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takyon writes:

A number of companies are developing advanced supercapacitors in the hopes of replacing or augmenting lithium-ion batteries:

Dr Donald Highgate, director of research at Superdielectrics Ltd, says a material he originally developed for soft contact lenses is also surprisingly good at holding an electrostatic field. [...] Dr Highgate is working with Bristol and Surrey universities to develop supercapacitors using the new polymer and hopes that they could eventually rival, or even surpass, lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries - so long as they manage to replicate prototype performance on a large scale.

[...] Taavi Madiberk, chief executive and co-founder of Skeleton Technologies, a supercapacitor maker based in Estonia, Germany and Finland, says his products incorporate layers of graphene - a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice - and other carbon-based materials in its supercapacitors. These layers have a huge surface area - just 1g of graphene can cover 2,000 sq m, says Mr Madiberk. This allows them to hold on to a lot more power.

[...] But he acknowledges that in the short-term, combining supercapacitors with li-ion batteries is probably the best way to enjoy the best of both worlds, particularly in electric vehicles. Ulrik Grape, chief executive of NaWa technologies, another supercapacitor maker based in the South of France, agrees, saying: "Supercapacitors don't store as much energy but their response is instantaneous. So a supercapacitor could handle acceleration and energy recovery under braking - taking care of the stressful part of a battery's life - possibly doubling or tripling a battery's life expectancy."

aristarchus writes:

From Gizmodo:

[...] an enormous ring of debris, 237 light years away from Earth, orbiting a long-studied, young star called HR 4796A. While the bright white ring of debris may be the most visually striking part of the image, astronomers are more excited about what's around it: the much larger, less-concentrated area of dust around it.

[...] Researchers aren't quite sure how the system got its shape, but perhaps the nearby companion star, HR 4796B, is influencing the shape with its gravitational pull. It's not easy understanding these things, given all the possible influencing factors, according to a Hubble press release.

Hubble has observed few systems like HR 4796A, but the scientists predict that these debris ring might be relatively common in younger stars, according to the paper. HR 4796 is a mere 8 million years old—our sun is around 4.5 billion years. And understanding these structures could help understand how stars evolve, and even how planets might form around these young stars. Our own solar system probably formed from a dust disk, too, after all.

The HR 4796A Debris System: Discovery of Extensive Exo-ring Dust Material (DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aaa3f3) (DX)

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

After 12 years of development, the MATISSE interferometry instrument has been installed during the last 3 months at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The instrument combines four of the VLT telescopes to obtain an interferometer with an extremely high spatial resolution. This instrument allows astronomers to study the environment of young stars, the surfaces of stars and Active Galactic Nuclei in the mid-infrared wavelength range. In February 2018, MATISSE successfully achieved ‘First Light’. This achievement consummates the decade-long efforts of a large number of engineers and astronomers in europe, including the infrared interferometry research group at the MPIfR in Bonn, Germany.

MATISSE is a second-generation Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) instrument providing extremely high spatial resolution. It is a combined imager and spectrograph for interferometry in the mid-infrared 3–5 μm spectral region (L- and M-bands) and the 8–13 μm region (N-band). MATISSE builds on the experience gained with the VLTI’s first-generation instruments, but vastly extends their capability to produce detailed images.

The instrument exploits multiple telescopes and the wave nature of the light to produce more detailed images of celestial objects than can be obtained with any existing or planned single telescope. High- resolution imaging in the infrared is technically demanding but has yielded spectacular results in detecting planet-forming discs around stars, images of the surfaces of stars, and dusty discs around Active Galactic Nuclei.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Cryptocurrency-mining malware-scum have started to write code that evicts rivals from compromised computers.

The miner in question was first noticed by SANS Internet Storm Center handler Xavier Mertens. Mertens spotted the PowerShell script on March 4, and noting that it kills any other CPU-greedy processes it spots on target machines, he wrote: “The fight for CPU cycles started!”

Pre-infection, the attack script checks whether a target machine is 32-bit or 64-bit and downloads files known to VirusTotal as hpdriver.exe or hpw64 (they're pretending to be HP drivers of some kind).

If successfully installed, the attack then lists running processes and kills any it doesn't like. Mertens noted that alongside ordinary Windows stuff, the list of death-marked processes includes many associated with cryptominers, some of which are listed below.

Mertens wrote that the script also checks for processes associated with security tools.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Biochemists have made a discovery that sheds light on the molecular machinery that allows some cells, such as immune cells or even malignant cancer cells in humans, to wiggle their way through tissues like organs, skin or bones.

The work, conducted in the University of Oregon laboratory of Brad Nolen, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, was described in a paper in the Feb. 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers examined a fibrous rope-like protein in cells called actin, which grows and branches the way limbs on trees do. When actin branches grow, they push on the cell membrane and create arm-like protrusions. These arms can pull an immune cell forward, allowing it to chase foreign invaders and wrap around and swallow them.

Nolen and colleagues looked at the actin-related complex, Arp2/3, a large assembly of proteins that is required for actin to branch. When Arp2/3 sits down on actin it promotes a new branch to form at that site.

This Arp2/3 complex is critical to cell motility -- the ability to move and perform myriad duties -- and for initializing the construction of a network of filaments known as the actin cytoskeleton that provides structural support for cells.

The researchers identified two locations on Arp2/3 where an activator protein touches it. This activator protein resides in the membrane and can sense when the cell needs to crawl or engulf a foreign agent. It then triggers the branching response inside of the cell by touching Arp2/3.

[...] "What we discovered was exciting because knowing precisely how the activator protein binds to Arp2/3 complex is the first step in understanding how it turns on its branching activity," Nolen said.

Understanding how this branching activity is turned on in malignant cells could be applicable in the development of new drugs to target cancer, the researchers said. In some disease states, including viral infections such as HIV and cancer, cells can lose control of their actin cytoskeleton.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The FDA will allow the genetic testing company 23andMe to offer information about three common BRCA mutations that can have an influence on breast cancer risk. According to the FDA, the test should not be used as a substitute for seeing a doctor:

The Food and Drug Administration for the first time has authorized a genetic testing company to offer screenings for three breast cancer mutations common in Ashkenazi Jews, giving consumers the ability to initiate testing at home and see results without talking to a doctor or counselor.

The agency's action on Tuesday permits the testing company, 23andMe, to report results as part of its $199 Health and Ancestry product, which uses DNA from saliva samples to inform customers about their families' countries of origin, along with information on genetic health risks. There will be no extra charge for the additional reports, which should be available in a few weeks to customers who actively opt in and request to see them, company officials said.

[...] But testing negative for the three mutations does not mean someone is in the clear, as there are over a thousand BRCA mutations associated with increased cancer risk. Some critics say that comprehensive genetic testing — an exhaustive analysis to detect all mutations associated with an increase in breast cancer risk — is preferable. Physicians, geneticists and policymakers have long been concerned that the enthusiasm over personalized medical information and genetic testing may place consumers who misunderstand or misinterpret results at risk of jeopardizing their health. Even for Jews of Ashkenazi descent, whose families originated in Eastern and Central Europe and who are most likely to test positive for the three mutations, testing negative is no panacea, as they may carry other mutations that increase cancer risk.

Also at STAT News, Reuters, and The Verge.

Related: FDA Permits Marketing of 23andMe Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Test
Color Genomics Launches a $249 Genetic Test for Breast Cancer Risk
23andMe Genetic Test Relaunches, but Transparency Report Reveals Law Enforcement Data Requests
FDA to Allow 23andMe to Sell Genetic Tests for Disease Risks

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Today on this March 6, 2018, this Reuters article describes:

BlackBerry Ltd on Tuesday filed a patent infringement lawsuit against social media platforms Facebook Inc and its units WhatsApp and Instagram.

BlackBerry said Facebook and its companies developed "competing applications that improperly used BlackBerry's mobile messaging intellectual property".

There are more details on the lawsuit at Ars Technica:

BlackBerry, the once-great smartphone maker that exited the hardware business in 2016, is suing Facebook for patent infringement. BlackBerry owns a portfolio of broad software patents that cover some of the most basic features of modern smartphone messaging services—and the company says it wants Facebook to pay up.

[...] BlackBerry began its own campaign of patent litigation in 2016, suing the little-known Android phone maker BLU and the Internet telephony company Avaya. BLU agreed to pay up last year, and BlackBerry is now moving on to Facebook—potentially a much more lucrative target.

BlackBerry is asserting seven software patents against Facebook, and they're remarkably broad:

takyon writes:

Google Takes Aim at Quantum Supremacy with 72-Qubit Chip

Google's Quantum AI Lab has revealed it is testing a 72-qubit quantum processor in its bid to become the first company to demonstrate quantum supremacy.

The chip, known as Bristlecone, was revealed on Monday at the annual American Physical Society meeting in Los Angeles. Given that you only need 49 or 50 qubits to demonstrate quantum supremacy – the capability of a quantum computer to outperform the largest supercomputers on certain computational tasks – a 72-qubit processor should be more than enough to achieve such a milestone. However, the error rates of such a system must be low enough so that it to be of practical use. Moreover, the ability to test a system for quantum supremacy is confounded by the very fact that classical computers cannot be used to compare test results.

Julian Kelly, a research scientist at the Quantum AI Lab who presented Bristlecone at this week's American Physical Society meeting, described the progress of their work in a Google Research blog post. In his writeup, he characterized the new chip as a "a testbed for research into system error rates and scalability of our qubit technology, as well as applications in quantum simulation, optimization, and machine learning."

Also at BGR.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

World-first firing of air-breathing electric thruster

In a world-first, an ESA-led team has built and fired an electric thruster to ingest scarce air molecules from the top of the atmosphere for propellant, opening the way to satellites flying in very low orbits for years on end.

[...] Replacing onboard propellant with atmospheric molecules would create a new class of satellites able to operate in very low orbits for long periods. Air-breathing electric thrusters could also be used at the outer fringes of atmospheres of other planets, drawing on the carbon dioxide of Mars, for instance.

"This project began with a novel design to scoop up air molecules as propellant from the top of Earth's atmosphere at around 200 km altitude with a typical speed of 7.8 km/s," explains ESA's Louis Walpot.

A complete thruster was developed for testing the concept by Sitael in Italy, which was performed in a vacuum chamber in their test facilities, simulating the environment at 200 km altitude.

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump submitted a story.

foxnews.com/us/2018/03/06/trump-cites-possible-progress-in-talks-with-nkorea.html

Trump commented Tuesday on Twitter after the South Korean government announced that North Korea has agreed to halt tests of nuclear weapons and missiles if it holds talks with the U.S. on denuclearization. South Korea and North Korea have also agreed to hold summit talks in late April.

Trump tweeted: "Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned. The World is watching and waiting! May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!"

The Associated Press has some additional information:

While the offer of talks could ease tensions, the adversaries will still have to overcome deep mutual suspicion. The U.S. has consistently demanded North Korea give up its nukes, which the reclusive socialist state had previously insisted was off the table until Washington abandoned its "hostile policy" toward it. At a minimum, the Americans wanted a halt in nuclear and missile testing for talks to begin.

"Maybe this is a breakthrough. I seriously doubt it," Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told a Senate hearing Tuesday. He said his doubts are grounded in what he called failed efforts by previous U.S. administrations to negotiate with North Korea over its nuclear program.

Coats said Kim is "very calculating" and views his nuclear capabilities as "essential to his well-being as well as the well-being of his nation."

takyon writes:

TorrentFreak reports on the closure of SeedStuff, a once popular "seedbox". Seedboxes are remote servers available for rent that can download and upload using BitTorrent, and store files for users to download anonymously later:

"The private trackers gamified seeding and rewarded their best members, this is what really paved the way for seedboxes. The users felt a need to compete and often did not have access to the means to do so, but could contract these machines out to help them succeed. The demand for seedboxes started in about 2010, which I think you will see coincided with a huge spike of private tracker activity."

SeedStuff says its initial aim was to improve user experience by not following the decision by many existing providers to "stuff as many users as possible" into each server. Restricting each unit to a maximum of four users and accepting just a small profit on each, the service grew while gaining support from customers.

"At our peak, we serviced over 4000 customers per month. Our total email database was well over 10,000 customer accounts. We did not monitor bandwidth or user activities as we felt this to be intrusive. We only dealt with server providers who offered unlimited bandwidth so that we were able to allow for the best user experience without limits," the company explains.

But after several years of growth, SeedStuff noticed a change. In addition to suffering a painful database crash caused by a host and a failed backup regime, in 2015 the company observed a shift in user patterns. "We noticed around this time that streaming services had started to become mainstream in almost every home and people were simply not using our services anymore. The main cancellation reason for the last three years has been 'Not needed anymore'," SeedStuff notes.

Original Submission

PastTense writes:

"A team of computer scientists from the University of Michigan may have solved the mystery behind strange sounds heard by American diplomats in Havana, who later suffered a variety of medical disorders.

Professor Kevin Fu and members of the Security and Privacy Research Group at the University of Michigan say they have an explanation for what could have happened in Havana: two sources of ultrasound — such as listening devices — placed too close together could generate interference and provoke the intense sounds described by the victims."

Original URL:
Computer scientists may have solved the mystery behind the ‘sonic attacks’ in Cuba

This is an update of previous stories here:
US Embassy Employees in Cuba Possibly Subjected to 'Acoustic Attack'
U.S. State Department Pulls Employees From Cuba, Issues Travel Warning Due to "Sonic Attacks"
A ‘Sonic Attack’ on Diplomats in Cuba? These Scientists Doubt It

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Oral contraceptives increase the risk of ischemic stroke, but this risk is very small among women who do not have other stroke risk factors, according to a Jan. 3, 2018 paper in the journal MedLink Neurology by Loyola Medicine stroke specialists.

Birth control pills do not increase the risk of hemorrhagic strokes, wrote neurologists Sarkis Morales-Vidal, MD, and José Biller, MD. Ischemic strokes, which account for about 85 percent of all strokes, are caused by blood clots. Hemorrhagic strokes are caused by bleeding in the brain.

Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain why oral contraceptives increase stroke risk, including by raising blood pressure and by making blood hypercoagulable (more likely to clot).

Hormonal Contraception and Stroke

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The late Russ Solomon radically changed retail music until the arrival of digital music players, streaming, online retailers, and late-stage big box stores all combined to cut deeply into the market. Now he, like music stores in general, has passed on:

A pioneer who was admired by employees and competitors alike, Solomon made Tower a $1 billion-a-year business stretching from Boston to Bogota, Colombia, with major outposts in Tokyo and London. He operated on a philosophy that was obvious to him but extraordinary for its day: Build big stores and pack them with as much music as possible. The company eventually branched into books and video.

The Rolling Stone also had this quote from a 2015 documentary on Solomon and his stores:

"You find the people that get their shit together, who get the job done, regardless of how much fun they have — and you leave 'em alone," Hanks told Rolling Stone of Tower Records' laissez-faire management style. "It's pretty dangerous, but it works for the era and for the music business. Russ kept finding himself in the right place, at the right time, with the right attitude."

Over-expansion played a large role in the stores going under.

Sources :
Founder of Tower Records dies at 92 while drinking whiskey and watching the Oscars. The Sacramento Bee.
Tower Records Founder Russ Solomon Dead at 92. Rolling Stone.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The American College of Physicians has issued less strict guidelines for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes, but some doctors and groups like the American Diabetes Association stand by accepted practices:

Major Medical Associations Feud Over Diabetes Guidelines

A major medical association today suggested that doctors who treat people with Type 2 diabetes can set less aggressive blood sugar targets. But medical groups that specialize in diabetes sharply disagree.

Half a dozen medical groups have looked carefully at the best treatment guidelines for the 29 million Americans who have Type 2 diabetes and have come up with somewhat differing guidelines.

The American College of Physicians has reviewed those guidelines to provide its own recommendations [open, DOI: 10.7326/M17-0939] [DX], published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It has decided that less stringent goals are appropriate for the key blood sugar test, called the A1C.

Also at Reuters.

Original Submission