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Phoenix666 writes:

New Scientist:

Much like humans, beavers can have an oversized effect on the landscape (SN: 8/4/18, p. 28). People who live near beaver habitat complain of downed trees and flooded land. But in areas populated mostly by critters, the effects can be positive. Beaver dams broaden and deepen small streams, forming new ponds and warming up local waters. Those beaver-built enhancements create or expand habitats hospitable to many other species — one of the main reasons that researchers refer to beavers as ecosystem engineers.
...
A couple of decades ago, the dam-building rodents were hard to find in northwestern Alaska. "There's a lot of beaver around here now, a lot of lodges and dams," says Robert Kirk, a long-time resident of Noatak, Alaska — ground zero for much of the recent beaver expansion. His village of less than 600 people is the only human population center in the Noatak River watershed.
...
Beavers' biggest effects on Arctic ecosystems may come from the added biodiversity within the ponds they create, says James Roth, an ecologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. These "oases on the tundra" will not only provide permanent habitat for fish and amphibians, they'll serve as seasonal stopover spots for migratory waterfowl. Physical changes to the environment could be just as dramatic, thawing permafrost decades faster than climate change alone would.

Beavers are a key species in modifying Arctic tundra in a warming climate.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

While it may not be widely appreciated, the Fortran programming language is still a thing. Last year, NASA ended up being overwhelmed by the sheer number of responses to their contest to optimize a Navier-Stokes equations solver used to model aerodynamics, to be evaluated on the Pleiades supercomputer. Fastest implmentation would have won the first prize, however there were far too many to evaluate. Fortran is quite old but neither outdated nor complex and nothing beats it for number crunching. So in many cases it is still the right tool for the job.

Many thought that the competition will never start due to the lack of applicants. In fact, it was cancelled for the exact opposite reason.

Quoting NASA's Press Release: «The extremely high number of applicants, more than 1,800, coupled with the difficulty in satisfying the extensive vetting requirements to control the public distribution of the software made it unlikely we would achieve the challenge's original objectives in a timely manner.»

Next up, MUMPS?

Original Submission

Previously: Chinese Scientist Claims to Have Created the First Genome-Edited Babies (Twins)

Update: Professor He Jiankui has defended his human genome editing project at the Human Genome Editing Summit at the University of Hong Kong. Although the project has been halted, Jiankui claimed that there was potentially a second pregnancy (and a third genome-edited baby) on the way. Jiankui also said that results have been submitted for peer review, although he did not name a journal. Eight couples consisting of an HIV-positive father and HIV-negative mother participated in the study, and all medical treatment was funded by He Jiankui. The parent company of the Shenzhen hospital where the experiment was carried out said that signatures on an application to the hospital's medical ethics committee had been forged. Chinese Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Xu Nanping called the experiment unlawful. Jiankui indicated that he had consulted with ethics experts in recent years:

William Hurlbut, a senior researcher in neurobiology at the Stanford Medical School, said that he was one of the ethicists that He consulted with over the past two years. Hurlbut, who served on the U.S. president's council on bioethics, said that while he knew that He was "heading in this direction," he didn't know the full-scale of the project or that it involved implanted embryos. "I challenged him at every level, and I don't approve of what he did," said Hurlbut.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

American scientist under investigation over ties to alleged genetic editing

Rice University has launched an investigation into one of its professors after reports surfaced that he is connected to alleged genetic editing in China that resulted in the birth of two babies with altered DNA. They announced the investigation Monday in the wake of reports that Dr. Michael Deem, a professor of biochemical and genetic engineering, was involved in a case in which genetic editing was performed on human embryos to alter a gene in a way to make them resistant to HIV. The university said that it had "no knowledge of this work" and that to its knowledge, the work was not performed in the U.S., where genetic editing of human embryos is illegal.

[...] Deem said he was in China when the participants agreed to genetic editing, and said they understood the risks, according to the Associated Press. Deem added that comparing the gene editing to a vaccine "might be a layman's way of describing it," according to the AP.

China orders probe into first 'gene-edited babies'

The National Health Commission said on Monday it was "highly concerned" and had ordered provincial health officials "to immediately investigate and clarify the matter". The government's medical ethics committee in Shenzhen said it was investigating the case, as was the Guangdong provincial health commission, according to Southern Metropolis Daily, a state media outlet.

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

In recent years, scientists have discovered that early humans moving out of Africa encountered Neanderthals living in parts of what is now Europe and Eastern Asia. In comparing Neanderthal DNA with modern humans, researchers have found that there was a least one pairing that led to offspring, which is reflected in the DNA of humans—approximately 2 percent of the DNA in non-African humans today is Neanderthal. In this new effort, the researchers have found evidence that suggests there was more than one such encounter.

Their findings make logical sense, considering that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted for approximately 30,000 years. Recent research by other groups had suggested that multiple offspring-producing unions had occurred—some people in East Asia, for example, were found to have up to 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than people of strictly European descent. In this new effort, the researchers took a more stringent look to find out once and for all if there had been multiple pairings or just one. They pulled and analyzed data from the 1000 Genomes Project, measuring the amount of Neanderthal DNA in genetic material from volunteers. The first step was separating the data between people of European and Asian ancestry. Doing so suggested that both groups had evidence of early multiple mating events. The researchers then studied the rates of the two groups by creating simulations showing outcomes of differing numbers of mating events between the two groups. Data from the simulations was then fed into a machine-learning algorithm that showed DNA percentage patterns based on the number of cross-breeding events that had occurred.

When you play Barry White, anything can happen.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow0824

[...] Today, people’s oral microbiomes vary much more from one person to the next than they did in the Middle Ages. The medieval men of Tjærby shared very similar lifestyles and monotonous diets; the traces of food proteins left in their dental plaque suggested dairy and goat milk, along with oats. In the 21st century, our diets include much more variety than the average medieval villager could have imagined, and one person’s diet may look much different from another’s. Different personal histories of antibiotic use, along with environmental factors and genetics, also shape microbial ecosystems in drastically different ways from person to person.

Scientists aren’t yet sure exactly how all of those factors combine to influence the invisible ecosystems that call our bodies home. In part, that’s because we don’t even completely understand which organisms live inside us; RNA studies have only recently discovered many species of oral bacteria, and several of them are nearly impossible to grow in the lab. But the sheer individuality of our microbiomes also presents a challenge. Some studies have suggested that the makeup of a person's microbiome may be as unique as a fingerprint, and that makes it hard to do large-scale comparisons of mouth microbiomes between populations.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/medieval-dental-plaque-sheds-light-on-how-our-microbiomes-have-changed/

Original Submission

Malware Inserted Into NPM Package by New Maintainer

darkfeline writes:

[NB: NPM is a node.js Package Manager.

https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116

One of the many popular one-function NPM packages for JavaScript was handed to a new maintainer who promptly injected code that steals cryptocurrency wallets.

Some takeaways: NPM has no security, FOSS packages should be inspected before use (including new versions), and maybe importing millions of packages each implementing a single function isn't such a good idea.

Widely Used Open Source Software Contained Bitcoin-Stealing Backdoor

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow0824

Malicious code that crept into event-stream JavaScript library went undetected for weeks.

A hacker or hackers sneaked a backdoor into a widely used open source code library with the aim of surreptitiously stealing funds stored in bitcoin wallets, software developers said Monday.

The malicious code was inserted in two stages into event-stream, a code library with 2 million downloads that’s used by Fortune 500 companies and small startups alike. In stage one, version 3.3.6, published on September 8, included a benign module known as flatmap-stream. Stage two was implemented on October 5 when flatmap-stream was updated to include malicious code that attempted to steal bitcoin wallets and transfer their balances to a server located in Kuala Lumpur. The backdoor came to light last Tuesday with this report from Github user Ayrton Sparling. Officials with the NPM, the open source project manager that hosted event-stream, didn’t issue an advisory until Monday, six days later.

NPM officials said the malicious code was designed to target people using a bitcoin wallet developed by Copay, a company that incorporated event-stream into its app. This release from earlier this month shows Copay updating its code to refer to flatmap-stream, but a Copay official said in a Github discussion that the malicious code was never deployed in any platforms. After this post went live, Copay officials updated their comment to say they did, in fact, release platforms that contained the backdoor.

In a blog post published after this post went live, Copay officials said versions 5.0.2 through 5.1.0 were affected by the backdoor and that users with these versions installed should avoid running the app until after installing version 5.2.0.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/hacker-backdoors-widely-used-open-source-software-to-steal-bitcoin/

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

the scientists discovered a set of enzymes that produce this molecule [luciferin], as well as luciferase, a light-emitting enzyme. The researchers used various types of cells to test activity of the luciferase, including human cancer cells and clawed frog embryos. In all cases, they obtained positive results: The gene introduced was active in cells, making them luminesce upon addition of luciferin

"If you understand how a bioluminescent system works, you can put the necessary components in a test tube and see luminescence. An important stage in our work was to identify the principal enzymes of fungal luminescence: those that catalyze biosynthesis of luciferin and the luciferase. We succeeded using a combination of analytical methods that allowed us to 'disassemble' the entire system into its components," says Konstantin Purtov, research fellow at the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk and one of the researchers on the project.

The fungal luminescence system turned out to be surprisingly simple. Scientists discovered enzymes that perform the caffeic acid cycle in fungal cells—a pathway for the biosynthesis of luciferin and emission of light. Activity of these enzymes is necessary and sufficient for any caffeic-acid-producing organism to become luminescent. And if an organism does not contain caffeic acid, luminescence can be induced by adding two more enzymes, which the authors demonstrated by engineering a yeast strain that glows in the dark.

At last, the path to glow-in-the-dark croutons is clear.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Computerworld:

At the end of the 19th century London telegraph wires were run underground through big pipes that carried gas and sewage. When they pulled the wire wrong, they employed an interesting technique to fix it:

One of these lateral wires was hauled out to be repaired. The men doing this work failed to attach to it a leading line, by which the wire could be drawn through again. The means employed to correct the error were very unique.

A large rat, with a fine steel wire, was put in the pipe. Behind there was thrust a ferret. The rat ran from the ferret a short distance and stopped. It was feared that he would show fight and be killed. But he started on again.

He ran through the whole length of the pipe, and brought out the wire in good style, though closely pushed by the ferret.

Huh! I always assumed they used leprechauns.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Using data from ESA's Gaia spacecraft, astronomers have discovered a new Milky Way satellite in the constellation Antlia. The newly found dwarf galaxy, named Antlia 2, is several times larger when compared to other systems of similar luminosity. The finding is detailed in a paper published November 9 on arXiv.org.

The Milky Way is known to be orbited by dozens of smaller, gravitationally bound galaxies. Although the list of identified satellites is relatively long, astronomers believe that some are still undetected.

[...] The search resulted in the finding of an enormous, faint dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way, which has received the designation Antlia 2 (or Ant 2 for short). Its nature was confirmed by spectroscopic observations with the 2dF+AAOmega Spectrograph on the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope and archival DECam imaging. The astronomers refer to the newly found satellite as "the hidden giant," given that the galaxy turned out to be significantly much[sic] larger than other systems in the Local Group with similar luminosity.

The Milky Way has groupies.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

As part of the "Blue Growth Strategy', the EU-funded H2020 W2O project has demonstrated the economic practicality of the world's first wave-driven desalination system, Wave2O. This operates completely 'off-grid' to supply large quantities of affordable fresh water.

Wave2O will be piloted in Cape Verde, an island in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa. A location for the pilot plant has been identified and site assessment studies, including bathymetric surveys, wave energy assessments, and water quality assessments are being carried out. Project coordinator and cofounder of the SME Resolute Marine Limited, Olivier Ceberio says, "We secured a pledge from the local power and water utility to purchase a full-scale Wave2O plant after trials of a pilot-scale plant have been successfully completed."

[...] Two wave energy converters (WECs) and two large 20-foot containers, one housing equipment for producing electricity and another for producing fresh water make up the Wave2O module. The WECs are connected to the containers by flexible hoses carrying pressurised seawater to and from the WECs. "Process seawater is sourced from an offshore well away from any sources of contamination through a multi-stage filtration system before entering a manifold system that splits its flow into two different paths," explains Ceberio.

Wave-induced mechanical energy is used by the WECs to drive two rotary actuators that increase the pressure of the intake seawater to 7 000 kPa before pumping it ashore. Here it is stabilised by a hydro-pneumatic accumulator to remove unwanted pressure pulsations before it enters the R/O system. A secondary flow of seawater is sent to an energy recovery unit (ERU). The ERU recovers energy from high-pressure brine – the by-product of the desalination process – and uses it to increase the pressure of the process seawater to 7 000 kPa. Energy recovery creates higher efficiency conversion, crucial for stand-alone operation.

The pressure-stabilised intake seawater is then merged and enters a standard R/O unit at an operating pressure of 6 200 kPa. Approximately 35 percent of the feed water is processed into fresh water, which is a relatively low recovery rate that has benefits related to reduced maintenance, extended membrane life and lower brine salinity. The highly energetic brine is then used to pre-charge the feed water.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/in-huge-shock-mitochondrial-dna-can-be-inherited-from-fathers/all/:

A piece of high school genetics, relied on for many sorts of genetic testing, has been found to have exceptions. Although mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is normally received from the mother, three families have been identified where people received some of their mtDNA, three-quarters in the most extreme case, from their father. The finding may change the way we treat mitochondrial diseases and brings genetic testing for maternal ancestry into question.

MtDNA exists separately from the rest of our DNA, inside the thousands of mitochondria within each cell, rather than the cell nucleus. It is so widely accepted as being from the mother's side it is sometimes known as the Eve Gene, the idea being that it can be traced back to some primeval mother of all living humans. Testing of mtDNA is used to identify maternal ancestry.

However, all that will have to change after Dr Shiyu Luo of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Luo's first exception is a boy who at four was hospitalized with symptoms suggestive of mitochondrial disease. Sequencing of the boy's mitochondria revealed no disease-causing genes, but some oddities in the mtDNA that led Luo and colleagues to sequence other family members for comparison. Around 40 percent of the boy's mitochondria matched that from his mother's father, and only 60 percent came from his grandmother.

After testing of other members of the same family, and other families with mitochondrial diseases, Luo found that, while paternal inheritance is very rare, it has occurred at least 17 times in three tested families.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin's Marine Science Institute have discovered nearly two dozen new types of microbes, many of which use hydrocarbons such as methane and butane as energy sources to survive and grow—meaning the newly identified bacteria might be helping to limit the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and might one day be useful for cleaning up oil spills.
...
"This shows the deep oceans contain expansive unexplored biodiversity, and microscopic organisms there are capable of degrading oil and other harmful chemicals," said assistant professor of marine science Brett Baker, the paper's primary investigator. "Beneath the ocean floor huge reservoirs of hydrocarbon gases—including methane, propane, butane and others—exist now, and these microbes prevent greenhouse gases from being released into the atmosphere."

Beware of eco-terrorists injecting oil fields with these bacteria!

Original Submission

PiMuNu writes:

FTFA:

Neutrinos have always been good for surprises. The postulate of their existence by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930 was already revolutionary. Later, physicists learned that neutrinos oscillate, meaning that the three known neutrino “flavors” (electron, muon, and tau) periodically convert into one another as they travel through space—a neutrino born in the muon flavor, for instance, may later be detected as an electron neutrino or tau neutrino. The discovery of neutrino oscillations implied that neutrinos have nonzero mass, which required a modification of the standard model of particle physics. Adding another surprise, the parameters that govern neutrino oscillations turned out to be vastly different from theoretical expectations.

Now, the MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab in Illinois has reignited excitement about neutrinos on yet another front. Data from the experiment suggest that muon neutrinos convert into electron neutrinos over distances that are too short for conventional neutrino oscillations to occur. This finding is all the more intriguing when considering that an earlier experiment—the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) at Los Alamos—already observed a similar signal in the late 1990s. The reason for excitement is that these signals could be beacons of sterile neutrinos, particles that only interact through gravity and aren’t foreseen in the standard model. The existence of sterile neutrinos could lead us to answers to some of the most pressing puzzles in physics—from the nature of dark matter to matter asymmetry in the Universe.

Journal article here

Note that most other physicists in the neutrino community think that the MiniBooNE folks have done their systematic error analysis wrong, in particular that the pi0 background shown in Fig. 1 of the paper is underestimated.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Medium:

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” -- Blaise Pascal

According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread boredom and instead choose aimless distraction, and we can’t help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false comforts of the mind.

The issue at the root, essentially, is that we never learn the art of solitude.
...
our aversion to solitude is really an aversion to boredom.

At its core, it’s not necessarily that we are addicted to a TV set because there is something uniquely satisfying about it, just like we are not addicted to most stimulants because the benefits outweigh the downsides. Rather, what we are really addicted to is a state of not-being-bored.

Deep thoughts by Blaise Pascal. Was he right? Are we addicted to not-being-bored? Is boredom good for us?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

BBCTech:

What is claimed to be the UK's first dockless electric bike hire service has begun, despite the risk of vandalism.

Lime said its motor-assisted bikes in Milton Keynes would be accessible for people of any age or fitness level.

They can be unlocked for £1, ridden for 15p per minute, then parked anywhere "responsibly" after use.

Santander pedal bikes can already be rented in the town for £1 per 30 minutes, but over half were vandalised and not in use during summer 2017.

More bikesharing makes it more convenient to cycle, but will drivers share the road?

Original Submission