SoylentNews

martyb writes:

Bad News for People Who Can't Remember Names:

With colleagues at Scotland's University of Aberdeen, [psychologist Devin] Ray ran four experiments^[$] that measured how people interpret forgetting. One had 56 students keep online "diaries" at the beginning of the school year, asking them to detail every single time they were forgotten. Their entries, recorded daily for two weeks, captured all the ways forgetting can play out. For the most part, it was loose acquaintances forgetting basic facts—names, class years, majors—or experiences they'd shared with the diary keepers, like attending the same party. But there were also broken commitments ("My friend was supposed to meet me at the library today"), dramatic exclusions ("My friends organized a night out and forgot to ask me"), and confusions of one person for someone else.

Ray and his team were surprised by how consistently damaging all this forgetting was. Statistical analyses of both the students' reports and a follow-up, controlled study found that people who were forgotten felt less close to those who had forgotten them, regardless of whether the forgetter was a family member or someone they'd just met. Mercifully, the people who were forgotten were almost always eager to excuse the memory lapses: The university students, for instance, would explain away potential slights with comments like "she already met too many people in the last couple of days." But such rationalizations only softened the blow in the end. "The good news is that this happens a lot, and people will try their best to be forgiving," Ray says. "The bad news is that, on average, they can't quite get there."

"upstart" writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Scientists develop novel vaccine for Lassa fever and rabies

[...] There are currently no approved Lassa fever vaccines. Although Lassa fever is often a mild illness, some people experience serious symptoms, such as hemorrhage (severe bleeding) and shock. The overall Lassa virus infection case-fatality rate is about 1 percent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but that rate rises to 15 percent for patients hospitalized with severe cases of Lassa fever. People contract Lassa virus through contact with infected Mastomys rats and through exposure to an infected person's bodily fluids. Lassa fever is endemic to West Africa where these rats are common. In 2018, Nigeria experienced its largest-ever Lassa fever outbreak, with 514 confirmed cases and 134 deaths from Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

Africa is also at high risk for human rabies. The WHO estimates that 95 percent of the estimated 59,000 human rabies deaths per year occur in Africa and Asia. Nearly all human rabies deaths are caused by bites or scratches from infected dogs. Effective rabies vaccines and post-exposure shots are available, but many deaths still occur in resource-limited countries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

From 'problem child' to 'prodigy'? LSD turns 75

Lysergic acid diethylamide was labelled a "problem child" by the man who discovered its hallucinogenic properties in 1943: as it turns 75, the drug known as LSD may now be changing its image.

The late Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann famously learned of LSD's psychedelic effects when he inadvertently took a small dose while doing lab work for pharmaceutical company Sandoz.

He wanted the drug to be medically researched, convinced it could be a valuable psychiatric tool and lead to a deeper understanding of human consciousness.

But through the 1960s, LSD became synonymous with counterculture and anti-authority protests.

By the early 1970s, it had been widely criminalised in the West, prompting Hofmann to publish his 1979 memoir, "LSD: My Problem Child".

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Human Retinas Grown In A Dish Reveal Origin Of Color Vision

In order to see the red of a sunset or the green of spring leaves, developing human eyes need to get the right hormone at the right time.

That's the finding of a team of scientists who studied how color vision develops using hundreds of human retinas grown in the lab.

The discovery, published Thursday in the journal Science, could help accelerate current efforts to cure colorblindness. It could also lead to new treatments for diseases including macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Apple argues stronger encryption will thwart criminals in letter to Australian government

Apple has long been a proponent for strong on-device encryption, most notably for its iPhones and the iOS operating system. This has often frustrated law enforcement agencies both in the US and overseas, many of which claim the company's encryption tools and policies are letting criminals avoid capture by masking communications and securing data from the hands of investigators.

Now, in a letter to the Australian government, Apple says it thinks encryption is in fact a benefit and public good that will only strength our protections against cyberattacks and terrorism. In Apple's eyes, encryption makes everyone's devices harder to hack and less vulnerable to take-overs, viruses, and other malicious attacks that could undermine personal and corporate security, as well as public infrastructure and services. Apple is specifically responding to the Australian Parliament's Assistance and Access Bill, which was introduced late last month and is designed to help the government more easily access the devices and data of criminals during active investigations.

Letter here (#53), or at Scribd and DocumentCloud.

Also at Ars Technica, Engadget, 9to5Mac, and AppleInsider.

Police told to avoid looking at recent iPhones to avoid lockouts

Police have yet to completely wrap their heads around modern iPhones like the X and XS, and that's clearer than ever thanks to a leak. Motherboard has obtained a presentation slide from forensics company Elcomsoft telling law enforcement to avoid looking at iPhones with Face ID. If they gaze at it too many times (five), the company said, they risk being locked out much like Apple's Craig Federighi was during the iPhone X launch event. They'd then have to enter a passcode that they likely can't obtain under the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which protects suspects from having to provide self-incriminating testimony.

Also at 9to5Mac.

Related:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

California Lawmaker Tries Hand at Banning Encryption
New York Judge Sides with Apple Rather than FBI in Dispute over a Locked iPhone
FBI Chief Calls for National Talk Over Encryption vs. Safety
Hacker Decrypts Apple's Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) Firmware
Federal Court Rules That the FBI Does Not Have to Disclose Name of iPhone Hacking Vendor
Law Enforcement Agencies Increasingly Cracking iPhones Using "GrayKey"
Australian Government Pursues "Golden Key" for Encryption
When's A Backdoor Not A Backdoor? When The Oz Government Says It Isn't
Five Eyes Governments Get Even Tougher on Encryption
FBI Used Cooperative Suspect's Face to Unlock His iPhone

Original Submission

martyb writes:

FCC Tells Court it has no "Legal Authority" to Impose Net Neutrality Rules:

FCC defends repeal in court, claims broadband isn't "telecommunications."

The Federal Communications Commission opened its defense of its net neutrality repeal yesterday, telling a court that it has no authority to keep the net neutrality rules in place.

Chairman Ajit Pai's FCC argued that broadband is not a "telecommunications service" as defined in federal law, and therefore it must be classified as an information service instead. As an information service, broadband cannot be subject to common carrier regulations such as net neutrality rules, Pai's FCC said. The FCC is only allowed to impose common carrier regulations on telecommunications services.

"Given these classification decisions, the Commission determined that the Communications Act does not endow it with legal authority to retain the former conduct rules," the FCC said in a summary of its defense [pdf] filed yesterday in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The FCC is defending the net neutrality repeal against a lawsuit filed by more than 20 state attorneys general, consumer advocacy groups, and tech companies. The FCC's opponents in the case will file reply briefs next month, and oral arguments are scheduled for February.

Then why not let the states implement it?

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Fifth-Century Child's Skeleton Shows Evidence of "Vampire Burial" :

The "Vampire of Lugnano" had a rock in its mouth to keep it from rising from grave.

Archaeologists have discovered the skeleton of a 10-year-old child at an ancient Roman site in Italy with a rock carefully placed in its mouth. This suggests those who buried the child—who probably died of malaria during a deadly fifth century outbreak—feared it might rise from the dead and spread the disease to those who survived. Locals are calling it the "Vampire of Lugnano."

"This is a very unusual mortuary treatment that you see in various forms in different cultures, especially in the Roman world," says Jordan Wilson, a graduate student in bio-archaeology at the University of Arizona who studied the remains. He added that this could "indicate a fear that this person might come back from the dead and try to spread disease to the living."

Pretty much every culture on Earth has some version of a vampire (or proto-vampire) myth. Chinese folklore has the k'uei, which are reanimated corpses that rise from the grave to prey on the living; one type has sharp fangs, the better to bite into the neck of said prey. Russian, Albanian, Indian, and Greek folklore have similar undead monsters. Russian villagers in the Middle Ages often drove stakes into the bodies of suspected vampires upon burial to keep them from rising again.

The most-likely explanation is that the locals did this to ensure the dead child stayed that way. Prior excavations amidst the human remains in the Cemetery of the Babies unearthed various items commonly associated with magic at the time: raven talons, toad bones, and bronze cauldrons filled with ash. The oldest remains found previously were those of a three-year-old girl whose hands and feet were weighed down with stones.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble...

Original Submission

Two Anonymous Cowards write:

Google, continuing to distance itself from "Don't be evil.", has produced an internal document that endorses political censorship to influence elections and more. The argument is that free speech (an "American tradition") is not viable on the internet due to various factors such as the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump.

The document admits that big tech companies "control the majority of online conversations" and have made a "shift towards censorship" over the popularity of political choices that they are unwilling to accept. This directly contradicts the repeated assertions that the political bias of big tech company executives doesn't end up affecting the products.

Fortunately for free speech, that document has leaked and now you can see the thinking of those who deem themselves your masters.

According to the briefing itself, it was the product of an extensive process involving "several layers of research," including expert interviews with MIT Tech Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin, Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer, and academic Kalev Leetaru. 35 cultural observers and 7 cultural leaders from seven countries on five continents were also consulted to produce it.

The Breitbart report is divided into several parts:

• Leaked Google Briefing Admits Abandonment of Free Speech For "Safety and Civility" - explains the desire of Google, Twitter, and Facebook to "create well-ordered spaces for safety and civility" on the grounds that the "European tradition" "favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom."
• Leaked Briefing Says Google Must Move Away from 'American Tradition' of Free Speech to Expand Globally, Attract Advertiser $$$s - explains that Google's grounds is simply to make more money.
• Google Briefing Accused Trump of Spreading 'Conspiracy Theory' - for saying that Google suppressed negative news about Hillary Clinton.
• Google Document Suggests Web Must Be Controlled Because 'Users Are Behaving Badly' - which focuses on "cyber harassment", "cyber racism" including nationalism, and venting about frustrating experiences. It must be noted that Google invited several notorious online harassers to speak as "anti-harassment" experts.
• Google Growth Strategy: 'Shift Towards Censorship' to Appease Authoritarian Governments - explains that Google's motivation is to appease foreign governments and advertisers.
• Google Briefing Admits Censorship Makes It Akin to a 'Publisher' - suggests that Google may now be legally liable in the United States for the content it carries.

The Good Censor [alt link (Dropbox download)]

"upstart" writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Nice people finish last when it comes to money: Agreeable people who place less value on money at a financial disadvantage, study says

Nice people may be at greater risk of bankruptcy and other financial hardships compared with their less agreeable peers, not because they are more cooperative, but because they don't value money as much, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"We were interested in understanding whether having a nice and warm personality, what academics in personality research describe as agreeableness, was related to negative financial outcomes," said Sandra Matz, PhD, of Columbia Business School and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "Previous research suggested that agreeableness was associated with lower credit scores and income. We wanted to see if that association held true for other financial indicators and, if so, better understand why nice guys seem to finish last."

[...] "We found that agreeableness was associated with indicators of financial hardship, including lower savings, higher debt and higher default rates," said Gladstone. "This relationship appears to be driven by the fact that agreeable people simply care less about money and therefore are at higher risk of money mismanagement."

[...] "Not every agreeable person is at equal risk of experiencing financial hardship," Gladstone said. "The relationship was much stronger for lower-income individuals, who don't have the financial means to compensate for the detrimental impact of their agreeable personality."

Nice guys finish last: When and why agreeableness is associated with economic hardship (DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000220)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Mikko Tiusanen, MSc, investigated in his doctoral dissertation the structure and functioning of plants and their pollinators in Arctic regions.

"Up north, there are very few Apidae, such as bees and bumblebees, so other insect groups bear the main responsibility for pollination," explains Tiusanen.

In his study, Tiusanen found that relatives of the ubiquitous housefly had a central role. These members of the Muscidae family are important pollinators, whose abundance impacts the seed production of northern plants.

Flowering in the Arctic occurs in the few weeks after the snow has melted. The subsequent profusion of flowers causes intensive competition for the pollination services provided by insects.

The abundant mountain avens with its attractive flowers hoards most of the pollinator visits, which leaves the pollination of rare and less attractive flowers particularly inadequate. At the height of mountain avens' blooming time, even their own seed production suffers from the competition for pollinators within the species itself.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

When you buy a game console, smartphone, dryer, vacuum cleaner, or any number of other complicated electronics, there’s usually a sticker or a piece of paperwork telling you that trying to repair the device yourself will void your warranty. That’s illegal under the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Companies offering a warranty on their goods aren’t allowed to void that warranty if the user attempts to repair it themself, but that doesn’t stop the company from scaring customers into thinking it’s true.

It’s such a huge problem that US PIRG—a non-profit that uses grassroots methods to advocate for political change—found that 90 percent of manufacturers it contacted claimed that a third party repair would void its warranty [pdf]. PIRG researched the warranty information of 50 companies in the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM)—an industry group of notorious for lobbying to protect is repair monopolies [sic]—and found that 45 of them claimed independent repair would void their warranty.

Source: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9k7mby/45-out-of-50-electronics-companies-illegally-void-warranties-after-independent-repair-sting-operation-finds

Original Submission

quietus writes:

Hurricane Leslie is set to hit Spain and Portugal this Saturday and Sunday. A hurricane hitting land in this location is very unusual.

The previous hurricane to do so was hurricane Vince in 2005. Before that, only one other hurricane is known to have made landfall in the region, in 1842.

Vince was a very unusual hurricane as it developed far away from where tropical cyclones usually develop, at water temperatures considered too low to cause a tropical cyclone, the precursor for a hurricane.

Leslie too is a bit unusual -- first registered on September 23, it has spent three weeks being bumped around by weather systems passing over the North Atlantic. There's still a chance it turns southern after landfall, and might make a run for the record of longest-lived tropical cyclone on record.

Before hitting Spain and Portugal, Leslie will hit Madeira. There are no historical records for such an event happening, since 1420.

martyb writes:

Here's How to see if You're Among the 30 Million Compromised Facebook Users:

The attackers who carried out the mass hack that Facebook disclosed two weeks ago obtained user account data belonging to as many as 30 million users, the social network said on Friday. Some of that data—including phone numbers, email addresses, birth dates, searches, location check-ins, and the types of devices used to access the site—came from private accounts or was supposed to be restricted only to friends.

The revelation is the latest black eye for Facebook as it tries to recover from the scandal that came to light earlier this year in which Cambridge Analytica funneled highly personal details of more than 80 million users to an organization supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. When Facebook disclosed the latest breach two weeks ago, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he didn't know if it allowed attackers to steal users' private data. Friday's update made clear that it did, although the 30 million people affected was less than the 50 million estimate previously given. Readers can check this link to see what, if any, data was obtained by the attackers.

On a conference call with reporters, Vice President of Product Management Guy Rosen said that at the request of the FBI, which is investigating the hack, Facebook isn't providing any information about who the attackers are or their motivations or intentions. That means that for now, affected users should be extra vigilant when reading emails, taking calls, and receiving other types of communications. The ability to know the search queries, location check-ins, phone numbers, email addresses, and other personal details of so many people gives the attackers the ability to send highly customized emails, texts, and voice calls that may try to trick people into turning over money, passwords, or other high-value information.

Information wants to be free?

Original Submission

"upstart" writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

New microscope offers 4-D look at embryonic development in living mice

For the first time, researchers can now peek inside a living mouse embryo and watch the gut begin to form and heart cells take their first tentative beats. Over a critical 48-hour window—when rudimentary organs begin to take shape—scientists can follow every embryonic cell and pinpoint where it went, what genes it turned on, and what cells it met along the way.

The new work is "literally a cellular-resolution building plan of the entire mouse," says Philipp Keller, a physicist and biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. He and his colleagues report the results October 11, 2018, in the journal Cell. And they're making the microscope and computational tools, built at Janelia, and all the imaging data free and publicly available.

Such resources are critical for scientists trying to grow or regenerate organs, or to one day fix developmental problems that arise in the womb, says Kate McDole, a Janelia developmental biologist and study coauthor. "To do any of that, you first need to understand how organs form," she says. "You need to actually see what happens in a real embryo."

[...] At the center of the Janelia researchers' microscope, a clear, acrylic cube houses the embryo imaging chamber. Two light sheets illuminate the embryo, and two cameras record images. Those components let researchers spy the once-unseen world of early organ development, revealing dynamic events in high-resolution detail no one has seen before.

[...] The microscope's brain is equipped with a suite of algorithms that track the embryo's position and size. These algorithms map how the light sheet moves through the sample and then figure out how to get the best-looking images—keeping the embryo focused and centered in the field of view.

Because the embryo is constantly changing, the microscope must constantly adapt, making decisions in milliseconds, over hundreds of images, at hundreds of different time points. "I wouldn't say our microscope is smarter than a human," Keller says, "but it's capable of doing things that a human operator would not be able to do."

In Toto Imaging and Reconstruction of Post-Implantation Mouse Development at the Single-Cell Level (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.09.031)

Original Submission

martyb writes:

NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory Enters Safe Mode; Investigation Underway:

At approximately 9:55 a.m. EDT on Oct. 10, 2018, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory entered safe mode, in which the observatory is put into a safe configuration, critical hardware is swapped to back-up units, the spacecraft points so that the solar panels get maximum sunlight, and the mirrors point away from the Sun. Analysis of available data indicates the transition to safe mode was normal behavior for such an event. All systems functioned as expected and the scientific instruments are safe. The cause of the safe mode transition (possibly involving a gyroscope) is under investigation, and we will post more information when it becomes available.

Chandra is 19 years old, which is well beyond the original design lifetime of 5 years. In 2001, NASA extended its lifetime to 10 years. It is now well into its extended mission and is expected to continue carrying out forefront science for many years to come.

Has anyone heard from Opportunity lately?

But seriously, it's amazing how many probes keep running so far beyond their designed life span. Take a look, for instance, at the Mars Rovers. And then consider the two Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977 which are still in operation!

Original Submission