Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password


Site News

Join our Folding@Home team:
Main F@H site
Our team page


Funding Goal
For 6-month period:
2022-07-01 to 2022-12-31
(All amounts are estimated)
Base Goal:
$3500.00

Currently:
$438.92

12.5%

Covers transactions:
2022-07-02 10:17:28 ..
2022-10-05 12:33:58 UTC
(SPIDs: [1838..1866])
Last Update:
2022-10-05 14:04:11 UTC --fnord666

Support us: Subscribe Here
and buy SoylentNews Swag


We always have a place for talented people, visit the Get Involved section on the wiki to see how you can make SoylentNews better.

What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:46 | Votes:100

posted by Fnord666 on Friday November 10 2017, @11:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the distracted++ dept.

Apple Is Ramping Up Work on AR Headset to Succeed iPhone

Apple Inc., seeking a breakthrough product to succeed the iPhone, aims to have technology ready for an augmented-reality [AR] headset in 2019 and could ship a product as early as 2020.

Unlike the current generation of virtual reality [VR] headsets that use a smartphone as the engine and screen, Apple's device will have its own display and run on a new chip and operating system, according to people familiar with the situation. The development timeline is very aggressive and could still change, said the people, who requested anonymity to speak freely about a private matter.

While virtual reality immerses the user in a digital world, augmented reality overlays images and data on the real one. The applications for AR are endless, from a basketball fan getting stats while watching a game to a mechanic streaming instructions on how to fix a specific piece of equipment. Apple isn't the only company working on the technology. Google, which drew derision for $1,500 smart glasses a few years ago, is developing a business-oriented variant. Startup Meta has developed a headset with a focus on education and medical uses.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook considers AR less isolating than VR and as potentially revolutionary as the smartphone. He has talked up the technology on Good Morning America and gives it as almost much attention during earnings calls as sales growth. "We're already seeing things that will transform the way you work, play, connect and learn," he said in the most recent call. "Put simply, we believe AR is going to change the way we use technology forever."

Apple declined to comment.

The operating system on the devices is reportedly called "rOS".

Also at CNBC, AppleInsider, and 9to5Mac (opinion).


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Friday November 10 2017, @09:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-river-runs-through-it dept.

Submitted via IRC for Sulla

A recent study paints a sobering picture about the state of our oceans.

According to the paper, published last month in Environmental Science and Technology, rivers deposit up to 4 million metric tonnes of plastic into the sea -- and about 95 per cent of that comes from just 10 waterways.

Previous studies suggested about 67 per cent of plastic in the oceans came from 20 rivers. For this study, researchers out of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Science used a larger data set to reach their findings, sampling from 79 sites along 57 rivers around the world.

Eight of the 10 rivers are in Asia. [...]

  • Yangtze River, Yellow Sea, Asia
  • Indus River, Arabian Sea, Asia
  • Yellow River (Huang He), Yellow Sea, Asia
  • Hai River, Yellow Sea, Asia
  • Nile, Mediterranean Sea, Africa
  • Meghna/Bramaputra/Ganges, Bay of Bengal, Asia
  • Pearl River (Zhujiang), South China Sea, Asia
  • Amur River (Heilong Jiang), Sea of Okhotsk, Asia
  • Niger River, Gulf of Guinea, Africa
  • Mekong River, South China Sea, Asia

Source: https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/ninety-five-percent-of-plastic-in-sea-comes-from-just-ten-rivers/89034/


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Friday November 10 2017, @07:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the brain-matters dept.

Stanford researchers develop a gel for growing large quantities of neural stem cells

[Sarah] Heilshorn described a solution to the dual challenges of growing and preserving neural stem cells in a state where they are still able to mature into many different cell types. The first challenge is that growing stem cells in quantity requires space. Like traditional farming, it is a two-dimensional affair. If you want more wheat, corn or stem cells, you need more surface area. Culturing stem cells, therefore, requires a lot of relatively expensive laboratory real estate, not to mention the energy and nutrients necessary to pull it all off.

The second challenge is that once they've divided many times in a lab dish, stem cells do not easily remain in the ideal state of readiness to become other types of cells. Researchers refer to this quality as "stemness." Heilshorn found that for the neural stem cells she was working with, maintaining the cells' stemness requires the cells to be touching.

Heilshorn's team was working with a particular type of stem cell that matures into neurons and other cells of the nervous system. These types of cells, if produced in sufficient quantities, could generate therapies to repair spinal cord injuries, counteract traumatic brain injury or cure some of the most severe degenerative disorders of the nervous system, like Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.

Heilshorn's solution involves the use of better materials in which to grow stem cells. Her lab has developed new polymer-based gels that allow the cells to be grown in three dimensions instead of two. This new 3-D process takes up less than 1 percent of the lab space required by current stem cell culturing techniques. And because cells are so tiny, the 3-D gel stack is just a single millimeter tall, roughly the thickness of a dime. "For a 3-D culture, we need only a 4-inch-by-4-inch plot of lab space, or about 16 square inches. A 2-D culture requires a plot four feet by four feet, or about 16 square feet," more than 100-times the space, according to first author Chris Madl, a recent doctoral graduate in bioengineering from Heilshorn's lab.

Maintenance of neural progenitor cell stemness in 3D hydrogels requires matrix remodelling (DOI: 10.1038/nmat5020) (DX)

Related: First Serotonin Neurons Made from Human Stem Cells
Scientists Develop Very Early Stage Human Stem Cell Lines for the First Time
Millions of Functional Human Cells Can be Created in Days With OPTi-OX


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Friday November 10 2017, @06:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the C,-C-Rust,-C-Rust-Go,-Go-Rust-Go! dept.

In which ESR pontificates on the future while reflecting on the past.

I was thinking a couple of days ago about the new wave of systems languages now challenging C for its place at the top of the systems-programming heap – Go and Rust, in particular. I reached a startling realization – I have 35 years of experience in C. I write C code pretty much every week, but I can no longer remember when I last started a new project in C!
...
I started to program just a few years before the explosive spread of C swamped assembler and pretty much every other compiled language out of mainstream existence. I'd put that transition between about 1982 and 1985. Before that, there were multiple compiled languages vying for a working programmer's attention, with no clear leader among them; after, most of the minor ones were simply wiped out. The majors (FORTRAN, Pascal, COBOL) were either confined to legacy code, retreated to single-platform fortresses, or simply ran on inertia under increasing pressure from C around the edges of their domains.

Then it stayed that way for nearly thirty years. Yes, there was motion in applications programming; Java, Perl, Python, and various less successful contenders. Early on these affected what I did very little, in large part because their runtime overhead was too high for practicality on the hardware of the time. Then, of course, there was the lock-in effect of C's success; to link to any of the vast mass of pre-existing C you had to write new code in C (several scripting languages tried to break that barrier, but only Python would have significant success at it).

One to RTFA rather than summarize. Don't worry, this isn't just ESR writing about how great ESR is.


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 10 2017, @04:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the hackers-paradise dept.

Facebook to Fight Revenge Porn by Letting Potential Victims Upload Nudes in Advance

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

This new protection system works similar to the anti-child-porn detection systems in use at Facebook, and other social media giants like Google, Twitter, Instagram, and others.

It works on a database of file hashes, a cryptographic signature computed for each file.

Facebook says that once an abuser tries to upload an image marked as "revenge porn" in its database, its system will block the upload process. This will work for images shared on the main Facebook service, but also for images shared privately via Messenger, Facebook's IM app. Potential victims will need to upload nude photos of themselves

The weird thing is that in order to build a database of "revenge porn" file hashes, Facebook will rely on potential victims uploading a copy of the nude photo in advance.

This process involves the victim sending a copy of the nude photo to his own account, via Facebook Messenger. This implies uploading a copy of the nude photo on Facebook Messenger, the very same act the victim is trying to prevent.

The victim can then report the photo to Facebook, which will create a hash of the image that the social network will use to block further uploads of the same photo.

This is possible because in April this year, Facebook modified its image reporting process to take into account images showing "revenge porn" acts.

Facebook says it's not storing a copy of the photo, but only computing the file's hash and adding it to its database of revenge porn imagery.

Victims who fear that former or current partners may upload a nude photo online can pro-actively take this step to block the image from ever being uploaded on Facebook and shared among friends.

We won't be doing this. I don't even want to see hashes of you folks naked.

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/facebook-to-fight-revenge-porn-by-letting-potential-victims-upload-nudes-in-advance/

Facebook asks Australians to send nude photos, for safety

"Worried that an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend might post your intimate photos on the internet? Facebook says it has a solution – as long as you'll hand over the photos first.

The social media giant recently announced its new plan to combat "revenge porn," when individuals post nude photos online without the consent of the subject." http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/11/08/facebook-says-it-needs-your-explicit-photos-to-combat-revenge-porn.html


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

posted by martyb on Friday November 10 2017, @03:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the Thunder-Lizard-met-its-match dept.

The Chicxulub impact event is credited with causing the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs around 66 million years ago. Now, a study in Nature suggests that dinosaurs could have survived if the asteroid had landed in an ocean or almost any bit of land that wasn't loaded with hydrocarbons:

[...] the extraterrestrial impact happened nearly anywhere else, like in the ocean or in the middle of most continents, some scientists now say it is possible dinosaurs could have survived annihilation. Only 13 percent of the Earth's surface harbored the ingredients necessary to turn the cosmic collision into this specific mass extinction event, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-14199-x] [DX]. "I think dinosaurs could still be alive today," if the asteroid had landed elsewhere, Kunio Kaiho, a paleontologist from Tohoku University in Japan and lead author on the study, said in an email.

Other researchers questioned their findings.

When the asteroid, which had a diameter about half the length of Manhattan, struck the coast of Mexico, it found a rich source of sulfur and hydrocarbons, or organic deposits like fossil fuels, according to the researchers. Scorching hot temperatures at the impact crater would have ignited the fuel. The combustion would have spewed soot and sulfur into the stratosphere in sufficient quantities to blot out the sun and change the climate, setting into motion the collapse of entire ecosystems and the extinction of three-quarters of all species on Earth.

[...] Eighty-seven percent of Earth's surface, places like most of present day India, China, the Amazon and Africa, would not have had high enough concentrations of hydrocarbons to seal the dinosaurs' fate. But if the asteroid had hit marine coastal areas thriving with algae, which would have included present day Siberia, the Middle East and the eastern coast of North America, the bang would have been about as devastating to the dinosaurs and life on Earth as the Chicxulub impact.

Humans should burn off all of the hydrocarbons and tar sands in the Earth's crust, so we can make our species more resistant to impactors.

Also at DW, The Atlantic, and Live Science.

Related: Asteroid Impact That Killed Off the Dinosaurs Quantified


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday November 10 2017, @01:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the three-tine-fork dept.

news.bitcoin.com reports that the proposed blocksize increase to 2MB from 1MB of the SegWit2x fork of Bitcoin has been cancelled.

The post states that "the Segwit2x effort began in May with a simple purpose: to increase the blocksize and improve Bitcoin scalability.

[...] [Bitgo CEO, Mike ] Belshe predicts that "as fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become obvious that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens, we hope the community will come together and find a solution, possibly with a blocksize increase. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade."

The term "SegWit2X" is a combination of "Segregated Witness" which offloads some of the transaction data from the blockchain leading to smaller entries and "2X" refers to doubling the block size. More background at Explainer: What Is SegWit2x and What Does It Mean for Bitcoin?.

They further note that the prices surged by more than $500 in the first hour after the announcement and hit a new high of $7900 per coin.

But, as of this being written (2017-11-10 02:50:00 UTC), the price of a bitcoin is back down to $7,254.56.

Related:Will This Battle For The Soul Of Bitcoin Destroy It? - SoylentNews
Saudi Prince Predicts Demise for Bitcoin


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 10 2017, @12:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the hope-there-are-no-bugs-in-the-bugs-fighting-the-bugs dept.

The EPA has approved the use of bacteria-treated mosquitoes to help reduce mosquito populations. The approval will be effective for five years in 20 states and D.C.:

On November 3, 2017, EPA registered a new mosquito biopesticide – ZAP Males® - that can reduce local populations of the type of mosquito (Aedes albopictus, or Asian Tiger Mosquitoes) that can spread numerous diseases of significant human health concern, including the Zika virus.

ZAP Males® are live male mosquitoes that are infected with the ZAP strain, a particular strain of the Wolbachia bacterium. Infected males mate with females, which then produce offspring that do not survive. (Male mosquitoes do not bite people.) With continued releases of the ZAP Males®, local Aedes albopictus populations decrease. Wolbachia are naturally occurring bacteria commonly found in most insect species.

Nature reports:

"It's a non-chemical way of dealing with mosquitoes, so from that perspective, you'd think it would have a lot of appeal," says David O'Brochta, an entomologist at the University of Maryland in Rockville."I'm glad to see it pushed forward, as I think it could be potentially really important."

MosquitoMate will rear the Wolbachia-infected A. albopictus mosquitoes in its laboratories, and then sort males from females. Then the laboratory males, which don't bite, will be released at treatment sites. When these males mate with wild females, which do not carry the same strain of Wolbachia, the resulting fertilized eggs don't hatch because the paternal chromosomes do not form properly.

The company says that over time, as more of the Wolbachia-infected males are released and breed with the wild partners, the pest population of A. albopictus mosquitoes dwindles. Other insects, including other species of mosquito, are not harmed by the practice, says Stephen Dobson, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and founder of MosquitoMate.

NPR has reprinted a 2012 article about the idea. Also at Newsweek.


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 10 2017, @10:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the big-boom dept.

One of SpaceX's new "Block 5" Merlin rocket engines has failed during a test:

On Sunday, one of SpaceX's rocket engines exploded during a test at the company's facility in McGregor, Texas — and now it's investigating what happened, The Washington Post reported [archive]. The mishap occurred during a "qualification test" of a Merlin engine meant to be used during a Falcon 9 launch in late 2018. SpaceX says that no one was injured during the event and that it shouldn't affect the company's launches moving forward.

"We are now conducting a thorough and fully transparent investigation of the root cause," SpaceX spokesperson John Taylor said in a statement to The Verge. "SpaceX is committed to our current manifest and we do not expect this to have any impact on our launch cadence."

[...] However, the explosion isn't expected to have too much of an impact, since the Merlin engine being tested was for the upcoming Block 5 configuration of the Falcon 9. The Block 5 is the final upgrade to the rocket that SpaceX has been developing this last year, which will supposedly have even higher thrust and improved landing abilities. Until that upgrade is finalized, though, SpaceX has been flying a transitional version of the Falcon 9 known as the Block 4.

Now, SpaceX plans to suspend all Block 5 engine testing at McGregor until the accident investigation is included[sic], though Block 4 engine testing will proceed. The company will also start repairing the test bay the engine exploded on, which should take two to four weeks to complete. SpaceX expects repairs to be done before the investigation is over, but just in case, the company has an additional test bay at McGregor it can use. However, that second test bay sustained some minor damage in the explosion, too, but repairs should only take two to three days before testing can resume.

Falcon 9 had already been upgraded to be able to fly some payloads that were originally intended to fly on Falcon Heavy. Each Block 5 first stage is intended to be flown ten times with only inspections in between, or up to 100 times with refurbishment. The Falcon 9 Full Thrust first stage has a thrust of 7,607 kN at sea level and 8,227 kN in vacuum, while the Block 5 first stage can reach a thrust of 8,451 kN (sea level/vacuum not specified).

Also at: Spaceflight Insider and Space.com.


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 10 2017, @08:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the do-it-before-spring-thaw dept.

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Chill-proofed divers are about to plunge beneath the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica in an attempt to figure out how global warming is affecting the diverse array of life that hangs out there.

And for the first time, they are recording 360-degree video of the entire six-week expedition to create a virtual-reality experience of the mysterious polar environment above and below the ice.

"The aim of the outreach is to raise awareness about the unique and fragile Antarctic coastal under-ice ecosystems and the broader effect climate change might have on the ecosystems and the whole planet," Alf Norkko, a marine biologist at Helsinki University, said in a statement.

Norkko is one of three Finnish members of the expedition, along with University of Helsinki marine biologist Joanna Norkko, who is also married to Alf Norkko, and the explorer and photographer Patrick Degerman, which set out Thursday (Oct. 26) from Scott Base in Antarctica. [In Photos: Diving Beneath Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf]

In addition to their scientific studies and diving duties beneath the ice shelf, the Finnish team members are responsible for shooting the 360-degree video and keeping the world informed through a series of regular updates, photographs and videos on their Facebook page.

Source: https://www.livescience.com/60802-explorers-dive-beneath-antarctic-ice.html


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 10 2017, @07:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the mutations-you-can-grow-out-of dept.

Submitted via IRC for takyon

The Broad Institute and MIT scientists who first harnessed CRISPR for mammalian genome editing have engineered a new molecular system for efficiently editing RNA in human cells. RNA editing, which can alter gene products without making changes to the genome, has profound potential as a tool for both research and disease treatment.

In a paper published today [October, 25, 2017] in Science, senior author Feng Zhang and his team describe the new CRISPR-based system, called RNA Editing for Programmable A to I Replacement, or "REPAIR." The system can change single RNA nucleotides in mammalian cells in a programmable and precise fashion. REPAIR has the ability to reverse disease-causing mutations at the RNA level, as well as other potential therapeutic and basic science applications.

"The ability to correct disease-causing mutations is one of the primary goals of genome editing," says Zhang, a core institute member of the Broad Institute, an investigator at the McGovern Institute, and the James and Patricia Poitras '63 Professor in Neuroscience and associate professor in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering at MIT. "So far, we've gotten very good at inactivating genes, but actually recovering lost protein function is much more challenging. This new ability to edit RNA opens up more potential opportunities to recover that function and treat many diseases, in almost any kind of cell."

REPAIR has the ability to target individual RNA letters, or nucleosides, switching adenosines to inosines (read as guanosines by the cell). These letters are involved in single-base changes known to regularly cause disease in humans. In human disease, a mutation from G to A is extremely common; these alterations have been implicated in, for example, cases of focal epilepsy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and Parkinson's disease. REPAIR has the ability to reverse the impact of any pathogenic G-to-A mutation regardless of its surrounding nucleotide sequence, with the potential to operate in any cell type.

Unlike the permanent changes to the genome required for DNA editing, RNA editing offers a safer, more flexible way to make corrections in the cell. "REPAIR can fix mutations without tampering with the genome, and because RNA naturally degrades, it's a potentially reversible fix," explains co-first author David Cox, a graduate student in Zhang's lab.

Source: http://news.mit.edu/2017/researchers-engineer-crispr-edit-single-rna-letters-human-cells-1015


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday November 10 2017, @05:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the How's-that-taste,-Bud? dept.

Drinking beer is for scientific research!

Most humans can be placed into three major categories of tasters—nontasters, tasters, and supertasters, roughly in the ratio of 25 percent: 50 percent: 25 percent. There is also a small percentage (less than 1 percent) of humanity categorized in a super-supertaster category. Supertasters are mostly women, and people of European ancestry are usually not supertasters. So what exactly is a supertaster? You might think that a supertaster would have a lot of fun eating and drinking, but it's more like the opposite. Because supertasters experience tastes more intensely than nontasters and tasters, the effects of different tastes detected by tongues of supertasters are amplified relative to the nontasters and tasters. Super-supertasters have it even worse than supertasters. Taste is a good case of "more is not better."

The best way to describe the differences between the categories of tasting is to take one of my favorite beverages to taste—beer—and explain how each of the categories of tasting will respond to this beverage. The Master Brewers Association of the Americas recommend what is called the American Society of Brewing Chemists flavor wheel to help its members assess the taste of their brews. The flavor wheel was created by a coauthor of Sensory Evaluation Techniques, first published in the 1970s and now in its fifth edition. Morten Meilgaard, a professor of the senses and how to measure them, created the taste wheel to lend a more quantitative aspect to beer tasting.

[...] What is an effective technique for examining how many papillae someone has in a given area of the tongue? All of them involve darkening it, and the most enjoyable is to swirl red wine in the mouth and over the tongue. If done correctly, you will be able to see little lumps of tissue on the tongue that are the papillae. Next, take a piece of three-hole notebook paper. The punched holes are about 6 or so millimeters in diameter, and a piece of paper torn off with one of these holes can be placed over the darkened tongue. Now simply count the number of papillae you see in the punched hole. If you have fewer than 4 papillae, you are more than likely a nontaster, whereas from 4 to 8 papillae would suggest that you are a taster. Anything over 8 would indicate that you are a supertaster or a super-supertaster.

So get out there and help them with their research.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday November 10 2017, @03:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the really-Really-REALLY-old-growth-forests dept.

During Antarctica's summer, from late November through January, UW-Milwaukee geologists Erik Gulbranson and John Isbell climbed the McIntyre Promontory's frozen slopes in the Transantarctic Mountains. High above the ice fields, they combed the mountain's gray rocks for fossils from the continent's green, forested past.

By the trip's end, the geologists had found fossil fragments of 13 trees. The discovered fossils reveal that the trees are over 260 million years old, meaning that this forest grew at the end of the Permian Period, before the first dinosaurs, when Antarctica was still at the South Pole.
...
The time frame is exactly what they are looking for. The Permian Period ended 251 million years ago in history's greatest mass extinction, as the Earth rapidly shifted from icehouse to greenhouse conditions. More than 90 percent of species on Earth disappeared, including the polar forests. Gulbranson believes that the trees in the Antarctic forests were an extremely hearty species and is trying to determine why they went extinct.

The Antarctic forests went extinct because the Elder Things carelessly switched to electric vehicles and short-circuited the greenhouse effect that their internal combustion engines had created. Duh.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday November 10 2017, @02:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the hardware-wants-to-be-free? dept.

It looks like it's nearly game over for the Intel Management Engine:

Positive Technologies, which in September said it has a way to attack the Intel Management Engine, has dropped more details on how its exploit works.

The firm has already promised to demonstrate [a] God-mode hack in December 2017, saying the bug "allows an attacker of the machine to run unsigned code in the Platform Controller Hub on any motherboard".

For some details, we'll have to wait, but what's known is bad enough: Intel Management Engine (IME) talks to standard Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) debugging ports. As [does] USB, so Positive Technologies researchers put the two together and crafted a way to access IME from the USB port.

[...] The latest attack came to Vulture South's attention via a couple of Tweets:

Game over! We (I and @_markel___ ) have obtained fully functional JTAG for Intel CSME via USB DCI. #intelme #jtag #inteldci pic.twitter.com/cRPuO8J0oG

— Maxim Goryachy (@h0t_max) November 8, 2017

Full access the Intel ME( >=Skylake) by JTAG debugging via USB DCI https://t.co/TMvOirXOVI @ptsecurity @h0t_max @_markel___

— Hardened-GNU/Linux (@hardenedlinux) November 8, 2017

The linked blog post [in Russian] explains that since Skylake, the PCH – Intel's Platform Controller Hub, which manages chip-level communications – has offered USB access to JTAG interfaces that used to need specialised equipment. The new capability is DCI, Direct Connect Interface.

Reddit discussion linked by LoRdTAW in a journal.

Previously: Intel Management Engine Partially Defeated
Disabling Intel ME 11 Via Undocumented Mode
How-To: Disabling the Intel Management Engine
Andrew Tanenbaum's Open Letter to Intel About MINIX 3


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday November 10 2017, @12:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the Yikes!-Cancer?-I-need-a-drink! dept.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has released a statement (open, DOI: 10.1200/JCO.2017.76.1155) (DX) discussing the links between alcohol consumption and cancer:

The statement provides evidence of a connection between light drinking and an increased risk of esophageal and breast cancer. Heavy drinkers face a much longer list of risks, including mouth cancer, throat cancer, cancer of the voice box, liver cancer, and colorectal cancer. That's a whole lot of cancers.

"The message is not, 'Don't drink.' It's, 'If you want to reduce your cancer risk, drink less," said Dr. Noelle LoConte, lead author of the statement. "And if you don't drink, don't start." She says this "subtle" take on the issue is somewhat less cautionary than the warnings about smoking. But the message rings the same.

The doctors behind the statement aimed to draw attention to what they view as a public health problem and advocate for a push towards better education and research.

Also at Medscape and ASCO (shorter press release).

Previously: Study Shows 3 Drinks a Day May Cause Liver Cancer

Related: Even Moderate Drinking Linked to a Decline in Brain Health
Researchers Make Alcohol Out of Thin Air
No Magic Pill to Cure Alcohol Dependence Yet
Early Age of Drinking Leads to Neurocognitive and Neuropsychological Damage


Original Submission