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takyon writes:

Alzheimer's protein may spread like an infection, human brain scans suggest

For the first time, scientists have produced evidence in living humans that the protein tau, which mars the brain in Alzheimer's disease, spreads from neuron to neuron. Although such movement wasn't directly observed, the finding may illuminate how neurodegeneration occurs in the devastating illness, and it could provide new ideas for stemming the brain damage that robs so many of memory and cognition.

[...] Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom combined two brain imaging techniques, functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, in 17 Alzheimer's patients to map both the buildup of tau and their brains' functional connectivity—that is, how spatially separated brain regions communicate with each other. Strikingly, they found the largest concentrations of the damaging tau protein in brain regions heavily wired to others, suggesting that tau may spread in a way analogous to influenza during an epidemic, when people with the most social contacts will be at greatest risk of catching the disease.

The research team says this pattern, described yesterday in Brain [open, DOI: 10.1093/brain/awx347] [DX], supports something known as the "transneuronal spread" hypothesis for Alzheimer's disease, which had previously been demonstrated in mice but not people. "We come down quite strongly in favor of the idea that tau is starting in one place and moving across neurons and synapses to other places," says clinical neurologist Thomas Cope, one of the study's authors. "That has never before been shown in humans. That's very exciting." Because the researchers looked at Alzheimer's patients with a range of disease severity, they were also able to demonstrate that, when tau accumulation was higher, brain regions were on the whole less connected. The strength of connections also decreased, and connections were increasingly random.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Internet slowdowns at home aren't just annoying anymore. They can be hazardous to your health or dangerous if you're in an area that freezes.

Internet service provider Armstrong Zoom has roughly a million subscribers in the Northeastern part of the U.S. and is keen to punish those it believes are using file-sharing services.

The ISP's response to allegedly naughty customers is bandwidth throttling -- which is when an ISP intentionally slows down your internet service based on what you're doing online. In this case, when said ISP believes you're doing something illegal.

As part of its throttling routine, Armstrong Zoom's warning letter openly threatens its suspected file-sharing customers about its ability to use or control their webcams and connected thermostats.

The East Coast company stated: "Please be advised that this may affect other services which you may have connected to your internet service, such as the ability to control your thermostat remotely or video monitoring services."

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/05/pirates-risk-being-left-in-the-cold/

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The US Customs and Border Protection agency has updated its guidelines for electronic border searches, clarifying what remain broad and potentially invasive procedures. The directive was published today [ January 5, 2018], and it adds new detail to border search rules that were last officially updated in 2009.

Officers can still request that people unlock electronic devices for inspection when they're entering the US, and they can still look through any files or apps on those devices. But consistent with a statement from acting commissioner Kevin McAleenan last summer, they're explicitly banned from accessing cloud data — per these guidelines, that means anything that can't be accessed while the phone's data connection is disabled.

The guidelines also draw a distinction between "basic" and "advanced" searches. If officers connect to the phone (through a wired or wireless connection) and copy or analyze anything on it using external devices, that's an advanced search, and it can only be carried out with reasonable suspicion of illegal activity or a national security concern. A supervisor can approve the search, and "many factors" might create reasonable suspicion, including a terrorist watchlist flag or "other articulable factors."

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/5/16855804/customs-border-protection-electronic-device-border-search-update-statistics

Original Submission

rylyeh writes:

From Quanta Magazine:

To efficiently analyze a firehose of data, scientists first have to break big numbers into bits.

Computer programs that perform these kinds of on-the-go calculations are called streaming algorithms. Because data comes at them continuously, and in such volume, they try to record the essence of what they've seen while strategically forgetting the rest. For more than 30 years computer scientists have worked to build a better streaming algorithm. Last fall a team of researchers invented one that is just about perfect. "We developed a new algorithm that is simultaneously the best" on every performance dimension, said Jelani Nelson, a computer scientist at Harvard University and a co-author of the work with Kasper Green Larsen of Aarhus University in Denmark, Huy Nguyen of Northeastern University and Mikkel Thorup of the University of Copenhagen. This best-in-class streaming algorithm works by remembering just enough of what it's seen to tell you what it's seen most frequently. It suggests that compromises that seemed intrinsic to the analysis of streaming data are not actually necessary. It also points the way forward to a new era of strategic forgetting.

Small numbers are easier to keep track of than big numbers.

Imagine, for example, that you're monitoring a stream of numbers between zero and 50,000,000 (a task similar to logging internet users by their IP addresses). You could keep track of the numbers using a 50,000,000-term index, but it's hard to work with an index that size. A better way is to think of each eight-digit number as four two-digit numbers linked together. Say you see the number 12,345,678. One memory-efficient way to remember it is to break it into four two-digit blocks: 12, 34, 56, 78. Then you can send each block to a sub-algorithm that calculates item frequencies: 12 goes to copy one of the algorithm, 34 goes to copy two, 56 goes to copy three, and 78 goes to copy four. Each sub-algorithm maintains its own index of what it's seen, but since each version never sees anything bigger than a two-digit number, each index only runs from 0 to 99. An important feature of this splitting is that if the big number — 12,345,678 — appears frequently in your overall data stream, so will its two-digit components. When you ask each sub-algorithm to identify the numbers it has seen the most, copy one will spit out 12, copy two will spit out 34, and so on. You'll be able to find the most frequent members of a huge list just by looking for the frequent items in four much shorter lists.

I wonder if any Soylenters have heard of similar solutions.

Full Article
The paper at arxiv.org

Original Submission

Bill Dimm writes:

Loot boxes in video games give the player a random item, perhaps a weapon or a skin, typically in exchange for payment. Should they be viewed as a legal sweepstakes or as an illegal lottery? This video examines the legal issues and explains how loot boxes could be structured to avoid running afoul of gambling laws (which vary by state) in the U.S.. The video concludes that many current implementations of loot boxes are really illegal lotteries, and conjectures that major game companies use them anyway because the risk of being prosecuted isn't enough to dissuade them.

Previously: Belgium Moving to Ban "Loot Boxes" Throughout Europe, Hawaii Could Restrict Sale to Minors

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A third party, Vuzix, will use Amazon's Alexa service to deliver information to its augmented reality glasses:

The first augmented-reality glasses with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant will be shown next week at CES in Las Vegas -- manufactured by a 75-employee company rather than the e-commerce giant's growing devices division.

Vuzix Corp. will show off a pair of smart glasses that can talk to Amazon.com Inc.'s voice-activated digital assistant and display information to the wearer's field of view, Vuzix Chief Executive Officer Paul Travers said in an interview. Vuzix's Alexa integration is part of an Amazon program that allows third-party hardware manufacturers to put the digital assistant into their products. In October, Sonos Inc. unveiled a smart speaker with Alexa's system for controlling music playback. The strategy is designed to put Amazon's service, which generates revenue for the company, in as many places as possible to sell more products.

[...] Vuzix will release its AR glasses by the second quarter at a cost of about $1,000, Travers said. While it's a "high price point," he said, "the ultimate goal is to have it under $500, and we'll be able to do that" by 2019. Wearers, who must be Amazon customers or become Amazon customers to enable Alexa's capabilities, could for example ask the digital assistant to pull up a map or display sports scores on the glasses.

Amazon hasn't said whether it will release its own branded smart glasses with Alexa, but Travers expects it to happen. "I think everyone is going to come out with glasses sooner or later," he said.

You fail first, then we'll take a look.

Also at CNBC, which notes that Vuzix stock jumped 13% on the news.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The oceans are the largest global heat reservoir. As a result of man-made global warming, the temperature in the global climate system increases; around 90% of the extra heat is absorbed by the oceans. This means that the average sea temperature can tell us a lot about the state of our climate, both today and in the past. However, it is difficult to determine an accurate average value across all sea depths and regions of the world.

The results of previous measurement methods heavily depend on location, season or sea depth, which can lead to distorted results. As part of the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project, an international research team led by Bernhard Bereiter from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography - now working at Empa and the University of Bern - has developed a method of measuring ocean temperatures over the last 24'000 years with high accuracy.

These measurements have now been published in Nature. "Our study clearly shows that the basic idea - the connection between the concentration of noble gases in the atmosphere and the average ocean temperature - is correct and that the method works," said Bereiter.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Astronomers have found a star, HD 173701, with a similar mass, radius, and age to our own Sun, but twice the metallicity:

The spots on the surface on the Sun come and go with an 11-year periodicity known as the solar cycle. The solar cycle is driven by the solar dynamo, which is an interplay between magnetic fields, convection and rotation. However, our understanding of the physics underlying the solar dynamo is far from complete. One example is the so-called Maunder Minimum, a period in the 17th century, where spots almost disappeared from the surface of the Sun for a period of over 50 years.

Now, a large international team led by Christoffer Karoff from Aarhus University has found a star that can help shed light on the physics underlying the solar dynamo. The star is located 120 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus, and on the surface, the star looks just like the Sun: it has the same mass, radius and age -- but inside, the chemical composition of the star is very different. It consists of around twice as many heavy elements as in the Sun. Heavy elements here means elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

The team has succeeded in combining observations from the Kepler spacecraft with ground-based observations dating as far back as 1978, thereby reconstructing a 7.4-year cycle in this star. "The unique combination of a star almost identical to the Sun, except for the chemical composition, with a cycle that has been observed from both the Kepler spacecraft and from ground makes this star a Rosetta Stone for the study of stellar dynamos." explains Karoff.

The Influence of Metallicity on Stellar Differential Rotation and Magnetic Activity (DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aaa026) (DX)

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Solving the world's food, feed and bioenergy challenges requires integration of multiple approaches and diverse skills. Andrea Eveland, Ph.D., assistant member at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and her team identified a genetic mechanism that controls developmental traits related to grain production in cereals. The work was performed in Setaria viridis, an emerging model system for grasses that is closely related to economically important cereal crops and bioenergy feed stocks such as maize, sorghum, switchgrass and sugarcane.

The Eveland laboratory's research findings, "Brassinosteroids modulate meristem fate and differentiation of unique inflorescence morphology in Setaria viridis", were recently published in the journal The Plant Cell. In their study, Yang et al. mapped a genetic locus in the S. viridis genome that controls growth of sterile branches called bristles, which are produced on the grain-bearing inflorescences of some grass species. Their research revealed that these sterile bristles are initially programmed to be spikelets; grass-specific structures that produce flowers and grain. Eveland's work showed that conversion of a spikelet to a bristle is determined early in inflorescence development and regulated by a class of plant hormones called brassinosteroids (BRs), which modulate a range of physiological processes in plant growth, development and immunity. In addition to converting a sterile structure to a seed-bearing one, the research also showed that localized disruption of BR synthesis can lead to production of two flowers per spikelet rather than the single one that typically forms. These BR-dependent phenotypes therefore represent two potential avenues for enhancing grain production in millets, including subsistence crops in many developing countries that remain largely untapped for genetic improvement.

"This work is a great demonstration of how Setaria viridis can be leveraged to gain fundamental insights into the mechanisms that govern seed production in the grasses - our most important group of plants that includes corn, sorghum, rice, wheat and barley," said Thomas Brutnell, Ph.D., Director of the Enterprise Institute for Renewable Fuels, Danforth Center. "It's also worth noting that this project was conceived and work initiated after Dr. Eveland joined the Danforth Center - an impressive feat for a junior faculty member that speaks to both the advantages of working on a model system and the great team that she has assembled at the Danforth Center."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google provides colorful bicycles for its Mountain View area employees to ride. But hundreds of these bicycles go missing every week, and some have been found tossed in a local creek:

"The disappearances often aren't the work of ordinary thieves, however. Many residents of Mountain View, a city of 80,000 that has effectively become Google's company town, see the employee perk as a community service," the Wall Street Journal reported.

And for the company, here's one Google bike use case that's got to burn a little: 68-year-old Sharon Veach told the newspaper that she sometimes uses one of the bicycles as part of her commute: to the offices of Google's arch foe, Oracle. Google doesn't really want non-Googlers using the bikes, "but it's OK if you do," Veach explained.

Google has hired 30 contractors using five vans to recover lost and stolen bikes, about a third of which are equipped with GPS trackers. The teams carry waders and grappling hooks for pulling bikes out of creeks.

The company can't even confront people who appear to have stolen their bikes:

Ensuring that only company workers are riding the "Gbikes" is not particularly straightforward: some Googlers don't exactly fit the stereotype of the Silicon Valley techie. Company transportation executive Jeral Poskey told the paper he once took action when he saw what appeared to be a homeless woman on a commandeered Google bike. "If I could describe her, you would agree with me," Poskey said. "She looked all panicked, and then she showed me her Google badge."

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

According to Techradar, there are 8 reasons to replace your VPN client with OpenVPN.

Sign up for a new VPN and it makes sense to use your provider's clients. They should work right away, with no setup hassles, and you'll get easy access to any bonus features the service offers: encrypted DNS, ad blocking, split tunnelling, whatever they might be.

But what if your VPN doesn't have any bonus features, or its clients are so feeble and underpowered that they can't deliver the power you need?

OpenVPN could be the answer. It's an ultra-configurable open source VPN client which works with just about any VPN provider that supports the OpenVPN protocol. It gives you new ways to automate, optimize, control and troubleshoot your connections, and you can use it alongside your existing client, or maybe replace it entirely – it's your call.

The package won't be for everyone, but experienced VPN users in particular could have a lot to gain. We've listed eight good reasons you might want to give OpenVPN a try.

That is if you'e not just running over SSH or IPsec already.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Australia's first electric aircraft has begun test flights at Perth's Jandakot Airport, amid hopes the plane will be flying to nearby Rottnest Island within months.

The two-seater single-engine Pipistrel Alpha Electro has two batteries that can keep the plane in the air for an hour, with an extra 30 minutes in reserve.

The team behind the plane says while there are environmental benefits in doing away with jet fuel, electric planes are also safer and easier to fly.

"Electric propulsion is a lot simpler than a petrol engine," Electro.Aero founder Joshua Portlock said. "Inside a petrol engine you have hundreds of moving parts. "In this aircraft you have one switch to turn the aircraft on and one throttle lever to fly."

The engine is powered by two lithium-ion batteries, similar to those used in the Tesla electric car. There is no gear box or multiple moving engine parts —instead the plane's motor attaches directly to the propeller. Rather than a fuel gauge, a panel tells the pilot the amount of power left in the battery, and estimated minutes of flight time, based on the throttle position.

The batteries are re-energised in about an hour by a supercharger based at the Jandakot airfield.

[...] In mid-January Mr Bodley will begin training local pilots to fly the single-engine electric plane, with registered pilots required to complete a familiarisation flight before flying solo.

Mr Portlock said the group had held discussions with the Rottnest Island Authority to install a supercharger to tap into its solar array, allowing pilots to fly the plane to the island.

Future plans include electric air-taxis capable of carrying up to five people to the holiday destination.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Qualcomm has confirmed its processors have the same security vulnerabilities disclosed this week in Intel, Arm and AMD CPU cores this week.

The California tech giant picked the favored Friday US West Coast afternoon "news dump" slot to admit at least some of its billions of Arm-compatible Snapdragon system-on-chips and newly released Centriq server-grade processors are subject to the Meltdown and/or Spectre data-theft bugs.

[...] Qualcomm declined to comment further on precisely which of the three CVE-listed vulnerabilities its chips were subject to, or give any details on which of its CPU models may be vulnerable. The paper describing the Spectre data-snooping attacks mentions that Qualcomm's CPUs are affected, while the Meltdown paper doesn't conclude either way.

[...] Apple, which too bases its iOS A-series processors on Arm's instruction set, said earlier this week that its mobile CPUs were vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown – patches are available or incoming for iOS. The iGiant's Intel-based Macs also need the latest macOS, version 10.13.2 or greater, to kill off Meltdown attacks.

[Update: The launch of the secret payload was reportedly a success. The Stage 1 booster returned to the LZ-1 landing pad at Cape Canaveral and landed successfully. If you missed the launch, SpaceX usually posts a recorded copy a few hours after launch at the same YouTube location as the live stream.]

SpaceX's Mysterious Zuma Mission May Finally Take Flight Sunday

Fnord666 writes:

Originally planned for a November launch, the mysterious Zuma mission may finally go to space on Sunday evening. SpaceX has confirmed that its rocket, and the undisclosed national security payload, are ready for launch, and weather conditions appear to be generally favorable. The two-hour launch window opens at 8pm ET.

An undisclosed issue with the Falcon 9 rocket's fairing caused SpaceX to delay the launch for several weeks in November and eventually move the date forward to January 4. Earlier this week additional propellant loading tests contributed to further delays, as did "extreme weather" at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida—mostly gusty winds.

But now conditions for the mysterious mission are 80-percent go, weather-wise, in Florida. This is SpaceX's third classified mission, and arguably its most secretive flight for the US military. All that is publicly known about the Zuma payload is that it is a satellite manufactured for the US government by Northrop Grumman, and it is bound for low-Earth orbit.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/watch-live-spacexs-zuma-mission-may-finally-be-ready-to-zoom-into-space/

SpaceX to Launch Classified Zuma Mission: 0100-0300 UTC on 8th (8:00-10:00 p.m. EST on 7th)

martyb writes:

takyon writes:

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have used sensitive optically pumped magnetometers to detect low frequency magnetic signals while ignoring noise, effectively boosting their range:

The NIST team is experimenting with low-frequency magnetic radio—very low frequency (VLF) digitally modulated magnetic signals—which can travel farther through building materials, water and soil than conventional electromagnetic communications signals at higher frequencies.

VLF electromagnetic fields are already used underwater in submarine communications. But there's not enough data-carrying capacity for audio or video, just one-way texts. Submarines also must tow cumbersome antenna cables, slow down and rise to periscope depth (18 meters, or about 60 feet, below the surface) to communicate. "The big issues with very low-frequency communications, including magnetic radio, is poor receiver sensitivity and extremely limited bandwidth of existing transmitters and receivers. This means the data rate is zilch," NIST project leader Dave Howe said. "The best magnetic field sensitivity is obtained using quantum sensors. The increased sensitivity leads in principle to longer communications range. The quantum approach also offers the possibility to get high bandwidth communications like a cellphone has. We need bandwidth to communicate with audio underwater and in other forbidding environments," he said.

As a step toward that goal, the NIST researchers demonstrated detection of digitally modulated magnetic signals, that is, messages consisting of digital bits 0 and 1, by a magnetic-field sensor that relies on the quantum properties of rubidium atoms. The NIST technique varies magnetic fields to modulate or control the frequency—specifically, the horizontal and vertical positions of the signal's waveform—produced by the atoms. "Atoms offer very fast response plus very high sensitivity," Howe said. "Classical communications involves a tradeoff between bandwidth and sensitivity. We can now get both with quantum sensors."

Traditionally, such atomic magnetometers are used to measure naturally occurring magnetic fields, but in this NIST project, they are being used to receive coded communications signals. In the future, the NIST team plans to develop improved transmitters. The researchers have published their results [open, DOI: 10.1063/1.5003821] [DX] in the Review of Scientific Instruments.