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Bytram (from IRC) writes:

New bird flu viruses in ducks after vaccines largely prevented H7N9 in chickens

In response to bird flu pandemics starting in 2013, officials in China introduced a new vaccine for chickens in September 2017. Recent findings suggest that the vaccine largely worked but detected two new genetic variations of the H7N9 and H7N2 subtypes in unvaccinated ducks.

[...] "It surprised me that the novel, highly pathogenic subtypes had been generated in and adapted so well to ducks, because the original highly pathogenic form of H7N9 has very limited capacity to replicate in ducks," says Hualan Chen, a senior author on the paper and an animal virologist at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.

Chen's team collected over 37,928 chickens and 15,956 duck genetic samples 8 months before and 5 months after the vaccine's introduction. They isolated 304 H7N9 viruses before the vaccine's release, and only 17 H7N9 viruses and one H7N2 virus after.

"Our data show that vaccination of chickens successfully prevented the spread of the H7N9 virus in China," says Chen. "The fact that human infection has not been detected since February 2018 indicates that consumers of poultry have also been well-protected from H7N9 infection."

Cell Host & Microbe, Chen et al.: "Rapid Evolution of H7N9 Highly Pathogenic Viruses that Emerged in China in 2017" https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(18)30434-7, DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2018.08.006

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Bytram (from IRC) writes:

After century of removing appendixes, docs find antibiotics can be enough:

After more than a century of slicing tiny, inflamed organs from people's guts, doctors have found that surgery may not be necessary after all—a simple course of antibiotics can be just as effective at treating appendicitis as going under the knife.

The revelation comes from a large, randomized trial out of Finland, published Tuesday, September 25, in JAMA.

Despite upending a long-held standard of care, the study's finding is not entirely surprising; it follows several other randomized trials over the years that had carved out evidence that antibiotics alone can treat an acute appendicitis. Those studies, however, left some dangling questions, including if the antibiotics just improved the situation temporarily and if initial drug treatments left patients worse off later if they did need surgery.

The new JAMA study, with its full, five-year follow-up, effectively cauterised those remaining issues. Nearly two-thirds of the patients randomly assigned in the study to get antibiotics for an uncomplicated appendicitis didn't end up needing surgery in the follow-up time, the Finnish authors, based at the University of Turku, report. And those drug-treated patients that did end up getting an appendectomy later were not worse off for the delay in surgery.

"This long-term follow-up supports the feasibility of antibiotic treatment alone as an alternative to surgery for uncomplicated acute appendicitis," the authors conclude.

The finding suggests that many appendicitis patients could be spared the risks of surgical procedures, such as infections. They may also be able to save money by not needing such an invasive procedure (although the study didn't compare costs), and they could reap the benefits of shorter treatment and recovery times. Researchers will have to collect more data to back up those benefits, though.

JAMA, 2018. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2018.13201

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to-your-shadow-co-1828476051:

Facebook is not content to use the contact information you willingly put into your Facebook profile for advertising. It is also using contact information you handed over for security purposes and contact information you didn't hand over at all, but that was collected from other people's contact books, a hidden layer of details Facebook has about you that I've come to call "shadow contact information." I managed to place an ad in front of Alan Mislove by targeting his shadow profile. This means that the junk email address that you hand over for discounts or for shady online shopping is likely associated with your account and being used to target you with ads.

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chromas (from IRC) writes:

NASA Spots Opportunity as the Dust Storm Clears. Still No Word From Her Though:

A new image produced by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has located the Opportunity rover on Mars. As expected, the rover was spotted on the  slopes of the Perseverance Valley, where it went into hibernation mode about 100 days ago when the planet-covering dust storm darkened skies above the region.

And while communications still haven't been reestablished with the rover, the MRO was able to spot the Opportunity rover from orbit. The image was captured while the orbiter was at an altitude of about 267 km (166 mi) above the Martian surface. The white box marks a 47-meter-wide (154-foot-wide) area centered on the rover.

This dust storm was one of the worst in recent Martian history. It began back in May, starting in the Arabia Terra region and then spreading to become a planet-wide phenomena within a matter of weeks. This storm caused the skies over the Perseverance Valley, where the Opportunity rover is stationed, to become darkened, forcing the rover into hibernation mode.

This is due to the fact that Opportunity, unlike the Curiosity rover, relies on solar panels to keep its batteries charged. The prolonged dust storm also meant that the rover might not be able to keep its heaters running, which protect its batteries from the extreme cold of the Martian atmosphere. For this reason, there were fears that Opportunity might not survive this latest dust storm, depending on how long the storm lasted.

Further Reading: NASA

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takyon writes:

NSA employee who brought hacking tools home sentenced to 66 months in prison

Nghia Hoang Pho, a 68-year-old former National Security Agency employee who worked in the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) division, was sentenced today to 66 months in prison for willful, unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents and material from his workplace—material that included hacking tools that were likely part of the code dumped by the individual or group known as Shadowbrokers in the summer of 2016.

Pho, a naturalized US citizen from Vietnam and a resident of Ellicott City, Maryland, had pleaded guilty to bringing home materials after being caught in a sweep by the NSA following the Shadowbrokers leaks. He will face three years of supervised release after serving his sentence. His attorney had requested home detention.

In a letter sent to the court in March, former NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers told Judge George Russell that the materials removed from the NSA by Pho "had significant negative impacts on the NSA mission, the NSA workforce, and the Intelligence Community as a whole." The materials Pho removed, Rogers wrote, included:

[S]ome of NSA's most sophisticated, hard-to-achieve, and important techniques of collecting [signals intelligence] from sophisticated targets of the NSA, including collection that is crucial to decision makers when answering some of the Nation's highest-priority questions... Techniques of the kind Mr. Pho was entrusted to protect, yet removed from secure space, are force multipliers, allowing for intelligence collection in a multitude of environments around the globe and spanning a wide range of security topics. Compromise of one technique can place many opportunities for intelligence collection and national security insight at risk.

Previously: Former NSA Employee Nghia Pho Pleads Guilty to Willful Retention of National Defense Information

Related: "The Shadow Brokers" Claim to Have Hacked NSA
The Shadow Brokers Identify Hundreds of Targets Allegedly Hacked by the NSA
Former NSA Contractor May Have Stolen 75% of TAO's Elite Hacking Tools
Former NSA Contractor Harold Martin Indicted

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Mitsubishi is recalling 68,000 SUVs because of bad software in two different engine-control units (ECUs), according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In one of the two actions, the automaker is recalling 58,916 of its 2018 Eclipse Cross, 2017 to 2018 Outlander, and 2018 Outlander Sport SUVs because of faulty software in the hydraulic unit ECU—the computer control system for the brake system.

According to NHTSA, the software problem could cause some features—such as adaptive cruise control (ACC); forward-collision mitigation (FCM), which is a combination of forward-collision warning and automatic emergency braking; and antilock brakes (ABS)—to not work as expected.

In the second action, Mitsubishi is recalling 9,166 of its 2018 Eclipse Cross, 2017 to 2018 Outlander, and 2018 Outlander Sport SUVs because of bad software in the computer control for the FCM system.

According to NHTSA, if the FCM system detects a pedestrian in front of the vehicle who could be hit, that ECU may activate the brake for longer than necessary, even when the obstacle is no longer detected. There's concern that when this happens, the driver may provide additional braking, making the SUV slow rapidly and increasing the risk of a rear-end collision, NHTSA says.

Source: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/mitsubishi-recalls-68000-suvs-over-bad-software/

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canopic jug writes:

Low-tech Magazine explains how to build a low-tech web site, using its own (solar powered) web site as an example. They cover both the web design and the actual hardware in use, an Olimex A20. The idea is to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing the content, seeing as complex designs with Javascript have burdensome resource requirements that translate into increased use of electricity. Renewable power sources alone are not enough to address the growing energy use of the Internet. Their server is also self-hosted so there's no need for third-party tracking and cookies either.

Low-tech Magazine was born in 2007 and has seen minimal changes ever since. Because a website redesign was long overdue — and because we try to practice what we preach — we decided to build a low-tech, self-hosted, and solar-powered version of Low-tech Magazine. The new blog is designed to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing our content.

Earlier on SN:
Conservative Web Development (2018)
About a Third of All Web Sites Run on WordPress (2018)
Please, Keep your Blog Light (2018)

Original Submission

kazzie writes:

Sony has decided to yield to pressure to allow players of the popular game Fortnite to join Xbox, Switch and PC owners in online play.

The folks at GBAtemp report:

Over the last few months, there has been much controversy over Sony's approach to cross-platform multiplayer. From locking gamers to their own platform in Fortnite to claiming that Playstation is the superior platform, Playstation have had a plethora of excuses to justify their decisions.

Today, Sony published a blog post on their official blog, announcing that they are finally looking into the matter. Starting from today, Fortnite players on Playstation 4 will be able to play with other players on Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows, and Mac. Right now, it is being called an 'open beta', and Sony is still claiming that playing is 'best on Playstation'.

The BBC adds:

Sony was criticised in June after it blocked PlayStation gamers from using their Fortnite accounts on the newly launched Nintendo Switch version.

Gamers found that if they had ever used their Fortnite account on a PS4, they were unable to use it on the Switch or on Xbox. Meanwhile, Xbox, PC and Nintendo gamers could all play the game together online.

At the time, Sony said it was "open to hearing what the PlayStation community is interested in to enhance their gaming experience".

On Wednesday, Sony Interactive Entertainment president John Kodera said in a statement: "We recognise that PS4 players have been eagerly awaiting an update, and we appreciate the community's continued patience as we have navigated through this issue to find a solution.

"We have completed a thorough analysis of the business mechanics required to ensure that the PlayStation experience for our users remains intact today, and in the future, as we look to open up the platform," he said.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/6503418-151/study-minimum-wage-increases-in-6-cities-working:

The minimum wage increases that started four years ago in Seattle are spreading across the country, but economists continue to study — and disagree about — the impact.

The latest look at increased wage floors in six U.S. cities, including Seattle, finds that food-service workers saw increases in pay and no widespread job losses. That reinforces the conclusions the same group of University of California, Berkeley, researchers reached in 2017 after studying just in Seattle.

This time, the Berkeley researchers examined Seattle; San Francisco; Oakland, California; San Jose, California; Chicago; and Washington, D.C., where minimum wages at the end of 2016 ranged from $10 to $13.

"We find that they are working just as the policymakers and voters who enacted these policies intended," said Sylvia Allegretto, co-author of the report and co-chair of Berkeley's Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics. "So far they are raising the earnings of low-wage workers without causing significant employment losses."

abstract https://www.nber.org/papers/w25043

Original Submission

chromas writes:

From Billboard:

The Music Modernization Act is not the law of the land yet, but it's pretty damn close, as the House of Representatives today (Sept. 25) unanimously approved passage of the U.S. Senate's version of the bill, which had itself been approved by that chamber last week. Now, the MMA is off to the White House where it will await the signature of President Donald Trump before becoming the law of the land.

The legislation forged by compromises throughout the music industry creates a blanket mechanical license and a collective to administer it, while changing some of the considerations used in setting music publishing rates. It also compels digital and satellite radio to pay a royalty on pre-1972 master recordings to labels and artists and it codifies the procedure by which SoundExchange can pay producers and engineers royalties for the records it works on.

From Engadget:

MMA will update rules regarding royalties and licensing when it comes to streaming in an effort to make sure creators are properly compensated. It will lead to the creation of a publicly-accessible database that makes it easier to see which publishers and artists need to be compensated for particular songs. Further, it will update the royalty rates for artists behind pre-1972 songs and will update royalty rates to reflect market changes all around.

[...] The president is now expected to sign it into law over the next ten days.

The bill: S.2823 - Music Modernization Act

Previously: Senate Passes Copyright Bill to End 140-Year Protection for Old Songs

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Oculus Quest, a fully wireless VR headset, shipping spring 2019 for $399

Facebook used its latest virtual reality conference, the fifth annual Oculus Connect, to finally confirm retail plans for its most ambitious standalone VR product yet: the Oculus Quest. Originally known by its prototype name, Oculus Santa Cruz, the Quest will ship in spring 2019 for $399.

In terms of the sales pitch, this is the Oculus holy grail: a wireless, hand-tracked, "six degrees of freedom" VR system with apparently legitimate 3D power and no required PC or phone.

The headset will include two bundled handheld controllers, and more than 50 games will be available at launch. The headset has a 1600×1440 per eye resolution (3200×1440 total resolution), compared to 1280×1440 per eye for Oculus Go or 1440×1600 per eye for HTC's Vive Pro, and has 64 GB of internal storage.

Vive's wireless adapter gives the best VR experience lots of money can buy:

chromas (from IRC) writes:

Earthquake fear ends Dutch gas boom:

The Dutch are proud of the way they have created a country by fighting back the ocean—but when they started making their own earthquakes it proved a step too far.

The tiny village of Zeerijp in the northern Netherlands looks ordinary on the surface, yet closer inspection reveals cracks in homes, schools and historic buildings.

A series of quakes caused by extractions at Europe's biggest gas field in Groningen province culminated in a 3.4-magnitude tremor in January, the biggest for six years.

[...] Facing a wave of public anger over the threat to life and limb, the Dutch government announced that all gas extraction from Groningen will end by 2030.

Original Submission

chromas (from IRC) writes:

Kids as young as 7 are finding ingenious ways around Apple's screen time controls:

[...] Parents can use the feature to impose restrictions on their children's device usage — or so they thought. One Reddit shared the story of how their seven-year-old had gamed the feature, sparking a chat that has nearly 500 comments.

"When iOS 12 came out I limited my 7-year old son's screen time through the family share. For a few days I felt like he was playing a bit more than he should, but I couldn't figure out why," u/PropellerGuy said.

"Finally today, my son revealed his hack: When he runs out of screen time and his games get locked, he heads to App Store, downloads a previously installed (but later removed) game through the cloud icon, and it works without limitations!"

"What can I say," they added. "I'm not even mad. That's impressive."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Spheres can make concrete leaner, greener: Rice's microscopic particles promise stronger building materials and more

Rice University scientists have developed micron-sized calcium silicate spheres that could lead to stronger and greener concrete, the world's most-used synthetic material.

To Rice materials scientist Rouzbeh Shahsavari and graduate student Sung Hoon Hwang, the spheres represent building blocks that can be made at low cost and promise to mitigate the energy-intensive techniques now used to make cement, the most common binder in concrete.

The researchers formed the spheres in a solution around nanoscale seeds of a common detergent-like surfactant. The spheres can be prompted to self-assemble into solids that are stronger, harder, more elastic and more durable than ubiquitous Portland cement.

[...] The work builds on a 2017 project [DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b12532] [DX] by Shahsavari and Hwang to develop self-healing materials with porous, microscopic calcium silicate spheres. The new material is not porous, as a solid calcium silicate shell surrounds the surfactant seed.

Size- and Shape-Controlled Synthesis of Calcium Silicate Particles Enables Self-Assembly and Enhanced Mechanical and Durability Properties (DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.8b00917) (DX)

Related: Biologists Create Self-Healing Concrete
Probing Ways to Turn Cement's Weakness to Strength
Roman Concrete Explained
The Rock Solid History of Concrete
Fungi Can Help Concrete Heal Its Own Cracks

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Discovery of Galileo's long-lost letter highlights the value of physical repositories

Modern scholars don't always have to physically visit museums and archives around the world to seek secrets of the past. Many collections have been digitized, and much can be done with these online resources. But can anything beat the thrill of being there and finding an item assumed lost to history? That's what happened last month at the London archives of the Royal Society, with the discovery of a letter of great historical importance.

Written by Galileo Galilei in 1613, the letter sets down for the first time the scientist's gripes with the Vatican's doctrine on astronomy. His forthright objections launched one of science history's most famous battles, which culminated in the Inquisition's condemnation of Galileo for heresy 20 years later. Different copies of the letter had circulated, and their content has been tirelessly analysed and discussed by historians. But seeing the original for the first time, with its scorings-out and word substitutions, solves a long-standing mystery about whether a version sent to the Inquisition in Rome had been doctored — and, if so, by whom.

Galileo, it now seems clear, doctored his original letter himself, to make the language less aggressive, as soon as he realized the trouble heading his way. This suggests that the editing was not the malign work of theologians trying to make a stronger case against him, as had been assumed by the nineteenth-century scholar Antonio Favaro, whose 20-volume The Works of Galileo Galilei is a main reference work.

Also at Smithsonian Magazine and Live Science.

Original Submission