutations that result in the body-wide loss of a protein called dystrophin. Dystrophin is essential for muscle strength and function. It acts like a shock absorber, without it muscles become weak and break down. Most affected children will be in wheelchairs by their early teens with death typically occurring in early adulthood because of complications with the heart or lungs.

Duchenne is first and foremost a muscle disorder, but the intelligence of individuals with the disease is lower than the general population. Intellectual disability, epilepsy, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are also common. Mounting evidence links these symptoms to the loss of dystrophin in the brain. But given the more urgent need to treat the muscles, brain involvement in DMD has been ignored.

So what does dystrophin do in the brain and why is its loss linked to cognitive and behavioural problems? We understand very little. Unlike muscle, the brain produces several different types, or isoforms, of dystrophin. These are found in different regions of the brain, and in different parts of the cell. Proposed functions are therefore diverse and range from a scaffolding function in the nucleus to roles in synapse activity.

[...] The lack of understanding of how dystrophin functions in the brain is a major roadblock to the development of effective whole-body treatments. There is an urgent need for fundamental research in this area. My postgraduate research student, Amanda Ash, and I have this month launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise awareness and funds to help kick start such work. The platform, Experiment, recently surpassed £1,000,000 in total funding raised. Scientists using the platform have been featured in The Economist, Forbes, Nature, and The New York Times.

https://thebiochemistblog.com/2017/09/07/what-is-a-muscle-protein-doing-in-the-brain/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Twitter will allow some users to post up to 280 characters in a single tweet:

Twitter is experimenting with doubling the number of characters users can include in a single tweet, the company announced on Tuesday.

Some users will be able to write messages with 280 characters, double the normal 140-character limit, as the social media site considers whether to launch the feature more widely.

"This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence!" Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote in a single tweet — something that would have been impossible before the limit was doubled to 280.

The change should benefit ASCII/Latin-1 users the most:

Character limit is a source of frustration for people tweeting in English, but not, for example, in Japanese, Twitter said. The company said its research shows that 9 percent of all tweets in English hit 140 characters, while only 0.4 percent in Japanese reach the maximum.

Is Twitter throwing things at the wall to try to avoid becoming the next Myspace?

Twitter has been struggling to invigorate user growth and advertising revenue while investors are questioning whether the San Francisco-based company can find a long-term growth path. Twitter reported 328 million active monthly users in the second quarter, unchanged from the previous period. Shares have declined 15 percent in the two months since then, closing at $16.59 Tuesday in New York.

It was already possible for tweets to go over the limit due to the way URLs are counted, and @replies not being counted towards the character limit.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The latest version of Apple's macOS operating system, macOS High Sierra, has been released. If you have upgraded your system already, how did the upgrade go? Did you encounter any problems? If you have not yet updated, why have you chosen not to?

Original Submission

dx3bydt3 writes:

For the first time three gravitational wave detectors have recorded the same event. The detection was made by both LIGO and Advanced Virgo (which has just recently begun collecting data for the first time). From the news release:

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors. This is the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole system and the first significant gravitational-wave signal recorded by the Virgo detector, and highlights the scientific potential of a three-detector network of gravitational-wave detectors.

The three-detector observation was made on August 14, 2017 at 10:30:43 UTC. The two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Virgo detector, located near Pisa, Italy, detected a transient gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of two stellar mass black holes.

A paper about the event, known as GW170814, has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/government-announces-creation-of-national-space-agency-20170924-gynx3c.html

The federal government has announced that it will establish a new national agency to grow Australia's domestic space industry.

A working group chaired by former CSIRO chief Megan Clark will provide advice on the possible scope and structure of the agency to the federal government by the end of March next year.

Senator Michaelia Cash, the acting Minister of Industry, Innovation and Science, will on Tuesday tell the International Astronautical Congress that Australia will not have a NASA but an agency "right for our nation, right for our industry".

[...] The government made its announcement on the same day Labor outlined its own plans to boost Australia's space industry through the establishment of a space science and industry agency from 2020.

Opposition science spokesman Senator Kim Carr said Labor would also create a space industry innovation council and a space industry supplier advocate to bolster opportunities for investment.

"It is in Australia's national interest to build our own capabilities in these areas, not only to meet current and future needs, but also to mitigate the risk of these services becoming unavailable," he said.

[Australia's Canberra site is one of three that make up the Deep Space Network that NASA uses to communicate with spacecraft. See Deep Space Network Now for real-time information on which spacecraft each dish is communicating with. --martyb]

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1937

Researchers investigating the infection of hundreds of thousands of computers with a trojanized version of a popular software utility, CCleaner, have had a lucky break that gives greater insight into the hackers' goals.

The trojanized version of CCleaner gave unknown attackers the ability to potentially push secondary malware onto any infected system they desired. But the command-and-control server used by attackers had a small hard drive, and when it was recovered by Avast - with the help of law enforcement agencies - it was only storing three days' of attack data, listing 18 targeted companies.

Now, however, researchers at Czech anti-virus vendor Avast, which owns Piriform - the British developer of CCleaner - have gained access to a second server storing data that has revealed a list of additional computers that may have been hit with secondary malware by attackers.

Source: https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/researchers-get-lucky-break-in-ccleaner-malware-investigation-a-10332

Original Submission

martyb writes:

The Arecibo Observatory is a 309 meter wide radio telescope located in Puerto Rico. Not only can it be used for passive observing of radio frequencies, it has also been used as an active source — to bounce radar signals off planetary bodies — and then use its receiver to perform imaging studies.

Hurricane Maria caused tremendous damage across Puerto Rico — many people are still struggling to find food, water, and power. Though most of the potential damage was mitigated, the observatory did sustain millions of dollars in damages and it is possible that this may lead to its being closed: