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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Adequate Consumption of 'Longevity' Vitamins Could Prolong Healthy Aging, Nutrition Scientist Says

A detailed new review of nutritional science argues that most American diets are deficient in a key class of vitamins and minerals that play previously unrecognized roles in promoting longevity and in staving off chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and, potentially, neurodegeneration.

In the review, published Oct. 15, 2018, as a "Perspective" article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bruce Ames, PhD, presents the conclusions of more than a decade of research in his laboratory at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), which is affiliated with UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals.

These findings are presented alongside a detailed survey of additional evidence published by other scientists. Ames concludes that healthy aging can be extended by ingesting optimal levels of 30 known vitamins and essential minerals, and he suggests that these, along with 11 additional substances not currently classified as vitamins, should be recognized as essential "longevity vitamins" because of their potential to extend a healthy life.

realDonaldTrump writes:

With the help of more than 400 volunteers, including elementary students and teachers, scientists placed small microphones in bee-pollinated areas along the path of totality in Missouri, Oregon and Idaho. The microphones were "placed as far as possible from foot and vehicle traffic," researchers wrote in the report.

During the majority of the total solar eclipse in August 2017, the bees continued to buzz and work. But then, for a short period of time as totality hit and darkness swept over, the bees stopped."

foxnews.com/science/bees-briefly-ceased-to-buzz-during-total-solar-eclipse-study-finds

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martyb writes:

A Dog's Colour Could Impact Longevity, Increase Health Problems:

Recessive colour genes could indicate health problems.

New research led by the University of Sydney has revealed the life expectancy of chocolate Labradors is significantly lower than their black and yellow counterparts.

The study of more than 33,000 United Kingdom-based Labrador retrievers of all colours shows chocolate Labradors also have a higher incidence of ear infections and skin disease. Its findings were published in the open access journal Canine Genetics and Epidemiology today.

[...] In the UK, the median longevity of non-chocolate Labradors is 12.1 years, more than 10 percent longer than those with chocolate coats. The prevalence of ear inflammation (otitis externa) was twice as high in chocolate Labradors, who were four times more likely to have suffered from pyo-traumatic dermatitis (also known as hot-spot).

[...] "The relationships between coat colour and disease may reflect an inadvertent consequence of breeding certain pigmentations," he said. "Because chocolate colour is recessive in dogs, the gene for this colour must be present in both parents for their puppies to be chocolate. Breeders targeting this colour may therefore be more likely to breed only Labradors carrying the chocolate coat gene. It may be that the resulting reduced gene pool includes a higher proportion of genes conducive to ear and skin conditions."

Journal Reference:
Paul D. McGreevy, Bethany J. Wilson, Caroline S. Mansfield, Dave C. Brodbelt, David B. Church, Navneet Dhand, Ricardo J. Soares Magalhães, and Dan G. O'Neill Labrador retrievers under primary veterinary care in the UK: demography, mortality and disorders. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40575-018-0064-x.

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takyon writes:

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket seems to be a hit with satellite companies

When the Falcon Heavy rocket launched for the first time in February, some critics of the company wondered what exactly the rocket's purpose was. After all, the company's Falcon 9 rocket had become powerful enough that it could satisfy the needs of most commercial customers. One such critic even told me, "The Falcon Heavy is just a vanity project for Elon Musk."

[...] Last week, the Swedish satellite company Ovzon signed a deal for a Falcon Heavy launch as early as late 2020 for a geostationary satellite mission. And just on Thursday, ViaSat announced that it, too, had chosen the Falcon Heavy to launch one of its future ViaSat-3 satellite missions in the 2020 to 2022 timeframe.

[...] In explaining their rocket choice, both Ovzon and ViaSat cited the ability of the Falcon Heavy to deliver heavy payloads "direct"—or almost directly—to geostationary orbit, an altitude nearly 36,000km above the Earth's surface. Typically, rockets launching payloads bound for geostationary orbit drop their satellites into a "transfer" orbit, from which the satellite itself must spend time and propellant to reach the higher orbit. (More on these orbits can be found here).

[...] The demonstration flight of the Falcon Heavy apparently convinced not only the military of the rocket's direct-to-geo capability but satellite fleet operators as well. The Falcon Heavy rocket now seems nicely positioned to offer satellite companies relatively low-cost access to orbits they desire, with a minimum of time spent getting there in space.

See also: SpaceX heading to two to four Falcon Heavy paid launches per year

Related: How to Get Back to the Moon in 4 Years, Permanently
Falcon Heavy Maiden Launch Successful (Mostly)
SpaceX Confirms it Lost the Center Core of the Falcon Heavy
After the Falcon Heavy Launch, Time to Defund the Space Launch System?
NASA's Chief of Human Spaceflight Rules Out Use of Falcon Heavy for Lunar Station
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Could Launch Japanese and European Payloads to Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway

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takyon writes:

Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 packs up to 10GB of RAM and a stunning 93% screen-to-body ratio

Following a tease by the company's president back in August, Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi has now officially announced its next all-screen monster handset, the Mi Mix 3.

Boasting a FHD+ AMOLED display with a stunning 93% screen-to-body ratio, the Mi Mix 3 also packs a powerful 2.8GHz Snapdragon 845 processor into its unique frame, along with the option of 6GB, 8GB or a whopping 10GB of RAM.

Those after the 10GB model will have to track down the 'Forbidden City' limited edition, which sports traditional Chinese styling, a 10W wireless Qi charger and a collectible statue.

All of the Mi Mix 3 phones will be exclusive to the Chinese market for now. The 10 GB version is priced at RMB 4,999 ($720).

Xiaomi also announced a gaming phone with up to 10 GB of RAM, the Black Shark Helo.

Also at Ars Technica and The Register.

Previously: Oppo Likely to Release the First Smartphone With 10 GB of RAM

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upstart writes in with a submission via IRC for Fnord666:

Collapse of ancient city's water system may have led to its demise

The Cambodian city of Angkor was once the largest in the world... then the vast majority of its inhabitants suddenly decamped in the 15th century to a region near the modern city of Phnom Penh. Historians have put forth several theories about why this mass exodus occurred. A new paper in Science Advances argues that one major contributing factor was an overloaded water distribution system, exacerbated by extreme swings in the climate.

Angkor dates back to around 802 CE. Its vast network of canals, moats, embankments, and reservoirs developed over the next 600 years, helping distribute vital water resources for such uses as irrigation and to help control occasional flooding. By the end of the 11th century, the system bore all the features of a complex network, with thousands of interconnected individual components heavily dependent on each other.

[...] "The water management infrastructure of Angkor had been developed over centuries, becoming very large, tightly interconnected, and dependent on older and aging components," says co-author Mikhail Prokopenko, director of the Complex Systems Research Group at the University of Sydney. "The change in the middle of the 14th century CE, from prolonged drought to particularly wet years, put too much stress on this complex network, making the water distribution unstable."

[...] There is a lesson here for our modern-day cities in the fate of Angkor. Our cities are larger, more complex—and our infrastructure is aging rapidly. This makes cities more vulnerable to the rippling effects brought on by climate change, most notably an increase in extreme weather events. "If we don't build resilience into our critical infrastructure, we may face severe and lasting disruptions to our civil systems, that can be intensified by external shocks and threaten our environment and economy," says Prokopenko.

DOI: Science Advances, 2018. 10.1126/sciadv.aau4029.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/x-org-bug-that-gives-attackers-root-bites-openbsd-and-other-big-name-oses/

Several big-name Linux and BSD operating systems are vulnerable to an exploit that gives untrusted users powerful root privileges. The critical flaw in the X.org server—the open-source implementation of the X11 system that helps manage graphics displays—affects OpenBSD, widely considered to be among the most secure OSes. It also impacts some versions of the Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS distributions of Linux.

An advisory that X.org developers published Thursday disclosed the 23-month-old bug that, depending on how OS developers configure it, lets hackers or untrusted users elevate very limited system rights to unfettered root. The vulnerability, which is active when OSes run X.org in privileged (setuid) mode, allows files to be overwritten using the -logfile and -modulepath parameters. It also makes it trivial for low-privilege users to escalate system rights. A variety of nuances are leading to widely divergent assessments of the bug's severity.

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) entry: CVE-2018-14665.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

City College of New York:

A network metric called the K-core[*] could predict structural collapse in mutualistic ecosystems, according to research by physicists at The City College of New York. The K-core appears able to forecast which species is likely to face extinction first, by global shocks such as climate change, and when an ecosystem could collapse due to external forces.

[...] The idea applies to any network -- from species interacting in ecosystems, like plant-pollinators or predator-prey -- to financial markets where brokers interact in a financial network to determine the prices of stocks and products.

In all these networks a hierarchical structure emerges: each species in the ecosystem belong to a given shell in the network: the so called K-shells. In the periphery of the network is where the commensalists live. These are species that mainly receive the benefits from the core of the network but give nothing back (not to be confused with parasites which benefit from but at the same time harm the network core).

[*] K-core.

Journal Reference:
Flaviano Morone, Gino Del Ferraro, Hernán A. Makse. The k-core as a predictor of structural collapse in mutualistic ecosystems. Nature Physics, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41567-018-0304-8

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Stanford:

People who frequently engage with multiple types of media at once performed worse on simple memory tasks, according to the last decade of research. However, it's still too soon to determine cause and effect, says psychology Professor Anthony Wagner.

The smartphones that are now ubiquitous were just gaining popularity when Anthony Wagner became interested in the research of his Stanford colleague, Clifford Nass, on the effects of media multitasking and attention. Though Wagner, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Memory Laboratory, wasn't convinced by the early data, he recommended some cognitive tests for Nass to use in subsequent experiments. More than 11 years later, Wagner was intrigued enough to write a review on past research findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and contribute some of his own.

The paper, co-authored with neuroscientist Melina Uncapher of the University of California, San Francisco, summarizes a decade's worth of research on the relationship between media multitasking and various domains of cognition, including working memory and attention. In doing that analysis, Wagner noticed a trend emerging in the literature: People who frequently use many types of media at once, or heavy media multitaskers, performed significantly worse on simple memory tasks.

Smartphones make us forgetful?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

The world's first bio-brick grown from human urine has been unveiled by University of Cape Town (UCT) master's student in civil engineering Suzanne Lambert, signalling an innovative paradigm shift in waste recovery.

The bio-bricks are created through a natural process called microbial carbonate precipitation. It's not unlike the way seashells are formed, said Lambert's supervisor Dr. Dyllon Randall, a senior lecturer in water quality engineering.

In this case, loose sand is colonised with bacteria that produce urease. An enzyme, the urease breaks down the urea in urine while producing calcium carbonate through a complex chemical reaction. This cements the sand into any shape, whether it's a solid column, or now, for the first time, a rectangular building brick.

If you're been looking for more uses for pee, you're in luck.

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upstart writes in with a submission via IRC for Fnord666:

Amazon fixes security flaws allowing smart home hijacks

Some smart home device owners may have dodged a bullet. Amazon recently patched 13 security flaws in an operating system for the Internet of Things, FreeRTOS, as well as Amazon Web Services connection modules. The holes let intruders crash devices, leak the contents of their memory and remotely run code, effectively giving attackers full control. The flaws might have been far-reaching if they'd gone unfixed -- both FreeRTOS and its safety-oriented counterpart SafeRTOS are used in a wide range of devices inside and outside the home, including cars, aircraft and medical gear.

From the Zimperion Labs blog linked above:

Fluffeh writes:

The United Kingdom told Ecuador in August that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would not be extradited if he left the country's London embassy, where he has lived under asylum since 2012, Ecuador's top government attorney said on Thursday.

[...] Salvador said Ecuador passed on the UK's response to Assange's lawyers, but noted that if Assange stayed in the embassy Ecuador would put new conditions on his stay. "Mr. Assange had a choice between turning himself in to British authorities with those assurances, or staying in the embassy of Ecuador, but given that the asylum had lasted six years with no signs of immediate resolution we were going to place certain rules." Salvador said at a news conference.

[...] The relationship between Assange and Ecuador has grown increasingly tense in the past year. Assange filed a lawsuit in an Ecuadorean court last week claiming the new asylum terms, which require him to pay for medical bills and telephone calls and to clean up after his pet cat, violate his rights.

Previously:
Julian Assange Sues Ecuador for "Violating His Fundamental Rights".

Original Submission

upstart writes in with a submission via IRC for Fnord666:

Netflix to raise $2 billion in debt to fund more original content

Netflix’s commitment to growing its original content collection will see the company again returning to debt markets to raise more financing, the company announced today. According a release published to its investors site, Netflix says it plans to raise $2 billion to help fund new content, including “content acquisitions, production and development, capital expenditures, investments, working capital and potential acquisitions and strategic transactions.”

[...] “We recognize we are making huge cash investments in content, and we want to assure our investors that we have the same high confidence in the underlying economics as our cash investments in the past. These investments we see as very likely to help us to keep our revenue and operating profits growing for a very long time ahead,” the letter to shareholders read.

Netflix also pointed to the increasing competition in the industry as one of the reasons why original content investment was so critical, adding that it didn’t only compete with linear TV, YouTube, gaming, social media, DVDs and pay-per-view, but with a number of new and upcoming streaming services, as well.

“Content companies such as WarnerMedia and Disney/Fox are moving to self-distribute their own content; tech firms like Apple, Amazon and others are investing in premium content to enhance their distribution platforms,” the letter also stated. “Amid these massive competitors on both sides, plus traditional media firms, our job is to make Netflix stand out so that when consumers have free time, they choose to spend it with our service,” it had said.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Nurdles are small pellets of plastic that are created as a precursor for the making of a wide variety of plastic products. They have been travelling across the oceans for decades after shipping accidents drop them into the sea. While the ocean has millions of nurdles from shipping accidents, a recent spill from near the South African city of Durban saw over a billion nurdles dumped into the ocean. Due to nurdles having a distinct chemical fingerprint they can be traced to the place of origin. The University of Western Australia (UWA) has called for volunteers to help clear nurdles from Australian beaches.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

A research team from Tsinghua University in Beijing has developed a fibre they say is so strong it could even be used to build an elevator to space.

They say just 1 cubic centimetre of the fibre – made from carbon nanotube – would not break under the weight of 160 elephants, or more than 800 tonnes. And that tiny piece of cable would weigh just 1.6 grams.

"This is a breakthrough," said Wang Changqing, a scientist at a key space elevator research centre at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian who was not involved in the Tsinghua study.

The Chinese team has developed a new "ultralong" fibre from carbon nanotube that they say is stronger than anything seen before, patenting the technology and publishing part of their research in the journal Nature Nanotechnology earlier this year.

"It is evident that the tensile strength of carbon nanotube bundles is at least 9 to 45 times that of other materials," the team said in the paper.

But hey, it's China, please consume with a medium-sized boulder of salt.

Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2170193/china-has-strongest-fibre-can-haul-160-elephants-and-space

Original Submission