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"Arthur T Knackerbracket" has found the following story:

To eradicate pathogens or counteract inflammation, cells of the immune system move through often rapid blood flow toward peripheral disease sites, such as skin, gut or lung. Thus a goal of immunologists has been to define the repertoire of molecules that not only keep fast-moving immune cells on course but allow them to access inflamed tissues.

Now, a team led by La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LJI) researcher Klaus Ley, M.D., reports that helper T cells move toward inflamed tissue using membrane protrusions that stabilize them and provide traction on the vasculature. Using high-resolution microscopy and global molecular analysis, the team shows that immature T cells lack these protrusions but that maturing T-cells switch on a gene expression program to create material to construct them.

That work, published in the Dec. 26. , 2017, issue of Cell Reports, provides a brand new collection of factors potentially useful to modulate immune responses in conditions as diverse as cancer and autoimmune disease.

"Immature T cells remain in lymphoid organs and can't move into sites of infection," says Ley, a professor and head of in LJI's Division of Inflammation Biology. "To reach their targets, T cells must first acquire biomechanical properties necessary for migratory behavior. We now know they do that in part by deploying strategies similar to those we previously discovered in cells called neutrophils."

Specifically, in a 2012 Ley's group reported in Nature that white blood cells called neutrophils throw out tube-like protrusions to anchor themselves and avoid being swept away by blood rushing by at high speed. As neutrophils gently roll along, tether after tether is peeled loose and slung forward like a lasso to gain new traction and slow them down. The new work shows multiple types of mature T cells, which unlike neutrophils are part of the adaptive immune system, also sprout tethers and slings to help them migrate to targets. Those T cells include so-called Th1 and Th17 T helper cells, which "help" other cells mount an immune response, and regulatory cells called Tregs.

Michael Abadier, Akula Bala Pramod, Sara McArdle, Alex Marki, Zhichao Fan, Edgar Gutierrez, Alex Groisman, Klaus Ley. Effector and Regulatory T Cells Roll at High Shear Stress by Inducible Tether and Sling Formation. Cell Reports, 2017; 21 (13): 3885 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2017.11.099

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janrinok writes:

The PDF contains the full paper (14 pages), but also includes the following abstract:

Abstract—Millions of people use adblockers to remove intrusive and malicious ads as well as protect themselves against tracking and pervasive surveillance. Online publishers consider adblockers a major threat to the ad-powered "free" Web. They have started to retaliate against adblockers by employing anti- adblockers which can detect and stop adblock users. To counter this retaliation, adblockers in turn try to detect and filter anti-adblocking scripts. This back and forth has prompted an escalating arms race between adblockers and anti-adblockers.

We want to develop a comprehensive understanding of anti- adblockers, with the ultimate aim of enabling adblockers to bypass state-of-the-art anti-adblockers. In this paper, we present a differential execution analysis to automatically detect and analyze anti-adblockers. At a high level, we collect execution traces by visiting a website with and without adblockers. Through differ- ential execution analysis, we are able to pinpoint the conditions that lead to the differences caused by anti-adblocking code. Using our system, we detect anti-adblockers on 30.5% of the Alexa top- 10K websites which is 5-52 times more than reported in prior literature. Unlike prior work which is limited to detecting visible reactions (e.g., warning messages) by anti-adblockers, our system can discover attempts to detect adblockers even when there is no visible reaction. From manually checking one third of the detected websites, we find that the websites that have no visible reactions constitute over 90% of the cases, completely dominating the ones that have visible warning messages. Finally, based on our findings, we further develop JavaScript rewriting and API hooking based solutions (the latter implemented as a Chrome extension) to help adblockers bypass state-of-the-art anti-adblockers.

canopic jug writes:

The Pineapple Fund has given $1M in Bitcoin to the Internet Archive.

This year, Christmas came early to the Internet Archive. On Saturday, the generous philanthropist behind the Pineapple Fund gave $1 million dollars in Bitcoin to the Internet Archive. This anonymous crypto-philanthropist explains, "I saw the promise of decentralized money and decided to mine/buy/trade some magical [I]nternet tokens. ...Donating most of it to charity is what I'm doing." We so admire this donor using Bitcoin as the currency of giving this season, and are honored to be the recipients of such a gift. Whoever you are, you are doing a world of good. Thank you.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A joint research team, affiliated with UNIST has introduced the Hybrid-Solid Electrolysis Cell (Hybrid-SOEC) system with highest reported electrochemical performance in hydrogen production. The proposed system has attracted much attention as a new promising option for the cost-effective and highly-efficient hydrogen production, as it shows excellent performance compared with other water-electrolysis systems.

This breakthrough has been led by Professor Guntae Kim in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST in collaboration with Professor Tak-Hyoung Lim of Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) and Professor Jeeyoung Shin of Sookmyung Women's University.

A solid oxide electrolyzer cell (SOEC) consists of two electrodes and an electrolyte that are all in solid-state. They are strongly desired as novel candidates for the hydrogen production, as they require no need to replenish lost electrolytes, while eliminating the corrosion problems. Besides, SOECs also operate at relatively high temperatures (700-1000 °C), which helps to offer reduced electrical energy consumption.

Professor Kim and his research team have been seeking ways to improve energy efficiency of hydrogen production, using SOEC. In the study, the research team has demonstrated the novel concept of Hybrid-SOEC based on the mixed ionic conducting electrolyte, allowing water electrolysis to be occurred at both hydrogen and air electrodes.

[...] The layered perovskite with excellent electrochemical properties was used as the electrode of Hybrid-SOEC. By adding an excellent electrode material on mixed ionic conducting electrolyte, resulting in enhanced electrochemical performance. As a result, the corresponding yields of hydrogen produced were 1.9 L per hour at a cell voltage of 1.5 V at 700 °C. This is four times higher hydrogen production efficiency than the existing high-efficient water electrolytic cells.

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mrpg writes:

https://nypost.com/2017/11/21/earths-slowing-rotation-could-cause-huge-earthquakes-in-2018/

High-budget Hollywood disaster flicks love to make up weird natural phenomena to vaguely explain why a bunch of crazy catastrophes are about to threaten the very existence of mankind, but they're almost always complete bunk. Now, a new study featuring actual science suggests that 2018 could see a spike in huge earthquakes around the globe and it's thanks to the Earth's rotation slowing down.

The research, which was presented in a paper by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Montana at Missoula, focuses on historic earthquake trends and seems to draw a pretty strong link between periods of slower Earth rotation and rashes of major quakes.

It sure sounds like a sci-fi plot point, but the science is based purely in reality. The study's authors plotted earthquake activity going back over 100 years and thanks to the wealth of data available they were able to determine that the temporary slowing of Earth's rotation seems to be linked to the most devastating and frequent earthquake outbreaks.

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Fnord666 writes:

University of Basel physicists has successfully cooled a nanoelectronic chip to a temperature lower than 3 millikelvin. The scientists from the Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute set this record in collaboration with other physicists from Germany and Finland. The team used magnetic cooling to cool the electrical connections, as well as the chips itself.

There have been numerous working groups around the world using high-tech refrigerators to attempt to reach temperatures that are as close to absolute zero as possible. Physicists want to reach absolute zero because the extremely low temperatures are the ideal conditions for quantum experiments and allow entirely new physical phenomena to be examined.

[...] This is how [Basel physics professor Dominik] Zumbühl's team succeeded in cooling a nanoelectronic chip to a temperature below 2.0 millikelvin, a low-temperature record. Dr. Marioi Palma, lead author of the study, and his colleague, Christian Scheller, have successfully used a combination of two cooling systems that were both based on magnetic cooling. They cooled all of the chip's electrical connections to temperatures of 150 microkelvin. This is a temperature less than a thousandth of a degree away from absolute zero.

The researchers then integrated a second cooling system directly onto the chip and placed a Coulomb blockade thermometer on it. This construction and material consumption allowed the team to cool the thermometer to a temperature near absolute zero.

"The combination of cooling systems allowed us to cool our chip down to below 3 millikelvin, and we are optimistic that we can use the same method to reach the magic 1 millikelvin limit," says Zumbühl.

What's even more amazing is that they can maintain this temperature for around 7 hours.

Source: http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/10687/record-broken-for-world-s-coolest-chip-within-a-thousandth-of-a-degree-from-absolute-zero

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Fnord666 writes:

I thought people might be interested in some recent stories about work that other countries are doing in their space programs.

Two research satellites to probe Earth's climate patterns and test ion engine technology to counter atmospheric drag in an unusual low-altitude orbit launched Saturday on top of a Japanese H-2A rocket.

The two Japanese-built spacecraft rocketed away from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan at 0126:22 GMT Saturday (8:26:22 p.m. EST Friday) inside the H-2A's payload fairing.

Liftoff occurred at 10:26 a.m. Saturday Japan Standard Time.

Mounted on a dual-payload adapter fixture, the satellites were released into two distinct orbits a few hundred miles above Earth by the H-2A's upper stage.

[...] The Shikisai satellite carries a wide-area global imaging instrument package — including a visible and near-infrared radiometer and an infrared scanner — to extend climate observations made by Japan's ADEOS 2 spacecraft, which succumbed to a power failure and ended its mission in 2003.

During its planned five-year mission, the climate monitoring observatory will make "surface and atmospheric measurements related to the carbon cycle and radiation budget, such as clouds, aerosols, ocean color, vegetation, and snow and ice," according to a fact sheet released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Scientists say Shikisai's observations will improve their understanding of climate change, and help numerical climate models predict future changes. The imager will also track phytoplankton, aerosol, and vegetation activity to map fisheries, monitor the transport of dust, and estimate crop yields, according to JAXA.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/12/22/h2a-f37-launch-coverage/

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Fnord666 writes:

ArsTechnica has a very interesting video (with transcript) that features Richard Garriot, co-creator of Ultima Online, discussing the virtual ecology of the game and how it went pear shaped as soon as the game was released.

When creating Ultima Online, Richard Garriott had grand dreams. He and Starr Long planned on implementing a virtual ecology into their massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It was an ambitious system, one that would have cows that graze and predators that eat herbivores. However, once the game went live a small problem had arisen...

Source: http://video.arstechnica.com/watch/war-stories-ultima-online-the-virtual-ecology [Ed-Requires ecmascript]

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Fnord666 writes:

A Ukrainian-built Zenit booster and a Russian-made Fregat upper stage launched with an Angolan communications satellite Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, heading for an orbital perch more than 22,000 miles above Earth.

A nearly 20-story-tall Zenit rocket lifted off with the Angosat 1 spacecraft at 1900 GMT (2 p.m. EST) Tuesday from Site 45 at the historic spaceport in Kazakhstan, where launch occurred at 1 a.m. Wednesday local time.

A live webcast of the launch provided by Roscosmos showed the Zenit booster climbing through low clouds over the frigid launch base, heading northeast over the Kazakh steppe.

Deployment of the 3,631-pound (1,647-kilogram) Angosat 1 satellite from the Zenit's Fregat upper stage is expected at 0354 GMT Wednesday (10:54 p.m. EST Tuesday) after three Fregat engine burns to place the spacecraft into a circular geostationary orbit nearly 22,300 miles (nearly 35,800 kilometers) over the equator.

[...] Angosat 1 is Angola's first communications satellite, the product of an inter-governmental agreement signed between the Angolan and Russian governments in 2009. Built by RSC Energia, a major Russian aerospace contractor, Angosat 1 is designed for a 15-year mission providing television broadcast, Internet, radio and other telecommunications services to Angola, the rest of Africa and parts of Europe.

The satellite carries 16 C-band and six Ku-band transponders, and controllers will position it along the equator at 13 degrees east longitude to start its mission.

Airbus Defense and Space reportedly supplied the communications payload for the Angosat 1 satellite.

Russian engineers also helped construct and activate a satellite control center near the Angolan capital of Luanda on the southwest coast of Africa, where officials will oversee Angosat 1 operations.

The launch of Angosat 1 aboard a Zenit rocket is a rare example of cooperation between Russia and Ukraine, whose relations have soured since 2014 with Russia's annexation of Crimea and involvement in an ongoing civil war.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/12/26/angolas-first-communications-satellite-ready-for-launch-tuesday/

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takyon writes:

Starting on Jan. 1, 2018, the U.S. Library of Congress will only archive Twitter selectively, instead of nearly completely:

Since 2010, Library of Congress has been archiving every single public tweet: Yours, ours, the president's. But today, the institution announced it will no longer archive every one of our status updates, opinion threads, and "big if true"s. As of Jan. 1, the library will only acquire tweets "on a very selective basis."

The library says it began archiving tweets "for the same reason it collects other materials – to acquire and preserve a record of knowledge and creativity for Congress and the American people." The archive stretches back to Twitter's beginning, in 2006.

But as anyone who's been following along can attest, Twitter and the way it's used has changed since then. First and foremost from a collection perspective: the sheer number of tweets.

"The volume of tweets and related transactions has evolved and increased dramatically since the initial agreement was signed," the library explains in a white paper accompanying the accouncement[sic].

The library doesn't say how many tweets [it] has in its collection now, but in 2013, it said it had already amassed 170 billion tweets, at a rate of half a billion tweets a day.

[...] Another issue: Twitter only gives the library the text of tweets – not images, videos, or linked content. "Tweets now are often more visual than textual, limiting the value of text-only collecting," the library says.

The library also has to figure out how to effectively manage deleted tweets, which aren't part of the archive.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The existence of UFOs had been "proved beyond reasonable doubt," according the head of the secret Pentagon program that analyzed the mysterious aircrafts.

In an interview with British broadsheet The Telegraph published on Saturday, Luis Elizondo told the newspaper of the sightings, "In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of 'beyond reasonable doubt.'"

"I hate to use the term UFO but that's what we're looking at," he added. "I think it's pretty clear this is not us, and it's not anyone else, so no one has to ask questions where they're from."

Since 2007, Elizondo led the government program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, investigating evidence of UFOs and alien life. It was shuttered in 2012.

Its existence was first reported by The New York Times last week.

Elizondo was not able to discuss specifics of the program, but told The Telegraph that there had been "lots" of UFO sightings and witnesses interviewed during the program's five years.

Investigators pinpointed geographical "hot spots" that were sometimes near nuclear facilities and power plants and observed trends among the aircrafts including lack of flight surfaces on the objects and extreme manoeuvrability, Elizondo told The Telegraph.

Previously: Pentagon's UFO Investigation Program Revealed

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Cadsoft's Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor (EAGLE) is an ECAD (Electronic Computer-aided design), a software product for designing printed circuit boards. As that product has a demo/freeware version which is adequate for many users, as well as having a reasonable price structure for more-capable versions, and being cross-platform, it had considerable popularity.

A year ago, Autodesk acquired Cadsoft Computer GmbH and changed the licensing of the product to a subscription model. Since then, many users of EAGLE have been seeking a path away from that EULAware app. Many have moved to (FOSS) KiCAD, a project started by French academics which has gained developer support from personnel at CERN.

A sticking point for those wanting to transition to a new tool is the projects previously developed using the old tool and saved in the native format of that package.

Hackaday reports

There is a desire to port those innumerable Eagle board layouts and libraries to other PCB design packages. This tool does just that.

The tool is an extension of pcb-rnd, a FOSS tool for circuit board editing [itself, a fork of gEDA's "PCB" module], and this update massively extends support for Eagle boards and libraries.

As an example, VK5HSE loaded up an Eagle .brd file of a transceiver, selected a pin header, and exported that component to a KiCAD library. It worked the first time. For another experiment, the ever popular TV-B-Gone .brd file was exported directly to pcb-rnd.

This is a mostly-complete solution for Eagle-to-KiCAD, Eagle-to-Autotrax, and Eagle-to-gEDA-PCB, with a few minimal caveats relating to copper pours and silkscreen--nothing that can't be dealt with if you're not mindlessly using the tool.

While it must be noted that most Open Hardware projects fit inside a 80 [sq.cm] board area, and can therefore be opened and modified with the free-to-use version of Autodesk's Eagle, this is a very capable tool to turn Eagle boards and libraries into designs that can be built with FOSS tools.

Previous: Cadsoft EAGLE is Now Subscription-Only
CERN is Getting Serious About Development of the KiCAD App for Designing Printed Circuits

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

There's no question that Blade Runner 2049 revolves around computer-generated effects, whether it's the retro-futuristic technology or its holographic AI personas. However, the CG is more pervasive than you might think. Rodeo FX has released a visual effects reel for Denis Villeneuve's bleak sci-fi movie, and it's evident that even the seemingly mundane shots were draped in digital artwork. Caution: there are mild spoilers ahead.

It's not shocking that some scenes are entirely CG (such as flights over the future Los Angeles), or have to use it to fill in landscapes that don't exist. However, it's the extent to which it's used. When K exits his vehicle in Las Vegas, for example, very little of the scene is real -- he's walking toward a green screen held up by a crane. Even moments that don't look like they need CG, such as visiting a collection of genetic records or a sweatshop, use it to add depth and atmosphere.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/25/blade-runner-2049-vfx-reel/

Also: The VFX reel for Blade Runner 2049 shows how Denis Villeneuve brought his dystopian world to life

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Fnord666 writes:

A central conceit of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books (and the popular HBO series Game of Thrones based on them) is that the seasons of the planet where they take place are not as predictable as the Earth's annual cycle. Somehow the phrase "winter is coming" wouldn't seem as foreboding if you could reply, "Yes, that usually happens in December through February."

But how could a planet have unruly seasons? Earth's seasons are due to the tilt of its axis. During one part of Earth's orbit, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, with the resulting indirect sunlight spread thin over the surface of the hemisphere, causing winter. On the opposite side of its orbit, summer comes as this hemisphere is tilted toward direct sunlight. There isn't much room in such clockwork for randomness.

Well, if you've ever wanted to debate fan theories, here's an excellent new resource for you to draw from: a real climate model simulation of Westeros and Essos.

Source: Ars Technica

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Amazon and Microsoft employees caught up in sex trafficking sting

The tech industry has a clear history of sexism and misogyny, but a recent Newsweek report highlights another problem. The publication got its hands on a slew of emails sent to brothels and pimps between 2014 and 2016 that document the industry's patronage of brothels and purchasing of services from trafficked sex workers. Among the emails, which were obtained through a public records request to the King County Prosecutor's Office, were 67 sent from Microsoft employee email accounts, 63 from Amazon accounts and dozens more from companies like Boeing, T-Mobile, Oracle and local Seattle tech firms.

Some of the emails were collected during a 2015 sting operation that targeted sex worker review boards and resulted in the arrest of 18 individuals, including high-level Amazon and Microsoft directors. Two opted for a trial, which is currently set to begin in March.

Seattle's sex industry has grown right alongside its tech industry and the city's authorities have said that some men spend up to $50,000 per year on sex workers. Brothels are even known to advertise how close they are to tech offices. Alex Trouteaud, director of policy and research at the anti-trafficking organization Demand Abolition, told Newsweek that the tech industry is a "culture that has readily embraced trafficking."

Newsweek: Tech Bros Bought Sex Trafficking Victims by Using Amazon and Microsoft Work Emails

Related: "Pimping" Charges Against Backpage Executives Dismissed

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