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Phoenix666 writes:

Biomedical engineers have grown the first functioning human skeletal muscle from induced pluripotent stem cells.

The advance builds on work published in 2015 when researchers at Duke University grew the first functioning human muscle tissue from cells obtained from muscle biopsies. The ability to start from cellular scratch using non-muscle tissue will allow scientists to grow far more muscle cells, provide an easier path to genome editing and cellular therapies, and develop individually tailored models of rare muscle diseases for drug discovery and basic biology studies.

Sounds like an exciting time to be a bioengineer.

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takyon writes:

Ecuador has granted citizenship to Julian Assange as its government attempts to find creative ways of getting Assange out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London:

Ecuador says it has granted citizenship to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as officials try to find a way for him to leave the Ecuadorean embassy in London without risking legal action.

Assange, who is Australian, first sought refuge at the embassy more than five years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced an investigation over rape allegations. He was granted asylum, and has been holed up in the embassy ever since.

The original case against him has been dropped, but Assange remains inside the embassy. "He is still subject to arrest in Britain for jumping bail," The Associated Press notes. "He also fears a possible U.S. extradition request based on his leaking of classified State Department documents."

"Earlier this week, Ecuador said the situation was unsustainable and requested diplomatic status for Assange in hopes of springing him," NPR's Frank Langfitt reports from London. "A British government spokesman responded: 'Ecuador knows that the way to resolve this issue is for Julian Assange to leave the embassy to face justice.'"

Also at The Guardian.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

When people consider evolutionary events related to the origin and diversification of new species and groups, they tend to emphasize novel adaptations — specific genes giving rise to new, beneficial traits. But a growing body of research suggests that in some cases, that deciding factor may be something much more fundamental: size. In a paper published today in PLOS Biology, a pair of researchers studying the angiosperms, or flowering plants, has named genome size as the limiting constraint in their evolution.

The success of flowering plants, a group that includes everything from orchids and tulips to grasses and wheat, represents a long-standing puzzle for biologists. (In an 1879 letter to the renowned botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, Charles Darwin called it an "abominable mystery.") Terrestrial plants first appeared nearly half a billion years ago, but flowering plants arose only in the past 100 million years, beginning in the Cretaceous period. Yet, once angiosperms emerged, their structural and functional diversity exploded — far outpacing the diversification and spread of the other major plant groups, the gymnosperms (including conifers) and ferns.

Today, the 350,000 flowering-plant species, which have flourished in the vast majority of environments on Earth, constitute 90 percent of all plants on land. Since Darwin's time, biologists pursuing the answer to that abominable mystery have sought to explain how the flowering plants could possibly have achieved this level of dominance in such a relatively short time.

Perhaps the answer has been so elusive because those scientists have usually focused on the physiological traits that set the angiosperms apart from their relatives. In the PLOS Biology paper, however, Kevin Simonin, a plant biologist at San Francisco State University, and Adam Roddy, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, argue that it's the genome sizes underlying those individual adaptations that really matter.

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takyon writes:

Potassium iodide distributors have a friend on Twitter:

A Twitter battle over the size of each "nuclear button" possessed by President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un has spiked sales of a drug that protects against radiation poisoning.

Troy Jones, who runs the website www.nukepills.com, said demand for potassium iodide soared last week, after Trump tweeted that he had a "much bigger & more powerful" button than Kim — a statement that raised new fears about an escalating threat of nuclear war. "On Jan. 2, I basically got in a month's supply of potassium iodide and I sold out in 48 hours," said Jones, 53, who is a top distributor of the drug in the United States. His Mooresville, N.C., firm sells all three types of the product approved by the Food and Drug Administration. No prescription is required.

In that two-day period, Jones said, he shipped about 140,000 doses of potassium iodide, also known as KI, which blocks the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine and protects against the risk of cancer. Without the tweet, he typically would have sent out about 8,400 doses to private individuals, he said. Jones also sells to government agencies, hospitals and universities, which aren't included in that count.

Alan Morris, president of the Williamsburg, Va.-based pharmaceutical firm Anbex Inc., which distributes potassium iodide, said he's seen a bump in demand, too. "We are a wonderful barometer of the level of anxiety in the country," said Morris.

Note: A comment on the article claims that Nukepills is massively overcharging for the substance.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Cape Town, home to Table Mountain, African penguins, sunshine and sea, is a world-renowned tourist destination. But it could also become famous for being the first major city in the world to run out of water.

Most recent projections suggest that its water could run out as early as March. The crisis has been caused by three years of very low rainfall, coupled with increasing consumption by a growing population.

The local government is racing to address the situation, with desalination plants to make sea water drinkable, groundwater collection projects, and water recycling programmes.

Meanwhile Cape Town's four million residents are being urged to conserve water and use no more than 87 litres (19 gallons) a day. Car washing and filling up swimming pools has been banned. And the visiting Indian cricket team were told to limit their post-match showers to two minutes.

Such water-related problems are not confined to Cape Town, of course.

Nearly 850 million people globally lack access to safe drinking water, says the World Health Organisation, and droughts are increasing.

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takyon writes:

You can no longer boil a lobster alive in Switzerland, unless you stun it first:

The Swiss government has ordered an end to the common culinary practice of throwing lobsters into boiling water while they are still alive, ruling that they must be knocked out before they are killed.

As part of a wider overhaul of Swiss animal protection laws, Bern said that as of 1 March, "the practice of plunging live lobsters into boiling water, which is common in restaurants, is no longer permitted". Lobsters "will now have to be stunned before they are put to death," the government order read.

According to Swiss public broadcaster RTS, only electric shock or the "mechanical destruction" of the lobster's brain will be accepted methods of stunning the animals once the new rule takes affect.

Also at BBC.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" has found the following story:

Uber, like many companies that operate internationally, uses software to remotely disable its employees' laptops and smartphones.

As Uber has expanded -- opening offices in 78 countries worldwide -- sometimes local authorities have raided its offices. Police have wanted emails, documents and information on drivers and employees. It's happened in Paris, Hong Kong, Montreal and other countries.

In order to address these types of situations, the ride-hailing company uses software to protect its data, which is commonplace among companies that operate internationally. One type of software the company devised and reportedly used from Spring 2015 to late 2016 was called Ripley, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Ripley -- which was said to be named after Sigourney Weaver's character in the 1979 sci-fi movie "Alien" -- could remotely disable, lock or change the password on employees' computers and smartphones.

The idea was for Uber's team at its San Francisco headquarters to be able to shut down a device if necessary. The company used it at least two dozen times in situations with authorities in foreign countries, according to Bloomberg.

Uber said it no longer uses Ripley because it wasn't effective. It now uses an off-the-shelf software called Prey and another type of software it built called uLocker. Uber said this software is necessary to protect company data, along with the privacy of passengers, drivers and Uber employees.

[...] As for software like Ripley, Prey or uLocker, Uber said there's nothing secretive about it. It's basically the same software someone would use if they lost their smartphone.

"For instance, if an employee loses their laptop, we have the ability to remotely log them out of Uber's systems to prevent someone else from accessing private user data through that laptop," the Uber spokeswoman said.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Meet the butterflies from 200 million years ago

Newly discovered fossils show that moths and butterflies have been on the planet for at least 200 million years. Scientists found fossilised butterfly scales the size of a speck of dust inside ancient rock from Germany. The find pushes back the date for the origins of the Lepidoptera, one of the most prized and studied insect groups. Researchers say they can learn more about the conservation of butterflies and moths by studying their early evolution.

They used acid to dissolve ancient rocks, leaving behind small fragments, including "perfectly preserved" scales that covered the wings of early moths and butterflies. "We found the microscopic remains of these organisms in the form of these scales," said Dr Bas van de Schootbrugge from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Intriguingly, they show that some of the moths and butterflies belonged to a group still alive today that have long straw-like tongues for sucking up nectar.

Also at NPR.

A Triassic-Jurassic window into the evolution of Lepidoptera (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701568) (DX)

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" has found the following story:

You probably remember Subway's famous "five-dollar footlong" promotion as much for the obnoxiously catchy jingle as for the sandwiches themselves. (Sorry for getting that stuck in your head all day.)

The sandwich chain recently resurrected the promotion in a national advertising campaign promising foot-long subs for just $4.99—but the special deal won't fly at one Subway restaurant in Seattle, where owner David Jones posted a sign this week giving customers the bad news.

Sadly, the consequences of high minimum wages, excessive taxation, and mandate-happy public policy are not limited to the death of cheap sandwiches. The cost of doing business in Seattle is higher than the Space Needle, and the unintended consequences of those policies are piling up too.

The biggest cost driver, as Jones' sign mentions, is Seattle's highest-in-the-nation minimum wage. It went from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015, then to $13 per hour in 2016, with a further increase to $15 per hour planned.

The result? According to researchers at the University of Washington's School of Public Policy and Governance, the number of hours worked in low-wage jobs has declined by around 9 percent since the start of 2016 "while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent." The net outcome: In 2016, the "higher" minimum wage actually lowered low-wage workers' earnings by an average of $125 a month.

And now those same employees will have to pay more for sandwiches from Subway—and everything else too.

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canopic jug writes:

Teenagers are averaging over 4.5 hours per day dorking around on their smartphones, not including time spent texting or talking. So over at Techdirt Glyn Moody writes about the question specifically asked to Apple about what to do about gadget addiction among youth.

In an open letter to Apple, two of its major shareholders, Jana Partners and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, have raised concerns about research that suggests young people are becoming "addicted" to high-tech devices like the iPhone and iPad, and the software that runs on them. It asks the company to take a number of measures to tackle the problem, such as carrying out more research in the area, and providing more tools and education for parents to help them deal with the issue. The letter quotes studies by Professor Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University, who is also working with the shareholders in an effort to persuade Apple to do more

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takyon writes:

Bill Gates gave an address at J.P. Morgan's 36th Annual Healthcare Conference in San Francisco:

[There] is reason to hope that the insights uncovered in ongoing immunotherapy research for cancer will eventually help us control all infectious diseases. This would be a huge victory for humanity—and potentially a significant market for the life sciences.

Others seem to think so too. Venture capitalists like Bob Nelsen and Bob More have helped raise over $500 million for VIR Biotechnology—including funding from us—to discover and develop treatments for serious infectious diseases.

We are also investors in Immunocore, which is using T-cell technology to help stimulate the body's immune system. Initially, Immunocore's "T-cell receptor" technology targeted cancers, but it could also be applied against infectious diseases.

We are backing companies like CureVac and Moderna on mRNA approaches for vaccine and drug development, which have the potential to help us tackle cancer. This approach is also intriguing as a potential immunological intervention for HIV, malaria, flu and the Zika virus.

And mRNA vaccines are likely to be cheaper, easier, and faster to make than traditional vaccines. This would be particularly helpful in containing epidemics—whether they occur through nature or are the result of an intentional biological attack. Today, it typically takes up to 10 years to develop and license a new vaccine. To significantly curb deaths from a fast-moving airborne pathogen, we would have to get that down considerably—to 90 days or less.

Also at NBF.

Related: Bill Gates Commits $100 Million to Alzheimer's Research

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takyon writes:

Multi-planet System Found Through Crowdsourcing

A system of at least five exoplanets has been discovered by citizen scientists through a project called Exoplanet Explorers, part of the online platform Zooniverse, using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope. This is the first multi-planet system discovered entirely through crowdsourcing. A study describing the system has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.

Thousands of citizen scientists got to work on Kepler data in 2017 when Exoplanet Explorers launched. It was featured on a program called Stargazing Live on the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). On the final night of the three-day program, researchers announced the discovery of a four-planet system. Since then, they have named it K2-138 and determined that it has a fifth planet -- and perhaps even a sixth, according to the new paper.

Zooniverse. Also at Caltech and SpaceRef.

The K2-138 System: A Near-resonant Chain of Five Sub-Neptune Planets Discovered by Citizen Scientists (open, DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aa9be0) (DX) (arXiv)

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"Arthur T Knackerbracket" has found the following story:

Deep in a swamp in the Russian republic of Tuva, SNSF-funded archaeologist Gino Caspari has discovered an undisturbed Scythian burial mound. All the evidence suggests that this is not only the largest Scythian princely tomb in South Siberia, but also the earliest -- and that it may be harbouring some outstandingly well-preserved treasures.

Gino Caspari made the most significant find in his career to date not with a shovel, but at a computer. A recipient of Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) funding, archaeologist Caspari discovered a circular structure on high-resolution satellite images of the Uyuk River valley (Siberia) on his computer screen. An initial trial dig carried out this summer by the Bern University scientist together with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Hermitage Museum confirmed his suspicion: the structure is a kurgan, a Scythian princely tomb.

[...] Wooden beams found by Caspari during the test excavation date back to the 9th century BC, predating Arzhan 1, which was built at the turn of the 9th to the 8th century BC and excavated in the 1970s. "We have a great opportunity here," says a delighted Caspari, commenting on the results of the trial dig published in the current issue of Archaeological Research in Asia (*).

[...] The climatic characteristics of the Siberian soil add to Caspari's hopes. In the Uyuk Valley, the permafrost layer largely begins just a few metres below the surface. Everything above that thaws in summer, and organic material rots. However, beneath the thick stone packing of the kurgans, the rays of sunlight are unable to thaw out the soil. "Very rarely ice lenses form directly beneath the kurgans," explains Caspari. The ice prevents the decay of organic matter and preserves sensitive material. Caspari is expecting further finds to be unearthed in the course of the project: "If we're lucky, we might even find some well-preserved wood carvings or carpets under the stones, or perhaps an ice mummy."

Gino Caspari, Timur Sadykov, Jegor Blochin, Irka Hajdas. Tunnug 1 (Arzhan 0) – an early Scythian kurgan in Tuva Republic, Russia. Archaeological Research in Asia, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.ara.2017.11.001

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AnonTechie writes:

India on Friday deployed a remote sensing Cartosat and 30 other satellites, including 28 from six nations into the earth's orbit after a copybook launch from its spaceport here. The 44.4-metre tall Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C40) roared into a clear sky after a perfect lift-off at 9.29 a.m. following a 28-hour countdown. The 320-tonne rocket would eject the satellites one-by-one and deploy them into the earth's lower orbit 17 minutes and 18 seconds after the lift-off.

Of the 31 satellites, three are Indian and the rest are from Canada, Finland, France, South Korea, UK and the US.

INDIA LAUNCHES 31 SATELLITES, PUTS CARTOSAT-2 INTO ORBIT

[Also Covered By]:
ISRO's 42nd PSLV successfully puts 31 satellites in orbit
PSLV-C40/Cartosat-2 Series Satellite Mission

[YouTube Video]: The Launch of PSLV-C40 / Cartosat-2 Series Satellite

Related: PicSat Mission to Observe Beta Pictoris for Exoplanet Transit

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"MrPlow" writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Porn streaming sites were accessed from UK parliament 24,000 times in six months, figures have shown.

I'm torn between making a "bunch of wankers" joke and castigating them for being underachievers.

Source: https://www.rt.com/uk/415259-porn-stream-sex-parliament/

Original Submission