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martyb writes:

Ancient Intervention Could Boost Dwindling Water Reserves in Coastal Peru:

Senior author Dr Wouter Buytaert, of Imperial's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said: "The people of Lima live with one of the world's most unstable water situations. There's too much water in the wet seasons, and too little in the dry ones.

"The indigenous peoples of Peru knew how to get around this, so we're looking to them for answers."

Ancient Peruvian civilisations in 600 AD created systems within mountains to divert excess rainwater from source streams onto mountain slopes and through rocks.

The water would take some months to trickle through the system and resurface downstream -- just in time for the dry season.

To study this, the researchers looked at one such system in Huamantanga. They used dye tracers and hydrological monitoring to study the system from the wet to dry seasons of 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. Social scientists involved also worked with Huamantanga's local people to understand the practice and help map the landscape.

They found the water took between two weeks and eight months to re-emerge, with an average time of 45 days. From these time scales, they calculated that, if governments upscale the systems to cater to today's population size, they could reroute and delay 35 per cent of wet season water, equivalent to 99 million cubic metres per year of water through Lima's natural terrain.

This could increase the water available in the dry season by up to 33 per cent in the early months, and an average of 7.5 per cent for the remaining months. The method could essentially extend the wet season, providing more drinking water and longer crop-growing periods for local farmers.

Journal Reference:
Boris F. Ochoa-Tocachi, Juan D. Bardales, Javier Antiporta, Katya Pérez, Luis Acosta, Feng Mao, Zed Zulkafli, Junior Gil-Ríos, Oscar Angulo, Sam Grainger, Gena Gammie, Bert De Bièvre, Wouter Buytaert. Potential contributions of pre-Inca infiltration infrastructure to Andean water security. Nature Sustainability, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41893-019-0307-1

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martyb writes:

2nd Florida City Pays Hackers, as 3rd City Faces Breach:

A second small Florida city this month has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to hackers who took over most of its computer operations, an official said Wednesday, while a third Florida city said its data was breached.

The attacks in Riviera Beach, Lake City and Key Biscayne underscore the need for municipal governments to update and secure their software systems, and also reflect the dilemma of how to respond to hackers. The FBI doesn't condone paying ransom to hackers, but city governments often consider it the most convenient option.

The city manager of Lake City, a community of about 13,000 residents some 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Jacksonville, says it paid about $460,000 in bitcoin Tuesday to recover data and computer operations.

In a separate case, the Village of Key Biscayne, just off the coast of Miami, reported a data breach earlier this week. This comes a week after Riviera Beach in South Florida agreed to pay $600,000 in ransom.

It was not immediately clear if there was any connection between the attacks.

Joseph Helfenberg, city manager of Lake City, said paying the ransom was the cheapest option available since the city is paying a $10,000 deductible, and the rest is being covered by its insurer.

"We had a lot of attempts to recover the data that were unsuccessful," Helfenberg said Wednesday.

[...] Michigan State criminal justice professor Tom Holy said the recent attacks underscore the need for governments and businesses to spend money on backup systems and security protocols. If a city has been backing up its data, it's probably not worth paying a ransom, but if they haven't, "paying might be the cheapest option," Holt said.

"Which is really awful, but that's the point we may be at," Holt said. "This ransomware threat is not going to go away anytime soon."

What would happen in your town or city if it were attacked for ransom? Are networks properly partitioned? Are backups up-to-date? Have the backups actually been tested?

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RandomFactor writes:

Everyone has a heartbeat with a unique auditory signature. A new device developed for U.S. Special Forces can be used to tell them apart similar to irises or fingerprints even at a distance.

A new device, developed for the Pentagon after US Special Forces requested it, can identify people without seeing their face: instead it detects their unique cardiac signature with an infrared laser. While it works at 200 meters (219 yards), longer distances could be possible with a better laser. “I don’t want to say you could do it from space,” says Steward Remaly, of the Pentagon’s Combatting [sic] Terrorism Technical Support Office, “but longer ranges should be possible.”

[...]the new device, called Jetson uses laser vibrometry to detect surface vibrations the heartbeat causes on skin, clothing, or jackets (though it is not effective through very heavy clothing such as thick winter coats).

Cardiac signatures are already used for security identification. The Canadian company Nymi has developed a wrist-worn pulse sensor as an alternative to fingerprint identification. The technology has been trialed by the Halifax building society in the UK.

Jetson extends this approach by adapting an off-the shelf device that is usually used to check vibration from a distance in structures such as wind turbines. For Jetson, a special gimbal was added so that an invisible, quarter-size laser spot could be kept on a target. It takes about 30 seconds to get a good return, so at present the device is only effective where the subject is sitting or standing.

The developers of the technology indicate that this could likely also be adjusted to scan remotely for heart issues such as arrythmias.

Original Submission

chromas writes:

Medical Xpress:

Decisions to prescribe children drugs to treat chronic pain are not guided by sufficient, high quality evidence, according to an important new study published today.

Published as part of a special collection of systematic reviews in the Cochrane Library and recently summarised in the journal PAIN, the overview highlights a dearth of information available about treating childhood chronic pain and concludes that much more needs to be done to improve the quality and quantity of evidence available. It is led by researchers at the University of Bath in collaboration with an international team of researchers and physicians.

In adults, chronic pain lasting for three months or more is known to have a devastating effect. What is less well known is that one in five children also report chronic pain, which is both distressing and disabling for children and their parents.

But the new study reveals a stark contrast between the evidence available for the drugs used to treat adults with chronic pain, compared with that conducted in children. For adults with chronic pain, 300,000 patients have been studied in hundreds of individual randomised control trials. Yet only 393 children have participated in just six trials ever undertaken.

The research is a summary of all available systematic reviews of studies in this area and is supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Versus Arthritis and also involves Bath's Centre for Pain Services (part of the RUH Foundation Trust).

The team who prepared the overview stress that lack of evidence does not mean evidence of no effect. But they argue there has been very little investment in researching which drugs can best help children with chronic pain and suggest that this issue should be urgently addressed to increase confidence that children are getting the best treatment.

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

E-bikes are the fastest-growing segment of the bicycle industry. They're popular with commuters and baby boomers who might not otherwise be able to get out on a bicycle.

The bikes, which can cost $2,000 or more, combine the frame of a regular bike with lightweight batteries and electric motors for extra zip.

Their sales jumped 72% to $144 million in the U.S. last year, helping to breathe life into bicycle sales that have been relatively flat, according to the NPD Group, which tracks retail bike sales nationwide.

Their popularity has led to conflict.

In bike-friendly southern California, as local land managers take cues from agencies like the National Park Service, some are banning e-bikes from bicycle paths. That has angered riders, said Morgan Lommele, of PeopleForBikes, a bicycle advocacy group and trade association.

[...] Maine and 21 other states have adopted laws that classify e-bikes into categories. Most are treated like regular bicycles under such laws, said Lommele, who has been working with states to create uniform definitions. Only the fastest e-bikes are restricted to roads.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/no-one-should-die-blood-transfusion-so-why-did-it-n1021506

In early December, a nurse at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center gave a 23-year-old leukemia patient a blood transfusion that, unbeknownst to the medical staff, had become contaminated with bacteria.

The patient’s blood pressure soon plummeted, but there’s no evidence anyone at the nation’s top-ranked cancer hospital was actively monitoring her vital signs in the crucial moments during and after the procedure, a federal investigation found. She died a little more than a day later.

The potentially preventable death drew a harsh rebuke from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, whose subsequent investigation, made public Monday, uncovered systemic safety lapses at the hospital. Nurses were not properly monitoring patients’ vital signs while administering blood transfusions, not only in the case of the patient who died, but also in 18 out of 33 other cases examined, the investigation found.

[...] Fatal blood transfusions are so rare and so preventable that they are counted among a class of medical mistakes that experts say should never happen. Included on the list of so-called never events: Leaving medical equipment inside a patient after surgery. Operating on the wrong patient or on the wrong body part. Giving patients contaminated drugs.

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Phoenix666 writes:

New Scientist:

A solar-powered flying robot has become the lightest machine capable of flying without an attached power source.

Weighing just 259 milligrams, the insect-inspired RoboBee X-Wing has four wings that flap at a rate of 170 times per second. It has a wingspan of 3.5 centimetres and is 6.5 cemtimetres high.

The flying robot was developed by Noah Jafferis and colleagues at Harvard University.

Its wings are controlled by two muscle-like plates that contract when voltage passes through them. They are powered by six tiny solar cells weighing 10 milligrams each, which are located above the wings so as not to interfere with flight.

I, for one, welcome our flying robot overlords.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Previously, the EU-propped Ariane Group's CEO scoffed at the idea of pursuing reusable rockets (the upcoming Ariane 6 is fully expendable) due to Europe having a small market of 5-10 launches per year, as well as the potential effects on rocket-building jobs:

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

[Chief executive of Ariane Group, Alain] Charmeau said the Ariane rocket does not launch often enough to justify the investment into reusability. (It would need about 30 launches a year to justify these costs, he said). And then Charmeau said something telling about why reusability doesn't make sense to a government-backed rocket company—jobs.

"Let us say we had ten guaranteed launches per year in Europe and we had a rocket which we can use ten times—we would build exactly one rocket per year," he said. "That makes no sense. I cannot tell my teams: 'Goodbye, see you next year!'"

This seems a moment of real irony. Whereas earlier in the interview Charmeau accuses the US government of subsidizing SpaceX, a few minutes later he says the Ariane Group can't make a reusable rocket because it would be too efficient. For Europe, a difficult decision now looms. It can either keep subsidizing its own launch business in order to maintain an independent capability, or it can give in to Elon Musk and SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin. Charmeau seems to have a clear view of where he thinks the continent should go.

Now, the attitude has changed:

Europe says SpaceX "dominating" launch, vows to develop Falcon 9-like rocket

This month, the European Commission revealed a new three-year project to develop technologies needed for two proposed reusable launch vehicles. The commission provided €3 million to the German space agency, DLR, and five companies to, in the words of a news release about the project, "tackle the shortcoming of know-how in reusable rockets in Europe."

This new RETALT project's goals are pretty explicit about copying the retro-propulsive engine firing technique used by SpaceX to land its Falcon 9 rocket first stages back on land and on autonomous drone ships. The Falcon 9 rocket's ability to land and fly again is "currently dominating the global market," the European project states. "We are convinced that it is absolutely necessary to investigate Retro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies to make re-usability state-of-the-art in Europe."

Ariane Group isn't one of the five companies, but then again, €3 million isn't a lot of money.

Even a fully reusable rocket is on the table:

[...] attitude of the new RETALT project appears to have indicated European acceptance of the inevitability of reusable launch vehicles. Engineers will work toward two different concepts. The first will be a Falcon-9-like rocket that will make use of seven modified Vulcain 2 rocket engines and have the capacity to lift up to 30 tons to low-Earth orbit. The second will be a more revolutionary single-stage-to-orbit vehicle that looks like the Roton rocket developed by Rotary Rocket about two decades ago.

They should mine Elon Musk's Twitter for clues. Try making the rocket out of stainless steel.

Previously: Full Thrust on Europe's New Ariane 6 Rocket
SpaceX's Reusable Rockets Could End EU's Arianespace, and Other News

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

Apple plans to add 2,000 software and hardware jobs in Seattle within the next five years, starting with 200 additional jobs this year, company officials said Monday at a news conference with Mayor Jenny Durkan.

The company is leasing all the office space at 333 Dexter Ave. N., a complex of two 12-story buildings nearing completion at Dexter Avenue and Thomas Street, one block west of the core Amazon campus in South Lake Union.

The office space could accommodate more than 3,000 employees.

Polish up those resumes...

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

New Atlas:

A study by a team of scientists from Boston Children's Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital suggests food allergies can be triggered in infants by a lack of certain gut bacteria. As well as identifying which bacteria in human subjects are key to protecting against the onset of food allergies, a subsequent mouse study revealed a specific probiotic cocktail can reverse pre-established allergies.

[...] Homing in on a specific handful of gut bacteria that were in lower abundance in those infants suffering from food allergies, a subsequent mouse study affirmed the allergic association. Mice sensitized to an egg allergen were found to be protected from allergic reactions when administered the specific cocktail of six bacterial species identified by the researchers.

Even more interesting was the finding that these specific bacterial cocktails completely suppressed allergic reactions in mice already sensitized to an allergen. This discovery implies that not only can allergies be prevented from developing in the first place, but a pre-existing allergic response can be reversed after it has already developed.

New hope for sufferers of food allergies?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Penn State News:

People who order their Buffalo wings especially spicy and sometimes find them to be too "hot," should choose milk to reduce the burn, according to Penn State researchers, who also suggest it does not matter if it is whole or skim.

[...]The researchers looked at five beverages and involved 72 people -- 42 women and 30 men. Participants drank spicy Bloody Mary mix, containing capsaicin. Immediately after swallowing, they rated the initial burn.

Then, in subsequent separate trials, they drank purified water, cola, cherry-flavored Kool-Aid, seltzer water, non-alcoholic beer, skim milk and whole milk. Participants continued to rate perceived burn every 10 seconds for two minutes. There were eight trials. Seven included one of the test beverages and one trial did not include a test beverage.

The initial burn of the spicy Bloody Mary mix was, on average, rated below "strong" but above "moderate" by participants and continued to decay over the two?minutes of the tests to a mean just above "weak," according to lead researcher Alissa Nolden. All beverages significantly reduced the burn of the mix, but the largest reductions in burn were observed for whole milk, skim milk and Kool-Aid.

If the wings are too spicy, isn't the solution to dip them in the blue cheese or ranch dressing?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel internal memo highlights competitive challenges AMD poses

A recent post on Intel's employee-only portal titled, "AMD competitive profile: Where we go toe-to-toe, why they are resurgent, which chips of ours beat theirs," has found its way to Reddit and offers a fascinating glimpse into how Intel perceives one of its largest competitors and the challenges it is posing to some of its divisions.

[...] Penned by Walden Kirsch as part of "the latest in a Circuit News series on Intel's major competitors," the piece notes how AMD was the best-performing stock on the S&P 500 last year and enjoyed its second straight year of greater than 20 percent annual revenue growth in 2018. One of the reasons for AMD's resurgence, Kirsch surmises, is its strategic re-focus on high-performance products in the desktop, datacenter and server markets.

Specifically, Kirsch highlighted AMD's use of TSMC's 7nm manufacturing process, victories in public cloud offerings and its next-gen Zen-core products as factors that will "amplify the near-term competitive challenge from AMD."

[...] The company believes its 9th Gen Core processors will beat AMD's Ryzen-based products in lightly threaded productivity benchmarks as well as in gaming benchmarks. With regard to multi-threaded workloads, Intel said AMD's Matisse "is expected to lead."

Soon to be discontinued internal news series.

See also: Platform Storage Face-Off: AMD Upsets Intel
AMD Ryzen 16 Core 5.2GHz CPU Benchmark Leaked, Crushes Intel's i9 9980XE
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6 Core, 12 Thread CPU Tested on X470 Platform – Single-Core Performance On Par With The Core i9-9900K
AMD Ryzen 7 3800X Benchmarks Leaked, Crushes Intel's i9 9900K in Multi-threaded Performance

Related: Intel's Processors Lose More Performance From Vulnerability Mitigations Than AMD's
AMD and Intel at Computex 2019: First Ryzen 3000-Series CPUs and Navi GPU Announced
HP Boss: Intel Shortages are Steering Our Suited Customers to Buy AMD
AMD Details Three Navi GPUs and First Mainstream 16-Core CPU

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Telegraph (no paywall version):

Male fertility is being irreversibly damaged by a diet of western junk food by the time men reach 18, a study has found.

A groundbreaking investigation has established that teenagers who favour high-fat and processed foods like pizzas, chips and snacks are killing off sperm-producing cells that can never be replaced.

It showed that a diet dominated by fish, chicken, vegetables and fruit is best is for protecting those cells and ensuring healthy levels of sperm.

[...] The research is being presented at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) annual conference in Vienna.

The solution is simple: don't eat anyone's junk.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

CNet:

In 2016, the National Security Agency gathered 151 million call records even though Congress made rules to reduce the federal government's sweeping surveillance of Americans' phone records. A new report shows the NSA might have collected additional call data it wasn't authorized to obtain again last year.

The American Civil Liberties Union released documents on Wednesday that it says show the NSA's "unlawful" collection of call detail records, or CDRs, of Americans in October 2018. This comes months after the NSA purged millions of call records.

"These documents further confirm that this surveillance program is beyond redemption and a privacy and civil liberties disaster," Patrick Toomey, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, said in a letter Wednesday. "The NSA's collection of Americans' call records is too sweeping, the compliance problems too many, and evidence of the program's value all but nonexistent. There is no justification for leaving this surveillance power in the NSA's hands."

Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea are the greatest threats to America's freedom?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

VESA Announces DisplayPort 2.0 Standard: Bandwidth For 8K Monitors & Beyond

While display interface standards are slow to move, at the same time their movement is inexorable: monitor resolutions continue to increase, as do refresh rates and color depths, requiring more and more bandwidth to carry signals for the next generation of monitors. Keeping pace with the demand for bandwidth, the DisplayPort standard, the cornerstone of PC display standards, has now been through several revisions since it was first launched over a decade ago. And now this morning the standard is taking its biggest leap yet with the release of the DisplayPort 2.0 specification. Set to offer nearly triple the available bandwidth of DisplayPort 1.4, the new revision of DisplayPort is almost moving a number of previously optional features into the core standard, creating what's in many ways a new baseline for the interface.

The big news here, of course, is raw bandwidth. The current versions of DisplayPort – 1.3 & 1.4 – offer up to 32.4 Gbps of bandwidth – or 25.9 Gbps after overhead – which is enough for a standard 16.7 million color (24-bit) monitor at up to 120Hz, or up to 98Hz for 1 billion+ (30-bit) monitors. This is a lot of bandwidth, but it still isn't enough for the coming generation of monitors, including the likes of Apple's new 6K Pro Display XDR monitor, and of course, 8K monitors. As a result, the need for more display interface bandwidth continues to grow, with these next-generation monitors set to be the tipping point. And all of this is something that the rival HDMI Forum has already prepared for with their own HDMI 2.1 standard.

DisplayPort 2.0, in turn, is shooting for 8K and above. Introducing not just one but a few different bitrate modes, the fastest mode in DisplayPort 2.0 will top out at 80 Gbps of raw bandwidth, about 2.5 times that of DisplayPort 1.3/1.4. Layered on that, DisplayPort 2.0 also introduces a more efficient coding scheme, resulting in much less coding overhead. As a result, the effective bandwidth of the new standard will peak at 77.4 Gbps, with at 2.98x the bandwidth of the previous standard is just a hair under a full trebling of available bandwidth.

Related: HDMI 2.1 Announced
Linux, Meet DisplayPort
HDMI 2.1 Released
VirtualLink Consortium Announces USB Type-C Specification for VR Headsets

Original Submission