SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Astronauts can now sequence microbes they find on the International Space Station (ISS) without having to send them back to Earth:

Being able to identify microbes in real time aboard the International Space Station, without having to send them back to Earth for identification first, would be revolutionary for the world of microbiology and space exploration. The Genes in Space-3 team turned that possibility into a reality this year, when it completed the first-ever sample-to-sequence process entirely aboard the space station. Results from their investigation were published in Scientific Reports [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-18364-0] [DX].

The ability to identify microbes in space could aid in the ability to diagnose and treat astronaut ailments in real time, as well as assisting in the identification of DNA-based life on other planets. It could also benefit other experiments aboard the orbiting laboratory. Identifying microbes involves isolating the DNA of samples, and then amplifying – or making many copies - of that DNA that can then be sequenced, or identified.

The investigation was broken into two parts: the collection of the microbial samples and amplification by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), then sequencing and identification of the microbes. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson conducted the experiment aboard the orbiting laboratory, with NASA microbiologist and the project's Principal Investigator Sarah Wallace and her team watching and guiding her from Houston.

Now Russian cosmonauts can test their crazy ideas. At least, until the ISS gets split apart and deorbited.

Original Submission

Apple Offers $29 Battery Replacements in Response to iPhone Slowdown Scandal

takyon writes:

Apple posted a response to iPhone battery and performance concerns on Dec. 28. From the "Addressing customer concerns" section:

We've always wanted our customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible. We're proud that Apple products are known for their durability, and for holding their value longer than our competitors' devices.

To address our customers' concerns, to recognize their loyalty and to regain the trust of anyone who may have doubted Apple's intentions, we've decided to take the following steps:

• Apple is reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement by $50 — from $79 to $29 — for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January and available worldwide through December 2018. Details will be provided soon on apple.com.
• Early in 2018, we will issue an iOS software update with new features that give users more visibility into the health of their iPhone's battery, so they can see for themselves if its condition is affecting performance.
• As always, our team is working on ways to make the user experience even better, including improving how we manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age.

At Apple, our customers' trust means everything to us. We will never stop working to earn and maintain it. We are able to do the work we love only because of your faith and support — and we will never forget that or take it for granted.

Some have found the response annoying. Others have praised the "good vibes".

iFixit has in turn cut the price of its own battery replacement kits to $29 or less.

Previously: Eight Lawsuits Filed Against Apple Over iPhone Slowdowns

Apple apologizes for iPhone slowdown drama, offers $29 battery replacements

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Apple just published a letter to customers apologizing for the "misunderstanding" around older iPhones being slowed down.[...] "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down," says the company. "We apologize."

Source: Apple apologizes for iPhone slowdown drama, will offer $29 battery replacements for a year

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

martyb writes:

Another year is almost behind us and I thought it would be useful to take a look at what we have accomplished up to this point.

For those who may be new-ish here, SoylentNews went live on 2014-02-17. Since then, we have:

• Reached 244th place in the world with our folding-at-home team.
• Had nearly 780 site subscriptions.
• Had over 2740 articles posted to journals.
• Signed up over 6,800 user nicks/accounts.
• Published over 20,000 stories.
• Received over 24,000 story submissions.
• Had over 403,000 comment moderations.
• Posted over 615,500 comments.
• Had nearly 9,200,000 hits (views) on stories.

All of this was provided with absolutely no advertising by a purely volunteer staff!

Please accept my sincere thanks to all of you who have subscribed and helped to keep the site up and running! We could not have done it without your support.

I must also report that we have just over 100 people who have accessed the site in the past month whose subscription has lapsed. It is easy enough to do -- I've let it happen, myself. So, please go to the subscription page to check/renew your subscription. Be aware that the preferred amount is the minimum for the selected duration; feel free to increase the amount (hint hint).

Oh, and I would be remiss in not thanking the staff here for their dedication and perseverance. Linode decided to open a new data center and we had to migrate our servers to the new location. We accomplished this with almost no downtime on the site, and only about a 30-minute hiccup on our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server.

Because of performance degradation on our servers when loading highly-commented stories, we rolled out a new comment display system early in the year. It had several issues at the outset, but seems to have settled down quite nicely. We appreciate your patience, and constructive feedback reporting issues as they arose. It helped greatly in stomping out those bugs.

We have a bug-fix update to the site in the works... mostly minor things that are waiting on testing for release. We hope to roll those out in the next couple of weeks.

To all of you who have contributed to the site, in other words: to our community, thank-you! It has been a privilege to serve you this past year and I look forward to continuing to do so in the year to come. --martyb

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Vulnerable IoT speakers from Sonos and Bose can be hacked to scare/annoy users:

Researchers at Trend Micro have found that certain models of Sonos and Bose speakers have vulnerabilities that leave them open to hijacking, as reported by Wired. The accessible speakers are being exploited by hackers that are using them to play spooky sounds, Alexa commands, and... Rick Astley tracks.

Only a small percentage of speakers by the two companies are actually affected, including some of the Sonos Play:1, the Sonos One, and the Bose SoundTouch. All it takes is for the speaker to be connected to a misconfigured network and a simple internet scan. Once the speaker is discovered via the scan, the API it uses to talk to apps can be utilized to tell the speakers to play any audio file hosted at a specific URL. Of all the models, between 2,500 to 5,000 Sonos devices and 400 to 500 Bose devices were found by Trend Micro to be open to audio hacking.

Sonos told Wired in an email that it is "looking into this more, but what you are referencing is a misconfiguration of a user's network that impacts a very small number of customers that may have exposed their device to a public network. We do not recommend this type of set-up for our customers."

Also at TechCrunch.

Original Submission

Russia Blames Human Error for Loss of Angolan Satellite

takyon writes:

Russia's recent rocket launch was programmed with the wrong point of origin:

The loss of a multi-million pound weather mapping satellite was due to programming errors, the Russian deputy prime minister has said. Dmitry Rogozin said Meteor-M had been programmed for take-off from a different space station.

Speaking to Russian state TV, he blamed "human error". "The rocket was programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur," he told the Rossyia 24 TV channel.

In fact the rocket was actually taking off from new base Vostochny, in the east of the country.

Angola Loses Contact With First Commercial Satellite

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

AngoSat-1, a communications satellite built for almost $300m, was launched on Tuesday evening from the launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

It was scheduled to work for 15 years and was made to improve telecommunications in the African country. About 50 Angolan aerospace engineers were trained around the world. This crew was supposed to oversee mission from a control centre in Angola.

Earlier this year, Angola made public its long-term plan for its space programme, which envisages a steady expansion in the coming years. It is unclear how a failure of AngoSat-1 will influence that multi-year plan.

Also at Reuters.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

takyon writes:

One popular theory has linked declines in crime rates to the elimination of leaded gasoline. A study of New Zealanders suggests that this is not the case:

Lead exposure during childhood has been tied to a variety of developmental problems, but a new study suggests it may not be associated with higher odds of criminal behavior later in life.

The study set out to address a flaw in much of the previous research linking lead and crime: mainly that it's hard to determine how much of this connection might be explained by poverty and other socioeconomic circumstances that can influence both criminal activity and lead exposure. Researchers followed 553 people born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972 and 1973, when lead exposure was common among children of all economic backgrounds because of widespread use of leaded gasoline. All of the kids were tested for lead exposure when they were 11 years old, and the study team followed them until age 38 to see how many of them were convicted of crimes.

By the end of the study, 154 participants, or 28 percent, had at least one criminal conviction, the researchers report in JAMA Pediatrics. But the odds of this happening were barely influenced by the amount of lead exposure people had during childhood. Just being male had a stronger effect than lead levels, the researchers note. "Many studies have shown that higher exposure to lead could predict more criminal behavior, but our study actually found that there isn't a clear connection between the two," said lead author Amber Beckley, a researcher at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The reason for the different results this time is that the current study found children from all walks of life had high lead levels, Beckley said by email.

The Need to Include Biological Variables in Prospective Longitudinal Studies of the Development of Criminal Behavior (open, DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.4237) (DX)

Association of Childhood Blood Lead Levels With Criminal Offending (open, DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2017.4005) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The New York Times has published an article about the recent work of Dr. David Baker, a biochemist who launched Rosetta@home in 2005:

Scientists Are Designing Artisanal Proteins for Your Body

[...] Scientists have studied proteins for nearly two centuries, and over that time they've worked out how cells create them from simple building blocks. They have long dreamed of assembling those elements into new proteins not found in nature.

But they've been stumped by one great mystery: how the building blocks in a protein take their final shape. David Baker, 55, the director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington, has been investigating that enigma for a quarter-century.

Now, it looks as if he and his colleagues have cracked it. Thanks in part to crowdsourced computers and smartphones belonging to over a million volunteers, the scientists have figured out how to choose the building blocks required to create a protein that will take on the shape they want.

In a series of papers published this year, Dr. Baker and his colleagues unveiled the results of this work. They have produced thousands of different kinds of proteins, which assume the shape the scientists had predicted. Often those proteins are profoundly different from any found in nature.

This expertise has led to a profound scientific advance: cellular proteins designed by man, not by nature. "We can now build proteins from scratch from first principles to do what we want," said Dr. Baker.

Massively parallel de novo protein design for targeted therapeutics (DOI: 10.1038/nature23912) (DX)

Computational design of environmental sensors for the potent opioid fentanyl (open, DOI: 10.7554/eLife.28909.001) (DX)

Evolution of a designed protein assembly encapsulating its own RNA genome (DOI: 10.1038/nature25157) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

There's a patch for that:

A new approach to reducing bulging tummy fats has shown promise in laboratory trials. It combines a new way to deliver drugs, via a micro-needle patch, with drugs that are known to turn energy-storing white fat into energy-burning brown fat. This innovative approach developed by scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) reduced weight gain in mice on a high fat diet and their fat mass by more than 30 per cent over four weeks.

The new type of skin patch contains hundreds of micro-needles, each thinner than a human hair, which are loaded with the drug Beta-3 adrenergic receptor agonist or another drug called thyroid hormone T3 triiodothyronine.

When the patch is pressed into the skin for about two minutes, these micro-needles become embedded in the skin and detach from the patch, which can then be removed. As the needles degrade, the drug molecules then slowly diffuse to the energy-storing white fat underneath the skin layer, turning them into energy-burning brown fats.

Transdermal Delivery of Anti-Obesity Compounds to Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue with Polymeric Microneedle Patches (DOI: 10.1002/smtd.201700269) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

HATSouth discovers four 'hot Jupiter' exoplanets

An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of four new 'hot Jupiter' extrasolar worlds by the HATSouth survey. The newly found exoplanets received designations HATS-50b through HATS-53b. The finding is presented in a paper published December 12 on arXiv.org.

The Hungarian-made Automated Telescope Network-South (HATSouth) Exoplanet Survey is a network of 24 robotic wide-field telescopes. The telescopes are distributed over three locations in the southern hemisphere (Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the H.E.S.S. site in Namibia, and Siding Spring Observatory in Australia). The primary goal of the HATSouth survey is to discover and characterize a large number of transiting extrasolar planets, reaching out to long periods and down to small planetary radii.

To date, HATSouth has identified nearly 2,000 candidate transiting alien worlds of which more than 40 were confirmed as planets. Now, a group of researchers led by Thomas Henning of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, reports the discovery of four new exoplanets, expanding the list of exoworlds found by HATSouth.

• The HATSouth Exoplanet Survey
• HATNet Project

HATS-50b through HATS-53b: four transiting hot Jupiters orbiting G-type stars discovered by the HATSouth survey

We report the discovery of four close-in transiting exoplanets, HATS-50 through HATS-53, discovered using the HATSouth three-continent network of homogeneous and automated telescopes. These new exoplanets belong to the class of hot Jupiters and orbit G-type dwarf stars, with brightness in the range V=12.5-14.0 mag. While HATS-53 has many physical characteristics similar to the Sun, the other three stars appear to be metal rich, larger and more massive. Three of the new exoplanets, namely HATS-50, HATS-51 and HATS-53, have low density and similar orbital period. Instead, HATS-52 is more dense and has a shorter orbital period. It also receives an intensive radiation from its parent star and, consequently, presents a high equilibrium temperature. HATS-50 shows a marginal additional transit feature consistent with an ultra-short period hot super Neptune, which will be able to be confirmed with TESS photometry.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

New app developed to locate people in areas with no phone signal

Researchers of the Universidad de Alicante (UA) have developed new technology that makes it possible to locate people who have suffered an accident in remote locations without a phone signal and where a speedy rescue is essential to save lives. The system can also be used in emergency situations that arise as a result of earthquakes, floods or forest fires, where mobile phone infrastructure is often rendered useless.

"We have designed an application (app) that can be incorporated to any Smartphone and that, without a signal, emits a Wifi signal which in turn acts as a distress beacon over a distance of several kilometers", explains the creator of the technology and professor at the UA's Department of Physics, Systems Engineering and Theory of the Signal of the Higher Polytechnic School, José Ángel Berná. This signal contains the location (coordinates) of the person who has suffered the accident or disappeared and is using the Smartphone emitter, along with a short message that "can be altered depending on the situation, with examples such as 'I am injured', 'I am disorientated' or 'I need help'", specifies Berná.

In order to detect the distress signal, the researcher has also created a light (half a kilo), portable receptor device which rescue teams or mountain shelters could use. This device has a small antenna and connects to the Smartphone of the search party. When an accident occurs, the victim only has to activate the mobile phone app, which will in turn emit the distress signal periodically – for hours or even days, even if he or she is unconscious – indicating the coordinates of its location.

The Network of Valencian Universities for the promotion of Research, Development and Innovation, RUVID, is a non-profit private organisation that was born in December 2001 through a partnership agreement between the five public universities from the Valencian Region.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Why don't more low-quality patents get rejected? A recent paper published by the Brookings Institution offers fascinating insights into this question. Written by legal scholars Michael Frakes and Melissa Wasserman, the paper identifies three ways the patent process encourages approval of low-quality patents:

• The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is funded by fees—and the agency gets more fees if it approves an application.
• Unlimited opportunities to refile rejected applications means sometimes granting a patent is the only way to get rid of a persistent applicant.
• Patent examiners are given less time to review patent applications as they gain seniority, leading to less thorough reviews.

None of these observations is entirely new. For example, we have covered the problems created by unlimited re-applications in the past. But what sets Frakes and Wasserman's work apart is that they have convincing empirical evidence for all three theories.

They have data showing that these features of the patent system systematically bias it in the direction of granting more patents. Which means that if we reformed the patent process in the ways they advocate, we'd likely wind up with fewer bogus patents floating around.

Source : These experts figured out why so many bogus patents get approved

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A research paper published by Google this month—which has not been peer reviewed—details a text-to-speech system called Tacotron 2, which claims near-human accuracy at imitating audio of a person speaking from text.

The system is Google's second official generation of the technology, which consists of two deep neural networks. The first network translates the text into a spectrogram (pdf), a visual way to represent audio frequencies over time. That spectrogram is then fed into WaveNet, a system from Alphabet's AI research lab DeepMind, which reads the chart and generates the corresponding audio elements accordingly.

[...] The Google researchers also demonstrate that Tacotron 2 can handle hard-to-pronounce words and names, as well as alter the way it enunciates based on punctuation. For instance, capitalized words are stressed, as someone would do when indicating that specific word is an important part of a sentence.

[...] Unlike some core AI research the company does, this technology is immediately useful to Google. WaveNet, first announced in 2016, is now used to generate the voice in Google Assistant. Once readied for production, Tacotron 2 could be an even more powerful addition to the service.

However, the system is only trained to mimic the one female voice; to speak like a male or different female, Google would need to train the system again.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Apple defrauded iPhone users by slowing devices without warning to compensate for poor battery performance, according to eight lawsuits filed in various US federal courts in the week since the company opened up about the year-old software change. The tweak may have led iPhone owners to misguided attempts to resolve issues over the last year, the lawsuits contend.

All of the lawsuits — filed in US District Courts in California, New York and Illinois — seek class-action to represent potentially millions of iPhone owners nationwide. A similar case was lodged in an Israeli court on Monday, the newspaper Haaretz reported.

Apple did not respond to an email seeking comment on the filings.

The company acknowledged last week for the first time in detail that operating system updates released since "last year" for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, iPhone SE and iPhone 7 included a feature "to smooth out" power supply from batteries that are cold, old or low on charge. Phones without the adjustment would shut down abruptly because of a precaution designed to prevent components from getting fried, Apple said.

The disclosure followed a December 18 analysis by Primate Labs, which develops an iPhone performance measuring app, that identified blips in processing speed and concluded that a software change had to be behind them.

[...] The problem now seen is that users over the last year could have blamed an ageing computer processor for app crashes and sluggish performance — and chose to buy a new phone — when the true cause may have been a weak battery that could have been replaced for a fraction of the cost, some of the lawsuits state. "If it turns out that consumers would have replaced their battery instead of buying new iPhones had they known the true nature of Apple's upgrades, you might start to have a better case for some sort of misrepresentation or fraud," Boston University professor Rory Van Loo, who specialises in consumer technology law, said.

[...] The lawsuits seek unspecified damages in addition to, in some cases, reimbursement. A couple of the complaints seek court orders barring Apple from throttling iPhone computer speeds or requiring notification in future instances.

Previously: Two Class Action Lawsuits Filed After Apple Admits Slowing Down iPhones

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Rethinking how the US grows beef

As of now, cattle eat not only local pasture, but also grains, hay, and grass that is grown elsewhere and stored. A recent analysis by an international team of researchers looked into what would change if the US switched to sustainable ranching, in which cattle eat only from local grasslands and agricultural byproducts.

It turns out that the current amount of pastureland in the US could only support 45 percent of our current beef production and consumption. This admittedly narrow definition of sustainability relies on feeding cows more agricultural byproducts, which, as of now, account for only about 10 percent of their diet; the scientists note that, "despite the recent doubling of distillers' grain utilization," these byproducts are still plentiful.

If we were to cut the pastureland that ranchers currently use in half, that would diminish beef availability to... 43 percent of current values, rather than 45. So freeing up about 135 hectares—almost a quarter of our national surface area, and twice the size of France—would decrease beef availability by only two percentage points.

Most of this is not especially productive grassland, and it could be rewilded or conserved. But some of it is high-quality cropland that could be used to grow other food sources, like pork, poultry, grains, legumes, vegetables, and even dairy. All of these utilize less water and fertilizer than beef while emitting fewer greenhouse gases. In addition, they provide us with more calories, fiber, micronutrients, and even protein than the beef they'd supplant. The only thing we'd be missing is vitamin B12, for which the authors of this analysis offer a quick fix: take a pill.

A model for 'sustainable' US beef production (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0390-5) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Source code for Apple's legendary Lisa operating system to be released for free in 2018

You'll soon be able to take a huge trip down memory lane when it comes to Apple's computer efforts. The Computer History Museum has announced that the source code for the Lisa, Apple's computer that predated the Mac, has been recovered and is being reviewed by Apple itself...

The announcement was made by Al Kossow, a Software Curator at the Computer History Museum. Kossow says that source code for both the operating system and applications has been recovered. Once that code is finished being reviewed by Apple, the Computer History Museum will make the code available sometime in 2018.

While you've been able to run emulators of the Lisa operating system before, this is notable as it's not just a third-party hack solution, but rather Apple is directly involved and the full code will be available for everyone.

Apple Lisa.

Original Submission